When You Wish (Contemporary Romance) (23 page)

Lying beneath the sun after having great sex twice with Grace.

Suddenly, panic rocked him and the peace he’d searched for all his life fled. What had he done? Where was his brain? Not functioning when he needed it the most. Disentangling himself from her despite her mumbled protests, Dan sat up and cast a frantic glance about. There! There they were! He grabbed his pants, yanked out his wallet, and scrambled madly for—

“What are you trying to find?”

He glanced at her. She sat up, staring at him in sleepy confusion, so at ease with her nakedness, her skin a luscious golden-bronze, shimmering beneath the summer sun. His mind went numb, and he just stared, wanting her all over again.

She snapped her fingers in front of his face. “What do you have there, Doc?”

He held up an unopened foil packet, unable to speak for the horror.

She looked at it for a moment, then returned her unfathomable gaze to his. She shrugged. “Oops.”

“Oops? Oops? All you can say is oops? This is serious, Grace. And all my fault.” He put his free hand to his forehead and rubbed the burgeoning ache. “I’m sorry. I’ve had this thing in my wallet for years. I’ve never been very good at suave and debonair maneuvers.”

“Thank God.”

“Huh?” He dropped his hand.

“Suave and debonair is not my type. Relax, Dan. I’ve got the pregnancy issue covered.”

“You do?”

“I may be free-spirited, but I’m not an idiot. And no, I don’t sleep around. You would be the . . .”
She tapped her lip with her finger.  “Second guy I’ve slept with in this lifetime.” Before he could question that little tidbit, she continued. “From the age of that condom, it looks like you don’t sleep around either, so we have the other issue covered.”

Dan hung his head so she wouldn’t see him blush. Such frank talk embarrassed him. He just wasn’t a gigolo.

She scooted closer so they bumped hips. Her hand slid along his arm, and her fingers laced with his. “Hey, how come a hunk like you has a prehistoric condom?”

“Hunk?” Dan’s head came up and he stared at her, amazed. “Me?”

“Yes, you. Don’t tell me girls with glasses haven’t been hanging on your arm since you put out your doctor shingle.”

“Uh, not exactly.”

“It’s okay. You can tell me.”

“Quit teasing, Grace.
I’m not much of a stud muffin.”

She squeezed his hand. “You are to me.”

He stared into her eyes for a long moment. She looked serious. He’d have to think about that.
Later
. Right now he had questions of his own. “Why would a woman like you be alone so long?”

Her face, which
had been open and smiling, suddenly became shuttered and sad. “Because of how I look.”

“You lost me.”

“Guys think it would be exotic to date an Indian. Hey, savages must be wild in bed, right?”

Dan winced. How crude. “Who thinks that?”

“Never mind. The fact is most men don’t want to date
me
. They’re interested in my face or fascinated with the color of my skin. Which is it for you, Dan?”

If he hadn’t caught the need in her eyes and the vulnerable tremble of her mouth, he would have been insulted. Someone had hurt her badly. He wanted to take them
apart with his bare hands. Suddenly Olaf’s anger at him made a lot of sense. The only thing Dan could do to heal her pain was to ensure he didn’t hurt her again. He’d merrily let Olaf tear an arm out of the socket if that happened.

“I’m not saying you aren’t exotic.” She turned away, staring out at the lake. “That’s the first thing I noticed when I saw you step around that oriental screen. I’m not going to apologize because I thought you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. But I told you once you have a Ferrari inside, Grace, and I meant that. I quit seeing your face the second time I saw you.”

He cupped her cheek in his palm and turned her face so he could look into those deep, dark eyes.

“So what do you see now?” she whispered.

“I only see the you behind those eyes.”

Her smile lit up the sky at dusk. Her kiss made him forget som
ething he suddenly needed to remember. A long while later, that something came to him.

The sun was setting. The day was through.

His experiment was ruined.

Chapter
Fourteen

Dan shot up from the raft like a rocket and started getting dressed, muttering to himself in a distracted, panicked litany that made Grace nervous. Had too much sun and extre
mely great sex fried his incredible brain?

He didn’t even bother to tell her what was wrong. He just finished dressing and got into the bo
at, murmuring something that sounded like “Rebellion is bad.”

Grace sat on the blanket and watched him get ready to leave her
in the middle of a great big nowhere. Had she really thought his absentminded muttering cute?

“Hey, Doc, where do you think you’re going?”

“Huh?” He glanced up from his panicked fumbling with the oars, blinked at her as if she were a shocking surprise, and scowled. “Grace, get dressed. It’s nearly dark.”

“There aren’t any vampires around here. And the bats won’t bother us. What’s wrong with the dark?”

“I have to get back. What time is it?”

“Nighttime.” She stood and wrapped the blanket around herself.

“What are you doing? Get dressed.”

“That’s a little hard since my shirt is gone, and my shoe is at the bottom of the lake. I think my shorts shrunk. I’ll have to wear this home.” She twisted the blanket into a sarong.

“Whatever. Just hurry.”

She climbed int
o the boat and Dan took off rowing before she settled onto the seat. “What’s the rush?”

“My experiment. I should have been home hours ago. I might still save it if I can get there in the next half hour.”

“Uh-oh.”

Dan stopped rowing, and the boat drifted toward shore. “Don’t say ‘Uh-oh.’”

“All right.” Grace’s heart had started a panic dance of its own. What had she done?

“Say something!”

“Oops?”

Dan groaned. “Spill it.”

“We’re in Minnesota.”

“What?” The single word echoed across the lake.

Grace winced. “You were sleeping all the way here. I drove for two hours.”

He started laughing. He’d definitely blown a brain watt. “Very funny. You had me going.”

