by Sylvia Ryan
“You’re right. It doesn’t make any sense at all. But sometimes life has a way of showing you where you’re supposed to be.”
Grace shifted her eyes away from him. She looked back down at her hands and buried the next stake. He knew what she was thinking. She wanted life to show her which way to go, although she’d never admit it to him and probably not even to herself.
“I find my degree is more useful at the bar than in private practice.”
And then he saw it. Her eyes flicked to his bare chest. He’d caught her looking, and by the sudden irritated look on her face, she knew he’d noticed.
He tried to suppress his smile. “So what’s really going on here, Grace? Why are you here?”
She shrugged. “Not sure. My dad made Sarge promise to get me. I don’t know why. I can take care of myself.”
“Yep. That’s obvious.”
“You know my dad. What do you think?”
Luke stopped stabbing the dirt with the digger and looked away, thinking, thoughtfully choosing his words. “Insurance policy,” he said, then started digging again. “If we have something precious to us, something so important that it would be disastrous if it were lost, we insure it. A ‘just in case’ security blanket. Sarge is your dad’s insurance policy.”
Grace snorted. “I didn’t need an insurance policy.”
“It isn’t a reflection of how your father felt about your ability to take care of yourself. I’m here. I needed an insurance policy. Sarge was mine, too.”
Grace squinted up at him thoughtfully. A few seconds of silence passed between them before she smiled. “That’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me in a long time.”
“It sounds like you don’t really want to be here.”
Grace shrugged.
“Sometimes a crisis turns out to be the best thing that could ever happen to a person. In Chinese, the word crisis is written with two characters—danger and opportunity. We already have the danger. Maybe an opportunity will present itself.”
She didn’t look up at him. She didn’t answer. But Luke knew Grace had food for thought. Shit, she had a nine-course meal churning around inside that brain of hers.
He spent the rest of his day trying to force his gaze away from her. Her silence, her total indifference despite working together side by side for hours, felt like a direct challenge to him, and Luke loved a challenge.
Chapter 16
When Grace and Luke were done for the day, Luke went inside, leaving Grace alone in the backyard. She brushed off as much dirt as possible then sat on the back steps, taking some time to rest and enjoy the solitude. The fading sunlight brought with it the night sounds of crickets and a cool breeze that felt wonderful on the bare skin of her arms.
Listening to Luke had been interesting. His lazy way of talking made everything he said seem less stressful, not so damn important. It relaxed her. She felt comfortable with him. She was also feeling something else though. An internal alarm, a little red flag unfurled in the back of her brain at some point during the day. He was just too good to be true, too smooth, too casual. It was sexy, and maybe that’s why the red flag was waving. She needed to be careful. She felt like she was in over her head with him. In what way exactly, she didn’t know.
Grace looked down at herself. She was filthy and sticky with sweat. Dirt was embedded under her nails, and she could smell herself. Her last decent outfit was trashed. Only a couple changes of clothes had been packed in her bugout bag, and they all were caked with blood, or dirt and sweat.
She needed more clothes, and there was still the issue of birth control. She had a weird feeling in her stomach when she thought about trying to sneak out again. It was a mixture of nerves and fear, like when she was a little girl and had done something wrong. It was the same feeling she used to get when she knew she was going to be in trouble with her dad.
Grace hadn’t realized that Sarge had her intimidated. Not until she pressured Van not to tell Sarge about her attempted outing that morning. Now, this weird feeling? What the fuck?
She sighed. It seemed like just being herself kept Sarge in a perpetual state of fury. She didn’t have the slightest idea why he was so oppressive, smothering her with his massive personality. She wondered if he would ever accept her just as she was.
Grace looked around at the work she and Luke had done. The yard was almost completely booby trapped, and it would be harder, if not impossible, to get into the backyard by going over the fence. She didn’t like the added restrictions on her movement that these spikes added. She wanted the option of being able to ride her bike home without having to ask Sarge to let her out.
