by Teresa Hill
"Sorry." She fought the urge to hold the towel more firmly against herself. "I didn't realize it would take both of us practically being in there together to get him clean."
Okay, that did it. He looked. She could see his eyes run quickly over her from head to toe, then back up to meet her gaze again. Her cheeks burned and her whole body tingled, just imagining once again all that he'd seen of her.
He was soaked and a little grim-looking at first, but gave her a wry smile and shook his head. "We got the job done. The dog's clean."
She nodded.
"My turn in there?" He gestured toward the bathroom.
"Yes, but I don't think there's any more hot water right now."
"Not a problem," he said.
With that, he was gone.
Grace practically ran into the bedroom. She pulled her clothes on as fast as she could, wanting to cover up as much of her skin as possible and tell her body, Stop it. Just stop it.
She didn't know what to do with these feelings, not now. She'd come to this place to look for evidence of her husband's affair, after all, not to find a man who turned her on.
Grace walked out of the bedroom and there was Tink, still looking miffed at his ordeal, but ready to have her fuss over him and try to make it up him, so she did, crooning apologies to him and scratching his big, furry head. Then she told him, "You have to help me with Aidan. I'm going to find it awfully hard to face him."
* * *
The road was a mess that morning, more mud than anything else by the time they left. They saw two giant tree branches that had obviously been lying across the road at some point. Someone with a chainsaw had cut them up and moved them just far enough to the side to allow cars to pass. Aidan had put a chainsaw from the cabin in the back of Grace's car before they left, just in case they needed it. People out here had learned to be self-sufficient, it seemed, and not wait for someone else to come take care of things.
Tink was happy as could be, like he considered riding in the car a huge treat. He sat happily in the back seat. Grace rolled the window down for him, and he stuck his giant head out the window with his big tongue hanging out, looking more clown-like than ever. Kid after kid in cars they passed pointed and laughed at him.
She and Aidan had another hour before Maeve was expected to be out of the recovery room, so they stopped for an early lunch at a little diner.
Tink cried and used the best sad-puppy-dog eyes Grace had seen yet from him when they got out of the car and left him. But it was a comfortably cool day, the temperature in the sixties. They left the window down enough that he couldn't actually get out, but could stick his head out.
In the diner, they managed to find a booth next to the front window, right in front of the space where they'd parked and left Tink, who was now staring at them through the window and crying.
Grace laughed. It was easy to laugh at that dog. "What kind of dog do you think he is?"
"Saint Bernard crossed with a Great Dane?" Aidan suggested, not quite so grim anymore.
"No, he's not."
"Do you know of any bigger breeds of dogs?"
"Well, okay, but that's poodle fur, isn't it? Poodle-like, at least? It looks like someone meant to give him poodle hair, then changed his mind half-way through, and he got... I don't even know what."
"So, standard poodle and... What do you think?"
"What are those dogs people cross with poodles now? To get one that people aren't allergic to? Labs, that's it. I bet he's a labradoodle."
"Labs are great dogs. They're smart. He's not smart enough to be half lab. And he's too much of a cry-baby."
"Don't say that," Grace told him, but she was unable to keep from laughing herself, because the clown head was sticking out the window again, big enough to be a human head, with what looked like a giant, cream-colored Afro on top of it.
"You know it's true."
"I like him. He's sweet, and he makes me laugh," she insisted.
"Well, I guess even I could put up with him, if he makes you laugh."
Which was very sweet.
Aidan was sweet.
And he'd seen her dripping wet and practically naked today. She could still hardly look at him. So she kept talking about the dog.
"He's so tall and skinny. I think he's probably still a puppy, don't you think? He's pretty well-behaved, considering how young he is. Even out there, he's not barking, just fussing a bit. He could really be pitching a fit—"
"Grace?" Aidan stopped her.
"Hmm?"
"Do you, maybe, talk a lot when you're nervous?" He smiled slightly, looking understanding and a little amused.
