Saving Grace

by RaeAnne Thayne

  She snorted in disbelief and he gave her an offended look. “I did! Lily and Tiny needed to have a place to stay when they go back to the islands to visit their family. Over the years, it’s sort of turned into a corporate retreat. Nearly every single one of the people working for me have stayed there at one time or another. Just ask them.”

  “I don’t care if you’ve taken the whole damn city of Seattle over there. Nothing you say will change my mind. I’m not going with you, and that’s the end of it!”

  * * *

  “You’re crazy. You have to go with him!”

  “Not you, too.” Grace glared at Riley across a table laden with every kind of fried food known to man.

  She didn’t need this from him right now. She really didn’t. She’d been dealing with it all day and she was sick to death of it.

  Jack had mercifully dropped the subject of her going with him after her vehement proclamation in his office. But that hadn’t stopped Lily and Emma from haranguing her about it from the moment she walked in the door of the house earlier in the afternoon until she’d managed to escape a half-hour ago to meet Beau at this hole-in-the-wall diner.

  It was exactly his favorite kind of place—loud and rough, with sticky floors and greasy food. Just breathing the fumes from his plate was clogging her arteries.

  Sitting in this vinyl booth across from him talking over a case—while a ceiling fan stirred around stale smoke and a honky tonk song about no-good cheating women wailed from the juke box—seemed so comfortably familiar that it brought a sting of tears to her eyes.

  Or maybe she was just upset at Beau for coming down on the side of Jack Dugan and the rest of his household.

  He usually agreed with her about everything. She had expected him to nod his head and agree with her that going with Jack Dugan to his vacation home in Hawaii would be a mistake. He was supposed to agree that she would be far better off using the time that Dugan was away to concentrate on the case against him.

  Leave it to Beau to be contrary.

  Didn’t anybody care about what she wanted? She could imagine few things more miserable than spending a week hovering on the fringes of someone else’s family vacation.

  Knowing she was an outsider, that she didn’t belong, that she had no right to be there.

  Always conscious that she no longer had a family of her own.

  It was hard enough keeping Jack and his daughter at a distance here. She could just imagine how tough it would be while in a tropical paradise together. At least here she could hide away in her room when things became too hard for her to handle, but she seriously doubted she’d be able to get away with that at his house in Hali’ewa.

  Ice rattled as Beau took a swig of his jumbo cola. “Why are you so upset about going with them anyway? Seems to me you should be jumping at the chance.”

  “The man’s a possible criminal, for heaven’s sake. He could be facing indictment any day now. Why on earth would I possibly want to spend any more time than I have to with him? I can barely stand to be in the same room with him.”

  It was as blatant a lie as she had ever uttered, but she hoped Beau was too busy stuffing his face full of fried clams to figure it out.

  “Besides,” she added. “With him gone, I’d have a good chance to give a little closer scrutiny to GSI and its dealings, without having to worry about him always looking over my shoulder. Now that I have his security codes, I could even snoop through his office at the house and see what I can find there that might implicate him.”

  Beau looked up from his plate. “Searching his premises without his permission or a search warrant would be illegal. Nothing you found would hold up in court.”

  She sniffed. “Since when did that ever stop you, Riley? Besides, I’m just a lowly informer now. I don’t have to play by the rules anymore since I’m no longer a cop.”

  “Yeah, but I still am. And I’d like to stay that way, thank you very much. I’m already walking the line letting you work the case on an unofficial basis. You want to get me fired?”

  “What’s with you?” she snapped. “Since when did you turn into such a wuss? Don’t you want to bring down Dugan?”

  “Yeah, if he’s involved in the GSI smuggling ring, which we still don’t know for sure.”

  She narrowed her gaze at him. “What do you mean, you don’t know for sure?”

  Those big blue puppy-dog eyes that could get most women to tell him anything he wanted to know—and to his eternal chagrin, plenty of things he didn’t want to know—shifted away from her. He set down a french fry and wiped his fingers on a napkin.

