“Sure,” she said. “If you think they’re worth waiting for. We need somebody good. You were right, it’s dangerous.”
He gave her a smile, but no dimples.
She smiled back and changed the subject to the color of stain for the new-old kitchen cabinets. They could talk forever and never run out of renovation topics. Grace was grateful for the small blessing.
For once Delaney House seemed to cooperate with her plans. The house hummed with workers and their tools and the atmosphere in the old space changed. A new energy seeped through the rooms as if released by the physical activity.
Bryce treated her with deference, never far away from her side when he made his daily rounds. His face would light into a smile when he succeeded in catching her eye and Grace found herself smiling back. They were moving in reverse, as if they were building up to the scene on the kitchen staircase, not dealing with its aftermath. There would be no more romance, but they could still work together. The emerging beauty of Delaney House made her happy.
It lasted a week.
He showed up after the crew left on Friday afternoon. She’d just poured a glass of wine and was on her way to a hot bath when the piercing scream of the new security alarm went off.
“It’s me! It’s me!”
She found Bryce at the security panel behind the front door, struggling to hold on to a bottle of champagne and an armful of roses while he frantically pushed buttons.
“What’s wrong?” he yelled at her. “The code doesn’t work.”
Grace’s cell went off before she could answer him. When she’d entered the all-clear code and given the password to the security company, the silence in the house was louder than the alarm had been.
“You changed the code?” he asked.
“Obviously.” She couldn’t deny it and didn’t owe him an explanation.
“Any particular reason?”
“A security code isn’t any good if half the world knows it. I change it often.”
“I get it. A city girl thing.”
She wanted to be straight with him, but there he stood, cleaned up and bearing gifts. And smiling, in full dimples, so she said, “It’s a big house and I set the alarm whenever I’m alone. You should ring the bell or call before you come.”
“Okay, but it’s hard to surprise you that way.” He held out the roses.
She took them, but said, “That’s the point, Bryce. I don’t want any surprises. Not from anyone.”
Her words were there, she heard them, and yet he only nodded and smiled some more and said, “But we could have some fun. We haven’t had any time alone lately. Let’s have this champagne and then we’ll go out. I made reservations in St. Michaels. A beautiful place on the water. What do you say?”
What she said was ‘no’. She was tired and irritated but she tried to be kind as she begged off.
He insisted on leaving the champagne for another time, and Grace knew she’d only postponed a problem. She reset the alarm after he left, put the roses in a plastic water pitcher and finally got into her hot bath, but her peaceful evening was ruined.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The other projects which had kept Bryce so busy and away from Delaney House all seemed to disappear. The harder Grace tried to put emotional distance between them, the tighter Bryce attached himself to the daily work on her house.
At first, he said the crews needed him. When it was clear the foremen had their various projects in hand, he insisted on going with Grace to distributors in Baltimore and Wilmington to look at tankless hot water systems and high-efficiency furnaces. She knew she needed her general contractor with her and she wasn’t about to let him spend her money without her, but the trips were awkward. Two weeks into the new year, she changed her mind.
Maybe it was because she’d just signed a contract for an HVAC system that cost enough to give her the trip around the world she was never going to have. Or because every time Bryce caught her eye - and he was always trying to catch her eye - his dimples flashed with his smile. When she let her guard down, she reacted to his smile, to those dimples, and she was tired of her insides driving her crazy. Grace decided to clear the air, once and for all, after an afternoon of appliance shopping.
“Stop it,” she said as she pulled the car off the road and into the parking lot of a McDonald’s.
“Stop what?”
Despite his question, Bryce didn’t look confused as they squared off in the front seats of the BMW. She looked him straight in his beautiful brown eyes and knew she was making the right call.
“I have a nice car don’t I?” she asked.
He frowned, making even that mundane move look sexy.
“Yes?” he asked. “I mean, ‘no’ would be rude, and a lie, but I don’t know what you want me to say.”
