Saving Grace (Loving Meadows Book 1)

by Mignon Mykel

  Suddenly, her eyes opened, staring directly into mine. “But you’re ok? I mean, you’re standing and you’re here and you’ve obviously been moving around and packing, but—”

  I chuckled, kissing her worried lips again, smiling against the flesh before telling her, “I’m fine, Grace. I promise. Sore, but I’ll be a-hundred percent in no time.”

  Two days later, Grace and I packed up her little cottage with the help of Sydney and Caleb, loading everything in one of the most uncomfortable U-Hauls known to man. My gut still ached on occasion, but this truck brought ‘body aches’ to a whole new level.

  As Grace went to her landlady next door to return her keys, Sydney stood next to me, her own significant other in their truck, ready to head home. Sydney, however, wanted to say goodbye to Grace one last time.

  “You’re stealing my best friend from me,” my sister pouted.

  “You have Mia.”

  She crossed her arms this time. “A girl can have two best friends, Soy.”

  I chuckled. “I didn’t say that. I’m just saying Grace won’t be around, but Mia still is. I’m not stealing her from you, Sydney bean. I’m merely moving her away.”

  “Yeah. Stealing her.” Sydney refused to look at me.

  I reached around to hook her shoulders with my arm, pulling her close, in a side hug. “She’s still going to be your friend, Syd.” And because I couldn’t let a sad moment linger, “She just loves me more.”

  Which earned me a gut shot. I put my hands over the spot, grunting, to which Sydney’s eyes got comically wide, her hand over her mouth. “Oh my God! Did I hurt you?” The worry in her voice was palpable and, like her eyes, comical.

  Chuckling, I shook my head. “Wrong side, slugger. But you should probably be careful.”

  Her hand was still over her mouth. “Oh my God. What if… Oh my God, Soy! I’m so sorry!”

  Still chuckling, I pulled her in and kissed her forehead. “You didn’t, it’s good; it’s almost healed anyway.”

  “Don’t let him tell you that,” Grace said, marching over with a smile on her face. I held my arm out and she folded into my side as if it was the most natural thing in the world. “He overexerted himself the other day—”

  “Lalala!” Sydney said, her hands moving to her ears. “I don’t want to hear about sex!”

  Grace looked up at me and smiled, and I cracked up laughing. “Moving a box, Sydney. I moved a box.”

  Sydney wiped her hands together as if she hadn’t just been acting like a child. “Well, one can’t be sure with you two.” In the last two days, Sydney may have walked in on heavy make out sessions, but I swore that was all she saw.

  Sobering up though and dropping the subject, Sydney pulled Grace away from me to wrap her in a hug. “I’m going to miss the crap out of you.”

  Grace hugged her back. “We’ll be back next week for Christmas, silly! And I can visit anytime, otherwise. Or maybe you could get a fun casting assignment and we could go on a girls-only vacation.”

  “Oh my, that sounds like a blast! Let’s plan something. I’ll let you know what my schedule looks like.”

  I was well aware that this conversation was only at the beginning. What was meant to be a goodbye was quickly turning into a true conversation. Grace and I weren’t any closer to heading back to Utah now that she and Sydney were talking travel plans, but that was ok.

  Sydney could have her right now.

  I had Grace for always.

  Three Months Later

  Sawyer

  My brain hurt.

  I was tired and because of that, I couldn’t get my damn key in the lock. I sighed heavily and rested my weary head against the wood, grumbling when my forehead hit the twigged-out wreath that hung there, not caring what the neighbors would think if they caught sight of me right now.

  The grumble didn’t last long though. That damn wreath brought a smile to my face.

  I had been pulled out of my warm bed at midnight, after getting no more than two hours of sleep, and that was more than twenty hours ago. But hell, sleep was overrated when you were spending bed time doing other fun activities.

  Suddenly revived, I pulled myself straight and retried my key, taking my time, knowing that I had three days to enjoy myself and the embrace I left earlier this morning.

