Falling for Grace (12 page)

Yes, that’s what she would do.

But first, she had to get her ducks all in a
row. There was no way she was going to let Carson Price’s business
next door ruin her business—the business she’s worked so hard to
build.

Punching her pillow and wadding it up until
a tight little ball, she shoved it under her head, closed her eyes
tightly, and tried to erase the scene still etched in her mind from
moments earlier.

A bar. No way.

Carson Price was insane.

There had to be some way out of that lease.
Tomorrow, she would find it.

* * * *

“
What do you mean there is
nothing we can do?” Gracie paced from one corner of Jim Gray’s
massive oak desk to the other, her head shaking and her arms firmly
crossed over her chest. “There has got to be something, some
loophole. Look again.”

“
Nope. Gracie, look, I
told you. It’s clean as a pin. No loopholes. Everything above
board, no tricks, no fine print. Nothing to make the lease null and
void. Your signature clinched this deal. I’m sorry, hon, but he’s
got the place for a year. If you breach the contract, you’re gonna
owe him a heck of a lot of money.”

Stopping, Gracie turned to look at Jim, her
father’s childhood friend and her attorney. He’d never once steered
her wrong before. There was no reason not to believe him now.

“
I was so stupid to sign
the lease that he drew up.”

“
Wouldn’t have been any
different had he signed the one you drew up, Gracie. A signed
contract is a signed contract. You willingly put your signature
there. He just tightened up a few things and made a couple of
others a little broad, all to his advantage, of course, but nothing
out of the ordinary.”

“
So it’s
legal.”

“
Every bit of
it.”

“
But he said he was going
to open a
café
.”

“
And he did.”

“
But he
didn’t!”

“
Oh, yes, Gracie, he
did.”

“
But not the kind I
thought he was going to open!”

“
That’s your perception,
honey, not his. He did what he said he was going to do. Even wrote
into the lease that he planned to apply for a liquor
license.”

Gracie threw up her hands. “Well, I assumed
he was going to serve wine and cheese or something!”

“
Well, he decided to serve
or something,” Jim replied.

Gracie wanted to scream and shout and stomp
her feet on the floor and throw a temper tantrum. She hated being
frustrated. And she hated being duped all the more.

Finally, she plopped into the leather
armchair across from Jim’s desk and slumped into a most unlady-like
posture. “I give up.”

“
You could fight
it.”

She arched a brow and sat up a little
straighter. “I could?” Maybe there was hope yet.

Jim nodded. “Yes. But you’d lose. And it
would be expensive. I wouldn’t advise it.”

Her arched brow fell.

“
Besides, he’s an
attorney, and a damned good one to boot. I don’t think either one
of us want to cross him.”

Gracie slumped back into the chair and
frowned. Money was not something she was rolling in, and she really
didn’t want to make an enemy of Carson. She just didn’t want a bar
next door. I could ruin everything. “I guess I cooked my own goose,
didn’t I?”

Jim leaned closer. “Not necessarily. If I
know you, Gracie, you’ll find some way to make all this work for
you, and not against you.”

“
Hmpht,” she replied and
glanced away. How in the world would a bar next door work
positively for a place like
Romantically
Yours
? She couldn’t think of one single
advantage.

* * * *

Carson looked sharply up from his work at
the bar, and stared out the shop window toward the street. What was
that noise?

Listening, he cocked his head to one
side.

Silence.

After a minute, he glanced back down at the
paperwork spread out before him.

Crash!

He glanced back up. Yes. That was something.
Definitely something.

“
Izzie?
” He looked to the ceiling, wondering what the child was
doing upstairs.

At that point, he heard another crash. Then
a shriek. And he knew both noises definitely weren’t coming from
upstairs.

They were coming from next door.

“
Ah, hell,” he muttered
and quickly rose. “Please don’t let that be Izzie.”

He rushed out his front door and into
Gracie’s shop, not having to stop to open her door because it was
wide open. The scene that met him made his stomach plummet to the
floor.

