his arms over his chest, smiling, Grace could tell, like the proverbial Cheshire cat.
She turned to face him, and he tipped an invisible hat. “Welcome to your new life, Grace Lamb.”
Chapter 3
Two days later, Nick pulled up outside Priest Antiques. The rambling old house looked like it always had, faded, harmless, a grand old lady who had never given up her old-fashioned clothes, but he knew better. Grace was in there—and most likely doing something impulsive and ill considered.
Grace, who was just as infuriating and unpredictable as ever, but who was somehow all grown up now, in all kinds of ways he had never imagined. And in ways that made him think about her like a…well, like a woman, not the annoying honorary kid sister she had always been before Wednesday.
Grace, who had kissed him without thinking twice about it. On the cheek, in perfect innocence, but that hadn’t seemed to matter to his brain when her lips brushed his skin. No, his brain had skipped right over that and focused on how good she smelled, and how soft and full her lips were, and the faint heat coming off her body as she got close.
His brain had decided, without any help from any other part of him, that kissing her, really kissing her, on the mouth, would be even better. And touching her? Even better than that. Actually, maybe a few other body parts had voted yes to that, too.
And that was bad. So, so bad. It would be a mistake for the history books. Grace Lamb was his best friend’s sister, a woman who had just left her husband and whose life was, to be blunt, a mess. He had no business thinking about kissing Grace, and he knew it.
So he’d told his brain to cut it out, to think about someone else. Josie Reese, the bartender at Newtown Brew, who had a cute ass and bright blue eyes. Maggie DeFiore, who had just bought the café down on Canal Street, and made an awesome cheese steak on garlic bread.
But his brain didn’t take orders very well, it turned out. It kept reminding him that Josie always smelled like rum and whiskey, and smoked too much. And Maggie kept hinting about sleeping over, about keeping a toothbrush at his place, and liked to look at his gun, which was frankly a little disturbing.
Nope, his brain just kept pulling out the memory of Grace stretching up on her tiptoes to kiss him. All wild hair and soft lips and dark eyes, and Christ, that was the last thing he needed.
Grace was the last thing he needed. Grace back in Wrightsville, wreaking havoc, was even farther down the list of things he needed.
If the world was turning the way it was supposed to, she’d make him crazy the minute he walked in Priest Antiques, and he could forget all about the new, sexy Grace and focus on the old, irritating one. He needed to remind himself that he was this close to taking a job in Doylestown and getting out of Wrightsville himself.
Just as he opened the door and got out of his Jeep, a broken chair sailed out of a second-story window and hit the ground beneath it with a splintering crash.
It was reassuring to know that some things never changed.
“Grace!” he bellowed, and shook his head at the haphazard pile of furniture and assorted junk that apparently couldn’t fly either. Some of it had landed over the property line in Frank Garrity’s yard, and Nick could just imagine the angry phone call that was sure to come.
“Grace!” he shouted again.
When she didn’t appear, he decided not to wait and pounded up the porch steps and into the store.
“Hey, Nick,” Toby said from the hallway, a cup of coffee in his hand. “Can I get you—?”
“Not now,” Nick growled, and took the stairs to the second floor two at a time.
Grace was in the spare bedroom, which was at least passable at this point. A meandering path cut through the accumulated junk, although the piles to either side of it looked taller than they had the other day. He had only one foot over the threshold when Grace peeked briefly into a cardboard box and then heaved it out the open window.
“Grace!”
She whirled around, hand to her chest, and smiled as she unplugged a pair of iPod ear buds. Outside, he could hear the box land with a thud. “Hey, Nick. What’s up?”
He glared. “What’s up? I think the question is what’s down, Grace. What the hell are you doing?”
She blinked at him in surprise. Her hair was scooped on top of her head in a messy knot, curls springing out every which way like an exploded Slinky. “I’m…cleaning. It’s sort of obvious, Nick.”
“You’re throwing things out the window,” he bellowed, and didn’t even care when she flinched.
“Well, yeah. It’s a lot easier than carrying everything downstairs,” she said, and took a step backward when he growled.
“Grace, will you stop and think for a minute? Please?” He rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Half of it’s ending up in the Garritys’ side yard. And you can’t just leave it there. Someone is going to have to pick it all up and set it by the curb, or put it in a dumpster. Which would be on the other side of the house, in the driveway.”
“A bonfire would be quicker,” she said thoughtfully, and threw up her hands in defeat when he glared at her. “Okay, okay, no more tossing it out the window. You’re a total buzz kill, you know that?”
He ignored her last remark with effort and slouched against the door frame. “I have news about the VW, if you’re interested.”
“Good or bad?” she said idly, squinting at a faded water-color of a landscape she’d taken off the top of the nearest pile.
“Not great.”
She set down the painting and frowned. “Uh oh.”
“It’s not going to be cheap. It’s drivable, but if you want to return the car in the shape you found it, it’s going to cost you. With a car that old, just finding the parts costs money.”
Her face fell. “Oh. That’s bad.”
He shrugged, but his heart squeezed in pity, just for a second. She looked so appalled, so confused—and strangely adorable with her hair corkscrewing all over the place, and her cheeks warm with the hard, dirty work of cleaning out the spare room.
There went his brain again, whispering, Kiss her. Kiss her!
He shoved the thought aside and straightened up just as she sagged into the one empty chair in the room. “Does your friend need the car back right away?”
“No. But I can’t return it all banged up,” she said disconsolately. “It’s Regina’s baby.”
He folded his arms over his chest. Maybe that would cure the urge to reach out and stroke her head.
He still couldn’t believe that he wasn’t tempted to shake her instead. You couldn’t just run off and start a new life without a plan, without money, without reliable transportation, but would Grace admit that? Never. It was just like her to charge into making life-altering changes without thinking about it, but for the first time ever he couldn’t muster up enough indignation to yell at her.
Maybe
