At Your Service

by Amy Jo Cousins

  "The orphans?" she asked, ignoring what felt like a rejection.

  "Yes, orphans. These kids, they work here, but some are far from their families. Nine or ten would eat spaghetti at home alone, so I make them the tradition. The turkey, the sweet potatoes, all the trimmings." His eyes nearly sparkled in anticipation. "Three kinds of stuffing. Very good."

  She felt the urge to self-pity roll over her like a wave. Stop. Was there anything she could do to change her feelings, or the situation? She found that indeed there was.

  "Do you think I could join you?"

  "Hi, Gramma. I'm sorry I haven't come here before now."

  The small bouquet of autumn flowers she'd placed at the base of her grandmother's tombstone looked lonely against the cold ground. She'd nearly felt like a part of a large family at Paul's Thanksgiving dinner for the "orphans." The sensation had reminded her that she could in fact visit one member of her family who'd loved her, so she'd directed her driver to this small town north of the city on an impulse this morning. Another area of her life she would take better care of from now on.

  "I had dinner with Paul on Thanksgiving. Then I gave him half of Nice. He cried. You'd have been proud of me."

  She brushed the tears away and thrust her cold hands deep into her coat pockets.

  "I've done some other things you wouldn't be so proud of. I hurt some people I love very much. One person in particular. I'm not sure I can ever.be forgiven for it."

  She could practically hear her grandmother's feisty words ringing in her ears. Somehow she laughed through her tears.

  "I know. You're right. I'm a Haley." Her voice firmed in the deserted cemetery. "I have a genetic history of ancestors who defined the word tenacious."

  "Maybe we're just too stubborn to know when to quit. But as long as there's a chance, I can try to make things happen, my way.

  "Wish me luck, Gramma."

  Where was her taxi?

  Grace paced to the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the front of the building and peered down at the street; as if she could call the cab to her with the sheer force of her impatience, from several hundred feet above street level. She didn't regret giving her driver the night off, but maybe she should've asked if the limo she'd hired to take him and his fiancée out on the town for New Year's Eve could have dropped her off first.

  She paced a little more before giving up and striding to her front door. Forget it. She'd wait outside. Maybe she could flag a cab on the street. She stopped a moment at the mirror in her cntryway, checking her face and hair for the ninth time in fifteen minutes, and then screwed up her nerve and turned to head downstairs.

  Sudden pounding rattled the door on its hinges. She jerked her hand back from the knob like a two-year-old touching a surprisingly hot stove. After two moments of silence, the pounding recommenced, even louder now, if that were possible.

  "What did I do?" Grace murmured, and then shook herself out of her startled immobility. Why, in these situations, did she always assume that she'd done something wrong? Feeling guilty as a knee-jerk response was not good. After all, it was very possible that whoever was assaulting her door like a Marine taking Iwo Jima had the wrong condo number.

  "Grace!" The thick oak door didn't muffle Tyler's bellow one decibel.

  Shoot.

  She ought to have guessed. The dratted man had the timing instincts of a birthday honoree who insisted on returning home before all of the surprise party guests had a chance to assemble.

  "Grace! Open the damn door."

  She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, and then back again. Her velour felt winter hat was rolled into a skinny tube between her twisting fingers. He was ruining everything.

  The pounding let up for a moment.

  "Go away!" she shouted. "You're ruining it!"

  "What? Ruining what? You're the one locked away on the fiftieth floor of some..." His voice trailed away to a low rumbling mutter. The doorknob rattled in its socket. "Damn it, Grace! The doorman hosed me for a hundred bucks and a date with my sister. Open the door."

  Her hand was already on the knob, which twisted a little under her palm. She pictured his hand on the opposite end of the mechanism and felt the instant awareness of his physical presence like a blow to the gut. She opened the door.

  And took a step back as it flew open and crashed into the wall. Tyler barged through like a man who'd barely resisted the temptation to try to kick the door down. She retreated farther and stepped off the tiled floor of the entry, the heels of her winter boots sinking into plush carpeting. That probably explained her wobbly knees and the fact that her center of balance seemed to have flown out the window.

  Yeah, right.

  God, he looked good. In a long dark coat, black turtleneck sweater and dark jeans, he stalked toward her like an upscale sailor hitting shore after too many months on a boat without his woman. Make that a pirate. She edged backward and felt distinctly as if she'd just taken her first step down the plank.

  "My doorman's going on a date with your sister?" she said, grasping for any conversational straw in the sudden river rush of emotion at the sight of him. "Which one?"

