Head Over Heels: Drive Me Wild / Midnight Cravings
Head Over Heels: Drive Me Wild / Midnight Cravings
Beth Harbison
THE ONE WHO GOT AWAYFor Grace Bowes, going home again felt like facing disaster. While the town wondered how the golden girl had wound up a struggling single mum, Grace had to find a job - fast! Worse, her first interview ever was with none other than Luke Stewart, the man who once made her heart beat madly - before she married someone else. He was the lover who still made her wonder: What if…?"What if" wasn't an option for Luke. Until Grace walked into his world once more, looking every inch the beauty she always was. Suddenly, the brooding bachelor felt an ache to finish what they started so long ago. Not a bad proposition for a man with nothing to lose. Nothing, that is, except his heart…
Head Over Heels
Drive Me Wild
Midnight Cravings
Beth Harbison
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover (#u95abed47-3673-5967-b59d-964185c719af)
Title Page (#u4b3ab670-71a7-50af-bf0b-da120e142c8e)
Drive Me Wild (#ulink_5320eeb8-fd4c-5f9f-ae3e-680f696b552c)
Chapter One (#ulink_df5969d4-b25f-549f-9628-705605d2ab49)
Chapter Two (#ulink_cc24eb9b-2bdd-567c-bd28-8e54964d106f)
Chapter Three (#ulink_054a1eaa-54d4-5b35-b8ca-6c50ffb5f849)
Chapter Four (#ulink_ec709435-05f9-59a1-aa6c-793523b9c400)
Chapter Five (#ulink_a1a88446-2022-5290-992d-78ba4fc8ef35)
Chapter Six (#ulink_703f5e8e-9c1d-5f2c-b832-1c7d75673d30)
Chapter Seven (#ulink_8248c13b-38a1-50b4-9def-f57d708315e6)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Midnight Cravings (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Drive Me Wild (#ulink_284d6ef7-0f70-5ca9-8520-6f814cb399e3)
Beth Harbison
Chapter One (#ulink_c7d2f622-86f7-5701-8d38-0ebcaede9af7)
“You ever had to eat a locust?”
For a moment, Grace Bowes—standing in the blazing-hot sun looking for a mailbox that should have been on the corner of Main and Sycamore but wasn’t—didn’t think the question was directed at her. But when it was repeated with more vehemence, she looked toward the speaker and saw a bent old man perched on a bench in front of the Blue Moon Bay Pharmacy, staring at her so expectantly she couldn’t help but laugh.
“No, I haven’t.” She’d never been one to believe in omens, but when the seventeen-year locusts returned to her hometown the same month she—after a fifteen-year absence—did, she had to rethink her position. On several things. “But I haven’t ruled it out.”
The man laughed heartily, revealing a mouth full of holes plus one or two brown stubs of teeth. “Smart girl.” He thumped a gnarled finger against his temple.
“Have you?” She noticed he had a battered hat at his feet with a handwritten sign that said Thank You in an uncertain hand, and an old dented and rusted Partridge Family lunch box by his side. She immediately regretted asking. Maybe that lunch box was full of locusts right now.
“Had to, during the war. Would’ve starved otherwise.” He looked her over with a sharp blue eye. “What war are you fighting?”
Divorce. Betrayal. Single motherhood. The modern job market as it related to a woman whose only real job had consisted of working as a secretary for her father, the local judge, ten hours a week one summer. A lot of wars. “I’m just looking for a mailbox. I thought there was one on this corner.” She had to mail a car payment on a car that was the main asset she’d won in the divorce after her husband, Michael, had left her a note on the bathroom counter, saying he was sorry but their life together hadn’t worked out and he’d found someone else.
“Used to be one right there.” The old man gestured, then shook his head as if something very sad had happened. “Not there anymore.”
“No, it’s not.” Grace glanced at her watch. In ten minutes she had an appointment at the Bayside Jobs employment agency. First she had to mail this payment, hoping to avoid at least one early-morning call mispronouncing her name and threatening unspeakable actions if she didn’t get the car payment in on time. Along with winning the car, she’d won the car payment, thanks to Michael’s savvy at hiding his financial assets.
Michael Bowes. He’d been the golden boy of Blue Moon Bay, Maryland, the captain of the football team and homecoming king to Grace’s homecoming queen. He’d gone to college in the north and she’d followed a year later. Four years after that, they were married and Michael, then a commercial real-estate developer, had ridden a ride of prosperity right into a lovely upper-middle-class lifestyle. When the bottom had dropped out of that market, he didn’t bother to mention to Grace that they were living on credit cards and line of credit advances and a host of bad gambles.
By the time he left—no doubt because thugs with stub noses and barrel chests were threatening to break his kneecaps—he’d accrued hundreds of thousands of dollars in liability. He and Grace had had to sell the house and her jewelry and even her clothes. Her yard sales were legendary. And exhausting. When it was all over, she had nothing except bad memories of a man who had once seemed like the Catch of Blue Moon Bay.
She wasn’t sorry the marriage was over. Often she’d felt as if in their life together they’d lacked understanding of each other, and even real interest in each other. Perhaps if Michael hadn’t made the first move, she would have suggested it herself after Jimmy was grown. She’d never know, because Michael had beaten her to the punch.
So she’d packed up their ten-year-old son, Jimmy, and moved back to her hometown to live with her widowed mother in the house she’d grown up in. It was only for a year, she told herself. She’d save enough money to move back north, so Jimmy could be near his friends again, in the town that was his home. And she could be far away from this claustrophobic hamlet.
In the meantime, she’d just get a job here in Blue Moon Bay. Granted, at thirty-three, she should be heading her own household, not lying on the same bed she had as a teenager, counting the same fading roses on the wallpaper, but here she was. She was lucky to have the benefit of her mother’s generosity.
With any luck it would keep her from having to eat locusts.
“You have something to mail?” the old man asked, holding out a shaking hand.
Grace automatically pulled her purse in closer to her body. Too many years in the city. “No, thanks. I was just trying to orient myself.”
“Used to be a mailbox there.” He dissolved into a long, sputtering cough. “Gone now.”
She tried to smile and took out one of the only two dollars she had in her purse. “Thanks so much for your help,” she said, dropping the bill into the hat. She noticed there were only three pennies and a nickel in there and, with a pang of pity for the old man, dropped her other dollar in too. “I really appreciate it.”
“God bless you,” he called as Grace walked away and rounded the corner. “And God bless your family too.”
“I hope so,” she whispered.
She looked at her watch again and quickened her pace, hurrying down the shaded street that ran parallel to the old boardwalk a block up. In fifteen years, almost nothing had changed. The salty smell of the ocean still hung in the air and mingled with sweet taffy and caramel corn, though whether the smell was actually there or just a memory, Grace couldn’t say, since it was early May and most of the shops hadn’t opened for the season yet. The pavement was littered here and there with the familiar old Hasher’s French Fries bags, malt vinegar stains dotting the same logo they’d had for at least three decades. It was one of the only landmarks left, now that the once-charming holiday town had fallen in favor of the more exciting Ocean City forty-five minutes away.
Still, a few dings and whistles of arcade games echoed through narrow alleyways full of shops that only opened during the summer when the tourists came to the beach. Grace fought a feeling of melancholy. Around every kite shop, T-shirt shop, and junk-food joint were ghostly memories of bike spills, melting ice cream on muggy summer nights and first kisses in the shadows of doorways and brightly striped awnings.
She stopped at the address she’d written for Bayside Jobs and looked around. It took her a moment to realize 32 Maple Street was the tiny space that used to sell funnel cakes and, for a couple of years in the seventies, had been a head shop.
She paused outside the door and pulled the fabric of her blouse away from her damp underarms. It was a little tight, she’d noticed, thanks to her Oreo therapy, but it would probably be okay as long as she didn’t raise her arms and split the back. If she stood straight, it looked fine. She hoped.
With a quick breath, she heaved the old glass door open and stepped into the cool, dark, mercifully locust-free office. It still carried the faintest whiff of grease, sugar and marijuana.
An unpleasantly familiar stout woman looked up from the desk a few feet in front of her. “Grace Perigon,” she said flatly, her face pink under her now-white hair.
“Ms. Lindon?” Grace gasped, recognizing the voice that addressed her by her maiden name. Ms. Lindon—she’d always emphasized the Ms., leading to rampant speculation among the students about her sexuality—had been the meanest home ec teacher on the east coast, maybe even the meanest in the whole United States.
Students had called her “the Egg Beater” because she’d always seemed hostile, even when baking a cake.
Grace felt the blood drain from her face and pool in the toes of her new discount-store pumps. “I have an appointment.”
“I don’t have any appointment down here for you.”
“You’re in charge here?” Grace glanced around to make sure, once again, that she’d opened the correct door and not, say, an acupuncturist’s or a martial arts studio. “Bayside Jobs?”
Ms. Lindon’s brow lowered further than was aesthetically pleasing. “I am Bayside Jobs.”
That was it. Grace was done for. Except that she couldn’t allow herself the luxury of being done for. She walked slowly toward the large metal desk. The air conditioner hissed in the corner. “Then I must have an appointment with you,” Grace said, in as warm a voice as she could muster.
For a moment, she toyed with the idea of running back outside to take her chances with the locusts.
The older woman took out a vinyl-covered appointment book and studied it intently. “I don’t see you here.”
“Oh.” This was as very bad start. “When I called, I used my married name. I’ll still be using it now, even though we’ve gotten divorced.”
“What is it?”
“Oh, just the usual, I guess. We grew apart—”
“The name,” Ms. Lindon barked. “What is the name?”
She knew damn well that Grace had married Michael Bowes. Everyone did. There were no secrets in this sardine can of a town. But even if she didn’t know the name, there weren’t enough unemployed people in Blue Moon Bay during the summer to fill two lines of the daybook, much less an entire day, so she could have figured it out. For Pete’s sake, Grace could see it was all right there on the page, with just a little doodle of a dog in the corner and some scribbling around the middle of the page. And her name under 11:00—Grace Bowes.
Ms. Lindon looked too long at the page before tapping the scribbled line in the middle and saying, “There it is. You were supposed to be here at eleven, not ten past. Rule number one, Always be on time. Bayside Girls are always professional.”
Bayside Girls? A pang of dread reverberated in the depths of Grace’s heart. It was still 1952 here in Blue Moon Bay, just as it had always been. This was going to be hard to get used to after all those years up north.
She took a deep breath and remembered Jimmy. “Of course. I’m sorry.”
“Have a seat.” The Egg Beater gestured and waited for Grace to obey, then took out a pen and steno pad that still had the bargain-store price tag stuck to the front. “Now, tell me about your skills.”
Grace thought she was prepared for that question. “Let’s see, I’ve spent the past nine years chairing the annual Bingham Industrialists Golf Tournament.” The pen remained poised over the pad but did not touch it, Grace noticed. “I also organized and edited the Bingham Junior League cookbook in 1996, 1997 and 1999.”
After a painful pause, Ms. Lindon said, “I mean, what kind of marketable qualifications do you have? How fast can you type?”
Grace smiled brilliantly. “Typing isn’t really my strong suit….”
Ms. Lindon looked at her with flat eyes. “Computer skills?”
Grace wondered if her old Atari Pong game qualified. “None to speak of but—”
Ms. Lindon dropped her pen and leaned back in her chair, appraising Grace with a cool eye. “I’m afraid we don’t have anything that suits your particular…expertise.”
The blood that had drained moments earlier began to rise in Grace’s face. “I’m willing to learn,” she said, trying to keep the desperate edge out of her voice.
Something in the older woman seemed to soften. She picked up a large portfolio marked Positions to Fill in a handwriting Grace remembered from her old report cards—Grace needs to learn that she has to work for her grades instead of expecting everything to be handed to her on a silver platter—and leafed through it.
She shook her head. “Mmm. No, it’s as I thought. All of these jobs require the latest computer skills and good typing speed, not to mention experience. Wait—here’s one that will train you—” She squinted and looked closer. “Oh, no. That’s no good.” She clopped the book shut. “I’m sorry. I don’t have anything for you now. Maybe if you take a secretarial class and come back, we can help you at a later time.”
Grace refused to give up so easily, even though half of her wanted to concede. “You just said there was one that didn’t require experience.”
Ms. Lindon smirked. “No, that was definitely not for you.”
Grace leaned forward in her seat. “Ms. Lindon, I really, really need a job. Any job.” She hated to beg the help of a woman who clearly wouldn’t share a canteen of water with Grace even if her clothes burst into flames, but she had no choice. “I’m broke.”
The other woman shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I am sorry for your misfortune, but—”
“I don’t want your pity.” Grace swallowed hard. “I’m not here asking for favors. I have a ten-year-old son to take care of now. I need the work. Please, Ms. Lindon—” she reached out and touched the older woman’s hand “—please tell me what you have.”
A long moment passed, during which Grace wondered if Ms. Lindon would let that tennis ball fall in her court or if she’d just lob it back at Grace by the sheer force of impatience. “All right,” she said at last. “But I don’t think you’re going to like it.”
Grace tried to keep calm. “What have you got?”
“It’s at Connor Primary Day School. You know, over on Bayshore Drive?”
Grace nodded, feeling a dull ache grow rapidly in her chest. Dread. Another shoe was going to drop any minute, she knew it, and it would be a size-fourteen stiletto. “I went to school there.”
Ms. Lindon gave her a look of slight skepticism but didn’t say anything. “Well. You may be able to work tuition for your kid into the deal if you get the job. There’s one perk anyway.”
That didn’t sound so bad. She’d kind of like Jimmy to go to the same school she went to, if only briefly. “Really? So what do they need?” She tried to imagine what job Ms. Lindon thought Grace wouldn’t like. “Playground assistant?” she asked, to let the other woman know she was willing to take that kind of job. “After-school care?”
“Bus driver.”
Grace felt as if she’d missed the bottom step of a very steep staircase and fallen flat on her face. “I beg your pardon?”
“They need a bus driver.”
That was it, the other shoe she’d been waiting for. There was a moment’s silence while the news bounced around the room and into Grace’s consciousness.
“If you’re willing to do it, I can call and set up an interview.”
“But a bus driver?” Grace was still back at square one. Visions of meaty tattooed arms and screaming kids came to mind. “But I don’t know anything about driving a bus.”
Ms. Lindon shrugged. “It says here that they’ll train the right person.”
Grace shifted her weight in her seat, which had suddenly become extremely uncomfortable. “Are you sure there’s nothing else?”
“Nothing.” She pushed the book aside. “You’re clearly not suited for that kind of position, though.”
“But—”
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll keep a special eye out for anything that might work for you and I’ll call you immediately if I see something.” She started to stand up.
“Wait.” Grace put a hand up. “How much does it pay? The bus-driver position, I mean.”
Ms. Lindon looked in the book and quoted a figure.
Grace did some quick calculations and said, “That could work. I could survive on that pay.” She’d carefully budgeted what she needed to save each month in order to be able to move back north in one year. This salary would cover that and leave a little over at the end of the month for incidentals. It would be a strenuously budgeted life, but it would be temporary. “I’ll take it.”
“That’s only if they hire you, of course.”
There was that knot in the pit of her stomach again. “Do you think they won’t?”
“I don’t suppose you’ve ever driven a bus before?”
“No.” Of course not.
The older woman shrugged. “Might not matter. It does say they’ll train. You’d have to interview first, of course. I can only refer you. Whether or not they hire you depends on how that interview goes.” She hesitated before adding, “If you really want to try it.”
“I do.” Grace took a slow breath. She wasn’t going to get sidetracked into a discussion about whether or not she knew what she was saying. “You mentioned there’s a tuition benefit for my son?”
“Says so here. You can talk to Mr. Stewart about that more if you interview.”
Grace noticed that if. “Okay, set up an interview.” She straightened and brushed a fly off the front of her dove-gray Armani suit. She’d bought it in Milan two years ago. Things were different then. “I’ll be a bus driver.”
Chapter Two (#ulink_1718d604-825b-5b89-a652-ac004d15763a)
The familiarity of the Connor Primary Day School campus was disconcerting to Grace. It was as if nothing had changed in the twenty-some years since she’d attended, except that the trees were a little taller and the buildings looked a little smaller. Hope mingled with melancholy as she parked the car and got out to walk to the old red barn where the garage was located. Was it merely familiarity that was making Grace’s stomach flutter this way, or was it a premonition that she would get the job and everything would—eventually—be all right?
Having always been an optimist, she decided to believe the latter.
The office door was shut when she reached it, and for one terrible moment she feared that Ms. Lindon had sent her on a wild-goose chase. Grace had been so insistent about interviewing for the job that maybe the woman had just sent her out here to get rid of her. Her fear was exacerbated when she knocked and there was no answer. Within a few seconds, she’d almost convinced herself that there wasn’t even anyone here when a movement behind the old mottled-glass door caught her eye. Someone was here. Ms. Lindon wasn’t that mean—Grace had just let her imagination get carried away. She took a quick breath to bolster her nerve and knocked again, more firmly. A voice called out something inside, but she couldn’t understand what it said. Come on in? Or maybe Go away! Or even Get help, fast, I’m being held at gunpoint!
Now what was she supposed to do?
Deciding it was better to go forward with confidence than to appear timid, she opened the door and poked her head in, surprised to find she was so blinded by the sun outside that she couldn’t see in the dark, cool office. “Mr. Stewart?”
“That’s right. What can I do for you?” The man’s voice was nice. Smooth and kind, and she felt herself relax when it reached her.
She stepped in from the heat and said, in the general direction of the voice, since her eyes hadn’t yet adjusted to the light, “I have an appointment to interview with you. About the job opening here.”
There was an uncomfortable moment of silence while the splotchy figure across the room sat unmoving. Just as he was beginning to come into view, he said, in a voice she was suddenly able to place with absolute clarity, “Grace?”
Her stomach dropped. She imagined it plunking on the ground next to her and bouncing like an india-rubber ball. She blinked hard, and within a few seconds her vision came back to normal.
She almost wished it hadn’t.
There, before her, was a face she’d envisioned a million times over the years, a face she’d never thought she’d see again. A little older, of course, but the same golden tanned skin, now with a faint web of lines around the clear blue eyes. Same dark wavy hair that, in contrast, had always made those eyes absolutely striking. She’d always reacted physically to them, and to the charismatic man they belonged to.
Luke Stewart.
Grace couldn’t have been more surprised to see him if he’d been lassoing steer in her mother’s backyard. God almighty, she’d never dreamed Luke was the Mr. Stewart she was supposed to see. She didn’t even know he was still in town. Not only in town, but here, not ten feet away from her, behind a desk that was piled with papers, the odd piece of horse tack and quite possibly control of her future.
It seemed like twenty minutes that Grace stood there, trying to recapture her breath and find a voice beneath the stomach and heart that had lodged themselves in her throat. It wasn’t merely surprising to see Luke, it was deeply disconcerting. It had always been disconcerting to be around Luke Stewart, but why hadn’t she outgrown this particularly juvenile kind of heart-pounding, lip-trembling, struck-dumb reaction?
Just because once upon a time, a long time ago, she’d thought she’d loved him.
But instead of telling him, she’d married his best friend.
It was Luke who finally broke the silence. “You’re back.”
She nodded. “For a while.”
He held her gaze. She felt as powerless as a mortal in a Greek myth, unable to look away. “I thought you were gone for good,” he said.
Grace hoped she could sound calm and unaffected while her insides raged. “You just never know about people,” she said pointedly.
“No,” he agreed, just as pointedly. “No, you don’t.” He took a deep breath and blew it out, shuffling papers on the desk. “So. How long are you planning to stay?”
“About a year. I want to take my son back to New Jersey as soon as I can. To his friends and his school and all.”
Something flickered across Luke’s expression, but it was gone before she could identify it. “I heard about Michael. I’m sorry.”
Had he heard it from Michael himself? Surely not. They’d been pals in high school, but as far as Grace knew, they hadn’t spoken in years. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”
He shrugged. “Never did. What are you here to talk about, Grace?”
“I’m here about school business, of course.”
“Of course. How old’s your boy?”
“Ten.” Grace tried to think of something else to say, but she was stymied. She began to be aware of perspiration trickling down the center of her back, and wondered if it was the unusual May heat or this conversation with Luke that caused it.
She was completely over him.
Had been for years.
All of which was for the best, since he had never shared her feelings. In fact, during the three years of high school when they’d seen each other the most, they’d spent about 90 percent of their time arguing.
“So you’re looking to enroll him here for the year.” Luke nodded as if he’d figured out a puzzle. “We should probably move this discussion to my office and start over.”
“This isn’t your office?”
He looked around at the mess. “No. This is the garage. You wanted the main building. It’s just lucky I happened to be here.”
Lucky wasn’t the word that came to Grace’s mind. “This is where I was told to come,” she said, feeling her face grow warm and hating herself for it.
“Someone told you to come to the garage?”
She sighed. “Look, Luke, I’m not here to enroll my son and volunteer for classroom cookie duty, I’m here about the job. So are you going to interview me or not?”
“The job?” he repeated, as if the idea were incomprehensible. “What job?” Though his manner didn’t show it, he must have been rattled, because she’d already said why she was here. “There’s only one job opening here, and that can’t be…driving the bus?”
“Yes.” Grace raised her chin defiantly. “That’s the job I’m here about.”
He laughed. Laughed! “Give me a break.”
“What?”
“Come on. You’re Junior League, not bush league. You can’t be serious.”
“I’m completely serious.” Then she added, under her breath, “How many times am I going to have to say that today?”
A year ago, Grace couldn’t possibly have envisioned herself begging to be a bus driver. Someone could have won a lot of money on this bet.
He studied her for a moment, then said, “I don’t believe it.”
“What, do you think this is a joke? Do you think I just blew into town and decided the first thing I had to do was track you down, take some abuse about my marriage, then pretend to beg you for work? Does that make more sense, Luke, than Bayside Jobs sending me here looking for legitimate employment?”
“Actually, I have a hard time envisioning either scenario. But if Mary did send you here to drive the bus, I can’t even imagine what she was thinking. I’m afraid she had you come out here for nothing.”
“Mary?” Who was Mary?
He turned and looked at her sharply, as though he’d caught her trying to making faces at him. “Mary Lindon. You did say you were sent from Bayside.”
“Y-yes.” Mary? Lord, Grace must have called her Ms. Lindon forty times today and the woman hadn’t once stopped her and said, as almost anyone else would have, “Call me Mary, please.” Grace cleared her throat. “Mary thought I’d be perfect for the job.”
“Really,” he said, but his tone said bull.
Grace nodded. She had to compose herself, had to return the tone of this meeting to something less personal, more professional. “Obviously this is a little awkward, since we know each other. Is there someone else I should speak to instead?”
“Someone higher up, you mean?”
“Well…”
“I’m the headmaster,” he said, flatly. “I’m afraid it’s up to me.”
Headmaster? Oh perfect—she’d really blown it then. “Okay. Well, I came here for an interview, like anyone else off the street, so pretend I’m a stranger.” She drew herself up. “Now, are you going to interview me or not?”
A muscle ticked in his jaw for a moment, before he said, “Sure. If that’s what you want.” He jotted her name on the back of a telephone book on the desk and drew a line under it, then looked at her, obviously trying not to smile. “Tell me how long you’ve been driving school buses now, Grace.”
Heat rose in her cheeks. He wasn’t going to make this easy. “The job description clearly said that no experience was necessary.”
“Maybe not necessary, but it helps. More qualified drivers will have the edge there.” He made a note of it. “You have a commercial driver’s license?”
She heard a single minor piano chord ring ominously in her brain. “Oh, come on, Luke, what do you think?”
He leaned back in his chair and gave her a lazy look that would once have made her toes curl, but now just ticked her off. “I think you’re applying for a job driving a bus, so you must have at least some vague notion of what that job entails.”
She tried to stay calm. “I think it entails starting the engine and driving from place to place picking up children and bringing them to school, which is pretty much what we, in my old neighborhood, called ‘car pooling.’ How different can it be?”
“For one thing, you need a commercial driver’s license in order to do it here.”
“I can get one, right?”
He gave a half shrug that said wrong. “Have you learned your way around an engine since I last saw you?” he asked. By now his face wore the same bored expectation of a negative response that an airline clerk had asking if you’d packed your own suitcase.
This was no time to give up, Grace reminded herself, however tempting that might be. “I can learn.”
He released the pencil, letting it clatter to the desk. Then he leaned back, took a deep breath and let it out slowly, not unlike a hissing bus tire that had just run over the sharp shards of her broken heart. “Grace, I ask you this in all seriousness—do you have any idea what’s involved in taking this job?”
She straightened in her seat and smoothed her jacket, instantly regretting the prissy gesture. As a prospective bus driver, she should have brought a toothpick to chew on or something. “Not entirely.”
“For the license test, you’ll need to know the bus’s engine inside-out. They’re going to pop the hood and have you identify and locate every part of the engine, then they’re going to have you get down on your knees and identify the parts from underneath.” He counted his points triumphantly on his fingers. “Then they’re going to ask you what happens if any of those parts fail or wear out, and they’re going to ask you how to fix them.” He gave a small but meaningful shake of his head. “If you pass all that, then you get to take the driving test.”
It did sound daunting, but not as daunting as another registered letter from the IRS. “And you’re saying you don’t think I can do that?”
“I can’t see it, no.” Clearly he was harboring his old hostility toward her. “Point is,” he went on, “I’m expecting to hire someone who already has.”
“What if you can’t hire someone who already has?” she asked. “What if no one like that applies?”
“They will.”
“When do you need a driver?”
“For summer school. In four weeks.”
“Four weeks!” She threw up her hands. “And you’re only looking to hire someone now?”
“You’re not helping your case.”
“I’m trying to help yours. And mine.” She could tell she was getting nowhere with him. She remembered a chocolate bar for Jimmy that she’d put in her purse earlier, and made a mental note to inhale it the second this miserable meeting ended. “Look, maybe I should talk with someone else about the job, since you obviously can’t be objective about me.”
“As a matter of fact, I’m in the unique position of understanding just how wrong you are for this position.” He sighed and softened his voice. “Grace, you’d be miserable. Why are you even here?”
“Because I need work,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “And this is the only possibility in town.”
“But it’s not a possibility.”
“It is.” She knew she sounded desperate, but she didn’t care. She was desperate! “You can teach me whatever it is I need to know, and I can take the test and do the job so quietly you won’t even have to think about it again. I might be the best damn bus driver you ever had.”
“And you might hate it and quit after two days.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
“Well, you’ve already said you’re leaving town next year. I’m not hiring a lifeguard for the summer, I need a bus driver. I need someone who’s going to take the job, do it well and keep it for more than a single school year.” His gaze grew penetrating. “This is nothing personal.”
“Yes, it is!” She jabbed a finger in the air at him. “Personal is exactly what it is. You’re obviously holding something against me from a hundred years ago—”
“Not true.”
“—but if you think it’s easy for me to sit here and beg you for a job, you’re mistaken. If I can get past our history enough to work together, surely you can.”
“We don’t have a history.”
“Of course we have a history! We’ve known each other for eighteen years.” A small hurt flared in her, like a match lit on a windy night. How could he act as if they were total strangers? Maybe they hadn’t always gotten along, but once or twice in their past Grace had gotten the feeling that they had connected on a very deep level.
One instance in particular came to mind.
But now it was as if he was so eager to distance himself from her that he would even go so far as to distance himself from the facts. So she decided to remind him of those facts. “We went to high school together, Luke. You were my husband’s best friend, for Pete’s sake. That’s history.”
“That,” he agreed, “is history.”
She hesitated, unsure as to whether he was agreeing with her about the whole concept or if he was making the point that his friendship with Michael was history, as in kaput.
Because she knew that.
She remembered when it had happened.
Before she could think of something to say, Luke spoke again. “It’s irrelevant whether we have a history or not, because this is about qualifications. And you don’t have them. At least not the right ones.”
“I’ll bet I have better qualifications than most people you interview for this job,” she argued. “Have most of your applicants taken the Red Cross CPR course for infants and children? Can most of your applicants arbitrate an argument between two ten-year-olds? Can any of your other applicants tell the difference between the Robo-Crusier-Insect-Man and the Auto-Alien Transformer?”
Luke raised an eyebrow. “You think being able to make that distinction will come in handy?”
Her gaze was direct and serious. “You just never know.”
He studied her quietly for a moment, then, with a small nod, he said, “That’s true. But it doesn’t change my mind.”
“What would?” she asked plaintively.
He took a deep breath. A deep dismissive breath. “Look, I’ve got to admire your determination, but I don’t see this as a good fit. So I’ll keep your number on file and—”
“And what?”
He sighed. “And hope you forget this whole idea.”
“I can’t afford to,” she said, quietly but firmly. “I need this.”
“You’re not half prepared even to take the test, and like I said, summer school begins in just four weeks.”
“But I can learn, like I said.” She raised her chin and challenged him. “Besides, you’re ignoring some rather obvious extenuating circumstances.”
“Am I?”
Grace gathered her energy. “I won’t pretend to be able to read your mind, Luke, but I know you well enough to tell when you’re cornered.”
He raised an eyebrow.
She continued, “You need a driver. As you yourself have just pointed out, there are only a few short weeks until school starts, and—” she looked around the room “—I don’t see a lot of people lining up for this position, no matter how optimistic you may be about that happening as soon as I leave. I need a job. And while I may not have the exact qualifications you’re looking for, I’m willing to learn whatever I need to in order to satisfy your requirements. It seems obvious to me what you need to do.”
There was a long silence during which she trembled under his familiar gaze.
Finally, Luke broke the silence.
“You’re absolutely right. It’s very clear what I have to do.”
Hope surged in her. “Good.”
Luke stood up and gave her a cool appraisal. “Thanks for coming by, Grace. I’m sorry this didn’t work out, but good luck finding something else. And welcome home.”
Chapter Three (#ulink_92f09948-d794-50df-b8c7-ddb5fcd3da79)
Luke stared at the closed door in disbelief.
Grace Perigon.
No, make that Grace Bowes, trophy wife of his high-school partner in crime—it was hard to call Michael a friend—and the only girl who’d ever really gotten under his skin.
Even now, with the perspective of so many years, it was hard for him to say just why she’d gotten under his skin. Sometimes he’d thought he’d hated her. Other times…well, other times, he’d thought maybe it was the opposite.
One time—one short, stupid night—he’d been sure it was the opposite.
But that had passed quickly. And in the end, he’d watched her leave town without looking back while he, all in all, had to say he was glad to see her go. As Michael had pointed out to him, not so subtly, he didn’t have what she was looking for in a guy: money, position and the potential for rapid advancement.
Not that he’d ever let Michael, or anyone else, know of his feelings for Grace.
Michael had just seemed to pick up on the situation himself. It wasn’t that Michael was particularly perceptive, or so spiritually bonded to Grace that he perceived anything extraordinary about her, it was only that he always believed everyone wanted what he had. And he was ace at keeping what was his, whether it was a car or a girl.
Michael Bowes had somehow even managed to get Blue Moon High School to retire his football jersey at the end of his unremarkable varsity run.
The strange thing was that Luke had never known Michael to let go of any of his prized possessions, even after he’d completely lost interest in them. Once in high school Luke had spotted a broken Louisville Slugger in the back of Michael’s garage when they were working on his vintage ’65 Mustang convertible…and Grace was a much finer prize than that Louisville Slugger.
It was hard to imagine Michael letting go of her. Luke had been surprised about it ever since he’d heard the news several months back that they were divorcing. At first he’d half expected Grace to come back to town, but when she hadn’t come right away, he figured she never would. He’d figured he was safe.
He’d figured wrong.
* * *
Turned down for a job as a bus driver.
That was bad enough, but she’d been turned down by Luke Stewart, who she never thought she’d have to see again…much less under circumstances like these.
She’d made a mistake with Luke, there was no doubt about it. A mistake, it seemed, he’d never forget. Or forgive. She’d made a bad bargain for her future, and, in the process, wounded his male pride. It was nothing more than a glancing blow to his ego, but he was still willing to use it against her, even under circumstances as dire as those she faced now.
Her life couldn’t get a lot worse than this, Grace thought, kicking a dead locust from the path in front of her and feeling mean. She was living at her mother’s again, with no money and no skills to get a job, even a lousy job. That was another bad bargain she’d made: the housewife bargain. Believing her future to be secure, if not deliriously happy, she’d concentrated her efforts on making a comfortable home for her family. In so doing, she’d let technology and the job market pass her by. Now she could barely even see them in the distance.
