Falling for Grace (8 page)

“
...but I wouldn’t feel
comfortable knowing that you were moving in with the place still
dirty. And where would Izzie sleep? Of course, I suppose she could
stay in my spare room if you wanted, and you—”

Her eyes grew wide and she snapped her mouth
shut.

“
We have sleeping bags,”
he told her.

“
Oh.” She paused. “But I’m
not sure how comfortable those hard-wood floors…”

“
We’ll be
fine.”

“
Are you sure you want to
move tonight? I mean…”

Carson held up a hand. “Wait.” Flipping open
his checkbook, he took a minute to write out a check, carefully
tore it from the book, and handed it to her. “Here is the deposit
and the first month’s rent. Now the place is officially mine,
right? I’m moving in later tonight. If you want the cleaning
service to come first thing in the morning, that will be fine.
Until then, Izzie and I can fend for ourselves.” He glanced to the
child. “Actually, we’re used to a little dust, aren’t we Iz?”

Izzie nodded furiously. “Actually, sometimes
we’re used to a lot of dust.”

“
Enough, Iz.” Carson
chucked. “Ms. Hart might kick us out on our ears if she thinks
we’re not good tenants.”

Izzie clamped her mouth shut and made a
funny face. Carson had to laugh out loud. Looking to Gracie, he
also noticed she was smiling, intent on Izzie’s antics. He took in
that smile for a moment and let himself wonder just a little bit
more about Gracie Hart. What was her story? He couldn’t quite put
his finger on it.

Finger. Hm. Why
didn’t
she have a ring
on the third finger of her left hand? Then he mentally chastised
himself for noticing.

“
Well, I’ll let you in on
a little secret, Izzie,” she said as she leaned a little closer to
the girl, interrupting his thoughts. “Sometimes I have a little too
much dust in my house, too.”

Izzie giggled, her big eyes animated.
“Betcha don’t have as much as us! One time, me and Dad wrote our
entire whole names in the dust on the bookshelves and it stayed
that way for weeks!”

“
Izzie!”

“
Well, it did!”

“
Did not.”

“
Did so!”

“
Well, okay. You could be
right. But you know you’re not supposed to tell those
things!”

Gracie laughed again and for the second time
that afternoon, Carson found himself mesmerized by her smile and
captivated by the sound of her laugh and so very curious as to what
made Gracie Hart tick.

* * * *

“
Okay, Gracie, spill it
about the new guy next door.”

Amie, always on the lookout for new guys in
town, chewed on a blueberry bagel and looked across the table at
Gracie, staring her square in the eye. “You’ve been holding out on
me. I hear he’s a doll.”

Gracie snorted and took
another sip of hot lemon tea. “A doll? Hardly.” If it were up
to
her
to find
words to describe Carson Price, doll would not be on the list.
Hunk? Stud-puppy? Those two descriptive terms came to mind quite
quickly, and if pressed, Gracie was sure she could drum up a few
more. Yes, he was a very attractive man. Of course, she wasn’t the
least bit interested in drumming up descriptive terms for the likes
of Carson Price, or any man, for that matter.

She was only interested in Carson Price for
his rent check, although it seemed her friends had other thoughts
on the subject.

Nice looking eligible
bachelor
were the words Constance had
thrown up to her the day before. Gracie had shushed her off with a
wave of her hand. Gracie Hart wasn’t on the lookout for nice
looking eligible bachelors, she’d told Constance.

The older woman had made some comment but
Gracie pretended not to hear. Something about specific parts of her
anatomy shriveling up from lack of use....

“
You know he’s the talk of
the town.” Amie interrupted her thoughts. “I mean, all the women
have been sneaking by to peek in the window at him. I haven’t had
the chance. So, spill.”

Fiddling with her teacup,
Gracie stared off into Amie’s coffee shop, trying not to think
about atrophying body parts. It was early Friday morning, two hours
before her shop and most of the others on Main Street opened for
the day. The coffee shop was on the same side of the street
as
Romantically Yours
, but on the other side of the traffic light. She was North
Main, Amie was South Main. About a dozen people were occupying
space with them, drinking tea or coffee and eating bagels and
pastries.

