Saving Grace

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “You’re welcome,” the little girl said. “Lily and my daddy said I’m not supposed to bother you but I’m not, am I? I’m helping.”

  Something didn’t make sense. It took her several seconds before she realized what had been nagging at her subconscious. I’ve come to thank you for saving my daughter’s life, the golden-haired stranger had said. His daughter.

  If he was Emma’s father, who was the man who had been driving the car that night, the scruffy-looking drunk with the dark hair and tattoo who had been willing to let the little girl die?

  Somehow it didn’t seem appropriate to ask the child. “Where am I?” she asked instead.

  “My house. My daddy brought you here yesterday.” The little girl’s forehead crinkled again. “Or maybe it was the day before. I forget.”

  Grace tried to remember coming here but couldn’t summon anything but fragmented images after opening the door to the stranger Emma claimed was her father. “Why am I here?”

  “Daddy said you were sick and we needed to take care of you for a while. Lily put some gunk on your back. It stinks.” The girl bent down until her face was only inches away from hers, until she could feel the moist, milk-scented warmth of her breath on her cheek.

  “Are you gonna die?” Emma asked again.

  She had wanted to, hadn’t she? She remembered headlights and the sharp bite of a mosquito and a dark night of despair, and then that survival instinct bubbling up inside her out of nowhere when she thought the car would explode.

  Did she still want to die? She didn’t want to think about it right now.

  “My mama died when I was only two,” Emma confided. “She was in an airplane crash. She didn’t live with us but I still cried a lot.”

  “I’m sure you did.”

  “Who’s that?”

  Grace’s gaze followed the direction of Emma’s finger. She was completely unprepared for the agonizing pain that clutched her stomach at the sight of Marisa’s picture propped against a lamp on the bedside table. She must have been so focused on the pitcher of water she hadn’t noticed it before.

  She absorbed those little gamine features—as familiar to her as her own. The big dark eyes, the dimpled smile, the long glossy braids. The grief welled up inside her, completely blocking the physical pain of the burn.

  “Is that your little girl?”

  Grace nodded. “I…yes,” she whispered.

  “Where is she?”

  A cemetery, a cold grave marked by a plain, unadorned headstone, all she had been able to afford after the funeral expenses.

  “She died.” The words were wrenched from her. They sounded harsh and mean but the little girl didn’t seem to notice.

  “Just like my mama.” Emma’s face softened with concern and she patted Grace’s arm. “Did you cry a lot, too?”

  Buckets of tears. Oceans of them. Her heart hadn’t stopped weeping for a year.

  Before she could form her thoughts into an answer appropriate for a five-year-old girl, the door opened and the man who had come to her apartment, who had brought her Marisa’s picture, entered the room.

  He wore tan khakis and an icy blue polo shirt. With his slightly long, sun-streaked hair and tan, he looked like the kind of man who had nothing more pressing to worry about than whether he’d remembered to wax his surfboard.

  When she looked closer, though, she recognized an indefinable air of danger about him. He reminded her of a tawny cougar, coiled and ready to pounce.

  What had he said his name was? She sorted through the jumbled-up memories until she came up with it: Jack, wasn’t it? Jack Dugan.

  “Emma!” Jack Dugan said in a loud whisper. “You know you’re not supposed to be in here. What do you think you’re doing, young lady?”

  “I helped Grace get a drink, Daddy. She was thirsty so I poured her some water all by myself.”

  He turned his head quickly from his daughter toward Grace. “You’re awake.”

  She suddenly felt vulnerable, off-kilter, lying facedown in a strange bed, in an unfamiliar room, watching the world from this odd, sideways angle. Her stomach fluttered like it used to in the old days before she went out on an unknown disturbance call.

  She blinked at him but said nothing.

  “She waked up and I helped her get a drink all by myself,” Emma announced again.

  He gave his daughter a smile of such amazing sweetness it completely transformed him, gentled those lean, rugged features. His eyes warmed, darkened. Instead of a cougar, now he looked like a sleek, satisfied tomcat letting a kitten crawl all over him.

