Five Days Grace (14 page)

Grace turned her head to the side, toward Aidan, and he saw sheer joy on her face, water dripping off her, the T-shirt plastered to her. She looked like what could only be described as a wet-T-shirt dream, those legs, those perfect, tanned, toned legs, a flat belly and her breasts, her nipples, full and perfectly outlined by the wet cotton.

He almost loved the damned dog in that moment, for being a giant mess and making that picture he now had of Grace possible, and for her laughter.

"I think that's as clean as we can get him," Aidan said. "Give me a second to grab a towel to wrap around him."

He moved quickly, got the towel ready and opened the shower door. Tink stumbled out with a big, whiny cry. Aidan barely managed to wrap a towel around the dog before he shook himself all over the damned bathroom, not that there was much left that was dry at that point. Aidan toweled off the beast, then spread the towel on the wet floor. By then, Grace was in the shower all alone, shower door closed, thank goodness.

"I'm going to stay in here and rinse off again really quick," she said, sounding tentative for the first time since they all got in the shower together.

"Okay," Aidan said, as the dog pawed at the bathroom door and cried, wanting out. "The dog and I are leaving the room, Grace."

Tink bounded out, still crying and mad over the shower, shooting Aidan looks that said,
What did you do to me? And why? Why would you do that?
Aidan thought,
You? You have no idea what that was like for me.

He grabbed a dry towel from the closet for himself, and then realized Grace would need one, too. He opened the bathroom door just wide enough to slip the towel through, telling her, "Dry towel on the vanity for you."

Then, finally, it was done. He'd survived.

He toweled off his hair and his face, not that it really helped. He was drenched, every bit of him. But the image of Grace, smiling at him and laughing, wet T-shirt and long, pretty legs, was burned into his brain. He'd never get it out. He doubted he'd ever want to.

What he did want to do was strip off his clothes and walk back into the shower to join her. For a moment, he forgot all about whether he could get it up, then realized he didn't have anything resembling an erection. No doubt, that was a very bad sign considering what had just happened. But he could still kiss her, have his hands all over her, and maybe that would be enough for him for the moment. Maybe not for her, but he could make her feel really good. He was certain of that.

Of course, he had no right. She was so vulnerable, and his brother's friend's little sister, no doubt a good, good girl, who'd given him an incredible night just by sleeping in his arms.

So he didn't do it.

He didn't go in there.

He must be some kind of damned saint.

Chapter 8

Grace knew she was just a little bit crazy at this point in her life. She was keeping secrets from her family and from Luc's, and she was so sad, mad and confused, and trying so hard to figure things out, to make sense of all of it—and failing miserably. Her emotions were all over the place at times, veering wildly from wanting to take some kind of action to get out of this awful place, and wanting to just sit and hide and cry.

Now she could be impulsive, too, which so wasn't like her. But she'd had a lifetime of what she considered careful living, and look where it had gotten her.

So, at times now, she tried to push herself out of her comfort zone—which wasn't comfortable anyway anymore—and she did things she wouldn't have done just a year ago.

Like curling up on Aidan's lap, letting him wrap those wonderful arms of his around her and sleeping—just sleeping—with him the night before. Because she'd wanted that, wanted it so bad, and why deny herself that kind of simple comfort when it was offered?

Nothing much felt comfortable to her anymore.

This morning, he'd seemed so surprised by the idea of the two of them getting the dog clean in the shower, so convinced that she wouldn't do it. And it was a genuine conviction, not some bit of pretense to push her into doing it. He'd looked so uncomfortable, it had become something of a dare in her own mind, making her even more determined to do it. She'd wanted to see how far outside her comfort zone she could go, especially with him.

She'd been fine with it, even when it became obvious she'd need a lot more help from Aidan than she'd thought, that he'd have to be practically in the shower, too. The back of his hands had brushed her front a few times while he tried to get Tink's belly clean, purely by accident and mostly the squirming dog's fault. It had felt... nice, teasing and fun, and just a little bit bad.

Grace was never bad.

But then she turned around, and the dog wasn't between her and Aidan anymore. She opened her eyes and saw her own reflection in the mirror on the back of the bathroom door, and...

Oh.

She finally realized how little a soaking wet T-shirt covered up.

It was more like a second skin, a very thin second skin. She hadn't known she could look like that.
That sexy
. Grace knew exactly what she was. She could do good-girl sexy. Girl-next-door sexy. Sweet, let-me-look-at-you-and-kiss-your-face sexy. That she knew. But in-your-face, sex-pot sexy? Bad-girl sexy? Let-me-rip-your-clothes-off-right-now-and-take-you-against-the-wall sexy? No, that wasn't Grace.

Maybe things were different because she was happy and laughing, because of her brief, glorious escape from normal life with the dog and Aidan. Maybe it was because Aidan was so sexy himself.

But dripping wet, in the shower, wearing her wet T-shirt, she looked like a very bad girl, something she didn't think she'd ever been in her life.

She wondered, if she'd looked like this, acted like this, for Luc, would she have been happy? Would he have been happy and not found someone else? Because she would have tried if she'd known. She'd have tried almost anything to save her marriage. Being married, staying married was something she took very seriously. But she hadn't done this, and now her husband was gone, and instead, she'd let Aidan see her this way.

God, what he must think of her.

He was a virtual stranger, a kind one, but still a stranger.

She waited until Aidan and the dog were on the other side of the closed bathroom door, and then groaned, her face flaming. She stripped off the T-shirt, wrung it out and draped it over the shower door, then did the same with her panties. Because she really didn't want to smell like a wet dog, she grabbed the soap and quickly lathered up her hands to wash herself.

Her body felt different to her now, even beneath her own hands, when they were moving quickly and without any intent except to get clean so she could get out of here and get dressed.

It felt... sexy.

She had her eyes closed, and an image came to mind, unbidden, not of her own hands on her body, but Aidan's. As though, after they'd finished with the dog, they'd both been so turned on, they'd stripped off their clothes and proceeded to wash each other, laughing, kissing and happy as could be together.

Grace trembled just thinking about it, all of a sudden so turned on she could hardly stand it, more turned on than she'd been since before her husband died.

No, before that. Long before the bad times. Maybe more than ever in her life, and Aidan hadn't even touched her. Not really.

But he'd seen her and he'd held her last night, all night long, in a way that simply reminded her she was still alive and a woman. Now, she felt not only alive but like a woman starving for a man.

No, not just any man.

For Aidan.

People had told her those feelings would come back. That she'd come back to life, and her sex drive would come roaring back. She wasn't quite sure she'd believed them, but here it was. Her hands weren't moving fast anymore, and her body was warm and alive and tingling, the need she suddenly felt almost taking her breath away.

Great. Just great.

She wasn't sure if she wanted this part of her life back right now. Life was messy enough already, and she still had so much to do, so many things to figure out. She still felt so fragile most of the time.

Except here during this day with Aidan. Being here felt good, fun, interesting, full of possibilities and so far away from her life and her problems, it was like escaping to another world.

Grace shut off the water, wrung out her hair, dried off quickly and almost roughly, trying to will all those messy feelings away. But she had forgotten to bring her clothes back into the shower, so now she had to walk out that door in nothing but a towel. Determined to plow through it, she wrapped the towel firmly around herself and opened the door. Tink, still damp, looking bewildered and insulted, was waiting for her outside the door, as was Aidan, who wouldn't even look at her.

"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."