RaeAnne Thayne: Saving Grace

But the harder Grace tried to keep Jack Dugan and his little girl at arm’s length, the harder they tried to sneak through her defenses.

With Grace watching, Jack knelt down to slip a bracelet on his daughter’s wrist.

Grace was so fascinated by the sight of those broad, strong fingers performing such a delicate task that she forgot to keep him from putting her own bracelet on her.

“Your turn.”

With his head bent over her hand, his scent drifted to her on the sea breeze. His neck was tanned and strong. Would his hair be as soft as it looked?

Just before she would have reached her fingers to find out, the ferry horn sounded, and she snatched both hands away from him. What had she nearly done? Touched him, caressed him. Wanted him.

And for the first time in a year, she felt alive again.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Donald and Janice Thayne, for sharing the beauty of the Islands, and for raising such a wonderful son.

Special thanks to Cissy Serrao of Poakalani Hawaiian Quilt Designs in Honolulu for her vast knowledge of this exquisite art form.

lives in a crumbling old Victorian in northern Utah with her husband and two young children, where she writes surrounded by raw mountains and real cowboys. She loves hearing from readers at P.O. Box 6682 North Logan, Utah 84341.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

If she was going to do this, it would have to be soon.

Grace Solarez crouched in the dirt and watched cars move in an endless rhythm past the orchards that marched along this desolate stretch of interstate.

Three-hundred-sixty-five days ago she would have savored the sensory assault around her: the sweetness of the apples just a few weeks away from harvest, the tweet-tweet-tweet of the crickets; the cool, moist night breeze kissing her face.

Now, she could only watch the headlights slice through the night and wonder which pair she would see right before she died.

A mosquito sunk its teeth into her right biceps, honed and toughened by the last few months of hard labor on the docks. She glanced down briefly at the first sharp needle prick of pain, then ignored it. What was the point in swatting it away?

She had blood to spare.

Her eyes felt gritty, as if she’d grabbed a handful of dirt and rubbed it across her face. And she was tired. So tired. For a year she had gone through the motions of living, functioning on only the most basic of levels. Breathing, eating, sleeping. She couldn’t bear it another day, another hour, another minute.

This grief was too huge, too constant. Nothing slipped through it, not even the smallest shadow of respite. She couldn’t survive it anymore. The grief and the guilt had become burdens too heavy for her to carry.

She pulled the snapshot from the pocket of her T-shirt one last time. Moonlight filtered across the image, washing out the colors to a grayish blue, but she could still see the mischief glimmering in her daughter’s eyes. She traced Marisa’s smile with her fingertip.

“I’m sorry, Marisita,” she whispered. “So sorry. I tried—I swear, I tried—but I’m not strong enough. I just can’t do it anymore.”

Looking at the picture—at the image of a laughing, beautiful child frozen forever in time—was too excruciating to endure for long. After a few moments she carefully slipped it back into her pocket. Her right hand lingered over her heart protectively while she watched the mesmerizing parade of oncoming headlights, trying not to wonder if she would feel the impact of the collision before she died.

What she was about to do was a mortal sin, she knew. If Padre Luis—the bitter old priest at Tia Sofia’s church—could be believed, she would be damned for eternity, consigned forever to a special kind of hell reserved for those who defied God’s will.

But what did she care? She’d already been damned in this life, why not the next one, too? Besides, she had no problem pissing off a God vengeful enough to take away the only thing that had ever mattered to her.

Now, a few minutes past midnight on the anniversary of the day her life had effectively ended, she might as well make it official.

Muscles tensed and ready, she scanned the traffic, trying to pick her moment. From the orchard elevated six feet or so above the roadway, she had a good view of traffic in both directions.

Headlights a mile or so in the distance caught her attention. Even in the dark—and even absorbed, as she was, in the unchangeable past—she could tell it was moving much faster than the other vehicles, weaving and darting crazily from lane to lane.

From this distance, it looked like some fancy foreign make. A Porsche, judging by the sleek, curvy lines. Probably some spoiled rich kid coming home drunk after a night of clubbing.

As it approached her spot in the orchard, she watched the little sports car come dangerously close to hitting the fender of a pickup truck. The pickup driver apparently didn’t like being tailgated and she saw the angry red glare of brake lights suddenly light up the night.

The sports car driver apparently saw them, too, but just an instant too late. He slammed on the brakes and yanked the wheel to the left, sending the car hurtling toward the wide barrow pit in the median.

Just before he would have slammed into a reflector post, the driver jerked on the wheel again, overcorrecting the car and sending it screeching back across the lanes of traffic.

At such a high rate of speed, the driver couldn’t possibly regain control of the vehicle. Just as it passed her, the Porsche rolled, flipping side over side until it came to rest upside down in the empty drainage ditch a few hundred yards ahead of her.

For an instant, she stood stunned, disoriented by the abrupt, jarring shift in her emotions, from weary despair to adrenaline-laced shock in a matter of seconds.

Smoke began to pour from the mangled carcass of the car and she could smell that scent peculiar to accidents: a combination of gasoline, scorched rubber and hot metal.

What were the chances of the drunk walking away from such a crash? It was hard to gauge. When she’d still been on the job, she had worked accidents she would have sworn no one could possibly survive where the victims came out completely unscathed. And she had worked simple, no-frills fender-benders that resulted in fatalities. Every situation was a crapshoot, like so much of police work.

She looked through the filter of leaves but couldn’t see any activity around the car. Her stomach churned suddenly, unexpectedly, as she fought the urge to check out the scene, to make at least some effort to help the idiot driver.

She didn’t want to get involved, couldn’t handle getting involved. She could hardly think past her own agonizing grief. But she had been a cop for almost a decade and it was hard to ignore those powerful instincts.

The battle with indecision lasted for only a few seconds. With a defeated sigh, Grace scrambled down the small slope toward the accident scene.

A few other motorists had already stopped and a small crowd had gathered around the periphery of the accident scene. They all looked stunned, with the kind of dazed disbelief civilians share during traumatic incidents.