by Teresa Hill
"Then stop."
"I am. I'm stopping right now. With you. My husband was seeing another woman. You're the first person I've told, the only person." She had tears in her eyes, but blinked them back and glared at him. "Oddly, I'm just not feeling better yet."
"God, you're not Zach's wife, are you?"
"No! His wife's name is Julie. He's crazy about her. You don't even know his wife's name?"
He shrugged. "Never met her. Never came up. Look, I didn't tell you before, because I didn't see any reason why you'd believe me. I was just the guy holding a gun on you. But if it makes you feel any better, my little brother, Tommy, went to law school with Zach. I don't know him well at all, but my brother does. He spent a couple of breaks from school at Zach's parents' house."
"Oh," she said, looking like she was trying to place him.
Did she actually think she might know Tommy? Who was she?
"Anyway," Aidan went on. "I guess Tommy once represented a battered woman who needed to hide out from her husband for a while, and Zach let him stash her here. Tommy knew it was quiet, isolated and empty a lot in cool weather. That's how I ended up here. Feel better?"
"What law school?" she asked.
He frowned. "Not a good test of whether I'm telling the truth, Grace. Zach McRae is kind of famous in legal circles for his work in death penalty cases involving juveniles. His credentials are probably all over the web, a click or two away for anybody to find."
"What law school?"
"You think you've tripped me up?" He grinned.
"No, I think if you're... let's say, someone dangerous, who broke in, even if you knew this cabin belonged to the McRaes, you wouldn't have gone to the trouble of looking up where Zach went to law school first."
"Okay. Good point. University of Chicago."
She nodded. "Okay. If we're feeling all trusting toward each other, would you please, please, let me get you something to maybe stop the bleeding on your side? You can point your gun at me the whole time, if you still want to, while I find a clean towel."
He grinned. "It's sweet the way you worry, Grace."
"And then maybe we could both put on some dry clothes and build a fire? Maybe get warm? What do you say?"
Tink yowled and pawed at her, like he couldn't stand to be ignored.
"And give the dog a bath," she added.
"No bathtub here. Just a shower."
"Oh." She turned to the dog. "Sorry, baby. Maybe we'll try the shower. My sister gets her dogs clean by taking them into the shower with her when it's too cold to bathe them outside."
"It's a really small shower," Aidan said, seeing a flash of Grace in the shower—not washing the dog. "I'll throw him in the lake tomorrow."
Tink whined and hid his head against his paws.
"Stop. You're scaring him." She fussed over the dog.
The silly thing ate it up, and for a moment, Aidan couldn't help it. He imagined her fussing over him instead, teasing him, taking care of him. Touching him, maybe in the shower.
And wasn't that an enticing picture?
"Okay, you can help me with my side," he said.
They'd start there and see where it led.
Chapter 3
"Good." She stood up, walked over to him and frowned as she got a closer look at his bloodstained clothes. "Do you want dry clothes first? Or your side bandaged?"
"Dry clothes," he decided, not sure whether he was hoping she would or wouldn't offer to help with that, and whether he'd let her if she did.
He really shouldn't think of her that way. She was a mess—she'd told him so—a woman who'd just found out her husband had cheated on her. He had no business doing anything with her. Her life didn't need any more complications, and he refused to do anything to make matters worse for her.
"You should put something else on, too," he told her. "Do you have anything else?"
"In my suitcase in my car, up on the road."
And the rain was still pouring down.
"Not worth the trip in the mud and the rain," he said, because the car was up a now muddy, slippery path through the trees. "There are a few drawers full of clothes in the bedroom on the right. I guess people leave things behind to use only here. If there's nothing that fits you there, I have a whole wardrobe of sweatpants and T-shirts. They'll swallow you, but you'll be dry."
He offered without really thinking at first, and then, flashing through his head before he could stop it, came the idea. Her inside his clothes? Soft, pretty curves and creamy, smooth skin, touching his clothes all over. He wasn't sure he'd ever be able to wear them again.
