When You Wish (Contemporary Romance) (9 page)

The way she said that made Dan think she didn’t approve, and he had to wonder why. But before he could ask, the sky opened and poured rain on them as if it had been holding a bucket over their heads all along. Grace’s white dress plastered to her body and made Dan forg
et all about her dad, the attorney.

He took one step toward the house, but Grace held back, turning her face up to the sky and letting the rain tumble down her cheeks. He’d have thought the droplets were tears if he hadn’t heard her laugh out loud.

She let go of his hand and turned her palms up toward the raging sky, raising her arms until she stood like a sacrifice to the hidden moon. Slowly, she turned, a single, graceful revolution—a dance with the music of the night.

Dan couldn’t move; he could only stare at her in wonder as his body clamored for hers.

The lack of moisture all summer had made the ground hard everywhere but in the forest, and the sudden, unexpected abundance of water ran in rivulets along the dusty yard. Dan hadn’t seen the point in watering grass that was already dead. So he possessed a yard full of dirt that would soon be mud, if the rain continued to fall.

Grace lowered her hands, lowered her head, kicked off her shoes, and wiggled her toes in the tiny river that ran by
. Joy spread over her face, capturing him once again. “Ah, that feels so good after walking so long.”

It was as if their argument had never happened. The terror in the woods gone, the tension between them moot. The woman lived in the moment, taking pleasure from whatever came along. Dan watched her and he wanted to do that, too. But he had no idea how.

Then she smiled at him through the rain, and his heart nearly stopped. “Take off your shoes, Doc. Live a little.”

Dan stiffened. Take off his shoes? Stand in the rain? Squelch his toes through the mud?

He shrugged. Why not? Dan yanked off the two-hundred-dollar shoes his sister had given him on his last birthday, tossed them aside, and sent his socks tumbling after.

Grace was right. The rain soothed his heated feet, the dirt became mud beneath his toes, and he liked it. What he liked even more was the thought of his mother’s face if she could see him right now. She’d have a kitten.

Dan laughed out loud, then threw his head back and drank of the rain and the night.

Chapter
Six

For Grace the world was made up of the scent of evergreens at Christmas, the flavor of lemonade on the Fourth of July, and the softness of a baby bunny’s fur at Easter. Those things were good things—tactile memories to hold in your heart and take out when life got tough.

She added another memory right then and there. The sight of Dan Chadwick in the rain—a temptation so great she didn’t think she could resist. So she stood and watched the man come alive before her eyes.

The rain plastered his shirt to his chest, defining the muscles, clinging to his biceps. She wanted to touch that shirt, sl
ip her fingers beneath the neckline, rub her knuckles along his collarbone, and press her mouth to the pulse that called her name, while peeking from between the open buttons of his shirt.

The way he’d kicked off his shoes—so stiff and jerky—as if he’d never done such a thing before, Grace had figured he wouldn’t last a minute out in the rain. As soon as the first droplet hit his head he’d run for the cabin to avoid melting like the Wicked Witch of the West.

She’d waited for him to fold his socks neatly, or stuff them into his shoes. When he tossed them into the growing river of mud, he earned a three-point bonus from Grace.

The rain darkene
d his hair; the mud squished between his toes. She could smell Dan, an enticing combination of musk and man and one more thing she couldn’t quite identify. That scent tickled the edge of her mind, just beyond the tip of her tongue, hovering, waiting . . .

Crack!

Lightning. Electricity.
Close
. Not Dan at all, but danger. She grabbed him.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“We’re too close to the trees. Let’s get inside.”

“Not yet.” He did a fancy two-step in the mud. “I thought we were going to live a little.”

Lightning flashed.
Closer
. The trees were too great an enticement.

“There’s a time to live and a time to die, which is what we’ll be doing if we get barbecued because we’re too dumb to come in from the rain.”

