And then Mathers murmured, “The wedding.”
Boone nodded. The damn wedding. How could he forget? They’ve been planning it for weeks. He thought it was pathetic when he had to learn what a fucking viscaria was. Now? He was basically fluent in florist speak and could spot the difference between windflowers and poppies in a catalogue. He even had to help Mathers choose a wedding dress for his runaway bride. It was a good thing he was as big as he was. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have put it past Mathers to order him to try it on.
“Are the invitations printed yet?”
Invitations? That was the one detail that Mathers purposely decided against. What was the point? He wasn’t hosting a wedding because he wanted a fucking spectacle. In fact, he knew that Mathers was against the idea of marriage if only because it was one of the goddamn stipulations his father imposed on him. He’d stay a lifelong bachelor if only to stick his middle finger up at the old man.
But then he met Grace. Suddenly, Mathers was itching to get hitched. If they were married, she couldn’t escape him. Legally, she couldn’t, and the poor woman naively believed that no one should ever break the law. With how willing Mathers was to bend them, he’d have her forever. So long as he had a wedding license—forged or not, he didn’t care—and an official married them, that’s all that counted. Refusing to have a single witness other than Boone, and maybe Pope… it just wasn’t in the cards.
So invitations?
Boone shook his head.
“Let’s get on that.”
“Yes, sir.”
17
When Grace danced, she felt free. She felt untethered. She felt alive.
The music was in her blood, pumping through her veins. It didn’t matter what played. From her time on the stage, she had an affinity for classical, but she didn’t limit herself to Prokofiev, Stravinsky, and Mendelssohn. She adored upbeat Broadway numbers, sappy ballads, the twang of a country tune. Jazz got her moving, and gospel was so incredibly uplifting, she got greater height to her leaps. She could even practice her pliés and demi pliés in time to hardcore rap.
She hadn’t brought much with her when she fled from Dayton to Hamlet. Her music? She had that. There was no way she’d leave that behind. Like her toe shoes and her hair ties, they were just a part of who she was. If it wasn’t for her songs, she might have already tossed her worthless phone into the gulley.
Cell service was nonexistent in Hamlet. Internet? Nope. Not unless you could figure out dial-up. Like Maria, most locals ventured out of town if they really, really had to use technology. It wasn’t often, though. They didn’t know what they were missing, so they didn’t miss it.
And while it might have been a huge culture shock when she first came to stay in town, Grace was used to it by now. Even more surprisingly, she liked it.
She held onto her phone, refusing to take it off airplane mode because that’s how she’d kept it these last eight months. If it wasn’t for the time she spent dancing on her own, she probably wouldn’t even have bothered with charging the damn thing. All of her CDs were in storage. She digitized her whole library years ago, syncing her music to her phone. With a full battery and a pair of wireless headphones, she could turn on her music, lose herself in the beat, and let her body go.
It had been another successful dance class. Sally’s turn-out had improved greatly since October, and Bev performed a battement tendu directly into an arabesque with only a little wobbling. Plus, after a little prompting, Fina remembered all five positions and did them without falling over once.
Grace was so proud of her girls. Seeing the joy on their faces, watching as they tried their hardest, it reminded her of when she was a little girl. Sure, her dance lessons started when she was three and they soon became daily instead of weekly, but still. Even after retiring this year—being forced off the stage by Tommy’s obsession—Grace’s love of ballet hadn’t faded.
Which was why she went outside after the girls left, pulled up her good mood playlist, and turned the entirety of Ophelia’s backyard into her own performance center. There was no audience. No cheers. She didn’t need them. She never had. It was the music, the movements, and the freedom… and she missed it like nothing else in her life.
Tommy stole her career, but he’d never steal her ability to lose herself in the moment as she spun and leaped and, if only for that moment, forget about all the bad out there. She purposely focused on the good.
Rick.
It had been two weeks since the morning he came to her reeking of alcohol and smoke. When his hangover faded, she was worried he’d take it all back.