She wanted him to have to work for the answer. Maybe that way it would make an impression on him. After a minute she said, “It’s my mother’s. Or it was. She needed a car that would impress her clients when she took them out to view properties. She worked hard, my mom. And when I had to decide what to do with her car, I kept it. Not because it’s expensive, or beautiful. I prefer Jeeps.”
Bryce was trying so hard to follow her, she almost felt bad, but she went on. “I kept this expensive car instead of my Jeep because I wanted to remember how hard Mom worked. This car was the token of her success. Do you know what I’m saying?”
“Of course,” he said.
“You have no idea.”
“Look, Grace. I only asked if you wanted to stop and have an early dinner. Like I said, I know a great place -”
“A romantic place, no doubt.”
“You prefer McDonald’s?”
He really was trying, she thought. Trouble was, he was trying to push the wrong agenda. To the wrong woman. She said, “If you’re hungry and want to go through the drive through, I’ll get some coffee. If you want to talk about us, I’m not interested. I’ve given you mixed signals and I’m sorry. You’re a nice guy. I like you, Obviously, I do, or I wouldn’t have let things go as far as they did. But we are not a couple. I’m not staying in Mallard Bay. I’m selling the house as soon as possible. I’m thinking of putting it on the market in the next week or so.”
“You can’t do that!”
Grace could practically see the gears shift behind the handsome face. Not, ‘Don’t leave, I’m crazy about you’ but ‘You can’t list the house’. It had always been about the house.
“We aren’t nearly ready,” he went on. “I need six weeks. Give me six weeks. Five!” He searched her face. “Give me five weeks and you can list it.”
She tried to work out the reason for the five-week timeline. It wasn’t long enough to make the house perfect. She’d be showing it while the finishing touches were being added.
“Five weeks,” she agreed.
It hadn’t been a big Christmas or a big romance, but each stirred up emotions she could have done without. Ordinarily, a problem requiring Benny Pannel wouldn’t be a good thing, but an unexpected visit from the always-cheerful Verminator on a gloomy Monday morning seemed like a gift.
“Had a possum extraction over on Jefferson and one of your neighbors is a new client, so I decided to drop by and see if you are still critter-free,” Benny said as he accepted her offer of coffee and a tour of the house. “I guess having the van parked outside here all that time was good for business.”
“It’s certainly hard to miss,” Grace agreed and laughed as he thanked her sincerely for the ‘compliment’.
She enjoyed showing the house off to someone who’d seen it at its worst. Benny knew most of the workers and high-fived and fist-bumped his way through all three floors, checking former problem spots as he admired the new construction.
“I’ll take a look in the basement, too,” he said as they wound up the tour in the kitchen.
They found dead mice in the new mechanical room. Benny crouched down and examined the two small bodies without touching them. After a mom
ent he stood and swept the beam of his Maglight around. Nothing scurried or squeaked. Using gloved hands, he sealed the mice in a heavy plastic bag.
“I’ll put these little guys in the truck and then check the rest of the rooms,” he said.
She reminded him of the chemical explosion and told him about the sealed room at the end of the hall.
“That hasn’t been cleaned up yet?” Benny asked.
“Seems hazmat cleaners are in big demand.”
“Well, I know some people,” Benny said, then appeared to reconsider what he was going to say. “Listen, I’m sure Bryce and Henry have it all under control. These mice definitely got into some kind of poison. See here, you can tell because -”
“I don’t need to look,” Grace broke in. “I’ll take your word for it.”
Benny shrugged, “Okay, but it’s interesting. I’ll put out some traps and see if we can save any others that come wantin’ a warm place to spend the winter.”
Grace told Benny he had changed her view of certain elements of nature. She was rooting for live mice to be captured in her house.
As they came up the steps into the yard, Benny looked into the woods and said, “I guess it’s not a grave anymore since the body’s gone, right?”
