Damnation. Why did she look so ... perfect?
Not literally perfect. Hell, just look at her hips. They were way too narrow, almost boyish, and her waist didn’t dip in that classically feminine hourglass shape. Her breasts, on the other hand, were improbably generous for her slim frame, creating an imbalance that he knew made her self-conscious.
And her face. He didn’t need to look at her to picture the flaws. Her forehead was a little too high for true beauty, her nose too broad, and she had that very slight overbite. No, she was far from perfect.
But she was perfect for him. She always had been. And when she smiled, she lit up from within.
He shifted, cleared his throat. “We about through?”
“Through? Ray, I just got started. Now, sit still, would you?”
He dropped his hands to grip the back of the chair, but complied with her order to hold still. Thankfully, she moved to the side, taking the full-frontal view with her. He breathed a little easier, until her breast brushed his shoulder as she leaned in close to comb his hair straight up so she could grasp a lock between two fingers. He tightened his grip on the chair.
Snip, snip. Another clump of hair, yellow and startling, fell to the newspaper they’d spread on the floor.
That’s it, Morgan. Just keep watching the floor.
Except now that he wasn’t looking at her, he became more aware of her scent. It teased at his senses, the motel soap combining with her skin to produce a new fragrance, familiar but different. Lord, she smelled good. Warm, clean, his.
No, not his. Not any more.
Except he kept remembering the way she’d responded to him in the car. His palms remembered her breasts peaking inside her bra, and he heard again the way her breath had hitched and roughened.
He’d intended to punish her with those hard kisses that cared nothing for her comfort or pleasure, but she’d opened up to him, inviting him to take and take, then take some more. Only the knowledge that they were being watched had given him the presence of mind to put her away.
But no one was watching now.
What would she do if he grabbed her hips, pulled her close, buried his face in her breasts?
She’d go up like dry tinder. And so would he.
For a moment, he balanced on the knife edge of temptation. Why not? It sure as hell wouldn’t mean anything, and afterward they could write it off to the dangerous situation they found themselves in. A mindless, adrenaline-driven tumble.
God, when was the last time he’d done that? Years.
Used to be that after a hair-raising shift, he’d go to the bar to tip a few with his buddies. Then he’d tip one of the ever-present badge bunnies into bed, working off his excess energy with athletic, no-holds-barred sex.
Of course, he’d long since learned to work it off more safely and responsibly, usually by thrashing Quigg at racquet ball, or alone in the weight room. Even after Grace came into his life, he still made routine use of the gym after a wild day.
Grace was such a sensitive thing. He’d always been careful to come to her with his control intact so he could show her the tenderness she deserved.
Though she hadn’t seemed to need tenderness earlier tonight, in the car. Desire, hot and urgent, flashed through him at the memory.
She’d clipped her way around to his left side, her breast nudging his other shoulder as she leaned into him. The only thing that kept his butt glued to the chair was the fear of what he might do, what he might say.
Why wasn’t I enough? How could you just stop loving me and start loving someone else? The questions rose up inside him, but he’d be damned if he’d ask them.
She’d put the scissors down and moved in front of him. She lifted his hair, comparing the length of the left side against the right, her face the picture of concentration. Suddenly, preserving his pride didn’t seem so important. He felt the questions welling up again, threatening to spill out.
Quickly, before he could succumb to weakness, he summoned the images guaranteed to cool him off. Grace’s limbs tangled with another man’s. Grace moving under....
“Done,” she announced.
He leapt up, knocking the chair over.
“Whoa!” She sprang back as the chair crashed to the floor. “Careful.”
He righted the chair, muttering an apology.
She picked up the scissors, handed them to him, then sat down in the chair. “My turn.”
He looked at the scissors in his hand, appalled. “You want me to cut your hair?”
“I imagine you can do a better job on it than I can.”
Panic flared in his gut. “You don’t really need to cut it. It’s a different color and everything. Just tie it back or stick it under a baseball cap or something.”
She shook her head. “We shouldn’t take any chances. Besides, if you think I’d let you sacrifice your hair while keeping my own, you’ve got another think coming.”
He dragged a hand through his newly shorn hair. “That’s different. It wasn’t much of a sacrifice.”
She arched a brow. “You haven’t looked in the mirror yet.”
“But, Grace, I’ll make a mess of it. You love your hair. It’s your ... thing.”
Something flickered in her eyes, sadness or regret or maybe just wistfulness, but her voice was clear and determined: “I’ve made up my mind. If you don’t do it, I’ll do it myself.”
He studied her for a few seconds. Dammit, she meant it. She’d take the scissors to it herself if he didn’t do it.
He sighed. “Fine. You win.”
She smiled at him, but it didn’t reach the sadness in her eyes. He wished he could believe her melancholy had to do with the crime he was about to perpetrate on her hair.
“Why do you want to do this, Grace? Really?”
She lifted her chin. “I just have to.”
He sighed. “Okay, but remember, you asked for it. I’ll have you know my mother had a hairless Chihuahua when I was a kid, not poodles.”