First and foremost, he’d never see a cat as
large as Gracie’s old shop cat Claire, move quite as quickly as she
was moving at that precise moment. It appeared she was doing
three-hundred-and-sixty degree rotations inside the shop, under
tables, over chairs, leaping onto display cabinets, sliding over
polished hard wood floors, tipping crystal goblets and knocking
over brass candlesticks. All the while she was making hissing
noises that he’d never heard come from any earthly cat before.

But that was probably due to the fact that
Izzie’s nymph of a Shit-Zhu pup, was hot on Claire’s heels, nipping
and yipping, ears flying and toenails clicking, leaping and sliding
and knocking things over right behind her.

On her tail was Izzie. A shoeless Izzie who
in the process of chasing both cat and pup, managed to slide with
an excited yelp into a table display full of Victorian cards and
papers. The table skidded into a mannequin draped in a satin robe.
The mannequin teetered, papers flew high into the air and then
landed haphazardly around all of them like a game of fifty-two
pickup, while Izzie sprawled out spread-eagle on the floor, finally
coming to rest beneath the table.

He heard a small oomph as she hit the wall.
Carson grimaced.

And bringing up the rear, her long skirt
flowing, several tendrils of hair escaping from her French roll,
her high-heels clicking on the floor, was Gracie. Just before she
reached his daughter, he heard her cry out as one of her heels
caught on the edge of an oriental throw rug, which sent her
tumbling under the table with Izzie.

A larger oomph reached his ears. He grimaced
again.

Then the mannequin fell with another loud
crash. The entire scenario must have happened in no less than five
seconds flat.

Hell, Carson thought. This wasn’t good.

This wasn’t good at all.

He raced toward the woman and the girl. The
cat and the pup were long gone. At this moment, he didn’t even care
where they were long gone to.

“
Are you two all
right?”

Reaching under the table, he grasped
Gracie’s forearm, trying to ignore that her skirt had rode up to
her thigh, and helped her into a sitting position. She thanked him,
rubbed an elbow, and then helped him go after Izzie. Together they
pulled her from underneath the table until she, too, was sitting
before them.

Izzie rubbed the back of her head.

“
You guys all right?”
Carson repeated.

“
Yes,” Gracie finally
said, only a slight scowl on her face.

Izzie nodded.

Carson watched as Gracie lifted a hand to
her hair and attempted to smooth back the wayward strands into her
clip as she glanced about the room, covertly surveying the
damages.

“
Don’t look,” he told
her.

Heaving in a big sigh, and then exhaling in
a short huff, she looked back to Carson. “And why shouldn’t I
look?”

“
Because it will only
depress you.”

“
But I have
to—”

“
In a minute.”

She stared at him. “In a minute, what?”

“
In a minute you can
assess the damages and add up the bill and start cleaning up. And
I’ll help you.” He looked down at his daughter now, who had
remained extremely quiet the past few minutes. “And so will Izzie.
We’ll gladly pay for the damages.”

Izzie frowned and looked to the floor.

Carson let it go for now. He looked back to
Gracie. “I have a good idea what happened. I hope that this—”

Gracie waved him off and stood. Carson stood
with her. “Mr. Price, it’s not her fault. Really. I let Izzie bring
the pup in. I didn’t think Claire would react like that. It’s not
the child’s fault. It’s mine.”

“
But—”

Gracie smoothed her skirt and straightened
her sweater. Tilting her head back, she looked him square in the
eyes. “Don’t blame her. Please, just go find your pup. I think both
animals ran out the back door. Don’t worry about Claire. She’ll
find her way home.”

Carson glanced down at Izzie then, her eyes
wide.

“
Bandit went out the back
door?”

Gracie crouched down to speak to her. “I’m
not sure. Why don’t you go look?”

Izzie glanced to her father and he nodded
his permission. The child shouted for her pup. After she was gone,
Carson looked back to Gracie. Hell, he didn’t need this today. She
was mad enough at him already. One more incident like this and she
might actually have grounds to boot them out.

