Give Me Grace

  “You know you’re a big girl, right?” I called out.

  “Yeah, so?” he called out over his shoulder.

  “I’ll tell Evie about the fishing charter incident if you don’t get back here with those car keys.”

  Coby changed direction, coming back in the room. “You’re such a bitch, Daniels,” I was told as he dug his hand in his pocket. “Besides, she already knows.”

  “Yeah?” I chuckled. “How’d that work out for you?”

  “My ears are still fucking ringing,” he muttered.

  “Language!” Houlihan snapped.

  Coby set his jaw and tossed the keys on the bed while I fought not to laugh. I’d been copping it all week. It was refreshing to have it directed on someone else for a change.

  “Thanks,” I told him and pocketed the keys, causing Houlihan to grumble. “You pick up Grace’s suitcase from the duplex?”

  “Yep.”

  “You’re blocking my light,” Houlihan growled at Coby.

  He scowled and shifted back a step, folding his arms. Houlihan returned to her task. When done, she scooped up the empty bandage packets off the bed, tossed them in the bin in the corner, and left the room, over her shoulder, saying, “Goodbye, Mr Daniels. I see you in this hospital again, I’ll have your balls for breakfast.”

  My balls shrank back up inside my body at the thought of Houlihan anywhere near them.

  “Jesus,” Coby muttered, cupping his own protectively while I tugged a tee shirt over my head and yanked it down. “Does the father-in-law know your whisking his little girl away for a week of sex?”

  I tucked my wallet in my back pocket and picked up the duffel bag off the bed, sparing Coby a glance. “Father-in-law?”

  He smirked as he snatched the duffel bag from my hand. “You know his only son is into playing his guitar and partying, right? And then you come along and bond with him all week over fishing and cars. And then rather than ask him, you go all take charge and tell him you’re taking Grace away until you’re satisfied she’s safe. The man was impressed. But then we’ve all heard about Dalton.” Coby shrugged. “Any guy following that douchebag would look like the Second Coming to Nate. In his eyes, you and Grace are already hitched. Welcome to the Paterson family, mate,” he said with a grin.

  I looked at him sideways as we left the room, not hiding the smirk. “Of course the man’s impressed. No one can handle this much awesome and remain unscathed. If you’re lucky,” I told him as we walked side by side down the hall towards Grace’s room, “I might let a little of it rub off on you.”

  Coby snorted. “You’re so full of it, Daniels.”

  I shook my head in mock sympathy. “Jealousy is an ugly look, man.”

  “You would know,” he retorted.

  “Any news on Beck?” I asked him, switching topic midstride. I wanted to find out what he knew before we hit Grace’s room. Beck, our part-time surveillance guy, was tasked with watching Morgan. Seth had put together her background check but it came up clean. Too clean. Morgan was no angel, yet according to the report, she was set for sainthood. With someone of her background who now worked in the cybercrime division, she held the power to abuse the position if that was the way the wind blowed.

  “Still nothing,” he muttered, pissed, because I wasn’t the only one who wanted this shit done with. “Goes to work, occasionally the laundromat, shops, comes home. She had two friends over last night. Both female. He’s working on identifying them.”

  We rounded the corner to Grace’s room. “When he does, put someone on following them too.”

  Grace was perched on the edge of her bed wearing a tiny pair of ratty denim shorts. The length of beautiful toned leg on display sent a surge of blood to my cock. Seeing the bandages covering her right side quickly took care of that.

  The shirt she wore was white and floaty, with big red lips painted on it. It hung off her left shoulder, baring more skin than I could handle seeing right now. It made me itch to get her underneath me.

  Soon, I promised myself. I just had to get past the initial outrage when she realised I was stealing her away. Then we could get down to the serious business of sex.

  The cast on her right forearm had been set two days ago. Her wrist was now strapped to her chest with a sling, protecting her bruised shoulder. The bandage looked too tight, indenting the skin around her neck and leaving no doubt it was Houlihan’s handiwork.

  Henry knelt tying the laces on her runners, and her father stood behind her, looking uncomfortable as he tugged a brush through her hair.

