Heroes In Uniform (158 page)

“I don’t remember ever seeing you like this before.”

He gave her a sour look that had the perverse effect of making her grin, since it was a duplicate of ones Ben gave her when his male pride had been offended.

“I don’t mean sick. Although that applies, too. I mean – ” She waved a hand toward him. “Unshaved and your hair this long.”

“I ran out of time to get my hair cut before I left Washington. I’ll go to Mike’s in town.” A sly look came into his face. “Tomorrow.”

“Next week. You’re nowhere near strong enough to be driving into town. Besides, I kind of like this look.”

“It’s not military.”

“No, it’s not.”
Was that why she liked it
?

“I could at least take a shower and shave.”

“No shower. You’re too weak. But I tell you what, I will give you a sponge bath. You’ll feel a lot better.”

He gave her a look that included an element that in anyone else she would have said was fear. But this was Grif. And this was her. And as Fran had pointed out, a sponge bath was a standard way to make the patient more comfortable. And since nothing had changed – or would change – between her and Grif, giving him one made absolute sense.

She kept telling herself that even after she’d gathered the pan of lukewarm water, two wash cloths and a towel. Even after she’d started applying them to his broad shoulders, the lightly tanned planes of his chest, and his muscled arms. Finally, she blanked out her mind and operated on automatic pilot. Until Grif’s large hand clamped over hers as she wielded the towel in the final motions of drying him.

“You’d better let me finish that or we’re going to start something very different.”

Sudden realization flooded her with heat. Under her hand, the towel had followed the track of an errant trickle that had slipped under the waistband of his boxers, and headed south.

She jerked her hand back, leaving the towel. He picked it up, but she refused to watch what he did with it. Instead, she found a plethora of tidying that needed to be done on the bedside table. After a moment he handed over the towel, and she folded it in quarters, decided she didn’t like it, and refolded.

“Ellyn.”

He was trying to lever himself up to a more straight-backed position, and that gave her another excuse to avoid meeting his eyes, as she fussed with rearranging the pillows.

Only when she felt his breath across her breasts and felt a tightening in her nipples did she realize that the combination of their movements had put her chest immediately in front of his face, and that he was breathing hard and fast. It took her entire stock of self-control simply to stay still. Her nipples were taut and tender against the inside of her bra, as if they strained to meet the mouth expelling the air that teased across them, even through layers of cloth.

At last, she started slowly to pull back. Tension rode across the hard lines of his face, the lines around his mouth dug deep. Instinct dropped her gaze to where a bulge showed between his legs, blatant and unmistakable under the smooth expanse of sheet. When she would have continued her withdrawal, away from him, away from the side of the bed, maybe out of the room, the house, and the county, he captured her wrist in his hand, and held here. His grip was surprisingly strong for someone who’d been so sick. Or maybe her resistance wasn’t that strong.

“Are you going to ignore this, Ellyn?”

“I thought I would,” she admitted.

A faint smile touched his lips without removing the tension, and he didn’t release her wrist. “Maybe that would be best. Pretend I never said anything, either, and everything will go back to the way it was before.”

Abruptly she sat on the chair beside the bed, goaded by something inside her. Something that she hadn’t known she had until the past year – the strength to face facts.

“The question is, before what? Do you want to go back to the way things were before Dale ... before Dale died? – I don’t think that’s practical, do you? We’d all have to move back to Washington, and even then of course – ”

“Ellyn – ”

“Okay, so not that far back. All right then, go back to the way things were before you came to Far Hills? Well, I can do that, but I’d miss you. I know the kids would hate it. Marti and Kendra would definitely not be pleased. So, what does that leave? Putting things back the way they were before ... before I kissed you?”

He frowned. “You said that before – that
you
kissed
me
. That’s not how I remember it.”

“Well, we kissed each other, but I know you didn’t... I mean, you’re a very generous man, Grif.”

“Generous?”

She ignored his apparent disbelief. “And I love – like – I
like
that in you. It’s part of what makes you you, but ...”

“But?”

