When You Wish (Contemporary Romance) (16 page)

Grace
had
believed in forever after once. She’d hoped, and she’d dreamed, and she’d truly thought she’d found the man to share her life with. Then she’d heard him describe her as “one of the natives.” Good for a tumble but never a ring—at least not for an up-and-coming attorney with political aspirations, a son of the social elite.

Just remembering that night, his voice, her pain, made Grace’s eyes water. She had loved Jared with all her stupid young heart, believing, since he was a colleague of her father’s, that who and what she was okay with him.

And it had been, for an affair.

Was Jared the reason Dan pushed all her buttons? Dan looked nothing like Jared. Jared had been suave, tall, debonair, polished and slick. Dan was . . . well, Dan. Clumsy like a puppy and just as earnest, huge as Olaf, and brilliant as the sun on the water at noon.

Dan was a doctor—kind of. Jared had been a lawyer all the way. She was
not
falling for the same kind of man twice, no matter what Olaf muttered. She wasn’t falling for Dan at all. This was business and she would remember that. No more kisses, no more touches, no more dinners, or even long lunches.

Thinking in verse. I must be tired.

She was, quite frankly, exhausted. But before she went to bed, she had to discover the truth about one thing that was driving her crazy.

Grace went to an overloaded shelf of books and dragged out a medical text from massage school. Most of her boo
ks had been about bones and muscles, but one had been about everything under the sun. Grace hefted the tome onto her desk very carefully. If she dropped this one on her foot she’d probably break a bone.

She turned to the index. “Paronychial infection, where are you?”

Dan was working when headlights swept up his driveway and glared into the front window. He had not made it into the zone yet, or he’d never have noticed them at all. He’d been too preoccupied with Grace and his feelings for her to think clearly about what to do with his bottles and beakers.

How could Mrs. Cabilla have thought Grace would help his research? He couldn’t think straight for thinking of her. Though Mrs. Cabilla hadn’t been around to see him mooning over Grace, she knew what Grace looked like. She knew how Grace was.

The door burst open—he’d forgotten to lock it again—but why way out here? Like a crazed thief would come and steal the cure to paronychial infection? Even if he had one.

Grace stood in the doorway and Dan frowned, wondering if he’
d conjured her from his imagination. That would be a good trick since he’d never had much of an imagination—at least before he met Grace.

“
Magi-manidoo
!” she spat. “
Barba’risk! Bavia’n. Bete!
”

“English, Grace.”

“You—you—you doctor! You stiff! You impossible, abominable—” Her mouth worked as if she was searching for a suitable epithet. “Very bad man.”

“As cussing goes, you’ve got a lot to learn. But you’ve got the voice and the sneer just about right. You want to tell me what I did?”

Her gaze swept the room. Slowly, with the swaying walk that was all hers and usually turned Dan’s mind to Jell-O, she approached. When he saw her hands clenching and unclenching, he heard again the sound of breaking glass from Olaf’s room that morning, and he stepped between her and his work. He hadn’t wanted to be on this side of Grace’s temper, but it looked like he was. If he could only figure out what he’d done, he might be able to diffuse her.

She came so close the scent of cinnamon and spice wafted over him. His mind did the Jell-O jiggle. Then she stomped on his foot and the pain brought him back. Diffuse her? Maybe not.

“Paronychial infection is . . . is . . .” Her voice came through clenched teeth.

“Infection of the nail bed. What about it?”

“Aargh!” She threw up her hands and began to pace like a caged wolf. “You’re trying to find a cure for ingrown toenails?”

“Not exactly.”

“Close enough. That’s what this” —she waved her hand at the laboratory behind him— “is all about?”

He shrugged, unable to understand what had made her so mad. “I thought you knew that.”

“I knew you were trying to cure para, pora—some kind of infection. Something serious.”

“It is serious. By
discovering the cure to one infection, you can discover the cure to countless others.”

“I thought you were dealing with life-and-death stuff. I felt
guilty!
How could you try and take my grant for toenail rot?”

Dan was getting mad now, though with Dan, anger rarely showed. He got more proper the higher his blood pressure rose—just like his father before him.

“I am
taking
nothing. The grant was mine long before you showed up.”

“Showed up? I live here!”

“I don’t think people in glass houses should throw stones, do you?”

Her eyes narrowed, and Dan really wished he had not mentioned anything about throwing stones and glass. He glanced at his work, but there was no way, even with his huge body, that he could protect it all.

When he looked back, Grace had stepped closer. “Classical quotes at this time of night? Spare me. Just explain what you’re insinuating with your glass houses talk and your high-and-mighty attitude.”

Perhaps he would do better to advance than to retreat. She was so focused on him, she’d forgotten his work. If she’d ever cared at all. Dan stepped away from the glass and went toe-to-toe with Grace.

“I’m not insinuating anything. I’m saying right out—you’ve got nerve trying to steal the grant from me so you can make blankies.”

“That’s it!” Grace shoved him. Caught off guard, he grabbed her elbows. When she bumped into his chest, he kissed her.

She made a sound deep in her throat, fury or passion, he wasn’t sure which. A moment later, he didn’t care. When his mouth touched hers, all coherent thought fled.

His hands flexed on her shoulders, learning the shape of the fine bones beneath her shirt, beneath her skin. Strength and fragility; the contrast aroused him. He cupped her face, tilted her mouth, stroked those cheekbones that shaped her beautiful eyes. His own eyes were closed, yet still he could see every nuance of her face as if the image had been burned into his brain.

