by Lila Ashe
What if someone pulled out in front of them? What if they scared someone into having a heart attack? What if the engine’s brakes failed?
Tox grabbed her hand and squeezed it, and Grace’s happiness built again into joy that fizzed right up into her brain.
Then Luke shut it down. The engine slowed. At the pier, they turned into the parking lot at a decorous speed.
“That’s weird,” said Tox. “I could have sworn I heard something about a car fire.”
“Yup,” said Hank.
“Yup,” said Luke.
That hadn’t been safe. Or prudent. Anyone could have accidentally pulled out in front of the speeding engine. There could have been a deadly collision. Anyone could have been hurt.
But there hadn’t been a crash. No one got hurt. It had turned out okay.
Grace took a breath. “Yup,” she said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Tox walked Grace to her front door. He should be thinking about how badly the date went. It had almost been—but not quite—the worst case scenario. He should be thinking about making sure Grace felt calm. Secure. Safe.
Why, then, couldn’t he stop thinking about getting another one of those kisses? Jesus, not since he was sixteen had he been so unable to stop thinking about a woman’s mouth. Grace’s was perfect, and right now it was smiling at him …
Tox rubbed his neck. “So.”
“Is that still bothering you?”
“Nah,” he lied.
“Come in. I can massage it for you.” She went beet-red the instant the words left her mouth.
Tox grinned, but didn’t say anything. He followed her in, keeping an eye on the way her rear end looked in those old jeans of hers: compact, round, so incredibly hot.
Inside, she asked him if he wanted a cup of tea. Tox found the fact that her voice cracked adorable. “No, thanks.”
“Okay, then,” she said. “Sit there, on the couch.” She pointed to a small red loveseat. “I’ll make some. Hibiscus Rose okay?”
She’d obviously missed that he’d declined. And hibiscus rose sounded like something his grandmother would have put behind her ears. “Just fine.”
She went into the kitchen. He could hear her moving around, opening cupboards, turning on the faucet. Putting his hands behind his head to alleviate some of the pressure on his neck, he leaned back and looked around.
It was just like her in here. If a plane had dropped him anywhere in the world, he would have been able to tell that he was near Grace Rowe. It smelled like her, sweet, with a hint of spice, as if she tucked packets of cinnamon and cloves in the furniture. A faint scent of something earthier, maybe incense. That wouldn’t have surprised him.
The walls were painted in earth-tones, a rich russet on one wall, a dark adobe orange on another. The furniture was comfortable. Nothing fancy. Things like this red sofa, and the two oversized green chairs, things that called out to be sunk into, rested upon. There was no art, as he would have called it, on the walls. Instead, things hung from nails and hooks. A large drum with a fringe of feathers and beads hung on one wall. Next to the brick fireplace was a collection of what looked like painted gourds.
Hippie stuff. The kind of furnishings he would have mocked only days ago. In here, though, it looked good, like he was sitting inside some Western decorating magazine.
There was something hung above a low blue bookcase that looked like a round box made of metal. A tiny dollhouse? He stood and moved to get closer to it. Not a dollhouse, it was an aluminum open case that held a picture of a saint that had been painted with … glitter?
“My tin nicho,” Grace said from behind him. In her hands she held two orange mugs of tea. She’d taken off her canvas beach shoes and her bare feet surprised him, somehow. They looked so vulnerable.
“Pink toenails,” he said rather stupidly.
She laughed. Such a pretty sound that was. It was like the sound of dancing. Then she said, “It’s my own little, um … do you know what a hope chest is?”
“Not really.”
“It’s something a girl had in the old days. She filled it with the things she made to take with her into marriage. Her hopes.”
Tox felt his eyebrows shoot upward. “This is your marriage box?”
“No. Only the hopes for my life.”
“That looks like a saint or something.” He pointed at a picture glued inside. “Is that you?”
She nudged his shoulder with her own, only she was so much shorter than he was, she really just touched his elbow. His arm ached, suddenly, to go around her, but he held himself back.
“Of course not. That’s just a generic saint I cut out of a magazine.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s blasphemous to someone. Somewhere.”
“Nah,” she said easily. “I just think there’s something good and amazing and strong and wonderful in all of us, and part of our job here is to find out what that is.”
Did she really believe that? That people were inherently good? “Well, you haven’t seen the dregs of humanity, then.”
She touched her lips. He wanted to do that. Badly.
“Maybe,” she said. “But I’ve seen more than I would have liked to have seen. My first acupuncture job was in an alcoholic rehab center.”
“Okay.” He paused. “Maybe you’ve seen a little bit, then. What’s with the saint, then?”
She said, sounding a bit abashed, “She kind of looks like me. A little bit, I mean. Around the nose, maybe.”
Heck, she was right. Now that she said it, he could see it. It was as if they’d modeled the whole image on her. The same long toffee-colored hair that curled at the ends—always looking like it had just been caught in a windstorm. And the same big, brown eyes, as light as her hair. Almost clear, really. As expressive as the sun setting at twilight.
“My sister actually pointed it out to me in the magazine. I thought she was full of it, but I was … I was in a low place, then. Relationship-wise. Later, I dug the magazine out of the recycling and cut it out. Look, even the same dimple.”
