by Maddie James
Beside him, the door handle jiggled and the door swung open to Gracie’s shop. Carson stood still, waiting, barely allowing himself to breathe.
She stepped out, a huge watering can in hand, and moved toward the edge of the street where she started watering two large flower boxes full of pansies. Carson watched her with fascination. He decided right then that he really liked her hair down, not in the French roll she often twisted her locks up into. Tonight, over the t-shirt, she wore a short, wrap-around robe of pale blue. Even though the robe covered the t-shirt quite well, it still only hit her little below mid-thigh, and didn’t do a lot to hide those gorgeous legs.
Thankfully.
With a long sigh, he let his gaze stretch all the way down to her bare feet and painted toenails. Yes, he was sort of glad about that. Being a leg man, he wasn’t the least bit disappointed in the fact that Gracie had decided to show her legs a bit.
She moved to the other side of the flower boxes, nearly facing him now, and Carson decided not to play voyeur any longer. He stepped away from the building and closer to the flowers.
“Those pesky, thirsty plants. Always need the water, huh?” he said rather loudly. Immediately, he wished he’d taken another tack.
Startled, Gracie jerked her head up and let out a little shriek. One hand flew to her chest while the other dropped the watering can sharply on her toe.
“Ow!”
“Damn!”
Carson rushed forward.
Gracie stumbled backward and sat on the side of the flower box, her chest still heaving. She pulled the injured foot up and laid it on her right knee, then looked up at Carson. “You scared the hell out of me!”
He sat across from her on the opposite flower box. “God, Gracie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—“
She waved him off and reached for her foot. “It’s okay. Just dropped the damned thing on my toe.”
Carson reached over and righted the metal watering can, then also reached for Gracie’s foot. “Let me see.”
“It’s okay.” She shook her head and covered her foot with her hands.
“No. Please.”
Reaching out, Carson gently took the sole of her foot in his hands, cradling it in his palm. Her hands slid back. Lifting his gaze to her face, he made eye contact with Gracie as he carefully ran his hand along the top of the arch of her foot.
She grimaced. “Ow!”
“Where does it hurt? Here?” He pushed along the top of her toes.
“The two middle ones.”
He probed some more.
She jerked her foot back. “Ouch!”
“There?”
“What do you think?” she bit back.
Carson laughed. “Yeah. I think there.”
“Is it broken?” Her voice was softer as she asked, leaning forward as if to inspect the toe.
“Hard to tell,” he answered her.
“It hurts.”
With her foot still cradled in his palm, Carson began a slow caress of both the bottom and top of her foot. She started to jerk back a bit but he held her foot a little tighter, gently resisting the pull. He didn’t know why, but he wanted to touch her, to make her feel better. And as he continued the slow massage of her foot and each of its tiny appendages, he resisted the temptation to look up into her face.
It seemed the night had suddenly gone still around them. Not a breath; not a breeze. Nothing moved. Except his heart, which was beginning a slow and steady thrum in his chest.
Then suddenly, the night seemed full of just the two of them.
Finally, he looked up a Gracie. “Better?”
Her eyes were big and full of question. The expression on her face was difficult to discern. Quickly, she broke the connection between them and withdrew her foot. Carson dropped his hands to his side.
“Yes.” She cleared her throat and stood. “It’s...it’s fine now. Thank you.”
“Just a pretty good whack, I guess. I don’t think it’s broken.”
In the next movement, she gathered the watering can and turned toward the door. “Guess we’ll see. It’s late. I should be getting inside.”
Carson nodded. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Yes. I’m fine.” She started for her door, a slight hobble to her step.
Carson stepped up behind her. “I really am sorry I startled you. I didn’t mean to do that.”
As they both stood in front of her door, she turned and faced him again. “I know. It’s okay. I’m sure it will be fine by morning.” Then she offered him one of those little, uncertain grins he liked.
He nodded and she reached for the doorknob.
“Wait.”
She looked at him, questioning.
“I, uh, Friday night I’m giving a little party. Just a few of my friends from Louisville. To kick off the opening of the café. I’d like for you to come. That is, if you don’t have other plans.”
Suddenly, the thought occurred to him that it was quite possible she might have other plans. Like a date or something. He didn’t like the notion of that.
She bit her lip and glanced away.
“Just a small get-together,” he added. “Izzie will be there, too.”
She looked back at him and continued to chew her lip.
“Even if for a little while?”
Then after another lengthy moment, she dropped her chin in a nod. “I’ll be out of town Wednesday through Friday on a buying trip. If I’m not too tired when I get back late Friday afternoon, I’ll come by,” she finally said.
Then she twisted the doorknob and walked back into her shop. Carson wondered why all of a sudden the night felt so empty again.
Chapter Seven
Murphy’s Law must truly exist.
A storm delayed Gracie’s flight into Boston on Wednesday until way after midnight, which in turn forced her to take a cab instead of the shuttle to her hotel, a cab for which she had to pay an exorbitant price. The cabbie was new and didn’t know how to get to the hotel, made several wrong turns, and once finally there, charged her for exactly every wrong turn he’d made. Then, the hotel desk clerk told her she had no knowledge of Gracie’s reservation. Luckily, Gracie produced the confirmation number post haste and they were forced to give her a nice suite for her original price.