When she didn’t kick him in the shin, stomp on his foot, or knee him in the—Dan shifted so he could prevent that option, just in case—but started to kiss him back, Dan forgot why he’d kissed her in the first place, and just kissed her.

His tongue stroked her lips, and she opened them for him on a sigh that sounded of his name and the night. She tasted of honey, lemon, and something else, dark and rich, as unidentifiable as the need that rolled between them. Was it lust or something more? What did it matter? It was.

In the back of his mind he knew he should not be kissing her—not here, not now, not for whatever reason he’d begun to in the first place. But as usual, he had no control where Grace was concerned. When she reached up and shoved her fingers through his hair, holding his mouth on hers, stroking his lips, tickling his tongue, tasting his teeth, control became a memory he could not quite remember.

He wanted her in his arms more than he’d ever wanted anything else, so he dropped his hands from her face and wrapped them around her body. Her fingers twined about his neck, and the front of her pressed to the front of him. Once upon a time he might have been embarrassed by the condition of his body. But once upon a time he had not known Grace.

She did not flinch; she did not shift away from the obvious proof that he was glad to see her, but she did stop kissing him. And while he wanted to pull her back, and kiss her some more, when she put her hands on his chest and said, “Stop,” he stopped.

When she said, “Let me go,” he let go.

When she looked at him with big, confused eyes, he stared back with confused eyes of his own.

“You can’t just kiss me every time I say something you don’t like.”

“I can’t? It worked for me.”

“I noticed.”

Dan blushed. He’d been wrong to say Grace could not embarrass him. Grace could make him feel anything she wanted him to feel. That truth, combined with the lack of control he exhibited around her began to irritate him, as much as the reason for her visit.

“It didn’t work for me,” she continued. “You might make me forget who I am, what I want, what’s important, for a moment. But when we stop kissing, the problem’s still there.”

“I seem to have forgotten tonight’s problem.”

“Let me refresh your memory. You’re taking money to find a cure for something that doesn’t need to be cured.”

“Refresh my memory some more—you got your medical degree where?”

Those lips he liked so much when they were pressed to his own thinned into an angry line once more, and the confusion in her doe-brown eyes fled. “Why don’t you
use your own money for this nonsense?” she snapped.

“Nonsense? One man’s nonsense is another man’s dream. I would think you of all people would understand that.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You think my medical research is nonsense, well your blankie-drop is nonsense to me.”

“You don’t know anything about it. Just like all the rest—you look at me and you think I’m a flake. What I believe can’t be anything but the ravings of a first-class space cadet. If it’s important to me, well then it must be nonsense!”

Uh-oh, she could go from kiss Dan to kick ass in a matter of seconds. Dan’s head spun at the change and he scrambled to keep up. “Now, Grace—”

“You don’t
hear
anything, Dan! You don’t listen. You’re just like all those stiffs at all the hospitals. When I try to tell them what I’m doing, they just nod and walk away. And when I come back the next time, they don’t remember I was there the first time at all. It’s as if I don’t exist.”

“You exist, Grace.”

“You know you’ve never once asked me what my project is about?”

He frowned. “Blankets for seriously ill children.”

“But why, Dan? Did you ever ask me why?”

He shrugged. “Why?”

“Meet me at St. Mary’s Hospital tomorrow at ten, and I’ll try to explain it in a language you can understand, doctor boy.”

She walked out without a backward glance, and when she slammed the door, one of the test tubes he’d been trying so hard to protect rolled off the table and shattered.

“Figures,” he muttered to the suddenly silent room.

Grace growled in time with the stomp of her feet. “Men, men, men, men.” From the driveway, to the front walk, up the porch steps, and into the house.

Olaf’s boat was parked in the driveway, but the house was dark. The murmur of voices upstairs somewhere drifted to her. Either the Jewels were talking or a television was on.

Since she didn’t want any of the Jewels getting out of bed at 3 A.M.
to shut off their televisions—contraptions saved from the days before remote controls—then breaking a hip when they tripped on a slipper or a discarded headdress, she would shut off any wayward episodes of Jay Leno before she went to her own bed.

Grace climbed the first flight of stairs. Just being home calmed her. A
ll the people who loved her, understood her, supported her, lived beneath this roof. As long as she was home, everything would be all right.

She’d been steamed all the way back here. Heck, she’d been steamed all the way to Dan’s, and the temperature, both within her and without, had not cooled off any while she was with him. It never did. The man touched her and she melted. Embarrassing but true.

What
was
that?

Whatever it was, it had to stop. She’d be the flake he thought she was if she continued to wrap herself around his excellent body every time he so much as brushed it against her. She had to at least pretend to be a professional—even though pretending had never been her strong suit. Grace was who she was. Take her or leave her. Unfortunately, lately, most people chose the latter option.

Tomorrow she would show Dan what Project Hope was all about, and then it would be his turn, under Mrs. Cabilla’s dictum, to help her. They’d see if he had better luck with the powers that be than she had.

The continued
murmur of voices drew Grace toward Em’s room. She’d planned to check on Em last, so she could stay and chat or work her aunt’s feet one more time if necessary. But a glance at Ruby’s, then Garnet’s, doors revealed no lights, flickering or otherwise. The narrow glow from their night-lights revealed aunt-shaped lumps in the beds.

So who was in Em’s room?

Grace crept down the hall. No shouts, no cries, no thumps—it could not be an intruder, could it?

Her heart beat out a cadence of fear. Should she call the police right away? No, best to get Olaf. He was better than any policeman, because he was right here, right now. But she had to pass by Em’s room to get to the stairs that led to Olaf’s attic abode. Slowly, she crept down the hall.