So much for saving for her future.
It was beginning to seem entirely possible that she’d be stuck in this sandpit of a town for the rest of her life. She’d become one of those wacky old ladies whom everyone referred to as “Miz Grace.” Except for the kids who would call her dis-Grace, and who would ring her doorbell late at night and run.
She walked across the pretty green campus and thought ruefully of how nice it would have been for Jimmy to go to school here, just like she had done herself. Blue Moon Bay was a far cry from Morris, New Jersey. Here you could see horses from the school room window instead of traffic. Jimmy would love that.
When she got to the small gravel parking lot, she noticed a familiar older man getting out of a shining Lincoln. It only took her a moment to place him.
“Mr. Bailey?” Fred Bailey had been a friend of her parents for years. A lifetime bachelor, he was a big lawyer with offices in D.C. and Annapolis. He’d lived in Blue Moon Bay since he was a young man. In fact, he’d grown up with her mother, and gone to school with her through twelfth grade. They’d even dated briefly before he’d gone off to law school at Princeton.
He’d moved back to Blue Moon Bay six years later, after Grace’s parents had married, and made the 90-minute commute to his offices, remaining a pillar of Blue Moon Bay society. Though Grace hadn’t thought about Fred Bailey in a very long time, seeing him brought back a flood of warm memories. He was so much like her father that she had to fight an impulse to run into his arms. She could imagine how he would smell, of peppermint and pipe smoke. Just thinking about it made her feel more relaxed than she had for months.
“Mr. Bailey,” she said again.
He turned to her, his expression blank.
Her heart sank.
“It’s Grace Bowes…Perigon,” she said, fighting back a sudden overwhelming weakness in her limbs.
His face broke into a wide smile. “Grace? Good heavens, I wasn’t expecting to see you here!” He patted his breast pocket and took out a glasses case. As soon as he put his spectacles on, his eyes grew wide behind the thick glass. “So it is you!” He opened his arms, and she gave him a hug. “Welcome home, child. I’ve been looking forward to seeing you ever since I heard you were coming back. How long has it been?”
“Since Dad’s funeral.”
“My goodness, that’s a long time. Look at you, just as lovely as ever. Your father would be so proud.” He smiled again and clucked his tongue against his teeth. “I still miss the old fellow.”
She smiled, and her chest felt full but her eyes burned again. “Me too.”
“Well, what are you doing here?” Fred Bailey asked. “Not coming back to school, I expect.” He chuckled.
“Apparently not,” she said, a touch wryly.
“Beg pardon?”
She shrugged. “Well, I was here to apply for a job, but apparently I’m not properly qualified.” She resisted the childish urge to say, That mean, spiteful Luke Stewart wouldn’t give it to me.
Mr. Bailey’s brow lowered. “What job? I didn’t think there were any teaching positions open.”
Grace cleared her throat lightly. “It wasn’t a teaching job.”
“Not teaching?” He wasn’t going to let this go. “Was it administrative?”
“It was driving. The bus. Driving the school bus.” There. She’d said it. She’d admitted out loud that she’d been turned down as a bus driver.
It felt even worse now.
“Driving the school bus?” the older man repeated, with the same incredulity he might have shown if she’d said she wanted to become a trapeze artist. “That’s no job for a Perigon. Let’s go talk to Luke Stewart and see if we can’t find something reasonable for you here.” He took her arm and started leading her to the building she’d just left.
“No. Please.” Her reaction was too strong. He dropped her arm, startled. She smiled. “I mean, the driving position really was the one I wanted. It had flexible hours and would allow me to be with Jimmy when there was no school.” She tried to imagine Luke’s reaction if she reappeared with a big gun like Fred Bailey, demanding that a new position of some kind be created for her. “But it doesn’t matter, because he doesn’t think I’ll be able to get the license on time.” She didn’t know why she felt like she had to defend Luke’s decision suddenly.
“Hmm.” He rubbed his chin. “Well, I must confess I don’t know much about that.”
“It’s okay. I appreciate your concern, but I’ll find something else.”
“I’m sure you will.” Mr. Bailey looked at his watch. “I must go. I’ve gotten so caught up in talking to you, I forgot I had a board meeting. I want to see more of you now. Welcome back, Gracie.”
The endearment took the edge off her anger toward Luke. Nobody had called her Gracie since her father had died.
“Thanks, Mr. Bailey.” The lump in her throat expanded like a sponge. It was silly to feel a melancholy nostalgia for her childhood, but she did. She watched Fred Bailey walk away, noticing his gait was now that of an old man, a little creaky, stiff in the knees. It was then that she really realized that home hadn’t just waited for her, unchanging, while she went off and started a new life up north. Things had moved on here, too. People had died, grown older; some had moved away years ago, never to be seen again.
Thomas Wolfe was right, Grace thought, you can’t go home again.
But sometimes you have to.
* * *
“You’ll find something,” Grace’s mother, Dot Perigon, said, patting her daughter’s shoulder sympathetically. “If you like, I could speak to some of your father’s old friends and colleagues. They all loved Daddy so much, I’m sure at least one of them could find something for you to do.”
Grace shook her head and fiddled with a sweating glass of iced tea her mother had put on the table in front of her. There was a twist of lemon and a mint leaf in it, just the way she had always made it. “I’m desperate, but not so desperate that I’m willing to take a job at someone else’s expense. It’s one thing when there’s a job that needs to be filled—” she thought angrily of Luke “—but quite another when someone just creates a position as a favor to an old friend, then has to pay for it.”
“But anyone would be lucky to have you around, helping out.”
“Only if they needed the help, Mom. And I think most of Daddy’s friends have got highly qualified personnel working in their offices already.”
Dot sighed and topped Grace’s glass off with tea from a pitcher. “All right, dear, but I’d be glad to speak with Fred Bailey. Or anyone else,” she hastened to add. “If you change your mind.”
Grace smiled. “Actually, I spoke with Mr. Bailey today.”
Dot looked surprised. “You did?”
“Yes, he was on his way to the school when I was leaving.”
“What did he say?” Dot asked sharply.
Grace was afraid she heard, in her mother’s voice, a determination to speak with her old friend on Grace’s behalf. And Grace definitely didn’t want that. “As a matter of fact, he did offer to twist some arms for me,” she said, deflecting the idea she hoped, before it could take root. “But I told him no thanks.”
“You did?”
“I had to,” Grace stressed. “I don’t want charity.”
“I understand. Still, it was very nice of him to offer.” Dot looked quite pleased. “Very nice.”
“Yes, it was.” Grace took a long draw of the cold tea. “You know, it was almost like having Daddy around for a moment. When I saw him, it brought all of that back to me.”
“I know what you mean,” Dot mused, with a small smile.
“So you’ve known him since high school, right? Mr. Bailey, I mean.”
“Yes, why?”
Grace stirred her tea thoughtfully. “I was just wondering why he never got married.” But she was really thinking, again, of Luke. How come he hadn’t gotten married? Was he going to end up like Mr. Bailey, a lifelong bachelor in Blue Moon Bay?
“I couldn’t say,” Dot answered, looking out the window. “Looks like Jimmy’s having a good time with the Bonds’ old spaniel out there.”
Grace took a cookie off the plate her mother had set out. “He loves dogs.”
“Maybe you should get him one.”
“Mom! I can barely take care of the two of us as it is, despite Michael’s meager monthly payments.” It was then that it truly hit her. She had to take care of herself and her son, and if things continued the way they were, she wasn’t going to be able to. She’d have to…she didn’t even know what she’d have to do. Go on welfare? She shuddered at the thought. “What if I could find a job as a cocktail waitress or something over in Ocean City? Do you think you could keep Jimmy at night?”
Dot frowned. “I don’t want to say no to you, honey, but…well, I sometimes have things to do in the evenings. I just can’t commit to staying home according to your schedule.” She assumed a pleasant expression and added, “But, as I told you, he’s welcome to stay with me any time during the day.”
Grace swallowed her shock. Though she wouldn’t say she’d ever been spoiled, exactly, and she’d always been careful not to take advantage of her mother, at the same time she never thought her mother would say no to her. Especially on something as important as this.
But Grace was well aware that Dot had already been very generous in letting her daughter and grandson move in with her. Grace wasn’t going to argue for more. “Do we still have today’s newspaper?” she asked, trying to sound upbeat, although she felt anything but. “Maybe there’s something there that I overlooked before.”
Right. Like a classified ad offering a miracle to the most desperate candidate. Now there, Grace thought wryly, was a position she definitely was qualified for. High qualified.
* * *
“So what’s she doing at night that she can’t reschedule?” Jenna Perkins asked Grace a few nights later. After an unproductive week of job-hunting, Grace had reached the end of her rope. She had to get out. Now she and Jenna were in a crowded downtown bar called Harley’s, shouting to each other over the throbbing beat of a terrible band. Jenna was Grace’s oldest friend and had once shared Grace’s dream of leaving Blue Moon Bay, but she had stayed when the time came to decide. In reflection, it seemed like the better choice. She’d married a carpenter and had twins two years after Grace had Jimmy.
“Think she’s got a secret life you don’t know about?” Jenna went on, then raised an eyebrow. “Maybe a boyfriend?”
Grace laughed. “I don’t think so. Can you imagine it? Mom dating? Good lord!” She shook her head and reached for the peanuts. “Like life hasn’t gotten weird enough as it is.”
“Ten years is a long time to be alone,” Jenna said lightly. “And your mom’s a very attractive woman.”
“Come off it, Jenna. She’s known everyone in this town for sixty-three years. I don’t think anyone new has come in to sweep her off her feet.”
Jenna shrugged. “You never know.”
“You said you had a great job idea,” Grace reminded her, steering the conversation away from her mother. “What is it?”
“Well, you know how I was working in my dad’s shop last month when he and Mom went on that cruise?”
“Sure, I remember.” Jenna’s father was the only jeweler in Blue Moon Bay, and his shop had been there since his own father had established it in the forties. “What do you have in mind? Knocking off a jewelry shop and pawning the stuff at your dad’s?” Grace laughed.
Jenna laughed with her. “Don’t think I haven’t thought of it. But no, there was a woman who came in like three times while I was working, and she must have spent at least three grand just on big tacky rings and things. Know what she does for a living?”
“What?”
“She reads tarot cards.”
Grace groaned. “Oh, no, you want to be a fortune teller?”
“Wait a minute, I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. I think I could make a mint off the summer tourists. Probably even enough to keep us going the rest of the year, if that woman is any indication. Although she did say she works in Atlantic City, which, granted, has a bit more tourist traffic. But still, I might be able to make a living off it.”
“Right. You, Bob and the twins, all living off the telling of nineteen people’s fortunes.” Grace shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“There are more tourists in Blue Moon Bay than that and you know it. The town’s going to be mobbed in a couple of weeks, just you wait.”
“Mobbed by Blue Moon Bay standards, anyway.” Since leaving town, Grace had seen “mobbed” on a grand scale. Atlantic City in summer. Walt Disney World in summer. Blue Moon Bay did get a fair amount of tourists and beach-goers, but its reputation as a family-beach town kept the wild singles and college kids away. They went to Ocean City, forty miles from here, for their fun, leaving Blue Moon Bay comparatively quiet. “But it’s not like it’s going to be mobbed with the kind of people who go to fortune tellers.”
“Everyone likes fortune tellers. You should do it too,” Jenna went on, unperturbed. “Say thirty bucks a reading, two readings an hour, ten hours a day, six days a week, that’s…” She paused, thinking.
“Unlikely?” Grace supplied.
She shot Grace a look. “Thirty-six hundred bucks a week, right? With virtually no overhead. I could live with that.” She shifted on her barstool, nearly slipping off. The bartender approached and she shouted an order to him, then turned back to Grace and said, “Now where was I?”
“Dreaming.”
“No.” Jenna speared an olive from the bartender’s supply with a toothpick, then popped it into her mouth. “Tarot cards. Seriously, think about it.”
“How about if you try it and let me know how it works out. In the meantime, I’m going to find a real job.”
“Well, you haven’t so far. I would think you’d be willing to at least consider some untraditional alternative possibilities.”
“You’d be surprised at some of the untraditional alternatives I’ve thought of.” Grace took a swig of the Mexican beer Jenna had ordered for her, but the lime slice got caught in the neck of the bottle. She poked it down and tried again, appreciating the cold, sour taste. Michael would never have come to Harley’s bar and had bottled beer with fruit in it. He’d always preferred the muted cocktail scene at the Seahorse by the bay.
Somehow the fact that her ex-husband wouldn’t like it here made the beer taste even better.
“I hate to ask this,” Jenna started carefully, “but have you thought of borrowing money from your mom?”
Grace shook her head. “Dad’s pension is good, but not so good she that she can support Jimmy and me.” She sighed. “Besides, then I’d be in debt to her, and I’d have to make the money to pay her back, so what’s the difference?”
“All right, but I wish you could just stay here indefinitely. If only there was a job.”
Grace shook her head. “You can’t go back home.”
“But you are back home.”
“It doesn’t feel like it.” In truth, nothing felt like home at the moment. Grace felt completely and utterly lost.
She leaned back against the bar and let her eyes fall on the people playing pool across the room. The music of the band pounded through her, and she willed it to shake loose the tension that had become a constant hum inside her head. She had to take at least an hour or two off from worrying, or she was going to have a nervous breakdown. There was nothing she had to think about right now, she told herself, nothing she had to take care of right this moment. Jimmy was home with Jenna’s husband and kids, and there was nothing Grace could do about her job situation tonight. This was a great opportunity to loosen up, and she was going to enjoy it, no matter how hard it was.
As if testing her resolve on that cue, the band started playing “Stand By Your Man.”
Jenna clucked her tongue against her teeth. “They’ve got to be joking.”
“No, God is.” No sooner were the words out of her mouth, than the glass door to Harley’s opened and Luke Stewart strolled in. “Uh-oh. Time to leave.” She set her bottle down and hopped off the barstool.
“What?” Jenna asked, looking in the area of the door. “What’s wrong?”
“That’s wrong.” Grace said in a low voice, pointing to Luke.
“Oh, my God, it’s Luke Stewart,” Jenna gasped. “You haven’t talked to him since high school, have you?”
“As a matter of fact, I talked to him a few days ago. I had to beg him for a job driving a bus at Connor School, and he turned me down.”
Jenna looked at her, surprised. “You had to ask Luke? Why? Is he in charge of the buses?”
“He’s in charge of everything,” Grace said, popping an olive into her mouth. “Headmaster.”
“Oh, my. That must have been hard. How come you didn’t tell me earlier?”
Grace chewed and kept narrowed eyes on Luke. The sight of him brought a warm flush to her cheeks. Residual humiliation and anger, no doubt. “If you’d been turned down as a bus driver, you probably wouldn’t be talking about it much either.”
“Wow. I guess he’s still mad about you picking Michael over him.”
“I didn’t pick Michael over him. I stayed with Michael rather than throw the relationship away over a small, brief, untested crush on someone else.”
“On Luke, you mean.” Jenna pulled the bowl of peanuts across the bar and took a handful.
Grace kept her eyes on Luke. “It doesn’t matter who it was, it would have been stupid for me to throw away a secure relationship because of some silly infatuation.”
“I don’t know. It might have spared you a lot of trouble.”
“And bought me a whole new brand of trouble.”
Jenna nodded her agreement. “Probably so. And you wouldn’t have Jimmy.”
“That’s right. He’s worth it all.” Grace sighed. “Too bad he’s going to have to live on bread and water because his mother can’t get a job, even as a bus driver.”
“Well, why would you want to drive a bus anyway? And why there? Wouldn’t it be weird to go back to your alma mater that way?”
Of course it would be weird. It felt weird even before she knew Luke was part of the deal. “There’s no other work in this town,” Grace said dully.
“Oh, come on, I’m sure someone would hire you. One of your dad’s old friends? You know, as a favor to him?”
Grace winced inwardly. “I’d sooner die than shame Daddy by taking charity from one of his friends. They’d feel obligated, I’d feel pathetic…it would be the same as asking for a handout.”
Jenna shook her head. “You’re just as stubborn as you’ve always been.”
“I’m not stubborn, I’m mature.” She laughed. “Besides, if I worked for the school, I could negotiate tuition for Jimmy into the deal, and we’d keep exactly the same hours.”
“That makes sense. And it is a good school,” Jenna acknowledged with a sympathetic smile. “Jimmy’d like the horses.”
“That’s what I thought. But it’s not like I have the option of taking the job.”
“Well, there are minuses to it too. This is probably for the best.”
“Unemployment, in this case, is not for the best.”
“Surely there’s something else you can do that would fit the bill. Somewhere.”
Across the room, Luke had stopped and was talking to a petite blonde with a heart-shaped butt and a waist the size of Grace’s thigh. Drawing her attention away from the two, Grace pulled the bowl of peanuts over and took some. To hell with fat grams. “Yes, I’m sure. I’ll find something else,” she said, still watching Luke with a growing constriction in her chest. Nerves. But the anxiety she was trying to escape continued to escalate. Her breath stopped when she noticed Luke glance in her direction, but he didn’t seem to see her.
Jenna followed her gaze and asked, “So why did he turn you down?”
“I’m not sure.” She’d remembered he was great-looking, of course, but she hadn’t remembered just how great-looking he was. The jerk. “I believe he thinks I’m not clever enough to pass the test and then drive the big, bad bus,” Grace said, taking a last sip of beer. Part of her was actually reluctant to leave, but she didn’t trust herself to be entirely civil to Luke if he should see her. “And if I screwed up after he’d hired me, he’d look really bad in front of the board.”
Suddenly, Luke turned and walked purposefully in her direction. It felt as though all the noise and music and people receded into the background. Grace was as acutely aware of him as she would have been if he were following her down a dark alley with a ski mask on.
Before she could turn away and pretend she hadn’t seen him, he raised a hand in greeting, and she had no choice but to do the same.
“The usual,” he called.
“Sorry?” Grace said, at the same time hearing a voice behind her say, “You got it, Luke,” over the din of the band and the crowd around them.
Oh, God, he wasn’t even talking to her. He’d been waving at someone behind her, and she’d waved right on back at him, like a fool. Would this day never end?
He walked right past her without acknowledgment. Then he stopped and stood behind her at the bar, apparently oblivious to her presence. He wasn’t more than two feet away from her back. She could feel the heat of him, penetrating the thin fabric of her shirt.
She slipped some money out of her purse and whispered to Jenna, “Pay the bill and meet me outside.” She had to get away before he did notice her.
“Grace?” Too late. It was Luke’s voice. He’d spotted her.
She turned with as much cool as she could muster. “Oh. Hey, Luke. Did you hire someone for that job from the hundreds of people I saw lined up by the garage when I was leaving?”
He didn’t play along. “I left a message on your answering machine.” His voice was clipped. The bartender handed him a bottle of beer with no glass. He took a gulp of it, then let out a short breath. “You get it?”
“A message?” Grace was mystified.
His eyes, which had seemed such a warm shade of brown earlier, were hard. “You got the job.” His mouth turned up in the smallest ironic smile. “Surprise.”
Grace caught her breath. She was employed? Really? This was too good to be true—or was it? “I don’t understand. The other day you told me I didn’t.”
He took another draw off his drink and set it down, hard, on the bar. Foam bubbled out of the top and ran over onto the gleaming wood bar. “I’ve been outvoted.”
Her excitement turned to apprehension. He was angry about something. Had Mr. Bailey said something to him after all? “What do you mean you’ve been outvoted?” she asked cautiously.
He lowered his chin fractionally and gave her a look that could, under the right circumstances, have been extremely sexy, but which was, instead, downright accusatory.
Something cold slithered down her spine.
“I mean,” he said, with too much patience, “that starting in three short weeks, it’ll be your job to sit on a seat covered with chewed gum, in a vehicle equipped with a Bodily Fluid Clean-up Kit, surrounded by screaming kids. Just like you wanted.” One side of his mouth cocked into a smile. “This must be a dream come true for you.”
His iciness left little doubt that Fred Bailey had indeed leaned on him.
“I applied for that job without help from anyone,” she said defensively.
“And I turned you down without help from anyone.” He drank, then leveled his eyes on Grace. “If it had stopped there, we’d have no problem.”
“What happened?”
“Fred Bailey happened,” he said, confirming her fears. “He strongly ‘suggested’ that I reconsider you for the position, no matter how unqualified you are. What did you do, call him from your cell phone as soon as you got outside?”
“No!” Grace was hurt by the accusation. “I saw him in the parking lot when I left, and he asked what I was doing there. When I told him what happened, he offered to talk to you, but I declined. I had no idea he’d done it anyway, and I’m sorry he did.”
“This is the way things have always worked for you, Grace.” Luke shook his head and took an angry slug of his beer, hammering it back down on the countertop.
“And just what is that supposed to mean?”
“That means it’s always been easy for you. You’ve always known just what you wanted and gotten it.” He lowered his voice slightly and added, “No matter what the cost.”
She railed in anger. “That’s not true. Number one, if you think this is my dream job and I went after it pulling all the powerful strings I could because I wanted it so badly, you’re crazy. And number two, I would hardly say my life is easy. You have a lot of nerve making presumptions of any sort about me.” She caught her breath. “And what do you mean ‘no matter what the cost’?”
He looked as though he was about to fire back at her, then stopped. “That’s none of my business. It’s between you and whoever you make your deals with. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“That’s right, you shouldn’t. You have no right to judge me, Luke Stewart. No right at all.”
“I’ll keep my thoughts to myself from now on.”
“Right,” she said. “Like you always have, huh? Like you even can. You may not say anything, but you have a way of getting your disapproval across.”
“I don’t think you want to have that conversation,” Luke said, in a voice that assured her that she did not.
“I don’t want to have any conversation with you!”
He raised an eyebrow. “Then you’re going to find it particularly tedious to work for me, don’t you think?”
She threw her hands up in the air. “So what do you want me to do? You want me to say I won’t take the job?” she asked, fighting the urge to do just that. “You want me to quit before I even start?”
He gave a quick shake of the head. “Oh, no, I don’t want you to quit. I want you to come in tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. and start learning the parts of the engine.” He gave a quick, humorless smile. “You had your chance to decline. Now you have to go through with this. We need a driver and, like it or not, you’re it.”
Chapter Four (#ulink_fdccacbc-5b7d-5d61-a789-9f5729437578)
Three weeks later, Grace knew more about school buses than she’d ever dreamed she would. It was Wednesday, two days before she was set to take the test for her commercial driver’s license and five days before the first day of summer school—when she was supposed to begin driving.
Assuming she passed the test, that was.
It apparently had a first-time failure rate of 49 percent. Grace would have accepted those odds more comfortably if she hadn’t already come out on the short end of the 47-percent failure rate of first marriages.
She and Luke stood before the bus in the early-morning heat. It was not yet nine o’clock. Luke had insisted that Grace meet him on campus every day at 7:00 a.m. so they could get their work done before it got too hot and humid outside. Or so he said. She suspected the early hour was really because he wanted to make this whole experience as miserable as possible for her.
“All right,” Luke said, taking a sip of steaming coffee from a paper gas-station cup. “The test official is going to ask you to go through an outside sight inspection first, identifying all the major parts of the engine and frame.”
“How can you drink steamy coffee on a hot morning like this?” Grace asked. “You know, they make whipped frozen coffees that are really good.”
He gave her a look. “Is it necessary to discuss my drink preferences, or can we just move forward with what’s actually important?”
“Okay, okay. Move on.” She took a deep breath, like an athlete preparing for a sprint. “I’m ready.”
He stepped back and gestured toward the bus. “Then go for it. Tell me everything you’re checking as you do it.”
“Okay.” Her hands tingled with nervousness, but she wasn’t about to admit to him that this was harder than she thought it would be. If he noticed her shake, she’d blame it on the frozen whipped coffee she’d had on her way in. “First I check the headlights, taillights and brake lights, to make sure there are no cracks.” She walked around the bus, looking at all the plastic covers on the lights as she spoke, then stopped where she’d started again. “Everything looks fine.”
“Everything?” he asked, as if he’d caught her in a lie.
“Oh, the reflectors.” She’d nearly forgotten the reflectors again. For some reason she had made that mistake almost every time. She made another round, then came back and looked to Luke for approval.
He said nothing, just watched her impassively.
She wasn’t going to let him rattle her. “Okay, then. Tires.”
“What about them?” His mouth almost lifted into a smile. Almost.
She couldn’t help but admire the curve of his lips. That was something she’d always noticed whenever she saw him. He had a great mouth. Not full and girlish, but not lipless and hard. Just right.
And, she remembered with a reluctant shiver, he’d known just how to use it.
“Tires?” he prompted. “What are you supposed to look for there?”
She shook herself back into the moment. Tires. “The tread has to be four thirty-seconds of an inch, the rims have to be rust-free and smooth. No cracks. Valve caps on. And you can’t just take them off another car in the parking lot like you could with a normal car.”
“Is this the kind of thing you’re planning to say to the cop who tests you?”
She ignored his question and turned to kneel in front of the first tire. She half suspected Luke might have changed it since she went through this drill yesterday, but it looked the same. “So now I’m supposed to take the hubcap off—” she wrestled with it until it came free “—and check the slugs and grease seal.”
“Lugs,” Luke said.
“Huh?”
“It’s lugs. You keep saying slugs.” For the first time in two weeks he smiled. “You’re talking about tires, not guns.”
“I said lugs,” she lied, disarmed by his grin. What a weapon he had there. “You heard wrong.”
“Uh-huh.” He could see right through her.
She’d always been a terrible liar. “Where was I?”
“You mentioned tread, rims, valve caps, grease seals and ‘slugs,’” Luke said. There was a light in his eyes for a moment, but it dimmed quickly and he was back to business. “Anything else?”
Obviously he had something in mind. What was she forgetting now? She repeated the list in her mind twice before it came to her. “Air! I’m checking the air pressure. And making sure there’s no fabric showing through the rubber tire. Although, frankly, isn’t this the kind of thing they check for you at the gas station when you go to full service?”
“You’re not going to full service anymore, Grace,” Luke said. “At least not on the school’s dime.”
He was right—she wasn’t living in a full-service world anymore. Not here or at home. She went back to her drill, checking each tire in turn. “Next I check the wiper blades, the gas door,” she moved from one part to the next as she spoke, “and the running board.” She stepped on it and pushed hard with her foot. The bus rocked.
What would Michael say if he knew she could identify a running board?
“What are you checking for?”
She was ready with the answer. “To make sure it’s secured tightly.”
“Good.”
This was high praise from Luke. She gave a nod of acknowledgment, her mood lightening. “Now, Mr. Tester, if you wouldn’t mind helping me, I need to make sure the lights are working properly.”
“This isn’t a magic show, Grace,” Luke said. Or, rather, growled. “You’ve got to take this seriously.”
He wasn’t going to allow her even a moment of levity, Grace realized. And he certainly wasn’t going to let her act as if they were friends. This was all business, nothing more.
She was lucky he didn’t insist she call him “sir.”
“Forgive me,” she said, stopping just short of rolling her eyes. “But you said I’m supposed to have a second person, in this case the MVA guy looks at the lights while I turn them on and off.”
“That’s right. Just don’t get cute.”
“God forbid.”
“Well, I know that’s gotten you through a lot of things in life—”
“Oh, yeah, I’ve been cruising on cute for years now, Luke. It worked wonders with the mortgage holder when Michael left.” She put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “Cute got me lots of clams in the bank too. This bus stuff is just a hobby for me.”
He looked at her for a moment, one eyebrow raised and an expression between amusement and exasperation on his face. “You finished?”
“Are you?”
“For now.” He smiled again. Twice in one day. It was a record.
She couldn’t help but smile back. Which really galled her. Was she so desperate for kindness that this little morsel—even from Luke Stewart, who couldn’t be called friendly, much less a friend—made her feel so grateful? “Then if I may continue…?”
He nodded.
She opened the side door, stepped into the already-hot interior of the bus and took a moment to compose herself.
She inserted the key into the ignition and called out as she flipped switches, “Taillights, brake lights.” She stepped on the brake pedal, recited, “Back-up lights,” then put it in reverse. “Tag lights on?”
“Yup.”
“Great.” She shifted back into park. “Now I have to check the engine.” She located the hood latch and pulled it. Then, with false confidence, she stepped out into the sun again, moving in front of the engine.
It was a mess. She’d been over it a thousand times in the past two weeks, taken notes, even drawn a rudimentary picture of it with identifying notes, but when she looked at it with no notes or instruction, she was lost.
She could not let Luke know she was anything less than completely sure of herself. She started with the one part she could identify most easily. “First I check the battery to make sure there’s no corrosion and to ensure that the cable’s on tight.” She did so, slowly and deliberately, while she frantically tried to collect her thoughts and figure out what was next.
He must have sensed her confusion, because, without a derisive word, he leaned over the engine, brushing his arm against hers in the process. “What’s that?”
Her bare skin tingled from his touch, and Grace was disgusted with herself. New low, she noted. It had been so long since she’d been with a man that even this lightest of touches from a guy she didn’t even like sent shivers running through her. Pheromones were blind.
She focused on the part he pointed to. “The, uh, the steering-wheel rod,” she said, her voice weak.
“What about it?”
Steering-wheel rod, steering-wheel rod…A flood of information came back to her, right in the nick of time. “I have to make sure that it’s secure, not loose.”
“Right.” He stepped back. “What else?”
She pictured the drawing she’d done. “I need to make sure the brake-fluid level is correct, and that the brake lines are tight and not leaking.” She rattled the list off without looking away from the engine. She could feel Luke behind her, his eyes on her, and she knew if she turned and looked at him, she’d forget all of it.
“I’d check the power steering,” she continued, pointing to various parts as she went along, “power-steering pump, water pump, carburetor, window-washing fluid.” She was on a roll. “I need to check the alternator, to make sure the clamp is on securely and the wires are secured behind it. Then there’s the heater hose, the coolant, the radiator hose, transmission fluid, and oil dipstick.” She checked it all and turned to him triumphantly. “And that’s it for the engine.”
“No, it’s not.”
“It’s not?”
She deflated like a balloon. As hard as she’d tried, as much as she’d concentrated, she’d still managed to forget something.
“You didn’t check your belts.”
Automatically her hand flew to her waist.
“In the engine.”
“I know,” she said, trying to look at him like he was crazy for thinking she’d had anything different in mind. She bent over the engine and tugged at the fan belt. “They shouldn’t give more than an inch.” She turned back to him. “Words to live by, right, Luke? Don’t give an inch.”
“You think I’m inflexible?”
“If the shoe fits…”
“Hey, you’re here, aren’t you?”
She looked at him in disbelief. “Not because of any great flexibility on your part!”
“I’m being more flexible than you think.”
Something in Grace snapped. She was so sick and tired of feeling like a burden to people—to her lawyer, who was letting her pay in installments; to her mother, who was letting them live with her; to Fred Bailey, who had taken it upon himself to get this job for her; and even to Luke, who had been “persuaded” to give her the job against his will and who now had to take the time to teach her the ropes—that she sometimes thought she might just scream.
“Look, Luke,” she said, with as much control as she could muster. “I know you don’t want me here. I know you think I can’t do this, and I know that even if you did think I could do it, you would resent the hell out of the fact that Fred Bailey suggested that you give me the job.”
He gave a short laugh.
She continued without stopping. “I know all of that, but none of it is going to make me quit. All it’s going to do is make me more determined than ever to succeed at this, so you should be glad that, whether you wanted to or not, you just hired yourself the best damn bus driver you could have gotten.” The timbre of her voice rose as she spoke, and she took a moment to breathe and regain her composure. “Now. I’m going to take the test in two days and I’m going to pass it and I’m going to drive the kids to and from school, and I don’t want to hear one more word about how undeserving I am—got it?”
He looked at her for a long moment, during which she doubted the wisdom of her mini-diatribe, then the wisdom of taking the job, then the wisdom of wearing cut-off shorts that made her feel as bloated as a poisoned cat.
The silence went on so long that she was about to ask if he was all right when he spoke.
“Hit your knees,” he said.
Grace’s mouth dropped open. “What?”
He gestured at the ground. “You’re not finished with the test. Hit your knees and identify the parts underneath the vehicle.”
“Oh.” The color came back into her cheeks. “Okay.”
“What did you think I meant?”
“Nothing,” she said quickly. “I knew what you meant. I’m supposed to check the parts underneath, front, back and sides. I know that.”
