Jacques grabbed his guitar case and set it on the empty bed. “No. I wanted to work on some songs. You go… shower.” It was only when she watched him swallow that Rainey looked moreclosely.
Did the intimacy of sharing a room rattle Jacques just as much as it didher?
The thought was so arresting, Rainey had to push it from her mind in order to utter a word, and when she spoke, it came out more like a squeak. “Okay… I’ll just be a minute.” And then without looking at him again, she fled to thebathroom.
She closed the door behind her and flattened her palms to it, her heart a wild rabbit in her chest. The urge to go back into the room and fling herself into his arms was almostoverwhelming.
But that would be disastrous. For so manyreasons.
She pressed her forehead to the cool wood of the door and listened for any sound of him. Nothing. No rattling guitar case or sounds of movement. Either the sound quality of their hotel was excellent, or Jacques was standing perfectly still where she’d lefthim.
Rainey pushed herself off the door with a sigh and turned on the shower. After laying out her pajamas on the counter and placing her shampoo and conditioner on the edge of the tub, she stripped off her clothes and steppedin.
The heavenly heat of the stream had her closing her eyes. But behind her lids the images she saw were all him: Jacques in profile, his right hand draped over the steering wheel, laughing as she tried to trick him with song lyrics; Jacques, sprawled in sleep in the cramped quarters of his front seat, deliciously muscled limbs pointing in every direction, his sooty eyelashes fanned out against the sculpture of his cheeks; Jacques, swiping a sweet potato fry off her plate with a wicked halfgrin.
She’d spent eight hours looking at him. Exposed to such male beauty, she knew her retinas would never be the same. For the rest of her life, she’d close her eyes and see his face, just like one sees an afterimage of a camera flash or a lightning strike. But instead of fading in seconds, his likeness was bound tostay.
Rainey opened her eyes, grabbed her shampoo bottle, and squirted a glob into her palm. She could probably spend all night under the shower stream just reliving their drive, but that certainly wouldn’t helpmatters.
Yet even with the intention to push him from her thoughts, her mind snagged on the conversation they’d had about his father. And how Jacques had made no secret over the years of his anger and disappointment. Of how he had shunned him, yelled at him, even hung up on him attimes.
Rainey had complained about her father to everyone in her life — except her father. Her mother, Holi, Ash — even Jacques. They all knew how she felt. But she had never lit into Doc Dylan Reeves for the way he’d treated her mother during their marriage and the way he’d abandoned them after they lost JohnLee.
And until this moment — standing in the shower in a hotel room she would share with a man she wanted but couldn’t have — Rainey had never asked herself why. Why couldn’t she tell her father how angry she was with him? Why couldn’t she throw his measly attempts at connection back in his face? His two-minute phone calls or his yearly visits that lasted all of forty-eight hours? His monthly deposits into her bankaccount?
Rainey only had one answer. She was a weakling. A scared, little weakling. In this as she was in every other aspect of herlife.
“Rainey?” Jacques was calling her through the closed bathroomdoor.
Yanked from her own, private moment of self-loathing, Rainey stuck her sudsy head out of theshower.
“Yeah?” she called back. He was calling from the other side of the door. A door, she now realized, she’d neverlocked.
“Archie’s scratching on the door and whining a little. I’m gonna take him down for a walk. You okay withthat?”
Rainey blinked. Jacques was not about to open her bathroom door, locked or not. She knew this. He was far too much of agentleman.
But in her weak, little weakling moment, Rainey couldn’t be sure that she wouldn’t have preferred that hedid.
My God, get a hold ofyourself.
“Yeah, sure… Thanks!” she forced herself toshout.
“‘Kay. We won’t belong.”
She thought she heard the door to the hallway close. Rainey decided it might be best to be out of the shower and dressed by the time they returned. She rinsed, conditioned, and shaved her legs, aiming now tohurry.
“Ow! Dammit!” she hissed, pulling back the razor to see the telltale crimson nick on the boniest part of her left shin. Rinsing it under the shower stream burned like the dickens, and she drew in her lips and stifled asqueal.
Her leg was only half-done, of course so she propped it back on the edge of the tub and finished the job, all the while ignoring the streak of blood that moved down to her ankle and dripped off herheel.
When she rinsed out her conditioner and turned off the shower, she discovered that her efforts had been for nothing. The gentle cords from Jacques’s guitar told her they were already back, and he’d settled in to work on hismusic.
With a smile, Rainey admitted to herself that she wasn’t all that upset. Though he didn’t sing, she sensed by the rhythm that his song was playful, easy, and the sound of it brought hercomfort.
She wrung out her hair, wrapped a towel around her head, and dried off enough to step out of the tub and attempt to staunch her bleeding shin with a wad of toilet paper. She bent over the tub, turned the hot water on full blast, and soaped up her washcloth before scrubbing the basin as best she could. The last thing she wanted was to leave a morbid streak of blood for Jacques to find whenever heshowered.
Suppressing a groan, Rainey held up her meager pajamas. When she’d packed, she hadn’t even considered the possibility that she and Jacques would be sharing a room. So, her nightwear consisted of the usual: tiny PJ shorts, a tank top, and fuzzy socks. When she put these on and eyed herself in the mirror, her stomach tightened. A whole lot of thigh was showing, but the worst part was the tank top. With her hair damp and cold against her back, her taut nipples budded against the thin cotton of her top in a lewddisplay.