  "I don't know your doormen by name, Grace." He was definitely irritated with her.

  "No. Which sister?"

  "Sarah. She's waiting in the car." He whipped a daily organizer out of his coat pocket and scribbled words on the tiny screen with a stylus as she watched, openmouthed. "Get tinted windows."

  "When did you get a Palm?"

  "Right after we got reviewed in the Tribune, the Sun-Times and Chicago magazine. All in one week." Tyler shot a sharp look at her from under lowered brows while Grace nodded and tried to look dumb. What were strings for if you couldn't pull one or two? "Not only has business gone through the roof, but I happened to mention that I wanted to showcase local jazz and blues bands someday. Now I'm getting phone calls every day. Bands, people who represent bands, and some guy who wants me to come down to Dallas and open a place there. Crazy. I can't keep track of a damn thing without this computer now."

  "Sounds good," she ventured.

  "It is. I'm knocking down the wall and expanding into the next building."

  "Terrific. Congratulations." She heard herself reduced to babbling as Tyler took a step toward her. "I mean, that was always your plan, right? Expansion. You're just doing it a little..." She dug for the words, came up with nothing and edged farther backward.

  "Ahead of time?" When she nodded and gasped, she realized she'd been holding her breath. Her calf knocked painfully into what felt like a coffee table as she shuffled in reverse, trying to keep several steps away from Tyler as he stalked toward her, but unwilling to take her eyes off him. If she didn't know better, she'd swear he was grinning at her, amused by her evasion tactics. "I'm running about two years ahead of schedule, and I know who's responsible for that."

  "Tyler, I didn't do anything—"

  "I am." He took three quick strides and was on her. She threw a hand up reflexively and smacked her palm against his chest. Keeping him at arm's length was the only thing that might save her from throwing herself at him and looking like a complete fool. Tyler's hands dangled at his sides, but he leaned against her palm, telling her with the weight of his body that he wanted to be closer than this.

  She felt the planes of his chest muscles under her fingers. Saw her hand stretch wide open as if to touch even more of him, and knew she couldn't control that movement. Then she realized that Tyler was still speaking.

  "I am responsible for it. It was my dream, my vision. I planned it. I built it. And then I hired you. And I was smart enough to take advantage of what you could do for me."

  His hands came up and circled her wrists loosely. Her arm was no longer so firmly straight.

  "That was pretty smart of you." Somehow she managed to form the words, despite the fact that nearly all her attention was focused on the exquisite sensation of his thumbs moving in small circles on the undersides of her wrists.
>
  "I'm a pretty smart guy." His eyes shone with the light of a thousand stars in a night sky. She felt his steady heartbeat beneath her palm. "Every once in a while, though, it takes me a little longer to catch on." His hands tightened on her wrists. "I love you, Grace, and I want you with me, always. I'll try to adjust to your life, if you'll make yourself a part of mine."

  His face blurred in front of her and she tasted salt in his kiss as she collapsed the space between them in an instant. She clung tightly to him for a moment but then pushed him away, laughing through her tears.

  "You idiot!"

  She wrapped her arras around his neck and kissed him again, unable to stay away for more than a second. Taking advantage of her living room furniture, she gave him a little push and Tyler toppled willingly to the couch, twisting so that he landed on top of her.

  "I thought we'd decided that I was pretty smart." He grinned down at her.

  "You're ruining my whole plan." She pretended to throttle him and then pressed her lips to his neck in apology.

  "You had a plan."

  "Yeah," she said, looking up at this face she would wake up to every day for the rest of her life, "and it was a pretty good one." Then she knew what she had to do. She moved until Tyler sank beneath her and she lay on his chest. For a moment she considered just staying right here for the rest of the night, but she knew he deserved more than that from her.

  She stood next to the couch and beckoned to him.

  "Come on. Let's get out of here."

  "Everyone! People! Your attention please!"

  Someone cut the music off abruptly.

  Like a bug pinned to a mat, was all she could think, as hundreds of eyes focused on her. She was heads and shoulders above the crowd, knees wobbling as she stood on a bar stool in the packed room of Tyler's pub, one hand braced on the shoulder of a stranger at her side.

  But only one pair of eyes mattered. She could read the love in them from where she stood. Tyler didn't move, knowing that she needed to do this one last thing to make everything right. Not only between the two of them, but for everyone else she'd met and fallen in love with through him.

  Silence fell over the packed room.

  "Hi." She didn't know how to begin.

  "Hiya, Gracie!"