Smiling to himself, Luke watched Grace bend down and look under the front of the bus. He couldn’t help it, he loved the way she looked in those faded blue cut-offs. Her legs were long and shapely, and already tanned even though it was still early in the summer. Somehow those cut-offs reminded him of endless hot summers, and clumsy passion and foolish optimism.
“Luke?”
He was so lost in thought that he didn’t realize for a moment she was speaking to him. “Yeah. Sorry, I was…thinking about something.”
She raised her eyebrows. “You back now? Should I go on?”
“Absolutely, yes.”
“Okay.” She cleared her throat and turned back to the bus, giving him a pretty dazzling view from behind. “I check the stabilizer bar, guide arm, tie rod, tie rod ends—” she emphasized the tie rod ends, he noticed, since that was one of the items she consistently forgot “—brake lines to the disc brakes in front and the drum brakes in back, coil spring, shock absorber, power-steering pump, Pitman arm.” She took a breath. “Make sure there are no leaks in the power-steering box, radiator hose, fuel pump and water pump.” She stood up and slapped her dirty hands against the front of her shorts. “Everything’s okay from the front.”
“Good.” He’d barely been able to keep his mind on the engine parts, so he hoped she hadn’t forgotten anything major. She got down on her hands and knees at the side and started talking again. “All right, here are the transmission lines, and they are not leaking. The cross beams are secure, no cracks or leaks in the mufflers—” she looked back at him “—of which there are two. If you’re to be believed.”
“There are two,” he confirmed.
“It’s just that I’ve never heard of a car having two mufflers,” she said.
“This isn’t a car, it’s a bus, and there are two mufflers on it.”
“Okay.” She shrugged. “I’ve just never heard of it.”
“But you’ve seen them,” he said, exasperated. “You’re supposed to be looking at them right now.”
“Well, I am.”
He hesitated. “Grace?”
She looked guilty. “What?”
“Are you looking at them? Are you looking at anything as you identify it, or are you just rattling off a bunch of stuff you memorized?”
“Does it make a difference?”
“Does it make a difference?” he repeated incredulously. “Of course it makes a difference!” Grace was hopeless, he decided. There was no way she was going to pass the test unless she was able to charm whoever was administering it. If it was Bob Gaylord or Stan Vanderhof she’d be okay, but if she got Myrna Franz, Grace was in real trouble. “Grace, we’ve spent two weeks going over this damned bus, piece by piece. I know it’s not the most interesting thing you’ll ever do—”
“Luke.”
She spoke so quietly that he stopped.
He looked at her. “What?”
She crooked a finger at him, beckoning him over. “Come here. I’ll show you.”
He went to her and crouched next to her, and tried to ignore the seductive scent of her shampoo…which told him he was too close to her for his own good.
“That,” she said, “is the drive line. We’re checking to make sure the universal joints there—” she identified them correctly “—are secure.” She swept her arm down toward the back tire. “There you have the leaf springs, held on at the spring hanger and secured, as you can see, by a U-bolt. That also holds the rear axle there in place.”
She was right on all counts. He leaned in and looked to make sure. It was hot between them, but he wasn’t sure if it was the engine, the weather or something else.
“That’s the gas tank,” Grace was saying. “That’s the emergency-brake cable, and the oil filter is over there on the right side.” She turned to him, her face just inches from his. The blue of her eyes was so clear he almost felt he could see inside her. “And this—” she gave an ironic smile and pointed at him “—is a guy who is so convinced he’s right about everything and everyone that he’s unwilling to give anything a chance, even when it could be to his own benefit.” She flashed him a devious smile. “How’m I doing?”
He had to hand it to her. Not only had she learned all of the parts of the engine—a feat he had been certain she couldn’t accomplish even in a year—but she had done it in less time than it had taken the last two bus drivers.
Of course, she was wrong about him. He was nothing if not open-minded.
“You’re getting there,” he conceded, with a grudging smile.
A strange moment passed between them. For just a fraction of a moment, Luke thought that maybe he and Grace might someday, somehow, be friends.
But everything that had gone down between them came back to him in a flash. “Friends” seemed unlikely.
Grace’s smile widened. “I’m there, buddy, I’m finished. At least with the outside of the bus and the inside’s a piece of cake. I got everything right and you know it.”
He gave a nod. “I know it.”
“Ha!” She stood up and wiped the dirt off her hands again. “And you hate it,” she said, jabbing a triumphant finger in his direction.
“No, I don’t, Grace, I’m glad. I need you to get this right. I need for you to pass the test.”
She nodded. “I’ll pass.” She swallowed visibly, but kept her chin up in a determined way. “Don’t you worry about that.”
“There you are, Grace, Luke.”
Luke turned to see Fred Bailey making his way across the gravel parking lot. “I’m glad to find you both here. Saves me some time.”
“Hi, Mr. Bailey,” Grace said, sounding like a kid.
“What’s up, Fred?” Luke asked. If Fred Bailey was looking for him, he could be pretty sure it wasn’t to give him a lollipop. Fred only sought him out when there was a problem. Or a woman who needed a job.
The older man took a handkerchief out of his pocket and swabbed his forehead. “Hot as hell out here.”
“It is,” Luke agreed.
“Bet it’s worse in that tin box.” Fred nodded toward the bus.
Grace laughed. “Yeah. It has no air-conditioning.”
Fred seemed genuinely surprised. “No air-conditioning?”
She gestured toward the open bus door. “There’s a fan rigged up to the rearview mirror, but that’s it.”
Luke flashed Grace an impatient look. “There’s nothing wrong with the bus. On hot days, the driver can open the windows and use the fan. It’s just fine in there.”
Grace remained silent.
Fred Bailey looked at her quizzically, then shrugged. “You all know more about these things than I do. Tell you why I’m here.
“It’s about the funding.”
“Maybe I should let you two speak in private,” Grace said, glancing from one to the other.
“No, no. Part of what I have to say concerns you too, Grace.”
She raised her eyebrows. “O-kay…”
“Luke, I’ll get right to the point. Daphne Silvers has decided not to give the school the grant she promised. It was, as you know, substantial.”
Luke’s stomach dropped. Substantial was right. Daphne Silvers had promised the school fifty thousand dollars. He’d worked it into the budget and still come up slightly short of his five-year projections. The fund-raising plans he’d made were meant to fill the leftover gap, not a chunk as large as fifty grand.
“We’ve held an emergency meeting of the board,” Fred went on, “and we’re about to have another meeting this afternoon. Bernard Hall has offered an additional ten thousand on top of the donation he made this spring, but we’re still falling short.”
“Far short,” Luke said. “Though there’s a possibility that the state will give us a grant. I’ve got the paperwork on my desk.”
Fred shook his head. “Unfortunately, the deadline for that was yesterday.”
“What? That’s not possible. I went over every detail. I’m sure the deadline is next week.”
“Typo.” Fred waved his hand airily, as if to say the issue had already been raised and dismissed. “They sent out an amendment, but no one on the staff seems to have gotten it.”
Which meant that he’d have to wait another ten months to apply again. The school had only enough money, assuming full enrollment, to maintain itself for two more years. If that didn’t change, Connor Primary Day School would have to close.
“Why did Mrs. Silvers rescind her offer?” Grace asked.
“That’s beside the point—” Luke began.
“No, no, it’s a good question,” Fred said. “She rescinded her offer because of our policy change on the honor code at the end of last semester.”
Luke nodded miserably. He’d known some oldschoolers would disapprove of the change, but he’d felt strongly that the code, as written, wasn’t fair.
“What change?” Grace wanted to know.
“There was some cheating on the final exam. About six students in Amanda Bittner’s class. The old policy was that if anyone cheated, the entire class would be expelled. But that was plainly unfair.” He looked at Fred Bailey. “Surely you pointed that out.”
Fred nodded and swabbed his forehead again. “Several of us tried valiantly, but Daphne hates scandal. Didn’t want her name attached to anything that smacks of dishonesty. And she’s not the only one—she nearly got Ginger Anderson and Lynn Morrow on board with her.”
“But that’s so narrow-minded!” Grace objected.
Luke agreed privately, but aloud he said, “These are older folks who have been living in this town for half a century or more, Grace. Not only are their personal codes of conduct strict, but they hold almost impossibly high expectations for everyone around them.”
“Exactly so,” Fred agreed. “So we’ve got to walk the straight and narrow, Luke, the straight and narrow. We can’t have anything happen this year that has even the slightest appearance of impropriety.”
Luke nodded. “Absolutely.”
“Mr. Bailey, you said this had something to do with me,” Grace said, her voice a little smaller than usual. “I hope my presence here hasn’t been the cause of any trouble, what with my divorce from Michael and all.”
Luke shot a fast look at Fred. That hadn’t even occurred to him. Admittedly, Luke hadn’t wanted to hire Grace, but he wouldn’t stand for her termination on the basis of her personal life.
Fred looked surprised. “Certainly not, my dear. It’s nothing to do with your divorce. It’s about your job here.”
Grace swallowed visibly. “My job?”
The older man nodded and looked regretful. “I’m afraid so. One of the budgeting proposals before the board is to cut out transportation.”
Chapter Five (#ulink_27427905-89bd-567e-937b-4fa1f0f2abb6)
Grace’s stomach dropped. They might cut out transportation? As in, she might lose the only job she could get?
It was totally consistent with the year she’d had, she thought cynically. She’d lost her husband, lost her home, begged Luke Stewart to give her a job as a bus driver, and now she was going to lose even that.
Obviously—and this could not be overstated—she had really ticked off the Man Upstairs somewhere along the line.
“We can’t cut out transportation,” Luke said, with the merest glance her way. “People are counting on it.”
The glance was not lost on Fred Bailey. He followed it to Grace, then said, “There are other jobs.”
Luke hesitated a small but noticeable fraction of a moment. “Students are counting on it,” he said. “Some of these kids live miles away, with parents who, for whatever reason, can’t drive them to school. If we lose transportation, we lose students, and that means we lose revenue.”
“Tell me something, Luke. How many buses do we have here?”
“Two.”
“For how many students?”
Luke thought for a moment. “About twenty-five.”
Fred grimaced and swabbed his forehead again. “That’s only about ten percent of the student body. Last time I looked, we weren’t making much profit on transportation fees. With the cost of oil going up, we might even be working at a loss.”
“No way.” Luke shook his head. “We’re making several hundred dollars’ profit with each transportation contract we have.”
Fred gave a shrug that said he wasn’t quite buying it. “We’ll talk about it another time,” he said dismissively. “We’re not making any changes immediately.”
Luke expelled a tense breath and stood very rigid beside Grace. “I hope a few alternative plans were introduced.”
“Of course, of course,” Fred said. Grace got the impression that he’d already made up his mind about it. “Now there’s just one more thing.”
Grace could almost feel Luke’s agitation growing.
“What’s that?” he asked, clipped.
“As you may recall, the board wants the staff to be certified in CPR.”
“That’s right.” Luke looked at Grace. “Did you say you were certified?”
“Well, I took a class at the Red Cross, but I don’t have the actual certification.” She was about to add that she’d signed up for a refresher class at the firehouse already, but Luke interrupted her.
“That’s okay,” he said. “You can just take the course here. I should have mentioned it before. It’s a new policy, and I wasn’t thinking about it when I hired you.”
“She’s not the only one who needs the certification,” Fred said, raising an eyebrow at Luke.
“I know, Libby Doyle in the math department is already scheduled for a class in Dover this summer when she goes to visit her family.”
“What about you?”
“Me?”
For a second, Grace felt sorry for him. She’d been to his office; she knew he had a lot piled on his desk already. Although she questioned whether they needed to work on the bus so early in the morning, she did believe that it had taken some effort on his part to carve out that hour or so he had to do it.
“The entire staff needs to be certified,” Fred was saying. “My secretary already looked into it and discovered that the Red Cross is sponsoring an all-day course at the firehouse next month.”
“What’s the date?”
“Saturday the 20th,” Grace answered. “I saw the sign at the pharmacy and thought at the time it would be a good idea to refresh my memory, so I signed up.”
“Wonderful!” Fred was clearly delighted. “Such a clever girl. You are your mother’s daughter.” He turned back to Luke.
“So all we need to do is sign you up.”
“I’ll be there,” Luke said, sounding as if it were the last thing on earth he wanted to do.
“Excellent,” Fred said, patting his handkerchief along the back of his neck. “Glad you’re both willing to pitch in this way.”
Luke nodded, as if he’d had a choice, which everyone knew he hadn’t. Then he looked at his watch. “I’m sorry,” he said to Grace, “but I have to get inside for a conference call in fifteen minutes, and I’m not going to be around in the morning. How about if we finish this tomorrow evening? Say, around seven?”
“It’s a date,” she said, automatically.
He didn’t correct her, but he might as well have for the dark look he gave her. “Seven,” he repeated. “We’ll do one last drill. After that, you’re on your own.”
* * *
“When are we going home?”
“We are home,” Grace said to Jimmy for what seemed like the tenth time the next day. “For now.” She stabbed the ground with a trowel, thinking of Michael, and tossed the dirt aside. It was late to be planting tomatoes and basil, but she’d bought mature plants, and with a little luck she’d have a midsummer harvest. “You’re going to have to think of it that way.”
Jimmy rubbed his eyes with dirty hands, streaking mud across his lightly freckled face. His blond hair was sprinkled with dirt, like powdered sugar on toast. “But it’s not like home.”
“No.” Grace tried to temper her frustration at having to make him feel better about the move when she was having so much trouble feeling good about it herself. “For one thing, you’ve got this nice big yard to play in.”
“Yeah, and no one to play with.” She didn’t like the sulky edge to his voice. It sounded too familiar. She herself had said almost the same thing to her mother last night when they were talking about the unlikely possibility of Grace ever having a date again.
It’s not like there’s anyone to go out with in this town even if I wanted to, which I don’t.
“So you’ll have to get out and meet new people,” Grace said, like a tape recording of her mother.
“There are no new people here.”
She turned to him, startled. It was exactly what she’d said, but she had reason to say it. Blue Moon Bay held on to its inhabitants the way a spiderweb held flies…once you were trapped here it was difficult to leave. It was hard to say whether that was because people loved it so much or whether it was just too much trouble to move away. Unless, of course, one was an attractive eligible male.
But whatever problems Grace had with moving back, it should have been a dream town for a kid, with the ocean and the bay and the freedom and safety of living in a town where everyone looked out for everyone else.
“Everyone here is new to you,” Grace said.
“Everyone here is old!”
Grace laughed. “Come on, you’ve met Jenna’s kids.”
“They’re babies. They’re only, like, eight.”
“Well, don’t worry about it, because when you start summer school you’ll meet a bunch of new kids.”
“That’s another thing,” Jimmy said, like a little lawyer with his Evidence Against Blue Moon Bay all lined up. “Why do I have to go to summer school? If we were back home, with Dad, I’d get the summer off like normal kids. Like my friends.”
Grace winced inwardly. He was absolutely 100 percent right. But if he were back home, he’d be going to a school that was less academically challenging than Connor. “Well, in this case it’s a good thing you have summer school, because you will meet kids your age there. See? So it’s all working out perfectly.”
“Dad’s not here,” Jimmy muttered, kicking a bag of topsoil.
She was tempted to point out that Dad had seldom been around in New Jersey either, that whole days had passed when he got home after Jimmy had gone to bed and was asleep in the morning when Jimmy got up for school…but pointing out Michael’s parental inadequacies wouldn’t really make her feel better, and it for sure wouldn’t make Jimmy feel better.
Grace set her trowel down and pulled off her gardening gloves. “He’s not at our old home either, honey,” she said gently, putting an arm around her son’s narrow shoulders. “You know that. It’s not as if we could just drive back to New Jersey and walk into our old life. We’re making a new life, you and me. And if we can just be a little open-minded about it, we might be able to make a really great life here. Maybe we won’t even want to leave.” But she couldn’t imagine things turning out that way.
“I’ll always want to leave,” Jimmy vowed.
“Why?”
“Because this place is stupid.”
Grace experienced an unusual twinge of protective loyalty toward her hometown. “No, it’s not, Jimmy. This is where your parents grew up. It should be interesting to you for that, if for no other reason.”
“Do people here hate Dad?”
The question was so unexpected that for a moment Grace couldn’t formulate a response. “Why on earth would you think that?” she asked at last.
He smushed the topsoil bag with his toe, staring intently as he did so. “You do.”
“I don’t,” she said, trying to convince herself that it wasn’t a lie. “Dad and I just can’t be married to each other anymore. There are lots of people I can’t be married to whom I don’t hate.” Luke Stewart came to mind, a little joke from her subconscious.
“Does everyone know he left us?”
It broke her heart that Jimmy felt the abandonment so keenly. If Michael had a bit of heart to go with his good looks, he would have made more of an effort to maintain contact with his son. Since the divorce, though, he’d been in California seven months out of twelve and had only seen Jimmy about once a month when he was around.
“No one knows the details of what happened with Dad.” Of course, everyone knew at least some version of it. She’d heard several variations on the story herself. “You know what? Most people I’ve seen are just so glad we’re here. I can’t tell you how many people have come up to me and said what a fine young man you are.”
Jimmy’s face reddened. “They don’t know me.”
“But they want to. Give them a chance, Jimmy. You might really like them.”
He shrugged.
“And look at all this room you have.” She gestured at the backyard with the trowel she had picked up again. “We didn’t have a tenth of this in New Jersey. I think you’re going to have a lot of fun out here this summer.” She got up and went to him, pulling him into her arms. “I know it’s hard, buddy. It’s kind of hard for me too. But if we stick together and make the best of things, I think we might end up even happier than we were before.”
That much, at least, she believed. It was certainly possible for her to be happier divorced than she’d been with Michael. From the day they’d married, she’d felt a certain sense of this is it? They’d dated in high school and college and everyone had expected them to get married, so they had. They’d moved to the suburbs, bought two cars, had a child, done all the things that were expected.
If she was honest, Grace had to admit that it wasn’t the stuff that fairy tales were made of. In a way, she couldn’t really blame Michael for wanting something new. What she blamed him for was the way he set about getting it, and the way he’d treated his family—his son—in the process.
“There is one thing that might make me happy,” Jimmy said slowly.
Grace frowned. “What’s that?”
“A dog.”
“A dog.” Just as her mother had suggested.
She liked dogs. She’d had one herself, growing up. So why was she so resistant to the idea?
She knew why; it was because Michael was allergic, or at least he’d claimed to be, though she’d never seen him so much as sniffle. She remembered, with some irritation, how, during her teenage years, they always had to put Buff, her golden retriever, in the laundry room when Michael was coming to the house. Before now, a dog for Jimmy hadn’t even been a possibility.
Now it felt as if getting a dog would be the final nail in the coffin of her marriage to Michael.
“I think it’s a great idea,” she said.
He brightened. “Really? I can get one?”
“Are you going to take care of it? Feed it, walk it, brush it?”
“Yes!”
“Then I don’t see why not.” It was so good to see that hope in his eyes again. She smiled and pulled him into a hug again. “Why don’t you think about what kind of dog you want, big or small, and we’ll go to the humane society tomorrow and look.”
“Yes!” He pumped his fist in the air. “I’m gonna have a dog!”
And we’re really building a home without Michael now, Grace thought, without regret.
“Go on in and get ready to go to Jenna’s now,” she said to her excited son. “I’ve got to go back to the school for a couple of hours.”
For once, he didn’t argue. He skipped into the house so lightly she wouldn’t have been entirely surprised to see him click his heels together. She would bet he’d clean his face and hands without being told.
She picked up her gardening tools and dropped them into a bucket by the door before stepping into the cool, air-conditioned house.
“Will you be going out tonight?” her mother asked when she walked into the kitchen to get a glass of iced tea.
“I don’t think so, why?”
Was it her imagination, or did her mother blush? “I might have some company, and I wondered if you would be around.”
“Company? Who?”
Her mother took a cloth and busied herself drying dishes that were already sitting, dry, in the rack by the sink. “Oh, it’s not important. Just a member of my bridge club.”
Grace was interested. “A male member of the bridge club, by any chance?”
Dot set the cloth down and looked at her daughter. “Now why on earth would you ask that?”
Grace laughed. “Because, Mom, you’re acting very cryptic about this whole thing.”
“I certainly am not!”
“Okay, okay. Look, do you want Jimmy and me to get out of here tonight so you can have your friend over? We could go to a movie or something.”
“Grace Ann Perigon, you do not need to leave the house so I can have a friend over! I merely asked because I wanted to plan on how many pretzels to buy if I had company. But, now that I think of it, I’ll probably go out to the movies myself.”
Her mother was definitely hiding something, Grace thought. It was either a boyfriend, plans for a surprise party, or she had joined a cult and it was her turn to host the meeting. Assuming it wasn’t the latter, Grace’s birthday wasn’t for two months, so it had to be a boyfriend. But why hide that?
Grace suspected she knew why. “You know, Mom, if you ever did want to date someone…” What could she say without sounding condescending? It wasn’t her place to approve or disapprove, but she had a feeling her mother might worry that she would feel weird about it. “Well, I just think it would be a good idea.”
“What would be a good idea?”
“You dating. If you met someone. Although,” she added cynically, “who you could meet around this place, I don’t know.”
“There are lots of nice men around here, honey. You’ll meet someone.”
“Who said anything about me?” Three days earlier Roger Logan, who had a wife and four kids, had approached her in the produce section at the supermarket and asked if she wanted to meet him for a drink later. That about summed up the options for Grace here. She wasn’t even thinking about dating for herself.
Her mother smiled and took two glasses out of the cabinet. “This is about you, isn’t it?” She went to the refrigerator and took out the pitcher of iced tea.
“What do you mean?”
Dot poured and handed a glass to Grace. “All this negativity about Blue Moon Bay? Sometimes I think you’re looking for excuses not to like it here.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because it reminds you of the years you spent with Michael?”
And the years she spent before that, years in which she could have been taking a different direction with her life. “You think you’re pretty smart, huh, Mom?”
Dot smiled. “It runs in the family.”
Grace raised her glass to her mother, drank, then went to her room to shower before going to meet Luke. Not that she wanted to impress him; it was just that her pride prevented her from showing up filthy and giving him one more thing to dislike about her.
She stripped her clothes off in the bathroom and looked in the mirror. The strong afternoon sun had toasted her skin, leaving a white impression of her halter top behind. The light in this bathroom had always been flattering, and made her tan look deeper than it was. For a moment, she felt as though she’d time-traveled back to a summer two decades before, when she used to cover her Roxy Music album in tin foil and prop it on her chest as she lay in the sun, wearing no more protection than baby oil. She shuddered at the thought now and wondered how many of the faint lines around her eyes she could attribute to that, and how many to the stress of Michael’s abrupt exit.
She took a quick, cool shower, wrapped herself in a towel and went back to her room. It was only five o’clock. There was time for her to rest for a few minutes before going out, so she lay down on the bed and stared at the faded rose wallpaper.
She remembered when her father had first put it up for her. She’d been eight and had just danced in her first ballet recital. Daddy had told her she was a real little lady now, and he let her pick out new “grownup” wallpaper to replace the zoo pattern they’d put up when she was a baby.
This wallpaper had seen her through a lot. The sketched red flowers had hung there, bright but just a little melancholy, through giggly sleepovers; all-night teenage telephone conversations; delirious first dates and tearful breakups; her dog Buff’s death; getting ready for her high-school prom—and her wedding day.
And if the wallpaper had absorbed anything of her thoughts over the years, it had absorbed more than a little Luke Stewart, especially during one summer when, briefly, their relationship had changed.
Grace and Luke’s association had always been…heated. Throughout their high-school years, it had seemed to be the typical animosity that tended to exist between a guy’s best friend and his girlfriend. They argued over almost everything, from which weekend nights were for Grace to whose fault it was when Michael came over at 3:00 a.m. drunk after a night “with the boys.” Come to think of it, they argued a lot about who was at fault for Michael’s shortcomings.
But right after Grace’s senior year of high school, things had changed. The long, hot summer had stretched by with Michael away looking at colleges. Grace had stayed behind, dutifully spending time with Jenna and being available for Michael’s occasional long-distance calls.
Then one evening Jenna, who pronounced herself sick and tired of Grace’s inactivity, talked her into going to the boardwalk over in Ocean City. Jenna met a guy in a T-shirt shop and disappeared with him, cropping up every half hour or so to promise Grace she’d just be “a few more minutes.”
Grace had waited for an hour and a half, sitting there in her prissy sundress, wondering how Jenna got the nerve to just go off with some guy she didn’t even know and do God-knows-what. Just as Grace was getting ready to give up and call a cab to take her home, Luke had shown up, like some dark knight in a white El Camino. He’d offered her a ride and, telling herself it beat paying for a 40-mile cab ride, she’d accepted.
But that wasn’t entirely true. The prospect of riding all the way home with Luke wasn’t exactly unappealing. In fact, it was sort of…exciting. Thrilling. Maybe even dangerous. Under the boardwalk lights, his dark hair gleaming and his skin tanned to brown, making his pale eyes seem even lighter, Luke certainly looked dangerous. That, contrasted with the unexpected chivalry of his offering to drive her home, had made him irresistible to her that night.
She watched him in the dim dash light as he drove home. His hands strong and capable on the wheel, forearms lean with sinewy muscle, his profile straight and masculine…by the time they made it back to Blue Moon Bay, Grace had kissed him a thousand times in her mind.
Although she could never know the evolution of his thoughts that night, he must have begun to see her in a new light too, because he didn’t go directly to her house when they got to town. And she didn’t ask him to. Instead, they circled the quiet streets by the shore, eventually stopping at the small Jolly George “Fun Park” at the end of the boardwalk, where there were a few ancient rides—a wooden roller coaster and a Ferris wheel, that were open in the summer evenings.
They walked through the park, neither touching nor drawing apart, for what seemed like hours, talking about everything. Grace wondered how she’d never seen this side of Luke before. Granted, he only showed the world his silent, somewhat intimidating, exterior. But she’d never even imagined the sensitivity he had; the fact that he was artistic and liked to draw; the fact that he worried about, and had taken care of, his father since his mother’s death. It was hard to believe, but the guy who had been a thorn in her side since she’d begun dating his best friend was suddenly touching her heart as no one ever had before.
They were by the Ferris wheel when the guy who was running it announced that there would be just one more ride that evening. Grace, to whom Luke had just confided that he’d never gone on the rides here as a child, insisted that he had to go on with her. She wouldn’t take no for an answer.
The Ferris wheel had only taken about five turns when it got stuck, with Grace and Luke at the top. It was the first time she realized she had a fear of heights. It was also the first time she realized that kisses could be more than a bland precursor to pleas for sex and guilt for not complying.
Grace lay on her bed now, aware of Jimmy down the hall but caught up in the honeyed memory of a summer night that she’d stored away in the back of her mind for so long.
She closed her eyes and felt herself back in the cool metal seat next to Luke. It felt as if they were in space, a million miles from the bright lights and popcorn-strewn ground below. It was terrifying. When the wind lifted, the old seat squeaked on its hinges.
“What’s wrong?” Luke had asked, just as she felt the blood drain from her face.
“We’re stuck.” It was stupid. She’d never been afraid of a Ferris wheel before.
Luke must have thought it was stupid too. “So what? He’ll get it going again.”
“Did you see that guy?” Grace’s panic mounted. “Did you smell him? I bet that was a bottle of Mad Dog he had in his pocket.”
Luke shrugged. “Either that or he was glad to see you.”
“Luke, I’m serious.” Her voice rose thinly. “I’m scared.”
“Really?”
“Yes!”
“Shh. It’s okay.” He put an arm around her, a little awkwardly.
“How do you know? This thing’s fifty years old if it’s a day. It has to die sometime. Maybe this is the night.”
“Nah.” He was totally calm. “This happens all the time. These old motors overheat and just give out temporarily. Sparky down there will keep fidgeting with it, pushing the arm on and off, until it cools off some and starts to run again and he’ll think he fixed it.”
Grace laughed, despite her fear. Down below she could see the ride operator doing just that. It made her feel better. “You’re sure?”
“I guarantee it.”
“Okay.” She breathed. Her shoulders relaxed under his arm but he didn’t move it. He probably just forgot, but she was glad. “In the meantime, we’re trapped together,” she said, testing for his response.
He looked into her eyes, making her shiver. “Yeah.”
A moment passed.
“How long do you think it will be?”
“I don’t know. Ten, maybe twenty, minutes.”
“Ugh.” She glanced back down at the flummoxed ride operator and felt woozy.
“Look up,” Luke said quietly, lifting her chin with his index finger, then pointing to the stars. “You’ll feel better.”
He was right. The sky was a deep satin purple, so starry it seemed flecked like a dark tablecloth with spilled salt. She caught her breath. “It’s beautiful.”
“It is,” he agreed, but he was looking at her, not the sky.
A thrill fluttered over her as she pretended not to notice. “It looks like the sky in a children’s picture book.”
“I don’t know where you come up with this stuff,” he said, shaking his head. “Everything’s poetic to you.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing.” He smiled. “But what are you gonna do when you’re out of school and you need to live in the real world?”
“I do live in the real world.”
He gave a completely cynical shrug. “I wish.” Then he looked at her. “For what it’s worth, though, I like it.”
Did he like her? Before tonight, she wouldn’t have thought so. “Maybe I should write children’s books for a living, huh? Avoid the real world entirely.”
He laughed. “Girls like you don’t need to live in the real world. You’ll marry someone rich and do whatever you want.”
For some reason his saying that gave her a small pang. Not that she wanted to be with him or anything, but there was something disconcerting about him pawning her off on some imagined rich guy in her future. “So what happens to guys like you?”
He looked very serious. “I don’t know.”
She wanted to reach out to him. “What do you want?”
His gaze remained steady. “Doesn’t matter.”
She swallowed hard, trying to will away the desire that was snaking through her chest. Instead, she looked back over the edge of the seat. “So. This doesn’t bother you a bit, huh?” She tried to laugh.
“I think you could say I’m bothered,” Luke said softly, his gaze flickering from her face to her hair and back to her eyes, making her tingle as if he’d touched her.
“By the height?” she asked, looking up again so he wouldn’t see the real question in her eyes.
“No.”
Another moment passed, but something pulsed between them.
She turned to face him. “Then what?”
His mouth quirked up just a tiny bit on one side. “Now what do you think?”
“I don’t know,” she lied. She was terrified to say anything else. Terrified that she was wrong, that he wasn’t feeling what she was.
He stared into her eyes for a moment, then shook his head, laughing softly. “You do.”
Electricity worked its way from the pit of her stomach to the center of her being. She shifted in her seat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said haughtily, looking back at the sky.
“Don’t you, Grace?”
“No, I don’t.” Her lips felt full with the desire to be kissed. It was crazy—he hadn’t touched her, but she was experiencing every physical response in the book.
He didn’t say a word.
Instead, she felt his hand on her face, turning it toward him, then he captured her mouth with his, in a kiss so deep that it left her gasping.
“Now that makes me nervous,” he said huskily, his hand still cupping her cheek.
For a moment, she stared at him wordlessly, trembling in the warm night air. Then, following an impulse she’d never even dreamed of, she initiated another kiss.
He responded hungrily, opening his mouth under her parted lips and drinking her in so thoroughly that he might have taken some of her soul.
He moved his strong hands down her ribcage, across the thin cotton of her sundress. She felt safe in his grasp. Warm. Excited. He drove her wild yet at the same time made her feel utterly secure.
She raised her hands, twining her fingers in his thick dark hair, and pulled his mouth still closer, if that was possible. She wanted to stop him from stopping. As her mouth moved against his, she pressed herself against him, begging wordlessly for him to continue, to keep kissing her forever.
It felt as though he would. They groped at each other like the teenagers they were, touching, tasting, fumbling. Their teeth knocked together and they smiled, but only for a moment, before the fever of lust took them over again and they took it deeper, tongues touching, exploring, lingering.
“I hope we stay stuck here all night,” Grace breathed.
“It’ll cool off.” He spanned her lower back with his hands, then slowly moved her legs across his lap.
“I hope not,” she managed to say before drowning in sensation.
Luke’s hand moved across her hip, then her thigh, caressing her in broad, languid movements.
She relaxed her legs, parting them slightly.
He edged his hand higher and higher on her thigh, raising her dress with it, then slipped his hand between her legs, pressing gently against her. Only the thinnest fabric lay between his skin and hers.
