Charming Grace (40 page)

“
Gracie.
His husky morning voice nearly melted my legs. “What are you—”

“I can’t stay more than a second. I brought you a gift. From Marvin.”

I held out a small box. Boone opened it and lifted a carved wooden figure of a snake. “This is good whittlin’. Marvin made this?”

“No. Harp made it. He gave it to Marvin as a thank-you for helping him track the Turn-Key. Now Marvin wants you to have it.” I paused. “And so do I.”

Boone’s eyes gleamed. He carefully set the talisman on a small table behind him. Then he took one long step back to the open door and snared me gently by the shoulders. “
Gracie.
”

He and I spent the next sixty seconds locked in each other’s arms. “Please, stop,” I whispered. “I have to go before anyone sees me here.” He released me by slow degrees, dragging his fingertips down my arms and finally grabbing my hands, bringing them to his mouth for an angry kiss on each palm. “I wish I could—”

“Sssh. People are whispering that I’m
using
you to hurt the movie. I’m afraid I am doing that, whether I mean to or not.” I stepped back, staggering with desire, guilt, confusion, misery. “Fair warning. I
am
taking advantage of you, and you’re
letting
me. You risked Stone’s anger again over a snake—”

“No. A snake’s just a snake.”

I smiled sadly. “That’s what Adam said to Eve, and look at the trouble it caused.”

Chapter 17

Regardless of my regrets, the plan I’d set in motion began to spin out of my control. Transfixed by the frightening spectacle on the river bank below us, G. Helen, Leo, Mika and I ignored our pecan-crusted trout filets. The Oar House was an old cabin turned restaurant, deep in the woods overlooking the Chestatee. From our porch seat we could see Abbie, who stood by the river, making a dramatic figure among the dark summer greenery against a background of roaring, storm-surged water. Moving as if in a trance, she slung pebbles in the vague direction of the water. But the pebbles veered wildly, even arching sideways to land in the shrubs a few yards away. On the riverside patio, diners ducked.

“She’s scaring people,” Mika yipped.

“She’s scaring
Boone
,” I said darkly.

Boone, Tex, and Mojo stood nearby, ready to grab her if she fell in. Boone looked grim and worried. Tex and Mojo wore life jackets and held ropes. Abbie shut her eyes and methodically fired off a few more misguided pebbles. The Chestatee roared past her, rusty and churning. Ordinarily the river ran about two feet deep and could be crossed with a few minutes of lazy wading. That day, it was over a man’s head, and deadly.

G. Helen shook her head. “Tell me again.
What
is that idiot doing?”

“She’s pretending to be me,” I said. “She’s rehearsing
me
.”

“Rehearsing what?” Leo asked. “How to nerf your rep?”

“Speak English,” G. Helen ordered.

Leo grinned. “Sorry.
Nerf your rep
is cyber-game talk for ‘look stupid.’ Nerf means ‘bring down.”

“Weaken,” Mika added. “
Zap.
’”

“Ah hah.” G. Helen snorted. “Then yes, Abbie’s nerfing Grace’s rep.”

I winced. “I told her I used to come here alone when Harp was on assignment, tracking the Turn-Key. I’d stand by the river and skip rocks on the water. I called it ‘sinking my worry rocks.’ Abbie wants to understand me better. To feel my pain.”

Mika snorted. “Her aim’s so bad she can barely hit the river.”

I stood. “I’m going down there and stop her. She’s going to get someone hurt.”

Boone.

Abbie Meyers drowns in bizarre river ritual on location for Senterra film while under protection of Stone’s private security team. Security guards deemed ‘stupider than dirt.’

I could see the headlines.

“Noleene, I say we just lasso her,” Tex whispered, jiggling his rescue rope. “Just lasso her and say we thought she was fallin’ in, then tie her up real quick and haul her to the car. We could say we thought she was havin’ some kind of
fit
.”

Mojo grunted. “When her agent, her manager, and her lawyers got through with us,
we’d
be the ones who were tied up.”

I nodded. “I’ll give her another sixty seconds, then either she backs away from the river or I’ll
carry
her away.” I kept my eyes on Abbie without blinking, alert for any little fumble or stumble. The bird-dog routine was rough duty, considering that Grace was watching me from up on the restaurant’s porch and I wanted to watch her back. Nothing messes up a man’s day more than being hard for a woman he can’t grab while not being allowed to grab a woman who’s making his life hard.

“Countdown,” I said grimly, and clicked a timer on my watch.

“I’ll talk to her,” a voice said behind us.

Grace walked up beside me. Her auburn hair was up in a braided twist; she wore creamy, flowing pants and a billowy matching blouse that snuggled against her curves and didn’t want to leave wherever it made friends. When she started forward, I blocked her with an arm. “Talk to her, yeah, Gracie. But do it from right where you’re standing.”

“Harp and I grew up around this river. I’m not afraid of it.”

“Well,
I
am. If you and her fall in I’ll have to go fishing for
both
of you. I think the game warden sets a one-woman-per-fishermen limit around here.”

Grace huffed gently. Then she called out in a coaxing voice, “Abbie? Drop your rocks and let’s go have a glass of wine.”

Abbie twitched as if waking up, pirouetted on muddy, expensive hiking shoes, and stared at Grace. “What kept you from trying to drown yourself after Harp was killed? What gave you the strength to go on?”