Amie’s
Place
, which also served a light lunch,
closed at two in the afternoon. That’s the way Amie liked it. She
had the remainder of the day to play.

Gracie already knew Carson
was the talk of the town. Her own business had been boosted for the
past few days since he’d moved in and started some minor
renovations. The talk from the women was non-stop. Gracie would
smile and nod and try extremely hard not to get drawn into the
middle of those
oh-God-he’s-so-gorgeous
conversations.

She’d talked to him only
once, and briefly at that, during the week. Seems his plans were to
open his
café
at
the end of the month, barely three weeks away. Izzie, she’d
learned, was staying in Louisville for the next two weeks with her
babysitter until school was out for the summer. Then she would be
joining her father. For some reason, Gracie had felt a sense of
urgency from Carson that he get the
café
up and running as soon as
possible. She’d sensed that urgency in him before and wondered what
that was all about.

She supposed he was just ready to get on
with his new life. Of all people, she could understand that. Once
upon a time, she’d done the same thing.

But she tried not to think about that much
anymore. Ten years was a long time, but she was extremely proud of
the way she had recovered.

“
Of course,
you
wouldn’t sneak a
peek, would you, Gracie?”

Had Amie said something? Her thoughts were
temporarily back in New York. Gracie looked at her and said, “I’m
sorry. You were saying?”

Amie huffed. “I said, you wouldn’t sneak a
peek, would you?”

“
Moi? Of course not.” New
York was all but forgotten.

“
Yeah, right.”

“
Well, I, for one,” Gracie
returned, “have more things to do with my time than ogle my next
door neighbor while he hammers two-by-fours and moves equipment
about, wearing nothing more than a pair of tight jeans and work
boots, perspiration glistening off his back like some model in a
diet soft drink commercial.”

“
So you’ve never even
peeked, huh?”

Gracie shook her head. “Nope, not
interested.”

Amie snorted and then laughed out loud.
About six customers turned to look at her. “Like I said, yeah,
right.”

Gracie stuck out her tongue at her friend
and picked up her cinnamon bagel. “You’re impossible.”

“
And you’re lying. I know
you Gracie Hart. There is something up with this man.”

“
You’re wrong.” Grace bit
off a bite of bagel, looked Amie square in the eye. “There
is...nothing up...with that man,” she returned between
chews.

Sitting back in her seat and pushing her
coffee cup away at the same time, Amie crossed her arms over her
chest. Gracie didn’t like the way she was studying her. “Well, I’ll
tell you what. I’ll reserve comment on that subject until a later
date. Until I have some time to see you around this man. I mean,
Constance told me the other day that—”

“
Constance?” Gracie sat up
a little straighter. “What does Constance have to do with this
conversation?” Knowing that Constance and Amie had been talking
made Gracie a teensy-bit uncomfortable. Even though the two women
were her best friends, and had good intentions, she didn’t want
them joining forces again to instigate something into an area of
her life where Gracie had no intention of going.

Will those two never stop trying to hook her
up with a man?

“
Oh nothing,” Amie
replied, popping the last bite of bagel into her mouth. “You know,
Gracie, I am a bit miffed at you, however.”

Puzzled, Gracie stared at her friend.
“Whatever for?”

“
Allowing him to come into
town and open up another
café
. I mean, when the soup and
sandwich place closed down the street, I all but had a monopoly on
the lunch crowd.”

“
My goodness, you
have
the monopoly on the
breakfast crowd! And more customers than you can handle, as I
recall, at lunch,” Gracie told her. “Weren’t you just complaining
last week that you weren’t prepared for the onslaught and that
people could barely get in the door during their lunch
hour?”

