I hung my head, tired of fighting against him for the past ten minutes. “I can’t. I swear you aren’t listening to me. Grace is going to be up at any minute. I need to go.”
He took my hand in his and nodded like he actually understood, finally. “I know. I mean, we should do something later today. Would you like to go out with me for dinner?”
“Oh. Yeah, that would be great. I thought you meant—”
With a chuckle, he finished my sentence. “You thought I meant that I wanted to fuck you again right now. I do, more than you can imagine, but I’m a patient man. I can wait until tonight.”
Now my cheeks felt like they were on fire. Just the mention of us together again made my stomach flip, and an ache settled in between my thighs.
“I have to go. I should warn you that I don’t have anything really great to wear for any decent restaurant. I just thought you should know.”
He pulled me down on top of him and kissed me. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
I felt his hands at the back of my shirt and knew exactly what he was trying to do. Pulling away, I shook my head at his one track mind.
“Typical man.”
Nico shrugged and gave me another wicked smile. “Guilty. Tonight then.”
Nodding, I turned and ran out his bedroom as I silently prayed to God Grace wasn’t awake yet. By the time I reached my room, I had to catch my breath since I’d sprinted all the way across the house.
But it was all worth it because a few minutes later when Grace knocked softly on my door, I was there for her. With a drowsy expression, she rubbed her eyes and asked, “Can we go back to the woods today?”
I nodded and smiled at how cute she looked in her pink and white nightgown, her bare feet sinking into the white carpeting in my bedroom. “Absolutely, as long as it isn’t raining. I don’t want you to catch a cold. You look pretty sleepy, though. Do you want to go back to bed for a while?”
Grace nodded but didn’t turn to leave. After a few seconds, she asked in a tiny voice, “Can I come in your bed?”
How anyone could turn down such a sweet little girl I had no idea. I lifted up the bedspread and sheet and waved her over.
“Sure. Come on in!”
She ran over to my bed and climbed up under the covers. Smiling, she turned to look over at me. “Thank you, Tia. I used to like sleeping in my mommy’s bed.”
Suddenly, I wondered if she and her mother had always shared the same bed. If so, then she was probably feeling even more abandoned than I already believed.
“I’m sure your mom liked that too.”
Nodding, she smiled, but it was half-hearted. “Only on Sundays when she didn’t have to go into work. That was the only time I could get into her bed.”
“Oh. Well, I can understand that. It’s next to impossible to get out of bed to go to work when you want to stay right where you are.”
Grace said nothing, but after a few minutes, inched herself over closer to me. “Do you think my mommy misses me?”
Her tone of uncertainty broke my heart, so I wrapped my arms around her to give her a hug. “Of course, she does. Your mommy loves you, honey, and being away from people you love is hard.”
“It is. She doesn’t have a Tia either,” Grace said sweetly. “Can I make her something to send to her after we get back from the woods?”
I pressed my cheek against the top of her head and smiled. “Absolutely. I’m sure she’ll love it.”
Against me, Grace’s body got small all of a sudden. “Not like Uncle Nico.”
Since I couldn’t share with her what I knew about her uncle as of just a few hours ago, at least I could let her know he may not have been the man we both saw these past few weeks. “Well, I suspect he was just getting used to having a girl in his house. I bet now he’s going to be better. In fact, I’m sure of it.”
But that didn’t convince her. Nico was going to have to prove to his niece that he wasn’t the son of a bitch monster she had seen time and again in the weeks she’d lived here.
I hoped he was up to the challenge.
With a gallon sizeplastic baggie full of leaves, Grace marched down the path back toward the house. “I want to make my mommy’s card pretty. The big red leaf will be perfect, don’t you think?”