“Oh, Grace,” she said.
I peeked up at her. She was on her knees now but had stopped messing in the garden to look over at me. “I understand this must all be terrifying.”
I sniffled. “You do?”
She nodded. “Yes. Your life was turned upside down overnight.” She looked thoughtful. “I’d like to help you if you want.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“I brought the course schedule home from Crystal Brook Community College. The fall term starts in August.”
I flinched. Not community college again.
“I know it’s not NYU,” she went on, practically reading my thoughts, “but it’s better than doing nothing all day.”
I let the words sink in… and still I didn’t feel any different.
“Anyway, we can talk more about that later.” She stood up and picked a few cherry tomatoes from a vine. “You must have done something today.”
I breathed a slight sight of relief, grateful for the subject change. “I went for a bike ride. I met a guy.”
She glanced over her shoulder at me. “A guy? Was he cute?”
I laughed. “Yeah, he really was. Maybe you know him. Luke Anderson.”
“Ah,” she nodded. “I know of him.”
“What do you know?”
Aunt Ginger stepped carefully over the garden rows and made her way back to the grass. “I don’t think I’ve ever talked to him myself, but there’s been a good amount of talk about him. He moved here two years ago. Apparently, he grew up in New York and is from this big banking family. I’ve heard he’s real nice. He started a food pantry here in Crystal Brook, so that alone probably says a lot about him.”
She headed for the house, and I fell into step next to her. “Why did he move here?”
Aunt Ginger shrugged. “My guess would be he just needed some peace and quiet.”
A banking family…
“He’s in an awfully big house for just one person,” I suggested, trying to sound innocent.
Aunt Ginger opened the back door, and the rush of cool air wafted over my skin. I stayed a few steps behind her as we went into the kitchen.
“It’s likely nothing to him,” she answered, setting the basket on the counter. “From what I’ve heard, the Andersons are worth billions.”
I stared at her. “Billions? Seriously?”
“Mm hmm.”
She wasn’t looking at me anymore. Instead, she got busy pulling a colander from the cabinet and rinsing the tomatoes and herbs. I stood in the doorway, my head reeling.
Luke Anderson, single billionaire…
A door had just opened up where previously there had been none. I didn’t need L.A. I didn’t need my father. I didn’t need school or a job.
All I needed was to snag a husband.
Scratch that.
All I needed was to snag a billionaire husband.
CHAPTER SIX
Luke
I checked the door twice to make sure I’d locked it properly. Not that a food pantry would likely be a burglar’s first pick. There was no cash in the establishment, after all, so if anyone were to break in, the most they would get would be some bags of pasta and maybe a box or two of jumbo diapers.
And if someone needed the things that badly, then they should take them. Help was what Community First was there for.
But I knew the likelihood of someone breaking in to steal the goods was low. If a crime occurred, it would either be because someone thought there was money inside the pantry or because some kids figured it would be fun to vandalize a place.
The barber shop next door had its deadbolt busted only a couple months earlier, and before that it was the laundromat down the street, so you couldn’t be too careful when it came to locking up. I’d had an alarm system installed when we moved into the place, and perhaps that was the reason we hadn’t been targeted yet. Still… a big part of me was just waiting for the day I’d show up to the pantry and discover glass all over the floor.
Walking to the car, a song I’d heard on the radio that afternoon filled me up and spilled from my lips. I laughed, surprised to find myself singing. I couldn’t so much as carry a tune, so as a strict rule I never tried.
That day, though, I just couldn’t help it.
I turned the SUV on and rolled the windows down all the way, opting for the sweet Carolina breeze instead of the air conditioning. I loved the humidity, just like I loved everything else about the South. Its friendliness and hospitality. Its wide open spaces; its cooking. Its girls.
Granted, Grace wasn’t from the South. Still, I couldn’t get her off my mind. The girl had the largest brown eyes I’d ever seen, long, silky dark hair, and curves for days. Simply put, she was the most attractive woman I’d ever run into in Crystal Brook. Or maybe anywhere.
And tomorrow I would give her an unofficial tour of the town. I shifted eagerly in the seat as I signaled and took the turn onto the long stretch of highway.
Once the tour was over, I’d ask her on a date. A real one.
From the moment I’d set eyes on her, the very thing I’d been whining about to Mark seemed so far in the past it had become nearly imperceptible. For days, I hadn’t been able to get Lacey off my mind, and now, poof… like magic, she was gone.
And so was Gabi, the one serious girlfriend I’d had. After ending our years spent traveling the world together, I had always assumed she would be on my mind for the rest of my life.
You’re giddy because you just met her, I told myself. So slow down there, cowboy.
I sucked in a deep breath. That was it. I was just excited.
But something about this excitement was different. I just knew it. When my eyes had locked on Grace’s, the two pairs meeting for the first time, it was like there had been a literal click. It had resounded through the universe, shaking everything in existence. Just like the Big Bang, its after effects would probably be felt for the rest of time.