She winced at the sight of the mound of dirt still visible behind the now-scraggly tree line. She’d finally been permitted to fill in the pit where Audrey Oxley’s body had been found. While the removal of the bright orange flags and yellow crime scene tape had been an improvement, the area was still a gravesite.
After seeing the Verminator on his way, she called Lee McNamara. The grave was a constant reminder that the murder was still unsolved. Her call went straight to voicemail. She asked McNamara to call her and ignored the option of speaking to the duty officer. Another encounter with the surly Aidan Banks wasn’t likely to be productive. Besides, she’d wasted enough of the morning. If Bryce was on a five-week deadline, so was she.
Grace had unofficially joined the Cutters’ painting crew. During her free time, she did the detail trim on the crown molding and baseboards or worked on stripping the woodwork in the butler’s pantry. Bryce called just as she was wrapping up the afternoon scraping layers of oil-based paint.
She almost ignored the call when she saw his name on the screen, but she did need to talk to him. They’d been short two painters for several days and the crew’s momentum was starting to slow.
Bryce said he was stopping by to talk to Marty and would work on the crew roster. He sounded distracted and disconnected quickly. Grace let Marty know and went up to the apartment to shower and change. She was taking herself out to the Tavern for dinner. The soup and salads she’d been living on had taken care of the ten pounds she’d wanted to lose, but she was hungry for a hot meal that wasn’t from a can. She could take her time cleaning up and maybe Bryce would come and go by the time she was ready to leave. She wanted to keep their tenuous hold on civility.
At first, she thought her plan had worked. An hour later when she started down the staircase, the house was quiet, but it didn’t feel empty. She paused on the second floor, leaned over the railing and listened.
As if on cue, Norah Jones started to sing.
Chapter Forty
“I brought you a present and it needs atmosphere to be appreciated.” Bryce stood in the dining room, his arms wide open.
Grace didn’t know if he was offering himself up or trying to showcase the fabric he’d tacked up over the room’s tall windows.
Norah finished Come Away With Me and moved into Don’t Know Why. Grace thought the music selection was spot-on, but probably not for the reasons Bryce had intended.
“Well, what do you think? Another client of mine is a decorator. I was at his shop and I saw some drapes made out of this. I thought it looked like you and…” he broke off in mid-sentence, his eyes searching her face. “Okay. Poor decision. I’m sorry. I’ll take them down.”
“No, wait,” Grace said as he went to the window. “The fabric’s beautiful. It suits the room.” She ran her hands over the pale green watered silk, stopping to trace the outline of a tiny embroidered dragonfly. Hundreds of the golden creatures covered the delicate silk and shimmered in the light from the room’s single naked bulb. “It will be something when we get the chandelier hung, won’t it?”
He’d moved behind her, but didn’t touch her. “I brought a picnic dinner, too. We could start with a glass of wine and talk a while. Down here,” he added hastily. “Nothing serious, just talk. Friends, okay? And then, if you’re hungry, I have cheese and crackers, and a crab quiche.”
She was starved.
He had a plaid blanket which they spread out on the empty dining room floor. The Merlot had a bite to it, but the Talbot Reserve cheddar cheese was exquisite and the smell of the warm quiche was tantalizing. Bryce kept the conversation frivolous, teasing her about saving the crooked doorway as Emma’s ‘signature’ and proposing wild color combinations to replace the neutral palette she was using.
“Let me top your wine off,” he leaned closer as he held the bottle out toward her.
The memory of the staircase flashed through her mind; she knew her face was red. “I have plenty,” she said, moving her glass away. The wine was bitter, and the half glass she’d had felt sour in her stomach.
Bryce shrugged and sat back. “How would you like to go to Rehoboth tomorrow? We could do the boardwalk, walk on the beach, have a nice meal. How does that sound?”
Grace sat up a bit straighter, her stomach clenching in earnest. Why couldn’t he have left it alone? “It sounds like a date and we’ve had that conversation. I don’t want to start anything.”
