Amazing Gracie

by Sherryl Woods

  Naturally this was one of those prayers that was incidental to heavenly powers. Gracie walked in two minutes later and was subjected to an interrogation that any detective would have admired.

  Looking shellshocked, she finally made her way back to his table.

  “Any secrets left?” Kevin inquired as she slipped into the booth.

  “Quite a few, to their obvious disappointment,” she said dryly. “I don’t think that will slow them down for long, though. They seem to have pretty active imaginations.”

  “That they do,” he agreed.

  Jessie whisked by, set two cups of coffee in front of them and promised to be back any minute to take their order. Gracie took her first swallow of coffee as if it held the promise of eternal youth.

  “Jet-lagged?” Kevin inquired.

  “That,” she agreed, giving him a long, mischievous look, “plus staying up half the night pretty much turned my brain to mush.”

  “And here I just thought I was welcoming you home properly.”

  “There was nothing proper about it,” she retorted, smiling at the memory. “If those three over there knew how you say hello—”

  “They’d be green with jealousy,” Kevin finished.

  “Or stunned into silence.”

  “I don’t think a bomb going off under their noses would stun them for very long,” he observed. “They’d be too anxious to spread the news.”

  Gracie took another long, deep swallow of coffee, then looked him squarely in the eye. “Okay, Kevin, let’s hear it.”

  “Hear what?”

  “What drove you to Richmond to hide out.”

  He sighed. He’d figured they were going to get back to this sooner or later, but the wound was still too raw for him to want to start picking at it again. Besides, he ought to get into it with Delia first. He’d been by the house briefly this morning to clean up, but she’d been sound asleep.

  “Can’t this wait?” he asked.

  “From my perspective, yes,” she said. “But something tells me it has something to do with why Delia’s so upset. I won’t ignore that.”

  “Since when did you get so protective of Delia? She’s my aunt,” he said, not yet ready to acknowledge the real relationship.

  “She’s my friend.”

  “And I’m your what?”

  She regarded him archly. “That remains to be seen.” Her expression sobered. “Come on, Kevin. Spill it. How can I help Delia if I don’t know what’s going on?”

  “Maybe Delia’s not the one who needs help. Maybe she’s the one who threw a curve at me.”

  “Now you’re talking in riddles.”

  Thankfully, before he had to explain what he meant, Jessie came back to take their order. He chose the biggest breakfast on the menu—eggs, bacon, home fries, and toast. He couldn’t answer questions if his mouth was full. He noticed, however, that Gracie ordered an English muffin. Obviously, he concluded grimly, she didn’t intend to let food hamper her cross-examination.

  He sat back stoically and waited for the onslaught of questions to begin.

  It didn’t take long. Jessie had no sooner left for the kitchen than Gracie was studying him intently.

  “Okay, Kevin. Let’s hear it.”

  “You realize, of course, that this is none of your business.”

  If he’d thought—or hoped—she would take offense at that, he was very much mistaken. She merely smiled and regarded him patiently.

  “Have you ever found out something about yourself that changes everything?” he asked.

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” she said.

  “What?”

  “We were supposed to be talking about you.”

  “Humor me.”

  “Okay, I found out after years of roaming around the globe that what I was really looking for all along was a home.”

  “You had a home in Pennsylvania. You sold it.”

  “I meant one that fit my image of what a home ought to be, complete with a whole community of people who cared.”

  The response took him aback. “And you found that out here?”

  “Here with you,” she amended with total sincerity.

  All that advice to ask her to marry him came flooding back. He pretended it hadn’t.

  She studied him worriedly. “Is that what happened to you? You found out something about yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “From Delia?”

  “Yes.” He regarded her ruefully. “You’re not going to give up on this, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  Resignation sighed through him. He might as well blurt it out and get it over with. Maybe Gracie could offer some perspective he’d missed, solidify his own conclusions. “She told me that she’s my grandmother.”

  Gracie’s eyes lit up. “She is? Oh, Kevin, that’s wonderful.” Her expression turned worried. “It is, isn’t it? You adore her, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then I don’t see the problem. I’d give anything to suddenly discover I had a grandmother and it turned out to be somebody I love.”

  “You’re missing the point,” he groused.

  “Which point is that?”

  “Aunt Delia was the one person on earth I thought I could trust. Now I find out she lied to me and to my mother. All these years, she lied to us. Isn’t that important?” he asked, even though he’d already concluded it didn’t really matter in the larger scheme of things.

  “I might not have known your aunt very long, but one thing I know about her is that she worships you. If she kept this a secret, there must have been a very good reason for it.”

  “I suppose.” He repeated the whole, sad story. “She thought she was protecting my mother.”

  “Well, then, that explains it.”

  “Gracie, it’s not that easy. Okay, maybe for me it wasn’t a tragedy, even it did shake the trust I thought we shared. I had my dad and, for a while anyway, my mom. But my mother lived her whole life with a bitter old woman, thinking that she never did anything right, not understanding that there was a reason for that resentment.”

  Gracie reached for his hand. “I know that must have been awful for her and for you, but did you ever consider that it might have been worse if Delia had kept her.”