  It was a classic Beau stall maneuver, one she wasn’t about to let him get away with this time. “What’s going on, Detective Riley? What exactly aren’t you telling me?”

  He hemmed and hawed a few more minutes, then finally came clean. “The task force met for a strategy session after I talked to you today. The latest consensus is that there’s a chance—a slim one—that Dugan might not actually be involved in the gun-running.”

  She stared at him. “What are you talking about? You’re telling me I’ve been wasting my time staying at his house?”

  “I didn’t say that. There’s no question the contraband is coming in with GSI shipments, but so far we can’t find any evidence that Dugan has direct knowledge of it. That doesn’t mean he’s not involved, just that we haven’t found proof of it yet.”

  So there was a tiny ray of hope that Jack Dugan might not be a scum-sucking sleazeball wrapped up in a pretty package after all. She didn’t even want to begin to try figuring out why that thought should send such relief coursing through her.

  Why should she care whether he was guilty or not? He meant nothing to her. Absolutely nothing. Right?

  She took a sip of her water to hide the sudden flush she felt heating her cheeks. “So you haven’t found proof. So what? All the more reason why I should stay right where I am and keep digging.”

  “No. All the more reason why you should go with him and his kid to Hawaii.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Even if he’s not involved, somebody else at GSI is. Somebody who would know exactly where to find Dugan and his kid and would know they’d be vulnerable while they’re on vacation.”

  “If he’s not part of it, what motive would somebody have to kidnap her in the first place, then?”

  “Who knows? Money? Get Dugan out of the way so he doesn’t interfere with a big shipment coming in? Whatever. But what better time to try again after they screwed up the first go at kidnapping the girl than when he’s let his guard down?”

  Dammit. He was right, as usual. If she were of a sinister mind, she would use exactly this chance to move in. She sat back in the vinyl booth and closed her eyes, hating what she knew she was going to have to do.

  “It won’t be that bad. Besides, what do you have to complain about? I’d kill for a chance like this.”

  She opened her eyes. “Then you go with him.”

  Beau grinned. “Yeah, but you look so much better in a bikini than I do.”

  She aimed a killer glare at him, but he just laughed. “Come on, Gracie. It’ll be good for you. You look like you haven’t seen the sun in months. Go get a little color in your cheeks.”

  “This is Seattle. Nobody has seen the sun in months.”

  He finished the rest of his meal without haranguing her about it. Both of them knew she was backed into a corner and didn’t have a choice. That didn’t mean she had to like it.

  When they left the diner and reached the parking lot, he pulled her into a hug and planted a brotherly smack on her forehead. “It’s good to see you, Gracie. It kills me to say this, but I think staying with Dugan has been good for you. You’re looking a whole hell of a lot better than you did the last time I saw you.”

  “It’s good to see you, too,” she murmured.

  He set her away from him. “You know, when this thing with GSI is over, you ought to think about coming back to the job. You k
now there’s always a slot for you.”

  A month ago, she never would have considered it. But she was shocked to realize she didn’t find the idea completely repugnant.

  “I’ll think about it,” she murmured.

  He gave her one more quick hug then climbed into his pride and joy, a jacked-up old pickup truck with splotches of gray primer and a top-of-the-line stereo system.

  The truck rumbled to life but before he drove away, Riley rolled down the window.

  “Have a good time with Dugan in paradise,” he shouted above the snarling engine. “And bring me back a couple of them Aloha shirts, would you? Nothing too girly, just something that’ll make me look like Magnum PI.”

  She laughed and blew him a kiss as he drove out of the parking lot.

  Maybe he was right. Maybe it was time she returned to the job. Her stomach knotted as guilt swamped her with the thought. Returning to work meant returning to life. Feeling again. Caring again.

  She wasn’t sure she was ready for that.

  She wasn’t sure she would ever be ready.

