Saving Grace

Chapter 3

“You keep those dirty paws of yours out of my strawberries or I’ll chop ’em off.”

Used to her threats, Jack just grinned at his housekeeper brandishing a paring knife dangerously close to his fingers, and popped a slice of fruit into his mouth. For all her bluster, he knew Lily loved him nearly as much as he loved her. Even though neither of them spoke of it, both understood and accepted that she was the closest thing to a mother he or his daughter had ever had.

“If you chopped off my hands, I wouldn’t be able to do this.” Heedless of the knife in her hand, he grabbed her around her ample waist and scooped her off the ground in a hearty embrace.

She shrieked and slapped at him with her free hand. “You think I got time for this kind of crazy stuff? Put me down. I just get that girl of yours down for a nap and try to get some work done and you have to come in with your nonsense.”

He set her back on her feet, snitched another strawberry and leaned back against the counter to watch her finish making a fruit salad. “You work too hard, Lily. You need to relax.”

She snorted. “Food doesn’t just show up on your table like magic. Your clothes don’t wash themselves. Somebody’s got to do all that. Now I have to take care of the wahine, too. Just when am I supposed to relax?”

Her diatribe was as familiar as her threat to chop his fingers off for picking at food between meals and he treated it the same way—with a grin. Despite his frequent offers to hire someone to help her, Lily refused assistance from anyone.

Only once had he dared to go behind her back and had hired a maid through a temp service. Lily had been nothing short of livid and the woman had ultimately left in tears after only a few hours trying to meet her unreasonable expectations. Since then, he just let his housekeeper complain and tried not to give her too much extra work.

Until this week, and Grace Solarez. With a mental note to give Lily a hefty bonus, whether she wanted it or not, he reached into the refrigerator for a juice. “How is your patient, anyway?”

Lily shrugged. “She don’t say much. She seems to be getting better—the burn, anyway. Her heart, now, that’s different.”

He glanced up from twisting the top off the bottle. “What do you mean by that? What did she say to you?”

“Not much. I told you, she don’t talk much to me. I don’t need the words for me to see she’s got pain, though. You just have to look in her eyes to see she’s hurting big. Maybe too big even for words.”

He sipped the juice and thought of the report on his desk, outlining in stark detail the reason why Grace Solarez grieved. He pictured the child in the photograph, all big eyes and toothy grin. Her daughter, Marisa, he had learned. The innocent victim of a drive-by shooting while waiting outside her school for her mother to pick her up.

She had been killed a year to the date from the night her mother had given Emma back to him.

He grimaced at the bottle and set it down. The police had no leads into Emma’s kidnapping, and despite the lengthy report from his private investigators, he was no closer to unearthing the truth about Grace Solarez.

She had been staying in his house for five days and her presence on the highway that night—the anniversary of her daughter’s death—was still a mystery.

“How long you gonna keep her here?” Lily asked.

“She’s not a prisoner.”

“Does she know that?”

“Of course.”

Lily went on as if she didn’t hear him. “Because last I heard, you were telling her you wouldn’t let her leave.”

“I had to tell her that. If you had seen that apartment of hers, you wouldn’t want her going back there either. At least not until she builds up her strength.”

“Why don’t you take her dinner to her and tell her that yourself. You can save my old legs a few steps.” She held a tray out for him, brimming with food.

“I think you have a few good hulas left in those old legs.” He grinned, but took the tray from her, not willing to admit even to himself that he was eager for an excuse to talk to his guest again.

The door to the guest room had been left open and he found Grace sitting on a curvy old rocking chair and gazing out at the Sound. She made a stunning picture, swallowed up by what had to be one of Lily’s massive muumuus, with her dark hair curling around her face and her feet tucked under her.

She should have looked ridiculous in the oversize garment, but it just seemed to make her look delicate, ethereal. A lighter-than-feathers little sprite who could float away wherever the breeze took her, like a character in one of Emma’s favorite storybooks.

