blinked at him but said nothing.
“She waked up and I helped her get a drink all by myself,” Emma announced again.
He gave his daughter a smile of such amazing sweetness it completely transformed him, gentled those lean, rugged features. His eyes warmed, darkened. Instead of a cougar, now he looked like a sleek, satisfied tomcat letting a kitten crawl all over him.
The little girl dimpled back and Grace’s chest felt tight and achy at the obvious bond between the two of them.
“What a good nurse you are, Little Em,” Jack said.
“Just like Lily, yeah?”
He chuckled and tweaked her chin. “Just like Lily but not so bossy.”
Lily was the one who had put the “gunk” on her back, Emma had said. She gathered Lily was the sea-voice.
From her sideways perspective, Grace watched him pull a chair to the side of the bed and tug Emma onto his lap. Those vivid green eyes studied her intensely, like a boy watching a bug trying to scurry along the sidewalk, and she again felt exposed, stripped bare before him, even with the soft quilt covering her.
“How are you feeling this afternoon?”
“Peachy,” she muttered.
“I could probably round up some aspirin for you but that’s the best I can do. If you would let me take you to a hospital, you could probably get your hands on some kind of serious pain medication. I imagine something like that would hit the spot right about now.”
No hospitals. Hospitals were anguish and death. Doctors who told you, without any emotion at all, that your world had just ended. “I don’t need a hospital.”
“That’s a matter of debate, Ms. Solarez.”
“What is there to debate, Mr. Dugan? I don’t want to go to the hospital and you can’t admit me without my permission.” She knew she sounded petulant, childish, but she couldn’t help herself. I don’t want to and you can’t make me.
Exhausted suddenly, as if her brief spurt of defiance had drained her last ounce of energy, Grace rolled to her side, wincing as pain scorched along her nerve endings. “I appreciate what you’ve done for me but I—I just want to go home.”
It was a lie. She hated that apartment, hated the gray desolation of the neighborhood. But it was as far as she could get from the cheerful little two-bedroom cottage near the university, with its white shutters and the basketball hoop over the garage and the wooden swingset in the backyard she and Marisa had built together.
She had lived there for a month after her daughter’s death and then couldn’t bear it any longer. She had wanted to sell it but Beau had talked her out of it, so now she was renting to a married couple. Schoolteachers, both of them, with a son about Emma’s age.
The hovel she lived in now was her penance, her punishment for the sin of not protecting her daughter.
“You wouldn’t be able to take care of yourself for one day if I took you back to your apartment,” Jack said. “Sorry, but you’re stuck with us. At least until you regain your strength.”
She could hardly think past the fatigue and pain battling for the upper hand but she knew she couldn’t stay in this house where there was such love. “You can’t keep me here.”
“Don’t you like us?” Emma asked, her face drooping.
What was she supposed to say to that? How did she explain to a five year old that being here—seeing this warm, loving relationship between father and child—was like having not just her back flayed open but her whole soul.
She was spared having to answer by the return of the sea-voice.
“What do you two think you’re doing in here?”
“Uh-oh. Busted.” Jack sent a guilty look towards his daughter, then together they turned to face the woman glaring at them from doorway. Grace could see immediately why he looked so intimidated. Though an inch or two shorter than her own five-foot five-inch height, the woman had to weigh at least two-hundred pounds.
She had the brown skin and wavy dark hair of a Pacific Islander, probably Hawaiian, and right now she looked as if she wanted Jack Dugan served up at her next luau with an apple in his mouth.
“Uh, your patient’s awake, Lily.”
“Didn’t I say she needed to rest? Didn’t I say leave her be?”
“Well, yes—”
“I go for ten minutes and what do you two do? Come in here and start pestering her. You even wait ’til Tiny and me pulled out of the driveway before you came barging in here?”
“Yes,” he said defensively, then gave a rueful grin. “Almost.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “Next time you want dinner, maybe I’ll ‘almost’ fix it, then.”
Despite her annoyance, she looked at both of them with exasperated affection. It was obvious to Grace that the woman doted on Jack and his daughter. Again she felt excluded, more isolated than before.
Emma seemed impervious to the big Hawaiian’s temper. She hopped down from her father’s lap and skipped across the room. With a winsome, dimply smile, she grabbed the woman’s big brown hand in hers.
“Guess what, Lily? I gave Grace a drink of water all by myself and Daddy said I’m a good nurse just like you.” She giggled and tugged on the hand. “But not so bossy.”
The housekeeper lifted an eyebrow. “Bossy, hmm?”
“Someone better be careful,” Jack said with a pointed look at Emma, “or a bee will fly into that big mouth of hers.”
The little girl just giggled and even the housekeeper looked like she was fighting a smile. Still, she aimed a stern look at the pair. “Well, I’m gonna boss you both right out of here so my patient can get some sleep.”
“We’re going, we’re going.” Jack stood and, in one clean motion, scooped Emma up and over his shoulder. She shrieked with glee as he headed toward the door. At the last minute, he turned and met Grace’s gaze.
“Oh, I almost forgot to ask you. Would you like us to make any calls for you?”
“Why?”
He looked startled. “To let somebody know where they can reach you. You know. Family. Friends. Anybody who might worry about you if they couldn’t find you for a while? I can do it for you or bring the cordless phone in when you’re feeling better.”
She shook her head, her cheek rubbing against the sheet. She had no family, at least none that cared where she was. And in the last year she had distanced herself from all of her friends in the Seattle PD, unable to bear their sympathy.
All except Beau, her former partner and best friend. He refused to let himself be distanced, wouldn’t let her push him away.
“No,” she whispered. “I don’t need
