Heart of Grace (Return to Grace Trilogy #1)

by Abigail Easton

  “But we’re alone now, aren’t we?” This need terrified him, but he had crossed the threshold and he couldn’t bring himself to back away, especially when she brought her lips to his and kissed him lightly.

  “I want you to kiss me,” she whispered, “I know I shouldn’t. Too many complications, you and me.”

  She kissed him again. He held on, indulging in the feel of her in his arms. His Angie, so close, but already slipping through his grasp. He tightened his grip, as though that were enough to keep her. He teetered on the top of that slippery slope, already feeling one foot give way. And just as he was struggling with drawing up the effort to stop, she was the one who pulled away.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, “I didn’t mean to…I mean…I’m not handling any of this very well. I’m using you as a distraction, and that’s not fair. I’m sorry.” She walked into the house.

  He followed her inside and took her hand to stop her from pacing. “It’s okay. Come on, sit down.” He led her to the sofa.

  “I hate what I am,” Angela blurted out, her gaze on the floor. “I hate what my father did to me.”

  “The two are not the same – what he did and who you are

  – two different things, Ang.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “They’re exactly the same. My brother asked me to forgive him, and I couldn’t. Not at first. But remembering…it made it easier, somehow, to let go of all the pain I was holding toward Michael. But I can’t stop hating my father. It’s become who I am.”

  Cole squeezed her hand. “Angie, be honest. Is all I am to you a distraction from all that?”

  “What more do you want to be?”

  “Angie…”

  “No.” She wiped her palms on her jeans and stood. “That’s not all you are to me. But it’s not that easy now, anyway. You don’t understand.”

  “You know, Ang, maybe the solution to all of this, to you and me, is simpler than we think. All summer I’ve had to keep myself from asking you to stay, because I don’t want to be your reason.”

  She looked away, the battle between desire and pain thick in her eyes. He had come too close to asking, and it was unfair to them both.

  “Do you want me to stay?” she asked.

  He felt the words build up in his throat. He swallowed them down. “I won’t ask you, Angie.”

  “You sort of just did.” She paced to the small desk, where her laptop sat open with papers on either side. “If I stayed, you would be a reason, Cole. A big one. But not the only reason.” She turned and paced back in his direction.

  He stood and met her halfway. The hope rose and the fool in him wanted to drop down to one knee, right then and there. But the darkness crept in, and he forced himself to see the anguish in her eyes. “You could have a thousand reasons, but you’ve already got one foot out the door, Angie. I think you might let me convince you, but I wouldn’t want it to be that way.”

  “You need to know something,” Angie said, her cool voice a betrayal to the cocktail of pain and regret in her eyes. “I’m thinking of offering my half of the arena to Reed. What do you think?”

  “I think he’d be a good choice, but I don’t think he can afford it.”

  “I’m not selling it to him. I’m giving it to him.”

  “Well, that’s awfully nice of you, but you quit your job in New York. The suits you sold couldn’t have given you that much money. Angie, you can’t afford to give away your inheritance. You stayed in Grace to fix the arena so you could get something from it. Why give it away now? What changed?”

  She looked down. “How can I take Reed’s money? He’s been more of father to me than Henry ever was. And he’ll do a good job as your partner. You can trust him.”

  Unable to look at her, Cole glanced away and caught a glimpse of a spreadsheet on the computer screen. There was a column labeled “NYSE,” followed by a list of stock symbols and dollar amounts. In the bottom corner was an instant message box. The sender was “JSykes.” Angela moved to block his view.

  “You’re working for him again. Jeffrey.” Cole huffed. “Well, that explains it. New York Tycoon, back on top.”

  She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “That’s bull, Angie. You could’ve said no, but you said yes. There’s your choice. Was his offer that much better than…” He broke off, swearing under his breath.

  “Than what, Cole?” Angela insisted. “Than your offer? The offer you can’t bring yourself to make?”