She seemed unaware of his presence so he rested a hip against the doorframe and studied her profile, wishing he could read in her features some clue to the mystery woman who had invaded their lives.

After five days of Lily’s mothering, she definitely appeared healthier, he could say that much for her. Her skin had lost that sallow tinge it had worn when he first brought her here and those plum circles had faded from beneath her eyes.

No shadows remained under those mocha-colored eyes, but there were definitely still shadows in them, a sadness that looked as if it had been there for a long time.

He thought about what Lily had said, about her hurting too big for words. How would he bear it if he lost Emma the way she had lost her daughter?

If he hadn’t been holding the tray of food, he would have rubbed his chest at the sudden ache there. The startling depth of his compassion made his voice more curt than normal. “Are you supposed to be out of bed?”

She glanced up and those too-serious dark eyes blinked at him. “Beautiful view you’ve got here, Dugan,” she said, instead of answering his question.

He looked over her shoulder at the garden with its colorful late blossoms, framed by the vast blue of the sky and the water. It was one of those perfect, unusually clear fall days in the Northwest, and it looked like everyone on the Sound had decided to take advantage of the great weather. Dozens of pleasure boats—everything from sailboats to yachts to sea kayaks—dotted the water.

He had fallen in love with the view the first time he’d seen it, from the back of a motorcycle on the other side of the Sound. He’d been a badass seventeen year old, angry at the world and at himself. And most of all, hurting and furious over his father’s betrayal.

Trying to go as far and as fast as he could from the chaos left in the wake of his father’s, William Dugan, suicide, he had spent six days on the back of the bike. He remembered stopping on the water’s edge and staring out at Puget Sound, knowing he couldn’t go any farther, that he would have to stop here or go back the way he had come.

Suddenly, it was as if the anger and the grief fueling him through the trip had kept right on going without him, had slid into the ocean and washed away with the tide.

His father had left him with nothing but obligations, debts he had spent years paying off. But he had done it. And when it looked like the shipping company he had created out of the wreckage his father had left behind would survive, the first thing Jack had purchased had been this strip of land on the shore of Bainbridge Island.

“I like it,” he finally murmured to Grace Solarez. It was a vast understatement and couldn’t even begin to describe the tie he felt to this place.

He held out the tray to her. “I come bearing food.” He scanned the contents of the tray, pulling lids off of containers to snoop underneath. “What do we have here? Looks like soup, homemade bread, a fruit salad and some juice.”

She drew her bare toes even farther under the edge of the muumuu until they disappeared. “Please tell Lily thank you, but I’m not very hungry right now.”

He set the tray down on the bed. “You need to eat to get your strength back.”

“If I eat all that, will you let me go home?”

“Why are you in such a big hurry?”

“I don’t belong here. We both know that. While I certainly appreciate all you’ve done for me, I’m feeling much better now and would like to leave. I’m not used to having all this time to…to do nothing. Besides, I have a life to get back to in the city.”

Not much of one. A slum of an apartment, a job on the docks. No friends, no family who would worry about her. She couldn’t possibly be happy in that bleak existence.

“Can’t you just look at this as a well-deserved vacation?”

Her mouth pursed into a frown. “Why are you so insistent I stay here?”

“I just want you to be comfortable, for you to have someone to look after you while you heal.”

“Why?”

“You earned those burns saving my daughter’s life. I can never repay you for what you did for her. For me. The least I can do is make sure you have people to look after you while you recover.”

Her short laugh sounded harsh, caustic. “You don’t owe me a thing, Dugan.”

“I owe you everything,” he corrected softly.

She studied him for a moment, those big dark eyes murky, then she shrugged. “Fine. You’ve repaid me by giving me the royal treatment for a few days. It’s been a real blast, believe me, but we’re square now. Why don’t you just give me a lift to the ferry and we can call it even.”

They weren’t even close to being even. Besides that, he didn’t want to let her out of his sight until he could be absolutely sure she wasn’t involved in the kidnapping, until they had a suspect in custody.