Damn.
"Thanks," she said. "I'll get dressed, and then I'll build up the fire."
"I can do that, Grace," he said, although he hadn't gotten to his feet yet. He wasn't sure what kind of effort it would take and didn't really want her to watch. He'd done too much earlier trying to help Maeve and his muscles had been tightening up every second he'd sat here talking to Grace. "I'm not an invalid."
"Neither am I, and as a real bonus, I'm not bleeding from a wound I ripped open today."
"Okay," he said.
"Want me to help you out of that chair?"
"No."
She laughed. "You're kidding right? Is that some violation of the man code? No help, even when bleeding?"
"I said you could help. But I don't need you to haul me out of this chair like I'm some kind of invalid. I've had a lot of people helping me in and out of chairs and beds. I don't need that anymore."
"What did you do to yourself?"
"A crash," he admitted.
"Car? Plane?"
"Something like that."
"What's left? Let's see... Helicopter? Skydiving? Aerial skiing? Can you crash a boat? I guess you can. Train? Motorcycle? Glider? Cliff diver? Am I getting close?"
"Close enough," he said.
"Are we playing Twenty Questions?"
"No."
"Okay, I'm going with... cliff diver. But do you really crash, if you miss the dive? Or is that just a fall?"
"I think if you hit rocks or water hard enough, it qualifies as a crash. And it really hurts. I know that."
"You weren't cliff diving," she insisted.
He grinned. "No, I wasn't, but I'm starting to worry I might bleed to death before you stop asking questions."
"Right, sorry. I was just starting to get into the cliff-diving story, but that's okay. I'm going into the other room to find some clothes now. While I do, you can haul yourself to your feet without me seeing you, since it means so much to you that I don't."
"Thank you," he said, waiting until she was in the bedroom, the door closed behind her, before he moved.
Cliff diving?
He'd settle for walking without half a dozen different places in his body hurting. Bracing his hands on the arm of the chair and his feet on the floor, he eased out to the edge of the seat, then pushed up until he was standing.
Okay, not awful. He felt the incision, but it wasn't throbbing and the pain didn't rip through him, taking his breath away or even making him pass out. It had a few times in the early days when someone helped him to his feet. He shouldn't have actually helped pull the tree off Maeve, but it was no big deal. He'd be fine, as long as he hadn't pulled the incision open too deeply.
In the bedroom he was using, he pulled out a clean T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants, and found a pair of wool socks. The bitch of it was going to be getting the pants he was wearing off and the clean ones on. The socks would be even worse.
Throwing the clothes on the bed, he peeled off his shirt and then rolled down the waistband of his sweats. One of the real annoyances about the way he'd mangled his right hip was that the incision sat at the same level as the waistband of every pair of pants he wore, which had made it even harder for the wound to heal.
The fabric of the sweats stuck a bit, as the shirt had, and he reopened the incision when he pulled the fabric away.
Great.
He heard a cell p
hone ring, Grace swearing, maybe fumbling the phone. Next thing he knew, she was barging into his room, her shoulders and part of her abdomen bare. The dog trotted in, too, but Aidan had eyes only for Grace. She was holding a little T-shirt over... whoa, breasts, obviously bare beneath that T-shirt she was clutching to herself with one hand. With the other hand, she held out a cell phone toward him so he could hear the conversation, too.
"Zach, hi," she said, blushing as she mouthed to Aidan, Sorry, then pointedly looked away, staring at the floor.
Sorry about rushing into the room, half-dressed, so he could hear the conversation? Did she really think she needed to say she was sorry? The woman was beautiful, even half-drenched and after a major crying spell.
"Grace, you okay? I could see that you called earlier, but I couldn't hear you."
The connection was still cracking with some static now, but Aidan didn't have any doubt that was Zach McRae's voice.
"I'm fine," Grace told him. "I just wanted to say, 'Hi.' "
"How are the in-laws? Crying yet?" Zach asked. "What was the bet we had? Over/under five minutes?"
