by C. C. Coburn
Jack had fallen hard for Gracie the day she’d entered his classroom in their junior year. She’d graduated with an A-plus average, while Jack—thanks to his dyslexia—had barely scraped through. She’d won a scholarship to college, then medical school. Jack hadn’t fared quite so well—at least, not scholastically. He’d joined the peace corps right out of high school and worked on projects around the world for two years. He’d come home, drifted through college. Then, believing it was the best way to answer his calling to help others, he entered the seminary.
She stared at Jack, glanced at Betsy and then at his shiny new truck with Jack O’Malley Constructions on the door, and finally back at him. “Jack? You’re my contractor?”
“You inherited the house from your Aunt Missy?”
She shrugged. “Sort of. It’s a long story.”
One Jack was curious about since if anyone should have inherited, he’d expected it to be Gracie’s bum of a father. So Mike was well aware of who the owner was and Jack’s connection to her.
Meddling Mike wasn’t above a bit of matchmaking. Well, he’d lose any bets on this one.
Mike probably figured Jack wouldn’t be able to say no to his high school sweetheart. Mike was wrong.
“I’m not your contractor,” he said, almost wishing—perversely—that he was. He had something to prove to Gracie Saunders. “I agreed to do an estimate, for comparison’s sake. That’s all.”
“He told me...” She suddenly seemed to remember that her shoe was still stuck in the sidewalk and bent again to try pulling it out. Since the heels were so high and her dress so short and tight-fitting, it wasn’t an easy task.
“Allow me,” Jack said, and knelt at her feet. He grimaced at the metaphor. He’d virtually worshipped the ground Gracie walked on in high school. She’d been his first girlfriend. His first lover. And then she’d walked all over his heart.
He gently grasped her ankle in one hand and her shoe in the other.
* * *
GRACE FELT A SHOT of heat race up her leg at Jack’s touch. She watched as those big, capable hands eased her foot from her Christian Louboutin pump and placed it on the sidewalk while he worked on getting her shoe out of the crack. Jack had sure grown up. No wonder she hadn’t recognized him. He was so much taller, so much broader. Jack was no longer a high school boy; he was a man, and that resonated deep inside her.
But Jack was the one person whose path she hadn’t wanted to cross in Spruce Lake. If they spent any time together, she was afraid he’d discover her secret, which had the potential to destroy them both.
“Careful!” she warned as he pulled her shoe from the walk.
Jack stood to his full height, towering over her by at least eight inches now that she was balancing on her foot without the benefit of six-inch heels.
He examined the shoe, then handed it to her, saying, “Why anyone would want to wear something as impractical as this is beyond my comprehension.”
Grace had worn those shoes to impress. Impress anyone from her past she might happen to run into in Spruce Lake. She wanted to show them that Grace Saunders—in spite of her crappy home life, her loser parents, her hand-me-down clothes—had made good. In fact, she’d made better than good. She was a successful Boston pediatrician with a long list of patients.
Her shoulders sagged. A list of patients she’d handed over in her haste to leave town. She might be financially secure and successful. But she was also completely burned out.
She took the shoe from Jack and examined the heel. It was shattered. She cursed.
“Thank you is the usual form of appreciation in this town,” he said.
She glanced up at him and said, “So, I heard you’d become a priest or something?”
* * *
HE NODDED. “OR SOMETHING. I’m now a contractor.” No point in telling her the whole story. She wouldn’t be in town long enough for it to matter.
“My contractor.”
He shook his head. “I’ve already told Mike I couldn’t do this job.”
“Even if I paid you double?”
Now he stuck both hands in the back pockets of his jeans. She had him there. Money always talked and he had plenty of community projects he could direct some extra funds to, but Adam and Carly were family. He owed them.
“Not even then.”
“I don’t remember you being such a hard case in high school, Jack,” she said, practically batting her eyelashes at him.
“High school was a long time ago, Gracie,” he said, since she seemed to be avoiding the fact that they’d dated for two years.
When Gracie had put her name forward as a peer tutor, Jack, struggling because of dyslexia, had signed up. They’d spent a lot of time together after school hours and eventually he’d built up the courage to ask her out. She’d said, “What took you so long? Where did you have in mind?”
Jack had been so flabbergasted, never believing she’d say yes, that he didn’t have anywhere in mind. Except to go parking at Inspiration Point, the local necking spot. Not that he’d ever necked with a girl. And he didn’t get to do it that night, either. But later...
“What do you mean, ‘Not even then’?” she demanded, bringing him back to the present.
Jack crossed his arms and widened his stance. “I’m due to start work on my brother’s house outside town tomorrow. I don’t break my promises.”
* * *
GRACE ADMIRED HIS candor. Then a need to prick the confidence he was projecting made her say, “Didn’t you break your promise to the church by leaving the priesthood?” Aunt Missy had written her about it.
His eyes narrowed. “My relationship with the church, and why I left, is none of your business.”
Dammit! She was intrigued and couldn’t let it go. “Did you fall in love with one of your parishioners?”
“And you just stepped way over the mark.” He gave her a tiny salute, saying, “Goodbye, Gracie,” turned on his heel and headed to his truck. “I’d say it’s been a pleasure. But it hasn’t.”