“
You don’t have to take up
for her if she did something wrong, you know,” he told her. “I want
her to learn to own up to her mistakes.”

Gracie just stared at him. “Mr. Price, she’s
a beautiful child. A mischievous child, yes. But this one was not
her fault. I’m not blaming you. Or her. It was me. So go help your
daughter find your pup and quit worrying.”

It was blunt, but Carson wasn’t really
surprised. She’d been blunt the past couple of days. Still, he
expected that she’d want them to take the blame. Seems he was
wrong.

Carson stood for a moment longer looking at
Miss Grace Hart. For the life of him, he couldn’t figure the woman
out. First she ran hot, then cold. First she’s mad, then she’s
not.

Kept him damned confused.

Too damned confused.

That’s what worried him.

Women.

Chapter Eight

“
Are you mad at my
dad?”

Gracie stopped counting the money in her
cash drawer and peered across the counter at Izzie. There she
stood, the epitome of tomboy, scuffed knees peeking out from
beneath cut-off denims, lop-sided ponytail sticking out from a
crookedly placed ball cap, dirt-smudged cheeks, and floppy
high-tops with the laces untied. On her left hand was a ball glove;
in her right, a softball.

Taking a moment to assess the child, Gracie
had to smile. When she was Izzie’s age, she’d been exactly the
opposite of this child. Nothing but frilly dresses, ribbons and
bows, and dancing shoes. No ball gloves for her.

Still, she was captivated with Izzie. Even
though she didn’t want to admit it, she adored the child.

It was late Thursday afternoon and June had
turned hot and humid, but it was relatively cool in the shop, even
though the air conditioner was forced to run solidly. Izzie
insisted on skipping in and out of the shop all afternoon and
Gracie had made only one rule about that—no Bandit was to skip in
and out with her. She’d finally recovered from the incident earlier
in the week.

But she was certain the fanning front door
was causing another problem, elevating the shop’s temperature
several degrees.

Gracie wiped a trickle of perspiration from
her temple.

She liked the child. Had grown quite fond of
her over the last two weeks. Izzie had made her presence quite well
known in and out of the shop. And surprisingly, Gracie didn’t mind.
Not one bit. Not even after what had happened with the animals.

She wasn’t mad at the child at all.

She
was
still upset with the
father.

“
Or are you mad at
me?”

Surprised, Gracie glanced down at the imp.
“No, honey,” she replied. “I’m not mad at you! And I’m really not
mad at your father, either,” she told Izzie, “it’s just that we’re
having a bit of a, um, misunderstanding. That’s all.”

Izzie cocked her head to one side and stared
at Gracie. “Yeah, right.”

The child always threw her a curve ball.

“
You don’t believe
me?”

Izzie shook her head. “Nope.”

“
And why not?” Gracie
finished counting the bills, banded them, and slid them into her
money pouch with the checks. Now she was going after the
change.

Izzie leaned her elbows on counter. Her
little chin practically rested on the smooth oak surface; she was
barely tall enough to see over the thing.

“
Well,” she began, “my dad
has been grumpy all week, and you didn’t stay long at the party
last Friday, and he yells and tells me to stay away and not bother
you, and he still says we’re going to pay for the broken stuff, and
you won’t talk to him—I saw you 'noring him when you were watering
the flowers last night. And he won’t talk to you—I saw him 'noring
you at
Amie’s Place
the other morning at breakfast, and—”

Gracie put up a hand. “Stop. I get the
picture, Izzie. Perceptive little bugger, aren’t you?”

She grinned from ear to ear and nodded.
“What does per-cep-a-tive mean?”

Gracie smiled back at the scamp. “It means
that you notice things.”

The child nodded furiously this time. “I
notice lots of things.”

“
Oh, you do?”

“
Yep.”

“
Is that why you think
your father and I are mad at each other?”