“I only want to spend some time with you. I think you’d enjoy it.”
He was still smiling, but Grace sensed something else, a wariness. “This is nice,” she said and raised her wine glass in a salute and took a small sip. “But this is all there is, okay?”
“Okay,” he agreed. “But, you know, you could keep the house as a weekend home.”
She looked at the silk, then at him, wondering if he was teasing again. She decided he was. “Oh, sure. For all the wild parties I have.”
“Well, why not?” He leaned back on his elbows, watching her. “You could have a big rolling house party in this place. Plenty of bedrooms. Privacy. Your neighbors are mostly old and far enough away they can’t hear anything.”
Grace felt a twinge of unease. Her head was beginning to throb and her stomach was getting worse. She said, “People are in and out of here all day. Niki will be here soon, as a matter of fact.”
“Is that so? I talked to her yesterday and she didn’t mention it. She just said how hard it was to be in the middle between you and her parents.”
Damn. Grace tried to shut out the increasingly urgent messages from her body and think clearly. “That’s why she’s coming over. Besides, I didn’t know you two saw so much of each other.” Now, why had she said that? He was grinning. Too late, she realized he thought she was jealous.
“She isn’t coming, Grace. No one is.”
He suddenly sat forward and reached for her. She tried to scoot away, but her feet and legs were heavy and uncooperative. Bryce’s fingers closed around her wrist and he yanked her toward him.
The pounding in her skull increased as Grace’s feet finally got traction. She scrambled backward, kicking food and sending the bottle of wine sailing across the floor at Bryce.
“Hey!” He let her go and jumped to his feet, wiping wine from his jeans. “I only wanted to kiss you.”
Grace rose unsteadily, then bent at the waist as the room tilted.
“Let me help you,” Bryce took a tentative step toward her.
She wanted to tell him no, but she was trying not to pass out. “Get away from me!” she pleaded in a whisper. As he reached her, she felt bile rising in her throat and the floor fell away.
Her mother stroked her hair. She was wrapped in her old quilt. Where had it been? It didn’t matter, s
he had it now and it kept her warm. A hand touched her cheek.
“Mama?”
The slap split her lip and brought her face to face with Winston. “Not your mommy, cousin. Your worst nightmare.”
“Christ, Winnie! Could you be any cornier? What the hell are you doing?”
Bryce’s face swam into focus.
“Not another mark on her, understand?” he shouted over his shoulder. “The ones she has will be hard enough to explain.”
Winston’s voice came through the fog. “A fall down those stairs could have broken her neck. I say a couple more taps won’t hurt.”
Grace steeled herself, but instead of a blow, she heard a thud of muscle on flesh and a howl of pain that didn’t come from her.
“We wouldn’t be in this fix if not for you,” Bryce shouted. “You leave her alone. Anyone’s gonna do her, it’ll be me. Understand?”
Grace’s vision was clearing. She was in one of the small basement rooms, bound up in something soft. The picnic blanket. She tried to wiggle her hands, but they were clumsy. The scuffling and howling from Winston petered out. She closed her eyes and hoped she looked unconscious. One of the men was moving toward her again.
“I know you can hear me.” Fingers brushed her forehead. She flinched but didn’t open her eyes. “I’m sorry about all of this. I did try to make it more pleasant for you, but you’re a hard woman. At least I kept your cousin from killing you.” Suddenly, his mouth was near her ear and she smelled licorice as Bryce’s warm breath fell across her face. “You should have let me make you happy, Gracie.”
“Down here! Hurry!”
Grace woke to the sounds of thundering feet and shouts. She covered her face with her hands as people moved to her side.
“Don’t move now,” a man said as he knelt beside her.
She was thrilled that she could move. As she’d gone in and out of consciousness, she hadn’t been able to move her arms or legs. She’d cried, thinking she was paralyzed.
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