“It’s Grace!” she shouted to his back. “Not Gracie.” How dare he just walk away like that!
He shrugged and pulled open the door of his truck. “Whatever,” he said, and climbed in.
“Wait!” she cried, and hobbled toward his truck, one shoe on and one off.
She went to rest her arms on the passenger’s side window frame, then noticed it was dusty. She touched the frame with her fingertips and leaned in. “I’m sorry, Jack. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“Yes, you did.” He started the truck.
“You can’t leave me here like this! You promised to give me an estimate.”
“I promised Mike I’d give him an estimate. That was before I knew who his doctor client was. Goodbye, Grace.”
Chapter Two
Jack hated being played for a sucker. Mike knew exactly who he was dealing with, that was why he’d avoided using the doctor’s name. And Mike knew that Jack wouldn’t want to have anything to do with Grace. She’d left town, and him, without a backward glance after winning a full scholarship to a college in Boston faster than a snowflake melted in July. For too many years he’d tried to forget her. Now here she was, back in Spruce Lake and acting as if there’d been nothing between them.
And why shouldn’t she? She’d moved on, married, probably had kids. It cut deep that she hadn’t recognized him right away. He’d obviously spent too much time loving someone who didn’t feel the same way about him.
It hadn’t helped that during his time in the peace corps he’d been posted to remote places, often without internet access. They’d exchanged letters for a while, but Grace was always slow to respond, and when she did, it was all about college, the people she was hanging out with, how much she loved life in Boston.
Jack eventually realized she was letting him down as nicely as she could. He later heard she’d graduated from college early and gone to medical school. Then she’d married. Lost, Jack had entered the seminary, believing he could h
elp others. He’d wasted too many years dreaming of Grace. Now that she was here in the flesh, he had no intention of letting her under his skin again.
He put Betsy in gear, ready to get out of there—make a symbolic break with Grace. He glanced at her manicured fingertips still resting on Betsy’s window frame, hoping she’d take the hint and move.
“Mike didn’t tell you it was me who wanted the estimate?” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
Her frown and confused tone had him cursing under his breath. He turned off the ignition and scratched the inside of his elbow.
“I wonder why not,” she said, a little too loudly now that Betsy’s engine was no longer thumping away.
Jack wasn’t going to tell her why not. Mike knew that if Jack had any idea who the client was, he’d have refused outright. He wanted to hit himself upside the head for not making the connection. Mike sure had suckered him. He’d suckered Grace, too. He scratched the back of his neck.
Suddenly Grace was climbing into the passenger seat. An erotic fantasy—involving him and Grace in Betsy’s cab—filled Jack’s mind as she ran her hand down the inside of his elbow. Then she leaned in close to look at the back of his neck before he could react and tell her to get the hell out of his truck.
“Whoa! What are you doing?” he demanded, pulling away from her, worried his fantasy might come true. Half-worried it might not.
“Taking a look at your arm. And your neck.”
Jack edged farther away from her, embarrassed about the rashes.
“What if we make a deal?” she said.
“About?”
“If I cure you of these rashes, will you do the renovation for me?”
Much as Jack wanted to be done with the rashes and all the scratching, he had a prior obligation to his brother. “Nope,” he said, and resisted the urge to scratch the back of his knee. He felt as if he was carrying a contagious disease and wondered why Grace was even sitting in the truck with him. Apparently she wasn’t afraid of catching it.
She jumped as Al stuck his head through the passenger window. Al had the stocky build of his Mexican father and the height of his English-born mother. But Jack doubted it was Al’s physique that had Grace scooting across the seat. It was more likely the snake tattoo that ran from Al’s right wrist up his arm, disappeared into the sleeve of his T-shirt and emerged to coil around his throat. Several times. Grace couldn’t take her eyes off it.
“Hey, boss,” he said to Jack, and nodded to Grace.
Jack’s cell rang. He retrieved it from his pocket and saw that the call was from Adam. If it had been from Mike, he would’ve ignored it.
“Hey, Adam. What can I do for you?”
“You know how you’re supposed to start work on our house?”
“Ye-es,” Jack said slowly, suspicion creeping up his spine.
“Well, I’m wondering if you have anything else you could do instead. Carly wants to stay closer to the hospital until after the baby arrives. She has short labors and she’s worried the extra distance from the new house will mean the difference between giving birth in the hospital and giving birth in the car. To tell you the truth, I’d prefer the first option.”
This had Mike’s meddling written all over it. “I thought you were spilling out of the house on Washington?”
“We are. But that bothers me a lot less than not making it to the hospital in time.”
“So you want me to delay starting your renovation?”
“If you could.”
The tentacles of suspicion crept further up Jack’s spine. “Has Mike called you today?”
“Mike who?”
Jack’s lips thinned. So now it was a conspiracy involving Mike and Adam to throw him and Grace together for the summer. He glanced at Grace. She looked completely innocent.
“I’ll get back to you,” he said, and shut off his phone.
“Grace, this is my foreman, Al Hernandez.”
She offered her hand and Al shook it vigorously.
