Grace bit her lip. “I’m okay.” She wiped her face, taking off her glasses, trying not to think of how gently he’d slid them off. “Really.”
Freya rubbed her arm. “What’s up? Was he…?” Her voice trailed off. Clearly, she didn’t know what to say.
“He was lovely,” sniffed Grace.
“I knew it,” said Mia. “Jeez, Grace. What did I tell you?” Her eyes glinted. “Did you…?”
Grace rolled her eyes but couldn’t stop her lips curving.
“Hah!” Mia grinned. “Swear-out-loud sex! I told you!”
Freya’s eyebrows disappeared into her fringe.
“Will you two stop it?” Grace forced the smile from her face and stood. “I’m in a terrible predicament. I’ve had sex with him, and now I can’t possibly go around there next weekend because he’s going to expect it again.”
The girls exchanged a glance. Mia shrugged. “And the problem with that is…”
“I promised myself, Mia. No more lunatics, remember?”
“He’s not a lunatic, Grace.”
“He thinks he can speak to the dead. That sounds pretty nutso to me.”
“Lots of people believe in life after death, honey,” Freya reminded her. “Including me. Am I nutso?”
“Yes.”
Clearly, Freya hadn’t expected that. “I see.”
Grace sat again and put her head in her hands. “Oh God, you know I didn’t mean that. It’s just…believing in an afterlife is one thing. Saying you can speak to someone who died fifteen years ago? That’s something else.”
“Oh, Grace… Did he mention your father again?”
Grace gave a heavy sigh. “Yes. He told me…something he couldn’t have known.” She turned her head to look at the dark-haired girl beside her. “Hand on heart, Mia. You haven’t spoken to him, have you?”
Mia looked forlorn. “Of course not. I’d tell you. I promise.”
Grace shook her head. “I don’t understand how he could have known.”
“Known what?” said Freya.
Grace said nothing.
Mia sighed. “Look. Do you like him?”
“Yes,” Grace mumbled.
“Honey, I don’t know how he knows these things, but I know you wouldn’t have slept with him if you didn’t trust him on some level. Subconsciously, you believe him.”
“I want to believe him.” Grace rubbed the space between her eyebrows. “But it’s like saying you’ve met someone who believes the Earth’s flat, or who says he’s found gold at the end of the rainbow. I’m, like, really? I can’t believe he’s really doing what he says he’s doing, and therefore what does that make him? Either delusional—which is pretty bad, because if that’s the case, he really thinks he’s a medium and can hear voices. Or he’s deliberately set out to trick me, and that just makes me so…” A tear ran down her face.
“Oh, that’s not true,” Freya protested. “He’s too nice.”
“You don’t know him,” Grace sniffed, “I mean none of us does. He seems nice, but maybe he’s done background investigations into me to find out my secrets, and he’s using them to trick me into trusting him.”
Mia frowned. “Why?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why would he go to the bother of doing that? I mean, I’d understand it if you were some Regency heiress or something, or if you were president and he was a Russian spy, but Grace, honestly, it just doesn’t make sense.” She squeezed Grace’s hand. “Sweetheart, I know it’s a difficult concept for you to accept, but do you think it might be at all possible that you’re…?”
“What?” Grace said sharply.
“Wrong?”
Grace blinked. “Wrong?”
Mia shrugged. “I know you don’t believe there’s an afterlife. But you don’t have any proof of that. I know your views are tied up with the death of your father and your crazy mother, but do you think you should give Ash the benefit of the doubt? I mean, what if you refused to see him again because of this, and in fact you’re ignoring what’s supposed to be the greatest love of your life?”
Grace’s face burned. “It’s only sex.”
“Okay, the greatest sex of your life?”
Grace studied her friend’s calm face, then turned and looked at Freya, who just raised her eyebrows. She knew Freya believed in mediums, and that she’d occasionally been to shows where clairvoyants spoke to people in the audience and contacted their dead relatives. She also knew these shows were amazingly popular.
