Olaf shoved him back down. “Turn over. Silence. I do not like to talk while I work.”
“There’s been a misunderstanding. I came here to talk about Project Hope.”
“If you wish to talk of Hope, why do you lay on this table? Naked. Why do you ask for Gracie?” Olaf s fingers, which had been on Dan’s shoulders, suddenly dug into the sensitive cavity beneath his collarbone.
“Ouch.” Dan jumped from the table before Olaf could take off his head. He clutched the sheet around his middle and put the table between him and the other man. Dan had never before felt threatened by another human being, but all of a sudden he understood why most people got out of his way Dan very much wanted to get out of Olaf s way right now. “I said this was a misunderstanding.”
“I know what kind of misunderstanding you have. This is why Gracie has me.” He thumped a hamlike hand against his chest. “Olaf is to make sure no one touches Gracie with inappropriateness. People think because we massage we also do other things. But we do not!”
“Of course not,” Dan agreed. Damn, he wished he had his clothes. Olaf s face was getting redder by the second.
“Americans have no understanding of the ways of the body. All is medicine, science. What they can see and touch.” Then Olaf actually hissed. Dan had never heard a man hiss; it was quite effective. “You do not understand that what you do not see is more powerful than anything of this earth.”
Dan had never been able to understand what he could not see and touch, but he wouldn’t argue with Olaf if the masseur told him moon men had taken over every cheese factory in Wisconsin. Instead he nodded and slid toward the screen.
Olaf blocked his way. Dan looked up into Olaf s furious face. The guy had to be seven feet of pure muscle. Dan was going to have to talk his way out of this one, but talking had never been one of his better talents—especially talking while seminude.
“Listen, Olaf, I made a mistake. I apologize. I’ll pay you for your time. But I really need to talk to Grace.”
“No.” Olaf shook his finger in Dan’s face. “There will be no talking to Gracie for a bad man like you.” Then Olaf reached out and yanked the sheet from Dan’s grasping fingers.
Three things happened at almost the same time. Dan made a grab for the sheet, Olaf tossed it over his shoulder with an evil grin, and Grace walked in the door.
All three of them stood frozen for a moment. Then Dan dove for the screen, Olaf started laughing, and Grace asked, “Are you Dr. Chadwick?
Chapter Two
By the time Grace had calmed Olaf and sent him on his way, the doctor was dressed. Even so, she couldn’t forget the sight of him standing naked as a jaybird.
He’d been magnificent, standing there with the candlelight flickering across his body—big and strong, with curves and dips and muscles in all the right places.
Grace had a vision of what her ancestors had been subjected to centuries ago. If you put a sword in one hand, a shield in the other, and some kind of fur over his shoulder, you’d have a Viking invader climbing from his boat onto the shores of the New World. Now Grace had never been much for Vikings—being a Green Bay Packer fan herself—but wow, this one was something to see.
“You’re the administrator of Project Hope?”
Chadwick’s voice startled Grace from her mini fantasy. He stepped through the doorway and joined her in the hall. Nodding, she reached past him to close the door of her massage room. Her arm brushed his belly, and a tingling sensation ran all the way to her neck. His stuffy white shirt did nothing to stop the image of supple, smooth skin stretched over well-defined stomach muscles from appearing in her mind.
He hadn’t tied his tie, leaving the strip of bland, navy blue material looped around his neck. The starched shirt gaped open, and when he swallowed, the slide of his throat muscles made her shiver. How was she going to talk business with this man if every time she looked at him she remembered what he looked like naked?
“Miss?”
Grace blinked. She’d been standing too close, staring at his throat. Stepping back, she glanced at his face. He stared at her with rapt attention as well, but his eyes focused on her lips.
Self-consciously she wiped her mouth, half afraid she had drool on her chin. His eyes, the color of a sky surrounding a full moon—dark, yet somehow blue—followed the movement. Then he muttered and turned away, dragging a large, blunt-fingered hand through hair the shade of sand and sun. For a doctor, he had awfully long hair.