  “How so? What could possibly have been worse?”

  “You just sat here and listened to the gossip about us and about Bobby Ray and Marianne. At least none of that was vicious. Can you imagine what it would have been like fifty or sixty years ago to be a pregnant teenager with no father in sight? Can you imagine what your mother would have had to endure being called a bastard back then? She might never have married a man like your father because of the stigma. Wouldn’t that have been a hundred times worse than the problems she had with the woman she thought of as her mother? At least she had Delia in her life. You said yourself that your aunt provided a safe haven for both of you.”

  “I see what you’re saying. It’s just…”

  “A shock,” she supplied.

  He nodded.

  “Do you love Delia any less?”

  “Of course not. I just don’t know if I can ever trust her again.”

  “Kevin, there’s never been anything else she lied about, has there?”

  “No, not as far as I know.”

  “Just this one thing and you know she had her reasons. Maybe you should concentrate on understanding her side and tell her that you haven’t stopped loving her.”

  “I thought I had.”

  “But then you left town, probably after making some enigmatic remark about needing time to think,” she suggested, making him wince. “It obviously terrified her. I’m sure she’s scared to death of losing you.”

  “It’ll never happen. That old lady is too much a part of me.”

  “Tell her,” Gracie repeated. “Don’t let something that should be fabulous news end up splitting you apart.”

  “Has anyone ever told you you drive a hard bargain?” />
  “All the time. One of these days I’ll take you to France and you can talk to the asparagus farmer,” she teased. “Will you go to Delia?”

  “Okay, okay. Right after we finish breakfast,” he promised.

  She grinned. “I’m finished now,” she said, gesturing to her empty plate.

  Kevin’s eggs and bacon and potatoes were beginning to congeal into a greasy mess. He eyed them with disgust. “I suppose I am, too.”

  Outside the cafe, Gracie stood on tiptoe and brushed a kiss across his cheek. “Good luck.”

  His gaze settled on her. “When I’ve taken care of this, you and I need to talk.”

  “Isn’t that what we just did?”

  “You talked. I listened. Now I have a few things I’d like to say. Where are you going to be?”

  She regarded him with apparent uneasiness. “At the Victorian.”

  He wondered just how uneasy she would be if she realized what he intended to talk about was marriage. He pressed a hard kiss against her lips. “See you soon.”

  Her wariness clearly escalated. “Take your time.”

  Kevin chuckled at her obvious attempt to put off whatever he had on his mind. “Gracie, you can dish it out, but you sure can’t take it.”

  Her chin immediately tilted up a defiant notch. “I certainly can take whatever you intend to dish out, Kevin Patrick Daniels.”

  “We’ll see, darlin’. We’ll see.”

  Gracie hadn’t even had a full ten seconds to be relieved that things between Delia and Kevin were going to be smoothed over. Now, with this enigmatic promise of his to have a talk with her, all she could do was worry. She hadn’t liked the gleam in his eyes one little bit. There’d been an awful lot of speculation about marriage going on at the Beachside this morning. She certainly hoped Kevin hadn’t had anything to do with sparking the gossip or that he hadn’t been taking it to heart.

  “Well, it’s about time you got here,” Helen announced, pouncing on her the instant Gracie climbed the steps to the Victorian a few minutes later. “We’ve got a lot to do.”

  “There’s no need to panic. Ray Mason and his crew are back on the job this morning. I hear them hammering away. We can take a breather.”

  “Forget the house,” Helen declared. “We have a wedding to plan.”

  Gracie broke out in a cold sweat. “A wedding?” she repeated cautiously. “Whose?”

  “Bobby Ray’s and Marianne’s, of course. Whose did you think?” Helen asked, then chuckled. “Were you afraid we were going to do a surprise event for you and Kevin?”

  “Of course not,” she said defensively, then hastily improvised. “I was thinking of you and Max.”

  That drew a frown. “Oh, when the time comes, if it ever does, I suspect we’ll just elope,” Helen said lightly. “Max probably won’t want to leave the hotel for more than a day or two.”

  Something in her tone alerted Gracie that something had happened in Paris that she’d missed. “Trouble brewing?” she asked.

  “Between Max and me? Heavens, no,” Helen said, a little too brightly.

  She was obviously lying through her teeth.

  “Into the kitchen,” Gracie ordered.

  Helen actually did as she’d been told, another clue that something was seriously wrong.

  “Sit.”

  Helen sat.

  Gracie poured them both cups of coffee from the pot that Helen had brewed. “Okay, what happened?”

  “Nothing, really.” Helen grinned ruefully. “I’m being silly, I’m sure.”

  “Helen, just tell me.”

  “Okay, okay. It’s just that he seemed so distracted that whole time we were in Paris, like he couldn’t wait to get back to Cannes.”

  Gracie chuckled. She couldn’t help it, even though it drew a scowl from Helen. “I’m sorry. It’s just that the trip to Paris was probably the most spontaneous thing Max Devereaux has ever done in his entire life. He had, what, maybe twenty-four hours notice that we were coming?”

  “Less than that, actually.”

