When You Wish (Contemporary Romance)

by Handeland, Lori

  “You think so?”

  Dan looked her straight in the eye. “I know so.”

  Grace tilted her head and stared right back. She liked what she saw. Perry didn’t stand a chance.

  Chapter Eight

  They were on their own—for three weeks. No Perry, no Mrs. Cabilla. Just Dan and Grace, in the lab. Would he live through it? Or self-detonate from repressed lust and aggravated annoyance? Grace pushed his buttons as no one else ever had. Had she brought up that aura stuff just to see what he’d do? Nah, sensing auras was very Grace.

  He stared at her over the wide expanse of his bed. She’d twisted her hair into one of those braids that started at the center of her forehead, wiggled over the crown, and squiggled all the way down her back. Fancy. He’d like to watch her do that—preferably naked, right here on this bed.

  Dan gave himself a good mind-cursing. He would never make it through the next few weeks without dreaming of her—of touching her, kissing her, wanting her. Inappropriate things to feel for his research assistant—especially one with a partner who wanted to break him in half just for breathing.

  Dan soothed his conscience with the fact that he hadn’t hired her; she’d been foisted upon him. He wasn’t paying her, so she wasn’t really an employee. True enough, but a sense of impropriety remained—and with it just a twinge of the forbidden that had always excited him. “A little rebellion problem,” as his mother liked to call it.

  While a child, temptation had always called to Dan louder than most. He’d rarely been able to resist— even though he quickly learned that he always got caught, embarrassed, and punished. Yet temptation continued to beckon to his rebellious soul. Right now temptation’s name was Grace.

  Dan dragged his gaze from her face and glanced at his watch. He stared, then blinked. The time remained the same. A glance at the bedside clock revealed the same time, and he started around the bed.

  He’d been daydreaming in here for a quarter of an hour. He never did that. He couldn’t do that and keep his research alive. There were too many pots boiling on his stove to daydream, but obviously the tendency to daydream increased with the scent of Grace on the wind.

  He motored around the bed and headed for the door, intending to brush by her. Instead, being Dan, he bumped into her.

  She stumbled a bit and he caught her elbows. She glanced into his face. He completely forgot what was cooking in the lab as things heated up considerably in his cabin. Especially him.

  His hands slid beneath the short sleeves of her loose-fitting, neon-orange jumpsuit. Only Grace could wear such a thing and make the outfit look like a ten-thousand-dollar wedding gown instead of prison attire. His thumbs caressed inside of her arm, sliding across the softest skin he’d ever known.

  She shuddered at his stroke and tried to pull away. Dan took a deep breath and tasted Grace on his tongue without even trying. His body kicked into the next dimension, just as the smoke alarm went off in the lab.

  Dan picked Grace up and set her aside, then ran toward the blare of sound. He burst through the back door, skidded through the kitchen and came to a dead stop inside the laboratory. Grace thumped into his back.

  “Umph,” she said. “What is it?”

  He grunted and approached a boiling cauldron on a hot plate. He’d purposely put the hot plate beneath the smoke alarm to keep accidents to a minimum in his lab made of wood. Not that he’d ever burned a place down—not yet anyway. To be honest, he’d never forgotten an experiment before, but then he’d never had Grace in his bedroom before either.

  “Can you make that noise stop?” Grace asked in a tight voice.

  Dan glanced over his shoulder to find her wincing at the volume of sound, hands over her ears, shoulders hunched. She looked like she was in pain, and he hurriedly removed his experiment from the hot plate and walked away, waving his free hand through the steam to disperse the heat. A few seconds later, the alarm squawked one last time and went silent.

  Dan was already intent upon what was in the pan. He’d meant for the concoction to boil to just that point; the experiment wasn’t ruined, but it didn’t yield anything new either. His sigh came from the depths of his disappointed soul.

  “What’s the matter?”

  The sound of Grace’s voice made Dan start. He just wasn’t used to people hanging around in the lab, and Grace moved so quietly she’d snuck up on him. Not that he’d completely forgotten she was there—how could he?—but he’d spaced out of this world for a moment.

