step and forced herself to smile up at him. “I’m just tired. My body’s two hours ahead of my brain and the altitude is bothering me.”
“Is there anyone I can call for you? Your husband?”
Grace shook her head. “My...ex-husband is back in Boston.”
“You’re divorced?”
“I certainly hope so. Otherwise, Edward could end up in a lot of trouble with the law. He’s planning on getting married again come September. To his first ex-wife.”
Jack’s grin lit up his face. He’d always had a great smile.
“I heard your half of the conversation with your brother. Since he doesn’t need you, what do I have to do to sweet-talk you into restoring this place for me?”
What was she saying? Only a moment ago she was dreading spending any time with Jack for fear he’d discover her secret and now she was practically begging him to take the job!
Jack scratched the inside of his elbow again.
“That offer of a cure is still open, if it’ll clinch the deal.”
Jack’s eyes narrowed. “What are you really doing here, Gracie?”
“Grace,” she corrected. “I want this house restored.”
“And then what?”
“And then what, what?”
“Stop talking in riddles. Are you going to stay—or are you heading back to Boston?”
“You mean now?”
“Yes. Now. And then when the place is restored, are you flipping it, never to return to Spruce Lake?”
“My life is in Boston.” No way was she staying in this backwater where everyone knew everyone else’s business and the sidewalks were a death trap for expensive shoes. If Jack took the job, she wouldn’t have to hang around Spruce Lake supervising. She could get out of there, away from Jack, away from any fear that he’d discover her secret.
“Then I suggest you go back there. I’ll help you find another contractor who won’t mind putting his heart and soul into restoring a place only to have it sold off.”
“I’m not selling it, Jack. It has to stay in the family. That’s a promise I made to Aunt Missy.”
Before he could respond, she said, “I’m going to travel around Europe for the next couple of months.” She wondered where that had come from. In truth, Grace hadn’t given much thought to anything the past couple of days, not since little Cassie Greenfield died.
Her patient’s death—one of too many—had been the catalyst for Grace’s decision to throw everything in, get away from Boston and dying children and an ex-husband about to remarry and all the people who wanted to remind her of that while trying to set her up with their cousin, or brother or—heaven forbid—their uncle!
Just because Edward had been more than twice her age didn’t mean she was looking for another older man. It didn’t mean she was looking for another man, period! Edward had been a far from satisfactory husband or lover. But she’d married him in her first year of med school, when he was already a well-respected neurosurgeon. She’d craved the respect and financial security marrying Edward would bring. She’d basked in his compliments and ignored the thirty-year age gap—the age gap that meant he didn’t want any more children. He had two daughters and a son by his previous wife. They were all horrible to Grace—as was his ex-wife—whenever they happened to cross paths at social functions.
When Cassie Greenfield, a little girl who’d fought so hard and so bravely—like so many of her patients did against cancer—had died, something had died inside Grace. Cassie was the same age her daughter, Amelia, would be now. Her and Jack’s daughter.
The guilt she felt at having given up a healthy child, and the cumulative effect of treating so many who weren’t healthy, had come to a head that day.
Grace’s love of medicine and her belief in herself, that she could cure all the hurt and pain in the world, were shattered. She’d needed to get away, regroup, maybe think about another medical specialty. One that didn’t involve dying children.
There was a good reason she’d chosen to specialize in pediatrics—to atone for her sins. The guilt of giving her baby away bit deep. But the real sin she’d committed twelve years earlier was in not telling Jack—of not giving him a chance. That was the one she really needed to answer for. How she could even start to do that, Grace had no idea.
Jack scratched his elbow again. She knew that what he was suffering from was something she could easily cure. With no chance of Jack dying.
“What do you want from me, Jack?” she asked.
His eyebrows rose speculatively.
“Apart from that.”
He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Did I say anything?”
She grinned. That would doubtless be very nice. She wondered what it would be like to have a young, virile man like Jack make love to her. Instead of a selfish older man like Edward who was also a lousy lover.
Wondering what sort of lover Jack would be, now that he was a man—not a fumbling teen—Grace felt her face heat.
“Are you okay?” Jack asked. “You look flushed.”
“I’m fine,” she said, working to recover her equilibrium. “But can we negotiate? I’d very much like you to restore this house for me.”
“Then you’ll have to help with it,” he said, and glanced pointedly at her manicured nails.
“You’ve got to be joking! You have a foreman, so I assume you have a crew of workers. How would I be able to help?”
“You can sweep up, run down to the hardware store for supplies. Make lunch for the gang. Paint walls. Stuff like that.”
“And my trip to Europe?”
“You and I both know you just made that up.”
Grace chewed her lip. Jack was pretty shrewd. “I’d like to go to Europe sometime.”
“Then you can. When we’ve finished this project.”
We. The word scared her, especially in relation to Jack. They’d dated for two years but had only made love once—the night before Jack headed off for the peace corps and she left for college. Jack had excited her far more that fateful night than Edward ever did the entire time they were married.
And Jack had given her what Edward never could.
Why they’d waited so long to make love, she had no idea. But six weeks later, feeling as if she had a bad case of the flu but suspecting worse in spite of their use of birth control, Grace had purchased a pregnancy test.
When it came back positive, Grace knew she had only two options. Since the first went against her beliefs about preserving human life, she started making inquiries