"I won. Ellen started when I was still in the car on the way, talking to her on the phone."
"Ahh, Grace, I'm sorry. I'm sure they don't mean to make things harder for you."
"I know. I feel guilty about how much I hate visiting them, how long I've put this off."
Huh? The in-laws were making her feel guilty about being pissed about a husband who cheated on her?
"Well, don't," Zach told her.
Damn right.
"Look, if it gets to be too much, call me," Zach said. "I'll call you right back and invent some family emergency. You can leave."
"Okay. Thanks," she said. "And... I'm still not getting a great connection on this phone. I guess there's a storm somewhere. Will you tell Mom and Dad I got here okay, and I'll call them in a couple of days?"
"Sure. I love you, Grace."
"Love you, too," she said, then hung up the phone.
Love you?
Mom and Dad?
"You're his sister?" Aidan asked.
She nodded, finally looking him in the eye.
That was odd. What wasn't she telling him? "Why would you want to hide that, Grace?"
"I told you, most people who know Zach know me—"
"I don't. In fact, I can't remember anything Tommy ever said about Zach's sisters, except... Well, one of them was married, and the other one was an artist," he said. Tommy had raved, saying she was one of the most beautiful things he'd ever seen. And then Aidan remembered. "He said people called you the golden girl and sometimes, 'Sunshine.' "
She stood there clutching that shirt to her breasts, her pretty, long, golden hair all over the place, her blue eyes all big and sad, the dog huddled against her side.
"Sorry, I guess even I've heard that about you. Is that really so bad, Grace?"
"No, it's just... It's a long story."
"I've got time," he insisted.
He could see her going back and forth over it in her head, how much to tell him or maybe whether to tell him anything at all, and then her gaze drifted lower, and he could see in her face when she got to the scars.
Scrapes, he'd called them for the longest time.
Yeah, right.
A knife wound on his left bicep. No big deal. A spray of shrapnel high on his left chest, a curious pattern of cuts that always kept people guessing as to what the hell had happened there. He'd taken a bullet on his left side that hurt like a son of a bitch, but it had hardly done any real damage, missed all vital organs and nearly missed him completely.
If she could see his back, she'd know his right shoulder was still a problem from the crash. And then there was the incision from his hip surgeries that he'd pulled open a bit and was now oozing blood. It was a particularly ugly scar, because it was so recent, still raw-looking and raised, curling along the top of his hipbone in front for about six inches. He'd shattered the bone, and he was the lucky one. He was still breathing.
She was horrified, he feared. Did it really look that bad? It had at first, but he hadn't taken a good look in a while. He made a point not to. He didn't need to see the damned thing. Glancing down now, though, he saw that it was bloody, although a good bit of that was probably the rain making more of the blood than there really was.
She turned and ran into the bathroom, he thought for a minute maybe to throw up. Tink looked puzzled, started to follow her, but before he could, she was back with a hand towel that she pressed and held against Aidan's wound.
"Would it kill you to sit down?" she asked. "You are bleeding, after all."
He started to sit, but found nothing to hang onto. Which wasn't really a problem anymore, unless he was sore like this and had done too much. At times like this, it was really so much easier, getting up and down, when he had something to hang onto.
"Oh, for God's sake." She took his right arm and placed it on her bare shoulder. "Don't worry. I'll close my eyes. I won't look at this unmanly display of weakness."
"You're really mad," he said, as he eased down to sit on the bed.
"Yes, I'm mad. Did I do this to you?" She was so distressed she hadn't even taken the time to put her shirt on. She was about to forget why she was holding it so tightly against herself, if she wasn't careful.
She sank down to her knees in front of him, to press the towel against his incision, and his view got even better. Pretty curves, that sweet hollow between her breasts. God.
"Grace, go put your shirt on," he told her.
She glared at him. "Really? That's what you're thinking about right now?"