Grace tried to catch her breath but couldn’t, arching against him, begging silently for more. She felt him smile against her mouth for a moment, then he complied, artfully touching her as if she were naked.
She might as well have been for the dizzying response she had. She reached for the front of his jeans and felt his hardness behind the thick denim and stiff zipper. With shaking hands, she fumbled with his belt buckle, but froze when he slipped a finger around the cotton crotch of her underwear and plunged a finger into her.
She’d never felt like this before. Never let Michael this close. She didn’t know what insanity was making her allow Luke to do it, but it was too late, she couldn’t stop.
She didn’t want to stop.
His instincts were perfect. He weakened her with every stroke, instinctively knowing when to tease her and when to enter her. Her heart pounded so hard she thought it would burst, but she didn’t care. All that mattered was this moment, this man, this feeling.
And then, in a moment, something exploded inside of her, leaving her clinging to him and shuddering, as wave after wave of pleasure splashed upon the shore of her resolve.
It seemed to go on forever, then slowly the world came back into focus, with just a few shimmering streamers of ecstasy drifting through the sky before her.
“I—” She couldn’t speak. “I’ve never—”
He silenced her with a gentle kiss.
She held herself against his shoulder, burying her face in the crook of his neck.
The wind rose, and the seat creaked again. It had probably been creaking the whole time, only she hadn’t noticed.
“I’ve never done that before,” she said finally, in a rush of breath.
Luke touched her cheek tenderly.
“We shouldn’t have…this is crazy…”
He pulled back and looked at her with sharp eyes. “What?”
“Well, I mean, Michael…”
For a moment, he looked as if she’d slapped him. “Right. Michael.”
Something in her deflated.
“He’s probably been calling, wondering where I am,” she said, trying to think what she’d say to Michael about tonight.
Luke let out a long breath. “We’d better tell him the truth about this.”
“No!” She could imagine his response. He’d be livid. “No, we can’t.”
“It’ll be okay,” Luke said. “You want me to talk to him?”
“Oh, God, no, you can’t. Let me think.” But her mind was blank. Luke had erased everything. It wasn’t that she wanted to maintain her relationship with Michael. After what had just happened, she couldn’t imagine going back to him. She just didn’t want to end it in an explosion of jealousy and accusation. “If it looks like I ran off with his best friend, it will humiliate him.”
“Look, I’ll just tell him I made a pass at you,” Luke said, before she had the chance to tell him what she was thinking. His voice had cooled. “But that nothing really happened. That’s the truth, after all. Nothing much really happened. It’s not like we did it all.”
Nothing had happened? She had been intimate with him in a way she’d never been intimate with anyone, in a way she’d intended to save for her wedding night, but Luke thought nothing had happened?
Shame burned in her cheeks. “That’s right. Nothing happened. So why get Michael involved? He’ll just be mad at both of us, and for no real reason.”
The Ferris wheel jerked to life, easily lowering them to the ground.
“Perfect timing,” Luke noted. “I guess it’s a sign. Come on, I’ll take you home.”
In the end, neither one of them had to tell Michael. Susan Howard, who lived across the street from Grace and who had a massive crush on Michael, told him she’d seen Luke drop Grace off very late one night. It was all he needed to hear. He’d immediately jumped to the wrong—or maybe really the right—conclusion.
It had ended his friendship with Luke and nearly ended his relationship with Grace. She’d jumped through hoops to preserve it. As much as it embarrassed her to recall it now, she had apologized profusely and promised never to talk to Luke again. And she hadn’t.
Not until the day she’d walked into his office asking for a job.
Chapter Six (#ulink_b50ed0d3-18a5-5a67-9e7f-fba6621dbdd6)
It was still muggy outside at 7:00 p.m. A milky haze of mist hung over the soccer field, with a great orange ball of sun dipping lower behind the goalposts. The buzz of locusts filled the evening air.
Luke waited for her by the barn. He was grinding out the stub of a cigarette with his toe when she walked up.
“Thought you stopped that years ago,” she said to him.
“Did,” he said, with a puff of smoke. “Just every once in a while…”
She shrugged, thinking of the entire box of chocolate marshmallow cookies she’d consumed during a marathon viewing of Pride and Prejudice after Michael had left. She was hardly one to point fingers. “I guess we all do things that aren’t good for us once in a while.”
He looked at her for a moment. “Yeah, well, I won’t tell if you won’t.”
She hesitated. Was he talking about smoking or…? Or nothing. Of course he meant smoking. “I’m not going to tell,” she said flippantly. “The kids don’t need to know what a dubious role model you really are.”
He raised an eyebrow, resting his gaze on hers for a moment. “Think you’re a better one?”
She straightened. “I’ll be an excellent influence, Luke. You know I was a great student. You used to make fun of me for it all the time.”
He gave a laugh and started off toward the bus, like the Pied Piper, so sure she would follow him that he didn’t even look back.
She did.
“I don’t think I made fun of you for being a good student,” he said lazily. “As I recall, it was for sucking up to the teachers.”
“I did not suck up to the teachers!”
“Geez, Grace, you needed an extra locker just for all the polished red apples you brought in for Mrs. MacGonagle.”
“Once,” Grace said, her face going hot immediately. She had taken so much grief for that. “Once I brought in apples for Mrs. MacGonagle, and it was only because my mother told her we had such a huge harvest from the apple tree that she was going to have to throw them away if no one wanted them. And they weren’t polished.”
“Okay,” Luke said, splaying his arms as he walked. “If you say so.”
“What about you? As I recall you were an all-A student, even while you were doing your broody James Dean thing. You even got that big scholarship.”
“I never sucked up.” He smiled, but it was a smile that said he didn’t want to talk about anything personal if it had to do with himself. He kept walking until he got to the bus. “Okay,” he said, leaning on the yellow vehicle. “Go to it.”
“Okay.” If he didn’t want to talk about it, they wouldn’t talk about it.
She walked past him and into the bus. He followed this time.
It was as hot as a sauna inside. “Comfortable?” Grace asked with a wan smile. “If not, I can turn on the air conditioner. Oh, wait, there isn’t an air conditioner.”
“I’m fine,” Luke said. “But if you’re hot, go ahead and turn on the fan. That should help.”
She gave him a look. “You’ve never driven this bus in the summer, have you?”
“Sure I have. Now get going so you can pass the test and drive it yourself this summer.”
“All right, all right.” She proceeded to complete the safety check she’d have to perform for the final portion of the test on Friday. She checked the windows, the locks, the lights and signals, gauges, seat belts, mats, steering wheel and everything else that moved, lit, opened, closed, signaled or stuck out.
Including the Bodily Fluid Clean-up Kit.
“Which looks fine,” Grace pronounced, sitting in the driver’s seat backward, facing Luke. “Now. Did I forget anything?”
He shook his head. “Just remember to take the keys out of the ignition when you’re finished. Carol Borden forgot that twice.”
Was he ever, even once, going to admit she’d done a good job? She doubted it. To Luke, it seemed, complimenting Grace would mean a huge compromise of his principles. If she drove the bus through a flood and around a tornado, saving scores of children in her charge, he’d probably only comment on whether or not she fully depressed the parking brake afterward.
She leaned back against the steering wheel and crossed her arms in front of her. “So why do you know all this, Luke? Is it a prerequisite for becoming the headmaster?”
“I was the driver here for five years.”
“Right,” she scoffed, picking idly at some duct tape that was covering a hole on the back of the seat. “After that football scholarship to Stanford, you decided to come back home and drive a bus.”
“I didn’t go to Stanford,” he said quietly.
Grace was about to toss off a joke when she noticed how still his expression was and realized he wasn’t kidding. “You’re serious! You didn’t go at all?”
“Nope.”
Suddenly the buzz of the locusts outside seemed very loud.
“Why not?” she asked. “I thought it was a done deal.”
He shrugged. “Nothing’s ever really a done deal, I guess. Good lesson to learn early.”
The scholarship, she remembered well, had been very important to Luke. It was an incredible accomplishment. His parents hadn’t had much money to begin with, but when his mother had died—when he was, what, in ninth grade? Grace wasn’t sure—they’d lost half their income. Luke had taken a part-time job at the Texaco station, but his college prospects looked bleak until his spectacular senior year, when the scouts had come to check him out. His scholarship had been a huge deal in Blue Moon Bay. Even the newspaper covered it.
“Why on earth didn’t you go, Luke?” Grace asked, increasingly curious. Had he just blown it off? Too cool for school? “It was such a great opportunity.”
“It just didn’t work out,” he said shortly. “Bad timing. Forget it, it doesn’t matter now.”
“Well, sure it matters—”
“No.” His tone was hard, and left no room for argument. “It doesn’t.”
Grace looked at him wordlessly for a moment. What had happened to him? How had she never heard anything about it? Maybe she’d just been gone for too long. She was out of the Blue Moon Bay loop.
“What time are you scheduled to take the driving test on Friday?” Luke asked, taking a folded paper out of his back pocket.
It was clear he wasn’t going to talk about it anymore. She’d have to get the scoop from someone else. “Three,” she answered, trying to sound as if she wasn’t still stuck on the scholarship thing.
“All right. Chuck Borden’s going to drive up with you, since you’re not allowed to drive the bus without a commercially licensed driver until you have a CDL yourself.”
“Is Chuck the Spanish teacher?”
“He is. But he’s also the other bus driver. He took the run in order to earn a little extra. It works well for him, but it also means that he’s on a tight schedule. He does his run, then starts his classes. He won’t be available as back-up for you.”
“Who says I’m going to need back-up?”
“No one. I hope.”
“Well, I won’t,” she said with determination. “I’ll be here every day.”
“Assuming you pass the test. Don’t get ahead of yourself, or you’ll lose sight of that goal.”
“I don’t think so. I’m very well aware that the test is coming up.”
“You worried?”
“No,” she lied. “Not a bit.”
His mouth quirked into a half-smile as he leaned forward and handed her the piece of paper he’d taken out of his pocket. “This is the route you’re going to be taking Monday morning. Assuming you pass the test.”
“I’ll pass,” she said, studying the list. Some of the students were quite far-flung. “This is going to take forever.”
“It’s about an hour.”
“You really do need transportation,” she mused. “This one here on Saltside Lane would take half an hour to get to if you took a direct route. It would be hard for nine-to-fivers to get a kid here and still get to work on time unless one of the parents were working in town. And, God knows, there aren’t any jobs here.”
Luke gave a half smile, then said, “That’s Donald Henderson. He’s one of our scholarship kids. There’s no way in the world his parents could get him here themselves.”
She looked at the remaining addresses, and the geography of Blue Moon Bay and the surrounding area came back to her with complete clarity. Some of the students lived in multimillion-dollar homes in Cape Trayhorn Estates, and some lived in rowhouses along the main streets of town.
“You know, I never thought I’d be driving my own kid around Blue Moon Bay to school, much less anyone else’s.” She sighed. “So much for moving up in life.”
“What the hell’s wrong with you, Grace?” Luke asked in a sharp voice.
She was startled by his question and his tone. “What do you mean?”
“Why have you always been so down on Blue Moon Bay? Ever since I’ve known you, you’ve talked about getting out of here, like it’s some kind of hellhole. It’s a nice town, Grace, and it’s home to a lot of nice people.”
Humiliation filled her. “I didn’t mean to insult anyone, Luke, it’s just not the place I want to be.”
“You say that like anyone who does want to be here is some stupid peasant who doesn’t know any better.” He stood up and started for the door, then stopped and looked her dead in the eye. “As long as I’ve known you, you’ve wanted things bigger, better.” He hesitated, then added, “Richer. How’s it working out for you?”
She gaped at him in silence, completely unable to formulate a response.
“Good luck on the test,” he said abruptly, then left, shaking his head.
She watched him for a moment, then sprang from the seat and out into the thick evening air behind him. “Wait a minute, Luke!”
He stopped, and she could see him take a long breath before turning to face her. As though he was mustering patience.
That galled her.
“What?” he asked wearily.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” She wished she had a better argument, but the words had been stunned right out of her. They’d come back tonight, probably, around midnight. “You don’t know me at all,” she said lamely.
“You’re right—I don’t. I only know what I see.”
She went to him boldly and stood before him. “What do you see, Luke? Huh? What do you see?”
He looked down at her, and for a moment she saw tenderness cross his expression. But it was only for a moment, and it was gone quickly. “It doesn’t matter what I see.”
“No,” she said, wishing she really felt that way. “That’s right, it doesn’t matter. So keep it to yourself, okay?”
“You’re absolutely right, that’s what I should have done in the first place.”
“You bet it is. You know, you don’t have a clue what I’ve been through.” Self-pity rose in her breast, but she pushed it back down. It was enough that she knew she was a good person and, more than that, a good mother. She was proud of the way she’d held it together when Michael left, proud that Jimmy thought of her as strong and brave and someone who could take care of him when he was sad and confused. She hadn’t let him see her tears, or her anger, and she was proud of herself for that too.
Whatever it was that Luke hated so much about her was going to have to be his own problem. She couldn’t afford to let it affect her own confidence and self-esteem. She’d already taken enough of a beating in that regard.
“And you can just go to hell, Luke Stewart,” she fumed, stalking past him to her car.
He said something behind her, but she didn’t hear what it was and she didn’t want to stop and ask. She just kept going until she got to the old BMW that had seemed like such a prize once, and got in, praying it would start.
It did, thank God, and she whipped out of the driveway without looking back at him.
* * *
He was glad she hadn’t heard his apology. He didn’t want to apologize, damn it, it had been burning in him for so long.
Ever since that night on the Ferris wheel a thousand years ago.
He’d wanted her for a long time before that night, though it wasn’t something he went around talking about. For one thing, it was a betrayal of Michael, though he richly deserved it, but for another, Luke just wasn’t the kind of guy who needed anyone or anything. It was embarrassing to spend as much time as he did pining for a girl, much less one he could never have.
Then there had been that one brief moment, the unbelievable luck of finding her in Ocean City, when it had seemed as if maybe—just maybe—he wasn’t crazy to think he might have a shot with her. That maybe she felt the same way he did.
It was over quickly, though. Of course. Just as he was about to brave the subject, she’d raised the specter of Michael, making it very clear that she didn’t want him to know. She was terrified of losing Michael, it seemed, and not because she loved him. Hell, if she’d loved him, she wouldn’t have been with Luke. No, she wanted the Bowes name and everything that went with it. She wanted to be half of the golden couple of Blue Moon Bay. No matter what the cost.
For a while, Luke hadn’t wanted to believe that Grace was so shallow. But Michael had told him exactly what the arrangement was, just a few months after they’d gotten married. While Grace had stayed behind, pregnant, Michael had come back to town for his grandmother’s funeral. During that short week, Michael had slept with at least two women that Luke knew of. Just like in high school. As a matter of fact, he’d left Harley’s Bar with one of them about ten minutes after bragging to Luke about the “open arrangement” he and Grace had in their marriage.
She made the deal with me. She’s got what she wants, Michael had told Luke. Big house, imported car, President of the Junior League. And I get a good-looking arm piece when I have to go out.
So what do you want with someone like Mary Jo Wiley? Luke had asked, indicating one of the tightjeaned women who was waving to Michael from the bar.
Excitement, man. Michael’s laugh had been harsh. Heat. Grace is as cold as ice in the bedroom.
Luke knew with some certainty that that wasn’t true. Or if it was, it wasn’t her fault.
Still, who was he to question what went on in someone else’s marriage? It was their problem, not his.
His problem, now, was that Michael was history, and Grace was back, and some part of Luke’s eighteen-year-old libido remembered her.
* * *
Jimmy held tightly onto his mother’s hand. He knew it was babyish, but he was just so excited he couldn’t help it.
For the first time, he was beginning to feel like maybe this town wasn’t so bad. Maybe he actually even liked the quiet streets and the big yards and the fact that he was able to get a dog—a real, live dog—for the first time in his life.
They were at the pound, although his mother called it the humane society, and a guy in a blue uniform was opening a door for them to go look at the dogs.
As soon as he stepped through, Jimmy smiled. He couldn’t help it. The room smelled like pee and the sound of yelping and barking was so loud, he could barely hear his mom telling him to keep his fingers out of the cage, but to him it was heaven.
He walked slowly up the cement aisle, being sure to make eye contact with each dog along the way. He was positive that when he saw his dog, he’d know it. He walked past big scruffy dogs, and little happy dogs, and sleek dogs, and sleeping dogs, but only one dog came over and poked his nose through the metal fence at Jimmy. After that, he didn’t need to look in the dog’s hopeful brown eyes to know.
“This is the one,” he announced.
His mother frowned and came over to him. “Really?” She poked a finger through the cage—just what she’d told Jimmy not to do—and the dog licked her excitedly. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. And his name is…” He thought for a minute. Last night when he was lying in bed, the name he’d come up with had seemed so perfect. Now, though, he was afraid it was a little dumb.
“What’s his name?” his mom asked.
He decided to go ahead and say it. After all, his mom never laughed at him, but she’d tell him the truth. “It’s Tonto. Do you think that’s too goofy?”
“No, it’s great. Look, he even answers to it. Tonto!” She made her voice high. “Tonto! Here, boy!”
The little dog looked up and tilted his head to the side, wagging his tail.
“See?” She laughed. “That’s his name, all right.”
Jimmy smiled and touched the dog’s cold nose. “What kind of breed do you think he is?”
“He looks a little like a Jack Russell terrier. With, maybe, some springer spaniel or something mixed in. I’m not sure.” She stood up and smoothed her skirt down. She was all dressed up to go to some big test in the afternoon. “Are you sure this is the one you want, Jimmy?” she asked seriously. “Because you can’t just bring him back, you know.”
“I know. This is the one I want. And I’ll never want to give him back,” he said ferociously, thinking of his father and how long it had been since he’d come to see Jimmy and his mom. “Ever.”
* * *
Later that night, Grace had her own taste of excitement.
“Congratulations, you’re a bus driver!” Jenna raised her champagne glass and clinked it against Grace’s, sloshing the fizzy drink onto their hands.
“Thank you, thank you very much.” Grace raised her glass to her lips and closed her eyes, relishing the yeasty taste of her favorite vintage. She had half a case of it left—one of the more valuable parts of her divorce settlement—and the way things were going, she might just work her way through it this weekend.
She raised her glass to her new license, which she and Jenna had propped against a candle in the middle of the table. “To me,” she said with a giggle. “Oh, and to Bob for taking care of all the kids—and the dog—tonight, so we could have a girls’ night.”
“To Bob,” Jenna repeated, raising her own glass again. She took a sip then set it down and asked, “Say, where’s your mom?”
“Bridge club.”
Jenna frowned. “I thought they met during the day.”
“She’s got a bunch of them now.” Grace shrugged. “Several of them meet at night. In fact, they go really late.” Silently, Grace hoped that she didn’t end up at the high end of middle-aged alone and filling her time with card-playing.
“Ooh, maybe she’ll meet someone.” Jenna smiled. “Some dashing, card-playing Omar Sharif type.”
“Please,” Grace said. “Mother hasn’t been on a date since before I was born. I can’t even imagine her starting now.”
Jenna nodded. “It would be weird. But what about you? Think you’re going to get back into dating here?”
Grace groaned. “Who would I go out with? You snagged the only good man in Blue Moon Bay. And he’s not even from here.” Bob had moved into town ten years ago when he’d got a job with a carpentry company. He and Jenna had met when she’d hired him to build bookshelves.
Jenna raised an eyebrow. “I can think of one or two guys here who used to be interesting to you,” she said in a sing-songy voice.
“My track record with old Blue Moon love interests isn’t so good, Jen.”
“Well, Michael didn’t turn out so hot, but maybe someone else would. Let’s do your tarot cards and see,” Jenna said eagerly, reaching for her bag. “I brought them along so I could practice on you.”
“No, no, no, I don’t believe in those things.”
“So what’s the harm then?” Jenna asked, opening a small leather pouch. “Just do it for fun. Here.” She thrust the large deck into Grace’s hands. “Shuffle.”
“This is stupid,” Grace protested, shuffling.
“No, it’s not. Now cut the deck.”
“I don’t believe any of it.” She cut the deck.
“The cards will tell,” Jenna said, in a spooky voice, then laughed. “Pick one and put it here, then put the next one here.”
Grace picked cards according to Jenna’s direction, and Jenna set them up in an elaborate layout. Finally, with ten cards facedown on the table in the shape of a pentagon, she put the rest of the deck aside and started turning the cards over.
“This is where you are right now,” Jenna said. “This card represents whatever is either helping or hindering you. Hmm. The king of cups.” She considered the card. “A man with dark hair and blue eyes. Who could that be?”
“This is rigged.” Grace grabbed the book from Jenna and read the description for herself. Sure enough, it said the card could indicate a man with dark hair and blue eyes. A powerful yet fair man. An honest man.
Or it could represent those qualities, perhaps in someone else Grace knew. That’s what it had to mean, she figured, not an actual man with dark hair and blue eyes. And certainly not Luke Stewart, who, when last she’d seen him, had lambasted her for no good reason. She looked closer. The book didn’t say anything about personal attacks.
“You picked the card,” Jenna reminded her lightly, taking back the book. “This guy looks pretty significant in your life. Maybe a boss?” She winked. “In any event, you should be hearing from him soon.”
“Like on Monday? When I go to work? Remarkable prediction.”
Jenna ignored her sarcasm. “And there’s something about a journey. Maybe that’s driving the bus.”
Grace thought of the long route Luke had drawn up for her. “It’s going to feel like a journey. Every day.” Privately, she thought about her return to Blue Moon Bay and what a journey that had been, both literally and figuratively. What about the future journey back to New Jersey? Was she really going to be able to do that in a year, as she’d planned? Already, she was in a bigger financial hole than she’d anticipated. Grace had a bad feeling that her budget wasn’t going to work out quite the way she’d hoped.
“Well, don’t worry, there’s great prosperity here too. A huge fortune or inheritance.” She looked up at Grace. “Got any fabulously rich relatives I don’t know about?”
Grace flashed her a wry grin. “If I do, I don’t know about them either.”
Jenna looked back at the cards, then at the book she was using to check her interpretations. “Maybe it’s going to be more of a spiritual fortune. Yup, three of cups, here’s another love card.”
Grace watched, sipping her champagne with increasing frequency, as Jenna told her that her entire future was wrapped up with this dark-haired, blue-eyed man.
What if that were true? Grace wondered. Could she even imagine getting involved with a new man? It wasn’t that she still felt stung by Michael. Enough time had passed that she’d grown to realize she and Michael had never had the kind of close relationship she’d pretended they did. He didn’t get her jokes. Didn’t care about her life or her interests. Barely even showed any curiosity about their son. She was better off without him, and she knew that now.
But a new man? It was hard to picture. When she tried to imagine someone like the man Jenna described, all she could see was Luke Stewart.
And he certainly wasn’t a romantic interest for her. Or vice versa. That couldn’t be more plain.
When she was finished with the reading, Jenna sat back and said, “The cards don’t lie.”
Grace brought her focus back to Jenna. “Maybe not, but I’m not so sure about the reader.”
“Hey, I object to that! Out of seventy-six cards, you picked these ten. Check the interpretations yourself.” Jenna thumped her hand on the Mother Earth Tarot book on the table. “It’s very clear.”
Grace rolled her eyes. “Then I guess a tall, dark stranger will be coming to town to sweep me off my feet soon.” She shook her head. “Seriously, Jenna, that’d be great for starry-eyed teenagers who want their fortunes told, because you know there’s always romance in their future, but I’m not buying this for me at all.”
“Suit yourself.” Jenna gathered the cards and put them back in the case. “I’m not sure how much I believe myself, but you have to admit, it is interesting that all the cards you picked were so consistent about this guy.”
“And so wrong,” Grace added.
“Maybe.” Jenna poured more champagne into both their glasses. “I’ve got an idea! Let’s call him!”
“Who?”
“Luke! Just like we used to in high school!” She dissolved into a fit of giggles. “Remember when we called Kenny Harrison and had him convinced that we were aliens who were coming to get him at midnight?”
Grace couldn’t help laughing with her. Although Jenna had been the one doing the calling and the talking, Grace had listened with fascination on the other line as Kenny had asked what to pack.
“Come on, let’s call Luke,” Jenna persisted, taking the cordless phone from the table and pushing the Talk button.
Grace wrestled the receiver from her grasp. “No way. We’re not teenagers anymore. We’re mothers. Mature women. We don’t pull that kind of prank.” The dial tone blared between them. “Especially not with caller ID and Star-Sixty-Nine technologies out there. And especially not with Luke Stewart. Our relationship is bad enough.”
Jenna took her hand off the phone. “You just had a little spat. You guys always had spats, and, as you know, there was a definite attraction.”
It was hard to deny, at least to Jenna, who had always known the truth. “Yeah, well, we’re not always attracted to the people who are best for us, are we?”
“No, that’s true,” Jenna agreed. “But sometimes you just don’t know until you give someone a chance. Even someone like Luke.”
“Even if I were willing, and I’m not, Luke doesn’t have any interest in me. He hates me.”
“I don’t think so. And I know you don’t hate him.” She wasn’t going to give up. “Let’s go to his house. Look in the windows and see if he has a girlfriend.”
Grace tossed the phone onto the sofa several yards away. “I couldn’t care less if he has a girlfriend or not.” She tried to sound nonchalant, but she did kind of wonder about his private life.
“Come on, admit you’re curious. Let’s go.”
Grace shook her head. “On top of the fact that it’s illegal to spy on people through their windows, we’ve been drinking. We can’t drive.”
“We’ll walk.”
“We’re not interested.” Grace hesitated. “Although there is one thing I’m interested in. Do you have any idea why Luke didn’t go off to college at Stanford, like he was supposed to?”
Jenna looked blank. “I didn’t even know he was supposed to.”
“Yes, you did—he got a scholarship, remember? It was a huge deal.”
“Hmm. That sort of rings a bell. But I don’t know. Why?”
Grace shrugged. “He mentioned the other day that he hadn’t gone but he wouldn’t say why. The whole thing just seems strange to me.”
“So you do care about him.”
Grace felt her face grow warm. “I’m just curious. Aren’t you?”
“Not particularly. But if you really want to know what happened, we could ask the cards.”
Grace snorted. “Oh, come on, the cards don’t know squat.”
“I don’t know, Grace, it seems to me they were uncannily correct for you.”
“About what? About a man in my life? There isn’t one. A journey? Not going anywhere. And a great fortune? Please. If I had that, I wouldn’t be driving a bus.”
“You have to be a little patient,” said Jenna, unflappable. “This is the future we’re looking at. The cards clearly said—”
Fortunately, Jenna was interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell, although Grace had the uneasy feeling that she was going to be hearing a lot about what “the cards said” in the future.
“I was in the neighborhood,” Luke said when she opened the door. “I tried to call, but the line was busy. I hope you don’t mind me dropping by.”
Chapter Seven (#ulink_37e18d95-47a9-5ee9-8f3a-81df68acfd47)
The champagne hit her full-force as soon as she saw him.
“Uh. N-no,” Grace stammered. “I’m just surprised.”
“Look, about the other day. I shouldn’t have said that stuff. It wasn’t my place.” It wasn’t quite an apology, but she thought it was as close as she was going to get to one.
“Forget it.” She tried to gather her wits as they scattered like cockroaches in the light. “Do you want to come in? Have a drink?” She stepped back and gestured into the house.
He didn’t move, though his eyes flicked briefly behind her. “No, thanks. Did you pass the test?”
She smiled. “Yes, I did.”
“Good.”
“What, did you expect me to fail?” she demanded happily.
He gave a short laugh. “Since the day you walked into the garage at school, I haven’t known what to expect.”
Grace felt light-headed and silently cursed the champagne.
It was making her giddy. “Is that all bad?”
The porch light gleamed off his glossy hair. He looked like a model or something. A shampoo ad.
“Why are you looking at me that way?”
“What way?” She pulled herself together. “I wasn’t looking at you any way in particular. I just…I thought I saw a spider.”
“Ah.” He nodded as if he were talking to a crazy person.
“It’s gone now.”
“Oh, my God, Luke Stewart?” Jenna gasped from behind Grace. “I can’t believe it, we were just talking about you.”
“No, we weren’t,” Grace said quickly.
“Yes, we—”
“No, that was something else,” Grace said. Then, with a pointed look at Jenna, Grace stepped out onto the front porch with Luke, closing the door behind her before Jenna could say anything more. “Don’t want to let the bugs in,” she explained with a fast smile.
“You were talking about me?”
How did he do that, that almost-smile of his? How did he manage to look amused and above-it-all at the same time?
He was cool, that was how. He’d always been cool, even though he’d been an ace student, which was normally not considered cool at Bayside High School. But Luke gave off an aura of not needing anyone or anything.
Girls found it irresistible.
Not Grace, though. She had no trouble resisting him. “We weren’t talking about you,” she said. “We were talking about my job. Celebrating it, actually. We had a little champagne.” She was babbling and forced herself to stop.
The hum of the locusts rose around them, harmonizing with the chirping crickets.
“Well, I’m glad you passed,” he said, in a tone that suggested he was wrapping things up.
She didn’t want him to leave. Not yet. She wanted, somehow, to make things feel normal between them, so there weren’t awkward silences. “Have a seat,” she said, a little too eagerly, indicating the porch swing.
He watched as she went over and sat there herself. She stopped short of patting the spot next to her.
“I don’t want to interrupt your celebration,” he said, standing still under the light. “I just came by to see about the test and to give you these.” He reached into the front pocket of his jeans, took out a small key ring with two keys on it and tossed them to her.
Remarkably, she caught them, and closed her hand around them as if they were alive. They were warm from his body heat. “What are these for?”
“The bus,” he said, cocking his head slightly and giving her half a smile. An I-know-you’re-tipsy-so-I’ll-be-patient half smile. “Remember?”
“Well, yes.” She felt her face grow hot. Of course they were the bus keys, what was she thinking? Two small glasses, that was all she’d had. “I just meant…” She felt the keys, searching for an excuse for her stupid coy act. “There are two of them. What’s the second one to?”
“It’s a spare. Keep it in your wallet or something, in case you lock yourself out.”
“I’m not going to lock myself out.”
“Okay. Just in case.”
“Geez, you have no faith in me at all.”
“Don’t take it personally, Grace. I don’t have faith in anyone.”
She suspected he was kidding, but she couldn’t stop herself from baiting him. “Especially me, Luke. You’ve never had faith in me.”
He gave a broad shrug. “I have as much faith in you as I need to. I’m sure you’ll do a fine job.”
Fine. She’d always hated that word. “Thanks,” she said half-heartedly.
“Grace? Are you pouting?” He definitely looked amused.
“No.”
“Good.”
“Fine.”
Quiet settled between them.
“So, I guess I’ll go,” Luke said, starting to turn.
“Wait, Luke.” She felt as though she had to stop him. As though she had somehow to fix their conversation before she let him go. Before it got stuck in his brain as one more Bad Experience with Grace.
He looked back. God, had his eyes always been so blue? “What?”
She scrambled for something to say but came up short. “Nothing. I just…making sure…school starts at nine?”
“Nine-fifteen.”
“Ah. Well, there you go. Good thing I asked.”
He gave her a curious look but said, “Right. Wouldn’t want to get them there too early.”
She nodded and tried to look as if she was taking in more than just the sight of him, standing there looking sexy in the thick, hot air. She fully realized it was the champagne that made him look so good, and she didn’t want to say or do anything she’d regret later. “Good to know,” she said.
“Grace?”
“Hmm?”
“I was kidding. It doesn’t matter if they get there early. Just don’t get them in late.”
She forced herself to stop nodding and just leveled her eyes on his. “Deal.”
“You’ve got the list of students that I gave you the other day?”
“In my car.”
“You’re sure you haven’t lost them?”
“I haven’t lost them, Luke, come on, what kind of idiot do you think you’re dealing with?”
“Did I say you were an idiot?”
“Not in so many words, but you didn’t expect me to pass the test and you don’t expect me to be able to keep track of the key, and now you’re at least half convinced that I’ve lost the list of students I’m supposed to pick up. Is it me, or have you had really big problems with bus drivers in the past?”
