Betting on Grace (16 page)

Oh, Daddy, how could you do this?
Suddenly blinded by tears of grief, loss and disappointment, she bumped into a lawn chair that wasn’t pushed up to the patio table.

“Damn. Damn. Damn,” she swore, kicking the chair so hard it fell over and nearly skidded into the pool.

“Whoa. Somebody’s pissed off.”

She spun about to locate the voice. Nikolai. Head and shoulders peering at her above the cinder-block fence that separated the two yards. “Are you spying on me?”

“Why would I do that?”

She ignored the question and marched to the door of her little trailer. She opened it with such force the aluminum screen slammed against the metal siding and bounced back, hitting her shoulder.

“Stupid thing,” she shouted, yanking it closed behind
her. Once inside, she bent over like a marathon runner who’d just finished a ten-K meet.

“The past is past,” she whispered out loud. “Dad did what he thought was right. Well, maybe not right, but necessary.” Her stomach churned. An acrid taste filled her mouth. She wanted to weep but was afraid if she started she might not be able to stop. “Just let it go. Let it go,” she repeated like a chant.

She picked up a glass she’d left on the counter, filled it from the tap and took a tentative sip. The door behind her opened after the softest of knocks. Grace spun around, spilling water down the front of her top.

Nikolai loomed in the doorway. “What’s wrong?”

Grace set down the glass behind her and crossed her arms. This was her home. Her sanctuary. “None of your business. Go away.”

He stepped across the threshold, ducking his head to clear the doorway.

“No,” Grace cried, glancing about for a weapon. She grabbed the only thing handy. A plastic wand adorned with silver and purple tassels. She’d bought it for Maya and had forgotten to give it to her. She pointed it at his chest.

Nikolai stopped. He looked at the toy then lifted his head and gave her a sardonic smile. “Are you going to turn me into a toad?”

“Or worse. Now, please leave me alone. I’ve had a bad day.”

“So, tell me about it. Isn’t that what friends—and family—are for?” he said, leaning one shoulder against the open doorframe.

Grace heard the hint of sarcasm in his tone. She
poked him harder, this time bending over the cardboard stars at the tip of the wand. “We’re not related, remember?”

His fingers closed around the wand and he tugged, making her take a step closer. “That’s right. So pretending you’re not feeling this chemistry between us is a bit cowardly for a princess, isn’t it?”

Grace didn’t want to talk about the attraction she felt toward him. She let go of the wand and walked into what she euphemistically called her living room. It consisted of a three-sided couch that she’d covered with fake fur. Accent pillows adorned with spangles and plastic jewels matched the multihued scarves that made up her curtains. She’d repapered the walls in a metallic gold foil.

She sat down, pulling a persimmon-colored pillow onto her lap. “I’m not a princess. And my dad sure as heck wasn’t a king.”

His eyes narrowed, but he didn’t move closer to her. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing. Forget it. I don’t care what my mother says—I’m not talking to you. For all I know, you have some ulterior motive for being here.”

“What are you talking about? I’m here because your mother invited me.”

“True, but you have a hidden agenda, and, frankly, I’m sick to death of secrets.”

He closed the door and tossed the wand on the table. Resting his hip on the table of her built-in dining nook, he said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Grace hugged the pillow to keep her heart from spill
ing out of her chest. “You came here for payback. On the Romani.”

He looked baffled. “That’s ridiculous. I don’t have any gripes against your family.”

Grace moved to her knees. “Oh, really? You don’t think my family let you down when you were a child?”

He shook his head and threw out his hands as if words failed him. “No.”

“Even after your sister convinced you we were a bunch of marauding thieves?”

His lips flattened in a frown. “All kids have fantasies. They outgrow them.”

“Right, but can you honestly say that you came here expecting to like us?”

He opened his mouth but no words came out. Which answered Grace’s question.

“I thought so.”

