Falling for Grace (10 page)

“
I’m sure she’s fine,
too.” Carson glanced around. Still no kitty. Gracie figured Claire
had skidaddled at the first inkling of disaster. She wasn’t
worried. Claire was a cat who could take care of
herself.

Izzie took the pup away from him. “Bad
puppy,” she told the dog. “You have to stay out from under my
feet.”

Carson grasped Izzie’s chin and turned her
face so she would look at him. “Iz, I told you not to run on the
stairs. You...and the pup...could have been hurt very badly.”

Izzie cradled the puppy closer. “I know.
Sorry.”

Gracie heard Carson sigh and sensed his
relief. After a moment, he glanced up. At that precise second
Gracie realized she wasn’t an unobserved bystander to the situation
any longer. It probably had something to do with the way Carson’s
eyes grew larger as his gaze traveled slowly from her painted
toenails up to her face.

She glanced down.

Oh, no....

Her heart started that wild beat again.

* * * *

There was a moment, which seemed eons ago
now, that Carson had registered running into Gracie out in the
hallway. Briefly, he recalled their bodies bumping together and
them exchanging a couple of excited words as they raced down the
stairway toward Izzie. After that, he’d lost track of her.

But she was a damned hard sight to lose
track of at this particular moment in time.

His mouth went suddenly dry and he
swallowed. Hard. He knew Grace was tall, but as she stood before
him, she seemed nothing but legs. Long, shapely legs. Dancer’s
legs, he’d heard them called. And the big t-shirt she wore, which
hit her about mid-thigh, really wasn’t doing its job of effectively
covering them.

But he guessed it wasn’t meant to do that.
Obviously, Gracie had just been roused from her bed. He’d come to
that conclusion as his gazed traveled upward over her body. The
shirt she wore was obviously a nightshirt. Her rich brunette
tresses lay long and loose around her shoulders, unbrushed and
untamed. She wore no make-up, her face fresh and dewy, her eyes a
little swollen from sleep.

From out of the blue he thought of Marci and
how he’d loved the way she looked first thing in the morning,
before she’d taken her shower and made herself up for the day. That
was when he’d loved making love to her most.

But that was over three years ago. And
making love with Marci was the furthest thing from his mind at the
moment. In fact, the woman standing before him with the startled,
doe-eyed look on her face was doing more things to his body than
any other woman had in quite some time.

He decided to stand, lifting Izzie off his
lap. “Munchkin, why don’t you take Bandit upstairs. I’ll be along
in a minute.” He said the words to his daughter, realizing he’d not
yet taken his eyes off Gracie.

For once Izzie minded him without protest
and scooted up the stairs. He sent up a silent prayer.

“
Uh....” Gracie
started.

“
About the pup,” Carson
began.

“
It’s okay. She can have
her,” Gracie intercepted.

“
Well, there wasn’t
anything in the lease about pets. I wasn’t sure. Was going to ask
you today. We got in late last night.”

Gracie took one step up the stairway. She
pulled at her shirt, as if she were trying to make it longer, then
crossed her arms over her chest. Didn’t she realize that made it
shorter?

“
It’s okay. As long as
she’s careful on the stairs. I think my heart is still in my
throat.” She smiled hesitantly, then took another step up and
stopped. “Well...I should be getting back upstairs...to my
apartment.”

She started to move up another step,
clutched at her t-shirt again, then cautiously turned back to look
at him. “Um, would you mind going first?”

Carson then realized the reason for her
wavering; of her not wanting to precede him up the stairway. From
the lower position, he would have had a very nice few of her
backside. And she knew it.

“
Oh! Of course.”
Idiot!
Carson mentally
slapped himself on the forehead and moved upward, carefully moving
past her. Not stopping, he ascended all the stairs until he reached
the landing and the door to his apartment a few steps beyond. He
laid a hand on his doorknob then risked a glance
backward.

Gracie stood not six feet away, her hand on
her doorknob as well, her head turning back to glance at him at the
same time. Then at once, they both twisted their separate doorknobs
and pushed their respective doors to the inside.

“
Oh!”

“
One more
thing.”

They spoke simultaneously.

Carson grinned. Gracie giggled.

“
You first,” she
said.

“
No, you,” he
returned.

Gracie bit her lip. Carson thought it was a
cute gesture and not one he expected from Grace Hart, the
businesswoman. Yet, Grace Hart the businesswoman was not standing
before him at the moment. The woman standing before him was someone
else...was simply, Gracie.

“
Was just going to say,”
she began, “well...was just going to apologize again to you for
that tea-spitting thing the other day.”

Carson gestured with his hand, reminded of
the last time he’d seen her. “No problem. I understand. Anyone
could get choked on a bagel.”

She smiled again. Lord save him. He liked
that smile.

“
You were going to say?”
she asked then.

Nodding, Carson continued, “Was just going
to apologize for the pup. I should have asked first.”

This time Gracie gestured with her hand.
“Not a problem. With the pup, I mean.” She turned to head into her
apartment, then stopped and faced him once again. “Just don’t make
a habit of not asking, Mr. Price.”

For a moment, he thought she was dead
serious. Then he saw that smile return to her face and knew that
she was teasing.

* * * *

With her back to her closed door, Gracie
clamped her hands over her eyes and groaned. “Now what in the world
did I go and do that for?” she quietly chided herself.

Stepping away, she headed toward her bedroom
and the sanctuary of her comfy bed. “My God Gracie, you were
flirting with him! Half-dressed, no less! Have you gone mad?”

Falling into her bed, she jerked the covers
up to her neck, closed her eyes, and tried to erase the image of
Carson standing before her at his apartment door. She tried not to
think about the fact that the man had signed a years lease and that
he would be coming and going out of that door for months to
come.

Oh my. What in the world would she do?

