Saving Grace. RaeAnne Thayne

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      She had just enough energy left to glare at him. “I said I didn’t have anyone I need to contact.” To her horror, her voice broke on the last word and unexpected tears choked in her throat, behind her eyes. She must be more exhausted than she thought.

      Lily must have seen it, too. With a flip of her wrists, she shooed the father and daughter out the door then glided to the bed despite her girth.

      “You just rest now, keiki.” The housekeeper skimmed a gentle hand down Grace’s hair. “You had a bad burn and now your body needs time to heal. Don’t let that huki’ino bother you.”

      With fluid movements, she checked Grace’s bandage, fluffed the pillows, smoothed the blanket.

      And then, comforted in a way she hadn’t felt in longer than she could remember, Grace slept.

      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.

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