“Look, buddy, if you want me to toss my cookies on your very spiffy tux, then keep yelling. Otherwise, let me just do my thing.”
“Then hold on to me, goddammit.”
“I am.” Why was the moon getting fuzzy?
“Grace.”
The moon winked out. Funny, I couldn’t hear him anymore.
I couldn’t hear anything.
Warm again.
Nice and warm.
Three
“Ms. Copeland.”
Why was my hand trapped? I pushed at whatever was holding me down.
“Ms. Copeland, it’s time to come back to the land of the living.”
“Do you not see the oddness of sleeping with a woman you can’t call by her first name?”
“It’s not that I can’t, I choose not to.” Blake tightened his fingers around my hand.
More knucklehead fun. Maybe I could just keep my eyes closed and they’d eventually go away.
“I know you’re awake.” Blake leaned into me, his voice lowering to a mere grumble. “I know every single cadence of your breathing.” Were those his lips on my skin?
I shivered. Why the hell was he saying this stuff now?
One brush with death and now my guy was going to get all talkative and romantic? Well, about as romantic as Blake got, but still.
And really, this was a little too intimate for a hospital room. At least I was pretty sure I’d made it to the hospital. I moved my other hand and something crinkled.
A few flashes of memory came back. The staff trying to get me warm. The tug of an IV in my arm. Heating blankets because the hypothermia was a bit more important than my ankle.
Blake looming over me.
Blake arguing with doctors.
Blake next to me the entire night.
Jack always pacing.
Everything else was fuzzy. And I couldn’t move my damn leg and I was so afraid to open my eyes.
“Ms. Copeland.” Blake’s voice was a purr. I was used to a clipped tone with a hint of sex when he called me Ms. Copeland. He usually saved the purr for Grace.
And he definitely saved the groans to end with my given name.
“Come back to me, Grace.”
How could I ignore him? I lifted heavy lids, and squinted at the sunlight pouring around him. He’d been getting a little scruffier lately. Long hours in the office, and his perennial avoidance tactics in whatever we were calling our relationship…all of it was showing on his face.
His beautiful face, which I never tired of looking at. Even when he