It was the only good thing that happened the entire trip.
Thursday, she acquired a touch of food poisoning; she assumed the culprit was the marinated calamari she’d eaten for lunch. The remainder of her evening was spent in the bathroom. Only a little shopping was done that day.
Friday morning, she had a dispute with a vendor at a lingerie show and ended up abruptly canceling the order she’d come specifically to Boston to get. Angry at herself, she almost missed her flight home, then found out that due to more weather disturbances, her flight was re-routed through Atlanta where she endured a four hour layover.
Besides all that, her toe had turned black and was still mighty tender. She was almost certain it was broken.
Needless to say, by the time she was ready to pull into her parking spot behind the shop around ten o’clock Friday evening, Gracie knew the only thing on her agenda for the remainder of the night would be to fall into bed and oblivion for the next ten hours or so.
Except there was one teensy-weensy problem.
There was no empty parking space behind her shop. Not even the space reserved for her marked “private parking.” Carson’s red Corvette was parked in his space, however, right next to it.
There were no empty spaces behind either shop.
Or even on the street in front of the shop.
What the heck was going on?
Finally, her anger and her blood pressure rising, she parked three blocks away in the bank parking lot, retrieved her luggage from the trunk of her Miata, then hurriedly wheeled and hobbled her way up the sidewalk, grumbling all the while.
This last hurdle was not putting her in a good mood.
For the life of her, she couldn’t figure
out who would have the audacity to park in her private parking space behind her own home!
She was tired, dammit!
She’d had a helluva past three days.
Her toe hurt.
And she just wanted to go home. To bed! Such a simple thing. That’s all she wanted.
Before the night was through, someone was going to cough up some explanations. The more she thought about it, the angrier she became.
About a block away from her shop, she heard the music. It did nothing to lift her spirits.
Party. Damn. Someone was having a party.
Party?
Bah humbug! She felt like such a Scrooge.
Friday night?
Carson?
Stopping abruptly, she cocked her head to one side. No, certainly it wasn’t Carson. A small little get-together with friends, he’d said. Izzie would be there, too.
Something, wasn’t right. It smelled a mite...fishy.
Grasping her stomach at the thought, Gracie moved on.
Slowly, she walked closer to the café, the music growing louder. And louder. Glancing toward the street, she noticed a city police cruiser making a slow progression past the shops. Both hers and Carson’s.
She picked up her step. Alternative rock filled her ears.
Finally, she came to a halt directly in front of Carson’s café. The door was open, music and laughter and some kind of ping-ping-pong-poinging sound poured out to the street. What in the world?
Gracie glanced through the window. People. Everywhere. Wall to wall.
People with drinks.
People playing cards.
People laughing.
People playing some sort of video games on huge-ass, wall-mounted television screens? Soccer was on a couple of other screens on the opposite side of the room.
What happened to quaint and Victorian?
Then she glanced at the window. Painted across the large, shop-front window, in huge red and green script, were the words Geekmeister’s CyberCafé.
Gracie grimaced. I must be totally engrossed in my own small world. What the hell is a geekmeister?
She didn’t want to know.
What she did want to know, however, was the reason why Carson Price had lied to her.
He had turned the other half of her building into a bar!
Then she heard her name being shouted from somewhere beyond her vision. She searched the crowd in Carson’s “café,” trying to figure out who would have the audacity to call her into such a place.
* * * *
“Gracie!”
Carson glanced sharply up from where he was mixing a Bahama Mama when he heard Amie yell out Gracie’s name. The moment of truth was upon him. Thank God he’d had the where-with-all to invite Amie. She was a party demon and already in love with the concept of Geekmeisters. He was sure he’d already wooed her to his side.
Watching as Amie made her way through the crowd, drink in hand, Carson knew Gracie wouldn’t be as easily convinced. In fact, he’d been dreading this encounter the entire evening. And from the looks of things, Gracie wasn’t too keen on what she was seeing.
Gracie gestured and glanced agitatedly from side to side as she spoke to Amie, her faced animated. The body language wasn’t positive, that was for sure. Amie, in turn, smiled and excitedly pointed at this and that around the room, as if doing a hard sell on her friend.
“C’mon, Amie,” he whispered under his breath. “Convince her.” He wasn’t quite so sure of the reason he wanted so badly for Amie to convince Gracie that Geekmeister’s was on okay thing, he just knew that it mattered. The most likely reason, of course, was because he wanted to stay here. Subconsciously, he thought there might be another reason he wasn’t quite as quick to explore.
So he stayed put behind the bar, watching for an adverse reaction from Gracie. She didn’t look much past Amie, who was talking fast and furiously now, it appeared. Then Gracie looked up and her gaze met head-on with his and locked for several seconds.
Uh-oh.
The next instant she made a bee-line directly toward the bar, suitcase still in tow, dodging party-goers as she made her slow, half-limping progression across the room.
