Falling for Grace (14 page)

“
Gorgeous,” exclaimed
Ellen.

“
You’re a whiz with a blow
dryer, girl,” Wanda added.

“
Not too shabby,” said
Kelly remarked, surveying her work from several angles.

“
You really like it?”
asked Bets.

“
Uh-huh,” the other women
chimed in unison.

“
Then let’s
go.”

“
Wait! Blow dry my shirt!”
she told Kelly.

Bets had no longer flung the words from her
mouth than Kelly had dried her clothes as well and each of them
scrambled for the door. To Gracie, it was like something out of
some insane Lucy and Ethyl spoof.

They’d all gone mad. She was convinced.

Before she realized it, Gracie put two
fingers between her lips and whistled the most unladylike whistle
she’d whistled in her life. She owed that to her cousin Eric who
taught her how to do that when she was twelve.

The crew stopped dead in their tracks and
slowly turned to look at her. Kelly still had her blow dryer in her
hand.

“
Just where in the hell do
the five of you think you are going?”

Constance squared her
shoulders and looked Gracie straight in the eyes. “To
Geeks
,” she
challenged.

Gracie gulped and stared Constance right
back.

She was losing her groupies.

She didn’t quite know what to do about
it.

“
Well?” Constance
prompted.

Gracie glanced from one woman to another,
took a deep breath, squared her shoulders just like Constance and
drew herself up into her full five-foot-ten-inches height. It was
now or never.

“
Without me?” she
squeaked.

A small grin curled at one corner of
Constance’s mouth and snaked around to the other side producing a
full grin. Gracie hated herself at that precise second in time.

Constance had won.

Damn.

* * * *

Carson glanced up just as
the entourage entered
Geeks
. His gaze trailed the crew as
the older woman named Constance, followed by her Friday night
cohorts, picked their way through the sparse crowd toward the bar.
He had to stifle a smile. Two Friday nights in a row. Wonder what
Gracie would think.

But just as those words turned over in his
brain, Gracie stepped right through his door behind them, startling
him.

“
Damn,” he whispered.
“What does she want?” He found it odd that since she’d chosen to
avoid him most of the week, she would venture in for Happy
Hour.

There had to be a reason.

Probably wanted to blast him because the
music was too loud or that his “undesirable” crowd was causing too
much “undesirable” traffic in front of her shop or that he was
stealing her customers or something, he thought.

But he was completely taken by surprise when
she didn’t even toss a glance his way and simply made a beeline
straight toward Contance and her cronies. She looked neither right
nor left but kept her gaze on her friends. He was even more puzzled
when she sidled up to the bar and slipped her delicate little
behind onto a bar stool, her back stiff and her heels daintily
hooked on a stretcher beneath the stool.

She looked about as comfortable as a gobbler
on Thanksgiving eve.

He’d waited all week for some indication
that she wanted him to leave. Particularly after the Bandit thing.
He’d spoken briefly and succinctly to her a few times later in the
week. A quick “good morning” in the stairwell, or a cordial “hello”
at Amie’s. He’d sensed she was edgy, contemplating and choosing her
words carefully, as though she had a whole lot she wanted to say to
him but was waiting for the precise moment or exactly the right
words to enter her head before she commenced.

It was driving him crazy. He needed to know
what her intentions were about his lease.

Of course, the lease was airtight. He knew
that for certain. He didn’t want to, nor would he, push the
issue—but he had an airtight case for keeping the lease at least a
year.

He couldn’t go back to Louisville now. He’d
pulled Izzie out of school, turned over his law practice to Jack,
and put his house on the market. There was no turning back. And
Gracie Hart didn’t know it, but she would have a fight on her hands
if she chose to back out on their agreement.

Much as he hated to lock horns with her—he
actually liked Grace Hart—he would do it because that would be the
one obstacle in his path to achieving his goal.

His goal of a new and stable life for
Izzie.

Gracie Hart would not interfere.

No way. No how.

“
Barkeep! How ‘bout some
service over here?”

Carson groaned at Constance’s words. He
liked the older woman and she was teasing him, he knew. She was a
free-spirited senior citizen who spoke her mind and didn’t act her
age. She always made him smile. They’d talked at length a few
nights earlier about some of her Peace Corp experiences in the
sixties and the years she spent working in the Carter
administration in Washington. Interesting woman, to say the least.
His groan had nothing to do with Constance and the fact that he was
about to take an order for a round of drinks from her and her
friends—friends which no doubt would hang around a while
tonight—but had everything to do with the fact that he would soon
have to face Gracie Hart for more than a brief encounter.

He might actually have to be pleasant to
her.

Ah. Carson had to stifle a small grin. That
just might be the ticket. Perhaps he should just use his manly
charms to woo her into compliance.

Truth be known, Gracie’s avoidance had
bothered him more than he cared to admit. There were moments when
he recalled the scene in front of their shops several days back,
right after he’d frightened her and made her drop the watering can
on her toe, that sent a warm surging into his stomach. The very
instance he’d reached out for her dainty foot and had attempted to
slowly massage away her pain kept creeping back into his head. He’d
felt a sort of connection that night, something....

Wooing Gracie Hart into compliance would not
be a painful task, to say the least.

At that thought, Carson groaned and shook
his head. “Last thing you need, Price, is to romance and sweet-talk
the woman,” he murmured to himself. “You’ve got enough on your
hands without sending out the wrong signals to some unsuspecting
female.”

Truth was that Carson had no intention of
ever getting involved with another woman. Not after experiencing
what he had when Marci left. Nope. Never again.

Raising Izzie was his top
priority. His
only
priority. Romancing women was, well, way on the back
burner.

“
Woo-hoo, Mr. Bartender?”
Kelly the cosmetologist waved his way.