Nikolai pulled out a chair from the small table and turned it backwards and sat down. “Listen. I might not have thought much about your family when I first got here, but that’s changed. I know that your mother is a good person. If she could have done something to stop my f…birth father from giving me away, she would have.”

Grace clutched the pillow. His tone sounded sincere, but her ability to trust had been compromised almost to the breaking point. She sank back against the cushions and closed her eyes. “You’re right. She would have. But you were probably better off being raised by the gaujos anyway.”

A sudden thought struck her. “Wait a minute. If you were adopted, then your name isn’t Sarna, is it?”

He didn’t answer at first. “No. My name is Nick
Lightner. Sarna was the name on my birth certificate. When I decided to move here, your mother thought it would easier to explain my connection to your family if I used my birth name.”

“Lightner,” she repeated. “Nice, middle-America name. No ethnic vibes. And with your coloring, I bet no one ever suspected you of being a Gypsy.”

Although outwardly he showed no emotion, Grace could feel his anger simmering below the surface. “My adoptive parents gave me their name—after my Romani father washed his hands of me.”

Grace heard pain beneath the cynicism and she welcomed it. Honesty. That’s all she was asking for at the moment. “He was in jail.”

“For three lousy months.”

She tossed up her hands. “So who died and made you judge and jury? You’re convinced that your father was a worthless piece of dog doo who didn’t care about you. Never mind that he’d just lost the woman he loved. Never mind that he was shook up, mixed up and grieving. Alone in jail. Unable to reach you. Probably being sold a line of goods by some overzealous social worker who had an eager, upstanding middle-class family dying to adopt a little boy.”

His mouth opened but no words came out.

“Fathers sometimes make mistakes. They’re not perfect,” she cried, wondering who she was really trying to convince—Nikolai or herself.

He cursed loudly and stood up. “Stop trying to get inside my head. You don’t know what happened. You weren’t there.”

His words hit hard. They were true. She didn’t know
what had made her father compromise his rigid code of ethics.

“Maybe not, but I can feel for him just the same,” she said softly. Happy to let Nikolai think she meant his father, not hers.

“Well, I can’t.”

His response angered her. She got to her feet. “That’s it in a nutshell, isn’t it,” she declared. “That’s the difference between us. It’s not Mars/Venus, Gypsy/gaujo. It’s more basic than that. The fact is I feel. You don’t. Men like you ought to come with warning labels. Danger—emotional vacuum.”

He let out a low growl, but Grace ignored it and walked past him toward her bedroom. She pulled aside the thick curtain of beads that separated her private space from the living area. Pausing, she looked over her shoulder. “I thought, for a brief moment, that we had a connection, but ask my sisters—” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “Heck, ask anyone—and they’ll all tell you I can’t pick men worth squat. Now, if you’d please leave, I’d like to—”

He caught her arm. “Damn, you piss me off.”

Then he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. Hard.

Grace fought back for the space of one heartbeat, then she wrapped her arms around his neck and plastered herself against his warm, very male body. He might not be her ever-after man, but he was here and now. And he was offering just what she needed.

“W
AIT
.”
She pushed on his shoulders and he let her go. She stepped backward until she could no farther. “We can’t do this,” she said, panting. “
I
can’t do this. I don’t just have sex for the sake of having sex.”

Nick almost groaned. Her words said
go,
but her eyes said
come.

“Why not?” He kept his tone casual, but there was nothing casual about how he felt. He wanted her—to hell with Charles Harmon and the case. She wasn’t Charles’s patsy or cohort. She was a gorgeous, desirable woman. Forget the dozen or so reasons they shouldn’t be together.

He closed the distance between them, which wasn’t difficult in the cramped quarters of her trailer. “We don’t have to do this, but don’t pretend you don’t want to. You don’t have to be a fortune-teller to know there’s something between us. Something hot. Significant. And from the number of cold showers I took this past week, I’d say it isn’t going away any time soon.”

“You’ve been thinking about me?”