  I pushed the door open; the living room to the bungalow Grace and I moved into last month was dark. I took in the space, feeling completely at home.

  Grace had lived with me in my bare apartment but from the moment she stepped foot in the small square-foot apartment with her bags in tow, we knew we needed something larger. Two days after her moving to SLC and in with me, we set out on finding a bigger place, settling on a short-sale remodeled bungalow just north of the Sugar House neighborhood, and only ten minutes from my department. After a twenty-one day wait, we moved in and Grace immediately put her touches all over the place.

  Gone were the days of white walls and maybe a picture on a table. Now, the walls were decked out with funky wire and copper art, large photograph canvases of our families, and this odd eclectic mix of gray-beige paint.

  I also allowed her to drag me to a pet shelter and we “rescued,” as she liked to call it, a sassy cat and the oddest looking mutt of a dog I had ever seen.

  But I loved it all.

  “Honey, I’m home,” I called out with a grin, shutting and locking the door behind me. At my voice, Priss, so aptly named, made her appearance. A white cat with tabby markings, she typically had her nose in the air and walked around like she owned the joint.

  Which, I’m sure in her world, she did.

  The cat made her way to me, rubbing against my leg as she arched her back. I toed off my shoes and hooked my keys before reaching down to pull her up to my chest. Priss purred while rubbing her head against my chin, probably enjoying the stubble that was a current fixture on my face. I hadn’t had time to shave before leaving this morning and there wasn’t any time to do it at the office today.

  The 2,000 square foot bungalow was widely open, and I could see that Grace wasn’t in the kitchen, although she left the sink light on. Leaving it for now, I started for the room we were using as her office in the lower level, but caught sight of the light on in the only bedroom on this main level.

  Carrying Priss to the master bedroom, I grinned when I saw Grace laying on the bed, belly down, looking through a catalog with headphones in her ears. She was already dressed for bed in a flimsy white tank, which I knew was just a little bit see-through in the front, and silky shorts. By her side, Ollie, our Dachshund-terrier mix, snored through an open mouth, showcasing his wonky teeth that were too big for his mouth, set in one of the most prominent under bites on a dog I had ever seen. Grace immediately fell in love with the white and gray mess and honestly, I did too.

  I lowered Priss to the ground and rather than run into the room, she high-tailed it back toward the living room. The movement had Grace looking up.

  Pulling out her earbuds from her ears, she smiled and pushed back to sit on her knees.

  “Hey, Soy.” She stretched her arms out and I walked to her, taking the action for what it was—the comforting hug she always gave me at the end of the day.

  It didn’t matter if I had a good day or a bad day. She was always there to offer me what I needed afterward.

  I bent my knees when I reached the bed so I could wrap my arms around her sides, her arms wrapping around my neck, and when I stood straight, lifting her from the bed as I did every other time we met like this, she squealed into my ear. I chuckled before setting her back down on her feet, pressing my lips to her forehead.

  “I thought maybe you went to sleep already. How was your day?” I asked her, stepping away so I could rid myself of my work clothes.

  The case that pulled me from bed was an Amber Alert situation, the abductor being the girl’s uncle. It was almost always someone the family knew. The case had the potential to go sour, as the uncle was a known sex offender, and after a day of ch
asing, we recovered the six year old and returned her back to her home, not a hair on her head harmed.

  That was the best possible outcome and I was glad it hadn’t been any other way.

  Regardless though, I always felt filthy when I came home and the first thing I wanted to do was shower.

  “Good. I shipped a few orders and have some more inventory to go through tomorrow.” She followed me into the attached bathroom, again going along with what seemed to be our scripted movements when I returned from a day at work.

  Not that I was complaining.

  Not at all.

  I had the woman of my dreams in my arms every night. A guy could get used to this.

  “Speaking of going through things,” she started, hopping up on the vanity. She crossed her ankles and let them dangle in front of the drawers below her, leaning forward on her hands, which gave me an awesome view of her chest. Between the thin fabric showing her rosy, peaked nipples and the view down the center of her cleavage, I was fully engorged before I could disarm my gun from my holster.

