I shuddered when I looked at it. I had a vulnerable look about me that reminded me of the moment I woke up in hospital after the accident. I’d been hooked up to tubes and wires, with machines beeping behind me. I had no idea where I was or what had happened.
“Thank you so much,” Grace says, patting her belly. “The food was delicious, and now I know I’ll never eat again.”
I laugh. “If only that were true.”
She cocks her head to one side and contemplates me. I feel myself drowning in her sea-green eyes.
“So, Jack Acker, what did you do before you came to the firehouse?” she asks.
My heart skips a beat, but I’ve more or less prepared for this question. I don’t want to lie to her. Something special is happening between us, and I want to see more of Grace, even after the three weeks are over.
“If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you.” Yeah, that’s my plan. Joke and bluff through it.
Grace rolls her eyes and pushes her chair back. “Okay, mystery man. If you’re not going to tell me, can you at least help me clean up?”
I jump to my feet, grateful that disaster has been temporarily averted. “I’d love to.”
She shoots me an amused look as we carry the dirty dishes to the sink. Her kitchen doesn’t have a dishwasher, but it has a double sink. We stand side by side. She washes while I rinse. I can’t remember the last time I washed dishes or even cooked; I’m ashamed to admit. I’ve been acting since I was six years old, first in commercials and then in TV shows. By the time I moved out of my parents’ house, I was already a successful actor, and I had all the trappings that came with it.
We make chit chat, and soon we’re done. Grace faces me, and I pull her into my arms. “You make washing dishes fun.” She laughs and wraps her hands around my neck.
“So do you.” She realizes that she’s still in her overalls and wriggles in my arms, but I hold on tight.
“I should change.”
“You are a natural beauty.”
She grows still.
“But we can get rid of the smock,” I tell her while pushing it off her shoulders. “It’s spoiling my view.”
“We can’t have that, can we?” Grace says with a smile that gets my blood boiling hot. She wriggles out of the coat.
Her breasts sway, and I realize that she’s not wearing a bra. My dick springs to attention. I cup her breasts over her T-shirt, and she parts her mouth the slightest bit. I angle my mouth over hers and kiss her lightly at first. She tastes so good. Like clean fresh air and a whiff of summer flowers. I flick my thumbs over her taut nipples that press against the fabric of her T-shirt. She threads her fingers through my hair as I break the kiss and lift her T-shirt.
“You have beautiful breasts, Grace. I could stare at them all day.” I lower my head and take a nipple into my mouth.
Her laughter turns into a moan as I suck and tease it with my tongue. I alternate between each nipple, loving the way Grace presses my head down for more.
A shrill sound breaks through our moans.
“Oh, shit,” Grace says, pulling away. “It’s my phone. I have to answer.”
I’m reluctant to let her go. “Do you always answer your phone? Let it go to voice mail.”
“That’s my mother’s ringtone.”
I groan and follow her to the bedroom, my tented pants preceding the rest of me. I feel like an idiot walking around her house with a hard-on. She grabs her phone from the side table and sits on the bed. I join her and sit next to her.
“Hi, Mom,” she says and then continues after a beat, “It’s noisy; I can barely hear you. Where are you?”
I’d thought it would be a quick call. Conversations with parents are never short, and I get up and head to the door to give her some privacy. Her next sentence stops me short.
“What are you doing in the ER?” Grace says, her voice loud. “Okay, I’m coming.”
I turn around. “Is everything okay?”
She runs her hands through her hair in jerky movements. Her eyes look damp. “It’s my dad. He’s in the ER. Mom says he fell in the bathroom. She says it was a light fall. I have to go to Newtown.”
On the first day we met, she told me that Newtown was an hour and a half away. “I’ll drive you,” I say.
“No, you don’t have to. I’m sure you have stuff to do today. It’s your day off,” Grace says.
I remember the script waiting for me. “I have nothing slated for today.”
“Okay, thanks. I’ll just change, and we can go,” she says, her voice shaky.
“Hey, it’s going to be fine. I’ll be in the living room.”
It’s out of character for Grace to be so frightened, almost shell-shocked. I compare this Grace to the one who fights fires, and I can’t reconcile the two. She said that her father was in the ER from a light fall. Unless I’m mistaken, people don’t generally die from light falls unless there’s something else that she’s not saying.
In less than three minutes, Grace is ready to leave.
“Can we use your car?” she asks.
“I don’t have it yet.” It sounds as lame as it is, but what choice do I have? I’d rather sound weird than have to explain how I can afford to own a Lamborghini or a Porsche.
She looks at me quizzically. “It’s still not back from the repair shop?”
“Not yet,” I tell her feeling like a complete asshole. I contemplate telling her who I am for all of two seconds.
Bad idea. First, she has enough to deal with right now with her father at the ER, and second, I’m not supposed to tell anyone, not even the woman I’m sleeping with, that I’m researching for a role.
I also like being Jack. Temporarily. There’s nothing to complain about in my life. It’s afforded me the privilege of going to places I’d never have visited, otherwise; meet people I would never have met and accomplish so much professionally and personally. The charity I support jumps to mind. It's for at-risk and disadvantaged youth and knowing that I’ve made a difference makes the lack of privacy, the scrutiny, and other bullshit that comes with fame worth it.