  “Ouch, Dad!” she squealed, her head snapping back as the brush caught on a knot. “I’ve just come out the other side of a concussion. Are you trying to give me another one?”

  “Quiet!” he boomed, looking tense and red in the face. “And stop moving around or I’ll cut your hair off and solve both our problems.”

  “You threatened that every time you brushed my hair when I was little.”

  My lips twitched as Coby and I stood in the doorway taking in the scene.

  “So?” Nate retorted as Henry finished with her shoes and stood up.

  “So you haven’t done it yet,” she pointed out. “You’re nothing but a big bunch of hot air.”

  Grace’s head snapped back again, and I’m pretty sure it was deliberate that time. Coby chuckled from beside me. Her eyes flew our way at the sound, her face breaking into a smile when I stepped into the room.

  “Oh thank God,” she announced.

  I walked over, pressed a kiss on her lips, and picked up her bag. “Ready to go?”

  “Damn straight I’m ready to go.” Nate went for one more drag of the brush and she batted him away with her free hand, snatching the brush and giving it to me. I opened the zip partway on her bag, stuffed it inside, and closed the zip.

  Nate took the bag from my hand. “I’ll walk you both down to the car,” he muttered gruffly. The man was flying home to Melbourne later that day. There wasn’t much else he could do but return to work, though he was leaving with the promise that I’d keep both him and Henry in the loop.

  As we left the room en masse, Henry gave me a fist bump, knowing it was all up to me to squirrel Grace out of the city without her leaping from the car in a fit. “Good luck.”

  Grace furrowed her brow. “Good luck with what?”

  “Er …” Henry scratched the back of his head. “I don’t know.” Grace’s frown deepened and I shook my head. Henry was a shitty liar. “Stuff,” he mumbled.

  “What stuff?”

  Nate started moving a little quicker, no doubt trying to avoid the questioning his son had inadvertently set off.

  “Where’s the fire, Dad?” Grace called out as he raced ahead of us.

  “Don’t be impolite by dawdling, love.” He frowned back at her sternly. “Coby’s got his car in temporary parking to pick you up, you know. Do you have any idea how much hospital parking costs these days? Why they may as well ask a man to hand over his left nut.”

  Grace snorted, rolling her eyes at Coby who, along with me, was busy fighting back laughter. “Sorry I’m injured and can’t Olympic sprint to your car, Coby. I’ll be sure to pay the parking fee so you won’t have to sacrifice your left nut for us.”

  Coby cleared his throat. “That’s mighty polite of you, Grace, but I think I’ve got enough cash to cover it.”

  I took hold of Grace’s hand and she leaned in close to my ear as we walked. “My family’s not usually this odd,” she whispered furiously. “I think it must be a full moon.”

  I looked down at her, grinning. “It’s only a quarter moon, Slim.”

  “No, you’re wrong,” I was told, her voice ringing with authority. “It’s a full moon.”

  My grin widened and I squeezed her hand. “You’re adorable, even when you’re wrong.”

  “Adorable? You should check out all my bruises. Then you’ll change your mind.”

  “I’ve seen your bruises,” I replied. My nostrils flared with anger because
they were a reminder that someone had done this deliberately. I cracked my knuckles. “Every time I look at them I want to hit someone,” I muttered under my breath.

  Grace looked from my knuckles to my face, not missing the anger or the words. “Maybe you shouldn’t look at me then.”

  Everyone had walked on ahead while we were talking so I halted her with my hand, using the opportunity to nudge her gently back against the hospital hallway. “Stop looking at you?” I pressed my forehead to hers, staring into her eyes. “Why don’t you ask me to take you time travelling while you’re at it, or ask me for the cure for cancer?”

  Grace sucked in a breath, paling rapidly.

  “What?” I paused. Oh shit. Then I winced. I was trying to point out that what she was asking was impossible, but I couldn’t have been more of an idiot if I tried. “Dammit, Grace. Baby, I’m sorry. That was insensitive of me. I—”

  Grace cut me off, saying, “No, it’s fine,” but she was a shitty liar, just like her brother. “Really,” she added when my brows rose suspiciously. “We should catch up to Dad before he gives himself a hernia from moving too fast.”