He didn’t.
To her surprise, when her big, burly Marine committed, he committed. It was hard for Grace to remember dating in the time before Tommy, but she’d had a few lovers before. She wanted so much more from Rick; she just never expected it. She should’ve. He was a good man, and a man who knew what he wanted.
Now that he’d admitted that he wanted her? He wasn’t shy in showing it. Within days of their first date at the coffeeshop, there wasn’t a soul in town who didn’t know that their deputy was taken with the outsider woman—or that he shot down Natalie Newton in front of the whole crowd at the coffeehouse. Maria even had to turn off her radio to keep from some of the gossips—her friend Caro, Caro’s mom Bonnie, Adrianna from the coffeehouse—constantly buzzing for a fresh scoop on Grace’s relationship with Rick.
Maria thought it was hysterical. Rick turned beet red when she told him all about it during pillow talk. Grace put up with it all because Maria was her friend. And, hell, Rick was adorable when he blushed like that.
In the last couple of weeks, things had gotten even better between them. The only sore point?
Rick wanted more details about the ex chasing after her. And she point-blank refused to give him any.
She knew he wanted her to confide in him, but she couldn’t. Not because she didn’t trust him; it was because Grace didn’t want him to doubt her affection for him. If he knew all of the dirty details behind why she was hiding out in Hamlet, she’d go from someone he wanted to sleep with to someone he felt honor bound to protect.
It was bad enough that she confessed she had a troublesome ex when Rick first started to train her. If he knew the truth, if knew how crazy and insistent Tommy Mathers was, things would change. She was sure of it. And she never wanted Rick to question her attraction to him—or her motives.
Would he wonder if that’s why she came onto him? It would crush her if he did.
Tommy was her problem. If—and when—he came after her again, she’d deal with it alone. She wouldn’t let Rick get involved because, damn it, she couldn’t. She was absolutely positive that Tommy wouldn’t hurt her; she needed to be alive and healthy and whole to finally be his bride. But Rick?
No matter how hard she tried to deny it, she already knew what would happen. If Tommy ever met Rick face to face, he’d kill him. Whether he pulled the trigger himself or stood by as he gave the order to Boone, he’d kill him.
A pit formed in Grace’s stomach at the realization. It wasn’t the first time she had the thought; it usually snuck in during the times she mused on just how damn lucky she was to have found Rick at all. She supposed she had to thank Tommy for that. If he hadn’t chased her out of her first home, the city, then Dayton, she never would’ve gone to Hamlet. She never would’ve met Rick.
And now that she did? Grace was willing to do whatever she had to to make sure that Tommy didn’t.
Determination mixed with the frantic beat of the freestyle song blasting in her ears. She switched up her choreography, slipping seamlessly from classical to a contemporary style. Grace threw everything she had into each movement, while she did everything she could to push any thoughts of Tommy Mathers out of her head.
Two months. She’d been in Hamlet two months and, except for the outsider sighting at Jefferson’s, the gossips in town hadn’t caught a single whisper of any others. Maria said Sly was on the lookout for Tommy’s shin
y black Jaguar. A car like that would stick out like a sore thumb on Hamlet’s empty roads.
Nothing so far. She didn’t know if that was good, or foreboding.
Maybe he finally took the hint. Maybe Tommy had finally given up—
As the song faded out, Grace landed from her last leap, her chest heaving with exertion. Exertion and a smidge of hope—
Applause broke out behind her.
She froze. Sucking in a breath, shivers coursing up and down her bowed spine, she went as still as a statue. The enthusiastic clapping was drowned out by the opening chords of another song. The spell broke. She reached up quickly, jerking the headphones off so that she could make sure she wasn’t hearing things.
Nope. That was applause.
That was an unexpected audience.
It couldn’t be the girls. All three of them left more than an hour ago when class ended. Not Maria, either. She allowed Grace the use of the foyer for her dance lessons as well as her self-defense lessons. While Grace taught the girls, Maria locked herself in her room, working on a secret painting that she planned on giving Sly for Christmas in a couple of weeks.
