Falling for Grace (11 page)

“
The two middle
ones.”

He probed some more.

She jerked her foot back. “Ouch!”

“
There?”

“
What do you think?” she
bit back.

Carson laughed. “Yeah. I think there.”

“
Is it broken?” Her voice
was softer as she asked, leaning forward as if to inspect the
toe.

“
Hard to tell,” he
answered her.

“
It hurts.”

With her foot still cradled in his palm,
Carson began a slow caress of both the bottom and top of her foot.
She started to jerk back a bit but he held her foot a little
tighter, gently resisting the pull. He didn’t know why, but he
wanted to touch her, to make her feel better. And as he continued
the slow massage of her foot and each of its tiny appendages, he
resisted the temptation to look up into her face.

It seemed the night had suddenly gone still
around them. Not a breath; not a breeze. Nothing moved. Except his
heart, which was beginning a slow and steady thrum in his
chest.

Then suddenly, the night seemed full of just
the two of them.

Finally, he looked up a Gracie.
“Better?”

Her eyes were big and full of question. The
expression on her face was difficult to discern. Quickly, she broke
the connection between them and withdrew her foot. Carson dropped
his hands to his side.

“
Yes.” She cleared her
throat and stood. “It’s...it’s fine now. Thank you.”

“
Just a pretty good whack,
I guess. I don’t think it’s broken.”

In the next movement, she gathered the
watering can and turned toward the door. “Guess we’ll see. It’s
late. I should be getting inside.”

Carson nodded. “You sure you’re okay?”

“
Yes. I’m fine.” She
started for her door, a slight hobble to her step.

Carson stepped up behind her. “I really am
sorry I startled you. I didn’t mean to do that.”

As they both stood in front of her door, she
turned and faced him again. “I know. It’s okay. I’m sure it will be
fine by morning.” Then she offered him one of those little,
uncertain grins he liked.

He nodded and she reached for the
doorknob.

“
Wait.”

She looked at him, questioning.

“
I, uh, Friday night I’m
giving a little party. Just a few of my friends from Louisville. To
kick off the opening of the
café
. I’d like for you to come. That
is, if you don’t have other plans.”

Suddenly, the thought occurred to him that
it was quite possible she might have other plans. Like a date or
something. He didn’t like the notion of that.

She bit her lip and glanced away.

“
Just a small
get-together,” he added. “Izzie will be there, too.”

She looked back at him and continued to chew
her lip.

“
Even if for a little
while?”

Then after another lengthy moment, she
dropped her chin in a nod. “I’ll be out of town Wednesday through
Friday on a buying trip. If I’m not too tired when I get back late
Friday afternoon, I’ll come by,” she finally said.

Then she twisted the doorknob and walked
back into her shop. Carson wondered why all of a sudden the night
felt so empty again.

Chapter Seven

Murphy’s Law must truly exist.

A storm delayed Gracie’s flight into Boston
on Wednesday until way after midnight, which in turn forced her to
take a cab instead of the shuttle to her hotel, a cab for which she
had to pay an exorbitant price. The cabbie was new and didn’t know
how to get to the hotel, made several wrong turns, and once finally
there, charged her for exactly every wrong turn he’d made. Then,
the hotel desk clerk told her she had no knowledge of Gracie’s
reservation. Luckily, Gracie produced the confirmation number post
haste and they were forced to give her a nice suite for her
original price.

It was the only good thing that happened the
entire trip.

Thursday, she acquired a touch of food
poisoning; she assumed the culprit was the marinated calamari she’d
eaten for lunch. The remainder of her evening was spent in the
bathroom. Only a little shopping was done that day.

Friday morning, she had a dispute with a
vendor at a lingerie show and ended up abruptly canceling the order
she’d come specifically to Boston to get. Angry at herself, she
almost missed her flight home, then found out that due to more
weather disturbances, her flight was re-routed through Atlanta
where she endured a four hour layover.

Besides all that, her toe had turned black
and was still mighty tender. She was almost certain it was
broken.

Needless to say, by the time she was ready
to pull into her parking spot behind the shop around ten o’clock
Friday evening, Gracie knew the only thing on her agenda for the
remainder of the night would be to fall into bed and oblivion for
the next ten hours or so.

Except there was one teensy-weensy
problem.

There was no empty parking space behind her
shop. Not even the space reserved for her marked “private parking.”
Carson’s red Corvette was parked in his space, however, right next
to it.

There were no empty spaces behind either
shop.

Or even on the street in front of the
shop.

What the heck was going on?

Finally, her anger and her blood pressure
rising, she parked three blocks away in the bank parking lot,
retrieved her luggage from the trunk of her Miata, then hurriedly
wheeled and hobbled her way up the sidewalk, grumbling all the
while.

This last hurdle was not putting her in a
good mood.

For the life of her, she couldn’t figure out
who would have the audacity to park in her private parking space
behind her own home!

She was tired, dammit!

She’d had a helluva past three days.

Her toe hurt.

And she just wanted to go home. To bed! Such
a simple thing. That’s all she wanted.

Before the night was through, someone was
going to cough up some explanations. The more she thought about it,
the angrier she became.

About a block away from her shop, she heard
the music. It did nothing to lift her spirits.

Party. Damn. Someone was having a party.

Party?

Bah humbug!
She felt like such a Scrooge.

Friday night?

Carson?

Stopping abruptly, she cocked her head to
one side. No, certainly it wasn’t Carson. A small little
get-together with friends, he’d said. Izzie would be there,
too.

Something, wasn’t right. It smelled a
mite...fishy.

Grasping her stomach at the thought, Gracie
moved on.