  “Yeah?” I prompted, unholstering my gun and removing the magazine before placing it on the counter away from Grace. She wasn’t the biggest fan of my gun and while we were in an incredibly safe neighborhood, Grace still had her anxieties about my career, so it was just best to keep the piece near me.

  Just in case some cop hater decided to come to our house.

  But like I said, we were in a great neighborhood.

  I didn’t think I’d ever feel comfortable not having my gun somewhere near my person, and Grace understood that.

  I removed my belt and holster, stepping out of my jeans. Grace’s eyes were fixed to my boxer briefs before she grinned, raising a brow, and looked at me. “You dirty boy.”

  “Only for you, Sweetness.” I winked at her before pulling my tee off over my head. Standing in front of her in just my light blue boxer briefs, I prompted, “Speaking of going through things…?”

  “Oh, yeah.” She blushed, caught once again eyeing my package. She’d get plenty of it after my shower. “I was going through the sitting room earlier today.”

  The sitting room was attached to our bedroom and had windows from wall to wall, but not floor to ceiling. That was reserved for the sun room off the kitchen. The sitting room currently did just that for us—it was a place where we had an ottoman and two chairs, and a couple of books. Nothing too crazy. I imagined it was used as a nursery of sorts back when the layout was originally planned.

  I shucked my briefs now, fisting my hard cock as I turned toward the open shower. I turned the spray on, waiting for Grace to continue. There were no barriers in this bathroom; it was completely open. Grace and I had conversations like this nightly, and it was nice to not have a curtain or glass door in the way of talking.

  When we first walked through the house, Grace talked about installing a glass door but the way the shower head was set up, high in the ceiling, very minimal water ever hit outside the shower tub.

  “And I found something,” she said as I stepped under the spray.

  I let go of my length to do what I needed to, grabbing shampoo and washing my hair, bringing the suds down to my body to scrub whatever non-existent filth that was on my body, away.

  “You found something,” I repeated. I turned to face the spray, washing my face now.

  “Yep. A small something.”

  And then I remembered.

  “Fuck,” I said, only to take in a mouthful of water, coughing and sputtering as I reached to turn the water off. I pounded on my chest to try and rid the full burn from my esophagus.

  Grace—my quiet, sweet Grace—was laughing as she hopped off the vanity, coming to me and pounding my back with her open hand.

  “That’s not the reaction I was expecting,” she said around a smile.

  I coughed once more and stood straight, looking down at her as I dripped all over the shower floor.

  “I forgot it was there,” I mumbled now, reaching around her to grab my towel from the right side of the bar.

  “Oh, you forgot?” My towel was over my face and I was rubbing furiously at my hair, but I heard the smile on her face. “So it means nothing?”

  “Oh, it means something,” I growled as I quickly dried the rest of my body, wrapping the towel around my waist. I stepped out of the shower area, backing her up to the vanity. “I was going to wait another month or so,” I told her, caging her in with my hands on either side of her.

  Her blonde head tilted to the side and back so she could look up at me. “I can forget I saw it,” she whispered, moving her hands to rest on my chest.

  “I can’t forget that you saw it,” I answered. God, I wanted to kiss her so bad right now.

  Still whispering, this time much lower, she said, “I’m sorry.” But her face was smiling.

  Grace had come so far in the last few months. Her trust in what I said and what I did was even more evident now than it had been when we were merely friends who wanted more. I wished her free of anxiety all the time, but knowing she was free of worry when she was with me? It was fucking euphoric.

  “What’d you do with it?” I stared down at her, a grin playing on my lips. I pressed close to her as her hands trailed slowly down my abs to fist into the top of my towel.

  “Why, I put it back.” She was such a sass.

  I lifted her back onto the counter. “Stay put.” I pointed at her before playfully flicking her nose, sauntering out of the bathroom in just my towel. After retrieving the small something she had found earlier, I walked back into the bathroom, and back to Grace, still sitting perched on the counter.

