Selling Grace: A Light Romance Novel (Art of Grace Book 1) (26 page)

Okay, my cat has managed to get outside. But he can't have gotten far, I'm sure. He's a big, fat, lazy orange lump, and he's not especially inquisitive. I bring home cat treats and toys for him all the time, and he usually only prods them for a minute or two before giving up on them and pretending that they don't exist. He wouldn't be tempted to run away.

Sure, because cats are totally logical creatures. Right.

I took a deep breath, downed one more gulp of my coffee, and then headed outside. "Here, Admiral Whiskers," I called out softly, just in case anyone I knew happened to be out for a morning jog and passed by my house. Didn't want to give the impression that I'd gone totally around the bend. "Here, kitty kitty. Where are you?"

There weren't many places in my sparse backyard for my cat to hide, at least. The grass was fairly short, most of it slowly turning brown from lack of water and attention. I most definitely did not possess a green thumb. A couple scraggly bushes stood around the edges, up against the wooden fence that separated my backyard from the Winterhearst mansion on the property next door. At least that fence would surely prevent my cat from getting out of the yard - it stood a little over five feet high, made of wooden slats bolted onto beams running the length of my yard-

-and as I looked up at the fence, I saw a fat orange blob sitting on top, looking very satisfied with himself.

"Whiskers!" I burst out, glaring at my fat, rude asshole of a cat as he perched on top of a fence that he shouldn't have been able to climb, casually staring back at me. "Get down from there right now!"

A little voice inside my head pointed out that I was talking to my cat, trying to give him orders. Maybe I really had finally snapped and lost it, that voice suggested. Poor Elaine Dean, not even thirty-five, already going crazy. It's all that time without a boyfriend, with no one around but her cat. She's lost it, started acting like her cat is a real person. She'll probably end up as a recluse, dying alone inside her house and only being found after her cat's managed to eat most of her face.

I told that little voice inside my head to hush. I wasn't crazy. I might not have a boyfriend, or even any potential male suitors on the horizon, but I wasn't about to lock myself in my house and give up all contact with the outside world.

At the very least, thanks to the wonders of Amazon and free two-day shipping, I'd be able to get my hands on plenty of cat food.

I shook my head, blinking in the chill of the early morning as I stood in the warm sunlight. First things first. I needed to retrieve my cat.

I slowly crept across my backyard towards the fence where Whiskers perched, trying to appear innocuous and unthreatening. "That's a good kitty, just sit there," I muttered to him as he regarded me balefully out of the corner of one eye. "Just relax, and let me get within arm's reach so that I can snatch you up and put you back in your prison..."

My soft words seemed to be working. Whiskers shuffled his bulk a little bit as he perched on the top bar of the fence, but he didn't seem inclined to move. I reached the edge of my yard, slowly stretching out a hand towards the cat. Just a few more inches, and I'd be able to grab him by the chubby scruff of his neck...

And then, just as my fingers brushed against his fur, the cat jumped down from the fence.

On the other side.

Into the backyard of the Winterhearst mansion, the building next door to my cottage.

Double dammit.

For a moment, I stood there frozen in place, my hand still outstretched as if hoping that I could summon my cat back up onto the fence. I lowered it after another couple of seconds and instead stepped forward, rising up on my tiptoes to give myself just enough height to peer over the wooden slats of the fence.

Sure enough, Admiral Theodore Whiskers sat on the other side. The backyard of the Winterhearst mansion next door to me was overgrown and needed a good mowing, but Whiskers had moved through the long grass up to sit on the wooden deck of the central patio, right in the middle of a sunbeam. He'd already closed his eyes and flopped down on his side, and I could practically hear his loud, not-quite-even purring from the fence.

After giving him a very rude gesture, I stepped back from the fence and considered my options.

I could go around to the front of the Winterhearst mansion, heading down the sidewalk in front of my little cottage to the much larger, imposing, foreboding mansion next door, and see if anyone answered the bell. I didn't have much faith in this approach.

I frowned, my gaze panning from where Whiskers sat and sunned himself up to the house itself. It was the biggest house in Truckee, and had stood on this corner for nearly a hundred years. At some point in its history, one of the former owners of Winterheast mansion painted the entire building a dark navy blue, very nearly black. The color had faded over time, lightening to more of a dull, heavy gray, but it still looked gloomy, even in the morning sunlight.

For many years, I knew that the mansion had stood empty, that I hadn't had any neighbors. But I remembered my best friend, Della, mentioning something a couple weeks ago about someone new moving in. I tried to think back to recall exactly what she'd told me, but I drew a blank on any details. Maybe there was someone living there, maybe not.

Given that this newcomer hadn't chosen to greet his neighbor, me, I decided that he probably wasn't the friendly sort. He likely wouldn't be happy, then, if I woke him up this morning by knocking on his front door and asking for permission to go into his backyard and retrieve my jerk of a fatass cat.

What else could I try?

My gaze moved back down to the fence itself, and I frowned in consideration. It was a fairly sturdy looking fence, and although the sides were sheer, thanks to the vertical boards that formed tight slats, it didn't look impossible to scale...

A little part of my brain yelled at me that this was crazy, that I was acting like an impulsive, crazy person, but I told that voice in my head to shut up, and advanced towards the fence. I grabbed an old lawn chair that had been mouldering in my backyard and pulled it up against the fence, bracing it and then using it as a step. There, halfway over already. Now, I just needed to lift up one leg and swing it up and over...

Success! I managed to get one leg swung over the top of the fence between me and my neighbor's yard, and sat triumphantly on top of the fence. I didn't stay there for long, however, because although the boards had been worn a bit by weather, they were still somewhat sharp and splintery, poking into all sorts of uncomfortable places between my legs.