Turning the radio on, I settled for the station it was already set to. On any other day, I would have shaken my head in disgust at the sugary and unoriginal Top Forty song floating from the speakers, but on that day, I bobbed my head right along to it.
I turned onto Mark’s road, being careful to go slow now that I was on a residential street.
A few children played in one of the yards and a group of several middle aged woman power walked down the street. I waved at them, and they waved back, two of them giggling like little girls.
I grinned even wider. Damn, the day was beautiful.
Mark was outside of his duplex messing with his motorcycle. From the looks of it, he was detailing it — or just inspecting the whole thing, inch by inch. Mark’s main squeeze in life was his motorcycle. If you got him going, man, he could go on and on for hours about them. Usually, I didn’t understand half of what he said, but I would just nod along and act like I was listening.
I killed the engine and hopped down into his driveway.
“What’s up, man?” he asked, straightening up and dropping the towel he’d been wiping the bike down with.
“Just left the pantry.”
“Saint Luke,” he grinned, using the nickname I hated. His eyebrows furrowed. “Why do you look so happy?”
“What do you mean?”
He chuckled. “Take a look in the mirror. Nobody grins like that unless… well, I wanna say unless they just got laid, but you can make that happen anytime you want.”
I stretched my arms high above my head, enjoying the simple feeling of being able to move. “Nope. That didn’t happen.”
Mark smirked. “But you met someone.”
I dropped my arms and laughed. “What makes you think that?”
Walking over to the cooler sitting on his front porch, he grabbed two cans of beer and tossed me one.
“Because that’s how the universe works, man. We were just talking about how you needed to meet a girl, and there you go. It happened, like, right away.”
I frowned at him. “I don
’t know…”
He sat down on one of the steps, and I sauntered over to join him. A teenage boy came down the street walking a black lab. Mark waved at him, and the kid waved back.
“So who is she?” he asked.
I popped my can. “I don’t know much about her. All I know is she’s here from L.A. and staying with her aunt and uncle.”
Mark didn’t say anything. When I glanced at him, he had an odd look on his face, one I couldn’t quite name. It didn’t look good though.
“What?” I pressed.
“The Wells?”
“Yeah. You know them?”
“I know Joe from around, yeah. He and his wife come into the restaurant a lot. They’re nice.”
I got the sense there was more — maybe something Mark didn’t want to tell me.
“Come on.” I bumped his foot with mine. “What is it?”
“I heard their niece was coming.” He licked his lips. “I heard other things too.”
“Like what?”
“Word is that she’s a spoiled princess.”
“Aw, come on! You’re gonna believe that just because you heard it? It’s probably a rumor.”
“I don’t know…”
“Grace told me herself that she came here looking to get away from the city. That doesn’t sound like something a Beverly Hills brat would say.”
“Maybe she was lying.”
That irked me. “Or maybe, again, what you heard was just a rumor.”
“Her uncle is the one who told me.”
I stared at him. “Huh?”
He took a sip of beer. “Yeah. He said that his brother owns this big pet store chain and it’s going under. They’re losing, like, everything. He had to send his daughter to live with his brother because he can’t even take care of her. Crazy stuff, huh?”
“Wow,” I breathed out. “But you know, that doesn’t mean she’s spoiled.”
“That word was her uncle’s, not mine.”
I clamped my teeth together. “He could be wrong.”
Mark blew out a heavy breath. “All right, man. I guess you’ll see for yourself.”
I stared down at the beer can in my hands. As much as I didn’t want to believe Mark’s words, I was terrified they were true. In fact, when it came to the ingredients that could lead to being a spoiled little rich girl, Grace’s given life circumstances kind of fit the bill. And if anyone could be a judge of that, it was me. I’d grown up with a plethora of young women who thought that the entire world belonged to them. They were the kind of girls who’d been given whatever they wanted from the day they’d taken their first breath.
To be fair, I knew a lot of guys like that too. The issue wasn’t exactly gender biased.
But maybe Grace truly was different.
“I’m still going to see her,” I announced, taking a sip of beer.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Grace
Anthropology. Spanish. Those were the classes I’d agreed to sign up for at Crystal Brook Community College. But only to keep my aunt and uncle off my back. I also promised to look for a part-time job, although that one would be a little trickier. I was sure I would be able to practically skate through my two classes, especially since I was already halfway fluent in Spanish. It was the actual working thing that would be a bummer.
But no matter. I wouldn’t be going to classes and shifts at an office or, God forbid, mall for long. My real plan for life held so much more promise than a community college or minimum wage job ever could.
I was going to marry into money. Not only was it a simple plan, but I’d also personally known dozens of women before me who had done just that.
The irony of it all was that I used to look down on those women. I’d thought they were pathetic for hooking up with a guy simply because of his bank figures.
But now that I thought about it, I realized that being born into money wasn’t really all that different. And, besides, there really were no options left for me.
The cherry on top of my plan was sheer luck. Many of the women I’d known in L.A. who’d married rich men had settled for old, unattractive guys, but that wouldn’t be the case with me. Not only was Luke Anderson loaded, he was hot as sin.
