When You Wish (Contemporary Romance) (24 page)

His snort of laughter warmed her soul. When he put his hands over hers, their joined fingers lay over his heart. “Stay with me tonight, Grace. I need you more than I’ve ever needed anyone or anything.”

She shouldn’t.

Grace ope
ned her mouth to explain, and “yes” whispered past her lips. With no more words left, Dan carried her to his cabin.

They both smell
ed of lake water and waning sunshine. Dan would have liked to take Grace directly to his bed. He’d imagined her there so many times. Instead he took a detour to the shower.

Luckily his cabin previously had been the camp director’s, so he h
ad his own bathroom. While showering with Grace in the community showers might have sparked adolescent fantasies, he’d been having enough of those lately and he really needed to get over it.

Dan kicked open the door of his cabin and crossed the crowded room. He set Grace down at the bathroom door. She glanced over his shoulder at the bed, then back at him in confusion.

“You want to use the shower?”

“Are you saying I smell?”

“I just thought—” He shrugged.

“Oh!” She smiled seductively, which confused his mind, but his body went hot all over, even though his skin was chilled from driving two hours in wet pants. “I get it. Shower. Sure.”

Dan didn’t get it, until she yanked the tie on her blanket sarong and the material dropped to the floor with a damp-sounding thud.

“Let’s take a shower.”

“Let’s? As in us?”

“Don’t sound so surprised. I thought that’s what you wanted.”

Pathetic as it was to admit, and he didn’t plan on admitting it, Dan had never taken a shower with anyone else. Except in a locker room, and that really didn’t count.

“Of course that’s what I want,” he blurted, afraid she might change
her mind if he stood there gawking for too long.

But who wouldn’t stare at the beauty of Grace. Her skin was the same shade all over and smooth as honey. Except there, where she had a scrape on her belly and there an odd-shaped mark on her hip, and was that a bruise on her thigh?

She’d turned to precede him into the bathroom, but he caught her arm. “What’s this?” He traced his thumb along her hipbone.

Her breath caught and she leaned into his touch. That movement—sensual, yet trusting, made Dan’s own breath catch.

Grace glanced down and so did he. The sight of his lighter hand against her darker hip made him think of an artsy black-and-white photograph. He spread his large fingers around her small waist, fascinated with the texture of her skin and the contrast in the shades.

“I think that’s from your teeth.”

He lost all interest in art and color as his gaze flew up to hers, and he snatched his hand away as if she’d slapped him. He wanted to slap himself. “God, Grace, I’m sorry.”

“I’m not.” She drew his hand back to her stomach and held him there. “You want to make a matching set?”

“Yep.” The word was out before he realized it. Grace laughed, probably from sight of the shock on his face.

“Come on then.” She pulled him after her into the small bathroom, undressing him like he was a sick child.

Dan couldn’t seem to function very well. Sadness danced in his belly to the drumbeat of the need he had for Grace. She was trying to keep things light, to get his mind off his failure. And as she dropped the last stitch of his clothes into a pile on floor, his mind stopped thinking about anything other than this tiny room that was starting to fill with steam.

Grace stepped into the tiny shower stall. Dan stood there like a lump and hoped he didn’t start to drool as she threw back her head and let the water flow down her face and neck, then cascade over her cinnamon-tipped breasts. She turned her head and smiled at him through the foggy glass door. Beads of wa
ter dotted her face and her eyelashes were clumped together in such a way that her eyes looked even darker than usual, if that were possible.

“Are you coming, Dan?”

Not yet
, he thought. “Soon.”

She raised a brow. “How soon?”

“Aren’t you the one who told me to stop and smell the coffee?”

“Coffee?”

“Relax, Juan Valdez, it’s just an expression.”

“Too bad. I’d like some coffee.”

“Later. After.”

“Come on in here and show me before.”

He gave a long-suffering sigh. “All right. If I must, I must.”

The shower stall had never seemed big, especially for a man of Dan’s size. But with Grace in there too, it suddenly seemed just right. He couldn’t move without bumping into her.

She picked up a bottle from the floor. He became distracted by the view so that when she spoke her words didn’t register for several seconds. “I’ve been dying to wash your hair since I first got my hands into it.”

He blinked the water from his eyes. “My hair?”

Grinning, Grace poured shampoo into her palm. “Kinky little me, huh?”

She hadn’t actually meant they were going to take a washing kind of shower, had she? Knowing Grace, she wanted to conserve natural resources. She hadn’t even considered satisfying a fantasy Dan hadn’t even known he had.

“Bend down,” she ordered. He sighed, and did as he was told.

Grace raised her arms and started massaging his head. Her slick, perfect breasts came level with his face. “Isn’t this nice?”

“Huh?”

“I always liked it when my mother washed my hair. I got so relaxed.”

Dan was anything but relaxed. He tried to close his eyes so he wouldn’t have to look at what he shouldn’t touch or taste. But then he could smell her, he could feel her heat, so close to his lips all he had to do was pucker and he would touch them. No, she couldn’t be that close, could she?

Tentatively, Dan stretched his mouth outward. A nipple brushed his lips and he captured it. She gasped, but she didn’t protest. In fact she arched against him and moaned, then clasped his shoulders when he yanked her closer and set about putting matching marks everywhere she suggested.

Grace had a lot of excellent suggestions.

The one he liked the most was called wash but do not kiss. Dan lathed soap over every exquisite inch of Grace, he looked and he touched but he did not kiss and he did not take. Then she did the same for him. By the time the water ran tepid, they were both hot enough to not care much.