Jack couldn’t shake the gut instinct someone else besides the man Emma described had been involved in her kidnapping. He didn’t want that person to be Grace Solarez, but he couldn’t let what he wanted interfere with the investigation.

He sat on the bed, careful not to tip the tray. “I understand you used to be a cop in the city.”

The gentle movement of the rocking chair ceased and her expression became closed. “Used to be. A long time ago.”

“Not so long. You resigned about a year ago, didn’t you?”

“Your snoops were efficient.”

“It wasn’t exactly a state secret.”

She was silent for a moment, then turned curious eyes to him. “How did you find me, anyway?”

“The picture.”

She stared at him. “What?”

He gestured to the photograph still propped against the lamp by the side of the bed. “Your snapshot. You dropped it at the scene. We were able to identify the park in the background of the photo and then hit all the film processing places in the general area. I thought we had hit a dead end but it turned out a photo technician at the QuikPic where you developed the film knew you.”

“Pham Leung.”

He nodded. His private investigator told him the clerk hadn’t wanted to talk at first. He had been fiercely protective of Grace—to the point of rudeness—but had cooperated after Mike told him she had saved a little girl’s life, that the girl’s father only wanted to thank her.

“Once we had a name,” Jack continued, “the rest was easy.”

“You had no right asking questions about me.”

“Maybe not. But I had to find you.”

“Fine. You’ve found me, you’ve patched me up. Now let me leave.”

“Why are you so uncomfortable with my gratitude?”

“Why can’t you clue in that I don’t want it?”

At an impasse, they gazed at each other across the length of the room. Anger sent a flush of appealing color to her cheeks, turning her eyes almost black. Now that she was on the road to recovery, she looked much less the injured waif and much more a lush, soft woman.

There were curves somewhere in that voluminous robe, he remembered. They had been hard to miss when he carried her to his car that day. Now, with her spine stiff and her chin at an angle, he could see the high, firm outline of her breasts beneath the bright Hawaiian print.

To his shock, his body began to stir, to sizzle to life. He felt his blood begin to thicken, begin to churn through his veins like golden honey through a straw.

Where the hell did that come from? She wasn’t at all the kind of woman that usually attracted him. If he had a type, it was tall, willowy blondes, not scrawny ex-cops with wild dark hair and big, wounded eyes.

The situation between them was complicated enough. The last thing he needed to do was toss his suddenly unruly libido into the mix. With fierce determination, he clamped down on the burgeoning awareness.

His gaze found the photo by the bed, the one that had brought him to her. “I didn’t have the chance to tell you this before,” he murmured, “but I am very sorry about your daughter.”

At his words, the defiance seemed to drain away from her features. Hell, the whole life seemed to drain out of her, leaving only a cold, stark grief. He instantly regretted mentioning Marisa Solarez. If Grace had wanted to talk about her child, she would have brought the subject up herself.

She slowly sank back into the chair as if her bones couldn’t support the weight of her pain. “How did you…? Oh. Pham.”

He nodded. “Is that the reason you quit the police force?”

For a moment, he didn’t think she would answer him. She sent him one quick, unreadable look, then gazed out at the relentless water beating away at the shore, her fingers twisting restlessly amid the flowery folds of Lily’s colorful dress.

After several moments, she looked back at him. “I couldn’t do it anymore. I had too much rage, too much hate built up inside me. The department psychiatrist thought I would be a danger to myself and others.” She said the words with bitter self-mockery.

“Have you ever thought about doing any private security consulting work?”

“Excuse me?” She stared at him as if he’d just asked her to climb on the bureau and yodel.

“With your background in police work, I think you would be exceptional at it.”

This wasn’t the first time the idea of hiring her had occurred to him. Since he had brought her here, the idea had percolated in the back of his mind. It was the perfect solution on several levels. It would get her out of that dismal apartment, for one thing. And he would have a better chance of proving whether she participated in the kidnapping—and, if so, of finding the other kidnapper—if she stayed close enough for him to keep a watchful eye on her.