Carson glanced back once more to the women
and smiled as the Kelly grinned widely back and simultaneously
winked. Gulping, he plastered a smile on his face and approached
them.

“
We’re ba-ack,” one of
them chimed.

“
I see.” Carson smiled.
“My Friday night groupies, eh?”

“
He’s such a cute thing,
isn’t he?” Ellen patted his hand.

“
Come Carson, be our
boy-toy. Won’t you?” teased Constance.

Carson felt himself flush.

“
Such a love machine.
Grrrr...” Bets winked saucily and did a little disco
move.

“
Hubba hubba.” That was
from Wanda.

Carson caught a glimpse of Gracie as her
eyes widened in what looked to be disbelief at the sexual banter
her friends were dishing out. That’s when Carson decided to get in
on the game. Grace Hart was definitely uncomfortable.

And uncomfortable was definitely cute on
her.

He didn’t like where his thoughts were
leading him.

“
So what shall we have
tonight, ladies? A dip into a Fuzzy Navel? A Screaming Orgasm? A
little Sex-on-the-Beach? Or something wilder?”

“
Oh! Sex-on-the-Beach!
That’s what I want!” Ellen called out excitedly. “I haven’t had sex
on the beach since Henry died!”

Carson grinned, trying hard not to think
about Ellen having sex anywhere.

“
Ellen, he wants your
drink order! Not the details of your sex life!” This was from
Wanda.

“
Oh, but Ellen, do tell!
Do tell! I wanna know,” Kelly insisted.

“
Well,” she began, “it was
1976 and we were vacationing in this little place
called—“

Abruptly, Gracie stood and blurted out, “My
God, I can’t believe I’m hearing this!”

For the next ten seconds or so, the entire
group was quiet, all eyes on the tall blonde.

Carson let his gaze shift from Gracie to the
five women, and back again.

“
Gracie, sit down and quit
being a prude.”

That was from Constance.

Carson watched Gracie’s eyes widen even
more, her mouth open, then close, then open and close again very
quickly. Not even a whimper escaped her lips.

Then she sat right back down again.

He took drink orders from each of them.

Including Gracie.

Chapter Nine

There, take that! Let them
even think about calling
me
a prude again
.

With near precision aim, or as much
precision aim as she could muster under the circumstances, Gracie
sank another olive into the martini glass on the sink. From her
seat at the bar, the glass was sitting approximately five feet away
on the counter against the wall. With the olive carefully
positioned between her thumb and forefinger, she slightly closed
one eye and tossed another across the empty space between.

Plop!

Oh yes, she was good. The glass was half
full already.

And it was only her, hm, what? Her third
martini?

Or was it her fourth?

Couldn’t tell from the olives piling up in
the martini glass, she knew, she’d stolen most of them from behind
the bar when Carson wasn’t looking.

Oh, hell, she thought. Eating olives and
slurping martinis—she’d puff up like a blowfish by morning.

Slowly, Gracie leaned lower into the bar and
placed her cheek against the cool, wooden surface. It was late and
she was tired. She was also hot. Her brain felt slightly
shrink-wrapped. The music from that stupid jukebox was bouncing
around inside her skull, not to mention the poinging of those
arcade machines. Her eyelids felt like sandpaper was stuck to the
backs of them.

She was most likely a bit tipsy.

But, she wasn’t a prude.

Nope.

Not Grace Elizabeth Hart.

She was the life of the damned party. Poo
poo on Constance and whomever else doubted her party-hardyness.
Now, if she just knew where Constance and the others had
gone...

Perhaps she should take a nap. Just a little
one.

“
Gracie, wake up, honey.
We’re leaving.”

Gracie sat up like a shot and tried to focus
on the face belonging to the voice in front of her, but all she
could distinguish was a fuzzy blob of colors that must represent a
human being of some sort, and a dull pain that landed with a thud
across her forehead.

“
Huh?”

“
Time to go,
Sweety.”

“
Don’t wanna.” Gracie
slunk back down and put her cheek against the bar again. Ah, that
felt so good.

Someone tugged at her arm. “Now, honey.
Before you pass out totally and we have to carry you.”

Gracie didn’t look up, partially waved a
leaden arm at the voice, and closed her eyes. There were more
voices behind her, beyond her consciousness almost, but she really
didn’t care what the voices said.

All she wanted was to sleep...

Sometime later she realized the music and
the poinging had stopped thrumming in her head and the lights
weren’t nearly so harsh against her closed eyes and that the wooden
counter against her cheek had been replaced with something warm and
firm, but yet much softer than the bar.

That was about the same time she realized
that someone was quietly talking into her ear—although she couldn’t
quite understand what that someone was saying—and even through the
fuzz and haze of her brain it felt suspiciously like someone had
lifted her and was carrying her somewhere....

She wasn’t quite sure where.

Oh well, it didn’t matter, did it?

* * * *

“
Okay, Sleeping Beauty,
let’s get this over with.”

Carson whispered the words ever so softly
because he had no desire to wake Gracie from her more-than-tipsy
state as he carried her through his bar, ascended the back
stairway, stepped through her apartment, and gently deposited her
on her antique four-poster bed.

Constance had made sure Gracie’s apartment
was unlocked before she’d left when it became obvious that the
women were not going to budge her from the small nest she’d made at
the bar. Luckily, it had been a slow night and Gracie hadn’t made a
nuisance of herself while she chugged martinis and slam-dunked
olives into glasses. She was a quiet drunk, lost in her own little
world. Her friends were pretty much amazed, he knew, and when he
realized that they were just letting her get drunk, he even
questioned why they would do that.

“
Do her some good,”
Constance had said.

“
She needs to loosen up a
bit,” Kelly chimed in.

“
She’ll be old before her
time if she doesn’t get out and live a little,” Ellen
added.