Rick said he would meet her at six. The man was as considerate as he was careful not to push her too hard, too fast. He’d be there at six, not a minute before.
Since it was still light enough out, it couldn’t be any later than five o’clock.
She gulped, torn between wanting to face whoever was behind her and sprinting for the trees without ever checking. Lost in her music, lost in the dance, she had irrationally let herself forget. She let herself forget who she was, where she was, why she was hiding. Now she was trapped behind Ophelia, with the woods in front of her and a stranger behind her.
Tommy used to beg for her to dance for him. Only for him. He would always clap at the end, too.
Easy pickings, Gracey. What were you thinking?
The answer was: she wasn’t. At least, not about her own skin. Safety plan? What safety plan?
So consumed with worrying about hiding the truth of her entire history with Tommy, Grace forgot that she was supposed to be hiding from him. Somehow, between settling in at Ophelia, starting a new life here with friends, students, and a lover, Grace forgot that the biggest threat was in how far he was willing to go to take her back.
And she was alone. Or, she was.
That didn’t mean that it was Tommy lurking close by. It could be anyone—
Please, oh, please don’t let it be him.
Her heart lodged in her throat, it was a miracle that she managed to sound as calm and collected as she did as she called out behind her. “I’m sorry. Class is over for the week. If you want to join us, we meet every Friday at three. Leotards optional.”
“Jeeze, I’d freeze my tits off if I wore a leotard in December. I don’t know how you do it.”
At the first word, Grace’s head jerked up. The voice was familiar enough—it just wasn’t the one she had expected to hear. Not after what happened at the coffeeshop. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw she was right.
Natalie Newton stood by the corner. She had on a bulky sweater and a lumpy multi-colored scarf that screamed home-made. In contrast to the thin leotard and leggings Grace wore while she danced, the other woman looked dressed for winter.
She was also dressed as a civilian. Since Grace knew that both Sly and Ethan were on patrol, it was a safe bet that she was off duty.
Off duty and searching for Grace at Ophelia.
Wonderful. Was it insane that a tiny sliver of her would have rathered it be Tommy? At least, then, tense, terrifying moments like these would finally be over and done with. Her heart was thumping wildly, her anxiety ratcheting up way past a level ten. Applause shouldn’t make her feel like she was ready to jump out of her own skin.
The threat Tommy posed just by existing on the outside was going to end up killing her.
Maybe he did give up. Maybe Hamlet managed to beat all of his attempts to get to her. It was a pleasant fantasy, and one she liked to think she believed, but her reaction to the applause was a wake-up call. Grace might manage to tuck her fears away, hiding them deep down beneath her skin, but she still expected Tommy to show up.
Not now, though. Not today.
Today, she had to deal with Natalie. And it might not be as terrible as if she looked behind her to find Tommy standing there. Then again, considering how Natalie treated her the last time they met, it wasn’t much of an improvement. At least Tommy was convinced that he loved her in his own twisted way.
There was no love lost between Grace and Natalie.
She shrugged, trying to slough off the anxiousness and fear that settled over her shoulders like an old familiar coat. “It’s easy. After I stretch and warm up, the blood starts pumping. You heat up fast. I barely notice the chill in the air.”
The chill from the weather, at least. The chill from the blonde deputy’s unexpected appearance? Once she calmed down enough, once she understood that it was Natalie intruding on her instead of anyone else, Grace definitely felt that.
She smiled. It was phony as hell. She didn’t care. “Something I can help you with, Deputy?”
There was something in the way Natalie smiled in return. If it were anyone else, Grace might’ve thought it was earnest. Sincere.
Yeah. Okay.
Natalie wanted something, and she wanted it specifically from Grace. There had to be a reason why she searched her out when no one else was around. No Maria. No Rick. It was only Grace. The applause was on purpose. Natalie wanted her attention.
