by H. P. Munro
Grace Falls
H.P. Munro
About the Book
Dr Maddie Marinelli is looking for a fresh start; she’s leaving behind the ghost of a failed relationship and looking forward to starting a new job and life in San Francisco...what she didn’t count on was car trouble and the colorful residents of Grace Falls.
Alex Milne has spent most her adult life putting other people’s needs first. She is busy raising her daughter in her hometown while running her business and the last thing she expects is to be attracted to Grace Falls’ newest, albeit reluctant, resident.
Sometimes you don’t know what it is you’re looking for, until it comes along and finds you.
Grace Falls is a Red Besom book
www.red-besom-books.com
ebooks are non-transferable.
Please respect the rights of the author and do not file share.
Copyright@2014, H.P. Munro.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means electrical or mechanical, including photocopy, without permission in writing from the author.
ASIN: B00I5UVVN2
All characters within this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Acknowledgements
The question of what to do while on a snowboarding holiday when you’re too scared of breaking your backside again, while attempting to hurtle down a hillside strapped to a bit of fiberglass, became an easy one to answer. You create a town where you’d like to live – that said you’re not sure you would want to live there for fear of suffocation or succumbing to the desire to suffocate someone else. Regardless tucking myself away in Grace Falls, while sampling the après ski (sans actual skiing), was a lovely way to spend time. Therefore, in a roundabout way I would like to thank the instructor who had so much more faith in my ability to navigate an icy slope than I did, not one to hold a grudge…I was right, I could not do it!
Again, thanks goes to anyone who read and remembers this story in its original guise and thank you to my usual suspects of guinea pigs, Angela, Karin, Lesley, and Pauline.
Biggest thanks again go to my wife, for her never-ending support and patience and ability to spot a stray apostrophe at a hundred paces.
For Jane
Contents
About the Book
Acknowledgements
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Epilogue – Part One
Epilogue – Part Two
Prologue
Maddie Marinelli checked her watch for the fifth time since sitting down, she looked over to the empty seat opposite and sighed. It wasn’t the first time that Joanna was late for dinner, in fact it was becoming a common occurrence. However this was their anniversary dinner and Joanna was over an hour late. Twelve years since they met at Harvard, seven years since they stood in front of family and friends and vowed to spend their life together, and six months since Maddie had noticed small fissures appear in their once strong relationship and, however hard she tried to suture the cracks, they kept reappearing.
“Sorry I’m late, last minute fuck up with a client.”
Joanna slid into the seat opposite her wife and waved the waiter over in one fluid movement.
“It’s okay, I was late too. There was a fire in an apartment building so the ER was manic,” Maddie lied, frowning at her inability to show her disappointment at her wife’s tardiness and almost indifferent apology.
“Oh that’s okay then. Have you ordered?”
“Not yet, I was waiting on you.”
“Well I’m here now and I’m starving,” Joanna buried her nose in the menu, using it as an excuse to avoid speaking to her wife.
Their dinner was an awkward affair; the easy conversation that used to flow between them had become a stilted exchange of information and chat usually reserved for polite conversation with strangers. Joanna was on edge throughout the meal, continually running her hands through her short blonde hair and shifting in her seat constantly as if she would rather be anywhere else than in one of Atlanta’s top restaurants with her wife. Her one word or apathetic responses repeatedly thwarted Maddie’s attempts to keep the conversation going.
When the waiter asked whether they wanted the dessert menu or coffees, Joanna interrupted any response from Maddie to ask for the check and practically grabbed it from the waiter’s grasp when he returned with it.
Maddie was perturbed at their sudden exit and, as they stepped out into the warm Atlanta evening, she was still pulling on her light jacket as Joanna stood tapping her foot against the warm pavement. She opened her mouth to apologize in case her choice of restaurant had been the wrong one, but before she could say a thing Joanna handed her a set of house keys.
“Why are you giving me your house keys?” she asked.
“Because I won’t need them.”
“What are you talking about Joanna? Of course you’ll need them,” Maddie held the keys out to return them.
“No, no, I won’t Maddie. I’m not coming home with you tonight or any night.”
“You’re not making any sense, just take the damn keys.” Maddie thrust them towards her wife, when she didn’t get a response she grabbed Joanna’s hand and tried to put them into her closed fist, “Joanna, please you’re scaring me, take the keys.”
“Maddie, please don’t make a scene.”
“What the hell are you talking about, making a scene?” Maddie asked raising her voice. “I don’t understand what’s happening here Joanna.”
Joanna cast a quick look around the sidewalk and flashed an apologetic smile towards a passerby, “Please don’t shout. I’ve ordered two cabs for us, one will take you home and the other is taking me to a hotel, I’ve cleared my stuff out of the apartment.” She took a deep breath, “I’m leaving. I’ve been offered a job in the New York office and I’ve accepted it.”