Grace looked over her shoulder to make sure she was alone and then rushed to the garage and wheeled her bike out, hiding it between the side of the house and the bushes. It couldn’t have been a more perfect fit. It was completely camouflaged. She felt calmer, less trapped with her bike out, ready for her if she needed to use it.
She slipped back into the backyard and made her way down to the shelter, replacing the false wall behind her.
“I was just going to go up and see if you were okay,” Van said as she descended the stairs.
“Could you guys give me a minute?” Grace asked as she made a circling motion with her finger. “I need to clean up a little. Oh, and, guys, I need some clothes. What I have here is in pretty rough shape.”
No one answered her, but Sarge and Luke must have heard because they angled their backs away without interrupting the flow of their murmured conversation.
Grace stripped, wiped herself down, and threw on one of the oversized T-shirts she had stolen from Sarge.
When she went over to where the men were hanging out, they clammed up, and Sarge pegged her with an angry stare.
“What’s going on?” she asked. He was obviously angry at her and that “in trouble” feeling fluttered in her stomach again.
“Where were you trying to go this morning?” Sarge’s rough words were so icy, they could have turned to snow and fallen to the floor in front of her.
Grace shot Van a scowl. He had told on her. “What the fuck, Van?”
“I’m sorry, Grace. I’m just trying to keep you safe. Keep us all safe.”
His expression was sincere, but she didn’t give a shit if he thought he was doing the right thing or if he was sorry about it. She burned him with a look that let him know her feelings of betrayal, and he stared right back at her without regret.
Grace was floored. She hadn’t expected this. She’d just assumed they’d come to some kind of understanding this morning when she was sucking his cock! Her blood pressure rose. Not him, too. She’d had sex with him, and he had turned around and betrayed her.
“Don’t get pissed at Van,” Sarge said in a tightly controlled voice. “Where were you going?”
Grace just looked at him with a deliberately polite and amused expression. She would never let him know what his anger did to her insides. All he needed to know was that she didn’t have to answer to him. And she was sure as hell never going to tell him she was going for birth control, especially since the way it looked now, he was never going to get his dick inside her again.
They just didn’t get it, didn’t get her.
“Dammit! Enough is enough, Grace. If I have to start assigning shifts to guard you, I will.”
Grace shrugged. “Do what you got to do. Now, are we done, because I’m starving and dead tired.” Grace turned her back to Sarge and walked the length of the dimly lit shelter toward the canned food shelf.
The sound of Sarge’s limping gait followed her. “Don’t fuck with me, Grace.” His voice rumbled like a distant train.
Grace turned on him quickly and met him eye to eye. “No, Sarge, don’t you fuck with me.”
Sarge stepped toward her, and she gave no ground. They were nose to nose. Their bodies brushed against one another. Sarge’s gaze seared her, and his breathing was ragged, barely controlled.
“I’m tired of trying to fit into the mold of what you think is acceptable behavior for a poor, defenseless woman! I’m not going to change who I am. This is me.” She spread her arms wide. “If you don’t like the person I am, the decisions I make, it’s your problem, not mine!”
Sarge stood silent for several moments. “All right, Grace.” His tone was lethal. “Go ahead and get yourself killed. I’m done with this.” He turned and began to limp away from her. “I’m done with you.”
His angry dismissal added another wound to her already scarred heart and puny self-esteem she had in the relationships department. Grace couldn’t have been more crushed. She wished her angry rant would have helped him see her and maybe even like her for who she was. But it hadn’t, and wasn’t this her plan all along? Hold out until the men realized they weren’t attracted to her? It sounded easy in theory, but it was harder in practice.
After a brutally silent and tense evening, finally, mercifully, it was time to go to sleep. Grace was turned away from Luke when he climbed into bed next to her. He left a discreet distance between them. Poor guy, he’d probably spent the afternoon mulling over how he was going to handle his night in her bed. She assumed that the confrontation with Sarge ultimately made the decision for him. She had totally shut down, even though she could have gotten an Academy Award for her “I don’t give a shit” performance.