“I don’t ... Generosity might not be the best thing, Grif. Honesty would be better. So much better. Because pity, isn’t something I – ”

“Pity?
Pity
!” Implacable, his grip on her wrist brought her hand to his bare chest, then drew it down his body, over the sheet covering his abdomen, below his waist, and lower. “Does this feel like pity?”

By instinct or need her hand curled around his hot length.

His other hand caught the back of her neck and brought her, unresisting to him. “Dammit, Ellyn.” His mouth took hers, open and demanding from the start, his tongue plunging into her mouth with a hunger that made her moan. It was as if the kiss in front of the school had never ended, but was continuing now, building on itself and their desire.

She was draped across him. Then with a twist of his hips and a shift of his shoulders, she was beside him, lying on the open side of the bed. He followed her, one knee sliding between her legs, one hand sweeping up her rib cage. With the tips of his fingers brushing against the lower curve of her breast, he hesitated long enough to make her gasp. And then his hand covered her, and she gasped again.

And all the while their mouths held each other, each touch fueling the driving hunger.

She stroked her palms across his back, pressed them into his hard flesh. Tangled her fingers into his hair, then used their tips to follow the firm lines of his jaw and cheek.

He’d opened her shirt, pushed down her bra, with a need that knew no finesse. But his capable, strong hand feathered her nipple so softly that she arched and moaned. His knee came higher, and his hips rocked against her, taking up the rhythm of their tongues.

He tore his mouth from hers, and put his lips around her nipple, wetting the pebbled ring, then closing his mouth around her and drawing on her strongly.

She cried out, nearer the edge than she could have believed. As if he sensed that, he sought her other breast with his hand, but the bra intruded. Impatiently, he rolled her a few degrees toward him, and yanked loose the hooks at the back. A sound escaped him as he brought his mouth back to her nipple and stroked his hand over the other straining tip.

She dragged her hand down between their bodies, following the same path he’d taken her on earlier. And finding him even hotter and harder and bigger. She pressed her palm against him, and shifted, trying to ease the ache inside her.

He groaned, deep in his throat, the sound vibrating against her. His hand covered hers, holding it still, as he slid down the bed, his head resting on her ribcage.

“Ellyn...” His panting breath across her nipple made her shudder, incapable of answering. “If we don’t ... If we don’t stop now, you’ll be washing sheets again.”

The words penetrated slowly, but finally reached the grain of sense not drowned by her senses. She levered away from him enough to see his face. It was etched hard and taut. The lines stretched thin by the power of his self-control. Self-control that was about to snap. As if to confirm that, the flesh under her palm pulsed hot and hard.

“Sorry, Ellyn. I’m sorry.”

He was sorry. And she was shuddering with need.

He was sick. And she was crawling all over him.

She jolted away, off the bed, pulling her outer clothes together without taking time to deal with her bra.

“You’re sick. And I –Oh...”

She dragged in two deep breaths, staring at the dent in the pillow by his shoulder that had held her an instant ago. A flexing in that shoulder alerted her, and before he could reach for her, she bolted.

* * *

She had to come back eventually. She wasn’t going to leave him lying here in bed forever, not after treating him as if he were as weak as a kitten.

Which, in the area of self-control, he was.

Grif had been tired of being sick by the end of the first day. He’d wake up, answer the call of nature, drink more water than a camel after a dry month, she’d feed him something, and he’d drop off again, starting the cycle all over. Like some kind of overgrown infant.

At first he’d felt so bad he hadn’t cared. But after the first couple pills he could feel his strength returning – too slow for him, but steady. And he wasn’t dead for God’s sake. He was a little drained from their ... exertions, but he sure could have managed to continue until he was drained in a much more satisfactory manner.

No wonder she ran away, with a lecher in her bed.

It was more than hour before she came back, with another pill, more water, and a dish of cottage cheese and peaches. God, he hadn’t had cottage cheese and peaches since he was a kid. He used to love it ... and she’d remembered.

He felt such an urge to wrap her in his arms and pull her down to the bed beside him, so her body nestled close against his, that his voice came out raw.

