Saving Grace (Serve and Protect Series) (12 page)

Grace
. She was still punishing her poor thumb. “Yeah, this is perfect,” he reiterated, gesturing to the baggy pants and the skater shoes. “You did great.”

“Really?”

“Really. Next time I go on the lam, you’ll be the first one I call.”

She blinked rapidly, as though she might be fighting tears, but she still managed a smile. “Yeah? I bet you say that to all your fellow fugitives.”

He laughed. Damn, but she kept surprising him. He knew plenty of guys who’d crack under this kind of pressure, but here was Gracie, holding up like a rock. The old Gracie would have buckled. Never mind that the new Gracie had a huge hole in her memory. Never mind that life as she knew it had been torn away this afternoon by a sniper’s bullets.

Ray hauled himself up. What about life as
you
knew it? It had been ripped away the day she’d told him she couldn’t bear to spend another night apart from the man she loved.

He picked up a box of hair dye. “Okay, let’s get this done. What comes first? The cut or the color?”

“The color.”

“Do I get to be red or blond?”

The corners of her mouth lifted. “Definitely blond.”

Ten minutes later, he sat with his hair spiked up in wet tufts.

It had been torture to have her stand close enough to smell her scent, torture to feel her run her fingers through his hair as she applied the hair coloring. He’d sat stiffly, trying not to inhale too deeply, longing for it to be done.

“There,” she announced eventually. “Done.”

She stepped back and peeled off the latex gloves. Perversely, he felt a stab of disappointment at her retreat. Ignoring it, he pushed up off the chair.

“Geez, my scalp is starting to itch already,” he complained. “I have to leave this on
how
long?”

“Wimp,” she said mildly. “Think you can do mine, now?”

He accepted the box from her. “Sure. Nothing to it.”

Except there was. It was damned complicated. Once he got all the goop on her head, a hideous thought occurred to him. “This’ll wash out, right? It’s not
permanent
permanent?”

She smiled without opening her eyes. “I can dye it back later. Why?”

“I like your hair the way it was.”

She opened her eyes, her smile fading. “I think it’s time to rinse yours off.”

“Thank God. How do I do that?”

“Just shampoo it off in the shower. Oh, and use this on your head rather than the motel towel.” She plucked a navy hand towel from the pile of purchases he’d pegged as superfluous. “Some of the dye always comes off on the towel. If we don’t want the motel operators to know what we’ve been up to, we better use our own. And remove our own garbage.”

He shot her a look. “Hey, you
are
pretty good at this. I’m definitely calling you next time.” Of course, the need to remove their garbage had already occurred to him, but he wouldn’t have thought to buy towels. He’d have just taken the motel’s stained ones with him.

By the time he’d finished with the shower and pulled his jeans back on, Grace declared her own color ready to come off. He busied himself laying out the barbering stuff, but there was no shutting out the sound of the shower through the paper-thin walls. No shutting out the mental image of Grace standing under the spray, rivulets of water streaming down her body.

At last, the shower stopped. The plumbing made a loud hammering as she shut off the taps. Minutes later, she emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of steam, her hair wrapped in a dark towel.

“That bad, eh?”

She looked at him questioningly and he gestured toward the towel.

“Oh.” She lifted a hand to it as though she’d forgotten it. “No, not that bad. Though I gave myself a start when I first looked in the mirror.”

“Tell me about it,” he said dryly, running a hand through his own nearly dry hair. It was so ...
yellow
. “So, am I gonna get a look at it?”

Grace unwound the little towel and shook her hair out. She combed her fingers through the tangles. “What do you think?”

He’d been prepared for fire engine red. “It doesn’t look a lot different. Darker, maybe.”

“Hah! Just wait’ll it dries, or until you get a look at it under a better light source than that grimy sixty-watt bulb.”

“You sound like you know what you’re talking about.”

She shrugged. “My mother had red hair for a while. A little goes a long way.”

Ray wasn’t sure whether Grace’s last observation pertained to red dye or her mother. Both, he suspected.

“I don’t suppose you have any hair-cutting experience?”

She smiled. “Actually, I do.”

“You do?” How the hell had she come by that?

“Well, sort of. Dog clipping.”

“You were a
dog groomer
? How come I didn’t know that?”

She picked up the scissors and tested them, seemingly satisfied by the rasp of the sharp carbon blades. “Just for Mama. I learned to clip the poodles to save the grooming fees.”

Right. Ostentation on a budget. That was Elizabeth Dempsey’s style. And usually at her daughter’s expense. He’d long ago given up voicing those thoughts. Grace always rushed to defend her mother, a woman who wouldn’t return the favor.

“Poodles, eh?” He eyed the scissors in her hand with exaggerated wariness. Frankly, he wasn’t too concerned, but he didn’t mind pretending if it would take that look off Grace’s face, the one she always got when she talked about her mother.

She laughed. “Don’t worry, I won’t make you look like Fi-Fi. Now, go wet your hair a little so we can get on with this.”

A minute later he sat astride a chair, arms resting on its back, while Grace cut his hair. If having her color it had been bad, this was worse.

At the first touch of her fingers in his hair, he closed his eyes, only to find it intensified the sensations skating over his skin. He opened his eyes to find her breasts at eye level, just inches away. With both arms elevated, her hands busy in his hair, her bosom looked lusher than ever. He dropped his gaze, which settled on the leather belt cinched at her waist. She’d changed into a fresh t-shirt, which was tucked into her soft faded jeans.

Damnation
. Why did she look so ... perfect?

Not literally perfect. Hell, just look at her hips. They were way too narrow, almost boyish, and her waist didn’t dip in that classically feminine hourglass shape. Her breasts, on the other hand, were improbably generous for her slim frame, creating an imbalance that he knew made her self-conscious.