“I suppose you’ve heard by now about my daughter’s kidnapping.” He watched her intently for any sign of guilt—a nervous twitch, a flicker in her eyes—but she returned his gaze without emotion. She was either as cold as an iceberg or she was innocent.

He was almost positive it was the latter. Almost.

“Yes,” she replied. “Your housekeeper mentioned it. I imagine you both must have been terrified.”

His gut clutched in memory. The ransom note had arrived at the office: $500,000. Not much for a little girl’s life.

At first he’d put it down to some kind of sick joke and then his phone had rung with that panicked call from the director of Emma’s preschool saying she hadn’t come in from outside play time and had he somehow come to pick her up without checking in at the office?

Terrified didn’t even begin to describe how he had felt then—that cold, sick, paralyzing fear.

Would he ever be able to let her out of his sight again or hear the phone ring without that jolt of panic?

“How is your daughter handling it?” Grace asked. “It must have been a terrible ordeal for her.”

He uncoiled the lingering tendrils of fear that wrapped around his insides whenever he thought of that day and rested a hip on the edge of the bed, crossing his legs out in front of him at the ankles. “She’s seems to have emerged relatively unscathed.”

“That must be a relief.”

He nodded. Odd how he hadn’t been able to talk about this with anyone else—not even Piper or Lily—but he found himself wanting to confide in this slight, quiet woman.

“I would hate for her to live her life afraid,” he admitted, “but I hope she has gained at least a little healthy suspicion for strangers. She still treats everybody like her best friend, from the garbage man to the bag boys at the supermarket. She probably jumped right in the car with the guy who took her.”

He realized his hand had fisted in the quilt covering the bed and forced his fingers to relax. “If it can happen once, it can happen again,” he went on, “and I want to do everything I can to prevent that. I want to hire you to do everything you can to prevent it from happening again.”

“Is that your gratitude offering me a job, Mr. Dugan?”

“In part. I also hear you were one hell of a cop, that you made detective after just four years on patrol. It seems a shame to waste that hauling dead fish around.”

“My career choices are really none of your business.” That frosty, screw-you tone was back.

“You’re absolutely right. But protecting my daughter is my business.”

“You can’t keep your daughter in a bubble,” she said quietly. “No matter how good your security system is, how many people you hire to protect her, there would still be risks.”

“I know. But I want to do everything I can to minimize them, both here and at my business.”

“Global Shipping Incorporated. Specializing in Far East imports and exports.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “You must have a few snoops of your own.”

“Just Lily. She’s full of information. In fact, if you’re looking for a security leak you might want to start there.”

He grinned at the idea. People didn’t come any more loyal than Lily and Tiny Kihualani. “She must really like you. Usually she keeps her lips sealed up tighter than an oil tanker.”

Instead of returning his grin, Grace just continued regarding him solemnly, and he found himself wondering what it would take to make that lush, kiss-me mouth break into a smile.

He indulged in the possibilities for only a moment then returned to the business at hand. “I’m prepared to pay you well if you take the job.” He named a figure and had the satisfaction of seeing her eyes widen. “That would, of course, include room and board, since the most logical thing would be for you to stay here.”

She shook her head. “That’s certainly a very generous offer, Mr. Dugan, but I’m not interested.”

“Why not?”

She tilted her chin defiantly. “Does it matter?”

“Yeah,” he replied. “It matters to me.”

Her eyes were as cool as her voice now. “I was a police detective, not a security guard. I don’t know the first thing about what you’re asking me to do.”

“You solved crimes, right? I just want you to take it a step further and try to prevent this crime from happening again.”

“I’m not interested,” she repeated.

He studied her, noting the implacable thrust of her jaw, the stubborn light in her eyes. Finally he straightened from the bed. “Don’t give me an answer now. Just think about it for a while. Overnight, maybe. Then, if you’re still not interested in the morning, I’ll have Tiny take you home.”