“I’m sorry, Doctor, but I don’t understand. If you came here to talk about my project why didn’t you say so? You’ve gotten Olaf all excited. He thinks you’re a . . .”
Grace let her voice trail off. Olaf s exact words were not fit for repeating, being in Norwegian and roughly translatable as “whoremaster.”
Those solemn eyes returned to hers. “A what?”
“Never mind. I think there’s been a huge misunderstanding.”
“Yes,” he agreed quickly. “I apologize, Miss . . . I’m afraid I don’t know your full name. Just Grace, as the woman in the front called you, or Gracie.” He shrugged.
“My last name is Lighthorse, but I think we’ve gone past Miss and Doctor, don’t you?”
She couldn’t be sure, but she thought he blushed. You had to like a guy who topped six feet and could still blush.
“Lighthorse?” he asked. “You’re Native American?”
Obviously he hadn’t looked at her as closely as she’d thought he’d been looking. “Aren’t we all?”
“Excuse me?”
“You were born in this country; so was I. Native.”
“I didn’t mean to offend.”
“You didn’t.” She should be used to questions by now. She’d lived in the north woods all of her twenty-eight years, yet she never ceased to be amazed that people were surprised to find Indians there. “I’m Ojibwe.” Her voice became brisk. “Lac du Flambeau. But if you just call me Grace, I won’t call you white guy.”
That got a smile out of him. “Fine with me,” he agreed, and held out his hand. “I’m Dan.”
Dan didn’t look like he smiled often, but when he managed the effect was devastating. Grace folded her lips together. No drooling, even in her imagination.
She shook his hand, refusing to acknowledge the flicker of awareness that continued to haunt her. He had calluses on those big hands, and they rubbed along her palm in an enticing way.
“I’d like to discuss Project Hope,” he said. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”
“Yes. Certainly.”
He tugged on his hand, and she let go with a grind of her teeth. She seemed to have developed a thing for big guys with rough hands.
Having a doctor come to speak with her about Project Hope made this a banner day. Grace had figured she would be fighting the medical profession tooth and nail for a long while. From what she’d seen so far, none of them had any vision. But Mrs. Cabilla’s grant would help to gain respect for her dream. Money talked everywhere.
The two of them climbed the stairs to the second floor, which had once housed six bedrooms. The previous owner had knocked out walls, constructing a great room with a western window exposure. As Grace and Dan reached the top of the stairs, the chitter-chatter from the Jewels reached their ears, and Grace couldn’t help but smile. She’d had the Jewels in her life, together or in various combinations, since the day she was born. She adored them, eccentricities and all.
After crossing the few short steps from the landing to the curved archway of the great room, Grace gazed at the familiar scene. Three elderly ladies could make quite a mess when given free reign with scissors, fabric, batting, and thread. They liked to work amidst clutter, and since they were geniuses, she let them.
“Aunt Em?” she called.
“Aunt Em?” Dan echoed. “As in Auntie Em, there’s no place like home?”
Grace rolled her eyes. “No, as in Emerald. You met Garnet downstairs; the redhead is Ruby. My mother’s sisters, known as ‘The
Jewels of Dublin.’”
“Ireland?”
“South Dakota.”
Dan continued to contemplate the piles of fabric and batting, as well as the three tiny ladies who flitted among them. “I’m confused.”
“Don’t be. It’s quite simple. My great-grandparents, on my mother’s side, came from Ireland. They started a little town in the West. My grandparents had four daughters.”
“The Jewels.”
“Right.
“And your mother’s name?
“Diana?”
Grace snorted. The man had no imagination whatsoever. But what could she expect from a doctor? “Diamond.”
“Your mother’s name is Diamond Lighthorse?”
“Is that a problem?”
“Of course not. I just want to be clear before I meet her.”
“You won’t. She’s no longer with us.”
He turned his head and his sympathetic gaze met hers. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Doctor talk. She’d heard it all before. He couldn’t help it. That’s what he was trained to say, though the sympathy in his eyes seemed real. “She’s not dead,” Grace clarified. “She’s just no longer with us.”
