Amazing Gracie (2 page)

“Max, I will not have dinner with you,” she told him for the umpteenth time. “Not tonight, not ever. How many times do I have to say it?”

“Not even to save your precious flower budget?”

“No, Max. It’s a very bad idea. You’re my boss. Socializing would only complicate things. Besides, you and I don’t see eye to eye on anything. We’d just ruin our digestion.”

He shrugged as he always did after she’d rejected one of his invitations. “Suit yourself.” He returned his attention to the paperwork in front of him, dismissing Gracie as clearly as if he’d gestured toward the door.

Maybe it was because she was tired or frustrated or angry or all three, but Gracie stared at Max’s down-turned head for several minutes, then reached a decision that had been several weeks in the making.

“I quit,” she said softly but firmly.

That brought his head up. “What?” For an instant, shock registered in his usually cool gray eyes.

“You heard me. I quit.”

“Now, Gracie—”

“Don’t you
now-Gracie
me,” she snapped back. “You won’t listen to a thing I say. You’re determined to run this
chain as if it were a string of economy hotels. Obviously, I am no longer of any value to Worldwide, so I might as well take my expertise to another hotel chain where they care about appearances and service and comfort.”

There was the faintest hint of worry in Max’s expression, but once again he shrugged and said, “Suit yourself.”

Stunned by his indifference, Gracie paused long enough to sweep that blasted daffodil up and drop it into the trash can before leaving. Tempted as she was to slam the door, she didn’t want to disturb the guests by creating a scene. Even now, old habits died hard.

Back in her small suite of rooms off the hotel lobby, fighting tears, she began methodically packing. Because she moved frequently from hotel to hotel to troubleshoot problems, there was very little to pack, nothing personal needing to be shipped. She could be on a plane back to the States tonight…if only she had someplace to go.

Realizing that there was not one single destination in the entire world where someone would be waiting for her hit her like a blow. She sank to the edge of the bed.

“What now, Gracie?” she whispered.

Though her decision to quit had been far from impulsive, never once had she considered the next step. Now she had just abandoned the most exciting, rewarding, wonderful job she’d ever had, one she’d worked very hard to get. She was twenty-nine-going-on-thirty. Her last three relationships had been total disasters. All three men had ended up married to someone else—someone who stayed put—within days of breaking up with her.

The relationships weren’t worth talking about, but her career, well, that was not something she was quite so
willing to walk away from without a fight. She had loved the hotel business from the day she first discovered room service. In Monopoly, hotels were always her primary objective. In her mind’s eye, they were always small, elegant and discreet.

Worldwide had always exemplified that image. At least until recently. Shifting gears to accommodate all of the executive changes had turned a dream job into a nightmare. She’d been right to quit, she consoled herself. It was a smart decision.

So why did she feel so lost and empty?

A knock on her door prevented her from having to come up with an answer for the inexplicable “Yes?”

“Gracie, it’s Max.”

“Go away.”

“I think we should talk.”

“I disagree.”

“Would you open the blasted door and let me in, please. Or do you want the entire hotel to hear our conversation?”

That caught her attention as nothing else might have. She opened the door. She did not move aside to let him in. Max was much too forceful a presence to allow herself to be alone with him while she was in such a vulnerable state. He’d tried too many times to turn business conversations into something personal for her to trust him—or herself, at the moment—in such intimate surroundings. She might not much like the man at the moment, but he had a very attractive shoulder she could cry on.

“Yes?” she said.

He peered past her to the row of suitcases. “You’re determined to leave, I see.”

“I told you I was going.”

“Where?”

Ah, she thought, that was the million-dollar question. Money wasn’t a problem. Her heart was the problem. The only place she wanted to be was at the center of a thriving hotel. Her parents were dead. There had been no brothers or sisters, not even an extended family of aunts and uncles she’d been close to. She’d made a few close friends in college, but over the years, thanks to so much job-related traveling, she’d lost touch with all of them.

“That’s none of your business,” she said, hedging.

“No place to go, huh?”