"Sorry. I'm a guy. Can't help it." Glorious curves, fuller than he would have imagined, or maybe that was because of the way she held that shirt pressed against them.
She growled a little in irritation. "Close your eyes."
He did, and it was almost as bad as if he had them open. She was maybe a foot away from him, and he could feel every move she made. She lowered the T-shirt, must have needed to turn it inside out, and then pulled it over her head.
"Okay. Done."
Except, it didn't really fit her. It was a kid's T-shirt, tight on her, and her bra must have gotten wet, too, because she clearly wasn't wearing one now. Which meant those perfect curves of her perfect breasts were perfectly outlined for him to see, and, yes, they were absolutely, spectacularly perfect.
Plus, she was cold. Gotta love what the cold did to a women's breasts.
"Still?" she asked, bringing his gaze up to hers. "You're bleeding. You're in pain. You're wet. You're cold. And what are you thinking about? Breasts?"
He shrugged, liking her for being so up front about him staring at her and giving him a hard time about it. "I was in the hospital for a long time. Pain, pain meds, no privacy, and then I was in rehab. Not for drugs or alcohol. For the injuries. Very little privacy there, either. You know what I mean?"
"You're really pissing me off now," she said.
"I'm sorry. I'm a rat. Here, I can't see anymore." He put up a hand between her breasts and his eyes. "And men are jerks. We're idiots."
"You're hurt. I did that to you—"
"Honestly, I don't think you did, and even if you actually did, I was holding a gun on you at the time—"
"Either I did it or you had to be a hero and pull a tree off an old lady, knowing you were still healing from what looks like a really nasty injury."
"I'd like to point out that I didn't do it single-handedly. I had help. She's probably seventy-five, Grace. She was bleeding and in a lot of pain. It was a compound fracture—bone sticking out through the skin. She needed to get to the hospital."
"Well, okay, but... Could you at least be more careful from now on?"
"Honey, you don't need to worry about anything as minor as this," he said. "Trust me. I'm hard as hell to kill."
* * *
Grace had been feeling foolish for being so mad and so worried about him. He was a complete stranger, after all. Bu
t from the looks of that scar, whatever had happened to him had been bad, really bad, and then he'd said, I'm hard as hell to kill.
His face froze, and then he was just gone, so clearly not in the present with her, gone into the past instead. Grace didn't know how she knew, but she was sure she did, that he might be hard to kill—or more likely just lucky—but someone else had not been.
Someone had died.
It was written all over his face.
He'd been too surprised by what he'd said to cover up his reaction. And that wound was still raw, more raw than the scar on his hip.
He swore softly, his eyes shimmering with tears she was sure he'd never allow to fall.
Maybe it hit her so hard because she was seeing someone else in so much pain. Maybe it was the secrets she'd been keeping herself and feeling so alone for so long.
Whatever it was, Grace reacted on pure instinct. She just couldn't leave him there, all alone in his misery. She rose up on her knees, leaned forward and wrapped her arms around his waist. From there, she nestled in close against his bare chest and just held onto him as he sat on the edge of the bed.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm so sorry."
He was breathing quickly but deeply as his arms came up and locked around her, one of his hands in her hair, pressing her face against him. Despite the kind of illness he'd just gone through and the tough recovery he was having, he was still so reassuringly strong and solid.
And then, she knew.
"You're a soldier?"
"Sailor," he whispered. "Navy guys are sailors."
She just stayed there, holding him tightly, letting him hold onto her, and it felt as if he'd needed this—to be this close to someone—for a long, long time, and hadn't allowed himself the luxury. Maybe this was against his stupid man-code, too?
His breathing was ragged now, and Grace burrowed in as close as she could get. He'd been cold to the touch at first, and he smelled so good, like the rain. Grace thought he was trembling but couldn't be sure. She just wanted to make sure he didn't feel so alone, because she knew how awful it was to be hurting and all alone, secrets locked firmly inside.
