He pushed from the hood, his stance relaxed but his expression serious. “When did this happen?”
“Last year. Listen, I have to get to cheer practice—”
“When she came to see me in the hospital, she was perfectly fine.”
Grace sighed heavily. “No, she wasn’t. She hasn’t been fine for nearly five years, she’s just been hiding it because she didn’t want to burden me.” The thought of her mother being a burden after all she’d done for Grace was ludicrous and just pushed her anger higher and her sadness deeper. “She started taking medication two years ago, but it hasn’t helped. She was doing better before her roommate died…”
Emotion welled up in Grace’s throat, and she couldn’t go on.
“Will it get better?” he asked, his voice filled with the same distress Grace had lived with for the past year.
“No.” The word came out half rasp, half whisper. The will to keep all her emotions stuffed away made Grace tremble.
Josh approached her in slow, thoughtful steps. She wanted to back away, but the utter emotional defeat had robbed her of the will to move. And when he wrapped her in his arms, she squeezed her eyes closed, buried her face in his T-shirt…and broke. Just started bawling.
His arms tightened as he pressed kisses to her hair. Stroked her back. Rocked her gently from side to side. Her second jag in ten minutes dried up as quickly as the first.
“I want to help,” he murmured in that low rumbling voice.
Again, too little, too late.
She knew she should let go and step back, but, God, she needed someone to lean on so badly. “There’s nothing you can do. There’s nothing anyone can do. It just…is.”
His hands stroked across her shoulders, those big warm hands on her skin, sliding intimately o
ver her Lycra tank, curving over the small of her back, and traveling up her spine to the back of her neck. She wanted to lift her face to his neck, to breath him in, to taste his skin, to lick his lips the way she had last night. Craved the pressure of him between her legs, the sizzle of skin on skin.
“Let me take over the expenses here,” he murmured, cupping her head and kissing her temple. “I have the money, and you can’t keep running these crazy hours. You come here, then you go to cheer practice, then you’re at the club until an ungodly hour. You’re going to make yourself sick, then where will you be?”
The heat glowing at the center of her body immediately cooled, and she pushed away. “You realize that when you tell me I can’t do something, it just makes me want to prove you wrong, don’t you?”
“I didn’t mean can’t as in can’t, I just—”
“Mom worked two jobs and raised me for over twenty years. I sure as hell can do it for as long as she needs me. And dammit, there’s more to the club than just money. Didn’t you hear what I told you last night?”
“I did—”
“I may have taken the job to pay for Mom’s care, but I’ve built it into something different and special. Something unique. I would still work at the club even if I didn’t need the job for Mom.”
“I know,” he said, gently, seriously. “I talked to the owner last night. He thinks of you like a daughter. Brags about how much business you’ve brought in. How much the girls love you. How you’re the damn glue that keeps that place together.”
She pressed her lips together, not sure how to feel. Or what to believe.
“I don’t want to tell you what to do,” he said. “I just want you safe and happy. And I want Carolyn comfortable. I love her too.”
A mixed flurry of emotion swept in, whirling into chaos. He was able to say he loved her mother but not her. His offer, while sweet and generous, was also ignorant and shortsighted. And the bottom line was…she couldn’t depend on him in any way that mattered.
“I know you mean well, Josh, but that’s unrealistic in more ways than I have time to explain right now.”
He blew out a breath, shifted on his feet, and put his hands on his hips. “What can I do?”
She crossed her arms. “You can leave,” she said, in her gentlest voice, even though a sense of loss raged inside her. “Because we both know you’ve created your life somewhere else, and you’re going to leave eventually anyway. It would be better for all of us if you left sooner rather than later.”
She opened the driver’s door, and Josh caught the top in one big hand. “I’m not leaving like this.”
“Like what? Like this?” She gestured between them, indicating the conflict brewing. “This is how you left it a year ago. And nothing’s changed.”
She sat and pulled on the door, but Josh didn’t let go. “Everything’s changed. And I’m going to find a way to help—both you and Carolyn.”