Slowly, she walked closer
to the
café
, the
music growing louder. And louder. Glancing toward the street, she
noticed a city police cruiser making a slow progression past the
shops. Both hers and Carson’s.

She picked up her step. Alternative rock
filled her ears.

Finally, she came to a
halt directly in front of Carson’s
café
. The door was open, music and
laughter and some kind of ping-ping-pong-poinging sound poured out
to the street. What in the world?

Gracie glanced through the window. People.
Everywhere. Wall to wall.

People with drinks.

People playing cards.

People laughing.

People playing some sort of video games on
huge-ass, wall-mounted television screens? Soccer was on a couple
of other screens on the opposite side of the room.

What happened to quaint and Victorian?

Then she glanced
at
the window. Painted
across the large, shop-front window, in huge red and green script,
were the words
Geekmeister’s
Cyber
Café
.

Gracie grimaced. I must be totally engrossed
in my own small world. What the hell is a geekmeister?

She didn’t want to know.

What she did want to know, however, was the
reason why Carson Price had lied to her.

He had turned the other half of her building
into a bar!

Then she heard her name
being shouted from somewhere beyond her vision. She searched the
crowd in Carson’s “
café
,” trying to figure out who would have the audacity to call
her into such a place.

* * * *

“
Gracie!”

Carson glanced sharply up
from where he was mixing a Bahama Mama when he heard Amie yell out
Gracie’s name. The moment of truth was upon him. Thank God he’d had
the where-with-all to invite Amie. She was a party demon and
already in love with the concept of
Geekmeisters.
He was sure he’d
already wooed her to his side.

Watching as Amie made her way through the
crowd, drink in hand, Carson knew Gracie wouldn’t be as easily
convinced. In fact, he’d been dreading this encounter the entire
evening. And from the looks of things, Gracie wasn’t too keen on
what she was seeing.

Gracie gestured and glanced agitatedly from
side to side as she spoke to Amie, her faced animated. The body
language wasn’t positive, that was for sure. Amie, in turn, smiled
and excitedly pointed at this and that around the room, as if doing
a hard sell on her friend.

“
C’mon, Amie,” he
whispered under his breath. “Convince her.” He wasn’t quite so sure
of the reason he wanted so badly for Amie to convince Gracie
that
Geekmeister’s
was on okay thing, he just knew that it mattered. The most
likely reason, of course, was because he wanted to stay here.
Subconsciously, he thought there might be another reason he wasn’t
quite as quick to explore.

So he stayed put behind the bar, watching
for an adverse reaction from Gracie. She didn’t look much past
Amie, who was talking fast and furiously now, it appeared. Then
Gracie looked up and her gaze met head-on with his and locked for
several seconds.

Uh-oh.

The next instant she made a bee-line
directly toward the bar, suitcase still in tow, dodging party-goers
as she made her slow, half-limping progression across the room.

When she reached him, she narrowed her gaze
a bit, tilted her chin in an effort of authority, threw back her
shoulders and shouted loudly over the music and laughter. “Mr.
Price, may I have a word with you?” She glanced from right to left
then, and continued, “In private.”

Mr. Price.

He didn’t like the sound of that but decided
to just go with it. Nodding, he returned, “Of course. This
way.”

Carson led the way to the back room and
didn’t look back as Gracie followed. When they reached the storage
room-slash-office, he turned to let her pass then closed the door
behind the two of them.

The music was muffled; the atmosphere inside
the room was still charged. It had nothing to do with the
party.

“
How was your trip?” He
thought he’d try to get things off on a positive note.

“
Lousy,” she bit back. “I
got food poisoning. I had a four-hour layover in Atlanta. I lost a
contract. And my toe is black.”

That wasn’t the note he wanted to start off
with.

“
I’m sorry to
hear—”

“
And
then
, Mr. Price, I come home to find
out I can’t even park in my
own
parking space and that my tenant next door is a
liar and has turned my building into a bar. A bar! My God, what
kind of low-life to you expect to drag in here!”

Tenant.
Liar
.

He didn’t like the sound of those words,
either.

Carson put up his hands. “Whoa. Wait a
minute. Let’s talk about this.”

She harrumphed and crossed her arms over her
chest.

Carson decided to continue. “I have no
intentions of pulling in degenerates off the street. This is as
much of a family thing as it is a bar.”

“
Family thing?” she
screeched. Her arms fell to her side and her eyes widened as if in
disbelief of his words.

He was beginning to think this wasn’t a good
time to talk to her about it.

“
Yes, family thing. It’s
just a glorified arcade, Gracie, with computer-generated video
games and plasma screens and the option of a drink and a sandwich
while you’re here. Kids can go off and do their thing while parents
relax with a glass of wine or a beer and watch the game. We can
have birthday parties and music on the weekends. Family
entertainment, Gracie. That’s all it is.”

“
That’s certainly not what
it looks like tonight.”

“
Well, tonight is just
some of my friends and their friends...”

“
And their friends,” she
continued, glancing back at the door. Carson had to admit more
people came than he’d expected.

“
I certainly hope,” she
continued, “that you’re not intending to be up making this racket
all hours of the night because I, for one, am extremely tired and
would like about ten hours of sleep.” She turned toward the door,
then whipped around again. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow, Mr.
Price. I’m not in the right frame of mind to discuss business at
the moment. But I want to tell you one thing, I’m not pleased about
this. Not one bit.”

Business.

With that, she left, slamming the door.

Carson stared after her. “Well, that
certainly went well,” he muttered to himself.

* * * *

Gracie told herself that she was simply
going to block it all from her head, consume a fistful of
ibuprofen, and pray that sleep would not elude her this night.
Tomorrow, when her head was clear and she could think rationally,
she’d deal with Mr. Carson Price.