Eventually, I leaned over and turned off the water. The sudden quiet seemed to echo with a hundred things I couldn’t bring myself to say.
Tilting her face back, I took a wet washcloth and began gently wiping away her glittery elf makeup. “So how did it go with Joan?”
She hummed as the fabric passed over her closed eyelids. “Pretty well. We talked. She apologized and I apologized. We’re both going to try to do better.”
“That’s good,” I said, relieved. Joan could be stubborn, and I knew how badly Candace wanted to connect with her sister. If they’d made peace, that was a very good thing.
Her eyes were still closed when she admitted quietly, “I feel pretty dumb for the whole fight before the parade.”
As I considered what to say, I nudged Candace toward the center of the tub and tilted her head back. With the mason jar I’d brought from the kitchen, I wet her hair over and over until it was shiny and saturated.
Eventually, I replied, “I think it needed to happen. I don’t know if you and Joan would have talked it out otherwise.”
“Still embarrassing,” she said with a self-deprecating laugh.
“Let’s go with ‘a period of personal growth.’”
Her smile brightened.
I watched her for a moment. With her eyes closed and her head tilted back, she was so trusting, so open—gorgeous beyond belief. I wanted to lean forward and taste her wet skin, trail my hand along the surface of the water, reach beneath.
My eyes shifted to the bottle of lavender-scented shampoo I held in my hand, and I had to take a steadying breath.
Our deadline was fast approaching—less than a month—and Candace hadn’t shared her plans for the future or her exit strategy.
She was rooted in every aspect of my life—my work, my home, my damn heart. I didn’t know how I was going to let all this go when the time came. How I’d scrub this house of memories all over again.
She spoke a bit more about the conversation with Joan, how they’d been mistakenly viewing each other for years.
I was quiet as I listened and washed her thick hair, soaping up the strands and massaging her scalp. My fingers brushed away droplets along her hairline and trailed them down the elegant line of her throat.
Candace was all graceful compliance, tilting her neck this way and that as she spoke. She made these appreciative little groans that had me shifting on my stool.
After I’d rinsed out the last of the conditioner, she opened her brilliant green-gold eyes and murmured, “You’re really good at this, you know?”
“Thanks. It was always my dream to work in a salon.”
She laughed, causing ripples to fan out around her in the soapy water. When the water had settled but happiness still lingered on her face, she clarified, “I meant, you’re really good at taking care of people.”
I took a towel and dried her ears, not knowing what to say. Taking care of someone was what you did when you loved them. To me, it was as simple as that. I’d known I loved her for a while now. It wasn’t news to me, but it might not be what she wanted to hear.
“You’re always taking care of me,” she explained as she twisted her wet hair on top of her head and used a clip to hold it all in place. “Making sure I’m comfortable and content.”
I thought of my past life, with a wife I couldn’t make happy. I considered this empty room and the attached bedroom that hadn’t been used in over two years. Maybe I was only now learning how to take care of someone. Maybe Hannah had been right to go out and find a partner who could look after her in all the ways she deserved.
I picked up a washcloth and massaged some of Candace’s shower gel into it. Then I gently unwrapped her arm from where it rested around her knees. I worked the wet, sudsy fabric up the length of her forearm and asked, “Are you comfortable now?”
She smiled over at me. “I don’t think I’ve ever been this relaxed in my whole life, Mark.”
Her words made me warm with pride, or maybe it was the steam from the bath or the way she looked so damn beautiful beneath my hands.
I dragged the cloth up and over her shoulder blades, around to her other arm. She lifted it wordlessly for my ministrations. Then Candace stretched out her long legs until her red-painted toes touched the end of the bathtub, exposing her breasts above the waterline. Her skin was shiny with moisture, a bit flushed from the heat of the water, and her perfect nipples were tight in the cool air.
Gooseflesh pebbled in the wake of the washcloth as it passed over her skin.
With a voice so deep I hardly recognized it as my own, I asked again, “And now? Are you still relaxed?”
I didn’t know whether she recognized the direction my thoughts had taken, but she regarded me with dark eyes. Then slowly, she leaned back, using her hands for support, and opened herself even further to my gaze.