I couldn’t have planned it all out better if I tried.
I swiped on an extra layer of lip gloss, then took a step backwards from the bathroom mirror to inspect my handiwork. With my immaculate makeup and best push up bra holding the girls up, there was no way Luke would be able to resist me.
I already had the plan outlined. If I were too forward too soon, he would write me off as easy. A loose girl wasn’t the kind of girl you married. Nope. I had to play hard to get, all while showing him I was interested in him. Maybe I would even spin a story about waiting until marriage to have sex… or was that too much?
I pursed my lips. Staying celibate would certainly suck. With Luke’s tightly toned body and bright smile, keeping my pants on around him would be the challenge of a lifetime.
I walked to Luke’s house. The fishtail braid I’d plaited, although intended to look messy, was actually hair sprayed into place. The wind from biking would mess it all up.
Sucking in a deep breath, I straightened my posture as his house came into view. For the first time, I really inspected it, studying the tall windows on both the first and second floors. The place could hardly be considered a mansion, but it was one of the biggest homes I’d seen so far in Crystal Brook. Certainly it was way too big for just one person.
So was he actively looking for a wife? Had he bought the house with his gaze set on the future?
I knocked on the front door and then stood on the stoop, waiting. Footsteps sounded, making my heart rate pick up. I didn’t usually get so nervous around men.
Or maybe it was my fantastical and awesome plan that was making me queasy. It was a good one, sure, but it was also the only one I had. If it failed, I would end up mopping a high school somewhere or sorting mail in the back of a dingy office.
The door opened, and Luke smiled down at me. His light gray t-shirt, although loose, couldn’t hide his finely chiseled abs. My gaze wandered lower, to where a pair of tight dark jeans hugged his thighs.
A burning sensation filled my body, and I jerked my eyes back up to his face.
“You came,” he said.
“Yeah.” I giggled and clamped my lips shut. “I figured I’d be an idiot to turn you down.”
“Do you need anything from inside or should we go ahead and go?”
I would have loved to see the inside of Luke’s house, to get more of an idea about who he was and what he liked so I could play to those predilections, but I knew that chance would come sooner rather than later.
“I’m ready.” I smiled up at him.
He stepped across the threshold and turned around to lock the door. I used the spare moment to admire the back view of his packaging.
When he started to turn around, I quickly spun on my heels and headed down the steps. “So where first?”
He jumped down next to me. “What have you seen?”
“Uh, let me think,” I dramatically said. “How about the inside of my aunt and uncle’s house?”
He laughed. “Well, I hate to break it to you, but there’s really not much to see after that.”
“I knew it!”
We both started moving at the same time, heading for the sidewalk. “The part we’re in now has most of the historic houses. The house I’m in was built around nineteen hundred, and it’s one of the newest ones on this street.”
I looked up at him while he talked and walked. We were only inches away, and the top of my head barely came up to his chin. “You’re into that kind of stuff?”
“The history of architecture?” He paused. “No, not really.”
I laughed. “You could have fooled me.”
His grin grew wider. “I just thought that was what you wanted to hear about.”
“It’s cool,” I said, studying his face, desperate for
a clue as to what he wanted me to be interested in.
“So what are you into?” he asked. “What did you do in L.A.?”
Party. And party some more… but that’s not usually the kind of report a man wants to hear from his future wife.
“Hang out with my friends, mostly.”
He nodded. His forearm brushed my arm and a shiver traveled up to my shoulder. I was vaguely aware of the houses passing behind him, but they were even less interesting than they had been a minute ago.
“And what did you guys do?”
“This and that…” I trailed off, then realized how rude my answer sounded. “My friend Rainy’s dad has a lot of boats so Rainy and I go out on the water a lot.”
“You sail?” he asked, sounding impressed.
“God no,” I laughed. “I wouldn’t be able to steer a boat if my life depended on it. No, we just hang out on the deck. Her dad likes to sail, so sometimes we go out on his little yacht with him.”
“His little yacht?”
“Yeah, sorry… I don’t know anything about boats. I don’t even remember what it’s called.”
“That’s okay.” He smiled, looking amused at me.
“Have you ever sailed?”
“My brothers both love it, but I never really got into it. I used to row in school though. Does that count?”
“That’s a water sport, so yes.”
He smiled at me again and turned to look at something in front of us. We were at a crossroads and on the other side of the street was a building that looked like it had been made out of cobblestones.
“That’s the town museum,” he said, pointing at it.
“Cool,” I answered, feigning interest.
“I know. Not very interesting.”
I whipped my eyes back at him, trying to figure out if he was truly being serious. When I saw that he was, I laughed in relief. “No, it’s not.”
“It’s not much like Los Angeles here, I’m afraid.”
“Or New York.”
He looked at me curiously. A quick heat overtook my face, and I dropped my gaze to the sidewalk. “My, uh, aunt told me a little bit about you. She asked me if I’d met anyone here yet and I told her your name, so…um…”
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