  The familiar face saved her.

  "Hi, Benny," she called shakily. At the far end of the bar, Maxie was waving crazily at her, standing next to a smiling Susannah and Addy. Behind the bar, Spencer shut off the Guinness tap that was spilling stout over the top of the pint below it. Sarah had snuck through the crowd and now put an arm around Grace's waist. And with that, the words came. All she had to do was tell the truth.

  "Hi, everybody. My name is Grace. Grace Haley. And I'd like to tell you a story." Never taking her eyes off Tyler, she began in the age-old fashion.

  "Once upon a time, there was a girl who was in trouble. It was a lot of trouble, but instead of staying to fight her own battles, she ran away. Lucky for her, she ran into a man who liked to take care of strays." That man was looking at her now, and she held on to his gaze like a lifeline with her heart and soul. "A brilliant, wonderful, funny, incredible man, with a terrific family. They look her off the street and made a place for her in their homes. In their hearts. And it wasn't long before she fell in love with them. All of them. But the biggest part of her heart was filled with love for the man."

  She could hear the whispers building around her. She ignored them, as she ignored the tear she felt trickling down her face.

  "This girl was foolish and not very brave, so she did some stupid things. She lied about who she was and where she was from, because she hoped she could hide from all of her problems. She hadn't figured out yet that you can't hide from the really big ones. That you shouldn't.

  "Now, the man was pretty smart, as I said, and he knew she wasn't telling him everything. But he took her in anyways, gave her a job and let her stay, as long as she would promise him one thing. She could keep her secrets, she could be safe with him, he told her. Then he said, 'but on December thirty-first, New Year's Eve, you sign on one hundred percent and there'll be no more hiding for you."'

  She stopped. Tyler was walking toward her, pushing easily through a crowd that parted for him like mist, never breaking away from her eyes.

  She wasn't finished.

  "I've made a lot of mistakes since the day you said that, Tyler. But it's December thirty-first, New Year's Eve, and if you still want me, I'm done hiding. I love you, and I couldn't hide that if I tried."

  He was at her feet and she was trying to get off the damn stool, but she couldn't see the floor and then she couldn't see anything because she was crying as he kissed her and she was telling him she loved him, over and over again, fiercely, her hands fisted in his shirt as her mouth found his mouth, and his face, and any part of him she could reach. Touching him was coming home and loving him was what she'd been heading toward all her life.

  Her face was framed in his hands and she saw her soul in his eyes as he held her. She didn't even need the words when he said them.

  "I love you, Grace Haley."

  The crowd exploded around them. Richard was ringing the bell as if the gates of heaven had just opened and Spencer was pouring champagne as if the world was ending tonight.

  She found herself on the ground at last, surrounded by shouting friends who counted down the last seconds to midnight.

  The space between them was a separate world. She threaded her hands through his damp hair and smiled up at him.

  "I was coming to find you when you showed up at my door."

  "And I always knew I'd find you on the thirty-first, no matter where you'd gone." His smile was soft and his hands moved on her as if he couldn't get enough of touching her.

  "Then we were both looking for each other." Which felt right.

  "You got it," he answered, and kissed her while confetti rained down on them like drifting snow. When he lifted his head, his smile teased her. "So I've got my waitress back?"

  "No way." At his raised eyebrow, she grinned and stood on tiptoe to wrap her arms around his neck. "I've got a much bigger job in mind this time around." She saw him anticipate her words and loved that he knew her so perfectly. "How do you feel about taking on a wife?"

  The next moment she found out that he'd beaten her to the idea a long time ago. Reaching into his pants' pocket, he pulled out a small velvet box and held it in front of her.

  "I bought this the morning you left."

  She curled her fingers over his and leaned in to press her mouth softly to his.

  "I'll never leave again."

  The clock struck midnight. Horns blared and balloons fell around them. She whispered to her love the words that end all fairy tales.

  "And they lived happily ever after."

  Tyler spun her around and laughed out loud.

  "You bet your ass they did."

  * * * THE END * * *

  DID YOU PURCHASE THIS BOOK WITHOUT A COVER? If you did, you should be aware it is stolen property as it was reported 'unsold and destroyed' by a retailer. Neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this book.

  First Published 2004

  First Australian Paperback Edition 2004

  ISBN 0-733-55060-6

  AT YOUR SERVICE © 2004 by Amy Jo Albinak

  Philippine Copyright 2004

  Australian Copyright 2004

  New Zealand Copyright 2004

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  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or n
ames. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

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