Too Close to Resist. Nicole Helm
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by the room itself. Clients will eat that up.”
Grace was speechless and a little misty. She’d learned a lot in the past seven years, mainly how to protect herself, but she’d also learned firsthand that her little brother was one hell of a man when he wanted to be.
“You’re here.”
Grace turned and wrinkled her nose at Kyle standing in the doorway. It was a Saturday, and what was he wearing? Khakis and a button-up shirt. Who did that? If he ever deigned to wear jeans and a T-shirt, he might actually be kind of cute. In that preppy, brooding kind of way.
He’d filled out a bit since high school. Now instead of looking like a beanpole, he looked more as if he could be a marathon runner, lean but all muscle. He kept his blond hair cut very short, and his dark blue eyes always looked at her with the practiced disdain of royalty.
Which was crap because he was from Carvelle just like her and Jacob. Not only that, but he’d grown up in the trailer park while she and Jacob had lived in a small but cozy house in the nicer part of town thanks to two teacher parents.
But Kyle always went on about wine and opera and every pretentious thing under the sun with his clients, as though he was from somewhere cultured and fancy. He seemed to go out of his way to make people think he was something better, shinier and more important than a boy from a trailer park.
Grace wanted to feel sorry for him and what little she knew of his difficult childhood, but Kyle did everything in his power to pretend that his years in Carvelle didn’t exist.
It rankled Grace’s nerves the way he sneered at her choice of clothes, or her tattoo, or the colorful strands of her hair. He seemed on a mission to make her feel like the gum he’d scraped off the bottom of his shoe.
She didn’t deserve that treatment, and she’d never let him believe she did.
But he was agreeing to let her stay at his house. And she knew, mostly when her guidance counselor mother reminded her, that Kyle’s attitude had to stem from some kind of insecurity. So she would try to be nice.
Try.
“Hey, Kyle.”
“Grace. Welcome.”
His tone was bland. He sounded like a butler in one of those boring British movies where nothing happens and people just look at each other longingly.
Whatever, Mr. Khaki Pants. “Thank you for letting me stay.” Her gratitude was sincere, even if he wasn’t one of her favorite people.
“Of course.”
You’re here. Grace. Welcome. Of course. Could the guy string more than two words together? Grace turned to the window and the pretty view below. It really was best now that he was so tight-lipped, because she had a bad habit of baiting him when he started talking about anything.
He shouldn’t bother her. Grace knew that, but it didn’t change the fact that he did. All that condescension and disapproval. It was human nature to want to be contrary, wasn’t it? She certainly wasn’t going to go the Kyle Clark route and dress and act like some kind of stuffy, repressed robot just because bad things happened.
No. She lived in the moment, for the moment, took everything she could from the moment. Screw rules. If she wanted her hair to be fuchsia, so be it. If she wanted to tattoo her face with an obscene picture, her prerogative. And if Mr. Stick-Up-His-Ass frowned upon it, she most certainly did not care.
Grace flipped her hair over her shoulder, hoping he noticed the cascade of color beneath the brown.
Mom’s voice reminded her to play nice, and Grace felt immediately contrite for her inner diatribe. Sore nerve? Ugh. The guy was doing her a favor; she was going to have to cut him some slack. Or just avoid him at all costs. But right now, avoidance wasn’t an option. “It’s a great room. You guys have accomplished a lot.”
“Thank you.”
Grace rolled her eyes at yet another two-word sentence, but she bit her tongue. No need to get off on the wrong foot her very first day.
Silence settled over the room and Grace sighed. “All right, let’s get this over with.” She could feel the pinned-up tension waving off Kyle and weighing heavily on the small corner room. She could ignore it, or they could all get it out of their systems so the next few weeks went smoothly.
“What?” Jacob and Kyle asked in unison.
“Mr. Stickler over there probably has a list of rules for me while I’m here. Probably wants me to sign a blood oath I’ll follow them, too.”
Jacob looked at Kyle, then the ceiling. Obviously she’d been right.
“It’s okay.” She hopped onto the pretty bed, stretched out. “Lay ’em on me.”
* * *
KYLE FROWNED. HE did have some ground rules for Grace, but even he wasn’t rude enough to bring them up the minute she arrived. Especially when she was staying with them for such...sensitive reasons.
But Grace embodied everything Kyle worked so hard to rise above. No, she didn’t just embody it, she embraced it. She flaunted it. He had a business to run in this house, and her image didn’t match.
And if he kept telling himself that, he could ignore that Grace always put him off-kilter. Always prompted more response out of him than he wanted to give.
“I’m sure you have something to say about my tattoo,” she offered. “You’re always sneering at it.”
He wanted to argue. He didn’t sneer at it, per se. It was just so bright and...visible. That was fine for Grace, it even kind of suited her, but Grace...Grace did not fit the ordered, muted world he wanted.
“Your tattoo is fine, but... Well, it’s an image thing. We routinely have clients taking tours of the house. While your room will be off-limits for the duration of your stay, we may ask you to vacate it for scheduled tours. The kitchen and TV room are within the common areas. It’s likely you’ll be seen. Some people are put off by tattoos.” Which was why no one ever saw his.
She lay back on the bed, resting her head on folded arms. The sleeve on her arm rode up so the tattoo was now almost completely visible. The faded T-shirt she wore had bunched up so that a smooth strip of pale skin was exposed.
Back in high school she’d been more curvy, but ever since her incident, as he preferred to refer to it, she’d changed. She was lean now, her body toned with muscle as if she’d spent a lot of time trying to purposefully bulk up.
Wasn’t that what he’d done after his own...incident?
Kyle focused on the tattoo. “Well?”
“Well, listening to you talk reminds me of Mr. Mallory’s boring science lectures. But I get it. Walk around in long sleeves to hide my off-putting tattoo. Next?”
He scowled. How did she manage to make his perfectly reasonable request sound so ridiculous? “Next...” Kyle paused. She’d started this, but he was coming off looking like the jerk.
And that was why he hated to be around Grace. She always flipped things on their side. He could never control the situation. He’d spent eighteen years in a volatile, uncontrollable environment. He’d fought tooth and nail to get out, to make something of himself enough so that he was in control of his life.
Grace had an easy way of making him feel as though he’d failed.
“If you don’t like my tattoo, I imagine you don’t approve of my hair, either.”
“It is rather colorful.”
“And that’s a problem?”
He tamped down his irritation. For whatever reason, Grace always pulled emotions out of him he usually found easy to repress. No one else in his life could do that even with their best efforts.
Well, except one person, but Kyle refused to acknowledge that little blip.