Angel's Dance (6 page)

Clear unexpectedly awoke to a light
filtering through the shades. She felt slightly disoriented and
started to roll over before almost falling off the bed. A bed that
was not her bed. She clung to the edge for just a moment then
slowly rolled the other way. Grant was still asleep, still above
the covers. The light gently accentuated his sharp roman nose and
highlighted his curls that were a moppy mess atop his head. She lay
there for several minutes watching him sleep. He looked older like
this. The skin around his eyes was all puffy and the stern lines
around his mouth indicating that he rarely smiled. He also looked
vulnerable.

Clear wanted to hold him and make him
feel better. She wanted to make him smile and laugh. At that very
moment she wanted to run her fingers through his hair and play with
his curls, but she knew that was a bad idea. His silence over the
last few months had made it abundantly obvious that he did not want
a relationship with her. The only reason they were here together
was because he was desperate for his daughter. With that stinging
thought, Clear rolled over and flopped out of bed. She grabbed her
bags and hauled them into the bathroom and pulled everything out to
organize it. Glancing at her watch, she groaned as she realized it
was only 5:30 in the morning.

Her neck and back were so taut,
probably from clinging to the edge of the bed all night. After she
organized her bags, she realized it had only taken 20 minutes. Too
tense to go back to bed, she pulled out clothes for the day and
decided to jump in the shower, hoping it wouldn’t wake up
Grant.

The hot steam rolled over her, helping
to unknot the muscles around her neck. She scrubbed hard with her
luffa willing the muscles to uncoil, and then leaned into the water
breathing in the scent of her soap. She began to drift and her mind
relaxed, releasing even more tension from her neck.

Suddenly she was in a dark room. There
was no light and everything smelled damp and moldy. Her hands were
bound and there was a gag in her mouth. She could feel dried tears
on her cheeks and the stinging behind her eyes that indicated more
tears would come soon. Because it was so dark, Clear could not make
out any distinguishing features of the room. She realized that she
was with someone who was experiencing intense fear. The girl’s legs
were nearly frozen and kept cramping up from the cold of the floor.
The floor felt like unfinished cement. The girl was tied to a pole
and the angle sent spasms of pain through her shoulders and back.
The pole was also very cold. Clear tried to separate herself from
the girl, so that she could try to see something. In the darkness
there was nothing to see. Knowing she was tied to the girl’s
emotions, Clear tried to connect with her more, hoping to get a
name, or location, or some memory from the girl. She felt as if she
were close to making a connection, when all at once there was a
banging sound and Clear found herself kneeling naked in a freezing
shower with Grant towering over her.

She gasped trying to scramble out of
the icy water and Grant snatched her up wrapping a towel around her
and pulling her into the other room. He plopped her down on the bed
and began rubbing her vigorously with the towel.

“
Good God!” he growled,
“You are blue from head to toe.” The rubbing was beginning to hurt
as the blood began to flow back into her limbs and she yelped.
Grant pulled back. “Are you alright?”

Her teeth were chattering so hard she
could not talk. “I…it h…hu…rtttt….s.” He immediately stopped
rubbing and instead grabbed up the blankets wrapping them around
both of them and pulling her hard against him. She tried to pull
away, feeling awkward so close to him, and extremely disoriented, a
part of her mind still in that dank room. The memories of the room
were fading fast and her numb brain could not hold onto any of the
details.

“
I think you are
hypothermic. We’ve got to warm you up. Your body isn’t warm enough
for the blankets to help. Sit still.” He clamped his arms around
her and began gently rubbing her back and arms, careful where he
touched. She could feel flames from his hands. Not just his natural
warmth, but her body responding to him being so close. He was still
fully clothed and she wrapped her arms around him feeling his hard
chest through his shirt. She tucked her head into his shoulder,
turning it into the crook by his neck, in part to warm her face and
in part to keep from looking at him, and having him look at her.
Her fingers were numb and she tucked them under his shirt in the
back. He jumped a bit but didn’t pull away when she began to slowly
and gently rub her fingers across the small of his back. The
movement brought the warmth into her fingers and then she began
moving her hands. With the bigger coverage area, it took a further
distance to keep any one spot from turning the same temperature as
her frozen palms.

She could feel his hands
mimicking the same motions across her back. As she slowed he would
also slow. There was a sensuality to the motions, that should have
had her blood boiling. She wanted to push hard and have him push
back, but finally her brain defrosted enough for her to realize how
indecent this all was. Here she was completely naked, in a bed,
rubbing… ‘
ugh!
’

She pulled away and grabbed the
blanket as she went, pulling it tight around her and tucking her
hands under her armpits. Peeking at him through the strands of her
hair, for just a brief moment she saw a flicker of… something… then
he was back to business. He jumped from the bed and grabbed another
towel from the bathroom, tossing it over her head and rubbing
gently.

“
How are your feet?” he
asked, glancing down.