  Dan set the pan back on the counter, put his hands on the edge, and let his head fall between his shoulders. “Nothing’s the matter.”

  “Is the experiment ruined?”

  “Then why the face?”

  He straightened. “What face?”

  “This one.” Grace pulled her features into an exaggerated version of despair.

  Dan laughed, surprising himself. She made him laugh in times of trouble. No one ever had before. “I didn’t look like that,” he said, still laughing because she was still making the face.

  She stopped. “How would you know? I was the one doing the looking.”

  Silence fell between them. They’d both been doing a lot of looking—and a lot of touching. Dan wanted to do a lot more. From the look on her face, so did Grace.

  She turned away, walking toward the bank of windows that overlooked the lake, and staring through them as if she could find answers out there to her greatest dilemma. Dan wished answers were that easy to find. If they were, he’d look out those windows a whole lot more.

  “This has got to stop,” she said, still looking at the lake.

  “What?”

  “All the looking, and the touching, and the kissing.”

  “Why?” He sounded like an instructional tape on the best way to write a newspaper article—who, what, when, where, why and how—if you needed those questions asked, then Dan was your man.

  “We’ll never get anything done if we keep drooling all over each other.”

  Dan did not drool, but he got her point. “Maybe we should just sleep together and get it out of our systems.”

  That surprised a bark of laughter from Grace. “Spoken like a true man.”

  Dan straightened. No one had ever called him a true man before, though her words hadn’t sounded like a compliment.

  Grace turned. “I don’t think so, Dan.”

  His shoulders sagged again. “Why not?” Sounded like a great idea to him.

  “Because this” —she moved her slim, long-fingered, naked hands about in a dance that aroused him right then and there— “this doesn’t feel like something that would burn out in one session to me. Does it to you?”

  He was silent for a long moment. Truth or dare? He couldn’t lie about this. He couldn’t lie about much of anything. “No.”

  “So instead of working we’d be . . .” She shrugged. “You know.”

  “And that would be bad?”

  “Yes. I don’t sleep with the enemy, Dan.”

  “I’m not the enemy.”

  “Yes, you are. We both want the same thing—the Cabilla Grant. I’m not giving it up. Are you?”

  “No.”

  “Then let’s get started.” She stepped toward the worktable.

  He put a hand out to stop her. “How do I know you won’t sabotage my work?”

  She looked at him as if he were the biggest idiot on the planet. Grace could make him feel like that as easily as she could make him feel like the coolest guy on campus.

  Women, he thought. Or maybe just Grace.

  “Why would I sabotage your work? If we find a cure, you’re out of my hair. If I screw you up, and Mrs. Cabilla finds out, I’m out on my butt. I’d be better off helping you. Besides . . .” She sighed. “I really could use some help with those stiffs at the hospital.” She looked him up and down. Even though the look was cool, Dan went hot. “I think you talk their language in your sleep.”

  “Want to find out?”

  “Dan!” She smil
ed at him like he’d just discovered penicillin. “You made a joke.”

  Not really, but if making a joke caused her to smile like that, he was willing to play along.

  “There’s a first time for everything,” he said.

  Grace spent the rest of the morning typing the results of Dan’s experiments into a computer program. Seemed Dan could do many things, but typing was not one of them.

  “My fingers are too big. They hit two keys at once sometimes.”

  His face reddened as if that were his fault—and a major fault at that. Grace looked at her own bird-fingers, as Olaf always called them, and wished she had such problems. In her business big hands were a good thing.

  Grace shrugged. “My father always said typing was a marketable skill. He was big on marketable skills. He had me pecking away at his office from the day I knew my letters.”

  “You must be pretty good.”

  “Eighty-five words a minute.”

  He gaped. “You could get a pretty good job doing that.”

  Her smile at his comical expression of amazement froze at the accidental insult of his words. “I have a pretty good job, without sitting on my butt and doing other people’s grunt work.”