  She pushed away from the wall, but I held fast to her hand. “Grace, I …”

  “You what?”

  Christ. She had no idea how much I cared about her, did she? She was strong enough that I couldn’t walk all over her, teasing when I was in a pout, hot when I wanted a hard fuck, and sweet when I needed her in my arms.

  I wanted to tell her exactly that but my balls must’ve done a disappearing act because what came out instead was a lame apology.

  It was pathetic.

  “Casey.” Grace reached up cupping my cheek. Her thumb brushed over the short scruffy beard on my face. She seemed to like it. She was always touching it like she was doing now. I liked her doing that so much I hadn’t yet bothered to shave. “You’re amazing. So much so, that the fact you can’t cure cancer surprises me, because you give off this…” she shook her head, as though searching for the right word “…aura of intense capability that makes me believe you can do anything.”

  I turned my head and pressed a kiss to her palm. Then I winked. “That’s because I can. I’m Batman, remember?”

  Grace rolled her eyes, but I could see the amusement. “Like I could forget.”

  She slid her hand from my face and I watched her walk away, her laughter trailing down the hall, and I knew I didn’t just care for her. My heart was lost, and even if she didn’t want it, I wouldn’t take it back.

  I glanced sideways at Casey from the passenger seat of Coby’s Hilux. His brow furrowed in concentration as he drove so I wiped my left palm furtively on the denim of my shorts. Being back in a car made me break out in a sweat. A cold, clammy sweat. I hadn’t given it a thought until we pulled out of the hospital, but once we did, out came the meltdown. Not Casey though. His actions were so calm and unruffled you would think he was in a major car accident every other week. I could see him at the dinner table. “Can you pass the salt? Oh, and by the way, I was in a fiery crash today. Just in case you see it on the news. Tomorrow I plan on diving off the Harbour Bridge into a mob of great white sharks, but I’ll be fine, because I’m Casey.”

  The man was as cool as the Arctic.

  Setting my jaw, I beat back the imminent panic attack before it went nuclear. I hadn’t come this far in my life to fall apart at the thought of being inside a speeding metal box.

  I could do this.

  If Casey could be ice cold, then by God, I would be cooler than that.

  “What’s colder than ice?”

  “Dry ice,” Casey answered, glancing across at me. “Why?”

  I am dry ice.

  It didn’t have a very good ring to it. I shook my head. “What else?”

  “Liquid nitrogen.”

  I am liquid nitrogen.

  That made me sound like a lame villain out of a Spiderman movie. “Anything else?”

  “A polar bear’s nutsack?” Casey chuckled at his own joke, which made him just as lame as the idea of me being liquid nitrogen.

  He grinned across at me and I rolled my eyes. “You just lost some of your cool factor.”

  His grin widened. “You think I’m cool?”

  “Not anymore,” I mumbled, brows pinched as I stared dazedly out the window. My visions of flurries and Polar Ice Caps were interrupted by the view of a six-lane dual highway and forest. My eyes swung to Casey. “Where are we going?”

  He indicated right and changed lanes, shifting into fifth gear as he overtook a little Suzuki Swift. Wherever we were going, he planned on getting us there in a speedy fashion. “For a drive,” I was told.

  “Oh?” I prompted for a further explanation. After a lengthy wait where one didn’t appear forthcoming, I gave up and asked, “A drive where?”

  “North.”

  “Where north?”

  Casey hesitated, looking like he was going to say something and didn’t.

  My eyes narrowed because he was acting shifty. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing, Slim.”

  He may as well have said he was driving us to Kakadu for a spot of fishing because I didn’t believe it for a second. “Then why won’t you tell me where we’re going?”

  “I’ll tell you when we get there.”

  Casey accelerated a little harder and the car picked up speed. I tried not to notice the scenery blurring out my window and grabbed for my new phone from the centre console. Coby had taken my old one and put the new one in easy reach before he left with Dad and Henry. He called it a ‘temporary burner phone.’ I called it overkill. The idea that someone could be tracking me or listening to my phone conversations was outrageous. I was Grace Paterson, not the President of the United States.