When she reached him, she narrowed her gaze a bit, tilted her chin in an effort of authority, threw back her shoulders and shouted loudly over the music and laughter. “Mr. Price, may I have a word with you?” She glanced from right to left then, and continued, “In private.”
Mr. Price.
He didn’t like the sound of that but decided to just go with it. Nodding, he returned, “Of course. This way.”
Carson led the way to the back room and didn’t look back as Gracie followed. When they reached the storage room-slash-office, he turned to let her pass then closed the door behind the two of them.
The music was muffled; the atmosphere inside the room was still charged. It had nothing to do with the party.
“How was your trip?” He thought he’d try to get things off on a positive note.
“Lousy,” she bit back. “I got food poisoning. I had a four-hour layover in Atlanta. I lost a contract. And my toe is black.”
That wasn’t the note he wanted to start off with.
“I’m sorry to hear—”
“And then, Mr. Price, I come home to find out I can’t even park in my own parking space and that my tenant next door is a liar and has turned my building into a bar. A bar! My God, what kind of low-life to you expect to drag in here!”
Tenant. Liar.
He didn’t like the sound of those words, either.
Carson put up his hands. “Whoa. Wait a minute. Let’s talk about this.”
She harrumphed and crossed her arms over her chest.
Carson decided to continue. “I have no intentions of pulling in degenerates off the street. This is as much of a family thing as it is a bar.”
“Family thing?” she screeched. Her arms fell to her side and her eyes widened as if in disbelief of his words.
He was beginning to think this wasn’t a good time to talk to her about it.
“Yes, family thing. It’s just a glorified arcade, Gracie, with computer-generated video games and plasma screens and the option of a drink and a sandwich while you’re here. Kids can go off and do their thing while parents relax with a glass of wine or a beer and watch the game. We can have birthday parties and music on the weekends. Family entertainment, Gracie. That’s all it is.”
“That’s certainly not what it looks like tonight.”
“Well, tonight is just some of my friends and their friends...”
“And their friends,” she continued, glancing back at the door. Carson had to admit more people came than he’d expected.
“I certainly hope,” she continued, “that you’re not intending to be up making this racket all hours of the night because I, for one, am extremely tired and would like about ten hours of sleep.” She turned toward the door, then whipped around again. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow, Mr. Price. I’m not in the right frame of mind to discuss business at the moment. But I want to tell you one thing, I’m not pleased about this. Not one bit.”
Business.
With that, she left, slamming the door.
Carson stared after her. “Well, that certainly went well,” he muttered to himself.
* * * *
Gracie told herself that she was simply going to block it all from her head, consume a fistful of ibuprofen, and pray that sleep would not elude her this night. Tomorrow, when her head was clear and she could think rationally, she’d deal with Mr. Carson Price.
Yes, that’s what she would do.
But first, she had to get her ducks all in a row. There was no way she was going to let Carson Price’s business next door ruin her business—the business she’s worked so hard to build.
Punching her pillow and wadding it up until a tight little ball, she shoved it under her head, closed her eyes tightly, and tried to erase the scene still etched in her mind from moments earlier.<
br />
A bar. No way.
Carson Price was insane.
There had to be some way out of that lease. Tomorrow, she would find it.
* * * *
“What do you mean there is nothing we can do?” Gracie paced from one corner of Jim Gray’s massive oak desk to the other, her head shaking and her arms firmly crossed over her chest. “There has got to be something, some loophole. Look again.”
“Nope. Gracie, look, I told you. It’s clean as a pin. No loopholes. Everything above board, no tricks, no fine print. Nothing to make the lease null and void. Your signature clinched this deal. I’m sorry, hon, but he’s got the place for a year. If you breach the contract, you’re gonna owe him a heck of a lot of money.”
Stopping, Gracie turned to look at Jim, her father’s childhood friend and her attorney. He’d never once steered her wrong before. There was no reason not to believe him now.
“I was so stupid to sign the lease that he drew up.”
“Wouldn’t have been any different had he signed the one you drew up, Gracie. A signed contract is a signed contract. You willingly put your signature there. He just tightened up a few things and made a couple of others a little broad, all to his advantage, of course, but nothing out of the ordinary.”
“So it’s legal.”
“Every bit of it.”
“But he said he was going to open a café.”
“And he did.”
“But he didn’t!”
“Oh, yes, Gracie, he did.”
“But not the kind I thought he was going to open!”
“That’s your perception, honey, not his. He did what he said he was going to do. Even wrote into the lease that he planned to apply for a liquor license.”
Gracie threw up her hands. “Well, I assumed he was going to serve wine and cheese or something!”
“Well, he decided to serve or something,” Jim replied.
Gracie wanted to scream and shout and stomp her feet on the floor and throw a temper tantrum. She hated being frustrated. And she hated being duped all the more.
Finally, she plopped into the leather armchair across from Jim’s desk and slumped into a most unlady-like posture. “I give up.”
“You could fight it.”
She arched a brow and sat up a little straighter. “I could?” Maybe there was hope yet.