She looked at her hands. Only Mia knew what a difficult time Grace had had when her father died. How she’d prayed every night for her father to come back, to leave her a sign that he was still around. And she’d never had anything—not a single dream about him, not a flicker of a light bulb, not a butterfly or a white feather or any other thing the stupid books had said were signs of the dead trying to contact you. Isabella Fox had insisted her husband, Bill, was still with them, that the dead watched over the living, but Grace had long since stopped believing that. Instead, she’d placed her trust in science, in what she could see and what could be proven. Had she been wrong all this time?
“Go back,” said Mia gently, “and talk to him about it. Find out more about him. Ask him to tell you about what he does. If after that you’re still suspicious, and you can’t bring yourself to accept this different world, well then, you need never see him again if you don’t want to.”
After this, Mia went into the kitchen as it was her turn to cook, and Freya went to her room to do some studying, but Grace stayed in the living room and stretched out on the sofa.
Mia’s last words had been ever so slightly disapproving. Grace had picked up on the tone, even if Mia hadn’t meant to portray it. Mia thought she was narrow-minded. Was she? Was it narrow-minded to be cynical if someone said they’d seen pixies at the bottom of the garden, or the face of Jesus in a slice of bread, or if they thought Tarot cards told the future? At what point was it okay to think, yeah, that person’s lost it?
There was no scientific evidence for life after death. There were thousands of stories about after-death experiences and tunnels with bright lights, tales of children who could remember past lives, people who’d experienced miracles that couldn’t be explained by logic or science. But then that was the problem, wasn’t it? If it couldn’t be explained, how could you be sure it wasn’t coincidence, or the mind making real what the heart desired?
She closed her eyes. She could still feel the touch of Ash’s lips on hers, the way he’d held her so gently, until his desire had finally taken over. Even then, he hadn’t been rough, just passionate enough to make steam nearly come out of her ears. She’d never had sex like it. Well, clearly, the errant swear word was proof of that.
But great sex wasn’t a reason to throw away all her principles in one fell swoop. She wasn’t going to declare a belief in the supernatural just because she’d slept with a medium. That would be like saying you believed in the Loch Ness monster because a tourist had taken a photograph of an interestingly shaped twig floating in the water.
And because of that, it would be ridiculous to go back to his house again. She wasn’t stupid. The Viking god was not going to be easy to resist. Best she stay away. In fact, best she didn’t think about him at all from now on. She was going to put Ash Rutherford to the back of her mind. She certainly was not going to think about his muscular arms. Or his large, warm hand on her breast. Or the way he’d looked at her as if she were a foaming handle of icy cold Lion Red and he’d been working outside all day in the hot sun, with no top on, getting all sweaty…
Grace pulled a cushion over her head and groaned loudly into it. There was no hope for her—no hope at all.
The following Sunday, Ash stood by the front window and sighed as he checked his watch for the umpteenth time. It was now six minutes past three, and there was no sign of Grace.
“A watched pot, blah blah,” said Jodi without looking up from where she lay on the sofa, reading a maga
zine.
Ash shot her a look but didn’t say anything. He was learning that his daughter was decidedly astute when it came to deciphering his thoughts. The moment she’d returned with Liv the previous weekend, she’d asked him, “So, did you two have sex on the kitchen table?”
“No,” Ash had said, trying to resist the childish urge to cross his fingers behind his back, refusing to look at Liv, whose eyebrows had shot up. “Bathtime.”
“Venus in Scorpio?” Jodi teased. “Really, Dad, you’re so slow.” She’d looked at him suspiciously. “Are you sure you aren’t fibbing me?”
He’d then had to resist the urge to check his fly and motioned toward the bathroom. “I’ve run the bath and put bubbles in. Now go!”
“All right,” she grumbled, walking off down the corridor.
Liv had looked at him, eyes dancing, and he’d growled, “Don’t you start.”
“Aw, Ashton. I’m pleased for you.” She kissed him on the cheek. She was the only person he allowed to call him by his full name. “It’s nice to see you smile again.”