With only a haphazard use of a towel they tumbled from the shower and onto his bed. Dan was in such a state he could think of nothing beyond the feel of her body beneath his. He had to feel her body around his or explode. He drove into her as soon as they landed on the mattress.

She gasped and he froze, afraid he’d hurt her. Idiot. She was tall, bu
t she was fragile. Or more fragile than him. Who wasn’t?

“Don’t you dare stop.” She arched against him. “Don’t you dare smell the coffee now, Dan.”

He laughed, right in the middle of the most erotic sex he’d ever had. She opened her eyes and grinned.

“Coffee after,” he said.

“Long after.”

Dan finished what she’d started, and then he started and she finished, then they both started and finished together. They forgot about coffee because there didn’t seem to be much after. Only a whole lot of before, during, and again.

Much later, silver slivers of moonlight spilled through the window and across Dan’s bed. He wasn’t in the bed. Grace was. He’d been sitting in a chair, watching her sleep for at least an hour.

She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, and not because of the shape of her face or the shade of her body, but because she was Grace, and he loved her. He wanted to watch her every day for the rest of his life.

She had not wanted to stay with him; he had seen that in her eyes. Yet she had, because he’d needed her to. He probably should have sent her home, but he hadn’t been able to do that once she’d touched him. When Grace touched him, every ache in his life went away.

Was that love? The realization that another person filled a part of you that you didn’t even know was empty?

Dan knew nothing of love. Oh, sure, his parents had loved him, though they’d never said the words. They probably loved each other, too, but it would be inappropriate to act like they did.

Dan had not known he was lonely until Grace came into his life.
Now every moment he spent without her rang hollow. Waking up entangled in her arms was the most soul-shattering experience of his life. How was he going to get her to stay with him forever?

He had an idea.

Dan left the cabin with a final, lingering gaze at the woman in his bed before he went to the lab. One last look and then he’d do what he had to do.

Sitting down at his worktable, Dan pulled the jar of crap close and stared morosely into the bottom of his work. He blinked. He straightened. He opened his mouth, shut it again, and then began to laugh. He put his arms onto the table and laid his forehead against them. Then he laughed until tears ran down his face.

A door closed somewhere in the distance. Grace awoke, alone, in a strange bed. Where was Dan?

She found his T-shirt, dropped the garment over her nakedness, hugged the soft cotton that smelled of lake water and him to her skin, then slid from the room. A light i
n the lab drew her. Was he working again already?

Not wanting to disturb him, Grace looked into one of the windows. Her heart filled with pain as she watched him look into the jar, then put his head onto the table in a gesture of despair. His shoulders shook as he cried.

Grace blinked away tears of her own. His earnest devotion to what he believed tore at her heart. She’d said they were different from each other, but in many ways they were alike. She could feel his pain as if it were her own.

She took a step toward the back door, meaning to go in and lead him back to bed. She would make him forget everything but them, as she had only a few hours before.
But obviously the explosive passion and tender lovemaking they had shared had not been enough to cleanse his heart. Only one thing would do that.

Project Hope was worthy. Project Hope was her baby, her dream. But Dan—Dan was her love.

Lord knows she had tried not to love him. She hadn’t even wanted to like him. She’d projected all the bad qualities of men in her past that had betrayed and hurt her. But Dan was not like Jared; he was not like her father. He was Dan—and just as he’d said she had a Ferrari inside—the man had a Cadillac heart.

She had to trust him not to hurt her. She had to trust him to be the man he seemed to be. She had to trust that when he said his research could help countless people, he was telling the truth. A man that would cry because he’d failed at curing toenail fungus was a man she couldn’t live without.

Leaving him to his turbulent emotions, Grace returned to Dan’s bed. Before she fell back asleep, she made one little phone call that she hoped would fix all the ills of their world.

Unfortunately, she was wrong.

She awoke to an incessant pounding on the door. The sun baked the bed. She’d thrown off all the covers and her clothes. Dan was nowhere in sight.

Grace yanked the sheet from the floor, wrapped it around herself, and opened the door.

The woman on the porch was nearly as surprised to see Grace as Grace was surprised to see her. Early on a sunny morning, and the visitor was dressed to the nines in a pale pink suit, heels, and nylons despite the heat. Her blond hair was fashioned into an expert twist, and an age from that smooth, beautiful face was impossible to determine.

She looked Grace up. She looked Grace down. Her patrician nose wrinkled, then went up in the air. “Who, may I ask, are you?”

Grace disliked her on the spot. Bad habit, but it saved time. Her chin followed the direction of the woman’s nose. “Who are you?”

“Penelope Chadwick,” she stated, as if Grace should know her name. And Grace had a sinking feeling she should.
“Are you Daniel’s latest rebellion?”

Grace gripped the door as if she might fall. She wanted to. This was so much worse than
Jared walking into her father’s funeral with the wife and kiddies. This time Grace got to meet the wife while naked, with the bed of iniquity at her back. She wanted to die right then and there.

But first she would kill Dan. All she had to do was find him.

Chapter Fifteen

Dan returned from his errand by ten A.M., and he could barely find a place to park in front of his cabin. The only cars he recognized were Grace’s truck and Olaf s boat. The sight of the latter made Dan wince as he got out of his car.

Grace had stayed the night without benefit of matrimony and Olaf would be out for blood. Dan hoped he would get a chance to say he wanted Grace to make an honest man out of him, before Olaf broke his nose.

But who were all these other people?

It didn’t take Dan long to find out. As soon as he got out of the car, the mob descended.