“Nothing ruins a funeral more than a bloated corpse with a fishy smell.”

“Please, be serious.” Abbie threw out her arms. “Embrace your emotions! Help me overcome the negatives in Stone’s script! If I can identify and portray your
essence
then Stone’s terrible dialogue won’t matter!” She scooped her arms dramatically. Behind her, the river rumbled like a freight train. She teetered.

“Abbie!” Grace called. “Abbie, stand still!”

“Stop scooping,” I yelled.

Abbie didn’t hear us. “Embrace your emotions and be free!” She scooped her arms again, caught up in her own make-believe world, imploring Grace. “Help me find your essence and embrace your emotions! Eeeeeeee!”

Embracing the emotion of falling backwards into a six-foot-deep mountain river trying to take the express lane all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, she disappeared into the muddy water.

“Sssh, Boone. Slowly. Don’t move too much. Sssh. It’ll hurt if you move too fast.” Grace whispered to me as I fumbled for a hold on her. I kept my eyes shut but still tried to wrap one hand around her arm or any other good Grace part. She guided my hands back to my side then stroked my face. “Boone. Wake up. You cracked a rib and gashed your head in the river. Remember?”

Hmmm
. I remembered only what really mattered to me. That Grace wasn’t hurt. That Abbie wasn’t hurt, either—no thanks to Grace, who took a swat at her after I pulled her out of the river.

Now I pretended to keep dozing, so Grace would keep touching me.
Nice.
Touching the old bullet scar on my left side, tracing a knife scar beneath one collarbone, then another knife scar below my navel, then dabbing cool fingers around the stitched up spot on my forehead. She pulled a cool sheet and soft blanket back up my bare chest. I reached for her, again. Dull, not-quite-drugged-enough pain went through my right side.

I squinted up into the shadowy light of a pretty hospital room in Dahlonega’s Chestatee Regional. Grace was sitting on the bed next to me, one damp, mud-splattered leg drawn up under the other. Her hair was a red-brown mat of drying waves. River trash speckled her face. She looked down at me with agonized eyes and gently stroked my hair away from my forehead. “You never give up,” she said. “What am I going to do about you?”

I refused to screw up the moment by answering that. I was no fool. This was heaven. I groaned for sympathy. “What hit me?”

“The river.”

“I know, but did it sneak back in here after I went to sleep and hit me
again
?”

“Ssssh. Rest. Stone and Diamond are downstairs holding a press conference hawking the authentic dangers involved in making their authentic movie. When they’re done Stone plans to tromp up here and
personally
sit with you until you’re released in the morning. Or at least he’ll come up and say goodnight then
personally
order Tex and Mojo to sit with you. They’re covering for me while I visit you. I can only stay a few more minutes. It’s my job to stop this movie.” She stroked the back of her fingers along my jaw. “It’s your job to stay safe and stay out of my way.”

“If you’re all right, I’m all right.”

She studied me a long time. “I’m fine,” she whispered.

“You didn’t try to smack Abbie again after I passed out, did you?”

“I controlled myself. She’s in a private room conferring with her publicist and her manager about the press release they plan to write about her artistic acting exercise.”

“Her
what
?”

She believes she nearly died for her art. I pointed out that you nearly died for it, too.”

“Promise me something—don’t ever jump in a river and try to save me, again.”

“I couldn’t help myself. How could I let you die for Abbie’s art? That would be like sacrificing you for the cinematic equivalent of an Elvis portrait painted on velveteen.”

I reached for her again. This time I got lucky and snagged her by one arm. “I’ll make you a deal. Just give me a kiss. The one I didn’t get at Chestatee Ridge. The one I barely got at my motel room the other day.”

“
Boone.
I don’t want to go, but I have to.”

I pulled her toward me. “Just kiss me, Gracie, and then I promise you, you’ll be right here inside me, all night.”

She made a soft, lost sound, took my face between her hands, and melted her mouth onto mine. The kiss was gentle and wild and deep and wet and everything else you can say that’s wonderful between two people who slip through each other’s skin as easy as we did. I shifted from the sensations, and my side ached like a bastard. When I made a that-hurts-but-don’t-stop noise she whispered, “Don’t move so much,” then moved downward, to my throat. “Does that feel better?”

“That’s better, but keep tryin’.”

She eased the covers down my chest. Kissed me there. “Hurt?”

“Twinges. Try a little further down.”

She uncovered my stomach. Tested several spots in the center. “No pain?”

“You’re getting there.”

She eased the covers down another few inches. Kissed the skin just above the waist band of my white, cotton, practical-Catholic BVD’s. “No problem here?”

“Only the obvious one.” My voice was hoarse by then.

“
That’s
no problem.”

A few seconds later the BVD’s no longer covered what God meant them to cover, and my problem stood up and said
I love you, Gracie.
She eased her hand into place, posed her mouth just so, then hesitated only long enough to burn me up with a tearful look through her wild tangle of river-drenched hair. She struggled with her voice for a second. Then, “Twenty-five years, when were just kids, I sat in a room in this same hospital with Harp, the day we found him at Ladyslipper Lost.”

I’m not Harp
, I started to say.
I’m not going to get myself killed to prove I deserve you.
The evidence said otherwise, but when she lowered her mouth on me, I put that thought out of my mind.