  The little girl dimpled back and Grace’s chest felt tight and achy at the obvious bond between the two of them.

  “What a good nurse you are, Little Em,” Jack said.

  “Just like Lily, yeah?”

  He chuckled and tweaked her chin. “Just like Lily but not so bossy.”

  Lily was the one who had put the “gunk” on her back, Emma had said. She gathered Lily was the sea-voice.

  From her sideways perspective, Grace watched him pull a chair to the side of the bed and tug Emma onto his lap. Those vivid green eyes studied her intensely, like a boy watching a bug trying to scurry along the sidewalk, and she again felt exposed, stripped bare before him, even with the soft quilt covering her.

  “How are you feeling this afternoon?”

  “Peachy,” she muttered.

  “I could probably round up some aspirin for you but that’s the best I can do. If you would let me take you to a hospital, you could probably get your hands on some kind of serious pain medication. I imagine something like that would hit the spot right about now.”

  No hospitals. Hospitals were anguish and death. Doctors who told you, without any emotion at all, that your world had just ended. “I don’t need a hospital.”

  “That’s a matter of debate, Ms. Solarez.”

  “What is there to debate, Mr. Dugan? I don’t want to go to the hospital and you can’t admit me without my permission.” She knew she sounded petulant, childish, but she couldn’t help herself. I don’t want to and you can’t make me.

  Exhausted suddenly, as if her brief spurt of defiance had drained her last ounce of energy, Grace rolled to her side, wincing as pain scorched along her nerve endings. “I appreciate what you’ve done for me but I—I just want to go home.”

  It was a lie. She hated that apartment, hated the gray desolation of the neighborhood. But it was as far as she could get from the cheerful little two-bedroom cottage near the university, with its white shutters and the basketball hoop over the garage and the wooden swingset in the backyard she and Marisa had built together.

  She had lived there for a month after her daughter’s death and then couldn’t bear it any longer. She had wanted to sell it but Beau had talked her out of it, so now she was renting to a married couple. Schoolteachers, both of them, with a son about Emma’s age.

  The hovel she lived in now was her penance, her punishment for the sin of not protecting her daughter.

  “You wouldn’t be able to take care of yourself for one day if I took you back to your apartment,” Jack said. “Sorry, but you’re stuck with us. At least until you regain your strength.”

  She could hardly think past the fatigue and pain battling for the upper hand but she knew she couldn’t stay in this house where there was such love. “You can’t keep me here.”

  “Don’t you like us?” Emma asked, her face drooping.

  What was she supposed to say to that? How did she explain to a five year old that being here—seeing this warm, loving relationship between father and child—was like having not just her back flayed open but her whole soul.

  She was spared having to answer by the return of the sea-voice.

  “What do you two think you’re doing in here?”

  “Uh-oh. Busted.” Jack sent a guilty look towards his daughter, then together they turned to face the woman glaring at them from doorway. Grace could see immediately why he looked so intimidated. Thoug
h an inch or two shorter than her own five-foot five-inch height, the woman had to weigh at least two-hundred pounds.

  She had the brown skin and wavy dark hair of a Pacific Islander, probably Hawaiian, and right now she looked as if she wanted Jack Dugan served up at her next luau with an apple in his mouth.

  “Uh, your patient’s awake, Lily.”

  “Didn’t I say she needed to rest? Didn’t I say leave her be?”

  “Well, yes—”

  “I go for ten minutes and what do you two do? Come in here and start pestering her. You even wait ’til Tiny and me pulled out of the driveway before you came barging in here?”

  “Yes,” he said defensively, then gave a rueful grin. “Almost.”

  She rolled her eyes at him. “Next time you want dinner, maybe I’ll ‘almost’ fix it, then.”

  Despite her annoyance, she looked at both of them with exasperated affection. It was obvious to Grace that the woman doted on Jack and his daughter. Again she felt excluded, more isolated than before.