“
Complaining? No. Drooling
at the thought of the increase in lunch sales? Yes. But now I
suppose…”

Leaning forward, Gracie
replied, “Look, Amie. Carson Price putting in another
café
down the street is
not going to ruin your business. If lunch customers can’t get in
your door because it’s too crowded and the service is slow, do you
think they are going to come back? No. And besides, Carson’s place
is going to be different from yours, not just a soup and sandwich
place, he said. In fact, he’s even going to be open for
dinner.”

Amie thought about that. “Not just a soup
and sandwich place, huh? Wonder what he meant by that?”

Gracie shrugged. “Not sure. I just think he
must be designing something fairly upscale since he’s planning to
be open for dinner, too.” Her thoughts drifted for a moment, then
she looked at Amie. “I wonder...wouldn’t it be great if he was
putting in some sort of tea room? I mean, that would be so cool
right next door. We could possibly double up on advertising and
marketing and bring in customers for each other....”

Thoughts were swimming in her head. This
could be perfect. This could be just the thing she needed. She
couldn’t wait until the next meeting of the Chamber.

“
I dunno,” her friend
said, “Carson Price doesn’t look much like the tea room type to
me.”

But Gracie wasn’t listening. Visions of
increased business and new customers were dancing in her head.

Amie touched her arm.

“
What?”

“
I said why don’t you ask
him now.”

Gracie shook her head. “Excuse me?”

Pointing with her thumb
over her shoulder, Amie directed Gracie’s attention to the front of
the shop. “That’s him, right? Why don’t you go discuss business
with him now? See if you two could drum up some
business
together.”

Gracie sucked in a deep breath. Amie’s
innuendo stood for more than business, she knew. Turning, she
looked in the direction her friend pointed. There he stood at the
front counter, wearing tight jeans, work boots, and a black t-shirt
that fit like a second skin—ordering breakfast to go.

“
Doesn’t look like any
lawyer I ever met,” Gracie muttered.

“
What?”

She sat up straighter and looked at Amie.
“Wait a minute. You said you’d never seen him. How did you know
that was Carson Price up there?”

Amie tossed her an evil little grin and
tilted her chin a bit. “Oh, all right. So, I lied. I peeked. And,
oh yeah, he comes in here every morning for breakfast. Just in case
you’d like to know.”

Amie grinned wide and giggled and Gracie
could all but strangle her. She was up to something. So was
Constance. And that didn’t bode well for her, she knew.

* * * *

“
Just a large coffee,
black, and one of those honeybuns. To go.”

Carson eyed the young girl across the
counter as she turned and headed for the coffeemaker. She couldn’t
be more than seventeen, he thought. Yet, she was giving him the
once over and smiling like he was prime rib or something.

Another teenager sidled up next to her,
pretending to get coffee as well. She glanced back at him and both
girls giggled. He thought he heard one of them say something about
“his honeybuns” and tried like hell to ignore that statement.

Briefly, he closed his eyes and shook his
head. It had been like this all week. If it wasn’t the two
teenagers behind the counter who served him breakfast every
morning, it was the same group of women who sauntered by his place
every afternoon as though they were window shopping. Sighing, he
glanced around the shop. His gaze immediately latched on a tall
brunette in the back of the room.

Gracie?

“
Honeybun...and
coffee.”

He turned back to the girl. She sat his
coffee and pastry down on the counter with a sassy
seventeen-year-old smile and stared at him while he produced the
couple of dollar bills and the change he owed her.

What was it with this town? Ever since
Tuesday women had been parading by his windows, staring like they’d
never seen a man before.

New man in town. Single. Eligible
bachelor.

Oh, hell.

Out of the blue, the concept hit him square
in the face. He didn’t like it. Memories of old festered up mighty
quickly and he shook himself, desperately trying to tamp them
down.

Living in Louisville for the past twenty
years, he’d forgotten about small town antics. He should have
known. He’d grown up in a little village just east of Cincinnati
where everyone knew everyone else and no one thought twice about
getting involved in their neighbor’s business. That was one of the
reasons he had preferred the city. One could get lost in the
shuffle and do their own thing and not worry about what their
neighbor thought or did. It just had never occurred to him that he
would have to revert back to dealing with small town antics here in
Franklinville.