Opening her eyes wide again, she stared
across the bedroom, letting her brain quietly mull the
situation.

Nothing. She would do nothing.

After all, there was
nothing
to
do.
She would just go about her daily routine, living her life, just as
she had done for ten years now.

But the ticking started in
her brain again and this time it appeared to be piercing her heart
with every
tick, tick, tick,
it drummed up.

“
One of these days, Gracie
Hart,” she whispered to herself, “you’re going to have to come
face-to-face with your fears, you know that?”

And she knew exactly what her fears were.
Facing them was just the thing she had to learn to do. For some
reason, she knew that day was coming closer. It had been ten years
since she’d lost everything. Ten years since the accident which
took from her everything she’d ever loved—her fiancé and her
dancing career.

Ten long, and sometimes lonely, years.

She never thought she’d end up like this:
thirty-five, single, and childless—but this was her life. And now,
there’s an interesting man next door who makes her heart flutter,
one who might even be a very nice candidate for someone to
love.

She just didn’t know if she could ever get
over this fear about falling in love. Actually, it wasn’t the
falling in love part that scared her so much—it was the losing of
that love that scared the hell out of her.

* * * *

Later that evening, Carson
glanced about the inside of
Geekmeister’s
, not believing that
the time had almost come. The place had truly been transformed.
Three weeks of hard work and late nights and his
café
was nearly up and
running. He’d been thinking how he would handle his grand opening,
debating on whether to throw one hopping shindig of a kick-ass
party, or just quietly open his doors one evening and see what
happened. Maybe he’d host a small party with some of his Louisville
friends on Friday night, a little live music, food and drink, and
just take it from there.

Since that was the direction he seemed to be
leaning, Carson figured he probably needed to get himself in gear
and start inviting people. Goodness knows his friends loved their
weekends and a good party to boot. Well, they had best make time
for him on this particular Friday night.

It was high time Main Street Franklinville
started hopping. He chuckled at the thought.

Stepping closer to the
front of the
café
, he stared out the window to the dark, empty street lit with
the red glow of the traffic light and a smattering of street
lights. Quiet, quaint little town. He liked it, but it was a far
cry from downtown Louisville where he’d lived since
college.

He almost felt a little guilty thinking
about how he was going to break this calm next weekend. Of course,
today was Sunday evening and the town was cozily tucked in for the
night, preparing for the next work week. Friday and Saturday
evenings were usually a little more lively, anyway.

It had crossed his mind whether he should
extend an invitation to Gracie. Maybe, just maybe, he should. On
one hand, there was no use borrowing trouble. On the other, he
wouldn’t be able to hide it from her forever.

With thoughts of Gracie in his head, he
twisted the doorknob and stepped outside to the street. The nights
were still cool and crisp and he inhaled deeply of the fresh air.
This, was an advantage. Although Louisville wasn’t a smoggy town,
the air just seemed cleaner here. He stood for a moment taking in
the quiet, then leaned again the bricked front of his building.
About the same time, a light went on next door in Gracie’s shop,
throwing a muted rectangular glow toward the street.

Images of her this morning
popped into his brain. That same image had troubled him all day
long. He couldn’t deny that right from the start, he’d thought Ms.
Grace Hart an attractive woman.
Geekmeister’s
had kept him so busy
though, that he’d only allowed himself to entertain those thoughts
briefly over the past three weeks.

But since seeing her this morning, with her
hair soft around her shoulders and wearing nothing more than that
big, sexy t-shirt—well, he was having difficulty extracting
thoughts of her from his mind.

And that wasn’t necessarily a good
thing.

Beside him, the door handle jiggled and the
door swung open to Gracie’s shop. Carson stood still, waiting,
barely allowing himself to breathe.

She stepped out, a huge watering can in
hand, and moved toward the edge of the street where she started
watering two large flower boxes full of pansies. Carson watched her
with fascination. He decided right then that he really liked her
hair down, not in the French roll she often twisted her locks up
into. Tonight, over the t-shirt, she wore a short, wrap-around robe
of pale blue. Even though the robe covered the t-shirt quite well,
it still only hit her little below mid-thigh, and didn’t do a lot
to hide those gorgeous legs.

Thankfully.

With a long sigh, he let his gaze stretch
all the way down to her bare feet and painted toenails. Yes, he was
sort of glad about that. Being a leg man, he wasn’t the least bit
disappointed in the fact that Gracie had decided to show her legs a
bit.

She moved to the other side of the flower
boxes, nearly facing him now, and Carson decided not to play voyeur
any longer. He stepped away from the building and closer to the
flowers.

“
Those pesky, thirsty
plants. Always need the water, huh?” he said rather loudly.
Immediately, he wished he’d taken another tack.

Startled, Gracie jerked her head up and let
out a little shriek. One hand flew to her chest while the other
dropped the watering can sharply on her toe.

“
Ow!”

“
Damn!”

Carson rushed forward.

Gracie stumbled backward and sat on the side
of the flower box, her chest still heaving. She pulled the injured
foot up and laid it on her right knee, then looked up at Carson.
“You scared the hell out of me!”

He sat across from her on the opposite
flower box. “God, Gracie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—“

She waved him off and reached for her foot.
“It’s okay. Just dropped the damned thing on my toe.”

Carson reached over and righted the metal
watering can, then also reached for Gracie’s foot. “Let me
see.”

“
It’s okay.” She shook her
head and covered her foot with her hands.

“
No. Please.”

Reaching out, Carson gently took the sole of
her foot in his hands, cradling it in his palm. Her hands slid
back. Lifting his gaze to her face, he made eye contact with Gracie
as he carefully ran his hand along the top of the arch of her
foot.

She grimaced. “Ow!”

“
Where does it hurt?
Here?” He pushed along the top of her toes.