Grace tried as hard as she could to hold back the sobs, but now that she was in the shrouded safety of darkness, it was impossible to hold back. The bed shook almost imperceptibly as the tears started to flow. This was all too much.
She was so bad at this male-female stuff. She didn’t know what she was doing.
The only thing she knew for sure was that she was a shitty judge of character. And so far, she’d opened up a little and trusted both Van and Sarge, and it had gotten her nothing but let down. How many times did she have to be hurt and betrayed before she learned to just keep to herself. Luke propped himself up and leaned over her. “Are you okay?” he whispered in her ear.
She didn’t answer him.
He touched her. At first it was just a brush of his hand, but then, gently, he comforted her, stroking her back, her shoulders, her hair. It was exactly what she needed.
He leaned over again. “He’s not trying to be mean to you. He cares about you. He just wants to see you safe, that’s all.”
Still she didn’t answer. She didn’t want to talk about it, at least not when she was a blubbering idiot. She was embarrassed that words could reduce her to this.
Luke pulled his hand away from her.
“No. Don’t stop, please,” she murmured.
Luke’s hand returned. He rubbed her back and sifted his hand through her hair while she cried like a pitiful weakling. Every once in a while, an almost inaudible whimper escaped with her silent sobs. Luke’s slow, gentle strokes continued until they lulled her into sleep.
* * * *
Sarge lay on the couch cushions mere feet from the bed Grace shared with Luke. He’d heard Luke’s low murmurs, but couldn’t quite make out what he was saying to her. Now, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t block out the rhythmic sounds of movement from the bed. He was about to lose his mind.
He heard the softest of whispers. “Don’t stop, please.” The words sighed from Grace’s lips and stabbed at his eardrums.
He had driven Grace into the arms of another man. Someone else was inside her right now, and there was nothing he could do. He didn’t have a leg to stand on.
He couldn’t blame Luke. Sarge conceded that to the outside observer, it probably looked like he didn’t even like Grace, let alone love her. They were constantly at odds with each other, him wanting to take care of her, and her rebelling against it.
He’d gone about it all wrong. He had been trying to force her to bend to his will, to his rules. He wanted her to submit to him. Just as she’d said, he tried to force her into being what he thought she should be, of what he wanted her to be. But Grace wasn’t submissive and probably never would be.
In hindsight, this whole clusterfuck mingled and fused with other snippets of conversation until everything coalesced and was suddenly painfully obvious.
“Men don’t like strong women like me.” Isn’t that what she had said?
How come he couldn’t see until now what he was doing? He was trying to change her. Trying to rule her. Trying to make her more like a girl. Fuck! He was being like every other prick who’d treated her like she was weak and incapable and then became dissatisfied with her when she wasn’t.
If he had treated her like she deserved, like an equal, she would have talked to him. She would have told him where she wanted to go and why. He could have helped her plan, and she could have gone with Luke to cover her.
Now Luke was covering her in a whole new way. Sarge heard a whimper from the bed and the soft sound laid waste to his heart. He felt gutted. All his insides ripped right out of him.
Chapter 17
The following night, after the job of burying the spikes was finished, Luke sat alone on the back steps enjoying the cooler weather. After some time, Grace joined him. She sat close to him. The baby wipes she’d used to clean herself made her smell delicate and inviting. He drew in a deep breath. It was provocative.
“Thanks for last night,” she said, looking away from him with a far-off expression.
“My pleasure,” he drawled. It was nice to see that the tense atmosphere wasn’t dragging her down too much. It said a lot about who she was. He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her closer. “What’s my reward for being such a good boy?”
As they had worked together that afternoon under the careful watch of Van, their interactions seemed to take on an air of perpetual flirtation. He knew it was a way for Grace to get her jabs in and hurt Van back for what she considered his betrayal, and Luke didn’t mind that at all.