“What is it with me smiling?” he said indignantly. “You’re as bad as Jodi. I smile all the time!”
To his surprise, she put her arms around him and squeezed him tight. “No you don’t, love. And that’s fine. I know what you’ve been through, and how hard you work. But even you deserve to have some fun.”
He rested his cheek on the top of her head. “I wish I believed that.”
She’d hugged him tighter, leaving without saying anything more. He knew how she felt about his self-flagellation concerning Angela’s death, though. She’d be pleased he’d found someone else to occupy his mind.
And occupy his mind Grace Fox had, Ash thought as he turned from the window and paced the living room. He’d thought about little else all week. She’d even snuck into his meditations. There he’d be, visualising peaceful green meadows and trying to quieten his mind, and suddenly he’d get an image of Grace outside her car bending over to collect her books, the wind whipping up her skirt and showing him her stocking tops. It was surprisingly difficult to meditate with a hard-on.
But it hadn’t only been her sexy body that occupied his mind. Even though he had no intention of turning what they’d done into something serious, he’d called the school three times over the week, leaving her a message to phone him, too much of a gentleman not to contact a woman after he’d slept with her. But she hadn’t returned the calls. He’d spent a long time wondering if he’d done the right thing. Sure, it had been fun, but seducing a woman who thought he was a nutcase—however mind-blowing her underwear was—was not a good move. Now she would hate him for making her go against her principles. It was quite likely she wasn’t coming back. And so he would have ruined a good opportunity for Jodi, as well as spoiling his chances of getting to know Grace better.
And yet he couldn’t bring himself to regret it. From the moment he first saw her, sprawled on the floor in the auditorium, her black lacy teddy clearly visible beneath her schoolmistress clothes, he’d been entranced. He’d known when she told him she was no good in bed she was way off the mark. And he’d been proved right. Just the thought of running his hand up her thigh and touching her white garter belt made him grow hard again. But it wasn’t just her body he found fascinating. She was an intelligent, thoughtful and passionate woman, and her frank manner—when you got used to it—was endearing. It made a change not to have to worry about what a woman was thinking.
But he should have held back. Let her learn to trust him before he made a move on her. And he definitely shouldn’t have mentioned her books. That was her father’s fault. Clearly, she thought people would react badly if they knew she wrote raunchy romance novels. And perhaps they would—especially her mother, from the sounds of it. He wondered what her father thought about Grace’s relationship with her mother. Maybe he’d ask him later, if the guy came through again.
The buzz from security, followed a few moments later by the scrunch of tyres on gravel, alerted him to the arrival of a car, and he walked to the window quickly enough to make Jodi laugh.
“Will you stop? I just wanted to get started on my meditation.” But he was surprised at the pleasure that flooded through him as he watched Grace get out of the car. She still wore her hair pinned up in its customary bun. But it was the only schoolmistress-looking thing about her, apart from her glasses. This week she wore a black skirt, about six inches above her knee, made of some kind of floaty material that once again the breeze delighted in flicking up. She smoothed the skirt down impatiently, casting a glance over her shoulder at the house as if checking to see if he was watching, but she wasn’t quick enough to hide the brief flash of her garters. A dark colour, possibly black, this time.
“Oh yeah,” said Ash out loud, forgetting Jodi was in the room.
Jodi started laughing. “Your face is a picture.”
“Not a word,” he scolded, walking past her into the hall. He opened the front door just as Grace reached up to press the bell, making her jump.
“Oh!” She was carrying half a dozen text books, and as she moved back one slipped from under her arm, and then the whole lot went. “Damn it.”
“Here, let me help.” He bent to help her retrieve them, glanced up as she joined him and got a perfect view down the front of her purple blouse. Not black underwear—whatever she was wearing was a dark plum colour, and there was a sinful amount of lace. Nice.
He cleared his throat and stood, placing a hand under her elbow to help her up. Her cheeks flushed a rosy pink, making him smile. She was so adorable. He wanted to take her inside and kiss her senseless.