She tugged on Dan’s hand again, and he reluctantly took a step after her. Grace had a funny feeling at the back of her neck, as if the hair stood on end. She picked up the pace, yanking Dan along with her, not an easy task.

The acrid scent of electricity filled the air; the hair on Grace’s arms tingled. Her body hummed with the energy that surrounded them.
Something wicked this way comes
, she thought, and started to run.

They’d almost reached the relative safety of the porch when Dan slid in the mud river. It was like watching someone skate on glare ice—someone who had no idea how to skate. Dan’s bare feet skidded a neat double furrow in the yard, right before those feet flipped up and
he fell flat on his back. Unfortunately, they were connected at the hand and Grace went down, too—right on top of Dan.

Then lightning hit where they’d been standing. The earth beneath them shook; the air sizzled. Dan dumped her unce
remoniously into the mud, covering her body with his.

The ground was cool at her back. The man was warm all along her front. The wind smelled of flames and the rain. Dan had his face pressed along her neck, and when his lips moved against her skin, a prayer or maybe a curse, she shuddered.

He lifted his head and looked toward the trees. “There’s a fire,” he said, amazement in his voice.

Grace followed the direction of his gaze. Mud squelched into her hair. Sure enough, one of the trees at the edge of the forest had been struck and flames shot upward. But even as she watched, rain hit the fire and a hissing noise filled the air. “It’s all right. The rain will put out the fire.”

He turned back and lifted a mud-caked brow. “Sure?”

“Yes.” Thunder rumbled in the distance. The rain slowed from a torrent to a trickle. The fire went out with a last, dying
poof
. The storm fled as quickly as it had come.

Grace became aware of a rock pressing into her rump and Dan’s knee digging into her calf. What had felt good amidst the wildness of the storm had become uncomfortable as reality returned. Wasn’t that always the way?

“Thank you for the gallant gesture . . . ” Grace shifted and the rock dug deeper. She shoved at Dan’s shoulders. He was as immovable as that rock. “But we can get up now. The storm’s gone.”

The clouds drifted off, too, revealing the moon once more. A silver halo surrounded Dan’s head, throwing shadows
all about him and making it difficult to decipher his expression. Grace didn’t see the kiss coming until his lips pressed against hers.

She forgot the rock at her back, the knee against her legs, and the weight of the man pressing her into mud that didn’t feel quite so good anymore. Because, as before, the kiss certainly did.

They had mud on their faces, mud on their hands, mud all over their feet and their clothes. But it just didn’t matter. All that mattered was what happened when their lips joined.

Dan’s kiss was so incredibly good it had to be bad, Grace thought, even as she wrapped her arms about the broad shoulders that blocked out the moon, the stars, and the sky, and held him closer to her.

There was some reason she shouldn’t be kissing this man, but she couldn’t recall what that reason was. So Grace threw caution to the winds, something she was very good at, and let him kiss her while she kissed him right back.

He nibbled at her
lips as if he had all night. Actually they did. Where were they going but into the cabin? And then . . .

Grace pushed away those implications so she could enjoy the moment. There were a lot of good things about enjoying the moment, something her mother always preached, and her father never learned. That omission had killed him in the end.

Her mouth opened beneath Dan’s questing tongue. He tasted of rainwater and storm wind, an arousing combination she wanted to taste again. So she swept her tongue out to meet his and they tangoed a moment or two.

He moaned as she tugged his lip into her mouth, suckling, tasting, teasing. Her fingers tangled in his hair, holding him to her because right now she did not want to let him go.

He shifted, and the weight of his body eased to the side. Now his knee pressed into her thigh—or perhaps it wasn’t his knee. She shifted, too, bumping her hip along that hardness. He pulled his mouth from hers on a hiss that sounded of pain, and she murmured soothing nonsense against his jaw. His hand cupped her hip and pulled her against him— hill to valley, hard to soft, man to woman.

He resurrected their kiss; his body blotted out the night, pressing against her where she wanted him the most.