Grace’s eyes twinkled with mischief. “What does my good boy want?”
“Beautiful, I don’t think you could handle what I want.”
“That sounds like a challenge,” she smirked, “but I don’t think you’ve got any moves I haven’t seen before.”
“Try me.” He practically growled the dare at her. In the space of a second, he leaned into her until their lips were a breath’s space apart.
Grace’s face changed from devilish to serious. “I don’t want you to be in the mix with the other two,” she whispered, pulling back, separating them from the intimate nearness of their lips and the rush of blazing lust that came with it.
“I warned them,” she said so softly it was as if she was talking to herself. “They still couldn’t handle it.”
Abruptly Grace seemed to shake her way out of the place she’d momentarily gone in her head, and she smiled at him with bright eyes and a mischievous smile. She leaned even closer and breathed her next words into his ear. “I don’t think you can handle it, either.”
He hit her with a high-impact stare. “Oh now, Grace, we’re going to have to prove that misconception wrong.”
Their eyes locked, and he could practically hear the thoughts whispering through her brain, weighing the pros and cons of putting another man into the very complicated dynamics of the shelter.
Her face fell. It was almost imperceptible, but Luke caught it right before she spoke again. “I made mistakes with them and lost friends in the process. I’m not going to make another one. It’s a bad idea, Luke.” She moved to stand, but his arm tightened around her and kept her in place.
“Come on. Sit with me for a few minutes. You can’t run away. I’d just follow you.”
They sat in comfortable silence for a long while. No doubt she was turning around ideas in her head, getting a look at them from all sides, just as he was. Something was changing inside him. It was as if the soft spot he had for this woman was transforming, mixing with the lust, and changing into something richer, more meaningful.
Luke cleared hi
s throat. “So, I’ve decided on a nickname for you.”
“Why on earth would you do that?” Her cute little girl voice made the corners of his mouth quirk up.
He shrugged. “That’s what I do. It’s a part of my charm.” He flashed her his most debonair grin.
“Oh, this ought to be good,” she muttered sarcastically under her breath.
“You haven’t even heard it and you’re already complaining.”
“I’ve had enough derogatory opinions about my personality lately. I don’t need a snide nickname to go with it.”
Luke covered his heart with both his hands. “You wound me, ladybug.”
“Ladybug?” She rolled her eyes.
“I had a few that I picked out, but ladybug was by far the best considering how you bug Sarge so much.”
She snorted. “What were the others?”
“I thought you’d never ask. Hmm let’s see…Lady Godiva, Iron Lady, lady-in-waiting, ladyfingers, Lady Luck, Lady Gaga, ‘Lady in Red’…” He smirked. “Dragon Lady…”
She laughed. “You’re a lunatic.”
“Thank you. I strive for unique, but I’ll take lunatic.”
Luke’s thoughts turned toward what he’d wanted to discuss with her tonight. He took in a long, slow breath. “I want to talk to you about something.” She shot him a wary look as he turned to look at her face-to-face. He held up a hand. “Just hear me out. I know you think that if you can keep us all at arm’s length from now on, you can keep this weird situation under control, maybe prevent getting hurt or hurting someone else.
Grace turned away from his scrutiny.
“But there’s more going on here than that, and I’m not even sure you’re aware of it.”
“Don’t try to tell me what’s going on inside my own head, Luke.”
“Ahh, ladybug, again, it’s what I do.”
“Well, don’t do it with me.”
“Too late,” he said with a husky voice. “I know why you refuse to admit your feelings—why you deny wanting a relationship.” He leaned in closer to her again, hoping the nearness of his body poked at her willpower. “You’ve always chosen bad boys, and before you deny it, don’t. Your father told me about the god-awful taste you have in men. He worried about you, you know. He wanted to help, but didn’t really know how.”