  “Sorry,” he mumbled. “This wasn’t my idea, if you’ll recall.”

  “I know.” She put out her hand. “Just give me the stuff and show me what you want me to do with it.

  In large but extraordinarily neat handwriting, Dan had recorded every little thing. So Grace typed every little thing into a program Dan had created for just that purpose. She had no idea what any of it meant, but she didn’t need to. She just needed to type, like any good grunt. The data would be collated once she’d entered everything—or so he said.

  Grace was pretty impressed—with the program and with Dan’s handwriting. Un-doctor man strikes again.

  Coming to the end of a page, Grace glanced at her watch and then at Dan. He was bent over a beaker, mumbling like a madman. He’d been doing that for the past hour and a half—ever since she’d asked him what paronychial infection was, and he’d told her, in med-speak.

  Her mind whirred; her eyes rolled back in her head. She had no idea what he was talking about, and when his voice had disintegrated into mumbles, she’d just walked away, leaving him in his own little universe. He’d never noticed she was gone.

  No wonder he liked to work alone. He sounded like a Saturday afternoon matinee monster when he mumbled like that. She’d just have to look up paronychial infection later—if she could manage to read through the definition without falling asleep.

  She pushed back her chair. Time to go home.

  “Dan?”

  Grunt.

  “I have to go.”

  Grunt.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”

  Nothing.

  Grace picked up the keys to Olaf s car and went to the door. “The conversation has been enlightening; the company charming.”

  He held up one finger, as if asking her to wait one minute. Grace did. When his finger was still up in the air four minutes later, she shook her head and left. But she did so with a smile. Unfortunately, she found the absentminded professor thing kind of cute.

  Five hours later, the smile had died along with her energy. Grace sat on her front porch and flapped a weak hand at her last customer of the day. She was beat. All she wanted to do was take a tepid shower, put on her jammies, and help the Jewels piece together a quilt in the workroom. Maybe play some music, have a fruit and yogurt smoothie for dinner.

  Her eyes drifted closed, her head fell back, her legs stretched out in front of her. She imagined the thick, white yogurt blended with blueberries and bananas, cooling her heated tongue, sliding down her parched throat, soothing her empty stomach.

  A car door slammed and absently Grace dismissed the sound as her last customer belatedly leaving. She went back to the fruit smoothie fantasy with a lick of her lips. She could almost taste the froth that floated on the top of the drink; the bubbles would burst upon her tongue with a mere hint of flavor, then disappear. As if in protest, her stomach rumbled, and she rubbed her palm over her belly in a circular motion until it calmed.

  Summer heat hung on the air and with a sigh, Grace popped open the next three buttons on her jumpsuit, down to where the clasp would be on a front-clasp bra—if she wore a bra. She’d never seen the point of wasting her money in the training-bra section at Sears.

  Dusk marked her second-favorite time of the day. Work was done and play about to begin. The night was hers and she could hardly wait.

  A breeze drifted across Lake Illusion, cooling the beads of sweat upon her bare chest, then picking up a stray lock of hair that had escaped from her French braid. The strand tickled her nose and she giggled, then ran fingertips down her collarbone and spread the droplets into nothing.

  Someone choked; glass shattered, and Grace leapt to her feet.

  Dan Chadwick stood at the base of her porch steps, a broken bottle at his feet. Red wine soaked into the dirt and the cement, ran down his bare shins and beaded upon his canoe-sized tennis shoes.

  He looked up, and in his eyes Grace saw a heat that had nothing to do with embarrassment. It was then that she understood the car door she’d heard had been his, and he’d been watching her all along. Watching her imagine an orgasmic meal, watching her open her shirt, watching her touch herself and sigh.

  Grace swallowed a scalding lump at the base of her throat, but she could not break the pull of his gaze, even if she’d wanted to.

  The breeze picked up again but could do little to dispel the heat that flushed over her. The scent of the wine, rich and red, rose on the steamy afternoon, wrapping about her, making her ache. She took a step toward him and he shook his head.