“Day and night.” Nick covered her mouth with his and tasted her.

After a few moments of mutual exploration that took
his breath away, she pulled back slightly and said, “I love the way you kiss. You could give lessons.” She ran her hands across his biceps to his shoulders.

Nick nuzzled an intriguing hollow where her neck and jaw met. There was a voice in his head that said,
Step away from the princess,
but it was being drowned out by the roar of blood on its way past his conscience headed right to his penis.

“Okay,” Grace said in a guttural whisper. “I give up. Let’s do this now, before I remember what a mistake I’m making.”

He kissed her again. His tongue plunged deeper, tracing her teeth, the roof of her mouth and underside of her tongue. She made a slight whimpering noise and transferred some of her weight to her arms, which were resting on his shoulders.

The angle opened the way for him to slide his hand under her white shell, which he discovered included a built-in bra. The stretchy material made it easy to pull down the elastic neckline and touch her skin. Hot and soft.

She shimmied against his palm, inviting him to explore. His fingers raked along her rib cage to the underside of her breasts.

She went still and opened her eyes. “This really is going to happen, isn’t it?” she asked. He saw her nervousness, but she didn’t flinch when his hand covered her breast and he gently squeezed.

He looked down at the fullness and felt his knees tremble. He couldn’t wait to see her naked. To taste every square inch of her body, but he felt honor-bound to say, “It’s not too late to call it off if you don’t want…”

She took his hand and pressed it to her crotch. Even
through her black hip-huggers, he could feel the heat and moistness. “If I backed out now, there are parts of me that would never forgive me. Including where your hand is.”

A pivoting motion of her hips made him think of a belly dancer. She stepped back and walked to the beaded curtain. The sparkling doorway led to a room unlike any he’d ever seen before. The vivid colors of the be-jeweled pillows on the couch were replicated everywhere—walls, ceiling and curtains. Sheer pink scarves were draped over the two hanging light fixtures on either side of the wall-to-wall bed, which was covered in scarlet satin.

“Wow.”

The long strands of beads gave a tinkling cackle after Grace followed him in. “A little over the top, I know,” she said, shrugging one bare shoulder. “Liz says the decor panders to the stereotype people have of Gypsies. But I like it. I was going for the
I Dream of Jeannie
look.”

Nick looked around as he unbuttoned his shirt. He found the surroundings slightly titillating. Campy and fun. Could he sleep there every night? That would depend on the company.

Grace leaned across the bed to close the curtains. The hue went from sunshine to mellow amber. She made a global gesture. “Welcome to my magic bottle.”

He laid his shirt on the dresser—the only freestanding piece of furniture in the room, taking care not to topple any of the ornate frames she’d assembled. “Can you make all my wishes come true?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. Her gaze stayed on his chest and she licked her lips in an unconscious way
that made him instantly hard. “Nobody can do that. But…” She unzipped her slacks and wiggled free of the stretchy material. “I might be able to satisfy one.”

She held up her index finger, then put it in her mouth and slowly pulled it out. Nick swallowed hard. He clawed at his buckle in a frantic effort to get out of his pants, but Grace stepped closer and did it for him. With a flourish that would have done Zorro proud, she whipped the belt free.

Nick undid his jeans and stepped out of them. “This isn’t going to be a hearts-and-flowers kind of thing, Grace.”

Her hand flattened against his hard-on and she leaned into him. Her breasts brushed against his chest. “We can do it standing up for all I care. Just satisfy me. Now.”

He slipped her panties over her hips. Pink lace, he acknowledged vaguely. He was more interested in the smoothness of her skin and the sculpted shape of her backside.

The stretchy fabric of her top molded to her figure, skimming her hips. He caught the edge and tugged upward. Grace lifted her arms. The elastic inched over her breasts, then suddenly they were free and visible.

Nick’s jaw dropped and saliva pooled in his mouth. “Grace, you’re beautiful.”

