Still scowling, Grady loomed closer until their lips were a breath apart and Ella was sure he could hear the thunder of her heartbeat. “Then why are you here?”
The reminder of what was at stake was like a glass of cold water dumped over her head. Drawing in a shaky breath that smelled like sun-warmed skin and saddle leather, Ella said, “I’m here for Merry. She wants a relationship with Jo Ellen, and I’m here for moral support. Nothing else.”
And I can’t let you distract me … no matter how good you smell.
The scowl faded from Grady’s face, but the focused power of his gaze never lessened, even when he cocked his head at an angle to study her. One corner of his mouth curled up, making Ella’s stare drop down to trace the sensual shape of his lips. She wondered how he would taste.
“I like the way you talk about your sister. She’s lucky to have you.”
Ella made her living off her ability to read people, to size them up and figure out the tactics that would work best to get what she wanted in any negotiation. But she couldn’t seem to get a handle on Grady Wilkes.
Rattled, she ignored the warm, speculative gleam in his eyes. “Are you almost done?”
“What? Oh. Should be. C’mon, give me your hands.”
He stood and she slid her hands against the worn, butter-soft leather of his gloves, suppressing a shiver at the way his eyes darkened as his fingers closed around hers.
“Here we go,” he said, lifting.
This time, Ella couldn’t bite back a thin cry as the move wrenched her ankle, sending a sickening jolt of pain up her leg.
She was still gasping when sudden, intense heat surrounded her. Grady dropped to his knees and scooted close enough to snake one long arm into the widened hole he’d made around her leg.
“I think my foot is caught on something,” she managed, her head still swimming from the pain.
His only answer was to tilt his chin down in concentration. Ella stared at Grady’s face bent so close, the solid bulk of his muscular body held still, his power leashed and tamed as his fingers groped her foot and ankle.
“Wait,” she cried, suddenly afraid. “I don’t think you should be touching that…”
“It’s okay,” he told her. “I’m trained for this.”
“You have training in getting women out of porches?” Ella wanted to laugh, but she was afraid to give in to the hysteria bubbling up in her throat.
“Sort of.” He paused for a long moment before reluctantly continuing. “Back before I moved here from Dallas, I was part of Texas Task Force One, an urban search-and-rescue team.”
Another puzzle piece slotted into place, and it calmed Ella’s nerves like nothing else could have. “So … I guess this isn’t even close to the craziest rescue you’ve ever attempted.”
A half smile tugged at his mouth, but didn’t reach his green eyes. “This ain’t exactly my first rodeo, no.”
Ella took a deep breath, bracing herself. “Okay. Go ahead.”
The fingers were back, but before she even had time to tense up, he said, “Got it.”
She felt a grating pressure against the bones at the top of her foot and controlled her instinctive wince, but there was no sharp pain, only a swift relief as she realized she could wiggle her foot from side to side.
“Let’s try this again,” he said.
Grady hooked his hands under her arms in a tantalizing imitation of an embrace that had Ella’s heart hammering. At the brush of his cheek against hers, the rough scratch of his golden-brown stubble, Ella had to bite back another sound—but this time it was a moan of need.
Feeling half crazy and dizzy with the onslaught of too many conflicting feelings, Ella let her hands steal up to clutch at his flannel-covered shoulders.
“Do it,” she said, bracing herself for another jab from a broken board, but between one heartbeat and the next, Grady hauled her up and out of the hole … and straight into his arms.
CHAPTER 7
Okay, Ella, you can do this. Stand on your own two feet.
But the instant she gathered the fraying threads of her self-control and pulled away from Grady’s steadying arms, her ankle protested with a ferocious twinge that sent her wobbling.
She nearly fell over before Grady caught her with his large hands wrapped around her upper arms.
Closing her eyes in an embarrassed wince, Ella said, “Thank you. I seem to have twisted my ankle a little. I’m sure it’ll be all right in a second.”
“Or it could be broken,” he pointed out, staring down her body as if he could perform an X-ray with his naked eyes. “What’s with the stoic act, anyway? It’s okay to admit you might be hurt, you know.”
No it’s not.
Swallowing back the gut reaction, Ella called up a smile. “Of course. I just don’t see what good it does for me to whine about it.”