But his new plan was to Slow Things Down, so that wasn’t going to work at all. “Come in,” he said lamely instead, stepping back to let her pass. “Weather’s a bit blowy today, isn’t it?”
She cast him a suspicious look. “Did you see my stockings again?”
He burst out laughing. “I’d forgotten how you say exactly what’s on your mind.” He gave her a warm smile, then, before he could think better of it, leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. “I’m glad you came back.”
“I wasn’t going to,” she admitted, slipping off her shoes and jacket and letting him catch the latter and hang it up.
“What changed your mind?”
She met his gaze, her large brown eyes wide and clear beneath her glasses. “I…” For once, she seemed lost for words. “I didn’t want to let Jodi down.” Her eyes said something different, however. There was a hint of longing in their depths, subtle as a rainbow in the rain.
She missed me.
Just then, Jodi came into the hall. He met her gaze, surprised at the look of pleasure on her face as she saw his smile.
“Hi, Miss Fox,” Jodi said, dragging her gaze to her science teacher.
“Hi, Jodi.” Grace handed the girl her books. “Can you put these on the table for me, please?”
“Sure.” Jodi carried the books in.
Grace gave Ash a nervous smile, and he recognised the emotion behind it. She’d missed him, she wanted to see him again, but she wasn’t sure if she ought to want to see him again. Never mind. He could work on that.
He followed her into the living room, watching the swing of her hips as she walked. What kind of underwear was she wearing? The lace intrigued him. He could just imagine how soft her breasts would feel under his touch.
Jeez. He stopped and massaged his forehead for a second. He was skilled in meditation, for crying out loud—he should be able to train his brain not to think about her underwear for two hours.
Yeah. Like that’s going to happen. He’d be lucky to make two minutes at this rate.
Chapter Eight
“Do you have a headache?” Grace asked, watching him try to massage his frown away.
“No, no.” Ash sighed. “I think I’ll leave you two to it.” He stood for a second with his hands on his hips, looking at the ground a few feet in front of him. “I’ve…um…got lots of…” Turning
on his heel, he walked off, mumbling under his breath.
“Huh,” said Grace. “Something I said?”
“Don’t mind him,” said Jodi. She had a wry smile on her lips. “What are we doing today?”
“Movement and energy,” said Grace absently, wondering why the topic made her think of the way Ash had thrust inside her, rhythmical and slow. Oh Lord. Focus, Grace. It was difficult, though. She’d come to the house determined to be professional and distant, but from the moment he opened the door and made her jump, she’d felt in a tizzy, her head buzzing like a bumblebee caught in a bottle. He was wearing khaki combat trousers and a stone-coloured T-shirt that, although not skin tight, still managed to make him look like a model for the New Zealand Firefighters Calendar. If there was such a thing. She totally did not have one of those on her wall.
“Miss Fox?”
Grace shook her head, wishing she could shake the bumblebee out. “Right. Let’s get to work.” She was not going to think about him for two hours, or worry about his last words and if he was irritated she’d shown up again. He hadn’t looked irritated, and he had called her three times over the week—three calls she hadn’t had the courage to return. Now he’d seemed distracted, as if he was keen to get on with whatever he had planned for the two hours she was tutoring Jodi. But she wouldn’t be able to figure out his thoughts and emotions remotely. Until the two hours were up, she was going to have to concentrate on the job she’d gone there to do and see if she could help this young woman learn something about gravity slightly more complicated than “if you fall off your bike, your gonna hit the floor”, which had been her answer in the science exam. As well as the difference between “your” and “you’re”.
So for two hours, she concentrated. In the end, it didn’t pass too slowly, and she only managed to think about Ash every thirty seconds or so, which was slightly better than she’d anticipated. Before long, it was nearly five o’clock and the doorbell rang announcing Liv’s arrival.
“Yay!” Jodi leaped up and turned awkwardly to Grace. “I mean, thank you for helping me, Miss Fox.”
An Uncommon Sense: Sensual Healing, Book 1 Page 7