"Maybe," she admitted, and went right on.
He let her talk through the whole meal, meatloaf for him, sliced turkey and dressing for her. Only when they were done did he say, "Honey, why don't you just tell me what's really bothering you?"
"I... uhh..." She felt heat flooding her cheeks. "I'm sorry about earlier..."
"About...?"
"The shower. The dog in the shower." There, she got it out.
"Okay, but I don't get it. You're the one who wanted to do it. You insisted we could do it."
"I know. I'm sorry."
"Yeah, I get that. You've been uncomfortable ever since we got the dog out of the shower. But what I don't get is that you seemed like you were having fun while we were in there. You even laughed. So, what happened?"
"Uhh... I didn't realize it would take both of us in there together to get him clean."
"Yeah, but you still wanted to do it and seemed happy about it—until we were almost done."
"I know." He watched too closely, saw too much. Grace winced as she pushed the words out. "Okay, the absolute truth is, I didn't have any idea what I looked like—how much of me you'd be able to see—in that wet T-shirt until I saw myself in the mirror on the bathroom door, right before we got Tink out of the shower."
Aidan burst out laughing, loudly and freely. People in the diner turned and stared. Especially the women.
Grace shot him a pleading look. "I didn't, I swear. It was much more... provocative—"
"It was sexy as hell," he agreed.
She frowned. "I thought you were mad."
He was still laughing. "Honey, it's a miracle I didn't come in there, tear your clothes off and mine and... Well, you know what comes next. If I could have managed it. And no, I do not want to talk about that particular problem here and now, so please don't ask me, okay?"
"Okay," she said, thinking, Tear my clothes off?
That sounded like a man who thought she could be a little bit bad, at least. Sexy-bad. She felt a little zing of happiness shoot through her.
"Wait," he said, studying her face intently. "You could not possibly think you weren't turning me on looking like that."
"Well, I hope so," she said, before she realized how that sounded. "I mean... I didn't mean it like that. Not exactly. I swear."
He shook his head. "I can't wait to hear this explanation. Please, Grace, tell me exactly how you meant it."
"I wasn't teasing you. I mean, I did. I know that now. But I didn't know I was. And then I thought... Oh, this is so hard to talk about." She hid her face behind her hands.
"But we are those kind of friends, remember? The tell-each-other-everything kind of friends. You can't quit now."
"At first, I didn't think it would be so... sexy. I thought it would be a little bit sexy, and I thought I could be comfortable with something a little sexy."
He frowned then, and studied her face for a long moment. "And why wouldn't you be comfortable with a situation that's a little sexy, Grace? What happened? Who scared you? Who hurt you?"
"No one. Not like that. Aidan, my husband wanted another woman. So I've been feeling a little insecure, sexually. I've been wondering what's wrong with me—"
"Nothing's wrong with you, dammit—"
"So when we ended up in the shower together, I thought I am not going to be uptight about this. I'm just going
to do it and enjoy it. I thought it sounded... adventurous. Do you think most people would consider that something adventurous? Sexually?"
Aidan stared at her.
Grace's face flamed. She made herself go on. "Do you think it was the kind of thing a... sexually adventurous woman would do?"
"Strip down to her panties and a T-shirt, and invite a man into the shower with her?" he asked finally.
She nodded.
"Yes," he said tightly.
"Okay. Good."
"Good?" He looked so mad. "What the hell, Grace?"
She shot him a pleading look.
"This is some crap your ex-husband fed you, right?"
Just her luck, Aidan figured it out. Right in the middle of the diner, he demanded, "What did the little asshole say?"
Grace shot him a furious look. It wasn't fair, but he was the one sitting across from her, so he got it.
"Some guys," he said more quietly, "will say anything to deflect the blame for their own asinine behavior, and the worst of them will blame the woman they're with for whatever they've done. You know that, right?"