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Beth Harbison
THE ONE WHO GOT AWAYFor Grace Bowes, going home again felt like facing disaster. While the town wondered how the golden girl had wound up a struggling single mum, Grace had to find a job - fast! Worse, her first interview ever was with none other than Luke Stewart, the man who once made her heart beat madly - before she married someone else. He was the lover who still made her wonder: What if…?"What if" wasn't an option for Luke. Until Grace walked into his world once more, looking every inch the beauty she always was. Suddenly, the brooding bachelor felt an ache to finish what they started so long ago. Not a bad proposition for a man with nothing to lose. Nothing, that is, except his heart…
Head Over Heels
Drive Me Wild
Midnight Cravings
Beth Harbison
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover (#u95abed47-3673-5967-b59d-964185c719af)
Title Page (#u4b3ab670-71a7-50af-bf0b-da120e142c8e)
Drive Me Wild (#ulink_5320eeb8-fd4c-5f9f-ae3e-680f696b552c)
Chapter One (#ulink_df5969d4-b25f-549f-9628-705605d2ab49)
Chapter Two (#ulink_cc24eb9b-2bdd-567c-bd28-8e54964d106f)
Chapter Three (#ulink_054a1eaa-54d4-5b35-b8ca-6c50ffb5f849)
Chapter Four (#ulink_ec709435-05f9-59a1-aa6c-793523b9c400)
Chapter Five (#ulink_a1a88446-2022-5290-992d-78ba4fc8ef35)
Chapter Six (#ulink_703f5e8e-9c1d-5f2c-b832-1c7d75673d30)
Chapter Seven (#ulink_8248c13b-38a1-50b4-9def-f57d708315e6)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Midnight Cravings (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Drive Me Wild (#ulink_284d6ef7-0f70-5ca9-8520-6f814cb399e3)
Beth Harbison
Chapter One (#ulink_c7d2f622-86f7-5701-8d38-0ebcaede9af7)
“You ever had to eat a locust?”
For a moment, Grace Bowes—standing in the blazing-hot sun looking for a mailbox that should have been on the corner of Main and Sycamore but wasn’t—didn’t think the question was directed at her. But when it was repeated with more vehemence, she looked toward the speaker and saw a bent old man perched on a bench in front of the Blue Moon Bay Pharmacy, staring at her so expectantly she couldn’t help but laugh.
“No, I haven’t.” She’d never been one to believe in omens, but when the seventeen-year locusts returned to her hometown the same month she—after a fifteen-year absence—did, she had to rethink her position. On several things. “But I haven’t ruled it out.”
The man laughed heartily, revealing a mouth full of holes plus one or two brown stubs of teeth. “Smart girl.” He thumped a gnarled finger against his temple.
“Have you?” She noticed he had a battered hat at his feet with a handwritten sign that said Thank You in an uncertain hand, and an old dented and rusted Partridge Family lunch box by his side. She immediately regretted asking. Maybe that lunch box was full of locusts right now.
“Had to, during the war. Would’ve starved otherwise.” He looked her over with a sharp blue eye. “What war are you fighting?”
Divorce. Betrayal. Single motherhood. The modern job market as it related to a woman whose only real job had consisted of working as a secretary for her father, the local judge, ten hours a week one summer. A lot of wars. “I’m just looking for a mailbox. I thought there was one on this corner.” She had to mail a car payment on a car that was the main asset she’d won in the divorce after her husband, Michael, had left her a note on the bathroom counter, saying he was sorry but their life together hadn’t worked out and he’d found someone else.
“Used to be one right there.” The old man gestured, then shook his head as if something very sad had happened. “Not there anymore.”
“No, it’s not.” Grace glanced at her watch. In ten minutes she had an appointment at the Bayside Jobs employment agency. First she had to mail this payment, hoping to avoid at least one early-morning call mispronouncing her name and threatening unspeakable actions if she didn’t get the car payment in on time. Along with winning the car, she’d won the car payment, thanks to Michael’s savvy at hiding his financial assets.
Michael Bowes. He’d been the golden boy of Blue Moon Bay, Maryland, the captain of the football team and homecoming king to Grace’s homecoming queen. He’d gone to college in the north and she’d followed a year later. Four years after that, they were married and Michael, then a commercial real-estate developer, had ridden a ride of prosperity right into a lovely upper-middle-class lifestyle. When the bottom had dropped out of that market, he didn’t bother to mention to Grace that they were living on credit cards and line of credit advances and a host of bad gambles.
By the time he left—no doubt because thugs with stub noses and barrel chests were threatening to break his kneecaps—he’d accrued hundreds of thousands of dollars in liability. He and Grace had had to sell the house and her jewelry and even her clothes. Her yard sales were legendary. And exhausting. When it was all over, she had nothing except bad memories of a man who had once seemed like the Catch of Blue Moon Bay.
She wasn’t sorry the marriage was over. Often she’d felt as if in their life together they’d lacked understanding of each other, and even real interest in each other. Perhaps if Michael hadn’t made the first move, she would have suggested it herself after Jimmy was grown. She’d never know, because Michael had beaten her to the punch.
So she’d packed up their ten-year-old son, Jimmy, and moved back to her hometown to live with her widowed mother in the house she’d grown up in. It was only for a year, she told herself. She’d save enough money to move back north, so Jimmy could be near his friends again, in the town that was his home. And she could be far away from this claustrophobic hamlet.
In the meantime, she’d just get a job here in Blue Moon Bay. Granted, at thirty-three, she should be heading her own household, not lying on the same bed she had as a teenager, counting the same fading roses on the wallpaper, but here she was. She was lucky to have the benefit of her mother’s generosity.
With any luck it would keep her from having to eat locusts.
“You have something to mail?” the old man asked, holding out a shaking hand.
Grace automatically pulled her purse in closer to her body. Too many years in the city. “No, thanks. I was just trying to orient myself.”
“Used to be a mailbox there.” He dissolved into a long, sputtering cough. “Gone now.”
She tried to smile and took out one of the only two dollars she had in her purse. “Thanks so much for your help,” she said, dropping the bill into the hat. She noticed there were only three pennies and a nickel in there and, with a pang of pity for the old man, dropped her other dollar in too. “I really appreciate it.”
“God bless you,” he called as Grace walked away and rounded the corner. “And God bless your family too.”
“I hope so,” she whispered.
She looked at her watch again and quickened her pace, hurrying down the shaded street that ran parallel to the old boardwalk a block up. In fifteen years, almost nothing had changed. The salty smell of the ocean still hung in the air and mingled with sweet taffy and caramel corn, though whether the smell was actually there or just a memory, Grace couldn’t say, since it was early May and most of the shops hadn’t opened for the season yet. The pavement was littered here and there with the familiar old Hasher’s French Fries bags, malt vinegar stains dotting the same logo they’d had for at least three decades. It was one of the only landmarks left, now that the once-charming holiday town had fallen in favor of the more exciting Ocean City forty-five minutes away.
Still, a few dings and whistles of arcade games echoed through narrow alleyways full of shops that only opened during the summer when the tourists came to the beach. Grace fought a feeling of melancholy. Around every kite shop, T-shirt shop, and junk-food joint were ghostly memories of bike spills, melting ice cream on muggy summer nights and first kisses in the shadows of doorways and brightly striped awnings.
She stopped at the address she’d written for Bayside Jobs and looked around. It took her a moment to realize 32 Maple Street was the tiny space that used to sell funnel cakes and, for a couple of years in the seventies, had been a head shop.
She paused outside the door and pulled the fabric of her blouse away from her damp underarms. It was a little tight, she’d noticed, thanks to her Oreo therapy, but it would probably be okay as long as she didn’t raise her arms and split the back. If she stood straight, it looked fine. She hoped.
With a quick breath, she heaved the old glass door open and stepped into the cool, dark, mercifully locust-free office. It still carried the faintest whiff of grease, sugar and marijuana.
An unpleasantly familiar stout woman looked up from the desk a few feet in front of her. “Grace Perigon,” she said flatly, her face pink under her now-white hair.
“Ms. Lindon?” Grace gasped, recognizing the voice that addressed her by her maiden name. Ms. Lindon—she’d always emphasized the Ms., leading to rampant speculation among the students about her sexuality—had been the meanest home ec teacher on the east coast, maybe even the meanest in the whole United States.
Students had called her “the Egg Beater” because she’d always seemed hostile, even when baking a cake.
Grace felt the blood drain from her face and pool in the toes of her new discount-store pumps. “I have an appointment.”
“I don’t have any appointment down here for you.”
“You’re in charge here?” Grace glanced around to make sure, once again, that she’d opened the correct door and not, say, an acupuncturist’s or a martial arts studio. “Bayside Jobs?”
Ms. Lindon’s brow lowered further than was aesthetically pleasing. “I am Bayside Jobs.”
That was it. Grace was done for. Except that she couldn’t allow herself the luxury of being done for. She walked slowly toward the large metal desk. The air conditioner hissed in the corner. “Then I must have an appointment with you,” Grace said, in as warm a voice as she could muster.
For a moment, she toyed with the idea of running back outside to take her chances with the locusts.
The older woman took out a vinyl-covered appointment book and studied it intently. “I don’t see you here.”
“Oh.” This was as very bad start. “When I called, I used my married name. I’ll still be using it now, even though we’ve gotten divorced.”
“What is it?”
“Oh, just the usual, I guess. We grew apart—”
“The name,” Ms. Lindon barked. “What is the name?”
She knew damn well that Grace had married Michael Bowes. Everyone did. There were no secrets in this sardine can of a town. But even if she didn’t know the name, there weren’t enough unemployed people in Blue Moon Bay during the summer to fill two lines of the daybook, much less an entire day, so she could have figured it out. For Pete’s sake, Grace could see it was all right there on the page, with just a little doodle of a dog in the corner and some scribbling around the middle of the page. And her name under 11:00—Grace Bowes.
Ms. Lindon looked too long at the page before tapping the scribbled line in the middle and saying, “There it is. You were supposed to be here at eleven, not ten past. Rule number one, Always be on time. Bayside Girls are always professional.”
Bayside Girls? A pang of dread reverberated in the depths of Grace’s heart. It was still 1952 here in Blue Moon Bay, just as it had always been. This was going to be hard to get used to after all those years up north.
She took a deep breath and remembered Jimmy. “Of course. I’m sorry.”
“Have a seat.” The Egg Beater gestured and waited for Grace to obey, then took out a pen and steno pad that still had the bargain-store price tag stuck to the front. “Now, tell me about your skills.”
Grace thought she was prepared for that question. “Let’s see, I’ve spent the past nine years chairing the annual Bingham Industrialists Golf Tournament.” The pen remained poised over the pad but did not touch it, Grace noticed. “I also organized and edited the Bingham Junior League cookbook in 1996, 1997 and 1999.”
After a painful pause, Ms. Lindon said, “I mean, what kind of marketable qualifications do you have? How fast can you type?”
Grace smiled brilliantly. “Typing isn’t really my strong suit….”
Ms. Lindon looked at her with flat eyes. “Computer skills?”
Grace wondered if her old Atari Pong game qualified. “None to speak of but—”
Ms. Lindon dropped her pen and leaned back in her chair, appraising Grace with a cool eye. “I’m afraid we don’t have anything that suits your particular…expertise.”
The blood that had drained moments earlier began to rise in Grace’s face. “I’m willing to learn,” she said, trying to keep the desperate edge out of her voice.
Something in the older woman seemed to soften. She picked up a large portfolio marked Positions to Fill in a handwriting Grace remembered from her old report cards—Grace needs to learn that she has to work for her grades instead of expecting everything to be handed to her on a silver platter—and leafed through it.
She shook her head. “Mmm. No, it’s as I thought. All of these jobs require the latest computer skills and good typing speed, not to mention experience. Wait—here’s one that will train you—” She squinted and looked closer. “Oh, no. That’s no good.” She clopped the book shut. “I’m sorry. I don’t have anything for you now. Maybe if you take a secretarial class and come back, we can help you at a later time.”
Grace refused to give up so easily, even though half of her wanted to concede. “You just said there was one that didn’t require experience.”
Ms. Lindon smirked. “No, that was definitely not for you.”
Grace leaned forward in her seat. “Ms. Lindon, I really, really need a job. Any job.” She hated to beg the help of a woman who clearly wouldn’t share a canteen of water with Grace even if her clothes burst into flames, but she had no choice. “I’m broke.”
The other woman shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I am sorry for your misfortune, but—”
“I don’t want your pity.” Grace swallowed hard. “I’m not here asking for favors. I have a ten-year-old son to take care of now. I need the work. Please, Ms. Lindon—” she reached out and touched the older woman’s hand “—please tell me what you have.”
A long moment passed, during which Grace wondered if Ms. Lindon would let that tennis ball fall in her court or if she’d just lob it back at Grace by the sheer force of impatience. “All right,” she said at last. “But I don’t think you’re going to like it.”
Grace tried to keep calm. “What have you got?”
“It’s at Connor Primary Day School. You know, over on Bayshore Drive?”
Grace nodded, feeling a dull ache grow rapidly in her chest. Dread. Another shoe was going to drop any minute, she knew it, and it would be a size-fourteen stiletto. “I went to school there.”
Ms. Lindon gave her a look of slight skepticism but didn’t say anything. “Well. You may be able to work tuition for your kid into the deal if you get the job. There’s one perk anyway.”
That didn’t sound so bad. She’d kind of like Jimmy to go to the same school she went to, if only briefly. “Really? So what do they need?” She tried to imagine what job Ms. Lindon thought Grace wouldn’t like. “Playground assistant?” she asked, to let the other woman know she was willing to take that kind of job. “After-school care?”
“Bus driver.”
Grace felt as if she’d missed the bottom step of a very steep staircase and fallen flat on her face. “I beg your pardon?”
“They need a bus driver.”
That was it, the other shoe she’d been waiting for. There was a moment’s silence while the news bounced around the room and into Grace’s consciousness.
“If you’re willing to do it, I can call and set up an interview.”
“But a bus driver?” Grace was still back at square one. Visions of meaty tattooed arms and screaming kids came to mind. “But I don’t know anything about driving a bus.”
Ms. Lindon shrugged. “It says here that they’ll train the right person.”
Grace shifted her weight in her seat, which had suddenly become extremely uncomfortable. “Are you sure there’s nothing else?”
“Nothing.” She pushed the book aside. “You’re clearly not suited for that kind of position, though.”
“But—”
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll keep a special eye out for anything that might work for you and I’ll call you immediately if I see something.” She started to stand up.
“Wait.” Grace put a hand up. “How much does it pay? The bus-driver position, I mean.”
Ms. Lindon looked in the book and quoted a figure.
Grace did some quick calculations and said, “That could work. I could survive on that pay.” She’d carefully budgeted what she needed to save each month in order to be able to move back north in one year. This salary would cover that and leave a little over at the end of the month for incidentals. It would be a strenuously budgeted life, but it would be temporary. “I’ll take it.”
“That’s only if they hire you, of course.”
There was that knot in the pit of her stomach again. “Do you think they won’t?”
“I don’t suppose you’ve ever driven a bus before?”
“No.” Of course not.
The older woman shrugged. “Might not matter. It does say they’ll train. You’d have to interview first, of course. I can only refer you. Whether or not they hire you depends on how that interview goes.” She hesitated before adding, “If you really want to try it.”
“I do.” Grace took a slow breath. She wasn’t going to get sidetracked into a discussion about whether or not she knew what she was saying. “You mentioned there’s a tuition benefit for my son?”
“Says so here. You can talk to Mr. Stewart about that more if you interview.”
Grace noticed that if. “Okay, set up an interview.” She straightened and brushed a fly off the front of her dove-gray Armani suit. She’d bought it in Milan two years ago. Things were different then. “I’ll be a bus driver.”
Chapter Two (#ulink_1718d604-825b-5b89-a652-ac004d15763a)
The familiarity of the Connor Primary Day School campus was disconcerting to Grace. It was as if nothing had changed in the twenty-some years since she’d attended, except that the trees were a little taller and the buildings looked a little smaller. Hope mingled with melancholy as she parked the car and got out to walk to the old red barn where the garage was located. Was it merely familiarity that was making Grace’s stomach flutter this way, or was it a premonition that she would get the job and everything would—eventually—be all right?
Having always been an optimist, she decided to believe the latter.
The office door was shut when she reached it, and for one terrible moment she feared that Ms. Lindon had sent her on a wild-goose chase. Grace had been so insistent about interviewing for the job that maybe the woman had just sent her out here to get rid of her. Her fear was exacerbated when she knocked and there was no answer. Within a few seconds, she’d almost convinced herself that there wasn’t even anyone here when a movement behind the old mottled-glass door caught her eye. Someone was here. Ms. Lindon wasn’t that mean—Grace had just let her imagination get carried away. She took a quick breath to bolster her nerve and knocked again, more firmly. A voice called out something inside, but she couldn’t understand what it said. Come on in? Or maybe Go away! Or even Get help, fast, I’m being held at gunpoint!
Now what was she supposed to do?
Deciding it was better to go forward with confidence than to appear timid, she opened the door and poked her head in, surprised to find she was so blinded by the sun outside that she couldn’t see in the dark, cool office. “Mr. Stewart?”
“That’s right. What can I do for you?” The man’s voice was nice. Smooth and kind, and she felt herself relax when it reached her.
She stepped in from the heat and said, in the general direction of the voice, since her eyes hadn’t yet adjusted to the light, “I have an appointment to interview with you. About the job opening here.”
There was an uncomfortable moment of silence while the splotchy figure across the room sat unmoving. Just as he was beginning to come into view, he said, in a voice she was suddenly able to place with absolute clarity, “Grace?”
Her stomach dropped. She imagined it plunking on the ground next to her and bouncing like an india-rubber ball. She blinked hard, and within a few seconds her vision came back to normal.
She almost wished it hadn’t.
There, before her, was a face she’d envisioned a million times over the years, a face she’d never thought she’d see again. A little older, of course, but the same golden tanned skin, now with a faint web of lines around the clear blue eyes. Same dark wavy hair that, in contrast, had always made those eyes absolutely striking. She’d always reacted physically to them, and to the charismatic man they belonged to.
Luke Stewart.
Grace couldn’t have been more surprised to see him if he’d been lassoing steer in her mother’s backyard. God almighty, she’d never dreamed Luke was the Mr. Stewart she was supposed to see. She didn’t even know he was still in town. Not only in town, but here, not ten feet away from her, behind a desk that was piled with papers, the odd piece of horse tack and quite possibly control of her future.
It seemed like twenty minutes that Grace stood there, trying to recapture her breath and find a voice beneath the stomach and heart that had lodged themselves in her throat. It wasn’t merely surprising to see Luke, it was deeply disconcerting. It had always been disconcerting to be around Luke Stewart, but why hadn’t she outgrown this particularly juvenile kind of heart-pounding, lip-trembling, struck-dumb reaction?
Just because once upon a time, a long time ago, she’d thought she’d loved him.
But instead of telling him, she’d married his best friend.
It was Luke who finally broke the silence. “You’re back.”
She nodded. “For a while.”
He held her gaze. She felt as powerless as a mortal in a Greek myth, unable to look away. “I thought you were gone for good,” he said.
Grace hoped she could sound calm and unaffected while her insides raged. “You just never know about people,” she said pointedly.
“No,” he agreed, just as pointedly. “No, you don’t.” He took a deep breath and blew it out, shuffling papers on the desk. “So. How long are you planning to stay?”
“About a year. I want to take my son back to New Jersey as soon as I can. To his friends and his school and all.”
Something flickered across Luke’s expression, but it was gone before she could identify it. “I heard about Michael. I’m sorry.”
Had he heard it from Michael himself? Surely not. They’d been pals in high school, but as far as Grace knew, they hadn’t spoken in years. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”
He shrugged. “Never did. What are you here to talk about, Grace?”
“I’m here about school business, of course.”
“Of course. How old’s your boy?”
“Ten.” Grace tried to think of something else to say, but she was stymied. She began to be aware of perspiration trickling down the center of her back, and wondered if it was the unusual May heat or this conversation with Luke that caused it.
She was completely over him.
Had been for years.
All of which was for the best, since he had never shared her feelings. In fact, during the three years of high school when they’d seen each other the most, they’d spent about 90 percent of their time arguing.
“So you’re looking to enroll him here for the year.” Luke nodded as if he’d figured out a puzzle. “We should probably move this discussion to my office and start over.”
“This isn’t your office?”
He looked around at the mess. “No. This is the garage. You wanted the main building. It’s just lucky I happened to be here.”
Lucky wasn’t the word that came to Grace’s mind. “This is where I was told to come,” she said, feeling her face grow warm and hating herself for it.
“Someone told you to come to the garage?”
She sighed. “Look, Luke, I’m not here to enroll my son and volunteer for classroom cookie duty, I’m here about the job. So are you going to interview me or not?”
“The job?” he repeated, as if the idea were incomprehensible. “What job?” Though his manner didn’t show it, he must have been rattled, because she’d already said why she was here. “There’s only one job opening here, and that can’t be…driving the bus?”
“Yes.” Grace raised her chin defiantly. “That’s the job I’m here about.”
He laughed. Laughed! “Give me a break.”
“What?”
“Come on. You’re Junior League, not bush league. You can’t be serious.”
“I’m completely serious.” Then she added, under her breath, “How many times am I going to have to say that today?”
A year ago, Grace couldn’t possibly have envisioned herself begging to be a bus driver. Someone could have won a lot of money on this bet.
He studied her for a moment, then said, “I don’t believe it.”
“What, do you think this is a joke? Do you think I just blew into town and decided the first thing I had to do was track you down, take some abuse about my marriage, then pretend to beg you for work? Does that make more sense, Luke, than Bayside Jobs sending me here looking for legitimate employment?”
“Actually, I have a hard time envisioning either scenario. But if Mary did send you here to drive the bus, I can’t even imagine what she was thinking. I’m afraid she had you come out here for nothing.”
“Mary?” Who was Mary?
He turned and looked at her sharply, as though he’d caught her trying to making faces at him. “Mary Lindon. You did say you were sent from Bayside.”
“Y-yes.” Mary? Lord, Grace must have called her Ms. Lindon forty times today and the woman hadn’t once stopped her and said, as almost anyone else would have, “Call me Mary, please.” Grace cleared her throat. “Mary thought I’d be perfect for the job.”
“Really,” he said, but his tone said bull.
Grace nodded. She had to compose herself, had to return the tone of this meeting to something less personal, more professional. “Obviously this is a little awkward, since we know each other. Is there someone else I should speak to instead?”
“Someone higher up, you mean?”
“Well…”
“I’m the headmaster,” he said, flatly. “I’m afraid it’s up to me.”
Headmaster? Oh perfect—she’d really blown it then. “Okay. Well, I came here for an interview, like anyone else off the street, so pretend I’m a stranger.” She drew herself up. “Now, are you going to interview me or not?”
A muscle ticked in his jaw for a moment, before he said, “Sure. If that’s what you want.” He jotted her name on the back of a telephone book on the desk and drew a line under it, then looked at her, obviously trying not to smile. “Tell me how long you’ve been driving school buses now, Grace.”
Heat rose in her cheeks. He wasn’t going to make this easy. “The job description clearly said that no experience was necessary.”
“Maybe not necessary, but it helps. More qualified drivers will have the edge there.” He made a note of it. “You have a commercial driver’s license?”
She heard a single minor piano chord ring ominously in her brain. “Oh, come on, Luke, what do you think?”
He leaned back in his chair and gave her a lazy look that would once have made her toes curl, but now just ticked her off. “I think you’re applying for a job driving a bus, so you must have at least some vague notion of what that job entails.”
She tried to stay calm. “I think it entails starting the engine and driving from place to place picking up children and bringing them to school, which is pretty much what we, in my old neighborhood, called ‘car pooling.’ How different can it be?”
“For one thing, you need a commercial driver’s license in order to do it here.”
“I can get one, right?”
He gave a half shrug that said wrong. “Have you learned your way around an engine since I last saw you?” he asked. By now his face wore the same bored expectation of a negative response that an airline clerk had asking if you’d packed your own suitcase.
This was no time to give up, Grace reminded herself, however tempting that might be. “I can learn.”
He released the pencil, letting it clatter to the desk. Then he leaned back, took a deep breath and let it out slowly, not unlike a hissing bus tire that had just run over the sharp shards of her broken heart. “Grace, I ask you this in all seriousness—do you have any idea what’s involved in taking this job?”
She straightened in her seat and smoothed her jacket, instantly regretting the prissy gesture. As a prospective bus driver, she should have brought a toothpick to chew on or something. “Not entirely.”
“For the license test, you’ll need to know the bus’s engine inside-out. They’re going to pop the hood and have you identify and locate every part of the engine, then they’re going to have you get down on your knees and identify the parts from underneath.” He counted his points triumphantly on his fingers. “Then they’re going to ask you what happens if any of those parts fail or wear out, and they’re going to ask you how to fix them.” He gave a small but meaningful shake of his head. “If you pass all that, then you get to take the driving test.”
It did sound daunting, but not as daunting as another registered letter from the IRS. “And you’re saying you don’t think I can do that?”
“I can’t see it, no.” Clearly he was harboring his old hostility toward her. “Point is,” he went on, “I’m expecting to hire someone who already has.”
“What if you can’t hire someone who already has?” she asked. “What if no one like that applies?”
“They will.”
“When do you need a driver?”
“For summer school. In four weeks.”
“Four weeks!” She threw up her hands. “And you’re only looking to hire someone now?”
“You’re not helping your case.”
“I’m trying to help yours. And mine.” She could tell she was getting nowhere with him. She remembered a chocolate bar for Jimmy that she’d put in her purse earlier, and made a mental note to inhale it the second this miserable meeting ended. “Look, maybe I should talk with someone else about the job, since you obviously can’t be objective about me.”
“As a matter of fact, I’m in the unique position of understanding just how wrong you are for this position.” He sighed and softened his voice. “Grace, you’d be miserable. Why are you even here?”
“Because I need work,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “And this is the only possibility in town.”
“But it’s not a possibility.”
“It is.” She knew she sounded desperate, but she didn’t care. She was desperate! “You can teach me whatever it is I need to know, and I can take the test and do the job so quietly you won’t even have to think about it again. I might be the best damn bus driver you ever had.”
“And you might hate it and quit after two days.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
“Well, you’ve already said you’re leaving town next year. I’m not hiring a lifeguard for the summer, I need a bus driver. I need someone who’s going to take the job, do it well and keep it for more than a single school year.” His gaze grew penetrating. “This is nothing personal.”
“Yes, it is!” She jabbed a finger in the air at him. “Personal is exactly what it is. You’re obviously holding something against me from a hundred years ago—”
“Not true.”
“—but if you think it’s easy for me to sit here and beg you for a job, you’re mistaken. If I can get past our history enough to work together, surely you can.”
“We don’t have a history.”
“Of course we have a history! We’ve known each other for eighteen years.” A small hurt flared in her, like a match lit on a windy night. How could he act as if they were total strangers? Maybe they hadn’t always gotten along, but once or twice in their past Grace had gotten the feeling that they had connected on a very deep level.
One instance in particular came to mind.
But now it was as if he was so eager to distance himself from her that he would even go so far as to distance himself from the facts. So she decided to remind him of those facts. “We went to high school together, Luke. You were my husband’s best friend, for Pete’s sake. That’s history.”
“That,” he agreed, “is history.”
She hesitated, unsure as to whether he was agreeing with her about the whole concept or if he was making the point that his friendship with Michael was history, as in kaput.
Because she knew that.
She remembered when it had happened.
Before she could think of something to say, Luke spoke again. “It’s irrelevant whether we have a history or not, because this is about qualifications. And you don’t have them. At least not the right ones.”
“I’ll bet I have better qualifications than most people you interview for this job,” she argued. “Have most of your applicants taken the Red Cross CPR course for infants and children? Can most of your applicants arbitrate an argument between two ten-year-olds? Can any of your other applicants tell the difference between the Robo-Crusier-Insect-Man and the Auto-Alien Transformer?”
Luke raised an eyebrow. “You think being able to make that distinction will come in handy?”
Her gaze was direct and serious. “You just never know.”
He studied her quietly for a moment, then, with a small nod, he said, “That’s true. But it doesn’t change my mind.”
“What would?” she asked plaintively.
He took a deep breath. A deep dismissive breath. “Look, I’ve got to admire your determination, but I don’t see this as a good fit. So I’ll keep your number on file and—”
“And what?”
He sighed. “And hope you forget this whole idea.”
“I can’t afford to,” she said, quietly but firmly. “I need this.”
“You’re not half prepared even to take the test, and like I said, summer school begins in just four weeks.”
“But I can learn, like I said.” She raised her chin and challenged him. “Besides, you’re ignoring some rather obvious extenuating circumstances.”
“Am I?”
Grace gathered her energy. “I won’t pretend to be able to read your mind, Luke, but I know you well enough to tell when you’re cornered.”
He raised an eyebrow.
She continued, “You need a driver. As you yourself have just pointed out, there are only a few short weeks until school starts, and—” she looked around the room “—I don’t see a lot of people lining up for this position, no matter how optimistic you may be about that happening as soon as I leave. I need a job. And while I may not have the exact qualifications you’re looking for, I’m willing to learn whatever I need to in order to satisfy your requirements. It seems obvious to me what you need to do.”
There was a long silence during which she trembled under his familiar gaze.
Finally, Luke broke the silence.
“You’re absolutely right. It’s very clear what I have to do.”
Hope surged in her. “Good.”
Luke stood up and gave her a cool appraisal. “Thanks for coming by, Grace. I’m sorry this didn’t work out, but good luck finding something else. And welcome home.”
Chapter Three (#ulink_92f09948-d794-50df-b8c7-ddb5fcd3da79)
Luke stared at the closed door in disbelief.
Grace Perigon.
No, make that Grace Bowes, trophy wife of his high-school partner in crime—it was hard to call Michael a friend—and the only girl who’d ever really gotten under his skin.
Even now, with the perspective of so many years, it was hard for him to say just why she’d gotten under his skin. Sometimes he’d thought he’d hated her. Other times…well, other times, he’d thought maybe it was the opposite.
One time—one short, stupid night—he’d been sure it was the opposite.
But that had passed quickly. And in the end, he’d watched her leave town without looking back while he, all in all, had to say he was glad to see her go. As Michael had pointed out to him, not so subtly, he didn’t have what she was looking for in a guy: money, position and the potential for rapid advancement.
Not that he’d ever let Michael, or anyone else, know of his feelings for Grace.
Michael had just seemed to pick up on the situation himself. It wasn’t that Michael was particularly perceptive, or so spiritually bonded to Grace that he perceived anything extraordinary about her, it was only that he always believed everyone wanted what he had. And he was ace at keeping what was his, whether it was a car or a girl.
Michael Bowes had somehow even managed to get Blue Moon High School to retire his football jersey at the end of his unremarkable varsity run.
The strange thing was that Luke had never known Michael to let go of any of his prized possessions, even after he’d completely lost interest in them. Once in high school Luke had spotted a broken Louisville Slugger in the back of Michael’s garage when they were working on his vintage ’65 Mustang convertible…and Grace was a much finer prize than that Louisville Slugger.
It was hard to imagine Michael letting go of her. Luke had been surprised about it ever since he’d heard the news several months back that they were divorcing. At first he’d half expected Grace to come back to town, but when she hadn’t come right away, he figured she never would. He’d figured he was safe.
He’d figured wrong.
* * *
Turned down for a job as a bus driver.
That was bad enough, but she’d been turned down by Luke Stewart, who she never thought she’d have to see again…much less under circumstances like these.
She’d made a mistake with Luke, there was no doubt about it. A mistake, it seemed, he’d never forget. Or forgive. She’d made a bad bargain for her future, and, in the process, wounded his male pride. It was nothing more than a glancing blow to his ego, but he was still willing to use it against her, even under circumstances as dire as those she faced now.
Her life couldn’t get a lot worse than this, Grace thought, kicking a dead locust from the path in front of her and feeling mean. She was living at her mother’s again, with no money and no skills to get a job, even a lousy job. That was another bad bargain she’d made: the housewife bargain. Believing her future to be secure, if not deliriously happy, she’d concentrated her efforts on making a comfortable home for her family. In so doing, she’d let technology and the job market pass her by. Now she could barely even see them in the distance.
So much for saving for her future.
It was beginning to seem entirely possible that she’d be stuck in this sandpit of a town for the rest of her life. She’d become one of those wacky old ladies whom everyone referred to as “Miz Grace.” Except for the kids who would call her dis-Grace, and who would ring her doorbell late at night and run.