She blushed like a virgin, but she didn’t shrink from his scrutiny. “Thank you. Now, what’s good for the gander, or some such thing.”

He took off his shorts and faced her. He was glad for her speechless scrutiny. It gave him time to ask “Condoms?”

“Built-in hidey-hole by the lamp.” She gestured vaguely in the direction of the headboard.

As she reached out to touch him, she ran her tongue over her bottom lip. Nick’s body reacted as any red-blooded male’s would. The point of no return was history.

Grace sensed the instant he was committed to making love to her. Some people might have considered the end result a sure bet, but Grace didn’t take anything for granted where Nikolai was concerned. “Can we skip the foreplay and get right to the good stuff?” she asked.

He looked shocked. Grace didn’t blame him. She wasn’t sure where she’d left her rational mind, but this new, wholly sensual side of her had taken over. “It’s been a while for me and I’m pretty much ready when you are, which by the looks of it was ten minutes ago.”

She touched the head of his penis and ran her nails down the rock-solid shaft.

Nikolai let out a sound, something between a growl and a groan. “You,” he said, gently pushing until the backs of her knees touched the mattress.

She sat down, legs spread in pure wantonness. Nikolai took in her pose, his left eyebrow lowering rakishly. “You could provoke a saint. My blood feels like it’s going to shoot out the top of my head.”

“I know a better way to blow off a little steam.”

She leaned forward and put her lips on him. Her hands cupped her breasts as she rocked forward and back, drawing him in and out of her mouth. His stomach muscles tensed in a well-defined six-pack and she could see his toes curled against the carpet. He let out a low, painful-sounding moan. “Woman, that’s torture. You’re torture. You’re not supposed to do that.”

“I’m not?” she asked, letting her hand take over so she could look up at him.

“You’re…a…princess.”

The words sounded ripped from his gut.

“You mean like a royal pain in the ass?” she teased, grabbing his left cheek and squeezing.

Nikolai’s head was back and the muscles in his neck stood out. “Yeah. That, too.”

She leaned forward until her breasts were almost touching him, then she rubbed the tip of his penis between them. Nick let out a choking sound and pushed himself against her chest. Her flesh surrounded him and he hunched over as if fighting for control.

“Oh, Grace, you…” His voice broke as he threaded his fingers into her hair and made a fist. The tug on her scalp increased the molten heat between her legs.

He pulled her to her feet then switched places with her, so she was straddling his knees. He buried his face in her chest, filling his hands with her and breathing deeply.

Grace had never made love to a man who was half-Romani. The thought made her shiver.

Nick looked up. “Are you afraid all of a sudden?”

“N…no. I guess not, but—”

He nuzzled one breast, blowing softly on the wet trail left by his tongue. The rest of her thought flew out the large gaping hole in her mind. When he took one nipple into his mouth and suckled, she arched her back, grinding against his knee.

She squirmed with a powerful need until she found just the right placement for his knee. She ground her hips in a circle, reveling in the quick, hot flicker of ecstasy.

He kept her from going too far, too fast, by lifting her hips and bringing them toward his waiting erection.
Grace went up on her toes, then she lowered herself with agonizing slowness that had Nikolai letting out a jerky breath.

“Oh, baby,” he said. “You’re sweet, tight and wet.”

Grace took a few seconds to thank heaven for this amazing connection; then she moved her hips in an ageless dance. She pushed harder and harder.

“Don’t worry, Grace,” Nikolai whispered in her ear. “We’re getting there. Trust me.”

She opened her eyes and saw his wicked, sexy grin. “But this damn satin bedspread doesn’t give a guy any traction,” he added.

A second later, she was on her back with Nikolai poised above her. Arms stiff, he looked down at her and said, “Do you mind? The way my butt kept sliding, we were going to wind up on the floor.”

She laughed.
When was the last time I laughed in bed?
She couldn’t remember.

He didn’t wait for her answer. He lowered himself, filling her. She wrapped her legs around him and they rocked together until they found a rhythm that worked for both of them. Grace felt her climax building.