His gaze snapped to hers as if she’d said something bizarre. Mouth twisting into something closer to a grimace than a smile, he said, “I get that.”
Ella stared at him, every inch of her aware of the taut, sculpted muscle beneath his bulky plaid shirt. And all Ella could do was wonder what he’d been through in his life to put that look on his face.
Probably, it wasn’t exactly what she’d been through. Chances were slim that he’d spent his childhood with a mother sliding into raging alcoholism and a father who detached himself from his family to save his own sanity. Grady had probably never felt like he had to be grown-up by the age of seven, because he had a little sister who didn’t understand what was going on, but still knew something was very wrong at home. He’d probably never dreaded the possibility of teachers or guidance counselors finding out about it, never pushed himself so hard to appear normal, without really knowing what normal even felt like.
But all the same, as she stood there in the circle of his arms and stared up into his eyes, she felt a connection unfurling between them like the tender green vines creeping up the side of the house. A perfect empathy unlike anything she’d ever experienced in years of talking candidly to professional therapists, even Adrienne.
Without warning, something inside her opened up, a tightly closed bud stretching toward the first sunlight of spring.
His gaze dropped to her lips, and Ella’s heartbeat quickened. The moment went taut, suspended and fragile between them, as if they were holding something delicate and infinitely breakable in the cradle of their bodies. Slowly, almost in a daze, Ella tilted her head back. Just a little.
Just enough.
As if aware that a sudden movement would shatter the moment, Grady dipped his head to take what she was offering.
His lips moved over hers softly, a questing touch that barely grazed her mouth, but somehow sent shivers of sensation cascading down her spine. Ella’s lungs ached and burned until she remembered to breathe, sighing against his lips, and the kiss changed.
Grady’s careful grip tightened, pulling her closer, so close she was all but burrowing into the solid warmth of his chest. He made a hungry noise that reverberated through her chest, and when she gasped, he stroked his tongue along the sensitive flesh of her bottom lip.
His eyes darkened, and Ella realized this was the first time she’d ever kissed anyone with her eyes open. It was odd, almost too intimate, and some part of her cowered away from the frightening vulnerability of letting him see what he was doing to her.
But she couldn’t bring herself to close her eyes. She couldn’t look away from him and what he was telling her without words. Whatever Grady was saying, it was in a language Ella didn’t know yet—but with every beat of his heart against hers, she felt herself groping toward understanding.
A truck engine rattled and coughed, heavy wheels churning up the gravel of the driveway.
Ella snapped back into reality with an unpleasant sensation of whiplash. Jerking her head back, she blinked into Grady’s intense stare. Her lips were still buzzing and tingling from his kiss. Every part of her body that had been touching his now felt cold and bereft.
Oh dear Lord. What am I doing?
A hot flush crawled up her neck, and she squeezed her eyes shut and pulled out of his arms, desperate to escape the unbearable strangeness of this whole episode.
What had she been thinking? Dreaming up some mystical, spiritual connection with a man she’d known for all of fifteen minutes, letting him save her and then swooning into his arms like some pathetic, helpless damsel offering herself up for a kiss?
It’s this island,
Ella thought hysterically as she put some much needed distance between herself and Grady.
Sanctuary Island is doing something to me. It’s turning me into an insane person.
The loud, dark blue pickup truck rumbled to a stop in front of the house, and the driver’s side door opened. Ella barely had time to smooth a trembling hand over her hair and make sure her shirt was still neatly tucked in before a tall, spare woman stepped down from the truck’s cab.
The woman shaded her eyes with one hand as she stared up at the porch, and when she smiled, Ella wished she were still standing close enough to Grady for his strong arms to steady her. That smile made the entire world tilt like the D.C. metro train taking a sharp curve.
That smile. Bright, open, infectious, inviting whoever saw it to share the joke. Ella had seen that smile a thousand times, growing up. But never before on her mother’s face.
That was Merry’s smile.
“Well, now.” The woman’s throaty voice, laced with a combination of nerves and amusement, sent a shock of recognition all the way to Ella’s bones. “Looks like Grady is making you feel right at home.”
Ella gathered the tattered shreds of her dignity around her and drew herself up as straight as she could manage without flinching at the low throb of pain in her stupid ankle. “Yes, he’s been very helpful.”