“I’m serious.”

He stopped laughing. “Damn.”

He began to row, but more slowly this time. The lack of panic scared Grace more than the panic had. “Dan, say something.”

“What is there to say? I’m not even surprised. This is what happens when I rebel. All my life, every time I tried to do something a little bit different, disaster followed.”

She didn’t like the way he said “do something different.” He’d just done her, and she’d always been different. “You don’t seem the rebellious type.”

“My entire career is a great big rebellion. And now it’s a disaster, too. You think I would have learned my lesson by now. This just proves I learned nothing.”

“What do you mean by ‘this’? I took you away for a day. You deserved a break. We both did. I thought this afternoon was more than an interlude and a hell of a lot more than a little rebellion. Or was I wrong?”

The bottom of the boat scraped the shore and Dan hopped out. He held out his hand to her, but she ignored him. A
different sort of panic had settled in her heart. Had she been wrong about Dan? Was what they had shared during this golden afternoon merely a little walk on the wild side for the good Dr. Chadwick? She found that hard to believe, but she’d been suckered by a man like him before.

He walked toward the car, mumbling again, and she didn’t press the issue. She had issues of her own, thank you.

The drive home was as silent as the drive there had been, but for different reasons. When she stopped in front of the lab, Dan was out of the car and running into the cabin before she could turn off the engine. Grace sat for a long moment staring at the light in the window. Should she stay or should she go? The continued silence from the cabin unnerved her, and she could not just drive away without knowing the truth, or discovering the lie.

He sat where he always did—on a stool at the center island table—but he looked different. Was it because he wore a wrinkled b
lack shirt and no lab coat? Perhaps the bare feet instead of shiny shoes? No, it was the dejected slump of the shoulders instead of the lighthearted movements that usually characterized his mixing and mumbling.

She didn’t speak; she didn’t move, but he knew she was there because he spoke. “Trashed. Wrecked. Ruined. Crap.” He gave a short bark of laughter that didn’t sound amused. Grace didn’t feel like laughing either. “Months of work because I took an afternoon off. You win, Grace.”

“Win what?”

“The whole shebang. The big banana. The grant. The money.”

She’d forgotten. Silly of her. All she’d been thinking about was him. “Who says I win? Who says I want to?”

“This fiasco sets me back at least a year. So I give up, and you win. Your blankie-drop will be funded. And why shouldn’t it be? Isn’t that what these last few weeks have been about?”

“Is it? If that’s what you think, then you don’t know me at all.”

Her cool tone must have penetrated his misery because he turned slowly toward her as she stalked across the distance that separated them. “Sure I want the grant. But not at your expense. Tell me why this is so important to you? Tell me why you’re willing to give up a normal life, your health, your happiness for . . . for . . . for whatever the hell it is you want to cure so badly.”

“Because thousands of people—”

She held up her hand. “No more propaganda, Dan. Tell me the truth.”

For a moment she thought he’d put her off with more drivel. Then he gave a quick nod and spilled it. “My parents were very disappointed in me when I chose this profession.”

“Medical research? I’d think they’d be thrilled and very proud.”

“You’d think. But they said I was wasting myself in research. Truth is, I’m a coward. People make me nervous.”

“I’ve never noticed that about you. Except with Olaf and he makes everyone nervous.”

“I feel comfortable with you and the Jewels. More comfortable than I’ve ever felt with anyone. Even my family. People in pain—all that emotion, focused on me, I didn’t cope well.”

“Maybe that’s because you care too much. What’s the crime in that?”

He flicked a glance at her from beneath his bangs, and his face revealed he’d never thought of that before. “I don’t understand.”

“You care, Dan. I saw you with Em. I’ve seen you with your work. It wouldn’t obsess you so much if you didn’t truly want to help people. Just because you aren’t on the front lines doesn’t mean you aren’t contributing t
o the battle. Quit beating yourself up over who you are. Accept it and be proud. So you like bottles and beakers. Big deal. Someone has to.”

His smile was a shadow of the grin she’d come to crave, but at least he wa
sn’t hanging his head anymore. “I do like being alone with my stuff. My sister, the cardiothoracic surgeon, calls me Dr. Frankenstein.”

“How . . .
cute.” Grace wanted to smack his sister up alongside her head.

“I think my parents would have adjusted if I’d gone to work for one of the big research hospitals and put my brilliance to use curing cancer. But I’ve never been interested in taking the usual path. I chose an underdog disease.”

“Because you’re an underdog.”

He shrugged. “I truly believe that by finding out why a minor infection occurs you can prevent all kinds of major inf
ections. But my parents were embarrassed. Toenail fungus isn’t very glamorous. They told me I was wasting my brilliance.”

“Wasting! You blaze trails from nothing. Why don’t they try it?”

He looked at her like she was some new bug he would like to stick on a pin and put beneath his microscope. Obviously what she thought was big news to him. “At any rate, they disinherited me. I haven’t spoken to them in five years.”

“Good riddance,” Grace muttered.

Dan lifted an eyebrow and his lips twitched. Progress. “I thought if I could make a success of this I’d prove my theory and win them over. But once again—disaster.” The smile dissolved and Grace wanted to kiss those sad, sad lips.

He turned around again and pushed the glass jar with the “crap” in it across the table with his finger. His sigh was long a
nd deep, and wavered in the middle. Grace lost the battle. She had to touch him.

Leaning against his back, she slid her arms around his neck and snuggled her head along his shoulder. He tensed but didn’t shrug her off.

“Maybe you started out wanting to prove your parents wrong, but I think somewhere along the line you discovered you wanted to help the suffering masses more. Forget about the insufferable messes that pretended to be family.”