“Oh, oh, oh,” she cried, becoming lost in the sensation.

He was making noises, too. Sounds that told her he was close to coming. She clung to his neck and lifted herself up, up. They met at the same place. He poured into her with a raw cry that seemed to come from the depth of his soul. Grace vaguely realized that they’d shared an emotional release neither could have predicted.

“Sweet,” she said softly, tears slipping past her lashes. “Oh, Nick, that was nice.”

“Nice?” he said gruffly. “Doughnuts are nice. That was freaking amazing.”

She agreed.

He crushed her to him and rolled so they were side-by-side in a nest of rumpled bedding. With a tenderness she didn’t expect, Nikolai swept her hair from her eyes and ran the back of his hand along her cheek. “You are breathtaking in every sense of the word.”

She smiled. Oddly embarrassed by the flattery, but not by what they’d just done. “You’re not too shabby yourself, Mr. Sarna. I mean Lightner.”

He closed his eyes and pushed his head into the pillow. “Not yet, Grace. Please? Let’s keep the real world at bay for a little longer.”

She let out a sigh and curled up beside him. “Smart idea. Sex always turns my brain to mush. I swear that’s the only reason Shawn and I lasted as long as we did.”

“Good, huh?”

“Nothing like this, of course,” she said, truthfully, although she kept her tone light and teasing.

“You’re wicked.”

“I know.”

He ran his hand up and down her back as if drawing a map. Grace closed her eyes and threaded her fingers through the small triangle of wispy chest hairs between his pecs. Most of the men in her family were wooly bears compared to him. As she idly wondered whether hirsute genes skipped a generation, a sudden thought made her let out a gasp. They’d forgotten the condom.

“Damn.”

“It hasn’t been a minute.”

“Sorry, but…”

He opened one eye.

“Look down,” she said, pointing in the direction of his groin. “Do you see a used raincoat on that big boy?”

He didn’t look. Instead, he muttered a low, rather appropriate expletive.

“You’re not on the pill, I take it?”

“No, but even if I was, what about AIDS and STDs?” she asked, swallowing. “Pregnancy isn’t the only thing to worry about.”

“I give blood once every couple of months. It’s a c…common thing when you’ve been in jail.” He blushed. “I’m pretty sure I’m clean.”

She found his embarrassment endearing. “Me, too. Clean, I mean. Not the blood-donor thing. I get queasy just thinking about needles, but I was tested after I broke up with Shawn. I haven’t been with anybody since.”

Neither spoke for a minute then Nikolai cleared his throat. “Going back to the subject of pregnancy, I’ve heard about a pill you can take after the fact.”

Grace pushed back to gain some space. The flatness of his tone disturbed her. She stared at the ceiling to avoid seeing that other Nikolai, the one who was too much a part of the real world. “I could probably ask Liz,” she said, feeling the warmth they’d shared start to slip away. Faking a smile, she added, “At least, we’ve established that we’re not related. No potential pollution of the gene pool.”

Nikolai’s lips didn’t flicker. He looked dead serious. “I’d expect to be told if anything came of this.”

An edict, not a request.

Suddenly feeling naked and exposed, she grabbed the loose end of the bedspread and hugged it to her chest. “Um…okay.”

Neither spoke for a minute, then Nikolai let out a long, deep breath. “I didn’t mean that to sound like an order,” he said, sitting up to face her. “I’m sorry.”

The apology pushed her over the edge. The emotional roller coaster she’d been riding crashed. Tears backed up into her sinuses. She wadded up the corner of the blanket and pressed it to her face. “I think you should go.”

She managed to hold herself together while he dressed and kissed her goodbye, but once he closed the door, she gave in to the grief, pain and disappointment that had been dogging her all day. The lovemaking—wonderful as it had been—hadn’t changed her reality. She knew, deep inside, that her life would never be the same again. Nikolai or no Nikolai.