Tox longed to touch that dimple with the very tip of his finger. Instead, he shoved his hand in his pocket.
“I used glitter glue on her dress, or robe, whatever it is. The thimble was my mother’s, and it reminds me that needles have always been important in our family. After my father died, before she got sick, she took care of both me and my sister as a single mother on just the income she made as a seamstress.”
There was pride in her voice, a stubbornness that he liked. And recognized. “What’s the matchbook for?”
She made a murmuring sound in the back of her throat, as if she was trying to decide what, or how much, to tell him. “It’s … to remind me of something.”
“And is that …”
“A piece of chain-link fence? Yeah.” Grace straightened her back. “It is.”
Tox hated it when anyone pushed him, so he wouldn’t do it to her. “I get it.” He accepted the mug of tea from her. “Thank you for this.”
They sat on the red loveseat. She was so dang close that if he moved an inch their legs would tangle. Just one inch, and they’d be touching. He wanted that so much. But she was like a kid who had called 911 after learning about it in school—all jumpy, jangled nerves. If he moved too fast, he thought she might scream, and that would seriously kill his chances of scoring another kiss from that luscious mouth.
Did she really not know how she was affecting him? Grace drew her legs up and rested the mug on her knee. She sighed and faced forward.
Her body language read as defensive. “Hey, Grace.”
She started. “Yeah?”
“This tea is good.”
She smiled. “I’m glad you like it.”
“We don’t have to do anything else.”
“What?”
He knew she was only pretending confusion. “I mean it. Yeah, I loved making out with you at the beach. You’re so hot I can barely look at you sometimes. You do something to me. And I like
it. A whole lot.”
“Oh.” Her voice, again, was small, but that little smile stayed on her face.
“But you’re spooked,” Tox went on. “And I hope to all heck it’s not me doing that, but if it is, I want to make it clear that all I want from you at this exact moment is this here cup of tea.”
She stared at the wall behind his head, where the nicho hung. She bit her lower lip again. It wasn’t that she was shy—Tox would never have called her that. She was scared of something.
That was fine. As long as it wasn’t him.
“There was this guy.” Grace said. “That’s the matchbook.”
“He was an arsonist?”
“He burned me. The matchbook is to remind me not to let it happen again.”
Tox set the mug down on the coffee table. He held out his hands and looked at them. “Sugar, we might have a problem. Because it’s hard for me not to light a match when it’s in my fingers.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Grace made a noise that was between a choke and a cough.
Tox was worried immediately. “How’s your breathing?”
“Fine. I’m fine. It’s just that sometimes you …”
“What?”
“You make me so nervous.” Grace closed her eyes, and Tox stared at the way her long lashes played against her cheeks. “I’ve screwed up so many times before. It’s embarrassing. I’m supposed to be the healthy one, and …”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Tox said. She could keep her secrets. After all, he wanted to keep his. No way would he tell her about his worries that his neck was going to put him out on medical. That he’d lose the job that meant everything to him if he didn’t somehow fix it. That without the job, he was nothing. A nobody. A failure.
Yeah, Tox wouldn’t push her.
“No, I want to tell you about him.”
“Matchbook guy.”
“I was with him a long time. Four years. It was my longest relationship.”
“I’ve never made it past two.”
“I hadn’t either, until him. I thought he was the one.”
“Your first real love?”
She shook her head, her hair skimming one eye. It was almost amber in the light of the orange lamp, and for a second Tox imagined sweeping it back over her shoulder. He clenched the mug tighter.
“No. I’d been in love before. I have no problem falling in love.” Grace smiled again, a real one. A wide smile, and she directed it right at him. Tox felt something in his chest tighten.
She went on, “I love falling in love. I’m good at it. The problem was, I’ve never been good at picking the guys. One was an alcoholic, and I didn’t know until he didn’t call me for three weeks because he was in freaking rehab.”
“You didn’t know?”
“I’m clueless. That’s the whole problem.” She sighed and took a sip of her tea. “Another had a gambling problem. He stole the little bit of jewelry my mother left me and sold it to bet on his ponies. I almost killed him for that. And again, I didn’t see it coming.”
Tox’s fist curled into a ball. He’d like to get his hands on that guy. “That must have hurt.”
“Nothing like the four-year guy, though. I thought I’d finally done it right. Picked a guy who was healthy. Strong. He was a yoga teacher, for Pete’s sake. We met when he came in for a tune-up. Nothing wrong with his body, he just wanted to make sure he was in alignment.” Grace’s eyes were far away. “He swept me off my feet. Told me I was beautiful.”
“You are.” He couldn’t help it.
Grace said, “Oh!” She looked startled. And pink, so prettily flushed. Tox had never wanted to kiss anyone so much in his whole life.
Then she went on, as if he hadn’t spoken. “He told me that I was everything he was looking for. He’d been with a bunch of screwed-up people, too. He’d gotten taken in by a woman who’d turned out to be a coke-head, and he hadn’t even noticed her using. We congratulated ourselves on finding someone healthy. Someone not crazy or screwed up or mean. Every year on our anniversary, we’d toast each other for not being insane.”