  “Angie-”

  “Someone from the coalition approached me. Wait,” she said before he could speak. “It’s okay now. I took care of it. Jeffrey helped. He used his connections to make it so they wouldn’t be able to get the zoning changed, even if they did manage to get all the land.”

  “At what price?” Cole asked. When Angela only stared at him, he shook his head and said, “You. You’re the price.”

  “I have to go back. That was the plan from the very beginning. I might not have a choice in working for Jeffrey, but I was always planning on going home”

  You are already home. Stay. He screamed the words inside his head, and if he loved her less – or if he were less of a coward

  – he might have said them out loud.

  “I wanted it to be your choice to stay, Angie. You could’ve come to me. We could’ve fought the coalition another way. But you chose your path. And what a convenient path it is, giving you permission to run away. Again. So be it.” He turned and walked toward the back door. “Don’t forget to wrap your knuckles,” he called back as he passed the punching bag. ****

  “You know how you sometimes dream and it’s like you’re watching yourself in a movie?” Angela raised a spoonful of ice cream to her lips. “That’s what it was like. I just kept watching myself break his heart and I couldn’t do anything to stop it.”

  “Oh, honey,” Sophie took the pint of ice cream from Angela and dipped her own spoon into it.

  “What if Michael had stayed for you,” Angela asked, “would you have been happy if that was the only reason?”

  “No.” Sophie said, her eyes still puffy and red from the tears she had been crying when Angela showed up on her doorstep. “Not if that was his only reason, but you already said you have other reasons to stay.”

  “And I have reasons to leave. Big reasons. It’s complicated.”

  “So you keep saying.” Sophie shrugged. The women sat on the couch and fell into silence, taking turns eating spoonfuls of ice cream. After a moment Sophie laid back in the cushions and pulled a throw pillow over her chest, hugging it.

  “I miss Michael,” she said, looking up at Angela pointedly. “But it’s not the same as it is with you and Cole. Michael and I are technically still together, just apart. I couldn’t imagine how much more I’d miss him if I knew I’d never see him again. Won’t you miss Cole?”

  “Of course I will. And I’ll miss you, and Tina and the arena. And Reed and everyone else.”

  “Is Jeffrey really all that wonderful?”

  Angela laughed. “He’s not wonderful at all! Goodness, I came here and faced what my father did to me just to get away from him for a while.”

  “But you miss him.” Sophie raised an eyebrow. “That’s why you’re going back.”

  “New York is my home. What I miss is my life.”

  “It won’t ever be like it was, not after what you’ve been through here.”

  “Yeah.” Angela sighed. “I know. I wish I could unknow some things, but I guess that’s impossible now.”

  “I’m half mad at you for coming back,” Sophie said. “Because if you hadn’t come back here Michael wouldn’t have come to see you, I wouldn’t have fallen in love with him, and I wouldn’t be missing him right now. But,” she added when Angela frowned, “it’s silly to hate the good stuff because of all the bad, isn’t it?”

  Angela swallowed and laid down her spoon. “Cole couldn’t even bring himself to ask me to stay. At least Jeffrey cared
enough to ask me to come back.”

  “So what? Make it your choice, not Cole’s.” Sophie sat up and took the ice cream carton from Angela’s hands. “He may not ask, but I will. Please stay in Grace, Angela. Make a life here.”

  “It’s not that easy,” Angela said. “When I came here there were two of me. The me who lived in New York, with the corporate career, the nice apartment in a trendy part of the city, and a sleazy boyfriend. It was my normal.”

  “Even the sleazy boyfriend part? That’s sad.”

  Angela shot her friend a sharp look. “And then there was the country girl me. The me who ran away from everything that happened to me as a child. I knew what my father did, even before I knew it. I didn’t want to come back to Grace, but I’d realized my life in New York had become all about the sleazy boyfriends and even sleazier clients. So I ran away from that life, too. I thought there was enough of New York in me to do what I had to do, keep myself distant from it all, and just hope it would work itself out.”

  “Did it?”