  “Yet he put everything aside and raced to Paris.”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Helen, Max does not drop things and take a holiday. He plans every little detail. Even when he came here, he spent a whole week working out the logistics, making sure he had staff to cover for him while he was gone. You actually got him to do something totally impetuous.”

  “Which he obviously regretted.”

  “I don’t think he regretted being with you for a second,” Gracie reassured her. “I do think he worried about all the work he’d left on his desk. Old habits are hard to break. Give it time.”

  Helen’s expression brightened. “Do you think so?”

  “Yes. I think so. I can’t think of another person on earth who could have gotten him away from Cannes on a moment’s notice like that. Most women couldn’t even get Max to take an unscheduled coffee break.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  Helen preened. “I guess I’ll just have to practice my technique on him more often.”

  “The more often, the better,” Gracie agreed.

  “Good,” Helen said, obviously relieved and reenergized. “That’s settled then. Let’s get busy on the wedding. We don’t have much time. Bobby Ray insists he won’t wait a minute longer than Labor Day weekend.”

  “That’s the weekend this place is supposed to open,” Gracie protested. “How can I manage both?”

  “Think of it this way. You’ll be guaranteed a full house with all the wedding guests coming from out of town.”

  “Ah, yes, the silver lining,” Gracie said. “I knew there had to be one.”

  “There always is,” Helen agreed.

  25

  Kevin found Aunt Delia in the garden. Not that she was doing much weeding, though. She was kneeling by the bed of pink-and-purple petunias, her gloved hands idle, her gaze focused on some point in the distance. Her strawberry-blond hair, which still astounded him, was smushed by a wide-brimmed straw hat.

  “Aunt Delia?” he said softly.

  Her head snapped around. A tentative smile formed. “Kevin? I didn’t hear you come up. I wasn’t even sure you’d come back home from wherever you were.”

  “I got back yesterday. Just now, though, you were lost in thought. Everything okay?”

  She searched his face. “I’m not sure. Is it?”

  He reached down and squeezed her shoulder. “Everything is fine,” he reassured her. “I’m sorry if I’ve worried you. I just needed some time to think. Your news took me completely by surprise. I couldn’t help thinking of how much my mother missed by never knowing the truth, how different things would have been for her if she had. Bottom line, though? I love you. I’m very glad that you’re my grandmother.”

  She struggled to her feet then and hugged him, tears trembling on her lashes. “Oh, you darling boy, I’ve been so worried you’d never forgive me.”

  “It was never a matter of forgiveness. I just needed to understand what you did. Gracie helped me put things into perspective,” he admitted.

  “She’s very smart, our Gracie is.”

  “That she is.”

  She eyed him speculatively. “So when are you going to stop wasting time and marry her? I think it’s way past time you two set a date.”

  “Aren’t you getting a little ahead of yourself, asking about the date. She hasn’t even said yes yet.”

  “Have you asked her?”

  “No.”

  “Well, why on earth not? You’ve thought about it, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “I’ve been working that out in my mind.”

  “Trying to believe she could love you and not be dependent on you,” Aunt Delia guessed.

  As always, he was startled by his aunt’s—his grandmother’s—insight into his thoughts. “How’d you know?” he asked.

  “Because I’m a grandmother and I’m smar
t and nobody on earth knows you any better than I do,” she said confidently. “Kevin, Gracie may not rely on you for money or career advice or to handle this crisis or that, but she loves you. That’s what really matters and I’d stake my life on that. Besides, there are lots of other ways to need someone.”

  “Such as?”

  “In Gracie’s case, I think she very much needed you to show her how to take things one day at a time, to bring some balance into her life. And, more than that, she needed you to give her a home, people to care about. Even a strong person like Gracie could use a little support every now and again, even if she never needs to be rescued.”

  He thought about that. Gracie had said much the same thing herself. Maybe he did have things to offer her that didn’t involve money. Maybe he could share the most important things of all with her, his heart and soul.

  And maybe she could give him back his faith in human beings again. After all, she’d seen the potential in Helen and Bobby Ray and gotten their lives back on track, when all he’d seen was Bobby Ray’s frustrating inability to handle responsibility and Helen’s spending excesses. Maybe he was more like his father and his uncle Steven than he’d realized. Maybe he’d encouraged them to lean on him to satisfy some need in himself.

  “Thanks, Aunt Delia.”

  “No thanks necessary,” she assured him. She regarded him wistfully. “But maybe one of these days you’ll get around to calling me Grandmother.”

  “Grandmother.” He tried it out and found he liked it. It had never had much meaning to him before, nothing that wasn’t negative anyway. He grinned at her. “You’re amazing, Grandmother.”

  “Well, of course I am,” she said briskly. “Now get along with you. I have weeding to do. The gardener never gets it quite right. Besides, Gracie’s waiting. A smart man doesn’t keep a woman like that waiting too long. Somebody else might sneak in and snap her up.”

  Kevin decided that the matter of proposing required a bit of planning and ingenuity if he was going to pull it off successfully. He might have resolved the last of his uncertainties, but he doubted Gracie had. He anticipated a fight.