Falling for Grace (22 page)

Thunder ripped through the night around them
as a flash of lightning split the night. The building seemed to
moan under the stress of the windstorm outside; the lights
flickered.

“
The cellar!” she shouted
and grabbed his arm.

He pulled her close, his arms around her,
and they both ran down the stairs towards the first floor landing.
Behind the stairwell, Gracie fiddled with another lock, finally
opened it, and they began their descent into the dark cellar.

“
I can’t see,” Carson told
her.

“
Wait.” She tugged on his
arm.

He heard her fumbling against the wall and
finally a bulb overhead lit the stairway. “There’s a flashlight
around here somewhere,” he heard her say. “There.”

Carson looked where she was pointing, fished
the flashlight out between the handrail and the wall, flipped it on
and saw that the batteries were still working, then grasped her
hand to lead her further into the cellar.

“
I haven’t been down here
in ages,” she told him. “I have no clue what’s down
here.”

They’d found the flashlight just in time, as
with the next flash of lightning, the power went completely
out.

Gracie grasped his arm tightly and he
silently and quickly lead her away from the side of the cellar with
the window wells and underneath the stairway, itself. The wind
thrashed against the windows and thunder roared above their heads.
He flashed the light in the dark corner and found several wooden
boxes stacked against the wall, underneath the stair.

“
Here. Let’s get back in
here,” he told her.

“
I don’t even want to know
what’s back there,” Gracie told him. He thought she might be
hesitant to crawl back under the stairway, until a boom and a crash
up above sent her into his arms and both of them toppling back
against the boxes.

She was shivering in his arms. Carson sat
back against one of the wooden crates and pulled her closer into
him. She was practically sitting in his lap, her head against his
chest, her arms around him.

And she was wearing that damned sleep shirt
he liked so much.

“
Are you okay?” he
whispered after a minute.

“
No.”

He smiled to himself. “You’re shaking.”

“
I know.”

“
I won’t let anything
happen to you, Gracie.”

She nodded against his chest. “I won’t let
anything happen to you, either.”

He smiled again and planted a small kiss on
the top of her forehead.

“
God, I hate tornadoes,”
she told him a little later.

“
Have you been in many?”
he asked.

She shook her head. “Never. But now I know I
hate them.”

“
Maybe it’s just a bad
thunderstorm. It will be over soon,” he promised.

“
I’m holding you do that,
Mister.” Carson grinned and held her tighter. Even in the midst of
a tornado, she felt so good in his arms and he was very conscious
of the fact that that was exactly where he wanted her—in his
arms.

Something crashed against the outside wall
again, then a tinkling of glass and a whoosh of wind made them
aware the storm was still not over. A window-well broken behind
them, Carson suspected.

The rode out the storm for thirty minutes or
longer and when it finally died down enough that Carson felt they
were safe to move, he told Gracie so.

“
Let’s wait a little
longer,” she told him.

“
The storm is over,
Gracie. Let’s go see what kind of damage we have
upstairs.”

She looked up at him then, her eyes wide.
“Oh my, our shops!”

“
Yeah,” he answered. “We
might want to take a look.”

The aftermath of a devastating storm can
bring an uncanny silence to its victims as they survey the damages
of their surroundings. Carson and Gracie both felt the chilling
calm as they moved through their businesses to assess the damages.
The power was still out and it was hours until daylight, so they
tried to check out what they could by flashlight.

The interior of Gracie’s shop fared a little
better than the storefront. The awning was ripped entirely away,
leaving crumbing brick behind. Her flower pots and window boxes
were gone. Totally gone. A bench, which at one time sat to the
right of her door, had been thrust into the building and was now
reduced to nothing more than potential toothpick material. It
narrowly missed her window, and Gracie was thankful for that.
Inside, water had been forced under the front door and around the
window--all that was ruined were some Oriental rugs on the
floor.

Carson’s side, however, didn’t fare quite so
well.

When the awning was ripped from the
building, a metal support pole was somehow thrust through the
window, shattering it. Glass was blown inward and scattered about
the room, along with tons of water, it seemed. Everything in the
room was water-soaked. Arcade games were blown over, everything
behind the bar—liquor bottles and glasses—were scattered and
broken, the wide-screened television was ruined. The force of the
winds must have been pretty strong, Carson thought to himself, in
order to do this much damage inside the building.

Each of them glanced about. Finally, Carson
turned to Gracie, a sick, sinking feeling in the pit of his
stomach. “I’m going to see if I can find some plywood somewhere to
board up that window. I think that’s about all we can do tonight
without power. We’re going to have our work cut out for us
tomorrow.”

Gracie nodded and slowly panned the room.
“I’m just glad Izzie wasn’t here,” she said quietly.

Carson had thought of that earlier. “Yes. I
know.”

Gracie looked at him then with a terrified
expression on her face. “Carson,” she began hesitantly, “we’re
often in the same storm path as Louisville, maybe you should
call?”

At that instant the sinking feeling in his
gut turned to dread. “You’re right.”

Within the next several minutes, Carson had
called Kate on his cell phone and found out that the storm had
skirted around Louisville. Izzie slept through the entire thing,
Kate told him, but she was relieved to find out that everyone was
okay in Franklinville after hearing the news reports. He made
arrangements with Kate for Izzie to stay another couple of days
while they cleaned up the shops, then set about to boarding up the
front window, while Gracie headed back upstairs to check out the
condition of both apartments.

It was in her bedroom that Carson found her
several minutes later, lying curled on her side in her bed, softly
crying into her pillow.

He didn’t know anything else to do but to go
to her. Lying down beside her, he pulled Gracie into his arms and
she turned into him, wrapping her arms about his waist and
snuggling close. Her head was tucked beneath his chin and his
fingers went to her cheek to gently stroke her hair away.