She walked across the pretty green campus and thought ruefully of how nice it would have been for Jimmy to go to school here, just like she had done herself. Blue Moon Bay was a far cry from Morris, New Jersey. Here you could see horses from the school room window instead of traffic. Jimmy would love that.
When she got to the small gravel parking lot, she noticed a familiar older man getting out of a shining Lincoln. It only took her a moment to place him.
“Mr. Bailey?” Fred Bailey had been a friend of her parents for years. A lifetime bachelor, he was a big lawyer with offices in D.C. and Annapolis. He’d lived in Blue Moon Bay since he was a young man. In fact, he’d grown up with her mother, and gone to school with her through twelfth grade. They’d even dated briefly before he’d gone off to law school at Princeton.
He’d moved back to Blue Moon Bay six years later, after Grace’s parents had married, and made the 90-minute commute to his offices, remaining a pillar of Blue Moon Bay society. Though Grace hadn’t thought about Fred Bailey in a very long time, seeing him brought back a flood of warm memories. He was so much like her father that she had to fight an impulse to run into his arms. She could imagine how he would smell, of peppermint and pipe smoke. Just thinking about it made her feel more relaxed than she had for months.
“Mr. Bailey,” she said again.
He turned to her, his expression blank.
Her heart sank.
“It’s Grace Bowes…Perigon,” she said, fighting back a sudden overwhelming weakness in her limbs.
His face broke into a wide smile. “Grace? Good heavens, I wasn’t expecting to see you here!” He patted his breast pocket and took out a glasses case. As soon as he put his spectacles on, his eyes grew wide behind the thick glass. “So it is you!” He opened his arms, and she gave him a hug. “Welcome home, child. I’ve been looking forward to seeing you ever since I heard you were coming back. How long has it been?”
“Since Dad’s funeral.”
“My goodness, that’s a long time. Look at you, just as lovely as ever. Your father would be so proud.” He smiled again and clucked his tongue against his teeth. “I still miss the old fellow.”
She smiled, and her chest felt full but her eyes burned again. “Me too.”
“Well, what are you doing here?” Fred Bailey asked. “Not coming back to school, I expect.” He chuckled.
“Apparently not,” she said, a touch wryly.
“Beg pardon?”
She shrugged. “Well, I was here to apply for a job, but apparently I’m not properly qualified.” She resisted the childish urge to say, That mean, spiteful Luke Stewart wouldn’t give it to me.
Mr. Bailey’s brow lowered. “What job? I didn’t think there were any teaching positions open.”
Grace cleared her throat lightly. “It wasn’t a teaching job.”
“Not teaching?” He wasn’t going to let this go. “Was it administrative?”
“It was driving. The bus. Driving the school bus.” There. She’d said it. She’d admitted out loud that she’d been turned down as a bus driver.
It felt even worse now.
“Driving the school bus?” the older man repeated, with the same incredulity he might have shown if she’d said she wanted to become a trapeze artist. “That’s no job for a Perigon. Let’s go talk to Luke Stewart and see if we can’t find something reasonable for you here.” He took her arm and started leading her to the building she’d just left.
“No. Please.” Her reaction was too strong. He dropped her arm, startled. She smiled. “I mean, the driving position really was the one I wanted. It had flexible hours and would allow me to be with Jimmy when there was no school.” She tried to imagine Luke’s reaction if she reappeared with a big gun like Fred Bailey, demanding that a new position of some kind be created for her. “But it doesn’t matter, because he doesn’t think I’ll be able to get the license on time.” She didn’t know why she felt like she had to defend Luke’s decision suddenly.
“Hmm.” He rubbed his chin. “Well, I must confess I don’t know much about that.”
“It’s okay. I appreciate your concern, but I’ll find something else.”
“I’m sure you will.” Mr. Bailey looked at his watch. “I must go. I’ve gotten so caught up in talking to you, I forgot I had a board meeting. I want to see more of you now. Welcome back, Gracie.”
The endearment took the edge off her anger toward Luke. Nobody had called her Gracie since her father had died.
“Thanks, Mr. Bailey.” The lump in her throat expanded like a sponge. It was silly to feel a melancholy nostalgia for her childhood, but she did. She watched Fred Bailey walk away, noticing his gait was now that of an old man, a little creaky, stiff in the knees. It was then that she really realized that home hadn’t just waited for her, unchanging, while she went off and started a new life up north. Things had moved on here, too. People had died, grown older; some had moved away years ago, never to be seen again.
Thomas Wolfe was right, Grace thought, you can’t go home again.
But sometimes you have to.
* * *
“You’ll find something,” Grace’s mother, Dot Perigon, said, patting her daughter’s shoulder sympathetically. “If you like, I could speak to some of your father’s old friends and colleagues. They all loved Daddy so much, I’m sure at least one of them could find something for you to do.”
Grace shook her head and fiddled with a sweating glass of iced tea her mother had put on the table in front of her. There was a twist of lemon and a mint leaf in it, just the way she had always made it. “I’m desperate, but not so desperate that I’m willing to take a job at someone else’s expense. It’s one thing when there’s a job that needs to be filled—” she thought angrily of Luke “—but quite another when someone just creates a position as a favor to an old friend, then has to pay for it.”
“But anyone would be lucky to have you around, helping out.”
“Only if they needed the help, Mom. And I think most of Daddy’s friends have got highly qualified personnel working in their offices already.”
Dot sighed and topped Grace’s glass off with tea from a pitcher. “All right, dear, but I’d be glad to speak with Fred Bailey. Or anyone else,” she hastened to add. “If you change your mind.”
Grace smiled. “Actually, I spoke with Mr. Bailey today.”
Dot looked surprised. “You did?”
“Yes, he was on his way to the school when I was leaving.”
“What did he say?” Dot asked sharply.
Grace was afraid she heard, in her mother’s voice, a determination to speak with her old friend on Grace’s behalf. And Grace definitely didn’t want that. “As a matter of fact, he did offer to twist some arms for me,” she said, deflecting the idea she hoped, before it could take root. “But I told him no thanks.”
“You did?”
“I had to,” Grace stressed. “I don’t want charity.”
“I understand. Still, it was very nice of him to offer.” Dot looked quite pleased. “Very nice.”
“Yes, it was.” Grace took a long draw of the cold tea. “You know, it was almost like having Daddy around for a moment. When I saw him, it brought all of that back to me.”
“I know what you mean,” Dot mused, with a small smile.
“So you’ve known him since high school, right? Mr. Bailey, I mean.”
“Yes, why?”
Grace stirred her tea thoughtfully. “I was just wondering why he never got married.” But she was really thinking, again, of Luke. How come he hadn’t gotten married? Was he going to end up like Mr. Bailey, a lifelong bachelor in Blue Moon Bay?
“I couldn’t say,” Dot answered, looking out the window. “Looks like Jimmy’s having a good time with the Bonds’ old spaniel out there.”
Grace took a cookie off the plate her mother had set out. “He loves dogs.”
“Maybe you should get him one.”
“Mom! I can barely take care of the two of us as it is, despite Michael’s meager monthly payments.” It was then that it truly hit her. She had to take care of herself and her son, and if things continued the way they were, she wasn’t going to be able to. She’d have to…she didn’t even know what she’d have to do. Go on welfare? She shuddered at the thought. “What if I could find a job as a cocktail waitress or something over in Ocean City? Do you think you could keep Jimmy at night?”
Dot frowned. “I don’t want to say no to you, honey, but…well, I sometimes have things to do in the evenings. I just can’t commit to staying home according to your schedule.” She assumed a pleasant expression and added, “But, as I told you, he’s welcome to stay with me any time during the day.”
Grace swallowed her shock. Though she wouldn’t say she’d ever been spoiled, exactly, and she’d always been careful not to take advantage of her mother, at the same time she never thought her mother would say no to her. Especially on something as important as this.
But Grace was well aware that Dot had already been very generous in letting her daughter and grandson move in with her. Grace wasn’t going to argue for more. “Do we still have today’s newspaper?” she asked, trying to sound upbeat, although she felt anything but. “Maybe there’s something there that I overlooked before.”
Right. Like a classified ad offering a miracle to the most desperate candidate. Now there, Grace thought wryly, was a position she definitely was qualified for. High qualified.
* * *
“So what’s she doing at night that she can’t reschedule?” Jenna Perkins asked Grace a few nights later. After an unproductive week of job-hunting, Grace had reached the end of her rope. She had to get out. Now she and Jenna were in a crowded downtown bar called Harley’s, shouting to each other over the throbbing beat of a terrible band. Jenna was Grace’s oldest friend and had once shared Grace’s dream of leaving Blue Moon Bay, but she had stayed when the time came to decide. In reflection, it seemed like the better choice. She’d married a carpenter and had twins two years after Grace had Jimmy.
“Think she’s got a secret life you don’t know about?” Jenna went on, then raised an eyebrow. “Maybe a boyfriend?”
Grace laughed. “I don’t think so. Can you imagine it? Mom dating? Good lord!” She shook her head and reached for the peanuts. “Like life hasn’t gotten weird enough as it is.”
“Ten years is a long time to be alone,” Jenna said lightly. “And your mom’s a very attractive woman.”
“Come off it, Jenna. She’s known everyone in this town for sixty-three years. I don’t think anyone new has come in to sweep her off her feet.”
Jenna shrugged. “You never know.”
“You said you had a great job idea,” Grace reminded her, steering the conversation away from her mother. “What is it?”
“Well, you know how I was working in my dad’s shop last month when he and Mom went on that cruise?”
“Sure, I remember.” Jenna’s father was the only jeweler in Blue Moon Bay, and his shop had been there since his own father had established it in the forties. “What do you have in mind? Knocking off a jewelry shop and pawning the stuff at your dad’s?” Grace laughed.
Jenna laughed with her. “Don’t think I haven’t thought of it. But no, there was a woman who came in like three times while I was working, and she must have spent at least three grand just on big tacky rings and things. Know what she does for a living?”
“What?”
“She reads tarot cards.”
Grace groaned. “Oh, no, you want to be a fortune teller?”
“Wait a minute, I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. I think I could make a mint off the summer tourists. Probably even enough to keep us going the rest of the year, if that woman is any indication. Although she did say she works in Atlantic City, which, granted, has a bit more tourist traffic. But still, I might be able to make a living off it.”
“Right. You, Bob and the twins, all living off the telling of nineteen people’s fortunes.” Grace shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“There are more tourists in Blue Moon Bay than that and you know it. The town’s going to be mobbed in a couple of weeks, just you wait.”
“Mobbed by Blue Moon Bay standards, anyway.” Since leaving town, Grace had seen “mobbed” on a grand scale. Atlantic City in summer. Walt Disney World in summer. Blue Moon Bay did get a fair amount of tourists and beach-goers, but its reputation as a family-beach town kept the wild singles and college kids away. They went to Ocean City, forty miles from here, for their fun, leaving Blue Moon Bay comparatively quiet. “But it’s not like it’s going to be mobbed with the kind of people who go to fortune tellers.”
“Everyone likes fortune tellers. You should do it too,” Jenna went on, unperturbed. “Say thirty bucks a reading, two readings an hour, ten hours a day, six days a week, that’s…” She paused, thinking.
“Unlikely?” Grace supplied.
She shot Grace a look. “Thirty-six hundred bucks a week, right? With virtually no overhead. I could live with that.” She shifted on her barstool, nearly slipping off. The bartender approached and she shouted an order to him, then turned back to Grace and said, “Now where was I?”
“Dreaming.”
“No.” Jenna speared an olive from the bartender’s supply with a toothpick, then popped it into her mouth. “Tarot cards. Seriously, think about it.”
“How about if you try it and let me know how it works out. In the meantime, I’m going to find a real job.”
“Well, you haven’t so far. I would think you’d be willing to at least consider some untraditional alternative possibilities.”
“You’d be surprised at some of the untraditional alternatives I’ve thought of.” Grace took a swig of the Mexican beer Jenna had ordered for her, but the lime slice got caught in the neck of the bottle. She poked it down and tried again, appreciating the cold, sour taste. Michael would never have come to Harley’s bar and had bottled beer with fruit in it. He’d always preferred the muted cocktail scene at the Seahorse by the bay.
Somehow the fact that her ex-husband wouldn’t like it here made the beer taste even better.
“I hate to ask this,” Jenna started carefully, “but have you thought of borrowing money from your mom?”
Grace shook her head. “Dad’s pension is good, but not so good she that she can support Jimmy and me.” She sighed. “Besides, then I’d be in debt to her, and I’d have to make the money to pay her back, so what’s the difference?”
“All right, but I wish you could just stay here indefinitely. If only there was a job.”
Grace shook her head. “You can’t go back home.”
“But you are back home.”
“It doesn’t feel like it.” In truth, nothing felt like home at the moment. Grace felt completely and utterly lost.
She leaned back against the bar and let her eyes fall on the people playing pool across the room. The music of the band pounded through her, and she willed it to shake loose the tension that had become a constant hum inside her head. She had to take at least an hour or two off from worrying, or she was going to have a nervous breakdown. There was nothing she had to think about right now, she told herself, nothing she had to take care of right this moment. Jimmy was home with Jenna’s husband and kids, and there was nothing Grace could do about her job situation tonight. This was a great opportunity to loosen up, and she was going to enjoy it, no matter how hard it was.
As if testing her resolve on that cue, the band started playing “Stand By Your Man.”
Jenna clucked her tongue against her teeth. “They’ve got to be joking.”
“No, God is.” No sooner were the words out of her mouth, than the glass door to Harley’s opened and Luke Stewart strolled in. “Uh-oh. Time to leave.” She set her bottle down and hopped off the barstool.
“What?” Jenna asked, looking in the area of the door. “What’s wrong?”
“That’s wrong.” Grace said in a low voice, pointing to Luke.
“Oh, my God, it’s Luke Stewart,” Jenna gasped. “You haven’t talked to him since high school, have you?”
“As a matter of fact, I talked to him a few days ago. I had to beg him for a job driving a bus at Connor School, and he turned me down.”
Jenna looked at her, surprised. “You had to ask Luke? Why? Is he in charge of the buses?”
“He’s in charge of everything,” Grace said, popping an olive into her mouth. “Headmaster.”
“Oh, my. That must have been hard. How come you didn’t tell me earlier?”
Grace chewed and kept narrowed eyes on Luke. The sight of him brought a warm flush to her cheeks. Residual humiliation and anger, no doubt. “If you’d been turned down as a bus driver, you probably wouldn’t be talking about it much either.”
“Wow. I guess he’s still mad about you picking Michael over him.”
“I didn’t pick Michael over him. I stayed with Michael rather than throw the relationship away over a small, brief, untested crush on someone else.”
“On Luke, you mean.” Jenna pulled the bowl of peanuts across the bar and took a handful.
Grace kept her eyes on Luke. “It doesn’t matter who it was, it would have been stupid for me to throw away a secure relationship because of some silly infatuation.”
“I don’t know. It might have spared you a lot of trouble.”
“And bought me a whole new brand of trouble.”
Jenna nodded her agreement. “Probably so. And you wouldn’t have Jimmy.”
“That’s right. He’s worth it all.” Grace sighed. “Too bad he’s going to have to live on bread and water because his mother can’t get a job, even as a bus driver.”
“Well, why would you want to drive a bus anyway? And why there? Wouldn’t it be weird to go back to your alma mater that way?”
Of course it would be weird. It felt weird even before she knew Luke was part of the deal. “There’s no other work in this town,” Grace said dully.
“Oh, come on, I’m sure someone would hire you. One of your dad’s old friends? You know, as a favor to him?”
Grace winced inwardly. “I’d sooner die than shame Daddy by taking charity from one of his friends. They’d feel obligated, I’d feel pathetic…it would be the same as asking for a handout.”
Jenna shook her head. “You’re just as stubborn as you’ve always been.”
“I’m not stubborn, I’m mature.” She laughed. “Besides, if I worked for the school, I could negotiate tuition for Jimmy into the deal, and we’d keep exactly the same hours.”
“That makes sense. And it is a good school,” Jenna acknowledged with a sympathetic smile. “Jimmy’d like the horses.”
“That’s what I thought. But it’s not like I have the option of taking the job.”
“Well, there are minuses to it too. This is probably for the best.”
“Unemployment, in this case, is not for the best.”
“Surely there’s something else you can do that would fit the bill. Somewhere.”
Across the room, Luke had stopped and was talking to a petite blonde with a heart-shaped butt and a waist the size of Grace’s thigh. Drawing her attention away from the two, Grace pulled the bowl of peanuts over and took some. To hell with fat grams. “Yes, I’m sure. I’ll find something else,” she said, still watching Luke with a growing constriction in her chest. Nerves. But the anxiety she was trying to escape continued to escalate. Her breath stopped when she noticed Luke glance in her direction, but he didn’t seem to see her.
Jenna followed her gaze and asked, “So why did he turn you down?”
“I’m not sure.” She’d remembered he was great-looking, of course, but she hadn’t remembered just how great-looking he was. The jerk. “I believe he thinks I’m not clever enough to pass the test and then drive the big, bad bus,” Grace said, taking a last sip of beer. Part of her was actually reluctant to leave, but she didn’t trust herself to be entirely civil to Luke if he should see her. “And if I screwed up after he’d hired me, he’d look really bad in front of the board.”
Suddenly, Luke turned and walked purposefully in her direction. It felt as though all the noise and music and people receded into the background. Grace was as acutely aware of him as she would have been if he were following her down a dark alley with a ski mask on.
Before she could turn away and pretend she hadn’t seen him, he raised a hand in greeting, and she had no choice but to do the same.
“The usual,” he called.
“Sorry?” Grace said, at the same time hearing a voice behind her say, “You got it, Luke,” over the din of the band and the crowd around them.
Oh, God, he wasn’t even talking to her. He’d been waving at someone behind her, and she’d waved right on back at him, like a fool. Would this day never end?
He walked right past her without acknowledgment. Then he stopped and stood behind her at the bar, apparently oblivious to her presence. He wasn’t more than two feet away from her back. She could feel the heat of him, penetrating the thin fabric of her shirt.
She slipped some money out of her purse and whispered to Jenna, “Pay the bill and meet me outside.” She had to get away before he did notice her.
“Grace?” Too late. It was Luke’s voice. He’d spotted her.
She turned with as much cool as she could muster. “Oh. Hey, Luke. Did you hire someone for that job from the hundreds of people I saw lined up by the garage when I was leaving?”
He didn’t play along. “I left a message on your answering machine.” His voice was clipped. The bartender handed him a bottle of beer with no glass. He took a gulp of it, then let out a short breath. “You get it?”
“A message?” Grace was mystified.
His eyes, which had seemed such a warm shade of brown earlier, were hard. “You got the job.” His mouth turned up in the smallest ironic smile. “Surprise.”
Grace caught her breath. She was employed? Really? This was too good to be true—or was it? “I don’t understand. The other day you told me I didn’t.”
He took another draw off his drink and set it down, hard, on the bar. Foam bubbled out of the top and ran over onto the gleaming wood bar. “I’ve been outvoted.”
Her excitement turned to apprehension. He was angry about something. Had Mr. Bailey said something to him after all? “What do you mean you’ve been outvoted?” she asked cautiously.
He lowered his chin fractionally and gave her a look that could, under the right circumstances, have been extremely sexy, but which was, instead, downright accusatory.
Something cold slithered down her spine.
“I mean,” he said, with too much patience, “that starting in three short weeks, it’ll be your job to sit on a seat covered with chewed gum, in a vehicle equipped with a Bodily Fluid Clean-up Kit, surrounded by screaming kids. Just like you wanted.” One side of his mouth cocked into a smile. “This must be a dream come true for you.”
His iciness left little doubt that Fred Bailey had indeed leaned on him.
“I applied for that job without help from anyone,” she said defensively.
“And I turned you down without help from anyone.” He drank, then leveled his eyes on Grace. “If it had stopped there, we’d have no problem.”
“What happened?”
“Fred Bailey happened,” he said, confirming her fears. “He strongly ‘suggested’ that I reconsider you for the position, no matter how unqualified you are. What did you do, call him from your cell phone as soon as you got outside?”
“No!” Grace was hurt by the accusation. “I saw him in the parking lot when I left, and he asked what I was doing there. When I told him what happened, he offered to talk to you, but I declined. I had no idea he’d done it anyway, and I’m sorry he did.”
“This is the way things have always worked for you, Grace.” Luke shook his head and took an angry slug of his beer, hammering it back down on the countertop.
“And just what is that supposed to mean?”
“That means it’s always been easy for you. You’ve always known just what you wanted and gotten it.” He lowered his voice slightly and added, “No matter what the cost.”
She railed in anger. “That’s not true. Number one, if you think this is my dream job and I went after it pulling all the powerful strings I could because I wanted it so badly, you’re crazy. And number two, I would hardly say my life is easy. You have a lot of nerve making presumptions of any sort about me.” She caught her breath. “And what do you mean ‘no matter what the cost’?”
He looked as though he was about to fire back at her, then stopped. “That’s none of my business. It’s between you and whoever you make your deals with. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“That’s right, you shouldn’t. You have no right to judge me, Luke Stewart. No right at all.”
“I’ll keep my thoughts to myself from now on.”
“Right,” she said. “Like you always have, huh? Like you even can. You may not say anything, but you have a way of getting your disapproval across.”
“I don’t think you want to have that conversation,” Luke said, in a voice that assured her that she did not.
“I don’t want to have any conversation with you!”
He raised an eyebrow. “Then you’re going to find it particularly tedious to work for me, don’t you think?”
She threw her hands up in the air. “So what do you want me to do? You want me to say I won’t take the job?” she asked, fighting the urge to do just that. “You want me to quit before I even start?”
He gave a quick shake of the head. “Oh, no, I don’t want you to quit. I want you to come in tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. and start learning the parts of the engine.” He gave a quick, humorless smile. “You had your chance to decline. Now you have to go through with this. We need a driver and, like it or not, you’re it.”
Chapter Four (#ulink_fdccacbc-5b7d-5d61-a789-9f5729437578)
Three weeks later, Grace knew more about school buses than she’d ever dreamed she would. It was Wednesday, two days before she was set to take the test for her commercial driver’s license and five days before the first day of summer school—when she was supposed to begin driving.
Assuming she passed the test, that was.
It apparently had a first-time failure rate of 49 percent. Grace would have accepted those odds more comfortably if she hadn’t already come out on the short end of the 47-percent failure rate of first marriages.
She and Luke stood before the bus in the early-morning heat. It was not yet nine o’clock. Luke had insisted that Grace meet him on campus every day at 7:00 a.m. so they could get their work done before it got too hot and humid outside. Or so he said. She suspected the early hour was really because he wanted to make this whole experience as miserable as possible for her.
“All right,” Luke said, taking a sip of steaming coffee from a paper gas-station cup. “The test official is going to ask you to go through an outside sight inspection first, identifying all the major parts of the engine and frame.”
“How can you drink steamy coffee on a hot morning like this?” Grace asked. “You know, they make whipped frozen coffees that are really good.”
He gave her a look. “Is it necessary to discuss my drink preferences, or can we just move forward with what’s actually important?”
“Okay, okay. Move on.” She took a deep breath, like an athlete preparing for a sprint. “I’m ready.”
He stepped back and gestured toward the bus. “Then go for it. Tell me everything you’re checking as you do it.”
“Okay.” Her hands tingled with nervousness, but she wasn’t about to admit to him that this was harder than she thought it would be. If he noticed her shake, she’d blame it on the frozen whipped coffee she’d had on her way in. “First I check the headlights, taillights and brake lights, to make sure there are no cracks.” She walked around the bus, looking at all the plastic covers on the lights as she spoke, then stopped where she’d started again. “Everything looks fine.”
“Everything?” he asked, as if he’d caught her in a lie.
“Oh, the reflectors.” She’d nearly forgotten the reflectors again. For some reason she had made that mistake almost every time. She made another round, then came back and looked to Luke for approval.
He said nothing, just watched her impassively.
She wasn’t going to let him rattle her. “Okay, then. Tires.”
“What about them?” His mouth almost lifted into a smile. Almost.
She couldn’t help but admire the curve of his lips. That was something she’d always noticed whenever she saw him. He had a great mouth. Not full and girlish, but not lipless and hard. Just right.
And, she remembered with a reluctant shiver, he’d known just how to use it.
“Tires?” he prompted. “What are you supposed to look for there?”
She shook herself back into the moment. Tires. “The tread has to be four thirty-seconds of an inch, the rims have to be rust-free and smooth. No cracks. Valve caps on. And you can’t just take them off another car in the parking lot like you could with a normal car.”
“Is this the kind of thing you’re planning to say to the cop who tests you?”
She ignored his question and turned to kneel in front of the first tire. She half suspected Luke might have changed it since she went through this drill yesterday, but it looked the same. “So now I’m supposed to take the hubcap off—” she wrestled with it until it came free “—and check the slugs and grease seal.”
“Lugs,” Luke said.
“Huh?”
“It’s lugs. You keep saying slugs.” For the first time in two weeks he smiled. “You’re talking about tires, not guns.”
“I said lugs,” she lied, disarmed by his grin. What a weapon he had there. “You heard wrong.”
“Uh-huh.” He could see right through her.
She’d always been a terrible liar. “Where was I?”
“You mentioned tread, rims, valve caps, grease seals and ‘slugs,’” Luke said. There was a light in his eyes for a moment, but it dimmed quickly and he was back to business. “Anything else?”
Obviously he had something in mind. What was she forgetting now? She repeated the list in her mind twice before it came to her. “Air! I’m checking the air pressure. And making sure there’s no fabric showing through the rubber tire. Although, frankly, isn’t this the kind of thing they check for you at the gas station when you go to full service?”
“You’re not going to full service anymore, Grace,” Luke said. “At least not on the school’s dime.”
He was right—she wasn’t living in a full-service world anymore. Not here or at home. She went back to her drill, checking each tire in turn. “Next I check the wiper blades, the gas door,” she moved from one part to the next as she spoke, “and the running board.” She stepped on it and pushed hard with her foot. The bus rocked.
What would Michael say if he knew she could identify a running board?
“What are you checking for?”
She was ready with the answer. “To make sure it’s secured tightly.”
“Good.”
This was high praise from Luke. She gave a nod of acknowledgment, her mood lightening. “Now, Mr. Tester, if you wouldn’t mind helping me, I need to make sure the lights are working properly.”
“This isn’t a magic show, Grace,” Luke said. Or, rather, growled. “You’ve got to take this seriously.”
He wasn’t going to allow her even a moment of levity, Grace realized. And he certainly wasn’t going to let her act as if they were friends. This was all business, nothing more.
She was lucky he didn’t insist she call him “sir.”
“Forgive me,” she said, stopping just short of rolling her eyes. “But you said I’m supposed to have a second person, in this case the MVA guy looks at the lights while I turn them on and off.”
“That’s right. Just don’t get cute.”
“God forbid.”
“Well, I know that’s gotten you through a lot of things in life—”
“Oh, yeah, I’ve been cruising on cute for years now, Luke. It worked wonders with the mortgage holder when Michael left.” She put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “Cute got me lots of clams in the bank too. This bus stuff is just a hobby for me.”
He looked at her for a moment, one eyebrow raised and an expression between amusement and exasperation on his face. “You finished?”
“Are you?”
“For now.” He smiled again. Twice in one day. It was a record.
She couldn’t help but smile back. Which really galled her. Was she so desperate for kindness that this little morsel—even from Luke Stewart, who couldn’t be called friendly, much less a friend—made her feel so grateful? “Then if I may continue…?”
He nodded.
She opened the side door, stepped into the already-hot interior of the bus and took a moment to compose herself.
She inserted the key into the ignition and called out as she flipped switches, “Taillights, brake lights.” She stepped on the brake pedal, recited, “Back-up lights,” then put it in reverse. “Tag lights on?”
“Yup.”
“Great.” She shifted back into park. “Now I have to check the engine.” She located the hood latch and pulled it. Then, with false confidence, she stepped out into the sun again, moving in front of the engine.
It was a mess. She’d been over it a thousand times in the past two weeks, taken notes, even drawn a rudimentary picture of it with identifying notes, but when she looked at it with no notes or instruction, she was lost.
She could not let Luke know she was anything less than completely sure of herself. She started with the one part she could identify most easily. “First I check the battery to make sure there’s no corrosion and to ensure that the cable’s on tight.” She did so, slowly and deliberately, while she frantically tried to collect her thoughts and figure out what was next.
He must have sensed her confusion, because, without a derisive word, he leaned over the engine, brushing his arm against hers in the process. “What’s that?”
Her bare skin tingled from his touch, and Grace was disgusted with herself. New low, she noted. It had been so long since she’d been with a man that even this lightest of touches from a guy she didn’t even like sent shivers running through her. Pheromones were blind.
She focused on the part he pointed to. “The, uh, the steering-wheel rod,” she said, her voice weak.
“What about it?”
Steering-wheel rod, steering-wheel rod…A flood of information came back to her, right in the nick of time. “I have to make sure that it’s secure, not loose.”
“Right.” He stepped back. “What else?”
She pictured the drawing she’d done. “I need to make sure the brake-fluid level is correct, and that the brake lines are tight and not leaking.” She rattled the list off without looking away from the engine. She could feel Luke behind her, his eyes on her, and she knew if she turned and looked at him, she’d forget all of it.
“I’d check the power steering,” she continued, pointing to various parts as she went along, “power-steering pump, water pump, carburetor, window-washing fluid.” She was on a roll. “I need to check the alternator, to make sure the clamp is on securely and the wires are secured behind it. Then there’s the heater hose, the coolant, the radiator hose, transmission fluid, and oil dipstick.” She checked it all and turned to him triumphantly. “And that’s it for the engine.”
“No, it’s not.”
“It’s not?”
She deflated like a balloon. As hard as she’d tried, as much as she’d concentrated, she’d still managed to forget something.
“You didn’t check your belts.”
Automatically her hand flew to her waist.
“In the engine.”
“I know,” she said, trying to look at him like he was crazy for thinking she’d had anything different in mind. She bent over the engine and tugged at the fan belt. “They shouldn’t give more than an inch.” She turned back to him. “Words to live by, right, Luke? Don’t give an inch.”
“You think I’m inflexible?”
“If the shoe fits…”
“Hey, you’re here, aren’t you?”
She looked at him in disbelief. “Not because of any great flexibility on your part!”
“I’m being more flexible than you think.”
Something in Grace snapped. She was so sick and tired of feeling like a burden to people—to her lawyer, who was letting her pay in installments; to her mother, who was letting them live with her; to Fred Bailey, who had taken it upon himself to get this job for her; and even to Luke, who had been “persuaded” to give her the job against his will and who now had to take the time to teach her the ropes—that she sometimes thought she might just scream.
“Look, Luke,” she said, with as much control as she could muster. “I know you don’t want me here. I know you think I can’t do this, and I know that even if you did think I could do it, you would resent the hell out of the fact that Fred Bailey suggested that you give me the job.”
He gave a short laugh.
She continued without stopping. “I know all of that, but none of it is going to make me quit. All it’s going to do is make me more determined than ever to succeed at this, so you should be glad that, whether you wanted to or not, you just hired yourself the best damn bus driver you could have gotten.” The timbre of her voice rose as she spoke, and she took a moment to breathe and regain her composure. “Now. I’m going to take the test in two days and I’m going to pass it and I’m going to drive the kids to and from school, and I don’t want to hear one more word about how undeserving I am—got it?”
He looked at her for a long moment, during which she doubted the wisdom of her mini-diatribe, then the wisdom of taking the job, then the wisdom of wearing cut-off shorts that made her feel as bloated as a poisoned cat.
The silence went on so long that she was about to ask if he was all right when he spoke.
“Hit your knees,” he said.
Grace’s mouth dropped open. “What?”
He gestured at the ground. “You’re not finished with the test. Hit your knees and identify the parts underneath the vehicle.”
“Oh.” The color came back into her cheeks. “Okay.”
“What did you think I meant?”
“Nothing,” she said quickly. “I knew what you meant. I’m supposed to check the parts underneath, front, back and sides. I know that.”
Smiling to himself, Luke watched Grace bend down and look under the front of the bus. He couldn’t help it, he loved the way she looked in those faded blue cut-offs. Her legs were long and shapely, and already tanned even though it was still early in the summer. Somehow those cut-offs reminded him of endless hot summers, and clumsy passion and foolish optimism.
“Luke?”