I tried not to think about the fact that I couldn't remember the last time I'd had someone else poking into those regions. When straddling a five foot tall fence, Elaine, it's not the time to lament your lack of a love life, I admonished myself.

Focus on climbing. Now that I'd gotten one leg over, I just had to very carefully lift up my other leg and swing it over next to its partner. That way, I'd be sitting on top of the fence with both of my legs dangling down into the Winterhearst backyard. Five feet wasn't that high, after all. I could just sort of lean forward, once I'd pulled myself into this sitting position, and drop down easily into the yard on the other side.

I just had to get my other leg up and over. For some reason, that leg didn't want to release its stance on top of the lawn chair. I wavered, torn between my leg's reluctance to move, and the growing pain of getting poked by the tops of these weathered, splintery boards.

No more time. Move and drop, one smooth motion. Just pull the leg up, lean a little too the side to bring it over but whatever I do, I can't overbalance-

"Whoop!"

Ouch. That didn't go as I planned.

Before I landed, I caught a split-second glimpse of Whiskers looking up at me, his eyes slitted, as if wondering why his human was so stupid.

Chapter Two

*

"Who are you?"

I opened one eye, and immediately regretted it.

Most of what I could see was green, and most of what I could feel was pain. I was pretty sure that I'd heard a voice speaking out loud, but I ignored it for the moment as I took stock of my situation, replaying the last couple seconds of my life with a grimace.

I'd swung my other leg over the fence, overbalanced, and gone toppling down on the other side. I remembered the overgrown grass rushing up to meet me. Where this annoyed voice had come from, I couldn't say.

I let my mind reach out along the different nerve endings in my body, checking for damage. One of my legs hurt - I must have twisted it underneath me when I landed - and my forearm felt like it had scraped against something, but nothing seemed permanently broken or otherwise disabled.

With a grunt of pain, I pulled myself up, getting up first to my hands and knees before rising all the way back up to a standing position. I opened my other eye, and now saw a pair of legs standing in front of me, clad in dark jeans.

These legs must belong to the owner of the voice I'd heard earlier. "Seriously, who are you?" the voice asked again, and sure enough, the sound came from above the pair of legs. "How did you get in here?"

"I'm just here for my cat," I muttered back, taking a deep breath and pushing myself up to my feet. I'd definitely landed badly on one leg, and it wobbled dangerously beneath me for a moment, but I managed to keep from losing my balance as I stood. "I just hopped over the fence because he made it look so easy-"

Now standing, my eyes finally traveled up from the pair of legs to the body on top of them, and I froze.

A tall, imposing man stood in front of me, glaring down at me from his considerable height. He had to be at least six feet tall, I saw, with a chiseled face and hard body, topped with a stormy scowl. He wore a white button-up shirt that looked tailored to his body, showing off a flat stomach and strong arms, and his dark, nearly-black hair looked perfect as it lay back against his head, with not a single strand out of place.

I recognized him instantly, as memory of previous conversations with Della came flooding back to me.

Sanford Welles, standing before me in the very shapely flesh.

I didn't really know Sanford Welles, but I knew of the man. Everyone in town did. Heck, I'd even come face to face with him a few times when I was younger, although he of course didn't have the same mystique back then.

He'd been the town's bad boy, growing up on the wrong side of the tracks, always getting into all sorts of trouble with anyone in authority. When I'd been a freshman in high school, he'd been a senior - but then, two months before he was set to finally graduate, just as the entire town was holding in its sigh of relief at getting him out of the school system, he vanished, running off to parts unknown.

After that, no one had heard from Sanford in a dozen years, although this lack of information didn't stop the rumors from flying. People whispered about how he'd gone off to the big city, how he'd made a name for himself as a self-starting entrepreneur businessman, how he made all sorts of shady deals with people in the underworld in order to keep on growing his business. No one had any proof of anything, but that didn't stop the rumors from continuing to grow, bouncing from person to person and swelling with imagination.

And then, less than a month ago, the rumors changed.

He'd come back, people claimed. They'd seen Sanford around town, although his appearances were rare enough for these accounts to be viewed with suspicion. He'd moved in somewhere, holed up somewhere. No one knew why. Maybe he was back to spend his millions that he'd earned. Maybe he was hiding out from the authorities, who'd found his underworld connections and were building their federal case against him. Maybe he had some sort of terminal disease and wanted to live out his last years in the town where he'd grown up. Maybe he wanted to exact revenge on the townspeople for his unhappy childhood.

There were lots of questions, with almost no answers or real facts. But of one thing, I was certain.

Sanford Welles stood before me, in the flesh, and he wasn't happy at my presence in his backyard.

"Uh, hi," I said, trying to collect my scattered thoughts (Sanford Welles! Oh, Della would practically wet herself with excitement when I told her about this!). I tried to look at the man closely, attempting to commit as many details of his appearance to memory as possible.

He certainly didn't look sickly, or like he was dying of any sort of disease. On the contrary, he looked strong and tall, his dark eyes imperious with command. He'd be attractive, if he didn't give the impression that he was carved from stone.

"Who are you?" he repeated, and he took a half step forward towards me, as if threatening to throw me bodily off of his property. I didn't think he'd actually try any violence against me, of course, but I remembered some of those rumors, and my body shrank back on its own.

"I'm Elaine, Elaine Dean," I replied hastily, my arm rising up to point at the fence behind me, and presumably managing to also indicate my little house on the other side. "I live next door to you. I'm in that little cottage around the corner-"

"The little pink gingerbread house?"

I started. "Well, the color isn't called pink, and it's certainly not made of gingerbread," I said. "But yes, that house. Anyway, I just came over for-"