“Of course I have a place to go,” she snapped. “I’m going to…Virginia.” She seized the destination out of thin air, based solely on some distant, idyllic memory of a family vacation in a small beach town there twenty years before.

“Virginia?”

Max said it as if he weren’t quite familiar with the state or even the country it was in. He’d obviously been in Europe way too long. Maybe she had been, too.

“Yes,” she said, warming to the idea. “It’s lovely there this time of year.”

“How in hell do you know that?”

“It’s spring,” she said. “It’s lovely everywhere in spring.”

“Of course,” he said wryly. The worried frown was back between his brows. “You’ll stay in touch?”

“Why?”

“In case you decide you want to come back, of course.”

“I won’t,” she said with certainty. Whatever happened, whatever she decided to do with her life, she would not come back to Worldwide as long as it was in the hands of Maximillian Devereaux.

“You’ll always have a job with us,” he said anyway. “Remember that when you tire of watching the dogwood and the cherry blossoms bloom.”

“I’d keep the flower references out of the conversation, if I were you. Flowers are what brought us to this impasse, remember?”

“You’ll be back,” he said with arrogant confidence. “You and I have unfinished business.” His gaze settled on her and lingered. “Professional and personal.”

She refused to be shaken by the intensity of his gaze, but only because there was no responding, wild leap of her pulse. She stared straight into his eyes and slowly shook her head. “Don’t bet the wine cellar on it, Max.”

And then she slammed the door in his face. Forever after, she thought she would remember with a great deal of satisfaction his thoroughly stunned expression. She doubted Max could recall the last time a mere mortal, especially a woman, had ever said no to him and not left the door open for a yes.

Gracie checked her bank balance and gave herself five months—the rest of spring and the entire summer—to pull herself together. She made that decision on the plane. Then, exhausted and emotionally drained, she slept the rest of the way to Washington.

At Dulles Airport, she bought a map, rented a car and started driving east on the Beltway, turning south on I–95 to Fredericksburg then heading east again. Seagull Point was a tiny speck on the map, tucked between Colonial Beach and Montross, right in the heart of history as the guidebooks liked to say.

Passing gently rolling farmland along the Rappahannock River, she began to have her doubts. Would she be
able to survive for long in the middle of nowhere? True, the dogwoods were blooming in profusion, their white and pink blossoms standing out against the budding green of giant oaks. Tulips and the last of the daffodils bobbed in the lilac-scented breeze. The scenery was idyllic, but the only town she passed through, King George, was hardly a metropolis. There wasn’t even a traffic light in the middle of town. She barely had to slow down until she hit the intersection with Route 205 and made the turn toward Colonial Beach.

Pausing at the next red light at Route 301, she considered turning left and heading north, across the Potomac River Bridge, back to D.C. or maybe Baltimore. Instead, though, she kept going, determined to follow the plan she’d set for herself. Making plans, seeing to details, was something at which she excelled. It was why, until recently, she’d been such a valued Worldwide employee. She was organized to a fault.

By three in the afternoon she’d found a small hotel on the Potomac River. No one would ever confuse it with a Worldwide property, but it was clean and the mattress was firm, just the way she liked it. It would do until she could find a rental property for the summer, she concluded.

By five she’d finished a take-out carton of Kung Po chicken, showered and watched the early news out of Washington. Though she’d intended to shift her body onto local time by staying awake until nine at least, by five-thirty she was sound asleep. Naturally, because of that, she was wide awake before dawn.

Years of starting the day while others slept made the early hour seem almost normal. Except there were no lists to make, no calendar to check for meetings, no
details to see to. There was absolutely nothing demanding her attention and no reason at all to get out of bed.

“Go back to sleep,” she coached herself, forcing her eyes shut and trying to stay perfectly still. She willed herself to relax. After fifteen increasingly restless minutes, she realized she didn’t know how.

“Tomorrow will be better,” she promised herself as she dressed and headed out to find someplace serving breakfast.

Over scrambled eggs and toast at the Beachside Cafe, she read the
Washington Post.
As she lingered over coffee, she dug in her purse for paper and made a list of things to do, starting with contacting a real estate agent about available rentals. She wanted something small, facing the river so she could sit on the porch and drink her morning coffee or her evening tea and watch the play of colors on the water.