  “No.” Angela picked up her spoon again, swinging it back and forth over her bent knees. “I fell in love. That was so not part of the plan.”

  “It hits you, and boom,” Sophie smacked the heel of her hand between her eyes, “you’re down for the count before you know it.”

  Angela laughed in agreement and scraped up the last of the ice cream. “And realizing there is more than just my own little world…it’s making me see more than I ever wanted to see.”

  “And that’s a bad thing?”

  “Yes, it is. I don’t know who ‘me’ is anymore.”

  “I think you are still you,” Sophie smiled, “there’s just more to you now. You can’t unknow something…your words.”

  “No, but I can forget, or at least not remember it all. In Grace I feel like I’m at the mercy of something I can’t control. I don’t like it.”

  “That’s stupid,” Sophie shot up and gathered the now empty ice cream carton and spoons. “Thinking you’re in control isn’t the same as being in control, because you’re never really in control of anything. You forgot about what your dad did, but you didn’t really forget, right? So you’ll go back to New York and pick your old life back up. You might not go back to Jeffrey, but you’ll find another sleazy boyfriend, and spend your days wooing more sleazy clients. And maybe you’ll be happy in a way, but you won’t forget Grace or Cole or me. Or everything you remembered. Do you really think you can live like that again?”

  “I know I can’t!” Angela stood and followed Sophie into the kitchen. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! I have reasons to stay and reasons to go back. It’s not about one life over the other.”

  Sophie turned on the faucet and rinsed off the spoons. After a moment she spun away from the sink, tears streaked down her face. “If you’re so sure you’ll be miserable no matter what, maybe you should choose the life where you have friends and a man who loves you.”

  “I can’t, Sophie. Besides, Cole is going back to the rodeo.”

  “So?”

  “So what am I supposed to do? Sit home alone at the ranch hoping I don’t get a phone call telling me he’s been injured, or worse?”

  “Now you’re just making excuses.”

  “Maybe I am.” Angela shrugged.

  “You say it’s not your choice, but here you are, making choices. You think they’re the right choices, but it’s all about self-preservation, isn’t it?” Sophie wiped her eyes. “Maybe the path you’re meant to take is the one you can’t control.”

  Irritated, Angela took her purse from its spot on the kitchen counter and fished out her keys. “If this is where I was supposed to end up all along, why did my father hurt me? To drive me away, only to bring me back? To make me have all this awareness that I don’t know how to process? If that’s how it is, I’d just as soon leave Grace, too, and go back to New York. At least there I’m the one who calls the shots.”

  “The thing is,” Sophie said quietly, her gaze on the floor, “once you know stuff, once you know grace, you can’t just hop on a plane and leave it all behind.”

  “Watch me.” Angela shouldered her purse. “Sophie, I love you and I’ll miss you like crazy. But I have to do this. Please just trust me.”

  Sophie nodded. “I know. I do trust you.”

  “I don’t want to leave like this.” Angela sighed and wrapped her arms around her friend. “You should come to New York for Christmas. We’ll go skating at Rockefeller Center and go shopping on Fifth Avenue. All that Christmas in New York stuff.”

  Sophie nodded and smiled. “I’d like that.”

  “And I have a feeling Michael won’t stay away for too long,” Angela winked.

  “I hope the same goes for you, Ang.”

  “You’re not getting rid of me. You’re my best friend, Sophie. And that gives me the right to annoy you incessantly with texts in the middle of the night to complain about my new sleazy boyfriend.”

  Sophie let out a watery laugh. “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  ****

  The coolness of the day had continued into night. Cole lit a fire – a suitable companion to brood by. He had done the right thing and he would keep on telling himself that until it finally settled in.

  Angie would go back to New York and to her fancy life and Grace would once again become a distant memory, as would he.

  He opened a small velvet box he had dug out of his mother’s things in the attic. The ruby engagement ring sparkled in the firelight. His mom had given it to him just before she died, her eyes filled with tears he had been too young to understand.

