Page 14 of Girl Anonymous

God. She spit on her palms and rubbed them together. An old superstition, probably one she had wrong, but she needed to cleanse the unruly wish away. She didnotwant to use Dante’s shower every day. She wanted nothing else to do with Dante and his mother, which worked because his mother—

Grief and regret caught her, shattered her into tiny pieces. Mrs. Arundel was dead. Killed by the blast, killed when her heart stopped. Remembering how alert Mrs. Arundel had been in that blast furnace of a library, how her eyes sparkled and her voice snapped…Maarja couldn’t believe it.

Dead. Mrs. Arundel was dead.

Sinking down on her knees, she sobbed. She clutched her hair and beat her fists on her thighs.

It wasn’t fair.Not to Mrs. Arundel, who sparkled with her enjoyment of life, and not to Maarja, to have so many memories resurrected. To have the chance to change the outcome, tothink she had and then have her shining hope slammed down and broken.

The bits of the past always, always felt like broken glass in her mind, and now more sharp splinters tore at her composure, her peace, and she was disconsolate. She pulled her legs up, wrapped her arms around them, put her head down, and rocked and sobbed.

The click of the shower door made her look up in shock.

Dante Arundel stepped in.

CHAPTER 6

Dante wore a white short-sleeved T-shirt and gray sweatpants, and shut the door behind him. He knelt before her, not touching, and his dark eyes showed compassion and concern. “Please stop. You’ll make yourself sick.”

“I c…can’t. You must see… I can’t.” She put her head back on her knees. All the old guilt rising and compounding the new grief… To cry in front of him lashed at her pride—yet the emotion could not be contained.

He gave a sigh, stood, picked her up, and sat on the shower bench with her on his lap. He rocked her. Which, for a guy who said he’d be more careful of touching her in the future, was wrong. On the other hand, there was not a hint of the sexual in his behavior. He offered pure comfort and really, what guy desired a woman who wept until her eyes were almost swollen shut and snot ran?

Yet the embrace was nice—andnicewas not a word she’d ever thought to apply to Dante Arundel. His sweatpants provided a cushion against her bare parts. He kept his arms wrapped around her, pushed her head onto his shoulder, rocked her, and made low comforting sounds that came through as rumbling beneath her ear. The warm water cascaded over them, the steam on the glass enclosed them, and the first wave of her grief began to pass.

When her crying slowed, he held her until she lifted her head and sniffed, loudly, and wiped the back of her hand across her nose. Body fluids were so inconvenient and embarrassing.

He groped around and handed her the washcloth. “Blow.”

She looked at it and looked at him.

“I’ve heard a crying woman blow her nose before. It doesn’t matter. Other than being naked, you’re hardly trying to seduce me.”

“Being naked is how I take my showers.” Snipping at him made her feel better, so she honked her nose and threw the washcloth into the corner. Leaning her head back against the wall, she looked at him beneath swollen eyelids. “Unlike you.”

Everything he wore was soaked. “I took off my shoes and socks.”

“How did you get in the bathroom?”

“I own this condo. I have the keys. I heard you crying and I couldn’t stand it. Did you finish washing?”

“Everything but my hair.”

He stood and deposited her on the bench, squirted shampoo into his palms, and massaged it into her scalp. Once again, the scents of citrus and lavender surrounded her. She closed her eyes against the bubbles and felt more acutely the way he dug his thumbs into the tense muscles at the back of her head.

As she relaxed, she burst out, “She…your mother… Who would do this to her? She was kind and smart, and already so helpless.”

“My mother wasnothelpless. She was…amazing. Brilliant. Inventive. Up for any challenge. Tilt your head back.” He pushed any unruly soap off her face and used the handheld to rinse her hair. “I am sorry about your hair. I’ll have a stylist come tomorrow morning and cut it into some semblance of a style.”

“My hair doesn’t matter, or it wouldn’t if I’d managed to save—” Her voice shook.

He took over the conversation before she could crumble again.“Physically, sure, but Mère was smart and in her own way, ruthless. When my father…died…she decided to remake our organization, and she did.”

She wiped her eyes and opened them, looked up at him. “From a wheelchair?”

“From her hospital bed. Then from her wheelchair.”

“A woman of strong will.” Maarja’s opinion of Mrs. Arundel shimmered and shifted.

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