be surprised at some of the untraditional alternatives I’ve thought of.” Grace took a swig of the Mexican beer Jenna had ordered for her, but the lime slice got caught in the neck of the bottle. She poked it down and tried again, appreciating the cold, sour taste. Michael would never have come to Harley’s bar and had bottled beer with fruit in it. He’d always preferred the muted cocktail scene at the Seahorse by the bay.
Somehow the fact that her ex-husband wouldn’t like it here made the beer taste even better.
“I hate to ask this,” Jenna started carefully, “but have you thought of borrowing money from your mom?”
Grace shook her head. “Dad’s pension is good, but not so good she that she can support Jimmy and me.” She sighed. “Besides, then I’d be in debt to her, and I’d have to make the money to pay her back, so what’s the difference?”
“All right, but I wish you could just stay here indefinitely. If only there was a job.”
Grace shook her head. “You can’t go back home.”
“But you are back home.”
“It doesn’t feel like it.” In truth, nothing felt like home at the moment. Grace felt completely and utterly lost.
She leaned back against the bar and let her eyes fall on the people playing pool across the room. The music of the band pounded through her, and she willed it to shake loose the tension that had become a constant hum inside her head. She had to take at least an hour or two off from worrying, or she was going to have a nervous breakdown. There was nothing she had to think about right now, she told herself, nothing she had to take care of right this moment. Jimmy was home with Jenna’s husband and kids, and there was nothing Grace could do about her job situation tonight. This was a great opportunity to loosen up, and she was going to enjoy it, no matter how hard it was.
As if testing her resolve on that cue, the band started playing “Stand By Your Man.”
Jenna clucked her tongue against her teeth. “They’ve got to be joking.”
“No, God is.” No sooner were the words out of her mouth, than the glass door to Harley’s opened and Luke Stewart strolled in. “Uh-oh. Time to leave.” She set her bottle down and hopped off the barstool.
“What?” Jenna asked, looking in the area of the door. “What’s wrong?”
“That’s wrong.” Grace said in a low voice, pointing to Luke.
“Oh, my God, it’s Luke Stewart,” Jenna gasped. “You haven’t talked to him since high school, have you?”
“As a matter of fact, I talked to him a few days ago. I had to beg him for a job driving a bus at Connor School, and he turned me down.”
Jenna looked at her, surprised. “You had to ask Luke? Why? Is he in charge of the buses?”
“He’s in charge of everything,” Grace said, popping an olive into her mouth. “Headmaster.”
“Oh, my. That must have been hard. How come you didn’t tell me earlier?”
Grace chewed and kept narrowed eyes on Luke. The sight of him brought a warm flush to her cheeks. Residual humiliation and anger, no doubt. “If you’d been turned down as a bus driver, you probably wouldn’t be talking about it much either.”
“Wow. I guess he’s still mad about you picking Michael over him.”
“I didn’t pick Michael over him. I stayed with Michael rather than throw the relationship away over a small, brief, untested crush on someone else.”
“On Luke, you mean.” Jenna pulled the bowl of peanuts across the bar and took a handful.
Grace kept her eyes on Luke. “It doesn’t matter who it was, it would have been stupid for me to throw away a secure relationship because of some silly infatuation.”
“I don’t know. It might have spared you a lot of trouble.”
“And bought me a whole new brand of trouble.”
Jenna nodded her agreement. “Probably so. And you wouldn’t have Jimmy.”
“That’s right. He’s worth it all.” Grace sighed. “Too bad he’s going to have to live on bread and water because his mother can’t get a job, even as a bus driver.”
“Well, why would you want to drive a bus anyway? And why there? Wouldn’t it be weird to go back to your alma mater that way?”
Of course it would be weird. It felt weird even before she knew Luke was part of the deal. “There’s no other work in this town,” Grace said dully.
“Oh, come on, I’m sure someone would hire you. One of your dad’s old friends? You know, as a favor to him?”
Grace winced inwardly. “I’d sooner die than shame Daddy by taking charity from one of his friends. They’d feel obligated, I’d feel pathetic…it would be the same as asking for a handout.”
Jenna shook her head. “You’re just as stubborn as you’ve always been.”
“I’m not stubborn, I’m mature.” She laughed. “Besides, if I worked for the school, I could negotiate tuition for Jimmy into the deal, and we’d keep exactly the same hours.”
“That makes sense. And it is a good school,” Jenna acknowledged with a sympathetic smile. “Jimmy’d like the horses.”
“That’s what I thought. But it’s not like I have the option of taking the job.”
“Well, there are minuses to it too. This is probably for the best.”
“Unemployment, in this case, is not for the best.”
“Surely there’s something else you can do that would fit the bill. Somewhere.”
Across the room, Luke had stopped and was talking to a petite blonde with a heart-shaped butt and a waist the size of Grace’s thigh. Drawing her attention away from the two, Grace pulled the bowl of peanuts over and took some. To hell with fat grams. “Yes, I’m sure. I’ll find something else,” she said, still watching Luke with a growing constriction in her chest. Nerves. But the anxiety she was trying to escape continued to escalate. Her breath stopped when she noticed Luke glance in her direction, but he didn’t seem to see her.
Jenna followed her gaze and asked, “So why did he turn you down?”
“I’m not sure.” She’d remembered he was great-looking, of course, but she hadn’t remembered just how great-looking he was. The jerk. “I believe he thinks I’m not clever enough to pass the test and then drive the big, bad bus,” Grace said, taking a last sip of beer. Part of her was actually reluctant to leave, but she didn’t trust herself to be entirely civil to Luke if he should see her. “And if I screwed up after he’d hired me, he’d look really bad in front of the board.”
Suddenly, Luke turned and walked purposefully in her direction. It felt as though all the noise and music and people receded into
