He straightened as Grace came back in with Bitsy in her arms, his gaze devouring the leggings and bra, her entire sexy body revealed in the formfitting clothes.
“And…” What had the old woman said? He couldn’t even think he ached for her so much. “Facebook? What?”
“Alex, are you awake? I know you’re an early riser.”
He looked down at the tent in his pants. “I’ve…risen,” he said dryly, making Grace bite back a laugh. “Now what did you say about Ruth Etheridge?”
Grace sucked in a breath. “What?”
“Oh, good, you’re with Grace,” Gramma said. “Put the lass on the phone, or put me on speaker.”
He pulled the phone away and mouthed, “Sorry,” as he tapped the screen. “Okay, Gramma, you’re on speaker. Grace and I were just…”
“Menu planning,” Grace said quickly.
He smiled and reached for the strap of her bra, snapping it playfully. “So what did Ruth Etheridge post on Facebook?” he asked.
“Her whereabouts, that’s what. And, Grace, didn’t you say you wanted to spend more time with her away from her husband, to find out about the history of your winery?”
“I did.” Her eyes lit up and so did her smile. “Thank you for remembering, Gramma Finnie.”
“’Tis nothing, lass. I have the memory of a steel trap,” she said without a drop of irony. “Ruth posted that she’s lookin’ forward to morning choir practice because they have a new song set or somethin’, but I happen to know she attends First Baptist of Bitter Bark, and one of my dear friends is a regular there. And she just told me that lunchtime choir practice starts at noon. Do with that what you will, lass.”
What would she do with that? Alex eyed Grace and watched her nod slowly. “Thank you, Gramma Finnie,” she said. “I really appreciate your sleuthing work.”
“Not to worry. I was just firing up my computer to write my blog this week.”
Grace blinked. “You blog?”
“Like a beast,” Alex joked.
“I’m writin’ up the story of my son’s second wedding,” she said. “My sweet old readers are lovin’ the romance of it all.”
“I bet they are,” Grace said. “And I promise I’ll get you some kind of exclusive interview when we get Scooter and Blue’s wedding. I owe you one, Gramma.”
“That would be wonderful, but you don’t owe me a thing, lass. ’Tis my pleasure to put a smile on your pretty face.”
After they said goodbye, Grace reached for Alex’s hand. “Will you go with me?”
“Yes. We’ll all go together.” He rubbed Bitsy’s head. “To the farmers’ market, then to Bitter Bark.”
She let out a sigh and pressed her hand against his chest. “Let’s give this a little more time,” she whispered.
He nodded, knowing that he’d lost her to the possibility of what she’d learn about her mother today.
“Maybe one more wall can come tumbling down when I talk to Ruth.”
He leaned over and kissed her. “There’s no rush, Gracie. I’m not going anywhere.” He put a hand on her cheek. “I promise.”
* * *
She almost forgot how nervous she was to talk to Ruth while they shopped and laughed their way through the farmers’ market with three puppies who attracted a lot of attention. But by the time they got to Bitter Bark at eleven thirty, the knot in Grace’s stomach started to burn.
“I want to talk to her alone,” she said as they walked through the square toward the stately white church next to the town hall. “Do you mind?”
“No, I get that,” Alex said. “I’ll stay right here with the puppies, on this bench. Are you going to go into the church?”
“I was hoping I’d catch her outside, but I don’t know if she walks or will park in the back.”
“You go to the back of the church and watch the parking lot,” he said. “I can see the steps from here, and if I see her, I’ll text you immediately.”
She smiled up at him. “It’s a plan. Thank you, Alex.”
He gave her a quick kiss. “Go…ambush.”
She backed away, then darted across the street, walking through the alley between the two big buildings. Just as she reached the parking area behind the church, she saw Ruth and another woman climbing out of a compact car.
She swallowed hard, her palms damp. She hadn’t expected anyone else to be with her, but she couldn’t back down now. This was the only living person she’d ever met who knew her mother. She had to talk to her.