Then headlights pinned them. They had been so engrossed in what they made each other feel, as inappropriate and dangerous as it was, that they had not heard the car approach until too late.

Once again Dan put himself between Grace and danger, even though he’d be better off not to. She was the one at home here; he was merely meat if the wild animals ever got a hold of him. And the wildest animals of all did not live in the forest—as was proven by the man who climbed out of the car.

“Gracie, what are you doing rolling in the mud with this very bad man?” Olaf bellowed.

“Uh-oh,” Grace murmured.

Dan glanced at her with a frown. “Uh-oh? Don’t say ‘Uh-oh.’”

Grace sat up. She didn’t think lying on the ground was the best option at this point, although a moment ago rolling in the mud had been quite appealing. “What should I say?”

“Say I’m not a very bad man. Say this was your idea” —he stood and waved a hand at the mud puddle they’d been wrestling in— “not mine.”

Now she was annoyed. He made it sound like she’d pulled him down and taken his virtue by force. Grace stood, too, and put her hands on her hips, as she spread her bare feet wide and dug her toes into the wet earth. “I’d be happy to do that, except this wasn’t my idea.”

“Well, it wasn’t mine either. It was an accident.”

“Accident? Accident?” Olaf slammed the car door. Both Grace and Dan jumped. The huge man stalked toward them. “I know what means accident. There better not ha
ve been an accident with my Gracie.”

“What does he mean by ‘my Gracie’? He’s awfully mad for a business partner.”

Grace went from annoyed to downright furious in the space of a single sentence out of Dr. Chadwick’s mouth. She admitted to having a temper, but Dan seemed to have an uncommon ability to rile her. “Just what are you insinuating, Doctor?”

“I just want to know why I’m about to be torn limb from limb. Is he the irate father type, or the homicidal boyfriend?”

“Boyfriend? Are you crazy? He’s over fifty.”

“So? Some women like that. Just tell me and I’ll step aside.”

She wanted to slug him so bad her hands balled into fists. But she’d never been the violent type—until she met Dan.

What did Mama always say? Hate rides the winds of love. Perhaps anger was the other side of lust. Because while she wanted very much to slug Dr. Dan, the scent of his skin, the storm-blue of his eyes, and the memory of those clever lips also made her want to kiss him all over again.

A huge hand came down on her shoulder. “Gracie, it is time to go. No more rolling in the mud with the bad man.”

“I am
not
a bad man!”

“That is a matter of opinion.” Olaf sniffed. “My Gracie goes off, and she does not come home. Em she is worried, and when Em is worried, my heart cries. So I go to look and I find Gracie’s car, and your car, bad man,
with the distributor caps missing.”

“Distributor caps!” Grace exclaimed.

“Ah, ha!” Dan said, and pointed his finger in the air as if he’d just discovered a new drug.

“Perry,” Dan and Grace said at the same time.

“Perry?” Olaf glanced at Grace. She nodded.

Olaf’s scowl was sinister. He’d never liked Perry either. In fact, Olaf didn’t like anyone who wasn’t a Jewel or a relative thereof.

“So you see, Olaf,” Dan said, in a perfectly reasonable, doctor-like voice, which was spoiled by the sight of him barefoot and covered in mud. “I had no nefarious designs on your Gracie.”

“I only know what I saw. And I think to myself when I find cars and no people—where would my Gracie be? And I wonder about the bad man.”

Dan scowled and opened his mouth to protest. Olaf ignored him. Olaf was on a roll. “Then I come here and what do I find? The bad man behaving with inappropriateness to my Gracie. Again.”

Olaf stepped forward, and when Grace would have intervened, he silenced her with a look. Olaf had been her teacher, her mentor, her best friend, and her advisor fo
r a very long time. When her father died and bad things began to happen, she had run away, but she had found Olaf. His no-nonsense way of looking at life and saying whatever he thought had soothed her broken heart and calmed her raging soul.