  I scrolled the contact list, grateful to see he’d at least transferred all my numbers in. Even Casey was still listed under Batman. After finding Mac’s number, I dialled.

  Casey glanced at me. “What are you doing?”

  “Ringing Mac. She won’t lie.”

  “I’m not a liar.”

  “You’re a deflector,” I retorted. I put the phone to my ear and trained my gaze out the window. “It’s practically the same thing.”

  “Grace,” Mac barked by way of answering the phone.

  I then realised my mistake by focusing on the outdoors. The blurring scenery forced the tight rein on my panic to snap like a rubber band. Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe and began to gasp and wheeze.

  Mac’s tone of voice changed from annoyed to alert. “Grace?”

  “Breathe, Slim,” Casey ordered from beside me.

  “No, I won’t breathe!” Having a panic attack in front of Casey was embarrassing. I didn’t want him seeing me fall apart. It wasn’t going to be pretty. “In fact, I’m holding my breath until you pull this car over. Then you can tell me what’s going on!”

  “Uh oh,” I heard Mac say.

  Casey backed off of the accelerator, slowing the car a little. “That better?”

  “No.” My efforts at being liquid nitrogen weren’t working. I was getting worse. Every breath I took forced my lungs to squeeze painfully. The realisation I was somehow suffocating freaked me out. Screw being cooler than ice. This wasn’t irrational fear of being in a car, this was a goddamn heart attack. “I can’t be in this car,” I gasped. “Let me out.”

  “I can’t pull over on the freeway. It’s not safe.” Casey glanced across at me again, real concern on his face. “Grace, are you okay?”

  “No,” I wheezed, my body starting to shake harder than Shakira live in concert. “Pull over. I need to get out!”

  “Look at me,” he ordered. “Don’t look anywhere else. Just at me.”

  I looked at him, my chest pounding so hard it hurt.

  “Grace, you’re having a panic attack, okay? You need to fight it by focusing on me, okay?” I shook my head. Who cared about focusing? I couldn’t breathe. He placed his palm on my bare leg, connecting us. Warmth seeped into my skin fro
m his touch. He began to rub, soothing me. “Focus on breathing with me. Slow and deep.”

  I tried doing what he said because I didn’t have any other choice. It took a full minute for my breathing to even out, slow and deep like his. The burning in my chest began to ease slowly. With that came the return of rationality followed by a nice big helping of mortification. “Thank you,” I murmured, my cheeks flushing pink.

  “Grace?” Mac’s voice floated up from somewhere on the seat and I realised I’d dropped the phone mid-conversation. “You there?”

  I went to reach for it but Casey stilled my arm. “Grace … It’s okay to be scared.”

  “You’re not,” I pointed out.

  He shrugged. “I’ve rolled my car once before, been rear-ended, spun out on a sheet of ice and hit a tree, and shoved into guardrail by an out-of-control truck.”

  “So what you’re saying is once I have a few more accidents under my belt, I won’t be scared anymore?”

  Casey glared. “You’re not having anymore accidents. That was your first and your last.”

  That was a ridiculous statement. Casey couldn’t predict the future. If he did it would include something far worse than a car crash. Not that someone ploughing into the side of Casey’s car was an accident. “It wasn’t an accident though, right? Someone wants me dead.”

  After a beat, he said, “That’s why I’m not taking you back to the duplex.” He glanced across at me. “I’m taking you up the coast. Our firm has a cottage by the beach. I think it’s a good idea for us to stay where you can rest safely for a few days.”

  I did my best to turn and look at him properly, but whatever painkillers I was given were wearing off fast and it hurt to move.

  “Whatever you’re going to say, save it. I’m not taking you back,” he informed me, his tone rigid. “You need time to heal and have hot sex on the beach, and I’m going to make sure you get both. You’re not going to complain about it either. You’re going to like it. Or else,” he added.

  Casey looked tense and wary, his jaw ticking. I knew he expected me to spaz out at any moment. It was possible I might. Time away to clear my head? An entire week of sunshine, sand between my toes, and hot sex with Casey? Sign me the fuck up.