And to think, Ella had been sure that when she saw her mother in the flesh for the first time in fifteen years, she’d feel nothing.
The seething well of messy emotions bubbling in her chest was certainly not nothing. Shocked at herself and taken completely off guard, Ella struggled to find some sort of equilibrium.
Eyes sharp on Ella’s face, Jo Ellen appeared to be gauging every word carefully. “Ella. It’s been … you look good. Wonderful, really. How are you doing?”
The stilted question flayed along Ella’s raw nerves like a razor blade. It seemed as if Jo were asking for a lot more than an update on Ella’s health and well-being.
“I’m fine,” she said, schooling her voice and her expression to show nothing. She didn’t want to give this woman anything, and wow, did she ever need a minute to catch her balance. “You should go inside. Merry is looking forward to seeing you.”
Next to her, Grady lifted a hand to her shoulder, and the warm, heavy weight of it was an anchor in a stormy sea. Ella straightened her spine and lifted her chin, pathetically grateful for the surprising show of support.
“And you weren’t,” Jo clarified, her voice quiet but unsurprised. “Well. That’s certainly … understandable. Thank you for coming anyway—it means a lot to me to have you here.”
“Look. I don’t mean to be harsh,” Ella found herself saying, even though she did mean to. Didn’t she? “But I don’t think there’s any point in beginning this visit under false pretenses.”
“So tell me, what you do want from this visit?” Jo Ellen said.
“I’m not here to act out some movie-of-the-week tearjerker.” Ella’s voice had gone raspy, the words ripping from her throat like bolts shot from an arrow. “I’m not going to fall into your arms and call you mom. I’m not here for you at all. I’m here for Merry. That’s it.”
She saw—actually saw—every one of those words strike home. That smile Jo Ellen had stolen from her youngest daughter melted away, leaving Jo looking up at the porch with an expression Ella couldn’t decipher.
“I see.” Jo stood tall, solid, completely unlike Ella’s memories of broken-down desperation. “In the interest of clarity, let me tell you what I’m expecting from this visit.”
Ella braced herself, ready to fend off her mother’s emotional demands for a renewed relationship, her desire to reconnect, to rehash the past, to apologize—Ella didn’t want to hear any of it.
Apparently, that wasn’t what Jo had in mind.
“I want you to get to know the island,” Jo said. “This place is part of your family history, and you deserve the chance to discover where you come from.”
It took Ella a long moment to switch gears. “Um, sure. It seems like a nice place.”
“It is,” Grady said. His deep, certain answer was aimed at Ella, but when she glanced at him, he was watching Jo. The two of them seemed to be having a silent conversation using only their eyes.
His hand still gripped her shoulder, and Ella fought a moment of vertigo. Was it weird to feel so much more of a connection to this man she’d just met than she did to her own mother? “And it’s small, too, which is nice. I can’t imagine it will take me long to see all the sights.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. I bet it would take a month, at least, to really plumb the depths of what Sanctuary has to offer,” Jo said lightly.
“One week,” Ella countered, her inner negotiator zooming to the fore.
“Three weeks,” Jo returned, with a hopeful smile.
“Two. And that’s my final offer—that’s all the vacation time I’ve got.”
Technically true, although this wasn’t exactly a vacation. Paul Bishop had told her he didn’t want to see her back in the office until she’d put on five pounds and lost the bags under her eyes. But there was no way she was admitting that to Jo Ellen.
“Okeydoke.” Jo’s smile widened into a grin, and there it was again, that so familiar, much-loved smile looking completely out of place … and yet, right at home on Jo’s angular face. “I can work with two weeks.”
Somehow, Ella realized, she’d gotten the short end of this deal.
“I know you don’t want to hear this,” Jo said, staring up at Ella. “And I know you won’t believe me right now, because I destroyed any trust you ever had in me a long time ago. But I’m going to make sure you don’t regret coming to Sanctuary Island. That’s a promise.”
Ella felt herself seize up with tension, as if someone had strung a wire through her shoulder blades and pulled it taut. Grady, who obviously noticed, stepped up to stand beside her. His voice was a deep rumble in her ear. “And when Hollister women make a promise, they never break their word.”