Saving Grace

“Yeah,” he finally said. “Yeah, I do. Okay. You can feed me whatever information you come up with. But for Pete’s sake, Gracie, be careful, would you?”

She tried not to let her grim anticipation filter through her voice. “I always am, Beau. I always am.”

Jack sliced through the water of his swimming pool with strong, steady strokes. Ten laps. Eleven. Twelve. With each turn, he felt his stress level drop a notch.

He had left the lights off in the indoor spa, preferring the glow from only the pool’s green underwater lights reflecting off black tile and the occasional moonbeam that thrust its way through the thick storm clouds to pour in through the wide row of sky lights overhead.

Including an indoor pool in the house design had been purely an indulgence—and an expensive one at that. But he didn’t regret a penny of the money he’d spent. In stress reduction alone, the thing had more than paid for itself.

At the end of the day, with his work finally done and Emma tucked into bed, all storied-out, he retreated here to unwind.

He needed it today. He had more kinks in his shoulders and neck than the cord of the damn telephone he sometimes felt was permanently attached to his ear.

He had spent the morning going over contracts, then had been on the phone in teleconference negotiations most of the afternoon. He had haggled and bartered and wrangled until he was bleary-eyed and hoarse-voiced, but he’d been successful. He had managed to swing a multimillion dollar deal for GSI.

Now, though, he wanted nothing more than to lose himself in hard, mindless physical activity.

After twenty laps, he paused to catch his breath and floated on his back for a few minutes, trying to see if he could find any stars in the murky night sky.

He ached to be up there. He hated sitting behind a desk—even when that desk was at his home office where he worked two days a week, instead of GSI’s hangar at the airport where he spent the rest of the week.

Desk work—even very lucrative desk work—made him feel trapped and edgy and out of sorts.

He wanted to be flying. If he had his choice, he’d leave all the negotiations and paperwork to Syd—hell, she was better at it than he was anyway—then he could do nothing else but fly.

But he didn’t have a choice. He had Emma to think about.

Even though Lily was wonderful with her, he hated leaving her overnight more than once or twice a month. She was only five years old and she needed her daddy right now more than he needed the thrilling rush of being behind the controls of a jet airplane.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to leave her if he didn’t know exactly what it was like to be on the other side of the equation. He had a whole childhood full of memories of yearning for his parents to remember he was alive. He knew firsthand the loneliness of another night spent in the company of only a surly housekeeper, of waking up alone after a bad dream and knowing he would have to comfort himself.

During those long nights after Camille took off, when he had been the only one there to get up with a baby crying out for a mother who wanted nothing to do with her, he had made a promise to himself and to his little girl. Even though her mother had jumped at the first chance to abandon her, he had vowed that Emma would always know she came first with him.

In a few more years, she’d be old enough that he could leave her without this guilt, without worrying about whether the pizza she had for dinner would give her a stomachache or if she had her favorite stuffed poodle tucked into her bed or if she remembered to brush her teeth.

Until then, he would work out his frustration at what amounted to a self-imposed standdown here in the water.

He curled over to his stomach again and started to freestyle toward the shallow end of the pool when a flash of color caught his attention.

He glanced up and found his houseguest standing in the doorway to the spa wearing that same robe of Lily’s, with vibrant red hibiscus and fronds of greenery splashed over it.

Her hair was tousled and her feet bare. From his vantage point in the water, he could see them clearly—slim and brown and somehow unbearably sexy.

Man, he needed a woman if he could get all fired up over a pair of bare feet.

“I’m sorry,” she said when he stopped swimming, in a voice as cool as a January wind blowing off the Sound. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

He frowned, wondering just what he’d done to earn such dislike, or if she treated everybody with the same chilly detachment.

“You didn’t disturb me. I was just about done anyway.”

With three quick strokes, he finished the lap and hoisted himself out of the pool then grabbed a thick towel hanging from the back of a koa wood chaise cushioned in bright tropical colors and wrapped the towel loosely around his hips.

“It’s after midnight—if you’re still determined to head over to the ferry in the morning, shouldn’t you be tucked in your bed, saving up your strength?”

She buried her fingers in the fold of the robe. “I was too restless to sleep. It feels like I’ve done nothing else for a month.”