Deadly Intuition(56)
Sophie shifted closer to him so she could press her head to the side of his chest. His heart was beating, soft and sure, and his arms tightened around her. “This is nice.”
“It is.”
“Can we stay here all day?”
“If you want.”
“You’re not going to try and make me watch shark movies?”
“No.”
“If I want to watch shark movies are you going to watch them with me?”
“I cleared my schedule.”
“Okay.”
“Okay you want to watch movies?”
“Okay I want to just lay here with you for a while.”
Grady brushed a kiss across her forehead. “Good.”
HE JOLTED awake two hours later. Sophie was trying to slip out of bed without waking him.
“What is it? What do you need?”
“I didn’t want to wake you up.”
“Just tell me what you need,” Grady said, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “I’ll get it for you.”
“I don’t think you can,” Sophie hedged.
“Try me. If it’s not here, I’ll go buy it for you. Although I think Mandy bought everything in the free world last night. Just tell me what you need.”
“I need to go to the bathroom.”
“Oh. You can probably do that on your own.”
“I think that would be best.”
“Are you coming back when you’re … um … done?”
“Actually, I was going to head downstairs,” Sophie said. “I’m kind of hungry. I haven’t eaten since lunch yesterday.”
That thought hadn’t occurred to Grady. “I’ll go start breakfast. What do you want?”
“I don’t know,” Sophie said. “I usually just have a piece of fruit.”
Grady rolled to a sitting position. “Eggs it is.”
Sophie smiled. “Go nuts.”
WHEN she made it downstairs – which was a more painful trek than she imagined – she found Grady standing in the kitchen with a spatula and two frying pans. His hair was messy, his face screwed up in concentration, and he was wearing only black boxer shorts.
Sophie had never seen anything more breathtaking.
“If you keep looking at me like that, I’m going to lose my mind and forget you’re not hurt.”
Sophie made a face. “How do you know I was looking at you? Your back was to me.”
“I can read minds.”
That was a scary thought. “I think you have a pretty high opinion of yourself for a guy trying to figure out how to open the bag of already shredded potatoes.”
Grady stuck out his tongue. “I was reading the directions.”
“You just rip the corner of the bag and dump them in the pan. Do you want me to help?”
“You’re injured,” Grady said. “You need to go and plant your ass on that couch and, when I am done, I will bring breakfast to you.”
“Not that I’m complaining, but how long are you going to be like this?”
Grady tilted his head to the side. “As long as I feel like it.”
“Okay.”
Grady narrowed his eyes. “Are you going to stand there watching me?”
Sophie shook her head. “No. I’m going to go sit on the couch and watch the news.”
“Why don’t you try watching a soap opera or something,” Grady suggested. “Watching the news is just going to get you all worked up. I think the news is to you like shark movies are to Mandy.”
“Like an aphrodisiac?”
“I hope not,” Grady said. “You can’t do anything like that for at least twenty-four hours.”
Despite her aches, Sophie was willing to test that theory – after she got some breakfast in her, of course.
“Well, I’ll leave you to your culinary delights.”
Sophie settled on the couch, searching through the paper bag on the table as she flipped on the television. News of her accident was the top story on Channel 4. She watched the coverage for a few minutes, a scowl on her face.
“Well, I know a few sheriff’s deputies who are probably throwing a party about this,” she said.
“Because of the coverage on the missing money?” Grady asked, not looking up as he cracked eggs into a pan. “I would think that they would be happy you’re trying to find the money.”
“That’s not how they see it,” Sophie said. “Two of them approached me at the funeral yesterday to make sure I knew that they considered my coverage a witch hunt.”
“They approached you at the funeral? Why were they even there?”
“It was a firefighter, there were a lot of representatives from law enforcement there,” Sophie said. “It’s just what they do.”