Still, I’m enjoying this interlude from my regular life. It’s nice to be a regular joe, getting to know a woman and letting her know me. That’s another thing that makes me hesitate to let Grace in on my secret. I don’t want to see her change her attitude toward me when she finds out who I am.
“Fine.” She grabs her car keys and hands them to me. She’s too distracted right now to give much thought to my lack of a car.
Downstairs, I unlock her car and open the door for her. Minutes later, we are on the highway, headed to Newtown. I throw worried glances at her. She hasn’t said a word since we left her apartment.
“Talk to me,” I tell her.
She sighs. “I’m sorry. I’m not great company right now. My parents are everything to me.”
“I understand.” I actually don’t.
“I’m adopted,” she says softly. “I started living with my parents when I was ten years old, and they gave me the stability that I desperately needed.”
“Oh.” I’m rarely at a loss for words.
“Yeah, my biological parents were irresponsible, and they should not have been allowed to raise a child.” Her voice is cold. Chilly. “But my adopted parents showed me another way of life, and it wiped out all the earlier memories of growing up with my biological parents.”
“I’m sorry.” I don’t need to have a psychology degree to understand why she panicked and why she’s super close to her adoptive parents. They rescued her from a life of misery. I wish I could ask her about her biological parents, but that would be prying into her life too much. It’s such a private matter. I think of my own family. I haven’t spoken to my parents in almost five years when I finally had enough.
“It’s fine. I healed, but I credit my life to my adoptive parents. I cannot bear the thought of losing either of them,” she says, her voice cracking.
“Hey, your father fell, right? Most likely, he
broke something. I’m sure it’s nothing more serious than that.”
“That’s what I keep telling myself. It sounds better coming from you,” she says and manages a smile.
I distract her with amusing tales of different places I’ve visited over the years. I tell her about the first time I rode on a camel and I ended up hanging upside down when the camel stood up before I’d settled into the saddle. The only thing I don’t tell her is that it was for a movie.
She laughs. “You’ve traveled a lot, haven’t you?”
“I have.”
“Was that in the desert?” she asks.
“Yes, in the Sahara Desert in Morocco. Have you traveled a lot yourself?” I ask her.
She shakes her head. “It’s on my long-term plans but so far, no. Work gets in the way.”
“Maybe one day we can travel together,” I tell her, and the fantasy grows in my mind. It would be nice to revisit all the places I’ve been with Grace. She’s not just good in the sack but out of it as well. Her company is amazing, and we keep a steady stream of conversation. Before I know it, the one and a half hours zip by, and we are pulling off the highway.
“We’re nearly there,” she says and gives me directions to the hospital.
I find my way to a parking lot near the ER entrance. We get out of the car and hurry across the parking lot to the entrance.
“Mom,” Grace says and hurries to an older woman with graying hair, sitting in the last row of the waiting area.
She sees Grace and stands up. On closer inspection, I see more than a passing resemblance between Grace and her adopted mom. They are both tall and elegant, and her features are similar to Grace’s. They are the same height too and have the exact same body shape. It’s puzzling. They are not biologically related, from what Grace explained to me. I stand to the side as the two women hug. They hold each other for a long time.
“Dad’s fine,” she says. “It’s a broken leg. They’re setting it now.”
“Oh, that’s good news,” Grace says, relief in her voice. She beckons me to step closer. “Mom, this is my friend and colleague, Jack Acker.”
I cringe at the name. Her handshake is surprisingly firm. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, and I’m sorry about your husband.”
“Oh, we’re just glad he’ll be fine. Grumpy for the next few weeks but okay otherwise,” she says with a smile that is a hundred percent Grace.
There’s no way they are not related. Such a coincidence is not possible. I offer to get some coffee and leave them talking.
I’m pretty familiar with the trauma bay, and I have immense respect for the doctors and nurses who work here. I once did as I’m doing now at the firehouse. I was researching the role of an ER doctor, and I shadowed a real ER doctor for two weeks. By the end of it, I was emotionally spent and wiped out from everything I had witnessed. At the end of it, though, I came out with an appreciation of the immense stress they face at work.
I take my time making my way to the hospital café on the second floor, grab three coffees from the machine, and head back to the ER. I hand Grace and her mother their coffees and sit down.
“It’s very kind of you to drive Grace all this way,” Mrs. Hughes says. “Thank you so much. It would have been an awfully long drive for her.”
“Don’t mention it, Mrs. Hughes,” I say.
“Please call me Nora,” she says.
We make chit-chat and finish coffee just in time for a man I assume is Nora’s dad is wheeled out of one of the inner examination rooms. He bears no resemblance to Grace, as I expected, which doesn’t explain why Grace is a younger version of her mother. I hate mysteries, and this one is grating at me. Worst of all, it’s not the kind of thing I would be comfortable asking Grace. We’re not close enough for such personal questions.
Grace introduces us, but I can tell he’s still in pain and understandably not in the mood to meet anyone. A hospital orderly wheels him to the car while another follows with a pair of crutches.