Clear had no idea, she couldn’t even
feel them. She stared dumbly at him, not really able to respond. He
knelt and taking a foot in one hand, began rubbing it vigorously.
She tried to pull away again as the tingling started. He dropped
that foot and rubbed the other one vigorously, the painful
sensation bringing tears to her eyes. Then he grabbed some socks
from the floor and put them on her.

“
I know it hurts,” he
muttered gently as he continued to rub, “but if we don’t do this,
we can’t get the circulation going again.”

After a few minutes she pulled her
feet away, the pain and numbness now past. Complete and utter
humiliation and embarrassment at the predicament she once again
found herself in warming every inch of her skin.

“
I’m fine now,” she
murmured, trying not to cry.

Grant looked up at her uncertainly.
After a moment he seemed to decide to trust her. He pulled himself
up onto the bed next to her. She scooted away wrapping the blankets
around her tighter, painfully aware of how nude she was.

“
What happened?” he asked
gently.

“
Just me… being me,” Clear
grumbled, the tears choking her.

“
Was it…?” The question
hung. Clear knew he was asking if it was about his daughter, but
she really had no idea who the girl was. She might have gotten
something if he had just left her alone… then again she might have
frozen to death. She grimaced.

“
I don’t know… what
happened, or who she was… or where… or when,” she shrugged in a
non-committal manner and put her head in her palms.

Grant stood up abruptly and went and
grabbed the clothes she had laid out in the bathroom. He tossed
them on the bed. “I’ll just wait outside.” He headed out the
door.

Clear quickly threw on her clothes,
her skin still burning, and groaned inwardly. What a mess. She
scrubbed her head hard to dry her hair and get her brain working
right. This wasn’t going to work if she kept getting into these
compromising positions. All she could think about was how warm and
comfortable it had been in Grant’s arms. That was the last place
she should be thinking about! She mentally slapped herself and
ripped a hairbrush through the knots she had engendered by the
vigorous hair drying. Pulling her hair into a tight ponytail, she
stomped to the door and opened it.

“
You can come back in
now,” she said a little more harshly than she had intended. Grant
eyed her warily then came back in. He grabbed his bag and walked
into the bathroom. She started shoving her stuff back into her bag
and then scooped up the two bags and snatched the keys up, stomping
out to the car. She popped the trunk and launched her bags in
unceremoniously.

The sun was out bright and warm,
despite the chill in the air. Clear glowered up at the sun and
wondered what time it was. Well after eight, she figured. How long
had she been in the shower? Long enough for the water in a hotel to
have gone cold. She closed her eyes and tilted her head up to the
light, trying to sift through what had happened.

A shadow crossed her vision and she
opened her eyes to see Grant standing nearby. His bag was over his
shoulder. He had changed, but hadn’t shaved. She noticed how some
of the stubble across his chin reflected the light, making it
almost look like he had silver droplets on his face.

“
Ready to go?” he asked
politely… a little too politely.

Clear shrugged again and moved so he
could put his bag in with hers. He walked around to the other side
and waited for her to unlock the doors. They both climbed in and
she passed him the keys. He started the car and pulled up to the
motel lobby.

“
Are you hungry?” he
asked.

“
Not really,” Clear
sighed, her stomach a mass of knots that threatened to overflow at
any moment.

“
Right, well, let me know
when you are.” Grant shrugged and ran in to settle the bill. He was
back in just a few minutes.

“
If you are hungry, we can
stop,” Clear pointed out.

“
Not so much. Finding a
friend half-dead in the shower tends to kill one’s appetite,” Grant
said a bit snarkily. So much for polite. “Sorry… I’m not really
much of a morning person,” Grant amended.

Clear shrugged again and
pulled her hoodie around her tighter. Grant turned up the heat. She
gave him the ghost of a half-smile then turned to face the window.
The highway followed fields and fields of corn and barley. Their
stalks looking like gold in the early morning light. With all the
warmth and light, Clear still felt chilled. She just couldn’t shake
the cold from that dank room from her vision. What if she was just
leaving that poor girl behind? What if that girl died and Clear
could have helped her? But she bit back the torrent of feelings.
There was no way she could help. She hadn’t seen anything that
could help. She didn’t even know if it was happening now. She
needed to focus on helping Grant find his daughter. They would be
in Chicago in a few hours and she needed to mentally prepare to
face the windy city, all its inhabitants, and all their thoughts.
She carefully worked on mentally reconstructing the walls that she
and Anne had been working on. Part of her worried that this would
also block out anything from Kat, unfortunately, she didn’t know
how to make
partial
walls. That had not been the goal in their process. She
certainly couldn’t help Kat if she was being driven mad by everyone
else.

Thirty minutes later and it was so hot
in the cab that she was sweating. She glanced at Grant and could
see the beads of sweat on his upper lip. She quickly cranked the
heater down and rolled down her window.