State of Grace (13 page)

“What?  It’s not like I’m not here enough. And the last time I tried to shave with one of your pink, sissy razors, I walked out with toilet paper covering my chin.” He grinned, but his eyes were intense, almost as if he was daring her to object.

At any other time, she would have laughed at the memory his words evoked, but as her heart quickened, she tore her gaze away from his and silently walked into the bathroom, placing his things on the counter. The following week, she found a few pairs of his boxers as she sorted through the laundry in her hamper, and a few days later, he’d walked into her apartment (he’d confiscated the spare key she kept outside underneath a potted fern) holding a take-out bag of Italian in one hand with her fresh dry-cleaning draped over one shoulder. She’d been sitting at the counter, paying bills on her laptop, and her mouth had dropped open at the sight. He dropped the dry-cleaning on the couch, food on the table, and used the opportunity to mold his firm lips to hers, starting with a slow, sensual kiss that quickly turned urgent. She found herself propped on the barstool, breathlessly holding onto the counter behind her as he drove into her, leaving her mindless with thrust after agonizing thrust.

And so it had continued.

At work between rounds, she’d recite possible openers to conversations with him about what exactly was going on.

“So, as of a few months ago, we hated each other, but now you’re basically living with me?”

Or a lighthearted, “
Aren't we a little too old to be playing house?”

Or just a simple, 
"What are we?"

But the more time that passed, the more he made her laugh at his charming wit or set her skin on fire. She found herself not wanting an answer. Avoiding the topic was easiest, because if he shrugged off what was happening between them as a casual nothing, reality just might crush her. 

So she found herself keeping her mouth shut and going with the flow ... and avoiding her brother and his new wife. The moment they saw her, they'd know something was up.  She'd never been very good about hiding her feelings—with the exception of Sean. 

She turned her attention back to Leah. “It doesn’t matter. He’s not going to find out.”

“What if it turns into more? What are you going to do then?” she persisted.

“It’s just sex,” Grace insisted stubbornly. 

Leah looked at her suspiciously. “So if you found out he was doing someone else right now, you’d be okay with it? Fuck buddies don’t owe each other anything.”

Bile rose in her throat at the thought. “No. We decided to be physically exclusive.”

Her friend’s eyes nearly crossed. “Physically exclusive? Are you kidding me?  Okay smarty-pants, what are you going to do if he meets a girl he doesn’t sleep with, but he really likes? Likes so much that he breaks things off with you?”

Bury myself in Haagan Daaz and never leave my apartment. Get a million cats and become a hoarder. 

“That’s his prerogative.” She shrugged nonchalantly. 

Leah snorted indelicately and popped another grape in her mouth. “Just sex, my ass.”

Chapter Seven

She'd managed to avoid them for weeks before she was mandatorily summoned for a shopping excursion followed by dinner at their house. After a full day of shopping, she and Sophie sat at an outdoor table of a café, sipping coffee.

Her sister-in-law’s eyes gleamed. “I know Lucas thinks it’s incredibly tacky, but I just love a good deal.”

She raised a brow and twisted her lips. “Soph, you are the only person in the world who married a rich dude and still wears sandals from TJ Maxx.”

“They might be from TJ Maxx, but they’re Prada!”

She grinned, taking comfort in the fact that some things would never change, including her family.

Except for the fact that she was sleeping with her brother’s best man. 

Guilt raced through her, and she could feel the color suffuse her face, and for the millionth time she wondered what the hell she was doing? 

She inhaled a shaky breath, and her sister-in-law looked at her in concern.

“Grace, you okay?”

She nodded. The smile she’d hoped was reassuring felt like it was stretched tightly across her face. “Just thinking about a patient at work,” she lied.

“Is everything going to be okay?”

At Sophie’s concerned question, guilt pored over her, and she delivered a swift, mental kick to her brain for lying.

“I think it’ll be fine,” she reassured all the while unable to stop her thoughts from taking over.

You are 
so
 going to fry in hell.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When Lucas called to invite him out for golf, Sean was wary. Lucas was never one for golf, but then again, Lucas had never been married.

Then again, you should have never slept with his little sister, asshole
.

Maybe he’d somehow found out and was waiting to bash him in the head with one of his new irons.

He tried to squash his uncooperative thoughts. “You look like hell,” his friend commented as he strolled onto the green of the golf course.

He knew he hadn’t been sleeping much, but Lucas wouldn’t appreciate the reason why. He gave him a dry look. “Nice to see you too, asswipe.”

Lucas smirked at his him. “Watch what you say to me. Remember the last time I kicked your ass?”

“Punching me for kissing Becky Martin before I hit my growth spurt twenty years ago doesn’t count.” Sean rolled his eyes as he picked up a club from the caddy. “So what’s with the golf? You finally manage to tear yourself away from Sophie for more than a couple hours?”

Lucas grinned at the mention of his wife. “Something like that,” he said with a small smile before his expression turned somber. “I actually wanted to talk to you about something.”

Sean felt a mild flare of panic, but he was pretty sure Grace hadn’t said anything. If she had, Lucas would’ve been on his doorstep with a steel baseball bat in no time.  Distracted by his thoughts, he took his first swing. 

 “Your game sucks ass.”

Irritated, he turned back to Lucas. “You were saying? You wanted to talk to me about something?”

“I’m worried about Grace.”

He swallowed nervously. Maybe Lucas would exact his torture slowly. He could be a masochistic bastard where his sister was concerned.

“Why? And what do I have to do with it?” he asked suspiciously.

“We think she’s depressed. We haven’t seen her in months, and Sophie had to beg and plead to get her out of the house today. She’s lost weight, and every time I call her, she rushes me off the phone with some excuse that she can’t talk because she’s busy.”

