“Don’t even think about it.” She kissed me. “I have to go see my daughter and get back to the hospital and after last night, I’m lucky I can walk. Now, go clean up.”

I showered alone as she found clean clothes in a drawer we’d agreed she could commandeer, found myself waiting for that usual sense of discomfort I feel when a woman has spent more than, oh, an hour in my bed. But I didn’t.

“I love you,” she’d mumbled as she drifted off to sleep.

How odd.

When I came back to the bedroom, she was stripping the sheets from the bed, and she’d changed into a pair of black jeans and a dark blue oxford shirt.

I came up behind her as she bent over the pillows.

“Touch me, Patrick,” she said, “and you die.”

I put my hands back by my sides.

She smiled as she turned with sheets in hand and said, “Laundry. Is that something you’re familiar with?”

“Vaguely.”

She dropped the pile in a corner. “Can I expect that you’ll remake the bed with fresh sheets or are we sleeping on a bare mattress next time I come over?”

“I will do my best, madam.”

She slid her arms around my neck and kissed me. She hugged me fiercely and I hugged back just as hard.

“Someone called when you were in the shower.” She leaned back in my arms.

“Who? It’s not even seven in the morning.”

“That’s what I thought. He didn’t leave his name.”

“What’d he say?”

“He knew my name.”

“What?” I unclasped my hands from her waist.

“He was Irish. I figured it was an uncle or something.”

I shook my head. “My uncles and I don’t talk.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’re my father’s brothers and they aren’t any different than he was.”

“Oh.”

“Grace”—I took her hand, sat her beside me on the bed—“what did this Irish guy say?”

“He said, ‘You must be the lovely Grace. Grand to meet you.’” She looked at the pile of bedclothes for a moment. “When I told him you were in the shower, he said, ‘Well, just tell him I called and I’ll be dropping in on him sometime,’ and he hung up before I could get a name.”

“That’s it?”

She nodded. “Why?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Not many people call me before seven, and when they do, they usually leave a name.”

“Patrick, how many of your friends know we’re dating?”

“Angie, Devin, Richie and Sherilynn, Oscar, and Bubba.”

“Bubba?”

“You met him. Big guy, always wears a trench coat—”

“The scary one,” she said. “The one who looks like he might just walk into a Seven-Eleven one day and kill everyone inside because the Slurpee machine isn’t working.”

“That’s the guy. You met him at—”

“That party last month. I remember.” She shuddered.

“He’s harmless.”

“Maybe to you,” she said. “Christ.”

I tilted her chin toward me. “Not just me, Grace. Anyone I care about. Bubba’s insanely loyal that way.”