Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
GRACE
Bag packed, Grace double-checked that the encapsulated, definitely possessed doll hadn’t transported itself into her things.
If only getting back to her condo and away from the creepy thing didn’t also mean saying goodbye to Alix.
Somehow, three days had evaporated in a blur, and just like that, Alix had a Saturday morning flight to catch despite Grace feeling like she’d only just picked her up.
Grace blamed the heavy, reluctant feeling in her body on having danced too much. She ignored the empirical evidence that kickboxing had never depleted her from the inside out.
The moment she walked into the living room with a view of the kitchen, Grace stopped short.
She’d expected to find Alix asleep on the sofa bed where she’d spent all of Friday recovering while they watched cable TV.
A CSI marathon and lots of fluids had resulted in one of the best days Grace could remember.
It had nothing to do with Alix’s amusement when Grace ranted about the things the show got wrong, or her interest when she recounted some of the cases she’d had.
No, it was just nice to put off work, even if she’d pay for it over the weekend.
Alix was not sprawled out with sheets tangled around her ankles like Grace expected. She was up and standing in the kitchen in black boxer briefs and a loose T-shirt. The last thing Grace wanted to do was gawk, but Alix’s legs were so unexpectedly toned and the boxers hugged her very cute—
Nope.
Grace swallowed to return the moisture to her mouth where it freaking belonged. It was when she snapped out of her lustful gaze that she noticed what Alix was doing. Cafetera in hand, she was watching a video on how to make Cuban espresso.
Hair mussed and attention trained on her task, Alix was unbearably adorable. Then Alix turned her attention to her audience of one — Baby, sitting at her feet and wagging his tail while he listened to her repeat the instructions.
Grace’s involuntary swoon was collateral damage. There was no way to shield herself from the drop in her stomach and unsteady knees. Who the hell could resist someone talking so earnestly to a dog?
Grace cleared her dry throat and dropped her bag by the front door before she devolved into a syrupy puddle on the floor. “You sure you want to do that?” she asked when she walked into the kitchen. “Pour coffee into your abused stomach after essentially having food poisoning yesterday?”
“Hey!” Alix’s grin was heart stopping when she whirled around. “I hope we didn’t wake you.”
“With this Food Network audition tape?” she joked. “No, I was up. Why are you up?”
“Don’t you love getting used to a time change right before it switches again?” Alix set the percolator on the stovetop. “Now I’ll spend a week waking up at the ass crack of dawn.”
“Isn’t that always the way?” Grace countered Baby’s headbutt with an ear scratch. “Here, put it on the edge so the handle doesn’t get too hot.” She moved the cafetera.
“I can’t wait to make a cafe con oat milk for Phyllis,” she said in commendable Spanish.
“She’s gonna lose her shit.” She leaned her back against the counter, and Grace had to avert her gaze from her tattooed arms, but a glimpse of the bottom of a thigh tattoo didn’t help.
Friends did not look at their friends and wonder whether they could lift them onto a kitchen counter, or perhaps bend—
Nope.
Grace took over espresso-making duties. She needed something productive to do. Needed somewhere to look other than Alix’s warm, dark eyes. The ones she was going to miss more than she should.
“So, apparently, my mother thought that all meat sins were absolved by having been cooked in avocado oil,” Grace explained while spooning sugar into a metal cup. “She is both horrified and extremely apologetic.”
“Tell her it was my fault.” Alix laughed, hand on her stomach.
“She told you—”
Alix cut her off with a hand on her wrist. A touch Grace felt like a jolt straight up her arm. That was fine. Totally normal. She wasn’t touched all that often. It was just a totally normal response. It was startling, not exhilarating.
“I knew, Gator,” Alix said in the most somber tone. “In my sober heart, I knew that nothing could make seitan taste like that. Not even a mom,” she added with her hand on her chest. “Choices were made, and they were mine.”
“So you meant to feel like actual death?” Grace raised a brow to signal her disbelief.
Alix bit the inside of her cheek, making a dimple sprout on the opposite side. She maintained her serious expression when she replied, “The consequences were harsher than I anticipated.”
Grace chuckled. “You’d do it again, wouldn’t you?”
Alix moistened her lips, and Grace had to force herself back to the espresso that had started brewing. God, why was there so much crap in the house? It made it so hot despite the running AC.
“My lawyer has advised me not to comment.”
“Smart lawyer.” Grace poured the first drops of espresso over the sugar and returned the cafetera to the stove to finish brewing.
“Oh, you have no idea.” Alix’s voice returned to her usual tone, as if to signal she wasn’t joking. “She’s pretty great at crisis management. Knows how to handle illness of all sorts, and is willing to plunge into a pool in the middle of the night to play with a dog.”
