“Have you lost your mind? I could’ve poked my fucking eye out!”
He threw the scissors out the bathroom door and into the farthest corner of the room. “Youare notcutting your hair.”
He heard the steel in his voice, and from the stiffening of her spine, she didn’t appreciate his tone. He didn’t care. Already mad at himself and in the mood for a fight, he welcomed her anger. He must have looked it too, because as suddenly as her temper reared, she had it checked.
Sighing with exaggerated exasperation, she leaned her butt against the warped counter. “It’s pine sap, Chase.” She wagged a matted clump at him in illustration. “This crap doesn’t wash out with shampoo.”
“I can get it out.”
She rolled her eyes. “Brushing won’t—”
“I can get it out.”
“It’s just hair. It’ll—”
He cut her off by grabbing her around the waist and pulling her ass away from the sink. The space between them eliminated, he tilted his head down a degree and growled, “I can get it out, Grace.”
She leaned her upper body as far away as his grip would allow, her intense green eyes studying his for a heartbeat. Gazes locked, he saw when she gave in to him, her features softening right along with her body.
And damn if that didn’t make him want her more.
Everything about her called to him. Her wild scent. Her sharp tongue. Her pink lips. Jesus. Weak with need, he wanted to kiss her. Wanted to fuck her. But more than anything, he wanted her to give in to him in every possible way.
Right then and there.
“Fine.” She aimed a punch at his stomach, forcing him to step back to avoid it. “Have it your way, Vidal.”
God, if she only knew.
Gray satin front of a cloudy mirror in an old wooden office chair, her legs folded beneath her. The lamp in the corner left the edges of the hotel room in shadow, but she could see Chase behind her, his bicep flexing with the motion of his arm.
“Do you carry that shit with you everywhere?” she asked, loving the feel of his hands in her hair.
“Peanut butter is a power food, baby.” He’d started at the bottom, teasing out the worst of her tangles against the palm of his hand. Much calmer than he’d been thirty minutes ago, now he stroked her brush from root to tip, careful to avoid the sections of hair slathered with peanut butter. “My grandmother used to say, one of life’s greatest pleasures was having one’s hair brushed.”
“You brushed your grandmother’s hair?” If that was the case, then she agreed with his grandmother wholeheartedly.
“Her hair was long. Almost as long as yours.” The brush made another pass, the scrape of the bristles making her scalp tingle in appreciation, his free hand following its passage. “And snow white.”
Gray tilted her head back and closed her eyes to listen. By now, she recognized when he had a story to tell.
“She had Alzheimer’s and needed twenty-four-hour care. My parents had to put her in a home. She hated it.” He huffed. “She escaped twice. The second time, the police found her at the bus station with a ticket to Pasadena.”
Gray smiled at the mental image.
“Near the end, she didn’t recognize any of us. She didn’t know our names. Our faces. But she remembered my grandfather. He brushed her hair. Every night. Right up until the day he died. And she remembered.”
The strokes continued—long and slow and steady.
“They kept it up, my parents, my aunts, my cousins. Every day someone went to the home and brushed my grandmother’s hair. And when I was in town, I went. She didn’t know who I was. But it didn’t matter, as long as I had a brush in my hand.”
He fell silent, the sound of the bristles like a heartbeat in the room.
“Did Tak take a turn?”
As she’d hoped, Chase barked a hard laugh, and opening her eyes, she met his gaze in the depths of the murky mirror.
“No. He never had the pleasure.” He leaned over her shoulder to put the brush in her lap. “You’re all done, Grandma.” The warmth of his breath tickled her ear, and she held back a shiver.