  “The glass,” he murmured, then stepped over the mess and up the steps.

  He stood too close, and she didn’t care. She wanted those big hands on her. She wanted them on her now.

  She watched him raise his hand and her eyes drifted closed, her head drifted back, revealing the line of her throat, opening her blouse to the swell of her breasts—what swell there was.

  Then he touched her, a single feather-light flick across her cheek as he pushed the stray lock of hair behind her ear. She waited for his kiss. His lips pressed to her brow. Her eyes opened, confused, as he stepped back and away from her, staring at the door.

  Grace turned. Olaf scowled. “Button self, Gracie. Can I not leave you for a moment and you are kissing very bad men?”

  “Go away, Olaf You act like I’m a nymphomaniac.”

  “Nymph? Perhaps. Maniac? That would be him.” Olaf sniffed at Dan, who just shrugged. “Why is he here anyway? Did you not see him enough while you were working?”

  She’d seen him, but he had not really seen her. Still, why was he here? And with wine? Grace glanced at the mess on the sidewalk. Make that without wine?

  “Em invited me to dinner,” Dan said.

  “What?” Grace squeaked—her jammie-and-smoothie fantasy evaporating on the night breeze.

  Olaf cursed in Norwegian. Em sailed out the front door, dressed in her Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile costume. Dan looked back and forth between the two of them. Grace groaned and sat back in her chair.

  It was going to be a very long night.

  Dan swept the sidewalk clear of glass and used the hose hooked to the front of the house to spray the cement and his legs. What was it about Grace that turned him into a walking klutz?

  That wasn’t fair—he’d been a klutz long before he met Grace. It just hurt more when she saw his failings. Grace was so . . . so . . . so Grace. Next to her he was an oaf, and he needed to remember that.

  He had come out of the zone to find Grace gone. Long gone to be exact—it was nearly dinnertime before he came back to earth. His mother would say he was rude not to have said good-bye, shown Grace out, thanked her for her trouble, blah, blah, blah. Of course his mother probably wouldn’t have let Grace Lighthorse into her house. His
mother was the queen of rude, which was why she felt it her duty to point out rudeness in others.

  The screen door popped open and Olaf lumbered out. Dan also needed to remember that Olaf loved Grace to the corners of his huge heart, and if Dan screwed up, Olaf might just use his huge fists on Dan’s face.

  Dan nodded. “Sorry about the mess.”

  Olaf s lip curled into a snarl. So much for apologies.

  Dan climbed the porch steps only to find his entrance blocked. He was not going to get into a shoving match with Olaf. Not only would he lose, he’d most likely end up looking stupid again. Once a day was enough for him, thank you.

  “Pardon me?” he tried.

  “I will not pardon you. Touching Gracie is forbidden, bad man.”

  “To you, too?” Dan couldn’t help it; it just slipped out. He watched Olaf’s face turn crimson, and waited to die.

  “Only a man such as you would think such a thing. Gracie is like my baby—the baby I lost long ago in my land of light. I once watched her cry over another such as you, and I did nothing because Gracie asked me not to. This time I will break you . . .” Olaf raised his fists in front of Dan’s face and made a snapping motion to illustrate, even though Dan had already gotten the point. “Like this. I will tear off your head and spit in your neck.”

  “Graphic image,” Dan murmured. Olaf had to be descended from Vikings—perhaps only a generation back.

  “Even Gracie will not stop me. So watch what you do, bad man, because I will be watching you.”

  He bumped his shoulder against Dan’s in what was becoming a familiar gesture between the two of them—almost as good as a handshake. Dan’s footing slipped but he managed to stay on his feet. The guy was going to kill him if he stepped out of line.

  “Dan?” Grace stood in the doorway, a slight smile on her face.

  She looked the same as when he’d watched her on the porch, except she’d buttoned her jumpsuit. Too late, because he’d already seen that there was just Grace beneath the neon light. Would his palms forever itch with the need to slip inside and discover the curve of her rib cage beneath the swell of her breast?