And her face. He didn’t need to look at her to picture the flaws. Her forehead was a little too high for true beauty, her nose too broad, and she had that very slight overbite. No, she was far from perfect.

But she was perfect for
him
. She always had been. And when she smiled, she lit up from within.

He shifted, cleared his throat. “We about through?”

“Through? Ray, I just got started. Now, sit still, would you?”

He dropped his hands to grip the back of the chair, but complied with her order to hold still. Thankfully, she moved to the side, taking the full-frontal view with her. He breathed a little easier, until her breast brushed his shoulder as she leaned in close to comb his hair straight up so she could grasp a lock between two fingers. He tightened his grip on the chair.

Snip, snip
. Another clump of hair, yellow and startling, fell to the newspaper they’d spread on the floor.

That’s it, Morgan. Just keep watching the floor.

Except now that he wasn’t looking at her, he became more aware of her scent. It teased at his senses, the motel soap combining with her skin to produce a new fragrance, familiar but different. Lord, she smelled good. Warm, clean, his.

No, not his. Not any more.

Except he kept remembering the way she’d responded to him in the car. His palms remembered her breasts peaking inside her bra, and he heard again the way her breath had hitched and roughened.

He’d intended to punish her with those hard kisses that cared nothing for her comfort or pleasure, but she’d opened up to him, inviting him to take and take, then take some more. Only the knowledge that they were being watched had given him the presence of mind to put her away.

But no one was watching now.

What would she do if he grabbed her hips, pulled her close, buried his face in her breasts?

She’d go up like dry tinder. And so would he.

For a moment, he balanced on the knife edge of temptation. Why not? It sure as hell wouldn’t mean anything, and afterward they could write it off to the dangerous situation they found themselves in. A mindless, adrenaline-driven tumble.

God, when was the last time he’d done
that?
Years.

Used to be that after a hair-raising shift, he’d go to the bar to tip a few with his buddies. Then he’d tip one of the ever-present badge bunnies into bed, working off his excess energy with athletic, no-holds-barred sex.

Of course, he’d long since learned to work it off more safely and responsibly, usually by thrashing Quigg at racquet ball, or alone in the weight room. Even after Grace came into his life, he still made routine use of the gym after a wild day.

Grace was such a sensitive thing. He’d always been careful to come to her with his control intact so he could show her the tenderness she deserved.

Though she hadn’t seemed to need tenderness earlier tonight, in the car. Desire, hot and urgent, flashed through him at the memory.

She’d clipped her way around to his left side, her breast nudging his other shoulder as she leaned into him. The only thing that kept his butt glued to the chair was the fear of what he might do, what he might say.

Why wasn’t I enough? How could you just stop loving me and start loving someone else?
The questions rose up inside him, but he’d be damned if he’d ask them.

She’d put the scissors down and moved in front of him. She lifted his hair, comparing the length of the left side against the right, her face the picture of concentration. Suddenly, preserving his pride didn’t seem so important. He felt the questions welling up again, threatening to spill out.

Quickly, before he could succumb to weakness, he summoned the images guaranteed to cool him off. Grace’s limbs tangled with another man’s. Grace moving under....

“Done,” she announced.

He leapt up, knocking the chair over.

“Whoa!” She sprang back as the chair crashed to the floor. “Careful.”

He righted the chair, muttering an apology.

She picked up the scissors, handed them to him, then sat down in the chair. “My turn.”

He looked at the scissors in his hand, appalled. “You want me to cut your hair?”

“I imagine you can do a better job on it than I can.”

Panic flared in his gut. “You don’t really need to cut it. It’s a different color and everything. Just tie it back or stick it under a baseball cap or something.”

She shook her head. “We shouldn’t take any chances. Besides, if you think I’d let you sacrifice your hair while keeping my own, you’ve got another think coming.”

He dragged a hand through his newly shorn hair. “That’s different. It wasn’t much of a sacrifice.”

She arched a brow. “You haven’t looked in the mirror yet.”

“But, Grace, I’ll make a mess of it. You love your hair. It’s your ...
thing
.”

Something flickered in her eyes, sadness or regret or maybe just wistfulness, but her voice was clear and determined: “I’ve made up my mind. If you don’t do it, I’ll do it myself.”

He studied her for a few seconds. Dammit, she meant it. She’d take the scissors to it herself if he didn’t do it.

He sighed. “Fine. You win.”

She smiled at him, but it didn’t reach the sadness in her eyes. He wished he could believe her melancholy had to do with the crime he was about to perpetrate on her hair.

“Why do you want to do this, Grace? Really?”

She lifted her chin. “I just have to.”

He sighed. “Okay, but remember, you asked for it. I’ll have you know my mother had a hairless Chihuahua when I was a kid, not poodles.”

The lie came easily. He’d never had so much as a goldfish or a hamster in that lousy, poorly-heated walk-up he’d inhabited with his mother, but it brought a laugh to Grace’s lips.

Ray was right, Grace thought, as she clutched the towel around her shoulders. Her hair had always been her “thing”. A full, rich sable, it fell perfectly straight with the lightest encouragement with a brush and blow dryer. Everything else about her might be forgettable, but people noticed her hair.

It seemed only right somehow that she should sacrifice it.

“Okay, give me some guidance, here.”

Poor Ray. He’d dodged bullets back there in that parking lot without breaking a sweat, but his hands were shaking now. She pretended not to notice.

“Just comb out a small section, then pull it tight between your fingers.”

“Like this?”

“Closer.”

“Forget it, Grace. I’m not cutting it that short. There’d be nothing left for the hairdresser to fix.”

“But that’s hardly short enough to make any difference.”