  CHAPTER 10

  “Relax. I’ve done this thousands of times before.” Jack took his gaze from the instrument panel just long enough to give Grace a reassuring smile.

  “Well, I haven’t. Forgive me if I’m a little edgy.”

  Edgy didn’t even begin to describe it, he thought. With her face pale and set and her back ramrod straight, she gripped the edge of her seat behind him with bloodless fingers.

  Everybody else in the sweet little Learjet he leased didn’t even seem to notice they were preparing to taxi down the runway.

  Emma and Tiny were in the middle of a heated game of Old Maid, Lily was engrossed in a magazine and Piper, in the co-pilot’s seat, was trading jokes with a buddy in the control tower as they waited their turn for take-off.

  Grace, though, appeared to be doing enough worrying for all the rest of them.

  He sent her another reassuring smile. “If I didn’t know better, I might think you don’t trust my flying ability.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself, Dugan. This has nothing to do with you.”

  “What is it, then? You don’t like to fly?”

  “I don’t know. Ask me when we land.”

  He stared at her. “You’ve never been on a plane?”

  “No,” she answered shortly.

  “Ever?” He couldn’t even conceive of someone living to the ripe old age of twenty-nine without flying in an airplane. To him, flying was like breathing—something so necessary to his existence that he didn’t even think about it anymore.

  “Never.” Her mouth wobbled in a shaky smile. “Terrible, isn’t it?”

  He had seen her grieving and he had seen her angry but he had never seen her this nervous and off-balance. He found himself intrigued by it, while at the same time it touched a deep, tender place in him.

  He was coming to care for her entirely too much and it scared him more than she could ever worry about flying.

  He had to help her relax. Couldn’t have his passengers spending the whole time white-knuckled and pale. “Man,” he teased. “Talk about putting pressure on a guy. Now I’m obligated to give you a perfect ride or risk turning you off of it forever.”

  She rolled her eyes. “We’re talking about flying here, not sex.”

  He grinned, relieved to hear her tart tone. If she could relax enough for that, she’d probably be okay. “Most pilots would tell you there’s not much difference.”

  “If that’s the case,” she answered primly, “it seems to me they must not be doing one or the other right.”

  He laughed so hard he had a difficult time hearing the tower clear them for takeoff. “Hang on, sweetheart,” he said after he had acknowledged the clearance. “I’ll let you be the judge of at least one of my skills.”

  He didn’t have time to check on her again until they were well out over the Pacific and he could put the Learjet at cruising altitude and turn the controls over to Piper.

  When he sat in the plush chair across the aisle from her, Grace didn’t even look up from gazing raptly at the glittering blue sea below.

  “At the risk of damaging my frail male ego,” he finally asked, “how was it for you?”

  “Incredible!” She finally turned to face him and his heart gave a funny little bump at the sheer pleasure there. “Absolutely amazing! When we took off, at first I couldn’t breathe and I thought we were all going to die, and then we lifted off and it was like nothing I’ve ever experienced. This astonishing rush of sensation, of power, as we took to the air. I can’t explain it. I just know I want to do it all over again.”

  He grinned. “Stop. You’re gonna make me blush.”

  She caught herself in midsentence as if she was finally remembering where she was, who she was talking with. To his delight, she was the one who blushed. A soft pink tinged her dusky cheekbones and she looked away. “Um, don’t you have a plane to fly or something?”

  “That’s the beauty of having a co-pilot. I get to do the really exciting things like takeoffs and landings and Piper handles the boring parts, like holding steady at this altitude for the next five hours.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got a real tough life, Dugan. Snatch all the fun for yourself and leave the dirty work to somebody else.”

  “I’ll go back and help him in a minute. Just thought I’d better check on my passengers.”

  “Guess what, Daddy?”

  At Emma’s high-pitched little lisp from the rear of the cabin, the animation in Grace’s features shut off as abruptly as if someone had flipped a switch.