“Mrs. Etheridge?” she called as she approached. “I don’t know if you remember me. I’m—”
“Gracie,” she said softly, slowing her step to stare and take her own shuddering breath. “Of course I remember you.” She turned to the woman she was with. “Sheila, I’ll meet you in there. I want to talk to this young lady.”
A warm rush of relief rolled over Grace as the other woman smiled and headed toward the back door of the church.
“Thank you,” Grace said. “I hope I’m not completely overstepping my bounds.”
“You are,” the other woman replied without a trace of humor. “But I haven’t stopped thinking about you since the other night.”
“Mrs. Etheridge—”
“Ruth. Call me Ruth.”
Grace nodded. “Ruth, I’ve never in my life met someone who knew my mother. I have so many questions about her.”
Ruth’s brows crinkled with a perplexed look. “You don’t…” She shook her head as if this news didn’t compute. “You don’t know your mother?”
“She died in a car accident, I believe.”
Her eyes flashed. “Celia’s dead?”
“I assumed you knew. She died when I was very little.”
“All those years, and Bonnie…” The color drained from her face. “Oh, I’m glad she didn’t know that pain. Though that girl certainly put her through enough.”
“That girl…my mother?” Grace guessed.
Ruth searched Grace’s face, thinking. “Did your father raise you, then? Did she ever find him?”
Grace shook her head as frustration rolled through her. “I don’t know who my father was,” she said. “I was put into the foster system at five and told my parents were killed in a car accident. That’s all I know. I didn’t even know I was related to the former owners of the winery until I found this.” She flipped open her bag and pulled out the picture. “Celia and Grace in 1988.”
When Ruth took it, Grace noticed her hands were shaking. “Oh, yes, there she is. The wild child.”
“That’s what someone else called her.”
“I thought you hadn’t talked to anyone who knew her.” Suspicion darkened her voice.
“I talked to a man who once worked at the winery. He met her as a little girl, but I don’t know how to find anyone else who knew the Hunnicutts.”
“They were recluses, that’s why. After Celia left with the…with you.”
“So she had a baby and ran away?” Grace tried to put the pieces together, but nothing quite fit.
An older couple approached the church, and the woman said hello, eyeing Grace as they passed. Another car pulled into the lot, making Ruth look from side to side as if one of these witnesses could tell her husband what she was doing.
“Come inside,” she said quickly, gesturing for Grace to follow. She opened the heavy door that led to a linoleum-floored hallway. With another flick of her hands, Ruth ushered her down that hall, then into a room furnished with undersized desks and chairs, the walls decorated with rainbows and Noah’s Ark animals.
“Cal signed a piece of paper that binds him legally,” she said. “He cannot, under any circumstances, reveal what Bonnie did and why.”
“What did Bonnie do?”
She huffed out a breath. “Made sure you got that winery, that’s what.”
“But, Ruth, how did she know who and where I was, and why didn’t she reach out to me?”
Ruth stared at her, her pale blue eyes moving over Grace’s fa
ce while she struggled with her secrets. “I don’t know everything,” she said. “But Cal told me enough, and I was friends with Bonnie for years before…” She bit her lip. “Before Celia left and shattered the hearts of those two people.”
“When did she do that? Why?”
“When you were two. Why? Because she got wind of where your father was.”
“Who is he?” Grace asked, her voice taut from the lump in her throat.
“Now that, I don’t know,” Ruth said. “Bonnie and Bib didn’t know, either. A harvest worker, is all. A man who showed up for one harvest and…” She tipped her head to the side as if she couldn’t even say it. “Made young Celia think she was in love, though I just think she was in one of her rebel phases, then he disappeared before he even found out she was with child.”
Her father was a harvester? Who came and went from winery to winery? “So she ran away to find him? And took me?”
She nodded. “Left in the middle of the night from that little cottage where she was living with you.”
Grace had lived in the cook’s cottage as a baby?