For long moments after he left the room, Grace stared after him. The room felt colder, somehow, emptier without his presence.

Something about Jack Dugan appealed to her, in a way she hadn’t been attracted to a man in longer than she could remember. It startled her—frightened her, even—the way her heart seemed to catch in her chest and her pulse fluttered wildly when he grinned, when he looked at her out of those green eyes.

Another reason why she absolutely could not take the job, as if she needed more.

Despite what she had told him, she knew she was capable of handling the assignment. Like he had said, she had spent enough time solving crime to have picked up plenty of knowledge about how to prevent it and she had worked enough VIP security detail to give her some idea of how she could make life safer for Jack Dugan and his daughter.

Still, capable was a far cry from expert.

Not that it mattered. No way could she even consider taking the job, not if it involved staying here in this house where there was such love, filled with toys and hugs and laughter.

She couldn’t bear it.

No, the smartest thing for her to do would be to catch a lift in the morning and ride away from Jack Dugan and his little blond daughter without a backward glance.

A knock interrupted her thoughts and she grimaced, not wanting another run-in with him. To her relief, it was Lily, the loquacious housekeeper.

“You’ve got a phone call.”

She straightened from the rocking chair. “There must be some mistake. No one knows I’m here.”

Lily shrugged. “It’s some man. Want me to tell him you don’t want to talk?”

“No. No, I’ll take it.”

Lily handed her a cordless phone and then slipped from the room, respecting her privacy. Still thinking the housekeeper had erred, she spoke hesitantly into the phone. “Yes?”

“Dammit, Grace. Where the hell have you been?”

She relaxed at the familiar voice. “Nice to talk to you, too, Riley.”

Her former partner bit out a curse. She could just picture him, clothes slightly rumpled, dark hair characteristically messy, hawk-like features twisted with irritation as he glared at the phone he hated.

Beau Riley was the closest she had to family. Six years of being partners, first on patrol and then as detectives, had made them closer than blood. Brain clones, Riley called them. They knew how the other thought, felt. They even finished each other’s sentences half the time, which was exactly why there could never be anything romantic between them.

In the hell of the last twelve months, he had been the only person she had stayed in contact with, although even that had been as sporadic as Seattle sunshine.

“You got any idea how worried I’ve been?” he snapped now.

“No.” Suddenly, unaccountably, famished, she speared a strawberry with a fork. “But I’m guessing you’re about to enlighten me.”

“You don’t answer your phone for a week. I go by your apartment and you’re not there. I go to that crummy job of yours on the docks. You’re not there. I go back and forth between the two until I feel like a stinkin’ yo-yo. Finally, I get one of your stupid neighbors to answer the door, only to learn some guy carried you out the door and into some fancy car a week ago. A stranger hauls an unconscious woman into his car and not once did the idiot think to call the police. What the hell is this city coming to?”

She settled back into the rocking chair and nibbled at the fruit salad while she listened to his familiar rant about the pitiful state of society.

When it finally sounded like Beau was beginning to wind down, she interrupted him. “How did you find me?” That seemed to be the question of the hour.

“The idiot neighbor at least had the brains to remember part of a license plate and the make of the car, although why he didn’t contact the police before is a complete mystery to me. Took me two days but I finally traced it to Dugan. What the hell are you doing there, Grace?”

Good question, one she’d love to answer if she only knew. “It’s a long story,” she finally said. “Why were you looking for me?”

The silence stretched thin between them, a few beats longer than was comfortable. When he finally spoke, he sounded almost sheepish. As sheepish as macho-man Beau Riley could sound, at any rate. “I was worried about you.” He cleared his throat. “What with the anniversary and all. Afraid you’d do something crazy.”

Crazy like taking a little stroll into traffic on the interstate. He didn’t say it, but she knew exactly how his mind worked. Hers had worked the same way, which is probably why he’d been worried about her.