“Oh. I see.”
His voice said very clearly that he did not see at all, but Grace wasn’t about to share private heartaches with a stranger—even though he wasn’t quite a stranger anymore. Her mother had been unwilling to come back to Wisconsin. She’d preferred to stay in Minnesota, alone, when Grace and the Jewels went looking for a new home. Though Grace was happy to be in the land of her birth once again, she missed her mother, but at least she had Em and the others.
Grace called to her aunt, louder this time. The Jewels’s hearing wasn’t what it used to be. “Aunt Em!”
Her eldest aunt looked up, smiled, then picked her way across the room. The other two, occupied with choosing material from the stack of bolts near the far wall, merely raised a hand in hello and went back to arguing over the merits of rust over burnt- orange, their heads bobbing with the force of their customary arguments. The bickering was a sister thing Grace had never understood, since she’d never had a sister. The continuous arguing over nothing had bothered her at first until she realized they liked to argue. It was the way they showed their affection.
“Grace!” The sun through the windows sparkled across Em’s recently retouched black roots. “All done for the day?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Em’s green gaze wandered all the way up Dan’s long body, then all the way down. Female appreciation filled her eyes. “And you saved one for me? Thoughtful girl.”
Grace glanced at Dan to see if he was blushing again. He was. His mouth opened, then shut. He shuffled his big feet, then held out a huge hand, enveloping Em’s fingers with his own. “Ma’am, it’s a pleasure.”
Amazingly, Em blushed, too. She’d buried five husbands and was on the lookout for number six. The spark in her eye made Grace think her aunt toyed with the idea of a younger man this time around.
“Aunt Em, Dr. Chadwick is here about Project Hope.”
“Doctor? How interesting.” She pulled her hand from his, then flicked her wrist up and down.
Dan glanced at Grace, a polite half-smile at war with the confusion filling his eyes. He looked back at Em, who was still flapping her wrist like an outraged puppeteer. “It hurts when I do this,” she said.
“Then don’t do that?” The punch line came out with the lilt of a question, as if he didn’t know that Em was asking him for advice. What kind of doctor wasn’t used to being quizzed on aches and pains at every opportunity?
“Never mind,” Grace told Em. “I stopped by to see how far you’ve gotten today.”
After sending a curious glance in Dan’s direction, Em dropped her hand. “We finished the crazy quilt, packed it up, and sent the box to FedEx with Olaf.”
“Good. What are you starting now?”
“Wedding Ring, for the Macieweski wedding.”
“I’ll be back soon to help cut the pieces.”
Em nodded, then patted Dan on the arm as if he were a lost little boy. “It’s all right, sweetie. Sometimes I pretend to be Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile. No one minds.”
She bustled off in a swish of multicolored skirts, and Dan stared after her, dumbstruck. “She thinks I’m pretending to be a doctor?”
“You have to admit, you don’t act like one.”
“I don’t?” Now he not only looked like a lost boy, he sounded like one.
Grace shook her head. “And you definitely don’t look like one.”
He grunted, as if he’d heard that before, and no doubt he had. Grace berated herself for mentioning it. She of all people should know that it was best not to judge by appearance.
“What do I look like?” he asked.
Viking marauder, her mind whispered. Romance novel cover model. All-Star wrestler.
“Lumberjack,” she blurted.
That made him smile again, and for a moment Grace just enjoyed the view. She really did like how he looked. For a woman who got looked at a lot, she should know better than to stare, but she couldn’t seem to help herself.
The longer they gazed into each other’s eyes, the harder it became to look away. His gaze dropped to her mouth and Grace caught her breath. For some insane reason, she thought he meant to kiss her. And for a lunatic second, she wanted him to.
Then Ruby’s voice shattered the thick, charged silence. “He’s a doctor! Maybe I can show him my corns.”
Dan started and looked over his shoulder, his face exhibiting an odd combination of alarm and morbid fascination.