“Might as well have ripped her mother’s heart out of her chest and stomped on it.”
Grace put her hand to her mouth, holding back all responses until she had time to process this information.
“Celia ran off to God knows where, and no one, not Bonnie or Bib or anyone, ever heard from her again. Course now you tell me she died.” She let out a mournful sigh. “You can only imagine what that did to those poor God-fearin’ people. Bad enough that Celia got herself pregnant by a virtual stranger. Then she left and never told them where she went or called them again.”
“She must have died without calling them, and they never found out.”
She gave a look that said even death didn’t absolve Celia of her sins. “Bib and Bonnie became shadows, I tell you. They never left the winery, just grew grapes, made and sold wine, and stayed to themselves. Emotionally, they were ruined.”
Grace stared at her, finally getting some pieces of the puzzle together, but still missing so much. “Then how did they find me to arrange for me to be able to buy the winery? And why didn’t they contact me before they died?”
“I don’t know.”
The words cut through her. “But I have to know. And I have to know why.”
Ruth shook her head. “If Bonnie told my husband, he didn’t tell me. All I know is that Bonnie came to him not long after Bib passed and just a month or so before she did, and she insisted on one thing—that you get the winery.”
“How could she be sure I would buy it? Or could?”
Ruth shrugged. “Once you saw it, did you ever consider not buying it?”
Not at that price. But how would Bonnie know that she’d buy it? And why wouldn’t Bonnie come directly to her? “I wanted it from the first,” she admitted.
“Bonnie must have hoped that’s what would happen,” Ruth said.
“And you’re sure she never knew her daughter had died?”
“I don’t know what she knew. We lost touch years ago. But, dear, I’ve just not only told you everything I know, I’ve risked my marriage and my husband’s reputation to do it.”
Aching for more answers, Grace reached out and took the woman’s hand. “Why did you do that?”
She didn’t answer for a long time, looking hard at Grace. “I didn’t care much for your mother,” she said. “She wreaked havoc wherever she went, ruining lives, breaking hearts, and living her life as selfishly as a person could.”
Grace’s heart broke a little. She’d longed for any detail about her mother, but now that she had it, she didn’t want it. At least, she didn’t like it.
“But your grandmother? And Bib? The finest people God has ever put on this earth. They didn’t deserve what that girl put them through, but I think…” She gave Grace’s hand a squeeze. “I think all that bad business must have skipped a generation, because you don’t seem a bit like Celia. You remind me more of Bonnie. And I know why she wanted to be sure you got the winery. Because she loved you. Good enough reason, if you ask me.”
Did she? If she loved Grace, why didn’t Bonnie reach out to her while she was still alive? Why make posthumous arrangements through a lawyer?
“And I think,” Ruth continued, “if Bonnie could whisper in my ear today, she’d tell me to help you. So I did. With everything I know, but there’s no more.”
Grace nodded, acknowledging that. “Thank you, Ruth. I won’t break your confidence, I promise. I won’t get your husband in trouble, and I won’t bother you again.”
Ruth nodded and backed away, reaching for the door, but then she turned to look at Grace.
“How did you get the name Donovan?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Grace said. “It’s just what they told me my name was.”
Ruth made a face as though she understood what kind of empty existence that must have been. “Well, your birth name is Graciela Bonita Hunnicutt. I remember the day you were christened, right here in this church. It was a private service, but I worked in the front office and sneaked into the sanctuary to watch. Bonnie told me you were named after both your grandmothers. Bonnie’s name was Bonita, so your other grandmother was Graciela. From somewhere in South America, I suppose.”
This new and unexpected revelation nearly knocked her over, drowning her like a rogue wave that came out of nowhere.
“Goodbye now.” With a nod, Ruth slipped out, leaving Grace alone in the room. After a minute, she pulled out a chair sized for a first grader and sat in it, dropping her head in her hands, trying to process it all.