“More coffee, miss?”

Gracie glanced up at the waitress and smiled, noting that her name was Jessie and that she had the reddest hair Gracie had ever seen, especially on a woman who had to be in her sixties. “Yes, please. Any idea what time I’ll be able to find a real estate office open around here?”

“Oh, it’s catch as catch can until nine or so, though Johnny Payne usually stops in here around eight. If he doesn’t have what you’re looking for, he can find it for you.”

Gracie glanced at the clock behind the counter. “Maybe I’ll just stick around then. Do you mind?”

“Be my guest. We’re never full on a weekday till after the season starts. I’ll send Johnny over when he comes in. Having breakfast with a pretty woman for a change will make his day. Those old coots he’s usually with ain’t nothing to look at.”

Gracie grinned. “Thanks.”

“You need anything else, just holler. I’ll check on your coffee now and again.”

It was three cups of coffee later, just as Gracie was beginning to get a worrisome caffeine buzz, when the man who turned out to be Johnny Payne ambled in. He headed for the counter, only to be waylaid by the waitress and directed toward Gracie. He was tall and raw-boned with a flushed complexion, liberal gray in his once-brown hair and a twinkle in his hazel eyes.

“Mr. Payne?” Gracie guessed when he stood beside her table, his hands shoved in the pockets of his chinos. Christmas-red suspenders held them up.

“Yes, ma’am, that would be me. What can I do for you?”

“Sit down, if you have a minute. I don’t want to keep you from your breakfast.”

“Not me,” he said, and pulled out a chair. “I had breakfast at home an hour ago. I come in here to fuel up on coffee and gossip.”

“Well, I certainly won’t keep you from having your coffee. As for the gossip, I’ll try not to keep you from that for too long, either.”

He grinned at her. “Not to worry. Nothing much happens around here anyway, leastways nothing that’s more exciting than a pretty stranger asking about property. That is what you wanted to see me about, isn’t it?”

“It is. I’m looking for a summer rental.”

“On the river?”

“Absolutely.”

“Big or small?”

“Small will do.”

He looked her over, his expression thoughtful. “You mind investing a little elbow grease?”

“Not at all.” It would keep her mind off of the decisions that had to be made.

He gave a brief nod of satisfaction, as if she’d just passed some sort of test. “I’ve got just the place. Owner died a few years back and his kids don’t give a hoot about the house. Can’t seem to agree about selling it, either. In the meantime, it’s for rent. Won’t suit just anybody because of its size. Two bedrooms, a big kitchen, and a living room. Most folks want the Taj Majal in the summer, so they can fill the place with everyone from back home they were trying to get away from. You know what I mean?”

Actually, she had no idea. She’d taken only one real vacation in her entire life—to this town, as a matter of fact. She nodded just the same.

“Anyway, the price is negotiable depending on how long you want it for and how much work you’re willing to put in yourself to clean it up and save me calling in a maid service.” At Gracie’s surprised look, he chuckled. “That would be my wife. She’d be mighty happy to let someone else chase the mice away for a change.”

Gracie swallowed hard and reminded herself she wasn’t at Worldwide anymore. “There are mice?”

“Not so many now that the weather’s warming up. Once you sweep away the dust bunnies and get to stirring around inside, the last of ’em will go.”

“I certainly hope so,” she muttered. “When can you show it to me?”

“Now’s as good a time as any, I suppose. You have a car with you?”

“I left it at the hotel.”

“Then you can ride with me. I’ll stop by the office and pick up the keys.”

Gracie wasn’t sure what she’d expected, someplace ramshackle and neglected, probably. At any rate, it wasn’t the tidy little white cottage with the Wedgwood-blue shutters and sprawling porch across the front. A pair of white rockers had been upended on the porch. That was all she needed.

“I’ll take it,” she said at once.

“You haven’t even been inside yet,” Johnny Payne protested.

“Okay, maybe you’re right. Maybe I was being impulsive, but this is exactly what I was looking for.”