The lie came easily. He’d never had so much as a goldfish or a hamster in that lousy, poorly-heated walk-up he’d inhabited with his mother, but it brought a laugh to Grace’s lips.
Ray was right, Grace thought, as she clutched the towel around her shoulders. Her hair had always been her “thing”. A full, rich sable, it fell perfectly straight with the lightest encouragement with a brush and blow dryer. Everything else about her might be forgettable, but people noticed her hair.
It seemed only right somehow that she should sacrifice it.
“Okay, give me some guidance, here.”
Poor Ray. He’d dodged bullets back there in that parking lot without breaking a sweat, but his hands were shaking now. She pretended not to notice.
“Just comb out a small section, then pull it tight between your fingers.”
“Like this?”
“Closer.”
“Forget it, Grace. I’m not cutting it that short. There’d be nothing left for the hairdresser to fix.”
“But that’s hardly short enough to make any difference.”
They compromised, agreeing on a mid-length.
“Okay, what now?”
“Just angle your fingers like so.” She used her own fingers to demonstrate.
“Like this?”
“Perfect. Now snip away.”
He muttered something that sounded like “Hail Mary,” and snipped.
The coppery lock fell onto her denim-covered knee. No going back now. For a moment, panic assailed her.
“Grace?”
She cleared her throat. “That’s good. Keep going.”
The second lock fell, this one hitting the newspapers, joining Ray’s impossibly blond hairs. She blinked rapidly. It was just hair. An external manifestation of her stupid vanity. She would not cry.
Besides, her old precision haircut was fine for the woman she’d been before this nightmare started. The new Grace needed something different. It was going to take all the courage she could scrape togeth
er to get through this. Just as her smooth coif had given her poise and polish, maybe a sassier color and a rough-and-ready cut would lend her the edge she needed.
Image was everything, right? Fake it until you can make it.
“What do I do with the front?”
She glanced up at Ray. His mouth was set in that way that made his jawbones stand out, the grooves bracketing his mouth deeper than ever. He looked like a man completely out of his depth and hating it.
“Leave it fairly long, about so.” She indicated a spot at the level of her cheekbone.
“Christ, I’m probably making a mess of this.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she assured him. “With all the mousse and hair spray I bought at that drug store, I could probably make it look like the CN Tower, if I wanted to.”
That earned a laugh, but when he made the next snip, his jaw had again taken on that grim line. The chair wasn’t high enough, she noticed. He had to bend to do the job, which must be killing his back.
And that’s not all she noticed, now that her panic had passed. His hands were clumsy in her hair, compared to the brisk competence of her stylist. But they were gentler, too. He separated the next section delicately, easing the comb through a snarl. She shivered.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay. It doesn’t hurt.”
But it did hurt. Quite suddenly, it hurt a lot. It hurt that this was the first time he’d voluntarily touched her for so long, apart from that display they put on for the clerk.
And, oh, that scene in the office! She dropped her eyelids, her face heating at the memory. The way he’d touched her....
She clamped down on the warmth flooding her belly. Nothing had changed. Their performance had been necessary to divert the clerk’s attention.
Still, awareness shimmered through her when he pushed his fingers through her hair again.
“Almost done. Then you can get that cold towel off your shoulders,” he said, obviously mistaking her shiver.
True to his word, he was soon finished. Grace didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed when he pronounced her done. Removing the towel from around her neck, she strode to the closet-sized bathroom to inspect her new appearance. She flipped the switch for the overhead light and froze.
Yikes! Was that really her? Her eyes looked huge, her chin more pointed. Lord, it even seemed to lift her cheekbones.
Ray’s reflection appeared behind her in the mirror. “What’s the verdict?”
“Wow.”
“Sorry,” he said gruffly. “I told you it was a mistake.”
“No, it’s good. You did a better job on me than I did on you.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Really. A little mousse and a blow dryer and it’ll kick butt.”
He just regarded her in the mirror, unspeaking, a yellow-haired stranger.
She pushed a tendril of hair behind her ear and sighed. “I suppose I should style it now, so we can hit the road.”
“No, let’s get a few hours sleep first. We can finish our transformations in the morning.”
She met his gaze in the mirror. “I thought we were going to sneak away under cover of night?”
He shook his head. “Better to blend in with rush hour traffic tomorrow morning than travel tonight. I just wanted to pay for the room in advance so we wouldn’t have to show ourselves to the clerk after we’d morphed.”
“We actually get to grab some sleep?”
The corners of his mouth turned up at her obvious relief, his eyes crinkling the way she loved. She smiled back into the mirror. For a few seconds, despite their altered appearances, they were the old Ray and Grace, but then his face sobered again.
“You take the bed; I’ll sleep in the chair.”
He turned and left the bathroom, leaving her staring into the mirror at the empty spot where he’d stood. She drew a deep breath, then followed him.
“That’s not going to work, Ray. You’ll insist on driving tomorrow, which is fine, but that means you’re the one who needs the rest. I’ll take the chair tonight, then doze in the car tomorrow.”
“I can sleep anywhere, Grace. It’s part of the training. You, on the other hand, would sit awake all night, and we can’t have that. We’re both gonna have to be sharp.”