"Yes." But Luc's words had still had the power to cut right through her, and now she'd made a fool of herself, trying to prove that something Luc had told her wasn't true. Stupid tears flooded her eyes, and she tried to close them before anyone saw, but Aidan did. He saw every humiliating thing.
"I'm sorry. Shit, I'm so sorry." He swore again, softly, under his breath, and his hand closed over hers on the table. "For making you talk about it and for what he did. The guy is beyond stupid and an ass."
She nodded, staring down at the table now. "I'm done eating. Are you done? Can we go?"
"Sure," he said. "Go ahead. I'll take care of this and meet you at the car."
"Thanks." She got up and fled.
Outside, the sun was shining, and it was one of those perfect fall days. Not hot. Not cool. Just perfect. Tink, she would swear, actually smiled at the sight of her coming closer. He even gave one really deep, quiet "Woof!" of happiness. He hardly ever actually barked, but when he did, it was usually just that one deep "Woof!"
She motioned for him to get his head back inside the car, then opened the back door and sat in the open doorway beside him. He looked delighted with her mere presence, and she wrapped her arms around him and hugged him, burying her face in his nice, clean fur.
"You smell so good," she told him. "Like flowers."
He licked her ear, making her laugh, and she dried her tears and sat with him until Aidan got to the car.
"How is the big baby?" he asked.
Tink whined pitifully. Grace laughed. Aidan rolled his eyes and held out his hand to her. She took his hand, and he pulled her to her feet in the open doorway. Surprising her, he took her in his arms in a loose embrace, then smiled down at her, looking a little sad and so understanding, so kind.
"I'm going to kiss you," he said.
Okay, that she wasn't expecting. "Right here?"
"Right here. I really wanted to this morning on the porch, but that thing you were sitting on? I think people probably use it as a bed, too, and I couldn't let myself kiss you the way I wanted to, not that close to a bed. Too tempting."
"Okay," she said.
"Like I said, it's a damned miracle we didn't end up in the shower together, minus the dog. So I think right now is the time. We're in a very public place. I won't be able to do much more than kiss you. Although, I'll want to Grace. I'll really want to."
"Okay, but not because you feel sorry for me, because of what Luc did or said, because—"
"No. That is so completely not on my list of reasons for doing this. I think it will help me prove a point I want to make, and as a bonus... God, I get to kiss you, finally. It feels like I've been waiting for years already."
And with that, he did it.
He kissed her.
He gave her that small, gentle smile of his first, as he tilted his head to the right and slowly lowered his mouth to hers. His soft, soft lips were gentle and insistent and sure, his body lean and strong, sinking against hers, hands wrapped around her back to hold her to him.
The dog whined, then started to cry, and Grace smiled a bit, even laughed, as Aidan smiled, too, and kept kissing her. It was one of those deliciously slow, sweet, thorough, take-away-the-world kind of kisses.
He kept taking little nibbles of her, little, delicious tastes of her mouth. He was warm all over, and he smelled so good. She had her hands on his chest at first, and then let them slide up his shoulders and into his hair, finally cupping his face and holding it to hers.
Her whole body started to thrum happily, warming to his, yielding to it, nerve endings coming completely alive. She thought for just a moment of being in the shower that morning, once he was gone, her hands running over her own body as she closed her eyes and pretended those hands were his.
She groaned against his mouth, wishing that he'd actually done it. That he'd stripped off his clothes and walked back into that shower with her. That he'd been the one to have his hands all over her, soaping her up and rinsing her off and then taking her to bed.
Grace was lost in the touch of his mouth on hers, his hands, his body pressed up against hers, by the time he finally lifted his head and stepped back.
He took a long, deep breath, then another one, looking like it had taken considerable effort to pull away from her. His eyes had turned dark and smoky and so sexy. She couldn't stop looking at his lips, thinking of how soft and sweet they were, wanting to run her thumb over them and imagining the feel of them on her bare skin.