“Come on!” Grace turned around and headed down the hall. Dan followed right on her heels.
The offices of Project Hope and Quilts to Order, the mail-order business of the Jewels, were housed in the only bedroom not ceded to the great room. Not much of an office—scratched-up desk, rotary phone, new answering machine, old kitchen chairs and a battered filing cabinet—but Project Hope was still a baby. If the grant came through, Grace would have to use some of the money to assemble a real office and maybe hire a real secretary. The Jewels should really devote all their time to making the quilts they were becoming famous for.
Grace took the chair behind the desk, and Dan took the one on the other side. The metal creaked beneath his weight and they both winced.
“Now, Doctor—” He raised an eyebrow. “I mean, Dan, you’d like more information about Project Hope? You wish to make a donation? Money? Blankets? Time? Or maybe you can help me distribute the blankets. I have to tell you, I don’t have any hospital contacts yet. I’m still waiting for final word on a grant.”
“That’s why I’m here.”
It was Grace’s turn to be confused. “The grant? You’re from Mrs. Cabilla?”
“No, or at least not in the way you think.” He sighed, then stood and paced the tight confines of the office. His size made the movement ridiculous, and he stopped with a growl of impatience, placing both hands in the center of Grace’s desk and looming over her. “I’m the man who’s spent five years trying to discover a way to prevent paronychial infections. If Mrs. Cabilla gives the money to Project Hope, everything I’ve done thus far will be worth nothing.”
Grace stood. She wasn’t going to let him loom over her. She knew that tactic for the intimidation ploy it was. Though why he wanted to intimidate her she had no idea. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m sure you don’t. That’s why I came to talk to you. I want you to withdraw your grant application. If you don’t, thousands, perhaps millions, of people will suffer.”
She’d ordered him out of her office, followed him down the stairs and shooed him out the front door. Good riddance! She wasn’t letting Dr. Daniel Chadwick into her home again. The nerve of the man! Trying to take her money. Trying to kill her dream. Trying to imply that Project Hope was a joke and his research oh, so very important.
But paronychial infections did sound serious
—and painful.
“Arrgh!” She slammed the door and stomped back up the stairs. Luckily the jewels were just deaf enough not to notice her grumbling and stamping, because she didn’t want to talk to anyone right then. She wanted to stew and fume, then she’d call Mrs. Cabilla and settle this once and for all.
Grace was not going to let Dr. Dan make her feel unworthy. If his research was so great, people would be standing in line to give him money. He didn’t need to take away the only chance she had to make a wish, a dream, and a promise, come true.
Grace crossed to the window overlooking the street and peeked around the curtain. He still stood next to his car, gazing at the house.
How could such a jerk be so cute? How could such a creep have such an incredible body? How could such a . . . a . . . a stiff pretend to be such a nice guy?
Dan’s wide shoulders slumped and he shook his head. For a moment he looked so dejected, Grace felt kind of bad. Then she reminded herself who and what he was: the enemy of her dream.
“Grace?”
“Hmm?”
She continued to stare out the window as he got in his car and drove out of her life forever. Good riddance, she thought once more. So why did she feel so bereft?
Aunt Em joined her at the window, but there was nothing left to see except a distant Lake Illusion sparkling in the sheen of the late afternoon sun. “What did Dr. Magnificent want?”
Grace smiled. Em never changed. Men were her forte. “He was, wasn’t he?”
“Magnificent? You bet your moccasins. If he hadn’t been looking at you like the last cream puff on the dessert tray, I might have snapped him up. But even with my extensive know-how, I doubt I’d be able to seduce that man away from you.”
“He won’t be looking at me again, and I won’t be looking at him.”
“Did he go medical on you?” Em asked.
Em had no patience for those who didn’t understand magic and mystery. Her grandmother had been a healer in Ireland and passed the knowledge of herbs and the like on to her eldest daughter, who in turn passed it on to her eldest daughter.
When You Wish (Contemporary Romance) Page 2