  “Gracelyn Dewey.” I smiled at her as I bent down to one knee, popping the lid of the box open and revealing a two stone, best friend true love styled ring. She bit her lip, her smile still fighting to push through. “You are my saving grace. You are the reason I haven’t lost myself in my career.” I watched as her blue eyes filled with tears but her smile never left her face. “For as long as I’ve known you, you have been the person to pull me from whatever depths the job dragged me down to. I know we’ve only been together officially a short time, but my heart has been yours for much longer.” I paused, taking in the blonde angel sitting above me. She was going to say yes. I knew it when I bought the ring, I knew it when she mentioned she found it, a playful smile on her face. This may not have been how I had wanted to ask her, but hell. It worked for us.

  “Tell me you’ll marry me and let me call you Mrs. Meadows.” My voice lowered and broke around the last words.

  She popped down from the counter and knelt in front of me. “It’s a good thing you didn’t do this in public,” she said, completely throwing me.

  “Huh?” Did she not hear my question? What was she doing?

  She looked at the ring in my hand—my hand that was trembling, what was up with that?—and reached out, trailing her hand from my heart, down lower where her fingers lightly traced my scar from the night Jeremy shot me, to lower yet, where my towel wrapped around my hips parted at my thigh.

  She leaned in and, as her fingers found my once again growing flesh under the towel, she whispered, “If you did this, like this, in public, you’d be thrown in jail for public nudity.”

  Her fingers played over my stiffening cock softly. “God, Grace. Really?” It came out rougher than intended, but here I had a very serious question for her, and she was being all playful.

  I suppose, seeing as we bought a house and had two animals together, that her saying yes was a given—it sure as hell should be a given, anyway—but I needed to hear it. I need the ‘yes.’

  She let go of my cock and put her hands on my face, still smiling wide. “Turn off your worry, Sawyer Meadows. Of course I’ll marry you.”

  Then she pulled me close and sealed the deal.

  * * *

  Sydney, Sawyer…Who’s the next Meadows to fall?

  That would be Smith!

  His story, Ember Glow, will release March 2017.

&
nbsp; In the meantime, keep your eyes open for Porter Prescott’s story (January 2017),

  followed by book one in the Enforcers of San Diego series,

  Dropping the Gloves (February 2017).

  Each and every time I close out a book, I am excited to get it out to you readers. Whether it be my BETA team, my editor, readers who offer to read ARCs, tour participants…I’m so excited to bring the book out! And then I get frantic with worry that something isn’t going to sit right with someone, or that maybe this book wasn’t as great as I could have written it.

  However, each and every one of those early readers knows just what to do to keep my chin up! No, it’s not always sugar and roses, but I truly believe I have all of you to thank in pushing the story to be the best one I can put out. The one reader who had my chin up, up, up the entire time writing was Vicki—you, my friend, are a rockstar reader. I love your enthusiasm for my stories! She is but one of many, but I wanted to call her out because she was definitely a pusher when it came to Saving Grace.

  To my BETA team for this project (Aurora, Paige, Jill, and Brianna), THANK YOU for your insights on this story early on. And then there was Amy, who graciously allowed me to send her a copy at last minute. I do think the beginning is better for your comments.

  Jenn, my editor, as always, it was wonderful working with you. I’m a little bit shocked that Rory may have had to take a backseat…but ecstatic just the same!

  ARC readers, tour participants, as well as the companies I chose for this project, IndieSage and RockStar Lit—thank you for everything that you do! I was a review blog once too. Thank you for choosing Saving Grace (and me) to grace (no pun intended, I swear) your blogs and social media accounts. I cannot thank you enough for the help you do.

  And lastly, my family and friends (but of course). The support you’ve shown since the moment I said, “I’m doing this,” has been incredibly great! I love every one of you, even from afar in my warm, secluded, desert corner! ;)