He was so lost in thought that he didn’t realize for a moment she was speaking to him. “Yeah. Sorry, I was…thinking about something.”
She raised her eyebrows. “You back now? Should I go on?”
“Absolutely, yes.”
“Okay.” She cleared her throat and turned back to the bus, giving him a pretty dazzling view from behind. “I check the stabilizer bar, guide arm, tie rod, tie rod ends—” she emphasized the tie rod ends, he noticed, since that was one of the items she consistently forgot “—brake lines to the disc brakes in front and the drum brakes in back, coil spring, shock absorber, power-steering pump, Pitman arm.” She took a breath. “Make sure there are no leaks in the power-steering box, radiator hose, fuel pump and water pump.” She stood up and slapped her dirty hands against the front of her shorts. “Everything’s okay from the front.”
“Good.” He’d barely been able to keep his mind on the engine parts, so he hoped she hadn’t forgotten anything major. She got down on her hands and knees at the side and started talking again. “All right, here are the transmission lines, and they are not leaking. The cross beams are secure, no cracks or leaks in the mufflers—” she looked back at him “—of which there are two. If you’re to be believed.”
“There are two,” he confirmed.
“It’s just that I’ve never heard of a car having two mufflers,” she said.
“This isn’t a car, it’s a bus, and there are two mufflers on it.”
“Okay.” She shrugged. “I’ve just never heard of it.”
“But you’ve seen them,” he said, exasperated. “You’re supposed to be looking at them right now.”
“Well, I am.”
He hesitated. “Grace?”
She looked guilty. “What?”
“Are you looking at them? Are you looking at anything as you identify it, or are you just rattling off a bunch of stuff you memorized?”
“Does it make a difference?”
“Does it make a difference?” he repeated incredulously. “Of course it makes a difference!” Grace was hopeless, he decided. There was no way she was going to pass the test unless she was able to charm whoever was administering it. If it was Bob Gaylord or Stan Vanderhof she’d be okay, but if she got Myrna Franz, Grace was in real trouble. “Grace, we’ve spent two weeks going over this damned bus, piece by piece. I know it’s not the most interesting thing you’ll ever do—”
“Luke.”
She spoke so quietly that he stopped.
He looked at her. “What?”
She crooked a finger at him, beckoning him over. “Come here. I’ll show you.”
He went to her and crouched next to her, and tried to ignore the seductive scent of her shampoo…which told him he was too close to her for his own good.
“That,” she said, “is the drive line. We’re checking to make sure the universal joints there—” she identified them correctly “—are secure.” She swept her arm down toward the back tire. “There you have the leaf springs, held on at the spring hanger and secured, as you can see, by a U-bolt. That also holds the rear axle there in place.”
She was right on all counts. He leaned in and looked to make sure. It was hot between them, but he wasn’t sure if it was the engine, the weather or something else.
“That’s the gas tank,” Grace was saying. “That’s the emergency-brake cable, and the oil filter is over there on the right side.” She turned to him, her face just inches from his. The blue of her eyes was so clear he almost felt he could see inside her. “And this—” she gave an ironic smile and pointed at him “—is a guy who is so convinced he’s right about everything and everyone that he’s unwilling to give anything a chance, even when it could be to his own benefit.” She flashed him a devious smile. “How’m I doing?”
He had to hand it to her. Not only had she learned all of the parts of the engine—a feat he had been certain she couldn’t accomplish even in a year—but she had done it in less time than it had taken the last two bus drivers.
Of course, she was wrong about him. He was nothing if not open-minded.
“You’re getting there,” he conceded, with a grudging smile.
A strange moment passed between them. For just a fraction of a moment, Luke thought that maybe he and Grace might someday, somehow, be friends.
But everything that had gone down between them came back to him in a flash. “Friends” seemed unlikely.
Grace’s smile widened. “I’m there, buddy, I’m finished. At least with the outside of the bus and the inside’s a piece of cake. I got everything right and you know it.”
He gave a nod. “I know it.”
“Ha!” She stood up and wiped the dirt off her hands again. “And you hate it,” she said, jabbing a triumphant finger in his direction.
“No, I don’t, Grace, I’m glad. I need you to get this right. I need for you to pass the test.”
She nodded. “I’ll pass.” She swallowed visibly, but kept her chin up in a determined way. “Don’t you worry about that.”
“There you are, Grace, Luke.”
Luke turned to see Fred Bailey making his way across the gravel parking lot. “I’m glad to find you both here. Saves me some time.”
“Hi, Mr. Bailey,” Grace said, sounding like a kid.
“What’s up, Fred?” Luke asked. If Fred Bailey was looking for him, he could be pretty sure it wasn’t to give him a lollipop. Fred only sought him out when there was a problem. Or a woman who needed a job.
The older man took a handkerchief out of his pocket and swabbed his forehead. “Hot as hell out here.”
“It is,” Luke agreed.
“Bet it’s worse in that tin box.” Fred nodded toward the bus.
Grace laughed. “Yeah. It has no air-conditioning.”
Fred seemed genuinely surprised. “No air-conditioning?”
She gestured toward the open bus door. “There’s a fan rigged up to the rearview mirror, but that’s it.”
Luke flashed Grace an impatient look. “There’s nothing wrong with the bus. On hot days, the driver can open the windows and use the fan. It’s just fine in there.”
Grace remained silent.
Fred Bailey looked at her quizzically, then shrugged. “You all know more about these things than I do. Tell you why I’m here.
“It’s about the funding.”
“Maybe I should let you two speak in private,” Grace said, glancing from one to the other.
“No, no. Part of what I have to say concerns you too, Grace.”
She raised her eyebrows. “O-kay…”
“Luke, I’ll get right to the point. Daphne Silvers has decided not to give the school the grant she promised. It was, as you know, substantial.”
Luke’s stomach dropped. Substantial was right. Daphne Silvers had promised the school fifty thousand dollars. He’d worked it into the budget and still come up slightly short of his five-year projections. The fund-raising plans he’d made were meant to fill the leftover gap, not a chunk as large as fifty grand.
“We’ve held an emergency meeting of the board,” Fred went on, “and we’re about to have another meeting this afternoon. Bernard Hall has offered an additional ten thousand on top of the donation he made this spring, but we’re still falling short.”
“Far short,” Luke said. “Though there’s a possibility that the state will give us a grant. I’ve got the paperwork on my desk.”
Fred shook his head. “Unfortunately, the deadline for that was yesterday.”
“What? That’s not possible. I went over every detail. I’m sure the deadline is next week.”
“Typo.” Fred waved his hand airily, as if to say the issue had already been raised and dismissed. “They sent out an amendment, but no one on the staff seems to have gotten it.”
Which meant that he’d have to wait another ten months to apply again. The school had only enough money, assuming full enrollment, to maintain itself for two more years. If that didn’t change, Connor Primary Day School would have to close.
“Why did Mrs. Silvers rescind her offer?” Grace asked.
“That’s beside the point—” Luke began.
“No, no, it’s a good question,” Fred said. “She rescinded her offer because of our policy change on the honor code at the end of last semester.”
Luke nodded miserably. He’d known some oldschoolers would disapprove of the change, but he’d felt strongly that the code, as written, wasn’t fair.
“What change?” Grace wanted to know.
“There was some cheating on the final exam. About six students in Amanda Bittner’s class. The old policy was that if anyone cheated, the entire class would be expelled. But that was plainly unfair.” He looked at Fred Bailey. “Surely you pointed that out.”
Fred nodded and swabbed his forehead again. “Several of us tried valiantly, but Daphne hates scandal. Didn’t want her name attached to anything that smacks of dishonesty. And she’s not the only one—she nearly got Ginger Anderson and Lynn Morrow on board with her.”
“But that’s so narrow-minded!” Grace objected.
Luke agreed privately, but aloud he said, “These are older folks who have been living in this town for half a century or more, Grace. Not only are their personal codes of conduct strict, but they hold almost impossibly high expectations for everyone around them.”
“Exactly so,” Fred agreed. “So we’ve got to walk the straight and narrow, Luke, the straight and narrow. We can’t have anything happen this year that has even the slightest appearance of impropriety.”
Luke nodded. “Absolutely.”
“Mr. Bailey, you said this had something to do with me,” Grace said, her voice a little smaller than usual. “I hope my presence here hasn’t been the cause of any trouble, what with my divorce from Michael and all.”
Luke shot a fast look at Fred. That hadn’t even occurred to him. Admittedly, Luke hadn’t wanted to hire Grace, but he wouldn’t stand for her termination on the basis of her personal life.
Fred looked surprised. “Certainly not, my dear. It’s nothing to do with your divorce. It’s about your job here.”
Grace swallowed visibly. “My job?”
The older man nodded and looked regretful. “I’m afraid so. One of the budgeting proposals before the board is to cut out transportation.”
Chapter Five (#ulink_27427905-89bd-567e-937b-4fa1f0f2abb6)
Grace’s stomach dropped. They might cut out transportation? As in, she might lose the only job she could get?
It was totally consistent with the year she’d had, she thought cynically. She’d lost her husband, lost her home, begged Luke Stewart to give her a job as a bus driver, and now she was going to lose even that.
Obviously—and this could not be overstated—she had really ticked off the Man Upstairs somewhere along the line.
“We can’t cut out transportation,” Luke said, with the merest glance her way. “People are counting on it.”
The glance was not lost on Fred Bailey. He followed it to Grace, then said, “There are other jobs.”
Luke hesitated a small but noticeable fraction of a moment. “Students are counting on it,” he said. “Some of these kids live miles away, with parents who, for whatever reason, can’t drive them to school. If we lose transportation, we lose students, and that means we lose revenue.”
“Tell me something, Luke. How many buses do we have here?”
“Two.”
“For how many students?”
Luke thought for a moment. “About twenty-five.”
Fred grimaced and swabbed his forehead again. “That’s only about ten percent of the student body. Last time I looked, we weren’t making much profit on transportation fees. With the cost of oil going up, we might even be working at a loss.”
“No way.” Luke shook his head. “We’re making several hundred dollars’ profit with each transportation contract we have.”
Fred gave a shrug that said he wasn’t quite buying it. “We’ll talk about it another time,” he said dismissively. “We’re not making any changes immediately.”
Luke expelled a tense breath and stood very rigid beside Grace. “I hope a few alternative plans were introduced.”
“Of course, of course,” Fred said. Grace got the impression that he’d already made up his mind about it. “Now there’s just one more thing.”
Grace could almost feel Luke’s agitation growing.
“What’s that?” he asked, clipped.
“As you may recall, the board wants the staff to be certified in CPR.”
“That’s right.” Luke looked at Grace. “Did you say you were certified?”
“Well, I took a class at the Red Cross, but I don’t have the actual certification.” She was about to add that she’d signed up for a refresher class at the firehouse already, but Luke interrupted her.
“That’s okay,” he said. “You can just take the course here. I should have mentioned it before. It’s a new policy, and I wasn’t thinking about it when I hired you.”
“She’s not the only one who needs the certification,” Fred said, raising an eyebrow at Luke.
“I know, Libby Doyle in the math department is already scheduled for a class in Dover this summer when she goes to visit her family.”
“What about you?”
“Me?”
For a second, Grace felt sorry for him. She’d been to his office; she knew he had a lot piled on his desk already. Although she questioned whether they needed to work on the bus so early in the morning, she did believe that it had taken some effort on his part to carve out that hour or so he had to do it.
“The entire staff needs to be certified,” Fred was saying. “My secretary already looked into it and discovered that the Red Cross is sponsoring an all-day course at the firehouse next month.”
“What’s the date?”
“Saturday the 20th,” Grace answered. “I saw the sign at the pharmacy and thought at the time it would be a good idea to refresh my memory, so I signed up.”
“Wonderful!” Fred was clearly delighted. “Such a clever girl. You are your mother’s daughter.” He turned back to Luke.
“So all we need to do is sign you up.”
“I’ll be there,” Luke said, sounding as if it were the last thing on earth he wanted to do.
“Excellent,” Fred said, patting his handkerchief along the back of his neck. “Glad you’re both willing to pitch in this way.”
Luke nodded, as if he’d had a choice, which everyone knew he hadn’t. Then he looked at his watch. “I’m sorry,” he said to Grace, “but I have to get inside for a conference call in fifteen minutes, and I’m not going to be around in the morning. How about if we finish this tomorrow evening? Say, around seven?”
“It’s a date,” she said, automatically.
He didn’t correct her, but he might as well have for the dark look he gave her. “Seven,” he repeated. “We’ll do one last drill. After that, you’re on your own.”
* * *
“When are we going home?”
“We are home,” Grace said to Jimmy for what seemed like the tenth time the next day. “For now.” She stabbed the ground with a trowel, thinking of Michael, and tossed the dirt aside. It was late to be planting tomatoes and basil, but she’d bought mature plants, and with a little luck she’d have a midsummer harvest. “You’re going to have to think of it that way.”
Jimmy rubbed his eyes with dirty hands, streaking mud across his lightly freckled face. His blond hair was sprinkled with dirt, like powdered sugar on toast. “But it’s not like home.”
“No.” Grace tried to temper her frustration at having to make him feel better about the move when she was having so much trouble feeling good about it herself. “For one thing, you’ve got this nice big yard to play in.”
“Yeah, and no one to play with.” She didn’t like the sulky edge to his voice. It sounded too familiar. She herself had said almost the same thing to her mother last night when they were talking about the unlikely possibility of Grace ever having a date again.
It’s not like there’s anyone to go out with in this town even if I wanted to, which I don’t.
“So you’ll have to get out and meet new people,” Grace said, like a tape recording of her mother.
“There are no new people here.”
She turned to him, startled. It was exactly what she’d said, but she had reason to say it. Blue Moon Bay held on to its inhabitants the way a spiderweb held flies…once you were trapped here it was difficult to leave. It was hard to say whether that was because people loved it so much or whether it was just too much trouble to move away. Unless, of course, one was an attractive eligible male.
But whatever problems Grace had with moving back, it should have been a dream town for a kid, with the ocean and the bay and the freedom and safety of living in a town where everyone looked out for everyone else.
“Everyone here is new to you,” Grace said.
“Everyone here is old!”
Grace laughed. “Come on, you’ve met Jenna’s kids.”
“They’re babies. They’re only, like, eight.”
“Well, don’t worry about it, because when you start summer school you’ll meet a bunch of new kids.”
“That’s another thing,” Jimmy said, like a little lawyer with his Evidence Against Blue Moon Bay all lined up. “Why do I have to go to summer school? If we were back home, with Dad, I’d get the summer off like normal kids. Like my friends.”
Grace winced inwardly. He was absolutely 100 percent right. But if he were back home, he’d be going to a school that was less academically challenging than Connor. “Well, in this case it’s a good thing you have summer school, because you will meet kids your age there. See? So it’s all working out perfectly.”
“Dad’s not here,” Jimmy muttered, kicking a bag of topsoil.
She was tempted to point out that Dad had seldom been around in New Jersey either, that whole days had passed when he got home after Jimmy had gone to bed and was asleep in the morning when Jimmy got up for school…but pointing out Michael’s parental inadequacies wouldn’t really make her feel better, and it for sure wouldn’t make Jimmy feel better.
Grace set her trowel down and pulled off her gardening gloves. “He’s not at our old home either, honey,” she said gently, putting an arm around her son’s narrow shoulders. “You know that. It’s not as if we could just drive back to New Jersey and walk into our old life. We’re making a new life, you and me. And if we can just be a little open-minded about it, we might be able to make a really great life here. Maybe we won’t even want to leave.” But she couldn’t imagine things turning out that way.
“I’ll always want to leave,” Jimmy vowed.
“Why?”
“Because this place is stupid.”
Grace experienced an unusual twinge of protective loyalty toward her hometown. “No, it’s not, Jimmy. This is where your parents grew up. It should be interesting to you for that, if for no other reason.”
“Do people here hate Dad?”
The question was so unexpected that for a moment Grace couldn’t formulate a response. “Why on earth would you think that?” she asked at last.
He smushed the topsoil bag with his toe, staring intently as he did so. “You do.”
“I don’t,” she said, trying to convince herself that it wasn’t a lie. “Dad and I just can’t be married to each other anymore. There are lots of people I can’t be married to whom I don’t hate.” Luke Stewart came to mind, a little joke from her subconscious.
“Does everyone know he left us?”
It broke her heart that Jimmy felt the abandonment so keenly. If Michael had a bit of heart to go with his good looks, he would have made more of an effort to maintain contact with his son. Since the divorce, though, he’d been in California seven months out of twelve and had only seen Jimmy about once a month when he was around.
“No one knows the details of what happened with Dad.” Of course, everyone knew at least some version of it. She’d heard several variations on the story herself. “You know what? Most people I’ve seen are just so glad we’re here. I can’t tell you how many people have come up to me and said what a fine young man you are.”
Jimmy’s face reddened. “They don’t know me.”
“But they want to. Give them a chance, Jimmy. You might really like them.”
He shrugged.
“And look at all this room you have.” She gestured at the backyard with the trowel she had picked up again. “We didn’t have a tenth of this in New Jersey. I think you’re going to have a lot of fun out here this summer.” She got up and went to him, pulling him into her arms. “I know it’s hard, buddy. It’s kind of hard for me too. But if we stick together and make the best of things, I think we might end up even happier than we were before.”
That much, at least, she believed. It was certainly possible for her to be happier divorced than she’d been with Michael. From the day they’d married, she’d felt a certain sense of this is it? They’d dated in high school and college and everyone had expected them to get married, so they had. They’d moved to the suburbs, bought two cars, had a child, done all the things that were expected.
If she was honest, Grace had to admit that it wasn’t the stuff that fairy tales were made of. In a way, she couldn’t really blame Michael for wanting something new. What she blamed him for was the way he set about getting it, and the way he’d treated his family—his son—in the process.
“There is one thing that might make me happy,” Jimmy said slowly.
Grace frowned. “What’s that?”
“A dog.”
“A dog.” Just as her mother had suggested.
She liked dogs. She’d had one herself, growing up. So why was she so resistant to the idea?
She knew why; it was because Michael was allergic, or at least he’d claimed to be, though she’d never seen him so much as sniffle. She remembered, with some irritation, how, during her teenage years, they always had to put Buff, her golden retriever, in the laundry room when Michael was coming to the house. Before now, a dog for Jimmy hadn’t even been a possibility.
Now it felt as if getting a dog would be the final nail in the coffin of her marriage to Michael.
“I think it’s a great idea,” she said.
He brightened. “Really? I can get one?”
“Are you going to take care of it? Feed it, walk it, brush it?”
“Yes!”
“Then I don’t see why not.” It was so good to see that hope in his eyes again. She smiled and pulled him into a hug again. “Why don’t you think about what kind of dog you want, big or small, and we’ll go to the humane society tomorrow and look.”
“Yes!” He pumped his fist in the air. “I’m gonna have a dog!”
And we’re really building a home without Michael now, Grace thought, without regret.
“Go on in and get ready to go to Jenna’s now,” she said to her excited son. “I’ve got to go back to the school for a couple of hours.”
For once, he didn’t argue. He skipped into the house so lightly she wouldn’t have been entirely surprised to see him click his heels together. She would bet he’d clean his face and hands without being told.
She picked up her gardening tools and dropped them into a bucket by the door before stepping into the cool, air-conditioned house.
“Will you be going out tonight?” her mother asked when she walked into the kitchen to get a glass of iced tea.
“I don’t think so, why?”
Was it her imagination, or did her mother blush? “I might have some company, and I wondered if you would be around.”
“Company? Who?”
Her mother took a cloth and busied herself drying dishes that were already sitting, dry, in the rack by the sink. “Oh, it’s not important. Just a member of my bridge club.”
Grace was interested. “A male member of the bridge club, by any chance?”
Dot set the cloth down and looked at her daughter. “Now why on earth would you ask that?”
Grace laughed. “Because, Mom, you’re acting very cryptic about this whole thing.”
“I certainly am not!”
“Okay, okay. Look, do you want Jimmy and me to get out of here tonight so you can have your friend over? We could go to a movie or something.”
“Grace Ann Perigon, you do not need to leave the house so I can have a friend over! I merely asked because I wanted to plan on how many pretzels to buy if I had company. But, now that I think of it, I’ll probably go out to the movies myself.”
Her mother was definitely hiding something, Grace thought. It was either a boyfriend, plans for a surprise party, or she had joined a cult and it was her turn to host the meeting. Assuming it wasn’t the latter, Grace’s birthday wasn’t for two months, so it had to be a boyfriend. But why hide that?
Grace suspected she knew why. “You know, Mom, if you ever did want to date someone…” What could she say without sounding condescending? It wasn’t her place to approve or disapprove, but she had a feeling her mother might worry that she would feel weird about it. “Well, I just think it would be a good idea.”
“What would be a good idea?”
“You dating. If you met someone. Although,” she added cynically, “who you could meet around this place, I don’t know.”
“There are lots of nice men around here, honey. You’ll meet someone.”
“Who said anything about me?” Three days earlier Roger Logan, who had a wife and four kids, had approached her in the produce section at the supermarket and asked if she wanted to meet him for a drink later. That about summed up the options for Grace here. She wasn’t even thinking about dating for herself.
Her mother smiled and took two glasses out of the cabinet. “This is about you, isn’t it?” She went to the refrigerator and took out the pitcher of iced tea.
“What do you mean?”
Dot poured and handed a glass to Grace. “All this negativity about Blue Moon Bay? Sometimes I think you’re looking for excuses not to like it here.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because it reminds you of the years you spent with Michael?”
And the years she spent before that, years in which she could have been taking a different direction with her life. “You think you’re pretty smart, huh, Mom?”
Dot smiled. “It runs in the family.”
Grace raised her glass to her mother, drank, then went to her room to shower before going to meet Luke. Not that she wanted to impress him; it was just that her pride prevented her from showing up filthy and giving him one more thing to dislike about her.
She stripped her clothes off in the bathroom and looked in the mirror. The strong afternoon sun had toasted her skin, leaving a white impression of her halter top behind. The light in this bathroom had always been flattering, and made her tan look deeper than it was. For a moment, she felt as though she’d time-traveled back to a summer two decades before, when she used to cover her Roxy Music album in tin foil and prop it on her chest as she lay in the sun, wearing no more protection than baby oil. She shuddered at the thought now and wondered how many of the faint lines around her eyes she could attribute to that, and how many to the stress of Michael’s abrupt exit.
She took a quick, cool shower, wrapped herself in a towel and went back to her room. It was only five o’clock. There was time for her to rest for a few minutes before going out, so she lay down on the bed and stared at the faded rose wallpaper.
She remembered when her father had first put it up for her. She’d been eight and had just danced in her first ballet recital. Daddy had told her she was a real little lady now, and he let her pick out new “grownup” wallpaper to replace the zoo pattern they’d put up when she was a baby.
This wallpaper had seen her through a lot. The sketched red flowers had hung there, bright but just a little melancholy, through giggly sleepovers; all-night teenage telephone conversations; delirious first dates and tearful breakups; her dog Buff’s death; getting ready for her high-school prom—and her wedding day.
And if the wallpaper had absorbed anything of her thoughts over the years, it had absorbed more than a little Luke Stewart, especially during one summer when, briefly, their relationship had changed.
Grace and Luke’s association had always been…heated. Throughout their high-school years, it had seemed to be the typical animosity that tended to exist between a guy’s best friend and his girlfriend. They argued over almost everything, from which weekend nights were for Grace to whose fault it was when Michael came over at 3:00 a.m. drunk after a night “with the boys.” Come to think of it, they argued a lot about who was at fault for Michael’s shortcomings.
But right after Grace’s senior year of high school, things had changed. The long, hot summer had stretched by with Michael away looking at colleges. Grace had stayed behind, dutifully spending time with Jenna and being available for Michael’s occasional long-distance calls.
Then one evening Jenna, who pronounced herself sick and tired of Grace’s inactivity, talked her into going to the boardwalk over in Ocean City. Jenna met a guy in a T-shirt shop and disappeared with him, cropping up every half hour or so to promise Grace she’d just be “a few more minutes.”
Grace had waited for an hour and a half, sitting there in her prissy sundress, wondering how Jenna got the nerve to just go off with some guy she didn’t even know and do God-knows-what. Just as Grace was getting ready to give up and call a cab to take her home, Luke had shown up, like some dark knight in a white El Camino. He’d offered her a ride and, telling herself it beat paying for a 40-mile cab ride, she’d accepted.
But that wasn’t entirely true. The prospect of riding all the way home with Luke wasn’t exactly unappealing. In fact, it was sort of…exciting. Thrilling. Maybe even dangerous. Under the boardwalk lights, his dark hair gleaming and his skin tanned to brown, making his pale eyes seem even lighter, Luke certainly looked dangerous. That, contrasted with the unexpected chivalry of his offering to drive her home, had made him irresistible to her that night.
She watched him in the dim dash light as he drove home. His hands strong and capable on the wheel, forearms lean with sinewy muscle, his profile straight and masculine…by the time they made it back to Blue Moon Bay, Grace had kissed him a thousand times in her mind.
Although she could never know the evolution of his thoughts that night, he must have begun to see her in a new light too, because he didn’t go directly to her house when they got to town. And she didn’t ask him to. Instead, they circled the quiet streets by the shore, eventually stopping at the small Jolly George “Fun Park” at the end of the boardwalk, where there were a few ancient rides—a wooden roller coaster and a Ferris wheel, that were open in the summer evenings.
They walked through the park, neither touching nor drawing apart, for what seemed like hours, talking about everything. Grace wondered how she’d never seen this side of Luke before. Granted, he only showed the world his silent, somewhat intimidating, exterior. But she’d never even imagined the sensitivity he had; the fact that he was artistic and liked to draw; the fact that he worried about, and had taken care of, his father since his mother’s death. It was hard to believe, but the guy who had been a thorn in her side since she’d begun dating his best friend was suddenly touching her heart as no one ever had before.
They were by the Ferris wheel when the guy who was running it announced that there would be just one more ride that evening. Grace, to whom Luke had just confided that he’d never gone on the rides here as a child, insisted that he had to go on with her. She wouldn’t take no for an answer.
The Ferris wheel had only taken about five turns when it got stuck, with Grace and Luke at the top. It was the first time she realized she had a fear of heights. It was also the first time she realized that kisses could be more than a bland precursor to pleas for sex and guilt for not complying.
Grace lay on her bed now, aware of Jimmy down the hall but caught up in the honeyed memory of a summer night that she’d stored away in the back of her mind for so long.
She closed her eyes and felt herself back in the cool metal seat next to Luke. It felt as if they were in space, a million miles from the bright lights and popcorn-strewn ground below. It was terrifying. When the wind lifted, the old seat squeaked on its hinges.
“What’s wrong?” Luke had asked, just as she felt the blood drain from her face.
“We’re stuck.” It was stupid. She’d never been afraid of a Ferris wheel before.
Luke must have thought it was stupid too. “So what? He’ll get it going again.”
“Did you see that guy?” Grace’s panic mounted. “Did you smell him? I bet that was a bottle of Mad Dog he had in his pocket.”
Luke shrugged. “Either that or he was glad to see you.”
“Luke, I’m serious.” Her voice rose thinly. “I’m scared.”
“Really?”
“Yes!”
“Shh. It’s okay.” He put an arm around her, a little awkwardly.
“How do you know? This thing’s fifty years old if it’s a day. It has to die sometime. Maybe this is the night.”
“Nah.” He was totally calm. “This happens all the time. These old motors overheat and just give out temporarily. Sparky down there will keep fidgeting with it, pushing the arm on and off, until it cools off some and starts to run again and he’ll think he fixed it.”
Grace laughed, despite her fear. Down below she could see the ride operator doing just that. It made her feel better. “You’re sure?”
“I guarantee it.”
“Okay.” She breathed. Her shoulders relaxed under his arm but he didn’t move it. He probably just forgot, but she was glad. “In the meantime, we’re trapped together,” she said, testing for his response.
He looked into her eyes, making her shiver. “Yeah.”
A moment passed.
“How long do you think it will be?”
“I don’t know. Ten, maybe twenty, minutes.”
“Ugh.” She glanced back down at the flummoxed ride operator and felt woozy.
“Look up,” Luke said quietly, lifting her chin with his index finger, then pointing to the stars. “You’ll feel better.”
He was right. The sky was a deep satin purple, so starry it seemed flecked like a dark tablecloth with spilled salt. She caught her breath. “It’s beautiful.”
“It is,” he agreed, but he was looking at her, not the sky.
A thrill fluttered over her as she pretended not to notice. “It looks like the sky in a children’s picture book.”
“I don’t know where you come up with this stuff,” he said, shaking his head. “Everything’s poetic to you.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing.” He smiled. “But what are you gonna do when you’re out of school and you need to live in the real world?”
“I do live in the real world.”
He gave a completely cynical shrug. “I wish.” Then he looked at her. “For what it’s worth, though, I like it.”
Did he like her? Before tonight, she wouldn’t have thought so. “Maybe I should write children’s books for a living, huh? Avoid the real world entirely.”
He laughed. “Girls like you don’t need to live in the real world. You’ll marry someone rich and do whatever you want.”
For some reason his saying that gave her a small pang. Not that she wanted to be with him or anything, but there was something disconcerting about him pawning her off on some imagined rich guy in her future. “So what happens to guys like you?”
He looked very serious. “I don’t know.”
She wanted to reach out to him. “What do you want?”
His gaze remained steady. “Doesn’t matter.”
She swallowed hard, trying to will away the desire that was snaking through her chest. Instead, she looked back over the edge of the seat. “So. This doesn’t bother you a bit, huh?” She tried to laugh.
“I think you could say I’m bothered,” Luke said softly, his gaze flickering from her face to her hair and back to her eyes, making her tingle as if he’d touched her.
“By the height?” she asked, looking up again so he wouldn’t see the real question in her eyes.
“No.”
Another moment passed, but something pulsed between them.
She turned to face him. “Then what?”
His mouth quirked up just a tiny bit on one side. “Now what do you think?”
“I don’t know,” she lied. She was terrified to say anything else. Terrified that she was wrong, that he wasn’t feeling what she was.
He stared into her eyes for a moment, then shook his head, laughing softly. “You do.”
Electricity worked its way from the pit of her stomach to the center of her being. She shifted in her seat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said haughtily, looking back at the sky.
“Don’t you, Grace?”
“No, I don’t.” Her lips felt full with the desire to be kissed. It was crazy—he hadn’t touched her, but she was experiencing every physical response in the book.
He didn’t say a word.
Instead, she felt his hand on her face, turning it toward him, then he captured her mouth with his, in a kiss so deep that it left her gasping.
“Now that makes me nervous,” he said huskily, his hand still cupping her cheek.
For a moment, she stared at him wordlessly, trembling in the warm night air. Then, following an impulse she’d never even dreamed of, she initiated another kiss.
He responded hungrily, opening his mouth under her parted lips and drinking her in so thoroughly that he might have taken some of her soul.
He moved his strong hands down her ribcage, across the thin cotton of her sundress. She felt safe in his grasp. Warm. Excited. He drove her wild yet at the same time made her feel utterly secure.
She raised her hands, twining her fingers in his thick dark hair, and pulled his mouth still closer, if that was possible. She wanted to stop him from stopping. As her mouth moved against his, she pressed herself against him, begging wordlessly for him to continue, to keep kissing her forever.
It felt as though he would. They groped at each other like the teenagers they were, touching, tasting, fumbling. Their teeth knocked together and they smiled, but only for a moment, before the fever of lust took them over again and they took it deeper, tongues touching, exploring, lingering.
“I hope we stay stuck here all night,” Grace breathed.
“It’ll cool off.” He spanned her lower back with his hands, then slowly moved her legs across his lap.
“I hope not,” she managed to say before drowning in sensation.
Luke’s hand moved across her hip, then her thigh, caressing her in broad, languid movements.
She relaxed her legs, parting them slightly.
He edged his hand higher and higher on her thigh, raising her dress with it, then slipped his hand between her legs, pressing gently against her. Only the thinnest fabric lay between his skin and hers.
Grace tried to catch her breath but couldn’t, arching against him, begging silently for more. She felt him smile against her mouth for a moment, then he complied, artfully touching her as if she were naked.
She might as well have been for the dizzying response she had. She reached for the front of his jeans and felt his hardness behind the thick denim and stiff zipper. With shaking hands, she fumbled with his belt buckle, but froze when he slipped a finger around the cotton crotch of her underwear and plunged a finger into her.
