Chapter Eleven
in the dark, while an owl still hooted, Ethan shifted, easing out from
under the arm Grace had wrapped around his chest. In response she
snuggled closer. The gesture made him smile.
"Are you getting up?" she asked in a voice that was muffled against his
shoulder.
"I've got to. It's after five already." He could smell rain on the air,
hear it coming in the rising wind. "I'm going to get a shower. You go
back to sleep."
She made a sound that he took for assent and burrowed into the pillow.
He moved lightly through the dark, though he had to check himself a
couple of times on the way to the bathroom. He didn't know her house as
well as his own. He waited until he was inside before turning on the
light so the backwash of it wouldn't spill into the hall and disturb
her.
The room was scaled to match the rest of the house, so small he could
have stood in the center and touched each side wall with his hands. The
tiles were white, the walls above them papered in a thin candy stripe.
He knew she'd hung the paper herself. She rented from Stuart Claremont,
and the man wasn't known for his generosity or his sense of decor.
He had to grin at the orange-billed rubber duck nested on the side of
the tub. One sniff at the soap made him realize why Grace always smelled
faintly of lemons. While he appreciated the fragrance on her, he hoped
sincerely that Jim wouldn't notice the citrus scent on him.
He ducked his head under what he thought of as a piss-trickle of spray.
She needed a new showerhead, he decided, and as he rubbed a hand over
his face, noted that he needed a shave. Both would have to wait.
But it was likely that now that things had changed between them, she
would let him take care of a few things around the house for her. She'd
always been so blessed stubborn about accepting help. It seemed to him
that even a proud woman like Grace would be less stiff about taking help
from a lover than a friend.
That's what they were now, Ethan reflected. No matter how many promises
he'd made to himself. It wouldn't end with one night. Neither one of
them was built that way, and it had as much to do with heart as it did
with loins. They'd taken the step and that step involved commitment.
That's what worried him most.
He would never be able to marry her, have children with her. She would
want more children. She was too fine a mother, had too much love to give
not to want them. Aubrey deserved brothers or sisters.
There wasn't any point in thinking about it, he reminded himself. Things
were the way things were. And right now he had a right, and a need to
live in the moment. They would love each other as much as they could for
as long as they could. That would be enough.
It took him barely five minutes to discover that Grace's hot water
heater was as small as the rest of the house. Even the miserly trickle
of water turned cool, then cold, before he'd managed to rinse away all
the lather.