Heat she couldn’t blame on anything but Alix’s words spread over Grace’s chest. It dripped into her stomach and triggered an avalanche of embarrassing flutters. She made the critical error of looking at her. Of indulging in the euphoric feeling of Alix’s attention before forcing herself to stop.
“To be fair, I was defrauded into believing a water rescue was necessary.” She poured the rest of the coffee into the metal cup and delighted in the thick foam she’d created with her aggressive stirring.
At the first sip, Alix closed her eyes and groaned. “God, I’m going to miss this.”
“We can stop somewhere on the way to the airport and make sure you leave with the right tools for the job.”
“I’m sure it won’t taste the same. Something about the Miami air probably makes it particularly good, you know?”
Grace nodded, holding back the stupid grin that wanted to spring on her lips. There wasn’t anything for her to smile at — just Alix.
Sitting by the pool while Baby ran his spirited laps around them, Grace was surprised to find that she wasn’t in a hurry to get home. That she wasn’t eager to drop Baby off at her mom’s place later, even if she was leaving with black fur on every garment.
“I can’t believe it went by so fast,” Alix said, gaze drifting over the still pool.
“It really did,” she agreed, wishing she could say more. Wishing she could say that she wasn’t ready for Alix to leave. But she couldn’t find a way to say it without making things weird.
“Christmas in Colorado could never compete with this,” Alix whined in a tone that was entirely too endearing.
Grace chuckled. “Oh, yeah. Being unwittingly dosed with drugs and force-fed meat while being accosted by half my family is a real thrill.”
“When you say it like that”—Alix laughed—“you make it sound so badass.”
Grace rolled her eyes playfully. “Any time you want me to remind you how many times I had to take Baby for a walk while you—”
“Okay, Gator. Allow a girl to leave with her dignity.”
Grace’s chest buzzed when she laughed. She’d laughed more since meeting Alix than she had in her entire life. She couldn’t even blame the damn weed brownies. God, she was so pathetic.
Grace’s mind conjured Julie and imagined her stoic expression. Julie wouldn’t outright call her a hyena. No. Julie was so good at just remaining quiet if Grace spoke negatively of herself. Never dispelling the assertion. Rarely countering it with something positive.
“Not that I’ve decided on going or not. I don’t know. If anything, this has made me dread the idea of going home for Christmas even more,” Alix said before mumbling something about Venus being in retrograde.
“Well, I more than owe you one,” Grace replied before giving herself time to dwell on it. “One good turn deserves another.” She stopped before unleashing a tirade of idiotic idioms.
Leaning back in the cheap white plastic patio chair, Alix cocked her head to the side when she looked at Grace. “I’m not following your adage-ing.”
“If you want, I’ll come to Colorado with you. Help you through it the way you helped me through Thanksgiving.”
Alix watched her carefully for a moment, her voice low as she asked, “Are you serious?”
There was something in Alix’s expression that nearly winded Grace.
A genuine, heartbreaking surprise. Alix looked at her like Grace had offered to give her a kidney rather than repay a favor in kind.
Years of studying people for jury selection made her tread carefully.
It took moments of reading Alix’s discomfort before deciding that light and breezy was the way to go.
“I’ve never seen a real-life snowy American Christmas.” Grace picked up the toy duck Baby dropped at her feet and flung it across the patio.
Alix laughed with both dimples, indirect sunlight dancing in her eyes.
“My dad will spend the entire holiday tucked away in his office building ships in a bottle while my mom makes pointed comments about every life choice I’ve ever made.
My brother, meanwhile, will only peel himself away from his video games for food and presents…
It’s nothing like how warm this has been. ”
“It would be fun to compare it to the Hallmark of it all. I mean, will there be a cookie competition? An eggnog showdown? A head-to-head gingerbread house battle royale?” Grace tried to look conspiratorial.
“We do have this gingerbread competition thing… but hang on. Are you a secret holiday romance fan?” Alix grinned.
“Who is keeping anything a secret?” Grace didn’t want to lose the glee emanating from Alix like a solar flare. She wouldn’t tell her that she’d never watched one but gleaned all she needed to know from pop culture.
“You’d go with me to Colorado for a whole week? Just like that? What about your job? The partners—”
“The partners owe me about a thousand hours of leave,” Grace said.
“And there are never any trials set for that week because of all the traveling for judges, lawyers, jurors, court staff. I can work when I’m there.
If the pandemic gave us a single positive thing, it’s that now so many things can be done over Zoom. If I have a hearing, I can—”
“Grace, are you messing with me?” Alix’s furrowed brow joined the renewed disbelief marring her beautiful face.
“If you don’t want me to go—”
“No.” Alix leaned forward. “No. That’s not it at all. If you want—”
“I want,” Grace promised and kept her gaze from dropping to Alix’s devastating smile. Kept from revealing that going with her to Colorado wasn’t the only thing she wanted.