Falling for Grace (15 page)

“
Been doing nothing but
running that shop for ten years,” Wanda said. “Shame for a young
woman like that to waste away.”

“
She needs a life,” Bets
told him.

“
She needs a man,”
Constance said matter-of-factly.

And when those same women just abandoned
her, just left her there for him to take care of, he was at first
flabbergasted, then furious, then nervous, and then finally
extremely curious about the entire situation.

Of course, then it dawned on him.

The old biddies were matchmaking, pure and
simple.

They wanted
him
to be Gracie’s
man.

It was a good thing he had his head screwed
on good and tight and he could see through their ploy. He just
hoped Gracie did. He sure as hell would hate for her to slip into
their matchmaking scheme, and fall in love with him, only for him
to break her heart.

Because no matter what the
Happy Hour Honeys were thinking, Carson Price was
not
the man for Gracie
Hart.

Trying to dismiss all that from his head,
Carson glanced down at Gracie snuggling into her pillow. She’d
curled slightly onto her side after he’d laid her there, drawing
her knees up and tucking her hands up next to her chin. Strands of
her dark, silky hair had partially fallen from the clip which held
it in its usually neat French roll at the back of her head. The
clip looked to be a little askew and uncomfortable, forcing her
head into a crooked position on the pillow.

Contemplating for a second, Carson placed
one knee on the bed and reached for the clip. Carefully, he removed
it, trying not to tangle and pull her hair. The remainder of her
silky mane tumbled about her shoulders. For a second or two, he
just stood over her, watching the light from her bedside table lamp
dance over the shining highlights of her hair. She moaned and
rolled over and Carson moved back. Twisting to the other side now,
Gracie’s hair fell completely over her face.

Without thinking, he leaned forward again
and brushed the locks away from her face, smoothing them back over
the pillow. Her hair was soft and so was her cheek where his
knuckles briefly touched her.

That was where he made his mistake. And he
knew it immediately. That slight touch, that ever-so-gentle caress
of his knuckles against her dewy skin and the feel of her silky
tresses on the pads of his fingers, sent one mega-warning spiral
into his gut.

A deep spiral that jack-knifed and plummeted
into somewhere he’d never felt before.

He had to get out of here.

Abruptly, he pulled back, placed the clip on
the bedside table, and reached for the switch on the lamp. But
something stopped him and he glanced back once more.

Oh hell
...

With a few jerky and swift movements, he
moved to her feet and removed her sandals, careful not to linger
over the feel of her foot in his hands, the delicate curve of her
arch, or the blaze red toenails which always took him a bit by
surprise. Then he covered her with an afghan lying at the foot of
her bed.

There. At least she looked a bit more
comfortable.

For the second time, he reached for the
lamp, his hand slowing as he glanced at the pictures on her bedside
table he hadn’t really noticed earlier. Two antique,
Victorian-style frames were placed on either side of the lamp. Not
sure why, he bent closer to look into one, and then the other.

The first picture was of a woman, a ballet
dancer, her hair swept off her face and on top of her head in a
tight knot. Her legs were long, her body graceful, her chin tilted
high into the air striking an almost regal pose, her arms perfectly
placed as she stood in some dancer’s position of which he had no
clue of the name.

The ballerina, he was certain, was Gracie. A
younger Gracie.

That would probably explain the satin ballet
slippers placed strategically before the picture.

The other picture was of Gracie and a man.
Which despite the statements he’d heard earlier this evening,
required no explanation at all.

The look between them told all he needed to
know. The two were obviously very much in love.

* * * *

Saturday morning breakfast consisted of a
pot of strong coffee, three ibuprofen, and a diuretic. The first to
unshrinkwrap her brain, the second to dull the thumping inside her
skull, and the third to ward off the puffy blow-fish look she woke
with from ingesting way too much sodium and alcohol the night
before.

It was not a good day.

She was not in the mood for the Saturday
morning coffee-klatch.

And she wanted like hell to keep the
“closed” sign turned out on the door all day long.

But she wouldn’t. There had not been a day
in ten years, since she first opened the shop, that she’d closed
the shop for no reason at all. And the girls were expecting
her.

Of course, today could always be a
first.

Acting strictly on impulse, Gracie slowly
walked to the back of the store and shut off the lights. She
ignored the knock on the front door as she slowly made her way back
up the stairs.

Gracie Hart certainly wasn’t a prude. She’d
proven that last night. And she could certainly make her own
decisions about whether she wanted to see her friends this morning,
or not. Or open her shop this morning, or not.

Today, she chose, or not.

* * * *

“
All right, so these are
our choices. What’s it going to be, Munchkin?”

Carson glanced over the shelves at the DVD
store searching for movies suitable for Izzie’s eyes and ears.
Always careful about his movie selections, he knew the task before
him was a difficult one. Izzie was not easily pleased when it came
to movies.

What he liked, she didn’t. What she liked,
or thought she liked, he would never allow.

“
Still the same rules?” He
glanced back down into her face.

“
Yep,” she replied. Hands
on hips, she cocked her head to one side and ticked them off. “No
girlie stuff. No singing movies. No kissie junk. No dopey
animals.”

Carson grinned. Those rules eliminated quite
a bit. His rules were a little different, however. His main
concerns were no sex, no foul language, and no violence.

It was damned hard for them to find a happy
medium at times. Surely they could agree on something, though.

“
All right, so how
about
101 Dalmatians
or
Bambi
?”

Izzie snarled her nose and shook her head.
“Dopey animals,” she replied.

“
Okay, well how about this
one.
Mary Poppins
.
”

She shook her head. “Old school… Seen it a
hundred times, Dad. Besides, it’s a singing movie.”