“I’m sorry?” Maddie closed her eyes as if hoping that squeezing them shut would somehow give her insight into why her wife was behaving this way or, when she opened them, she would realize that this had been some form of nightmare daydream. However, when she opened them Joanna was still standing there with an impatient look on her face. “You’re what?”
“Maddie, we both know it’s not been right between us for a while. I don’t know how or when it happened but we’ve changed, neither of us are the people we were when we met or when we married,” her blue eyes pleaded with Maddie to understand.
Despite her best effort, Maddie could feel tears start to fall down her cheeks, “That’s the best that you can come up with? We’re different now, so it’s over. You’re honestly going to throw away a twelve year relationship without even talking any of this over with me. You’re just going to go?”
“This way is for the best. Once you’ve had time to accept it, you’ll see I’m right. If I had spoken to you about how I was feeling you would have just tried harder and lost more of yourself in the process.”
“How long?” Maddie swiped at the tears betraying her anger. “How long have you felt this way? How long have you been lying to me about our marriage?”
“Months, years. I don’t know,” Joanna said throwing her hands up in the air. “You used to have spirit in you Maddie, but now I think the ER gets the best of you and I get what’s left. Even tonight I was late, you were pissed, you had every rig
ht to be pissed and yet you lied. I know when you left the hospital today, I checked. You just seem to put aside everything for an easy life.”
“Easy?” Maddie puffed out a noise that was somewhere between a sob and a laugh, “Seriously? You think that working seventy hours a week in the ER and coming home to dirty laundry and your crap strewn around the apartment is easy. I don’t not say things for an easy life Joanna, I just chose not to spend what little time I had with you fighting. It’s called making a marriage work.” She lifted her hands and combed her fingers through her black hair until they entwined at the back of her head, “I can’t believe that you’re trying to put this on me. You’re the one telling me, on our anniversary dinner I might add, that you’re leaving me to move to New York and you have the audacity to blame me for the failures in our marriage?”
Joanna gave a half shrug, “It just seemed like you stopped caring.”
Maddie threw her a disgusted look, “Take a good look Joanna, ’cause this moment here. This moment is when I stopped caring.” She tugged at the simple gold band on her finger, grimacing as the skin pulled around her knuckle as she removed the ring and threw it towards Joanna’s chest, “And now I’m going to make it really easy for you. The next time I hear from you it better be about a divorce.”
Chapter One
One Year Later…
Maddie’s fingers tightened around the hard molding of the steering wheel of her T-Bird. Her head bobbed around in time to the music keeping her company on her long drive west as the wind coming in from the open windows caused her dark locks to dance to their own rhythm. In four weeks, she would be starting her new life in San Francisco, a new job, a new start. She was almost giddy at the possibilities a clean slate offered her; no one looking at her with her past failures reflecting in their eyes, no more reminders of could or should haves. Even the small voice that persistently whispered that she was running away was silent today.
The beginning of a broad smile started to tug at her lips as the song changed on the radio, she reached down and cranked the volume up as far as the dial would allow, her fingers began to beat the rhythm of the song and she started to mouth the words silently. As the tempo started to increase, and the chorus began its second repeat, the steady beat she had tapped with fingers became an enthusiastic tattoo as she smacked the steering wheel with the heel of her hand. The silently mouthed words were replaced by a full-throated sing-a-long. Her shoulders danced in time with the music as the upbeat tune reached its crescendo. She felt happy, a word so small that it failed to capture the myriad of emotions careering around Maddie Marinelli at this moment, but if you were to ask her, she would chuckle, shake her head in an almost self-deprecating way and admit, albeit cautiously, that she was indeed happy...and hopeful.
The song changed again to one that Maddie didn’t know and, as the signal started to hiss with interference, she rolled her eyes, wondering whether she should bite the bullet and update the radio from the original AM signal seeker radio for a more modern one. Her love for the original features in her car had already stopped her from replacing the Town and Country radio on several occasions. She sighed and twisted the volume dial until it brought the noise down to a more acceptable level before pressing the on/off button and silencing the radio.
In the quiet, she allowed the passing scenery to invade her happy bubble, the brown hue of her sunglasses lending their color to the passing wilderness. A quick glance at her GPRS confirmed her suspicion than she was indeed in the ass-end of Alabama. The road ahead stretched into the horizon, with no turn or bend to deviate it from its approach to the distance. She quickly checked her mirrors, and confident that there were no other vehicles in her eye line, leaned forward in her seat.
“Let’s give you a little blow out baby,” she whispered in an almost seductive tone to her car. She sat back and locked her elbows, her foot pressed the gas pedal down until the back of the pedal hit the footwell. She whooped as her vintage car took up the challenge her right foot presented it with and it surged forward. The orange speedometer needle danced behind the protective glass, pushing up to numbers that Maddie had never taken it to before. Still cautiously watching in her mirrors in case her antics were being captured by a patrolman, Maddie started to rock back and forth as if egging the car, that was twenty years older than her, on. She was just about to celebrate the fifty-four-year-old engine reaching the top speed that had been on its credentials in its heyday, when a loud bang came from the engine and the car started to slow.