  Emma seemed impervious to the big Hawaiian’s temper. She hopped down from her father’s lap and skipped across the room. With a winsome, dimply smile, she grabbed the woman’s big brown hand in hers.

  “Guess what, Lily? I gave Grace a drink of water all by myself and Daddy said I’m a good nurse just like you.” She giggled and tugged on the hand. “But not so bossy.”

  The housekeeper lifted an eyebrow. “Bossy, hmm?”

  “Someone better be careful,” Jack said with a pointed look at Emma, “or a bee will fly into that big mouth of hers.”

  The little girl just giggled and even the housekeeper looked like she was fighting a smile. Still, she aimed a stern look at the pair. “Well, I’m gonna boss you both right out of here so my patient can get some sleep.”

  “We’re going, we’re going.” Jack stood and, in one clean motion, scooped Emma up and over his shoulder. She shrieked with glee as he headed toward the door. At the last minute, he turned and met Grace’s gaze.

  “Oh, I almost forgot to ask you. Would you like us to make any calls for you?”

  “Why?”

  He looked startled. “To let somebody know where they can reach you. You know. Family. Friends. Anybody who might worry about you if they couldn’t find you for a while? I can do it for you or bring the cordless phone in when you’re feeling better.”

  She shook her head, her cheek rubbing against the sheet. She had no family, at least none that cared where she was. And in the last year she had distanced herself from all of her friends in the Seattle PD, unable to bear their sympathy.

  All except Beau, her former partner and best friend. He refused to let himself be distanced, wouldn’t let her push him away.

  “No,” she whispered. “I don’t need to contact anyone.”

  “Are you sure?” Jack asked. “Someone is probably worried sick about you.”

  She had just enough energy left to glare at him. “I said I didn’t have anyone I need to contact.” To her horror, her voice broke on the last word and unexpected tears choked in her throat, behind her eyes. She must be more exhausted than she thought.

  Lily must have seen it, too. With a flip of her wrists, she shooed the father and daughter out the door then glided to the bed despite her girth.

  “You just rest now, keiki.” The housekeeper skimmed a gentle hand down Grace’s hair. “You had a bad burn and now your body needs time to heal. Don’t let that huki’ino bother you.”

  With fluid movements, she checked Grace’s bandage, fluffed the pillows, smoothed the blanket.

  And then, comforted in a way she hadn’t felt in longer than she could remember, Grace slept.

  CHAPTER 3

  “You keep those dirty paws of yours out of my strawberries or I’ll chop ’em off.”

  Used to her threats, Jack just grinned at his housekeeper brandishing a paring knife dangerously close to his fingers, and popped a slice of fruit into his mouth. For all her bluster, he knew Lily loved him nearly as much as he loved her. Even though neither of them spoke of it, both understood and accepted that she was the closest thing to a mother he or his daughter had ever had.

  “If you chopped off my hands, I wouldn’t be able to do this.” Heedless of the knife in her hand, he grabbed her around her ample waist and scooped her off the ground in a hearty embrace.

  She shrieked and slapped at him with her free hand. “You think I got time for this kind of crazy stuff? Put me down. I just get that girl of yours down for a nap and try to get some work done and you have to come in with your nonsense.”

  He set her back on her feet, snitched another strawberry and leaned back against the counter to watch her finish making a fruit salad. “You work too hard, Lily. You need to relax.”

  She snorted. “Food doesn’t just show up on your table like magic. Your clothes don’t wash themselves. Somebody’s got to do all that. Now I have to take care of the wahine, too. Just when am I supposed to relax?”

  Her diatribe was as familiar as her threat to chop his fingers off for picking at food between meals and he treated it the same way—with a grin. Despite his frequent offers to hire someone to help her, Lily refused assistance from anyone.

  Only once had he dared to go behind her back and had hired a maid through a temp service. Lily had been nothing short of livid and the woman had ultimately left in tears after only a few hours trying to meet her unreasonable expectations. Since then, he just let his housekeeper complain and tried not to give her too much extra work.