Sean drew his brows together in what he hoped looked like concern. He remembered, in vivid Technicolor, some of those times Lucas and exactly what he’d done to Grace to distract her. He tried to avoid looking directly at his friend as he moved to select another club. 

“Like I asked before, what does this have to do with me?” he muttered, hoping his voice sounded normal and guilt-free. 

“You two have always gotten on each other’s nerves. Tonight at dinner, try to rile her up a bit.”

Sean stared stupidly.

“Why?”

Lucas looked at him warily out of the corner of his eye as he got ready to tee up. “Because. If she sits there and takes it … then we know something’s wrong. If she doesn’t, well, then, we know she’s hiding something.” He swung the club and hit the ball with a hard 
thwack.
 

Sean pictured his head in the place of the golf ball and swallowed. He contemplated backing out for a moment. No telling how they would be around each other in front of her brother and his wife.

But crazy as it was, he couldn’t wait to be around her again. Even as he’d rolled out of her bed that morning to get ready to meet her brother, he felt a yearning sensation he hadn’t felt before. Even as she’d swatted him away when he went to press his mouth against hers, her sleepy gaze smiled into his as her mouth opened in welcome. They’d each made plans for the day with Lucas and Sophie, respectively. He was willing to bet his bank account she had no clue about dinner tonight. 

He would try to squeeze a text in to warn her. They had to get it over with at some point. Once Lucas and Sophie decided to start popping out babies, it was inevitable that they would have to see each other at christenings, birthdays, and whatever other parties his friend’s wife had in mind. They had to figure out a way to be around other people, namely her sibling and his wife, and her parents. It was going to be a struggle to act normal and not rip each other’s clothes off, but at some point they had to figure it out.

 “You know she might completely ignore me,” he said casually as he picked up a club, examining the end of a Ping nine iron. “Wish I had my own damned clubs with me,” he muttered under his breath.

“Don’t make excuses for why your game sucks before it begins,” Lucas quipped. “Besides, the only time she’s ever kept her mouth shut around you was after you made fun of her for getting her period.” He brightened. “That’s exactly what you need to do. Just bring her along for a stroll on memory lane.” 

Shit, he’d forgotten about that. Sean winced just as he swung, missing the hole by at least ten yards. He cursed as his friend crowed with laughter. 

Tonight was going to be interesting, if nothing else. 

As they continued the game, a fine sheen of sweat had broken out over his body, and he knew it had nothing to do with the weather.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Later that afternoon after they’d returned from golf, a sense of overwhelming doom descended in the pit of his stomach as he followed Lucas towards his backyard pool. 

Everything seemed to happen all at once.

Sophie smiled widely in delight, and Grace, clad in a pretty pink and white striped one-piece bathing suit, bolted for her brother. She hadn’t seen
him
yet.

He inwardly groaned as the movement caused her breasts to bounce softly.

Fuck.

“Sean! It’s so good to see you!” Sophie exclaimed, hugging him warmly.

Grace paused mid-embrace and peered over her brother’s shoulder at him. He could see a dull flush start to spread across her cheeks. He couldn’t help the grin that spread across his face.

“Sophie,” he greeted, his eyes twinkling at her. “You get more and more gorgeous every time I see you.”

“You are so full of it,” she smirked, releasing him from her embrace before turning to her sister-in-law. “Grace, come say hi, and you two play nice!”

Grace had disentangled herself from her brother and was now staring nervously at him. Clearly, she hadn’t expected him.

This could be fun.

He turned in her direction, his gaze colliding with hers. Her eyes were the same deep gray as a horizon on the verge of a thunderstorm. Her hair was pulled up in some sort of messy top-knot, a few wispy tendrils caressing her face. His eyes eagerly drank in the sight of her. She looked like a fifties pin-up model with her hips flaring out into generous curves, poured into her bathing suit.

She looked decidedly chaste, yet sexy.  He supposed the one-piece was meant to be conservative, but on her, it was anything but.

A throat cleared from behind him, and he glanced at Lucas.

He took her hand and brought it to his lips. “We’ll play nice just fine,” he murmured against her skin. As she jerked her hand away, he tightened his grip, letting his middle finger stroke along the underside of her palm.

He brought his eyes back to hers. Oh yeah, she wanted to kill him.

He heard her mutter “asshole” under her breath.

“Grace?” Sophie looked at her questioningly

She pasted a bright fake smile on her face. “Oh, nothing, I was just saying ‘Sean, nice shorts.’”

Sophie frowned. Grace’s last comment sounded nothing like what she’d said under her breath, but then again, she hadn’t heard her clearly. She looked at her husband, who was examining the clouds with great interest, and then she saw, really saw Sean’s swimming trunks, and she broke out into laughter.

“Sean, I’m so sorry. How did he get you into these?”

Sean narrowed his eyes as he turned to face the culprit responsible. “He said he didn’t have anything else for me to wear,” he grit out.

Lucas smirked. “What Sean is really saying is that everything else I had was too big for him. I didn’t want him to feel inadequate, so I gave him these.” He shrugged innocently and flashed a wicked smile of white, even teeth.

“You want me to get someone to vouch for my size, asshole?” Sean threatened.

“Delicate ears, gentlemen!” Sophie warned. “You’re making my poor Grace blush. Put the figurative swords away boys, and let’s go have a few cocktails. We have the loungers over there,” Sophie pointed out.

Sean snuck a glance at Grace, and sure as hell, her cheeks were adorably stained a deep pink. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, and as their eyes clashed, he raised an eyebrow in silent challenge. She turned her head so quickly, he was sure that if she’d moved any faster, she’d get whiplash.