“I’ve been waiting for you at the back of the house, boss,” Al said. “Yet I find you here, making time with the prettiest señorita this side of the Front Range.”
Jack climbed out of the truck while Al stood back and opened the door for Grace. She slipped past him with a whispered “Thank you” and hobbled to her vehicle. Jack enjoyed the view as she bent to remove her other shoe, opened the trunk and fished around inside it. She straightened, dropped a pair of fancy flip-flops on the ground and stepped into them.
“That’s better,” she said, coming over to them. “I’m Grace Saunders, by the way.” She flashed Al a smile and Jack could see his burly foreman melting under her charms.
Jack cleared his throat. “Shouldn’t you be getting home to Maria and the children?” For some stupid reason he needed to let Grace know that Al was spoken for, even though he was the one who’d prevented Al from getting home by asking to meet him here.
“Just as soon as we’ve done this estimate, boss.”
The three of them headed toward the house, going in through the squeaky front gate and up the weed-covered path. Al continued to the back of the house, saying, “I’ll finish measuring up the outside. Do you have a key?”
“Nope.” Jack reached inside the smashed pane of one of the front windows, releasing the catch. He pulled up the window and hoisted himself inside. Before he could open the front door, Grace followed him in, climbing over the sill.
* * *
MEMORIES FLOODED GRACE—memories she wasn’t prepared for. She staggered and Jack caught her arm.
“I was going to open the door for you,” he said.
Grace wasn’t going to correct his misunderstanding that climbing through the window had caused her to lose her balance.
“You’re whiter than a ghost,” he said. “Would you like to sit down?” Without waiting for an answer, he led her to the stairs.
She sank gratefully onto the first step and forced herself to smile up at him. “I’m just tired. My body’s two hours ahead of my brain and the altitude is bothering me.”
“Is there anyone I can call for you? Your husband?”
Grace shook her head. “My...ex-husband is back in Boston.”
“You’re divorced?”
“I certainly hope so. Otherwise, Edward could end up in a lot of trouble with the law. He’s planning on getting married again come September. To his first ex-wife.”
Jack’s grin lit up his face. He’d always had a great smile.
“I heard your half of the conversation with your brother. Since he doesn’t need you, what do I have to do to sweet-talk you into restoring this place for me?”
What was she saying? Only a moment ago she was dreading spending any time with Jack for fear he’d discover her secret and now she was practically begging him to take the job!
Jack scratched the inside of his elbow again.
“That offer of a cure is still open, if it’ll clinch the deal.”
Jack’s eyes narrowed. “What are you really doing here, Gracie?”
“Grace,” she corrected. “I want this house restored.”
“And then what?”
“And then what, what?”
“Stop talking in riddles. Are you going to stay—or are you heading back to Boston?”
“You mean now?”
“Yes. Now. And then when the place is restored, are you flipping it, never to return to Spruce Lake?”
“My life is in Boston.” No way was she staying in this backwater where everyone knew everyone else’s business and the sidewalks were a death trap for expensive shoes. If Jack took the job, she wouldn’t have to hang around Spruce Lake supervising. She could get out of there, away from Jack, away from any fear that he’d discover her secret.
“Then I suggest you go back there. I’ll help you find another contractor who won’t mind putting his heart and soul into restoring a place only to have it sold off.”
“I’m not selling it, Jack. It has to stay in the
family. That’s a promise I made to Aunt Missy.”
Before he could respond, she said, “I’m going to travel around Europe for the next couple of months.” She wondered where that had come from. In truth, Grace hadn’t given much thought to anything the past couple of days, not since little Cassie Greenfield died.
Her patient’s death—one of too many—had been the catalyst for Grace’s decision to throw everything in, get away from Boston and dying children and an ex-husband about to remarry and all the people who wanted to remind her of that while trying to set her up with their cousin, or brother or—heaven forbid—their uncle!
Just because Edward had been more than twice her age didn’t mean she was looking for another older man. It didn’t mean she was looking for another man, period! Edward had been a far from satisfactory husband or lover. But she’d married him in her first year of med school, when he was already a well-respected neurosurgeon. She’d craved the respect and financial security marrying Edward would bring. She’d basked in his compliments and ignored the thirty-year age gap—the age gap that meant he didn’t want any more children. He had two daughters and a son by his previous wife. They were all horrible to Grace—as was his ex-wife—whenever they happened to cross paths at social functions.
When Cassie Greenfield, a little girl who’d fought so hard and so bravely—like so many of her patients did against cancer—had died, something had died inside Grace. Cassie was the same age her daughter, Amelia, would be now. Her and Jack’s daughter.
The guilt she felt at having given up a healthy child, and the cumulative effect of treating so many who weren’t healthy, had come to a head that day.
Grace’s love of medicine and her belief in herself, that she could cure all the hurt and pain in the world, were shattered. She’d needed to get away, regroup, maybe think about another medical specialty. One that didn’t involve dying children.
There was a good reason she’d chosen to specialize in pediatrics—to atone for her sins. The guilt of giving her baby away bit deep. But the real sin she’d committed twelve years earlier was in not telling Jack—of not giving him a chance. That was the one she really needed to answer for. How she could even start to do that, Grace had no idea.