“Don’t call me baby,” she said.
Her teeth were chattering, and her lips were blue. Gideon pointed to his SUV that was parked close by. “Climb into my car. You can at least be warm while you wait for Kira.”
She scowled and stomped toward his car. “Fine.”
He unlocked it and opened the door for her. She climbed in, revealing a heart stopping amount of thigh when his jacket and shirt rode up, and folded her arms across her chest as he slammed the door shut and hurried to climb into his side.
He started the vehicle and turned the heat on high. He was aching to hold her, but he gripped the steering wheel and said, “Baby, why don’t I drive you to Kira’s? I have my key to her place. I can let you in and you don’t have to wake her. Okay?”
“You think I don’t know you’re just going to drive me to your house?”
He flushed. Okay, so maybe that was his plan, and maybe it was a bad one, but he didn’t want Grace at Kira’s. He wanted her at his home where he knew she was safe. Where he could check on her seventeen times in the night, just in case she had trouble breathing and needed to go to the hospital.
“I don’t need you to look after me,” Grace said.
He took a deep breath. “Maybe not. But I need to look after you tonight. When I got the call that it was your complex…”
He stopped, that terrible all-encompassing fear threatening to take over again despite knowing she was safe. “Please, Princess, let me take care of you. Just for tonight. Okay?”
The fight went out of her like a boxer taking a haymaker to the chin. Her body slumped against the seat and, her lips quivering, she whispered, “Okay.”
Chapter Fourteen
Letting Gideon take her to his place was a terrible idea. Grace knew that, but she couldn’t help herself. She wanted to be with Gideon. Needed to be with him.
She couldn’t seem to shake the terror she’d felt when she’d woken to a room full of black smoke and the sound of crackling fire right next to her head. Panicked, and with the effects of the sleeping pill she’d taken earlier still in her system, she’d spent agonizing minutes crawling around on the floor of her bedroom, disoriented, and choking on the smoke while she searched for the door.
She followed Gideon into the house and handed him his jacket before walking into the living room. Tank had thundered down the stairs the minute he heard the key in the lock, and he bounced around Grace as she walked, his big front paws stopping only inches from her with every excited bounce.
“Tank, enough,” Gideon said.
The Dane backed away but when Grace sat down on the couch, he immediately hopped up beside her and flopped his big head against her chest.
“Tank, down,” Gideon said.
“No,” Grace cupped Tank’s face, kissing the dog’s bony forehead, “he’s fine.”
She wanted to be touching Gideon. She wanted to climb into his lap, put her arms around him and let him comfort her until the terror inside was a distant memory.
But while Gideon might want to take care of her, that didn’t include touching her. So, she’d settle for the next best thing – his dog.
She snuggled the big dog close, petting his head and along his spine as he settled onto the couch beside her. His body took up the remaining space on the couch and after a moment, Gideon sat on the arm of the loveseat across from the couch.
He stayed there for only a few seconds before standing up. “I’ll go make up the spare bed.”
“Don’t bother,” she said. “I’m not going to sleep anyway.”
Tank dropped his big head onto her lap with a heavy sigh. She rubbed behind his ears and along the bridge of his nose.
“You should try,” Gideon said.
She shook her head. “It won’t work.”
Without looking at him, she said, “I’m sorry I still have your shirt. I meant to wash it and give it back to you, but I kept forgetting.”
“It’s fine,” he said.
Feeling weirdly detached from her body, she said, “That’s a lie. I wasn’t going to give it back.”
“Um, okay,” he said.
“I mean, I meant to give it back but then I realized that wearing your shirt helped me sleep,” she said. “So, I kept it. I stole your shirt.”
Laughter bubbled up and out of her chest. “I’m a shirt thief.”
“It’s fine, Gracie,” he said. “I have lots of shirts. Take as many as you want.”
That made her laugh harder. Tank lifted his head and stared at her, his dark brown eyes full of curiosity before he glanced at his master as if to say, ‘Do you see the crazy lady on your couch?’
Still laughing, Grace said, “How funny would it be if you came home one day to find all of your t-shirts missing? Just gone.” She giggled again. “You’d have to call it in and be, like, I need to put an APB out on my missing t-shirts, Wanda. The t-shirt thief has struck again.”
She howled laughter, and then sputtered when Tank licked her open mouth. She pushed his head down. “Tank, gross.”
She wiped her mouth, her sudden fit of giggles disappearing as quickly as it arrived. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“You don’t have to apologize, baby.”
“Your shirt doesn’t work anymore,” she said. “It stopped working a few nights ago, and now I’m tired again and I’m so tired of being tired. You know? Like, just once I want to go to bed and fall asleep like a normal person. I had that for a little bit with your shirt and it was,” she paused, “it was the single best thing that ever happened to me, Gideon. It was even better than kissing you, and I never thought it would be possible for anything to be better than kissing you. Only, it doesn’t work anymore, and I can’t sleep and I’m so tired.”
Tank was sitting up on the couch now. His big body towered over hers, and she leaned her head against his chest and listened to the steady beat of his heart. “I took a sleeping pill tonight. I took one even though I hate them because they make me slow and weird. I kind of dozed off though which is good, right? Only, when I woke up my room was full of smoke and the wall beside me was on fire and I thought I was going to die. I dropped to the floor like they tell you to do but the smoke was so thick. It was so thick, and I couldn’t breathe, and my brain was weird from the sleeping pill and I couldn’t find the door.”
“Tank, move.”
The dog jumped off the couch at Gideon’s low command and when Gideon sat down beside her and pulled her into his embrace, she flung her arms around his waist and rested her cheek on his chest. She closed her eyes, the steady beat of Gideon’s heart even more soothing than Tank’s.
He rubbed her back and kissed the top of her head. “It’s okay, baby.”
“I was so scared,” she whispered. “I couldn’t find the door and I was… I was terrified. I kept waiting for my life to flash before my eyes, but it didn’t. It was just darkness and smoke and terror.”
Gideon held her even closer, his arms wrapped around her body, his warm hands stroking her back. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”