later she would cut some of the tulips for the sunroom, definitely before afternoon snack time, a fun ritual that only two of her present occupants would take advantage of—the elderly couple who were honeymooning. A wider smile forced her dimple deeper in her right cheek as she thought about Ed and Zelma Brenner. In their seventies, and giddily in love, they were a hoot. After both had married someone else, borne children, then widowed, they met on a cruise and married five days later.
On their way to a planned honeymoon at a cottage on Lake Austin, the couple had driven through Ruby. They never made it any farther. According to Ed, the minute they saw Grace House, they had been enchanted and chose to stay there. Hence, Grace had been honored with their presence for over two weeks now. Each day she grew more fond of them. If her parents hadn’t died in a freak auto accident when she was in college, she wondered if they would have turned out like Ed and Zelma. She liked to think so, since the thought was somehow comforting.
Her other guest, however, was cut from a far different bolt of cloth. Ralph Kennedy was a well-known children’s author who sought complete solitude for the purpose of penning his stories. Here he had apparently found his niche because he’d been a guest for more than four weeks. His brief appearance at breakfast was about all she ever saw of him except on rare occasions when she’d catch him strolling through the grounds. She suspected he was trying to work through a story problem. Despite the fact that he wasn’t her usual outgoing boarder, rather weird to be exact, she had no complaints. He paid his weekly bill and seemed content. That was all that mattered.
Deciding it was time to get back to her chores, Grace grabbed a dust cloth out of the cabinet. Opting to keep on her apron, which she loved to wear in spite of its being out of vogue, she made her way out of the large, bright kitchen and headed toward the garden room. It was her favorite room in the entire house, a hard choice to make as the rest of the old dwelling had other bragging rights. The polished hardwood floors, which made no attempt to soak up the sounds of hard-soled shoes, were magnificent. Another favorite was the exquisitely gorgeous Waterford chandelier that hung in the foyer.
She gave a cursory glance to the arched doorways and beveled glass of the front door, to the antique furnishings as she went into the garden room that was a prime environment for lush plants. Grace had seen to it that the room was much more than that since the living room flowed into it, providing an informal but lush setting in which to relax over breakfast with a newspaper or good book or to sip afternoon tea.
Grace had wanted the room to seem drenched in light. So she had painted the walls a pearly white, keeping the furniture to a minimum and dispensing with drapes altogether. She had achieved her goal, the space becoming a charming blend of yellows and greens, mixed with seasoned wicker, plump cushions and pillows and a myriad of flowering bushes and plants.
On one wall she’d painted an ivy-covered trellis. Even in the dead of winter the garden room gave one the feeling of being constantly bathed in greenery and light.
She had just begun dusting the glass-topped coffee table when the doorbell chimed. Stuffing her cloth into her apron pocket, she hurried to open the door, only to cling to the doorknob for support.
Grace would have recognized him anywhere, regardless of the fourteen years since she’d seen him. Denton Hardesty, a ghost from the past.
It was obvious from the stunned look on his face that he hadn’t expected to see her, either, as his mouth was slightly open while his green eyes narrowed.
“Grace,” he finally muttered, his tone hoarse as if he had a sore throat.
“Hello, Denton,” she responded, staring at the man who, one starlit night, took her virginity and her heart with him.
Two
Somehow Grace managed to derail that traumatic thought and force herself to behave as though Denton Hardesty were a stranger, someone she’d never known. But that wasn’t easy, as she was more than a little overwhelmed and flustered by his showing up on her doorstep out of the blue. Holding on to her fractured composure was even more difficult because her senses had leaped at the sight of him.
Dear Lord, that would never do.
“What on earth are you doing here?” she finally asked, the silence having built to an almost thundering roar, at least to her. Maybe it was the sound of her heart beating. Absurd. She no longer gave a fig about him.
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“I live here,” she said simply, feeling her chin jut slightly and her spine stiffen.
As if he picked up on the slight edge of defiance in her posture, he sighed. “I was wondering if you’d ever left.”
“Again, what brings you back to Ruby?”
His sigh deepened. “So that’s the way it’s going to be?”
For a second Grace was confused. “Excuse me?”
“I can’t say that I blame you for not inviting me in.”
Grace flushed, realizing that she hadn’t budged so much as an inch since she’d opened the door. In fact, she seemed to be guarding the door as if he was an intruder who might force himself inside. In a way that was exactly what he was. However, she had no intention of letting him know that her senses still hadn’t quite settled, that his unexpected presence had definitely thrown her for a curve.
“Of course you may come in.”
His head leaned to one side. “Are you sure?”
“Certainly,” she said, swallowing her irritation at his assumption that she gave a damn one way or the other. She’d best be careful. He’d always had the uncanny ability to read her heart. But that was then, when she was just a teenager. Now she was an adult and he didn’t know beans about her.
Finally she stepped back and gestured with one hand. “Welcome to Grace House.”
He pulled up short. “You mean this is your place?”
“Yes.” Again her tone held a note of defiance, this time with an edge of acid.
Denton chuckled. “I see you haven’t lost that sharp tongue.”
“Some things never change,” she said, more breathlessly than she intended.
“In some cases that’s not bad.”
It wasn’t so much what he said as the way he said it that set off a warning inside her. That raspy note in his voice was just as much a turn-on now as back then. What had she done to deserve this cruel twist of fate? She’d never expected to lay eyes on her first love again.
And why now, when she was lonelier than she’d ever been?
“I’m impressed.”
Grace forced herself back to the moment, though what she really wanted to do was tell him to leave, to go back where he came from and not disrupt her life one more second.
Instead she made her way into the garden room and watched as he strode to the long expanse of windows before turning and facing her again.
“Would you like a glass of iced tea?” she asked. “Or would you rather have coffee?”
“Both,