Graciela Bonita Hunnicutt. Her grandmothers. For the first time in her life, Grace felt connected to a family. By blood. A woman named Bonnie. A South American grandma named Graciela. They were her people, her ancestors, her roots. Finally, Grace wasn’t completely…untethered.
Buoyed by the news—overjoyed by it, actually—she practically ran back to the square to tell Alex that one more brick had just fallen and smashed into a million pieces. Maybe the last brick in the wall she’d built around herself.
Grace Donovan might be guarded, cold, and scared of Alex’s passion. Grace Donovan might not trust anyone to stay with her. Grace Donovan might not be capable of love.
But Graciela Bonita Hunnicutt?
That was a whole new person.
Chapter Nineteen
Once, in his early days of cooking, Alex had popped a raw Komodo Dragon pepper into his mouth, and his entire head nearly exploded from the heat. Grace’s expression as she ran to him across the square reminded him of that moment, as though whatever was going on in her head was too much for one person to bear.
But she wasn’t in pain, as he had been. From Bitter Bark all the way back to the winery, she hummed with a new kind of passion and power, her eyes glinting as she told him every bit of her conversation with Ruth. Six times.
Her fingers grasped him over and over, squeezing his arm, his hand, his leg with every shared revelation.
She crackled with this little, but profound, new understanding of who she was, and it was clearly important that he share the true meaning of the moment with her.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this…electrified,” he said on a laugh as they climbed out of his Jeep and headed toward the winery.
She turned, practically dancing, flipping her long blond hair over her shoulder. “I should have trusted those DNA tests more because Ruth thinks my grandmother was from South America. I very well may be a Latina, Alex,” she announced, flipping her hair back. “What do you think of that?”
He reached for her, pulling her into a hug. “It’s hot. You’re hot. On fire.”
“Mmm.” Up on her toes, she planted a deep kiss on his mouth, softening against him and threading her fingers into his hair. “I am. I am…” She dug her nails in a little and dragged them over his neck, sending a cascade of need right through him. “I am a new woman.”
“I liked the old one.”
“Yeah? You’re gonna go nuts over the new one,” she teased, biting his lip. “Let’s go upstairs.”
“Now? In the middle of the day?”
She drew back. “You do not strike me as the kind of man who cares what time it is.” With a sly look, she bowed her back slightly. “There’s no one here. The puppies are tired. And I am…” She kissed him again, with no question of her intent.
“Graciela,” he whispered into her mouth.
“Yeah.” She practically melted, pulling him toward the door at the same time that she corralled the leashed puppies. They weren’t so cooperative, so while she got her key in the lock, Alex picked up Gertie and Bitsy and tugged Jack’s leash once the door was open.
They stood in the reception area to kiss again, with Gertie smooshed and Bitsy squirming between them.
“They need a nap,” Alex announced, setting the dogs on the floor.
“So do I.” Grace linked her free arm through his, easing him toward the steps. “Or at least an afternoon in bed.”
She didn’t have to ask twice. They made it up the stairs in record time, considering they had three puppies and had to stop to make out at least twice. The second time, Grace ripped off his T-shirt, which hit the stairs to her apartment. In the doorway, Alex got hers off. And her bra.
The puppies scampered right into their crate, which Alex shifted to the living room, and then he closed the door to find Grace already on the bed, shimmying out of her jeans.
“They don’t need to see this,” he joked, stepping to the bed to help her.
“It could scar them for life.” She lifted her butt so he could pull off her jeans and see all of her. “Oh, Gracie,” he whispered when she fell back on the bed, wearing nothing but a burgundy lace thong and a smoky, expectant expression. Every muscle in his body tightened, hardened, and ached for her. “Graciela,” he corrected.
She propped herself on her elbows, her bare breasts sloping like perfect teardrops, beckoning him. “Alexander the Great.”
He laughed. “That’s what they call me.”
“You are, you know,” she said softly, her voice so sweet he left his jeans on and knelt on the bed to get closer to her.
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