She’d never felt like this before. Never let Michael this close. She didn’t know what insanity was making her allow Luke to do it, but it was too late, she couldn’t stop.
She didn’t want to stop.
His instincts were perfect. He weakened her with every stroke, instinctively knowing when to tease her and when to enter her. Her heart pounded so hard she thought it would burst, but she didn’t care. All that mattered was this moment, this man, this feeling.
And then, in a moment, something exploded inside of her, leaving her clinging to him and shuddering, as wave after wave of pleasure splashed upon the shore of her resolve.
It seemed to go on forever, then slowly the world came back into focus, with just a few shimmering streamers of ecstasy drifting through the sky before her.
“I—” She couldn’t speak. “I’ve never—”
He silenced her with a gentle kiss.
She held herself against his shoulder, burying her face in the crook of his neck.
The wind rose, and the seat creaked again. It had probably been creaking the whole time, only she hadn’t noticed.
“I’ve never done that before,” she said finally, in a rush of breath.
Luke touched her cheek tenderly.
“We shouldn’t have…this is crazy…”
He pulled back and looked at her with sharp eyes. “What?”
“Well, I mean, Michael…”
For a moment, he looked as if she’d slapped him. “Right. Michael.”
Something in her deflated.
“He’s probably been calling, wondering where I am,” she said, trying to think what she’d say to Michael about tonight.
Luke let out a long breath. “We’d better tell him the truth about this.”
“No!” She could imagine his response. He’d be livid. “No, we can’t.”
“It’ll be okay,” Luke said. “You want me to talk to him?”
“Oh, God, no, you can’t. Let me think.” But her mind was blank. Luke had erased everything. It wasn’t that she wanted to maintain her relationship with Michael. After what had just happened, she couldn’t imagine going back to him. She just didn’t want to end it in an explosion of jealousy and accusation. “If it looks like I ran off with his best friend, it will humiliate him.”
“Look, I’ll just tell him I made a pass at you,” Luke said, before she had the chance to tell him what she was thinking. His voice had cooled. “But that nothing really happened. That’s the truth, after all. Nothing much really happened. It’s not like we did it all.”
Nothing had happened? She had been intimate with him in a way she’d never been intimate with anyone, in a way she’d intended to save for her wedding night, but Luke thought nothing had happened?
Shame burned in her cheeks. “That’s right. Nothing happened. So why get Michael involved? He’ll just be mad at both of us, and for no real reason.”
The Ferris wheel jerked to life, easily lowering them to the ground.
“Perfect timing,” Luke noted. “I guess it’s a sign. Come on, I’ll take you home.”
In the end, neither one of them had to tell Michael. Susan Howard, who lived across the street from Grace and who had a massive crush on Michael, told him she’d seen Luke drop Grace off very late one night. It was all he needed to hear. He’d immediately jumped to the wrong—or maybe really the right—conclusion.
It had ended his friendship with Luke and nearly ended his relationship with Grace. She’d jumped through hoops to preserve it. As much as it embarrassed her to recall it now, she had apologized profusely and promised never to talk to Luke again. And she hadn’t.
Not until the day she’d walked into his office asking for a job.
Chapter Six (#ulink_b50ed0d3-18a5-5a67-9e7f-fba6621dbdd6)
It was still muggy outside at 7:00 p.m. A milky haze of mist hung over the soccer field, with a great orange ball of sun dipping lower behind the goalposts. The buzz of locusts filled the evening air.
Luke waited for her by the barn. He was grinding out the stub of a cigarette with his toe when she walked up.
“Thought you stopped that years ago,” she said to him.
“Did,” he said, with a puff of smoke. “Just every once in a while…”
She shrugged, thinking of the entire box of chocolate marshmallow cookies she’d consumed during a marathon viewing of Pride and Prejudice after Michael had left. She was hardly one to point fingers. “I guess we all do things that aren’t good for us once in a while.”
He looked at her for a moment. “Yeah, well, I won’t tell if you won’t.”
She hesitated. Was he talking about smoking or…? Or nothing. Of course he meant smoking. “I’m not going to tell,” she said flippantly. “The kids don’t need to know what a dubious role model you really are.”
He raised an eyebrow, resting his gaze on hers for a moment. “Think you’re a better one?”
She straightened. “I’ll be an excellent influence, Luke. You know I was a great student. You used to make fun of me for it all the time.”
He gave a laugh and started off toward the bus, like the Pied Piper, so sure she would follow him that he didn’t even look back.
She did.
“I don’t think I made fun of you for being a good student,” he said lazily. “As I recall, it was for sucking up to the teachers.”
“I did not suck up to the teachers!”
“Geez, Grace, you needed an extra locker just for all the polished red apples you brought in for Mrs. MacGonagle.”
“Once,” Grace said, her face going hot immediately. She had taken so much grief for that. “Once I brought in apples for Mrs. MacGonagle, and it was only because my mother told her we had such a huge harvest from the apple tree that she was going to have to throw them away if no one wanted them. And they weren’t polished.”
“Okay,” Luke said, splaying his arms as he walked. “If you say so.”
“What about you? As I recall you were an all-A student, even while you were doing your broody James Dean thing. You even got that big scholarship.”
“I never sucked up.” He smiled, but it was a smile that said he didn’t want to talk about anything personal if it had to do with himself. He kept walking until he got to the bus. “Okay,” he said, leaning on the yellow vehicle. “Go to it.”
“Okay.” If he didn’t want to talk about it, they wouldn’t talk about it.
She walked past him and into the bus. He followed this time.
It was as hot as a sauna inside. “Comfortable?” Grace asked with a wan smile. “If not, I can turn on the air conditioner. Oh, wait, there isn’t an air conditioner.”
“I’m fine,” Luke said. “But if you’re hot, go ahead and turn on the fan. That should help.”
She gave him a look. “You’ve never driven this bus in the summer, have you?”
“Sure I have. Now get going so you can pass the test and drive it yourself this summer.”
“All right, all right.” She proceeded to complete the safety check she’d have to perform for the final portion of the test on Friday. She checked the windows, the locks, the lights and signals, gauges, seat belts, mats, steering wheel and everything else that moved, lit, opened, closed, signaled or stuck out.
Including the Bodily Fluid Clean-up Kit.
“Which looks fine,” Grace pronounced, sitting in the driver’s seat backward, facing Luke. “Now. Did I forget anything?”
He shook his head. “Just remember to take the keys out of the ignition when you’re finished. Carol Borden forgot that twice.”
Was he ever, even once, going to admit she’d done a good job? She doubted it. To Luke, it seemed, complimenting Grace would mean a huge compromise of his principles. If she drove the bus through a flood and around a tornado, saving scores of children in her charge, he’d probably only comment on whether or not she fully depressed the parking brake afterward.
She leaned back against the steering wheel and crossed her arms in front of her. “So why do you know all this, Luke? Is it a prerequisite for becoming the headmaster?”
“I was the driver here for five years.”
“Right,” she scoffed, picking idly at some duct tape that was covering a hole on the back of the seat. “After that football scholarship to Stanford, you decided to come back home and drive a bus.”
“I didn’t go to Stanford,” he said quietly.
Grace was about to toss off a joke when she noticed how still his expression was and realized he wasn’t kidding. “You’re serious! You didn’t go at all?”
“Nope.”
Suddenly the buzz of the locusts outside seemed very loud.
“Why not?” she asked. “I thought it was a done deal.”
He shrugged. “Nothing’s ever really a done deal, I guess. Good lesson to learn early.”
The scholarship, she remembered well, had been very important to Luke. It was an incredible accomplishment. His parents hadn’t had much money to begin with, but when his mother had died—when he was, what, in ninth grade? Grace wasn’t sure—they’d lost half their income. Luke had taken a part-time job at the Texaco station, but his college prospects looked bleak until his spectacular senior year, when the scouts had come to check him out. His scholarship had been a huge deal in Blue Moon Bay. Even the newspaper covered it.
“Why on earth didn’t you go, Luke?” Grace asked, increasingly curious. Had he just blown it off? Too cool for school? “It was such a great opportunity.”
“It just didn’t work out,” he said shortly. “Bad timing. Forget it, it doesn’t matter now.”
“Well, sure it matters—”
“No.” His tone was hard, and left no room for argument. “It doesn’t.”
Grace looked at him wordlessly for a moment. What had happened to him? How had she never heard anything about it? Maybe she’d just been gone for too long. She was out of the Blue Moon Bay loop.
“What time are you scheduled to take the driving test on Friday?” Luke asked, taking a folded paper out of his back pocket.
It was clear he wasn’t going to talk about it anymore. She’d have to get the scoop from someone else. “Three,” she answered, trying to sound as if she wasn’t still stuck on the scholarship thing.
“All right. Chuck Borden’s going to drive up with you, since you’re not allowed to drive the bus without a commercially licensed driver until you have a CDL yourself.”
“Is Chuck the Spanish teacher?”
“He is. But he’s also the other bus driver. He took the run in order to earn a little extra. It works well for him, but it also means that he’s on a tight schedule. He does his run, then starts his classes. He won’t be available as back-up for you.”
“Who says I’m going to need back-up?”
“No one. I hope.”
“Well, I won’t,” she said with determination. “I’ll be here every day.”
“Assuming you pass the test. Don’t get ahead of yourself, or you’ll lose sight of that goal.”
“I don’t think so. I’m very well aware that the test is coming up.”
“You worried?”
“No,” she lied. “Not a bit.”
His mouth quirked into a half-smile as he leaned forward and handed her the piece of paper he’d taken out of his pocket. “This is the route you’re going to be taking Monday morning. Assuming you pass the test.”
“I’ll pass,” she said, studying the list. Some of the students were quite far-flung. “This is going to take forever.”
“It’s about an hour.”
“You really do need transportation,” she mused. “This one here on Saltside Lane would take half an hour to get to if you took a direct route. It would be hard for nine-to-fivers to get a kid here and still get to work on time unless one of the parents were working in town. And, God knows, there aren’t any jobs here.”
Luke gave a half smile, then said, “That’s Donald Henderson. He’s one of our scholarship kids. There’s no way in the world his parents could get him here themselves.”
She looked at the remaining addresses, and the geography of Blue Moon Bay and the surrounding area came back to her with complete clarity. Some of the students lived in multimillion-dollar homes in Cape Trayhorn Estates, and some lived in rowhouses along the main streets of town.
“You know, I never thought I’d be driving my own kid around Blue Moon Bay to school, much less anyone else’s.” She sighed. “So much for moving up in life.”
“What the hell’s wrong with you, Grace?” Luke asked in a sharp voice.
She was startled by his question and his tone. “What do you mean?”
“Why have you always been so down on Blue Moon Bay? Ever since I’ve known you, you’ve talked about getting out of here, like it’s some kind of hellhole. It’s a nice town, Grace, and it’s home to a lot of nice people.”
Humiliation filled her. “I didn’t mean to insult anyone, Luke, it’s just not the place I want to be.”
“You say that like anyone who does want to be here is some stupid peasant who doesn’t know any better.” He stood up and started for the door, then stopped and looked her dead in the eye. “As long as I’ve known you, you’ve wanted things bigger, better.” He hesitated, then added, “Richer. How’s it working out for you?”
She gaped at him in silence, completely unable to formulate a response.
“Good luck on the test,” he said abruptly, then left, shaking his head.
She watched him for a moment, then sprang from the seat and out into the thick evening air behind him. “Wait a minute, Luke!”
He stopped, and she could see him take a long breath before turning to face her. As though he was mustering patience.
That galled her.
“What?” he asked wearily.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” She wished she had a better argument, but the words had been stunned right out of her. They’d come back tonight, probably, around midnight. “You don’t know me at all,” she said lamely.
“You’re right—I don’t. I only know what I see.”
She went to him boldly and stood before him. “What do you see, Luke? Huh? What do you see?”
He looked down at her, and for a moment she saw tenderness cross his expression. But it was only for a moment, and it was gone quickly. “It doesn’t matter what I see.”
“No,” she said, wishing she really felt that way. “That’s right, it doesn’t matter. So keep it to yourself, okay?”
“You’re absolutely right, that’s what I should have done in the first place.”
“You bet it is. You know, you don’t have a clue what I’ve been through.” Self-pity rose in her breast, but she pushed it back down. It was enough that she knew she was a good person and, more than that, a good mother. She was proud of the way she’d held it together when Michael left, proud that Jimmy thought of her as strong and brave and someone who could take care of him when he was sad and confused. She hadn’t let him see her tears, or her anger, and she was proud of herself for that too.
Whatever it was that Luke hated so much about her was going to have to be his own problem. She couldn’t afford to let it affect her own confidence and self-esteem. She’d already taken enough of a beating in that regard.
“And you can just go to hell, Luke Stewart,” she fumed, stalking past him to her car.
He said something behind her, but she didn’t hear what it was and she didn’t want to stop and ask. She just kept going until she got to the old BMW that had seemed like such a prize once, and got in, praying it would start.
It did, thank God, and she whipped out of the driveway without looking back at him.
* * *
He was glad she hadn’t heard his apology. He didn’t want to apologize, damn it, it had been burning in him for so long.
Ever since that night on the Ferris wheel a thousand years ago.
He’d wanted her for a long time before that night, though it wasn’t something he went around talking about. For one thing, it was a betrayal of Michael, though he richly deserved it, but for another, Luke just wasn’t the kind of guy who needed anyone or anything. It was embarrassing to spend as much time as he did pining for a girl, much less one he could never have.
Then there had been that one brief moment, the unbelievable luck of finding her in Ocean City, when it had seemed as if maybe—just maybe—he wasn’t crazy to think he might have a shot with her. That maybe she felt the same way he did.
It was over quickly, though. Of course. Just as he was about to brave the subject, she’d raised the specter of Michael, making it very clear that she didn’t want him to know. She was terrified of losing Michael, it seemed, and not because she loved him. Hell, if she’d loved him, she wouldn’t have been with Luke. No, she wanted the Bowes name and everything that went with it. She wanted to be half of the golden couple of Blue Moon Bay. No matter what the cost.
For a while, Luke hadn’t wanted to believe that Grace was so shallow. But Michael had told him exactly what the arrangement was, just a few months after they’d gotten married. While Grace had stayed behind, pregnant, Michael had come back to town for his grandmother’s funeral. During that short week, Michael had slept with at least two women that Luke knew of. Just like in high school. As a matter of fact, he’d left Harley’s Bar with one of them about ten minutes after bragging to Luke about the “open arrangement” he and Grace had in their marriage.
She made the deal with me. She’s got what she wants, Michael had told Luke. Big house, imported car, President of the Junior League. And I get a good-looking arm piece when I have to go out.
So what do you want with someone like Mary Jo Wiley? Luke had asked, indicating one of the tightjeaned women who was waving to Michael from the bar.
Excitement, man. Michael’s laugh had been harsh. Heat. Grace is as cold as ice in the bedroom.
Luke knew with some certainty that that wasn’t true. Or if it was, it wasn’t her fault.
Still, who was he to question what went on in someone else’s marriage? It was their problem, not his.
His problem, now, was that Michael was history, and Grace was back, and some part of Luke’s eighteen-year-old libido remembered her.
* * *
Jimmy held tightly onto his mother’s hand. He knew it was babyish, but he was just so excited he couldn’t help it.
For the first time, he was beginning to feel like maybe this town wasn’t so bad. Maybe he actually even liked the quiet streets and the big yards and the fact that he was able to get a dog—a real, live dog—for the first time in his life.
They were at the pound, although his mother called it the humane society, and a guy in a blue uniform was opening a door for them to go look at the dogs.
As soon as he stepped through, Jimmy smiled. He couldn’t help it. The room smelled like pee and the sound of yelping and barking was so loud, he could barely hear his mom telling him to keep his fingers out of the cage, but to him it was heaven.
He walked slowly up the cement aisle, being sure to make eye contact with each dog along the way. He was positive that when he saw his dog, he’d know it. He walked past big scruffy dogs, and little happy dogs, and sleek dogs, and sleeping dogs, but only one dog came over and poked his nose through the metal fence at Jimmy. After that, he didn’t need to look in the dog’s hopeful brown eyes to know.
“This is the one,” he announced.
His mother frowned and came over to him. “Really?” She poked a finger through the cage—just what she’d told Jimmy not to do—and the dog licked her excitedly. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. And his name is…” He thought for a minute. Last night when he was lying in bed, the name he’d come up with had seemed so perfect. Now, though, he was afraid it was a little dumb.
“What’s his name?” his mom asked.
He decided to go ahead and say it. After all, his mom never laughed at him, but she’d tell him the truth. “It’s Tonto. Do you think that’s too goofy?”
“No, it’s great. Look, he even answers to it. Tonto!” She made her voice high. “Tonto! Here, boy!”
The little dog looked up and tilted his head to the side, wagging his tail.
“See?” She laughed. “That’s his name, all right.”
Jimmy smiled and touched the dog’s cold nose. “What kind of breed do you think he is?”
“He looks a little like a Jack Russell terrier. With, maybe, some springer spaniel or something mixed in. I’m not sure.” She stood up and smoothed her skirt down. She was all dressed up to go to some big test in the afternoon. “Are you sure this is the one you want, Jimmy?” she asked seriously. “Because you can’t just bring him back, you know.”
“I know. This is the one I want. And I’ll never want to give him back,” he said ferociously, thinking of his father and how long it had been since he’d come to see Jimmy and his mom. “Ever.”
* * *
Later that night, Grace had her own taste of excitement.
“Congratulations, you’re a bus driver!” Jenna raised her champagne glass and clinked it against Grace’s, sloshing the fizzy drink onto their hands.
“Thank you, thank you very much.” Grace raised her glass to her lips and closed her eyes, relishing the yeasty taste of her favorite vintage. She had half a case of it left—one of the more valuable parts of her divorce settlement—and the way things were going, she might just work her way through it this weekend.
She raised her glass to her new license, which she and Jenna had propped against a candle in the middle of the table. “To me,” she said with a giggle. “Oh, and to Bob for taking care of all the kids—and the dog—tonight, so we could have a girls’ night.”
“To Bob,” Jenna repeated, raising her own glass again. She took a sip then set it down and asked, “Say, where’s your mom?”
“Bridge club.”
Jenna frowned. “I thought they met during the day.”
“She’s got a bunch of them now.” Grace shrugged. “Several of them meet at night. In fact, they go really late.” Silently, Grace hoped that she didn’t end up at the high end of middle-aged alone and filling her time with card-playing.
“Ooh, maybe she’ll meet someone.” Jenna smiled. “Some dashing, card-playing Omar Sharif type.”
“Please,” Grace said. “Mother hasn’t been on a date since before I was born. I can’t even imagine her starting now.”
Jenna nodded. “It would be weird. But what about you? Think you’re going to get back into dating here?”
Grace groaned. “Who would I go out with? You snagged the only good man in Blue Moon Bay. And he’s not even from here.” Bob had moved into town ten years ago when he’d got a job with a carpentry company. He and Jenna had met when she’d hired him to build bookshelves.
Jenna raised an eyebrow. “I can think of one or two guys here who used to be interesting to you,” she said in a sing-songy voice.
“My track record with old Blue Moon love interests isn’t so good, Jen.”
“Well, Michael didn’t turn out so hot, but maybe someone else would. Let’s do your tarot cards and see,” Jenna said eagerly, reaching for her bag. “I brought them along so I could practice on you.”
“No, no, no, I don’t believe in those things.”
“So what’s the harm then?” Jenna asked, opening a small leather pouch. “Just do it for fun. Here.” She thrust the large deck into Grace’s hands. “Shuffle.”
“This is stupid,” Grace protested, shuffling.
“No, it’s not. Now cut the deck.”
“I don’t believe any of it.” She cut the deck.
“The cards will tell,” Jenna said, in a spooky voice, then laughed. “Pick one and put it here, then put the next one here.”
Grace picked cards according to Jenna’s direction, and Jenna set them up in an elaborate layout. Finally, with ten cards facedown on the table in the shape of a pentagon, she put the rest of the deck aside and started turning the cards over.
“This is where you are right now,” Jenna said. “This card represents whatever is either helping or hindering you. Hmm. The king of cups.” She considered the card. “A man with dark hair and blue eyes. Who could that be?”
“This is rigged.” Grace grabbed the book from Jenna and read the description for herself. Sure enough, it said the card could indicate a man with dark hair and blue eyes. A powerful yet fair man. An honest man.
Or it could represent those qualities, perhaps in someone else Grace knew. That’s what it had to mean, she figured, not an actual man with dark hair and blue eyes. And certainly not Luke Stewart, who, when last she’d seen him, had lambasted her for no good reason. She looked closer. The book didn’t say anything about personal attacks.
“You picked the card,” Jenna reminded her lightly, taking back the book. “This guy looks pretty significant in your life. Maybe a boss?” She winked. “In any event, you should be hearing from him soon.”
“Like on Monday? When I go to work? Remarkable prediction.”
Jenna ignored her sarcasm. “And there’s something about a journey. Maybe that’s driving the bus.”
Grace thought of the long route Luke had drawn up for her. “It’s going to feel like a journey. Every day.” Privately, she thought about her return to Blue Moon Bay and what a journey that had been, both literally and figuratively. What about the future journey back to New Jersey? Was she really going to be able to do that in a year, as she’d planned? Already, she was in a bigger financial hole than she’d anticipated. Grace had a bad feeling that her budget wasn’t going to work out quite the way she’d hoped.
“Well, don’t worry, there’s great prosperity here too. A huge fortune or inheritance.” She looked up at Grace. “Got any fabulously rich relatives I don’t know about?”
Grace flashed her a wry grin. “If I do, I don’t know about them either.”
Jenna looked back at the cards, then at the book she was using to check her interpretations. “Maybe it’s going to be more of a spiritual fortune. Yup, three of cups, here’s another love card.”
Grace watched, sipping her champagne with increasing frequency, as Jenna told her that her entire future was wrapped up with this dark-haired, blue-eyed man.
What if that were true? Grace wondered. Could she even imagine getting involved with a new man? It wasn’t that she still felt stung by Michael. Enough time had passed that she’d grown to realize she and Michael had never had the kind of close relationship she’d pretended they did. He didn’t get her jokes. Didn’t care about her life or her interests. Barely even showed any curiosity about their son. She was better off without him, and she knew that now.
But a new man? It was hard to picture. When she tried to imagine someone like the man Jenna described, all she could see was Luke Stewart.
And he certainly wasn’t a romantic interest for her. Or vice versa. That couldn’t be more plain.
When she was finished with the reading, Jenna sat back and said, “The cards don’t lie.”
Grace brought her focus back to Jenna. “Maybe not, but I’m not so sure about the reader.”
“Hey, I object to that! Out of seventy-six cards, you picked these ten. Check the interpretations yourself.” Jenna thumped her hand on the Mother Earth Tarot book on the table. “It’s very clear.”
Grace rolled her eyes. “Then I guess a tall, dark stranger will be coming to town to sweep me off my feet soon.” She shook her head. “Seriously, Jenna, that’d be great for starry-eyed teenagers who want their fortunes told, because you know there’s always romance in their future, but I’m not buying this for me at all.”
“Suit yourself.” Jenna gathered the cards and put them back in the case. “I’m not sure how much I believe myself, but you have to admit, it is interesting that all the cards you picked were so consistent about this guy.”
“And so wrong,” Grace added.
“Maybe.” Jenna poured more champagne into both their glasses. “I’ve got an idea! Let’s call him!”
“Who?”
“Luke! Just like we used to in high school!” She dissolved into a fit of giggles. “Remember when we called Kenny Harrison and had him convinced that we were aliens who were coming to get him at midnight?”
Grace couldn’t help laughing with her. Although Jenna had been the one doing the calling and the talking, Grace had listened with fascination on the other line as Kenny had asked what to pack.
“Come on, let’s call Luke,” Jenna persisted, taking the cordless phone from the table and pushing the Talk button.
Grace wrestled the receiver from her grasp. “No way. We’re not teenagers anymore. We’re mothers. Mature women. We don’t pull that kind of prank.” The dial tone blared between them. “Especially not with caller ID and Star-Sixty-Nine technologies out there. And especially not with Luke Stewart. Our relationship is bad enough.”
Jenna took her hand off the phone. “You just had a little spat. You guys always had spats, and, as you know, there was a definite attraction.”
It was hard to deny, at least to Jenna, who had always known the truth. “Yeah, well, we’re not always attracted to the people who are best for us, are we?”
“No, that’s true,” Jenna agreed. “But sometimes you just don’t know until you give someone a chance. Even someone like Luke.”
“Even if I were willing, and I’m not, Luke doesn’t have any interest in me. He hates me.”
“I don’t think so. And I know you don’t hate him.” She wasn’t going to give up. “Let’s go to his house. Look in the windows and see if he has a girlfriend.”
Grace tossed the phone onto the sofa several yards away. “I couldn’t care less if he has a girlfriend or not.” She tried to sound nonchalant, but she did kind of wonder about his private life.
“Come on, admit you’re curious. Let’s go.”
Grace shook her head. “On top of the fact that it’s illegal to spy on people through their windows, we’ve been drinking. We can’t drive.”
“We’ll walk.”
“We’re not interested.” Grace hesitated. “Although there is one thing I’m interested in. Do you have any idea why Luke didn’t go off to college at Stanford, like he was supposed to?”
Jenna looked blank. “I didn’t even know he was supposed to.”
“Yes, you did—he got a scholarship, remember? It was a huge deal.”
“Hmm. That sort of rings a bell. But I don’t know. Why?”
Grace shrugged. “He mentioned the other day that he hadn’t gone but he wouldn’t say why. The whole thing just seems strange to me.”
“So you do care about him.”
Grace felt her face grow warm. “I’m just curious. Aren’t you?”
“Not particularly. But if you really want to know what happened, we could ask the cards.”
Grace snorted. “Oh, come on, the cards don’t know squat.”
“I don’t know, Grace, it seems to me they were uncannily correct for you.”
“About what? About a man in my life? There isn’t one. A journey? Not going anywhere. And a great fortune? Please. If I had that, I wouldn’t be driving a bus.”
“You have to be a little patient,” said Jenna, unflappable. “This is the future we’re looking at. The cards clearly said—”
Fortunately, Jenna was interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell, although Grace had the uneasy feeling that she was going to be hearing a lot about what “the cards said” in the future.
“I was in the neighborhood,” Luke said when she opened the door. “I tried to call, but the line was busy. I hope you don’t mind me dropping by.”
Chapter Seven (#ulink_37e18d95-47a9-5ee9-8f3a-81df68acfd47)
The champagne hit her full-force as soon as she saw him.
“Uh. N-no,” Grace stammered. “I’m just surprised.”
“Look, about the other day. I shouldn’t have said that stuff. It wasn’t my place.” It wasn’t quite an apology, but she thought it was as close as she was going to get to one.
“Forget it.” She tried to gather her wits as they scattered like cockroaches in the light. “Do you want to come in? Have a drink?” She stepped back and gestured into the house.
He didn’t move, though his eyes flicked briefly behind her. “No, thanks. Did you pass the test?”
She smiled. “Yes, I did.”
“Good.”
“What, did you expect me to fail?” she demanded happily.
He gave a short laugh. “Since the day you walked into the garage at school, I haven’t known what to expect.”
Grace felt light-headed and silently cursed the champagne.
It was making her giddy. “Is that all bad?”
The porch light gleamed off his glossy hair. He looked like a model or something. A shampoo ad.
“Why are you looking at me that way?”
“What way?” She pulled herself together. “I wasn’t looking at you any way in particular. I just…I thought I saw a spider.”
“Ah.” He nodded as if he were talking to a crazy person.
“It’s gone now.”
“Oh, my God, Luke Stewart?” Jenna gasped from behind Grace. “I can’t believe it, we were just talking about you.”
“No, we weren’t,” Grace said quickly.
“Yes, we—”
“No, that was something else,” Grace said. Then, with a pointed look at Jenna, Grace stepped out onto the front porch with Luke, closing the door behind her before Jenna could say anything more. “Don’t want to let the bugs in,” she explained with a fast smile.
“You were talking about me?”
How did he do that, that almost-smile of his? How did he manage to look amused and above-it-all at the same time?
He was cool, that was how. He’d always been cool, even though he’d been an ace student, which was normally not considered cool at Bayside High School. But Luke gave off an aura of not needing anyone or anything.
Girls found it irresistible.
Not Grace, though. She had no trouble resisting him. “We weren’t talking about you,” she said. “We were talking about my job. Celebrating it, actually. We had a little champagne.” She was babbling and forced herself to stop.
The hum of the locusts rose around them, harmonizing with the chirping crickets.
“Well, I’m glad you passed,” he said, in a tone that suggested he was wrapping things up.
She didn’t want him to leave. Not yet. She wanted, somehow, to make things feel normal between them, so there weren’t awkward silences. “Have a seat,” she said, a little too eagerly, indicating the porch swing.
He watched as she went over and sat there herself. She stopped short of patting the spot next to her.
“I don’t want to interrupt your celebration,” he said, standing still under the light. “I just came by to see about the test and to give you these.” He reached into the front pocket of his jeans, took out a small key ring with two keys on it and tossed them to her.
Remarkably, she caught them, and closed her hand around them as if they were alive. They were warm from his body heat. “What are these for?”
“The bus,” he said, cocking his head slightly and giving her half a smile. An I-know-you’re-tipsy-so-I’ll-be-patient half smile. “Remember?”
“Well, yes.” She felt her face grow hot. Of course they were the bus keys, what was she thinking? Two small glasses, that was all she’d had. “I just meant…” She felt the keys, searching for an excuse for her stupid coy act. “There are two of them. What’s the second one to?”
“It’s a spare. Keep it in your wallet or something, in case you lock yourself out.”
“I’m not going to lock myself out.”
“Okay. Just in case.”
“Geez, you have no faith in me at all.”
“Don’t take it personally, Grace. I don’t have faith in anyone.”
She suspected he was kidding, but she couldn’t stop herself from baiting him. “Especially me, Luke. You’ve never had faith in me.”
He gave a broad shrug. “I have as much faith in you as I need to. I’m sure you’ll do a fine job.”
Fine. She’d always hated that word. “Thanks,” she said half-heartedly.
“Grace? Are you pouting?” He definitely looked amused.
“No.”
“Good.”
“Fine.”
Quiet settled between them.
“So, I guess I’ll go,” Luke said, starting to turn.
“Wait, Luke.” She felt as though she had to stop him. As though she had somehow to fix their conversation before she let him go. Before it got stuck in his brain as one more Bad Experience with Grace.
He looked back. God, had his eyes always been so blue? “What?”
She scrambled for something to say but came up short. “Nothing. I just…making sure…school starts at nine?”
“Nine-fifteen.”
“Ah. Well, there you go. Good thing I asked.”
He gave her a curious look but said, “Right. Wouldn’t want to get them there too early.”
She nodded and tried to look as if she was taking in more than just the sight of him, standing there looking sexy in the thick, hot air. She fully realized it was the champagne that made him look so good, and she didn’t want to say or do anything she’d regret later. “Good to know,” she said.
“Grace?”
“Hmm?”
“I was kidding. It doesn’t matter if they get there early. Just don’t get them in late.”
She forced herself to stop nodding and just leveled her eyes on his. “Deal.”
“You’ve got the list of students that I gave you the other day?”
“In my car.”
“You’re sure you haven’t lost them?”
“I haven’t lost them, Luke, come on, what kind of idiot do you think you’re dealing with?”
“Did I say you were an idiot?”
“Not in so many words, but you didn’t expect me to pass the test and you don’t expect me to be able to keep track of the key, and now you’re at least half convinced that I’ve lost the list of students I’m supposed to pick up. Is it me, or have you had really big problems with bus drivers in the past?”
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Beth Harbison
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: THE ONE WHO GOT AWAYFor Grace Bowes, going home again felt like facing disaster. While the town wondered how the golden girl had wound up a struggling single mum, Grace had to find a job – fast! Worse, her first interview ever was with none other than Luke Stewart, the man who once made her heart beat madly – before she married someone else. He was the lover who still made her wonder: What if…?"What if" wasn′t an option for Luke. Until Grace walked into his world once more, looking every inch the beauty she always was. Suddenly, the brooding bachelor felt an ache to finish what they started so long ago. Not a bad proposition for a man with nothing to lose. Nothing, that is, except his heart…