Getting him into the car is a process that leaves Grace’s dad angry and frustrated.
“I feel sorry for my parents,” Grace tells me in the car as we follow them home. “Dad is going to be a horrible patient.”
“Yeah, he’s probably angry and frustrated that he has to depend on other people. He’ll get used to it,” I tell her.
Chapter 7
Grace
“Have you ever broken your leg?” I ask Jack.
He doesn’t immediately answer, and when he does, the answer he gives doesn’t make sense, and I’m too tired emotionally to pursue it.
“Sort of.”
I’m distracted by our surroundings as we drive through my street. Most of my growing-up memories are centered around this one street. I see Tracy’s house as we drive by, and as I peer at the single-family home, her mother steps out of the house. I freeze and shrink in my chair, trying to make myself smaller. She looks straight into the car, but she doesn’t recognize me. The next house is Dora’s house. Their houses were next to each other and mine further down the street. We had made a threesome in all of our teenage years until we fell out when I was sixteen.
A whisper of pain comes over me when I remember the day that would remain etched in my memory forever. We had planned to meet that Saturday at Dora’s house. I’d been late as I’d been finishing a landscape I’d been doing for my mother’s birthday.
I entered Dora’s house the way I did my own without knocking and headed upstairs to her room. The two of them were glued to the computer, and they didn’t hear me enter. I stood behind them and peered at what they were reading on the screen.
I froze when the words started to make sense. I dropped my gaze to a sad-looking nine-year-old child underneath a bold headline splashed across the screen.
The Doomed Love Child.
A shrill scream filled the room. It took me a moment to realize that the scream was coming from me. I ran from the room. That was the end of our friendship. They tried to apologize, but I blanked them, and they came over less and less.
The car comes to a stop in front of my childhood home, bringing me back to the present with a jolt.
“I’ll go and help your dad get out of the car,” Jack says, getting out.
I follow him. He goes to the passenger side and quickly takes charge. He converts a process that would have been painful and embarrassing into a smooth procedure. He gently raises Dad’s feet and swings them off the floor of the car to the ground. In minutes, my dad is out of the car, and with Jack’s gentle guidance and help, he’s hobbling toward the front door, which my mother is holding open.
He even gets Dad’s mood to improve, and as we follow them into the living room, Mom grips my arm to hold me back.
“He’s the one,” she whispers excitedly.
I laugh. “We’ll see.” I don’t want to dash her hopes, but as perfect as Jack is, it is too early to tell if we have a future. We barely know each other, and there’s a lot that Jack hasn’t told me about himself.
We stay and have a cup of coffee with my parents, and then we leave. They’ll have someone coming in from the hospital to show my dad how to move around.
“You were great with my dad,” I tell him. “You’ve won my mother’s heart.”
“It’s nothing,” he says.
I’m super curious about him. “How did you know how to get him out of the car?”
“I’ve garnered a lot of information over the years, most of it useless, to be honest. I’m glad that this time it helped,” Jack says.
“I’m so relieved that my dad is fine, and it was nothing worse than a broken leg.” I sink back into the seat and allow myself to relax. The panic that had gripped me when we were driving to the hospital has dissipated.
I glance at Jack’s profile, and gratitude flows through me. “Thank you for driving me,” I tell him.
“You’re welcome,” Jack says.
I rarely ask personal questions, but there’s something about the evening or maybe the
day itself that makes me more uninhibited than I would normally be. The sun is slowly dipping behind the clouds, leaving a brilliant orange hue in its wake.
“Tell me about your family.” I hold my breath waiting for him to answer.
“What do you want to know?” Jack says without taking his eyes off the road.
“Everything.”
He chuckles. “That’s a big task, but I’ll try. I’m an only child.” His voice takes on a faraway tone as if, with a single sentence, he has moved to another time and place.
“I’m an only child too. Did you long for siblings?” I ask him.
“Constantly.” I feel Jack’s stare. “What about you?”
“Only when I lived with my biological parents. Then I constantly wished for a sibling to share in the nightmare that my life was. After I started living with my adopted parents, I stopped obsessing over a sibling. Life became good.” I can’t believe I said all that. I’ve never told anyone this.
“I never stopped wanting a sibling.” Jack's voice is tinged with sadness, and it makes me want to throw my arms around him and comfort him.
He doesn’t explain any more, and I don’t ask. I feel as if I’ve asked as much as I can for now. The highway grows deserted as we get closer to LA.
The sound of the car, the silence of the night, all lull me to sleep. The next thing I know, someone is shaking me.
“What?” I wake up confused, but one look at the handsome face staring at me reminds me of where I am. I feel a trickle of drool, and I wipe it off with the back of my hand.
“You are home,” Jack says.
I sit up in my seat. “Sorry I fell asleep and left you without company.”
“It’s fine; you’re beautiful to look at when you’re sleeping,” he says.
“Flirt.” My heart swells with gratitude. It would have been tough to drive myself back and forth. I lean across and kiss him on the cheek. “Thank you.”
One Hot Secret: A Second Chance Romance (Love on Fire) Page 4