  Now he understood all too well. He closed the box and flicked it onto the coffee table. It bounced and landed on the floor, where he left it.

  Cole leaned his face into his hands and expelled a hearty sigh. Everything there was to be said had already been spoken. He flexed his hand into a fist and felt his muscles strain against damaged bones. The arm was weak, but it worked.

  It was time he also got back to an ordinary life. Seventeen

  Ralph raised his glass. Someone lowered the volume of the music.

  “Angie,” he said, “you’ve been nothing but a pain in my rear since you came back into town.”

  The room erupted into laughter.

  “But,” he continued, “I’m sure gonna miss you. We all are. Thank you for what you’ve done. Them sons-of-hades, oil drilling bullies ain’t gonna take over this town!” Ralph lifted his glass higher into the air – a warrior pose – and let out an emphatic battle cry.

  The gatherers at The Water Hole cheered in agreement, slamming back their drinks and banging their fists on the tables. Some swarmed her, offering their best wishes and thanking her as the music level raised.

  Angie excused herself and pushed back her chair. She wandered to the bar, keeping one eye on the door.

  “You did good, Angie.”

  “Oh?” Angela set her empty glass on the bar, sparing Jack only a momentary glance. “Which part was good? The part where I saved the arena, and by extension the town, or the part where I broke Cole’s heart?”

  “The part where you did what you had to do. Cole loves you, ya know.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” She shook her head and took her refilled glass from the bartender. “Besides, if that were true, wouldn’t he be here?”

  “He won’t chase you, Angie. He knows that’s not what he need from him.”

  “You think you know him so well, don’t you?” She turned fully toward Jack. “Maybe you think you know me just as well. So tell me, then…what will I do? Will I chase him? Or will I spend my life waiting for him, thinking of what might have been?”

  “I think you’ll forget about him.”

  A tear fell. She wiped it away and shook her head. “You’re right. But only because I’ll force myself.”

  Jack smiled and laid a hand on her shoulder his blue eyes misty. “You’ve always been a fighter, Angie. Al
ways willing to do what needs to be done.”

  She stepped back and surveyed the crowd. Her friends. Sophie and Tina laughed as Reed told them some story, his gnarled hands chopping through the air between them. Jeremy stood across the room with some of the other ranch hands, eyeing Tina – his new girlfriend – with a silly grin. Ralph played pool with Jim Markey and Nadine, and by the look on the men’s faces Angela presumed the maid was winning. Maisy Markey and Joan Bradley plotted at a corner table, eyeing Angela between whispers.

  “I don’t want to leave, Jack.” She leaned her elbows back on the bar, but when she turned in his direction, she found his stool empty.

  She took her jacket from the pegs by the door – the night air had begun to chill. She gave her friends one last long look, etching them into her memory before leaving The Water Hole. ****

  The sun danced on the horizon, shooting sprays of gold across the endless sky. Headstones rose against the colors, silhouetted by the setting sun. Some of the oaks had surrendered to the hard breeze, their leaves scattered among the grass.

  Through all this color and movement, Angela shivered and walked through the cemetery. She found her father’s grave marker beside her mother’s. Dead leaves crunched beneath her knees as she lowered herself to the ground.

  No one had chiseled “Beloved Father” on the marker. It listed only his name and the years he had spent in his short, miserable existence.

  She let out a measured breath and closed her eyes to the overwhelming scent of carnations and roses, peonies and dozens of other floral creations. The people of Grace cherished their dead. They honored those parts of the family tree that had fallen back to the ground.

  There were no flowers on Henry’s grave. She was surprised it made her sad.

  Her eyes shifted to the ground beneath her. The grass had grown back over the hole they had dug to lay him in. The cool nights had forced the new lawn into dormancy, but it would grow again in the spring. She thought of Henry’s body six feet below, the flesh rotting from his bones, eaten by worms as he slowly returned to the earth.

  Once upon a time he had been so strong. The evidence of that had branded her and there was nothing she could do to change those scars.