She had it now. Quite as obviously, the younger woman had no idea what to do with it.
Fiddling with the fringe on her scarf, she couldn’t bring herself to meet Grace’s stare. “Uh, yeah. I… Look, I’ve been meaning to stop in and talk to you. Actually, I came by the other day and Maria said you weren’t in. Didn’t want to bother you at Rick’s, so I dropped in when I had some free time. I heard the music—you dance beautifully, by the way.”
“Thanks.”
“Anyway, I heard the music coming from behind Ophelia and figured it might be you. I… I wanted to apologize. The last time we met? I was way out of line.”
That was true, even if Grace never, ever thought that Natalie would admit it.
She needed a second to think about that. Without a word, she walked toward the stool she dragged out to Ophelia’s backyard. Her phone was tossed on top of it, plus her water bottle and a clean towel. She plopped her headphones next to her phone, snatching the towel.
Grace wiped the sweat off her brow, then swiped the towel behind her to get the moisture collecting on her neck. Her heart was still racing. She wanted to think it was because she hadn’t had the chance to run through her normal cool-down routine yet. And then she ran Natalie’s apology through her head again and felt her fist clench around the towel, bunching the material between her fingers.
Finally, she had to say, “Did he put you up to this?”
It wasn’t quite an accusation; it was more curiosity mixed with utter resignation. If Rick thought he had to resort to this in order to smooth things over between her and Natalie, they would never have any sort of future together.
She came to Hamlet because she wanted to stand up for herself. She took self-defense lessons from Rick because she wanted to protect herself.
Prove herself.
“What? No. Oh, god, no. Ricky’s got no clue. If anything, he’d want me to stay far away from you. I’m risking his temper by coming here.”
“Really? Why’s that?” Grace tried to keep her voice carefully neutral. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but are you saying that he thinks I need protection from you?”
Natalie threw her hands up in front of her, palms out, a small smile tugging on her lips. When she wasn’t scowling or looking down her nose, the younger girl really was quite pretty. “Jesus. To be honest, it’s probably the exact opposite. I’ve heard about how you can knock Ricky on his ass when you two are sparring—whole to
wn has. If you could do that to him, I’d hate to think what you could do to me.”
“Mmm.” Grace made a noncommittal noise in the back of her throat as she tucked her towel under her arm and grabbed her water bottle. She took a much needed swig.
Okay. That was true, too. After six weeks of lessons, not to mention a lifetime of rigorous training for the ballet, even Grace knew it wouldn’t be a fair fight. She was taller than Natalie, a good seven years older, and she got what Rick meant when he said that you could fight fair, or you could fight to win.
She would always fight to win. Whether she was defending her life or her chance at happiness with Rick Hart, Grace wasn’t about to back down. She wasn’t above a bit of hair pulling, either. And Natalie’s long, blond hair would be so damn easy to grab and yank. Add a leg sweep and an elbow to her throat and she’d have Natalie down in a jiffy—
No. No. The deputy had come all the way down to Ophelia to apologize. Okay. For the sake of peace in Hamlet, she’d give Natalie the benefit of the doubt.
And if she tried any of that catty nonsense again? Grace would show her exactly why she now wore her hair in a bun while she trained with Rick.
Gathering up her phone, her towel, and her water bottle, she jerked her chin toward Natalie, gesturing at the way she came. “Let’s go around front. We can talk there.”
Just as Grace led Natalie around the corner, heading for the walkway that snaked up toward Ophelia’s porch, the soft hum of a motor broke up the awkward silence that hung between them.
“Evening, ladies,” called out a chipper voice.
A pleasant-faced Asian man in his late fifties, Grace would have recognized Phil even without his signature golf cart. His dark brown eyes were always kind, and he had a smile and a good word for her every time they met. He liked to think of himself as more than just the entirety of Hamlet’s makeshift postal service. Phil Granger was its welcoming committee, too.
I'll Never Stop (Hamlet Book 4) Page 19