“I’m sorry I shocked you.”

Her chin went up, and she put the tray down with a thunk.

“Shocked me? What do you think I am, Grif? Some naive little girl? You think I never had sexual feelings? You think I never had temptations? Everyone thinks I’m such a Goody-Two-Shoes, but I have urges, too. I feel things, no matter what Dale might have told you about – ” The stricken look she sent him was like a kick to the gut. “Oh, God – ”

“Dale and I never discussed that, Ellyn. Never.”

She gulped twice. “It’s not that I can’t talk about those sorts of things – I can. I do! But ...”

“But you wouldn’t have wanted Dale talking to me.”

“No. I wouldn’t have.”

She sat in her chair, handing him over the pill, then the water. When he’d finished, she gave him the dish.

He’d almost finished all of that when she spoke in a soft monotone, absent the life and passion of earlier.

“Dale was leaving me. The night he left here, and had the accident. He said he’d given the marriage another chance, tried moving back here, and it just wasn’t going to work.”

He heard her words, understood the importance of them, but something about her tone made the hairs along the back of his neck rise. Carefully he set the dish on the bedside table. He’d heard her talk this way before ... but when?

“He’d met someone. Someone who gave him what he wanted, what he needed. What I couldn’t. He was going to San Diego to join her. Then the accident ... If I’d been able to hold onto my husband, he’d be alive now.”

And then he knew. He remembered the tone from when she’d repeated the viciously stupid things her mother had told her about herself – how she wasn’t sexy, how she needed to make up for her lack of physical attributes, how hopeless she was as the sort of siren Rose considered herself.

“What sort of damned crap is that?”

His anger widened her eyes, and when Ellyn spoke her voice was back to normal, even a trace tart.

“It’s the truth. It wasn’t a fairy tale marriage cut short by tragedy like everyone else views it. I don’t want to shatter their illusions, but I couldn’t ...” She looked down at her hands. “I didn’t want to pretend any more with you, Grif.”

He watched her, seeing the new strengths and the old vulnerabilities. Wishing she could see herself through his eyes. He almost smiled to himself then. She’d have an ego the size of Montana if she could.

“You don’t have to pretend with me, Ellyn. Not ever. Not about anything.”

Her chin quivered so slightly that someone not feasting on the sight of her would have missed it.

“Thank you, Grif. I knew you’d understand.”

* * *

Early the next morning Grif returned to the bed from the bathroom, almost stumbling over the duffel bag.

Curious, he pulled it up beside him and checked out Fran’s sensible choice of underwear, a pair of sweats and his toiletries. He pulled out a paper bag marked “Far Hills Market Pharmacy” in surprise. The surprise deepened when he opened it and discovered two multipacks of condoms.

...you and Ellyn are two consenting adults and I don’t see why you couldn’t...

Clearly Fran agreed with Marti. And was even less subtle.

He put the bag back, careful to fold over its top so its contents weren’t obvious to the casual observer.

It struck him that he hadn’t heard Ellyn stirring. He ventured down the hallway. He’d managed this trip once before without her knowing – sure she would object if she caught him.

She was curled on her side on the couch, sleeping.

He pulled the multi-colored quilt up so it covered her flannel-clad shoulder, then brushed two curling strands of hair back from her cheek. She stirred, making a mumbling sound, then settled again.

If he was smart, he’d turn around and go back before she woke and gave him a tongue lashing.

He sat in the overstuffed chair that gave him a good view of her, even in the thin, gray light.

I knew you’d understand.

He’d thought he did until she’d said that. But there’d been a significance to those words that made him feel he’d missed something along the way.

He had to think this through. He’d been trained too well in the necessity of anticipating what dangers might lie over the next hill, or around the next bend or under the next bush to go plunging ahead.

The first step was to gather the available facts. That wasn’t always easy with people, but sometimes there were hints.

Like yesterday when she’d looked at him that way, and made that ridiculous comment about being kissed out of
pity.
and he’d decided he had to show her how wrong she’d been.