“Nonononononono,” Maddie whined as she pressed the brake pedal and pulled the car to the side of the road. She got out and popped the hood open, stepping back to avoid being engulfed in the steam that rose from the engine.
“Not the sort of blow out I had in mind.”
Coughing at the acrid smell from the engine, she waved her hands to clear the air. “Well that’s not good,” she groaned, pushing her sunglasses onto her forehead.
The steam started to clear and she was finally able to see into the engine, spotting immediately the damage she had caused. She pulled her cell phone from her back pocket and walked round to the driver’s door to call Triple A.
“Typical, just typical,” she yelled as the screen of her cell informed her that she had no phone signal. She tossed the useless phone through the open window of the driver’s door onto the seat where it bounced before landing in the footwell. Maddie gritted her teeth and let out a low growl of frustration, before taking a deep breath and giving herself a mental check, “Okay, this is not a problem. This…this is an opportunity.” She faked a smile as she used her hands to shield her eyes from the late afternoon sun, checking out the deserted road in hope. Seeing nothing, she gave her beloved car a kick to the front tire. “And this is where we will die,” she growled.
Maddie leaned in through the open window and grabbed her half-full bottle of water, taking a long swig of the lukewarm liquid while formulating her plan. She checked her GPRS again and spotted a town twenty miles ahead; looking up at the sun Maddie cursed the Marinelli competitive streak that meant she had spent less time and attention to her navigation badge in girl scouts than selling the most cookies. Realizing that any judgment she made on daylight hours left was going to be based more on guesswork than fact, she deduced that the sun would cool off in a couple of hours making the twenty mile walk a bit easier. Her plan for the time being was to stay out of the sun and relax. She pulled out a rug from the car, fished out a medical journal from the boxes of her belongings in the trunk and settled down in the shade of the car to wait it out.
An hour later and nature was calling…loudly. At first Maddie ignored it, using all of her mind-over-matter techniques that saw her make it through long hours in the ER. However, during work her laser-like focus on what she was doing could fool her mind. With no such distraction now, her mind had started to question her decision to ignore her body’s needs. She managed to last another half hour before her mind had started an all-out rebellion and she could no longer ignore her bladder. Grabbing a handful of tissues, she walked off the road and selected a suitable bush. She quickly scanned the undergrowth for anything that might leap up and bite her ass, before undoing her jeans and pulling them roughly down to her ankles and crouching. Her eyes rolled back in her head in ecstasy as her bladder started to empty. The sound of her urine hitting the dry sand was, however, suddenly joined by a car engine and loud music.
“Noooooo,” Maddie groaned realizing that she might miss her chance of rescue thanks to her bladder, as no amount of pelvic floor exercises would have allowed her to stop mid flow.
The engine and music stopped and Maddie heard the sound of a door opening and closing.
“Hey, is there anyone here?” a male voice yelled from the roadside.
“Yeah, I am, I’m here, gimmee a minute,” Maddie shouted back urging her body to hurry up. “C’mon,” she muttered in encouragement. “Finally!” she snarled as she finished. She pulled her jeans back up mumbling, “Longes
t pee in history.” Hastily refastening her jeans, she half ran back towards her car.
“Oh hey,” the tall man greeted her; he pushed his red baseball cap back on his head, revealing dark blonde hair and scratched his forehead. “You look like you’re in need of some help,” he motioned towards the car.
Maddie smiled, ”I’ve cracked the radiator and blown the head gasket.”
The man looked at her in surprise, “You a mechanic?”
“No, a doctor, I just like cars, this one especially,” Maddie laughed, looking fondly at her car. “At least when it works I do.”
“A doctor?” the man seemed to be contemplating something, a look of concentration furrowed his face, suddenly the look was gone, replaced by a large welcoming smile. “My name’s Sam Hunter, I work for an auto shop in Grace Falls. Why don’t we get you hitched up and we can have a look at it for you.”
Hesitating Maddie balanced off her needs for help against her desire not to become a missing person statistic. Her eyes flicked across to the truck Sam was driving; on the side in black lettering was ‘Campbell’s Auto Shop, Grace Falls’ No.1 place for your automobile needs’.
Sam followed her gaze. “It’s also the only place in Grace Falls for your needs and the only place for around ninety miles,” he laughed. “There’s no phone signal at this point on the road but it comes back in about a mile up if you wanna walk on and phone ahead to check me out,” he smiled, sensing the reason for her hesitancy.
Studying his face Maddie sensed that Sam’s offer was genuine. “Okay, let’s do this,” she smiled, dropping the hood of the car closed.
***
Thirty minutes later after hitching the car to Sam’s rescue truck, they were pulling into Campbell’s Auto Shop. A dark-haired man with twinkling blue eyes came out to greet them, smiling broadly as he assessed the classic car on tow. “She’s a beauty,” he murmured appreciatively while wiping his hands on a rag.