  He felt a muscle in his jaw twitch as she looked away from him—or more accurately, away from his daughter—and gazed out the window again. How long would she continue to keep shutting Emma out?

  He turned to Em with a distracted smile. “What, Em?”

  “Tiny was the Old Maid three times in a row!” She laughed uproariously, as if beating a big burly Hawaiian at a child’s card game was the funniest thing in the world. “And guess what else? He says he’s not gonna play with me no more cause I cheat. Only I didn’t, really. I beat him fair and square. He’s just bein’ a sore loser, aren’t you, Tiny?”

  Lily’s husband gave Emma a fierce glare that had put the fear of God into many a man. “Am not. You tricked me. You got X-ray vision in those big green eyes, don’t you? That’s how you knew which card was the Old Maid so you could leave me with her.”

  Jack winked at her. “Em, have you been using your X-ray vision again? How many times do I have to tell you it’s just not fair to use it against mortals?”

  She giggled again. “I don’t have X-ray vision, Daddy. You know I don’t.”

  Before he could tease her more, to make up for the aloofness he knew she must sense from Grace, the plane began to shiver and jerk.

  “What was that?” Grace reached out and dug her fingernails into his forearm.

  Her eyes looked huge and terrified. For all her enthusiasm about the headrush of takeoff, she was still a novice when it came to flying, he reminded himself.

  He covered her fingers with his other hand. Her skin was warm and smooth and for one wild moment—even with her coolness toward Emma—he wanted to lift her hand to his lips, then pull her into his arms to devour that incredible mouth of hers.

  In front of Tiny and Lily and Emma and anybody else in the damn world who might be watching.

  He was still reeling from the fierceness of the impulse when the jet jumped again. Her nails tightened on his arm and he squeezed her fingers. “We just hit a pocket of turbulence. Happens all the time. It’s nothing to worry about.”

  “I don’t like it. Make it stop.”

  He gave a short laugh. “Wish I had that power, sweetheart. But I’ll go see what I can do to smooth things out for you.”

  He returned to his seat in the cockpit with a hollow ache in his gut. He was coming to care about Grace Solarez entirely too much, despite all the reasons he shouldn’t and des
pite the fact that he knew damn well nothing could ever come of it.

  * * *

  Jack’s house in the North Shore surf town of Hali’ewa wasn’t at all what she expected.

  For some reason, she would have predicted his vacation home on the beach would be a modern showplace, with gleaming furniture and expensive artwork. Instead it was cozy and comfortable, with big plump sofas, sisal rugs and simple Hawaiian prints decorating the walls.

  Everywhere in the house were windows, even here in the guest room Lily showed her to. The windows in her room overlooked a porch—a lanai—that opened out above the beach and offered breathtaking views of sand and coco palm trees.

  And the sea, a deep, endless blue she couldn’t seem to look away from.

  “You like it?”

  She turned to find Lily standing in the doorway to her room with an armload of linens. The lines on her round, weathered face seemed to have smoothed out here in her native land and she looked younger, happier. For all her bulk, Grace realized, Lily was a striking, majestic woman.

  “It’s beautiful.” Grace answered. “The view, the house, the flowers. Everything.”

  “Yeah. Jack picked a good spot. Our house used to be about two miles windward.”

  “Oh? You lived near here?”

  “Yeah.” She set the linens on the cane chair near the window, pulled sheets from the pile, and flipped one out to make the bed.

  “I can do this,” Grace said. “You probably have a million other things to do.”

  Lily lowered thick dark eyebrows at her. “I’ll do it. You’re a guest here.”

  She wasn’t truly a guest here anymore than Lily was but she couldn’t seem to make the woman accept that.

  “At least let me help,” Grace insisted. She went to the other side of the bed and the two women worked in silence for a few moments.

  They were alone in the house, she knew. Piper had stayed in Waikiki, over an hour’s drive away, to begin hunting for his cocktail waitress. Tiny had gone after supplies to stock the kitchen, and Emma and Jack had headed right for the beach.