And you’d rather wake up with a cricked neck, a sore back and a killer headache than share that bed with me.
She felt like crying again, which was really stupid. He’d slept on the couch every night since she’d come home from the hospital. Why should it hurt that he sleep elsewhere again?
She shrugged and turned away. “Suit yourself,” she said, picking up a t-shirt and disappearing back into the bathroom.
An hour later, Ray sat slumped in the room’s lumpy chair, listening to Grace’s regular breathing. She’d fallen asleep almost immediately, as though her mind had just shut down.
Poor Grace. She wasn’t used to this, hadn’t asked for it.
He shifted in the chair, trying to ease himself into a more comfortable position. Trouble was, every time he shifted, his jeans dragged against his tender knees. He must have skinned them on the asphalt when he’d dived for cover. He shifted again. Finding a semi-tolerable posture, he willed his own mind to shut down. The minutes ticked by, evidenced by the glowing display on the clock radio every time he opened his eyes.
Dammit!
Standing, he shucked his jeans, then pulled his shirt off for good measure. Scooping up the dubious bedspread he’d warned Grace about earlier, he flopped on the chair again, covering himself. There.
But he couldn’t stop his brain from whirling. The scene in the school parking lot kept running on an endless loop. The itch between his shoulder blades as he’d approached Tommy’s car—he’d thought it was Grace’s gaze following him, but it must have been the sniper. The car window exploding, Ray standing there frozen as he’d tried to process it, the thunk-thunk of slugs slamming into metal, the look on Tommy’s face before he’d nailed the accelerator....
Had they found anything at the scene? He knew better than to imagine they’d have apprehended the shooter. If it was Landis’s man, he’d be no bumbling idiot. Of course, he was no sharpshooter with a rifle, either. If he had been, Ray’d be dead right now. Probably Grace and Tommy, too.
He thrust the thought away, turning his mind back to the shooter. No, the triggerman was no trained sniper, but he wouldn’t be a total amateur, either. Even someone handy with a gun might have trouble with a roof shot. For sure he’d be GOA by the time the cops landed, having provided for a quick getaway. But would he have had time to clean up the scene?
Lord, he hoped not. If the shooter left spent shell casings, they could establish his position, reconstruct the attack. Tommy’d soon figure out the bullets that hit his car had whizzed past their real target.
Which, he realized, wouldn’t alter much. If they thought he’d tried to set up Tommy to be whacked, they’d try to bring him in on a warrant. But if they figured out that the hit had been intended for him not Tommy, then they’d still want to bring him in, for protection. Grace, too. And Ray still wasn’t ready to take the chance, not with an internal investigation hanging fire. God knew how long that could bung things up, especially with that dickwad Creighton howling for blood.
The money. Damn, it always came back to that, didn’t it? They had to find out where it’d come from. Until he could explain that away, quickly and convincingly, they were screwed.
Grace cried out, dragging Ray’s attention back to the here and now. Beneath the covers, she twisted in the throes of a dream. He closed his eyes, gritting his teeth against the desire to comfort her. After a moment, the thrashing stopped. Thank God. He felt some of the tension in his muscles drain.
He waited for her to settle again, but instead of smoothing out, her breathing became more ragged. In the dark, he realized she was crying. They weren’t big, harsh sobs. In fact, her weeping was almost soundless. Somehow, that was so much sadder. It tore
the heart right out of him.
He flipped the throw off, pushed himself out of the chair and crossed to the bed. Knowing it was foolhardy but unable to do anything else, he peeled the covers back and climbed in with her. She went stiff at first, but then she melted into his arms, clinging and crying in earnest.
When the storm of weeping had passed, she murmured against his chest, “I’m so scared.”
“Sleep, Grace,” he said. “I’ll keep you safe.”
She relaxed against him. Within a few minutes, she’d drifted back into sleep. Wondering whether he could keep his promise, Ray followed at last.
Chapter 7
HE WOKE UP IN a state of unbearable arousal.
Grace’s warm body curved into his, her head resting on his shoulder. Her lush breasts, confined only by the t-shirt she wore, pressed flat against his side. His left arm had gone numb from the weight of her, but he was only vaguely aware of that. More insistent was the drumbeat of physical need pulsing through his blood, pooling in his loins.
She was still asleep, her moist breath feathering the hairs on his chest. At some point in the night, they’d thrown the covers back. Now, her left arm lay across his belly, innocent in sleep but wildly arousing. Her hair, which had been wet last night when she’d crawled into bed, was now a tangle of shocking auburn.
For long minutes, he battled the urge to roll her over and take her, warm and half asleep, this flame-haired woman who was Grace, but not Grace.
Sweet Jesus, what was he thinking? Had he no pride? She’d made her choice, and it wasn’t him. No way would he stand in for the man she really wanted. No way would he let his heart be ripped out again when she finally remembered where the hell she wanted to be and who she wanted to be there with.
Yeah, he had to get out of this bed.
In just a minute.
Then she opened her eyes. From a distance of six inches, he watched the fog of sleep give way to joy.
Saving Grace (Serve and Protect Series) Page 9