She sobbed softly for a few minutes and he
just held her. He supposed all of this was just a lot to
absorb.

“
Shshsh...” he cooed.
“Everything is all right now.”

She didn’t answer, but just clung closer to
him and sniffled.

Carson didn’t know when a woman had ever
felt so good in his arms. The past two nights he’d dreamed of
holding her and tenderly making love to her. It was something he’d
decided, if given the chance, he had to risk—not just making love
with her, but loving her. He’d decided that loving Gracie was worth
the risk, even if it turned out to be painful for him in the end.
Making love with her would simply be the icing on the cake.

Loving her mind and soul and heart were
first and foremost in his mind. Loving her body was secondary. But
oh, what pleasure he imagined that would bring.

And yes, it was worth risking the pain to
know the pleasure of loving Gracie.

“
Tell me why you’re so
upset,” he whispered to her. The room was dark except for the dull
glow of an emergency-powered street lamp outside her window. Carson
wanted to see her face but just kept his eyes closed and gently
caressed her cheek, thinking of her beautiful face with his mind’s
eye.

“
It’s just,” she whispered
and then paused, “it just hit me, we could have lost
everything.”

“
But we
didn’t.”

“
I’m glad Izzie wasn’t
here,” she said again.

“
Me, too.”

She was silent for a moment, still sniffling
once in a while. He just held her closer.

“
I lost everything in my
life once,” she said after another few minutes. “I don’t want that
to ever happen to me again.”

Carson thought about that for a moment.
“When Marci left, I thought my world was going to end,” he told
her. “But at least I still had Izzie and my job. I survived though.
I’m not sure what it would feel like to lose everything.”

Gracie took a deep breath and slowly
exhaled. “It’s hell,” she whispered.

Carson decided to take a risk. “Tell me
about it, Gracie.”

For a while all he heard, all he felt, was
her breathing. She took in long, even breaths and let them slowly
out against his chest. After a few minutes, she pulled away and
looked into his face. The both lay there, heads facing each other
on the pillow.

“
All I ever wanted to do
with my life was to dance,” she began softly. “It was all I ever
did as a child and my parents helped me reach that dream by sending
me to the finest dance instructors. When I graduated from high
school, I went to New York. In no time I was dancing with a very
prestigious troupe and was making quite a name for myself. I was
living my dream and every minute of my existence was focused on
that dream. I was consumed for several years. And then I met
Evan.”

She stopped and Carson said nothing. All he
wanted to do was listen.

“
Evan wasn’t a dancer and
it was a fluke that we even met because all my time was spent on
the road or practicing. We bumped into each other on the subway one
afternoon and it was sort of a magical, love-at-first-sight kind of
thing.”

Carson couldn’t tell, but he thought he saw
a little glimmer in her eye as she talked about him. He wondered if
that glimmer was a tear, or a twinkle from a fond memory.

“
He was a stock broker,
knew nothing about the dance world, but he loved me. And I loved
him. We were planning to be married, the date was set.
Then...”

She closed her eyes and Carson felt her
tense a bit. Reaching over, he stroked her cheek again, and caught
a tear that had escaped over an eyelid. Tears. What he’d seen were
still tears. He was moved by her sadness and only wanted to protect
her more, to ease her pain, for he could feel her pain as well.

“
You don’t have to go on
if you don’t want to,” he whispered. He didn’t want her to endure
this for his sake, but he had a feeling she needed to go
on.

She shook her head. “I want to,” she
murmured back.

He let her gather herself again, waiting for
her to continue. After a couple of minutes, she did.

“
We both had a weekend off
and had decided to take a drive out of the city, just to get away
from the rat race for a while. We had no plans, were just out for a
leisurely Saturday afternoon in the country. Our excursion didn’t
last long. It started raining and Evan lost control of his car on a
curve when a large truck met us nearly head on. We skidded into the
guardrail and flipped over a hill.

“
Evan died immediately. I
was conscious and laid there until help arrived. It was horrible
and seemed like hours. I knew he was dead. My right leg was badly
broken and I had a few other cuts and bruises, but I was
alive.

“
Unfortunately, I wasn’t
able to dance again.”

“
Why?”

“
The leg took months to
heal. It was a difficult break in two places. My life was in such a
dark cloud, I didn’t care about doing physical therapy or even
trying to dance again. I would have traded my dancing career for
Evan’s life, but that was not going to happen. So, I decided that
dancing would never be a part of my life again and I just didn’t do
what I needed to do to get the leg back in shape. It just wasn’t in
me. I couldn’t.

“
After a while, I came
back to Franklinville. My father had died a year before the
accident. My mother had died a couple of years prior to that. This
building was my father’s so it was now mine. It took me a while,
but I eventually turned to something other than dancing. That’s
when
Romantically Yours
was born. And ever since then, this is all I
have. All I’ve wanted. Until...”

She didn’t finish her thought. Carson wanted
badly to know where that thought was leading, but he was sure she
wasn’t going to say any more. He wanted to draw her closer, to hold
her next to his heart and keep her there but he was afraid she’d
pull back, that this wasn’t the time. So, he simply watched her
face.

“
Has there been no one in
your life since then?”

Gracie looked intently into his eyes. “No,”
she whispered. “It’s just too damned scary.”

He searched her face. It was now or never
and he didn’t know if there would ever be another opportunity like
this one. He had to tell her, in some subtle way, how he felt about
her. That he loved her. But he didn’t want to frighten her
away.

That’s what scared the hell out of him.

“
What if there was someone
else who was scared, too,” he said softly, his fingertips stroking
her chin and lips. “What if that someone was willing to risk
falling in love again, even though he was scared to death, too?
What if, for him, it was worth the risk? Would you still be
scared?”