He shook his head, his eyes locked on hers, and touched his thumb to her bottom lip for a moment. "Don't ever let any man tell you that you're not sexy enough for him. Anybody who'd try is a fool and a liar, who in no way deserves a woman like you, Grace."
He kissed her one more time, quickly this time, and pulled back again. "You believe me?"
"Yes. It's just... It wasn't that," she said, forcing the words out. "Not exactly."
Aidan shot her a hard look. "What did he say? Exactly?"
Grace closed her eyes. She had to. The words still stung. "He said I wasn't... adventurous enough."
Aidan looked murderous. He nodded slowly, taking that in. He started swearing softly. "So he was both mean and stupid. Son of a bitch. Want me to go find him? I'll knock the shit out of him. I'd enjoy it. Please tell me where he is."
Grace shook her head.
"Please," he said again. "It would make me so happy."
"No," she said. "You can't—"
"Oh, honey. Don't even entertain the thought that I can't. I could kill him with one hand tied behind my back. Hell, I could do it with two."
"That wasn't what I meant. I just... Thank you, but no."
"Okay." He sounded regretful to hear it. "You change your mind, just say the word, and it's done."
Chapter 9
Not adventurous enough?
What the hell?
Aidan turned the words over and over in his head as he drove to the hospital. Grace sat quietly by his side. The dog stuck his head through the gap in their seats to get between them, like he couldn't stand to be left out.
What exactly would a mean-assed son of a bitch be talking about when he complained that a woman wasn't adventurous enough?
The woman in question had stripped down to panties and a T-shirt and gotten into the shower, practically, with Aidan, and the way she'd looked standing there, all wet... Was there really a man alive who'd need more than that to be fucking thrilled with his life, with his own stupid luck and the whole damned world at that point?
Aidan didn't think so.
Adventurous?
Gotta be nothing but a way to try to deflect attention from the idiot's own shortcomings or his own stupid behavior.
But the word had hit Grace hard, and it made Aidan furious. Grace, who was undeniably beautiful, funny, sweet and sexy, very sexy. Just holding her in his arms while he slept had been delicious. His hand p
ractically burned remembering wrapping itself around her breast.
Now, he'd kissed her, had that one, sweet, hot taste of her luscious mouth, and that was something he would not forget soon.
He simmered with anger toward her husband as he found a place to park in the shade at the hospital. Grace took the dog for a little walk, which consisted mostly of him sniffing every bush in sight rather than actually doing what he was supposed to do. Then, once again, they put the dog in the car, and he was whining, with his giant head stuck out the window, watching them go like they were leaving him forever in a cruel place and he had absolutely no hope.
Aidan feared he might be as pathetic as the dog when Grace walked away from them later today. Was he really going to let her walk away from him? Could he stop her from doing that, if he tried?
He kept a hand on the little indention at the base of her spine as they walked, just because he wanted to. Mine, the hand said, true or not. He could feel the slight sway of her hips as she walked and was close enough that he smelled the clean, sweet womanly scent of her hair and skin.
After they saw Maeve, he'd take Grace back to the cabin and figure out how to talk her into staying. He'd take care of her and let her take care of him. They could forget about their screwed up lives for a while, like a little timeout from reality. She deserved it, he decided. He did, too.
The ICU attendant didn't want to let them in—family only—but eventually, the nurse they'd talked to that morning showed up, and he and Grace were in. She said no one else had shown up to see Maeve, who at least deserved the reassurance of knowing her dog was being taken care of.
By then, Aidan was thinking of excruciatingly slow, painful, highly satisfying things he could do to Grace's husband. Or was he her ex-husband already? Aidan wasn't sure, and that was certainly a point he'd like to have clarified ASAP. Castration came to mind as a proper punishment.
He was distracted, and it wasn't until they got to Maeve's bedside, deep within the ICU's big, open space, with a dozen patients clustered together around an open nurse's station, that the smell of the place hit him.