“So what did he end up being? A sex-addict?”
Her mouth dropped open and she turned to face him, crossing one ankle under her knee. “Do you know him? Tim Smith? Oh, please tell me you don’t know him.”
“It was the only thing on your list of losers you hadn’t mentioned.”
“Sex-addict.” Grace almost spat the words. “I can handle that people have problems with alcohol and drugs. I believe those are diseases, and that it’s hereditary. But he tried to tell me that sex-addiction ran in his family.”
“What he meant was that he saw his father cheating on his mother his whole life and had learned it was the only thing to do.”
“Holy cow,” she said. “Yep. That’s it exactly.”
Tox felt as if he’d gotten an A on a test.
“And the worst part was that I’d missed it entirely. Again. It was like my eyes were so open, and I was so happy that I was in something healthy that I completely didn’t believe any of the warning signs. He would come home late and say that he was working.”
“As a yoga instructor.”
“Yeah.” She laughed humorlessly. “I knew his studio closed at nine, and I believed him when he said he was doing paperwork. Paperwork! Until one in the morning. He was helping someone with her poses all those nights, and I found out later it was always a different someone. So I guess he was working, all right.”
“How did you find out?”
Grace set the mug on the low yellow coffee table in front of them and covered her face with her hands. “That was the worst part.” She peeked at him through her fingers. “He told me.”
“He told you?”
“He said he had to come clean before he asked me to marry him. He wanted it to be perfect between us, and nothing would do but total honesty. And the funny thing was, he thought I would be proud of him.”
“He sounds like a dog.”
Grace sat bolt upright and stared at him. “Methyl. You have to go home.”
Tox held out his phone. “Sims sent a message. He’s sleeping on the couch with her tonight. Look at this.”
The picture was darling, a tuckered-out yellow puppy curled into a ball on a blue pillow. Grace held out a finger as if she could touch the dog from her seat. “Okay, good.”
“So yoga-dude.”
“Was awful. It was all terrible. And the worst part was that even as I prided myself for being strong and healthy, and helping other people recover, I couldn’t seem to do it.”
“You were in love with him,” Tox said. He wasn’t that fond of what he felt inside when he said it.
“That’s the weirdest part,” said Grace. “I was. But I realized the person I loved had never existed, and it was more like mourning a death, in a way. I’d been with him for four years, and I’d never had the foggiest idea who he was.”
“But did you have fun?” Tox hated the question even as he knew he had to ask it.
“Yeah,” she said slowly. “We did. That was a good part.”
He wondered if they’d had good sex. And if so, was it merely good, or was it great? He stood, setting his mug next to hers, needing to move around, distribute some of the tension that ached in his bones.
Grace pulled up her knees again and brightened. “What about you, though? Long history of girls chasing you around the fire station?”
“Nah,” he said. “I tend to get involved with the crazies, too. Because of that, I don’t really do relationships. You know.” He touched the nicho and turned. “How crazy are you nowadays, exactly?”
“I would have said not at all, not anymore.” Grace looked at him, and their gazes tangled for one long moment. “But I’m not so sure now.”
Tox felt something build inside him. A determination of sorts. But it was blended with heated excitement, a fine tremor that made his hands feel jittery. “I should go.”
“I’m probably not crazy
enough for you, though. I’m pretty sure about that,” she said, standing. She came forward the two steps it took to reach him. “I’m hardly crazy at all.”
“Hmmm.” Tox lifted a hand and carefully, slowly, so as not to spook her, touched the strand of hair that kept falling over her eye. “Does it count if you’re driving me crazy?”
“Maybe.” She tilted her head to the side and rubbed her cheek against his hand. “You should probably leave. You’re bad for me.”
He could be so much worse for her, she had no idea. He ran the back of his fingers down the slope of her jaw, and let his thumb rest where it had wanted to all night, right on the plumpest part of her lower lip, exactly where he wanted to taste it again. “I’m good for you.”
“Your nickname is Toxic.”
“No truth in advertising,” he said. “I even helped save your sister. Doesn’t that make me good for something?”
Oh, shoot. Wrong words, wrong phrase. Her eyes widened, and he saw the incident flash in front of her again.
“Samantha … How could I forget? Even for a minute?”
“What, that she’s okay?” Tox trailed his finger down, over her chin, down her neck. Slowly. “She’s fine.”
“I could have lost her … I can’t—”
“Shhh, sweetheart.” The endearment slipped out so easily. “She’s sleeping. We’re the only two people not sleeping in Darling Bay right now, I’d be willing to bet.”
She lifted her chin so that his finger could find an even smoother trail down to the vee of her shirt. He paused at her neck, skimming it. A whisper of touch.
Then, instead of kissing her mouth, he leaned down and kissed there, in that sweet, warm spot, just under her chin. A soft kiss. A reassuring kiss.
But the noise she made in the back of her throat was anything but gentle. With a primal growl, she put her hands on both sides of his head, dragging his mouth up to hers. When they kissed, her tongue met his with a blaze that made him know he was lost.