He picked up another. “Here’s one.” He
showed her the box.

“
Girlie stuff,” she
replied.

“
This?”

She shook her head. “Kissie junk.”

Frustrated, Carson put the box back on the
shelf. “Well, there is nothing else, Iz.”

“
Yes, there is.” She raced
about three feet to their left and grabbed a movie off the shelf.
“What about
Hockey Players from
Hell
?”

Carson snatched the box from her hand and
studied the picture. A snarling hockey player with blood dripping
from his stick stared back at him. What in the world?

“
Where did that come
from?”

“
Let’s watch it Dad. It’s
really bloody…”

“
No!”

“
But—?”

“
Too much
violence.”

“
But I watched it at Joey
Brockman’s house and—”

“
You what?” Dumbfounded,
Carson looked at his daughter. Wait until he saw Joey Brockman’s
dad. “Well, you’re not going to watch it with me. Let’s look over
here.” He shoved the box back onto the shelf and with a nudge,
steered her in another direction. The nerve of some
parents.

Thank God he’d gotten her out of the
city.

“
How about this one?” The
cover looked safe enough. He glanced over the blurb on the back. A
Cinderella story of the future, it said. He showed it to
Izzie.

“
Looks like lovie-dovie
stuff.” She scrunched her nose again.

“
I think it looks
interesting.” Cinderella had to be safe, right?

“
No, Dad. I don’t
wanna.”

“
It says it’s a kind of
Cinderella story. You like Cinderella don’t you?”

Izzie made a rude noise.

Carson tucked it under his arm. “We’re
getting this one.”

“
But Dad...” Izzie
whined.

“
No. This is it. Come on.”
He began walking toward the counter.

“
Um, you might want to
think about that,” he heard a female voice behind him say. A very
familiar female voice.

Turning, he heard Izzie call out her name
before he realized fully who it was behind him.

“
Gracie!”

His daughter practically leaped into the
woman’s arms. “Izzie! Don’t jump on Ms. Hart like that!” He pulled
on his daughter’s arm and gathered her next to his side.

Gracie Hart looked both startled and
befuddled, if not a little fatigued. In fact, upon closer
inspection, he wasn’t quite sure he would have recognized her if
Izzie hadn’t called out her name.

For the first time since he’d known her, she
wasn’t wearing a long skirt and sweater or blouse. She was wearing
jeans and tennis shoes and a t-shirt. Her hair was pulled through a
baseball cap, which in turn was pulled down low over her forehead.
Underneath the bill of that cap, he could tell her eyes were
red-rimmed and swollen.

“
Shop closed today?” he
queried. He knew Saturday was usually her biggest day of the week.
He’d noticed that over the past few weeks.

She nodded slowly. “Feeling a bit under the
weather,” she told him.

Carson tried like hell not to grin.
“Oh.”

She glanced away. He decided embarrassed
looked cute on her.

“
Hope you’re feeling
better soon.”

She nodded again. “I should.”

There was another hesitant pause and he
said, “Well, we should be on our way.” He grasped Izzie’s hand and
started to turn.

“
Wait.”

He stopped and looked at Gracie.

Reaching out, she grasped the movie in his
hand. “I think you might want to rethink this.” She pointed to the
rating at the bottom of the movie, which clearly said the movie was
rated R. “I don’t think you want this one.”

Carson studied the back blurb again.
Ah...

Embarrassed himself, now, he looked back at
Gracie. “Thanks.”

“
You’re
welcome.”

“
Anytime.”

He placed the movie back on the shelf.

“
Now we gotta look again?”
This was from Izzie.

Exhausted now from their movie search,
Carson shook his head. “No, I think we’ll just go home.”

“
But Dad! You promised me
a movie!”

He crouched down to look Izzie in the eyes.
“I know I did but there doesn’t seem to be anything here that we
agree on so let’s just go home and find something else to do. You
could try out that new arcade game.”

“
I don’t want to do that!”
she wailed. “I’m tired of arcade games. I wanted to watch a movie.
You promised! You said we’d do something together this Saturday.
You said this was our day. You said—”

“
Izzie. All right. All
right. I did and we will see a movie. How about we go out and see
one instead of renting one.” He glanced up at Gracie, still
embarrassed. He didn’t know why Izzie was acting like
this.

Gracie looked a mite uncomfortable.

“
Well, I guess I’ll be
seeing you,” she said, and waved her hand to Izzie as she started
to leave.

“
Yes! Dad, I want to go to
a movie. Can I invite someone?”

Carson watched Gracie walk away. He hated to
admit that he liked the way she looked in those jeans. Not that he
didn’t like the way she looked in a skirt and silk blouse either,
but she just looked very nice in the jeans.

“
Dad?”

“
What?”

“
Can I invite someone to
go with us to the movies?”

“
May I.”

“
I may?”

He shook his head. “Sure. Of course.”

“
Great!”

“
As soon as we get home
you can—”

But she was off in a flash, running down the
aisle toward Gracie. He watched her animated display, her excited
little jig and her arms bouncing about as she spoke. He also took
in the surprised look on Gracie’s face as she glanced back at him
and then to Izzie.

She broke away then and started running back
toward Carson, a huge grin on her face.

And then it dawned on him.

Oh, no.

“
It’s okay,” Izzie told
him out of breath. “She said she’d come.”

* * * *

Why in the world she agreed to this, she’d
never know.

Well, she did know. She did it for Izzie. It
had a lot to do with how excited the child seemed to want her to
join them for the movies. It had everything to do with the sparkle
in her eyes and the laughter in her voice. It most certainly had
something to do with the way the child pulled at Gracie’s
heartstrings every time she batted those sinfully long lashes
lately.