  Until this week, and Grace Solarez. With a mental note to give Lily a hefty bonus, whether she wanted it or not, he reached into the refrigerator for a juice. “How is your patient, anyway?”

  Lily shrugged. “She don’t say much. She seems to be getting better—the burn, anyway. Her heart, now, that’s different.”

  He glanced up from twisting the top off the bottle. “What do you mean by that? What did she say to you?”

  “Not much. I told you, she don’t talk much to me. I don’t need the words for me to see she’s got pain, though. You just have to look in her eyes to see she’s hurting big. Maybe too big even for words.”

  He sipped the juice and thought of the report on his desk, outlining in stark detail the reason why Grace Solarez grieved. He pictured the child in the photograph, all big eyes and toothy grin. Her daughter, Marisa, he had learned. The innocent victim of a drive-by shooting while waiting outside her school for her mother to pick her up.

  She had been killed a year to the date from the night her mother had given Emma back to him.

  He grimaced at the bottle and set it down. The police had no leads into Emma’s kidnapping, and despite the lengthy report from his private investigators, he was no closer to unearthing the truth about Grace Solarez.

  She had been staying in his house for five days and her presence on the highway that night—the anniversary of her daughter’s death—was still a mystery.

  “How long you gonna keep her here?” Lily asked.

  “She’s not a prisoner.”

  “Does she know that?”

  “Of course.”

  Lily went on as if she didn’t hear him. “Because last I heard, you were telling her you wouldn’t let her leave.”

  “I had to tell her that. If you had seen that apartment of hers, you wouldn’t want her going back there either. At least not until she builds up her strength.”

  “Why don’t you take her dinner to her and tell her that yourself. You can save my old legs a few steps.” She held a tray out for him, brimming with food.

  “I think you have a few good hulas left in those old legs.” He grinned, but took the tray from her, not willing to admit even to himself that he was eager for an excuse to talk to his guest again.

  The door to the guest room had been left open and he found Grace sitting on a curvy old rocking chair and gazing out at the Sound. She made a stunning picture, swallowed up by what had to be one of Lily’s massive muumuus, with her dar
k hair curling around her face and her feet tucked under her.

  She should have looked ridiculous in the oversize garment, but it just seemed to make her look delicate, ethereal. A lighter-than-feathers little sprite who could float away wherever the breeze took her, like a character in one of Emma’s favorite storybooks.

  She seemed unaware of his presence so he rested a hip against the doorframe and studied her profile, wishing he could read in her features some clue to the mystery woman who had invaded their lives.

  After five days of Lily’s mothering, she definitely appeared healthier, he could say that much for her. Her skin had lost that sallow tinge it had worn when he first brought her here and those plum circles had faded from beneath her eyes.

  No shadows remained under those mocha-colored eyes, but there were definitely still shadows in them, a sadness that looked as if it had been there for a long time.

  He thought about what Lily had said, about her hurting too big for words. How would he bear it if he lost Emma the way she had lost her daughter?

  If he hadn’t been holding the tray of food, he would have rubbed his chest at the sudden ache there. The startling depth of his compassion made his voice more curt than normal. “Are you supposed to be out of bed?”

  She glanced up and those too-serious dark eyes blinked at him. “Beautiful view you’ve got here, Dugan,” she said, instead of answering his question.

  He looked over her shoulder at the garden with its colorful late blossoms, framed by the vast blue of the sky and the water. It was one of those perfect, unusually clear fall days in the Northwest, and it looked like everyone on the Sound had decided to take advantage of the great weather. Dozens of pleasure boats—everything from sailboats to yachts to sea kayaks—dotted the water.

  He had fallen in love with the view the first time he’d seen it, from the back of a motorcycle on the other side of the Sound. He’d been a badass seventeen year old, angry at the world and at himself. And most of all, hurting and furious over his father’s betrayal.