Saving Gracie

by Kristen Ethridge

  Gracie pushed the negative thought aside. She needed to stay positive. Plus, a historic apartment about four stairs away awaited her inspection.

  “Jake? Are you coming?” Melissa’s voice came from inside the apartment.

  “Yeah. On our way.” Jake gave Gracie a playful shove. “Ready to see your new home?”

  “Ready.” Gracie nodded. The dance of the butterflies in her stomach slowed at the sight of his white teeth bared in a boyish grin.

  She was ready to know where her school would operate after next week. She was ready to know where she’d live. She was ready to learn if she received the grant money.

  And above all, she was ready to stop wondering what it would be like if she let her guard down once more for an all-American, local native son.

  * * *

  Jake couldn’t help but notice the light in Gracie’s eyes as she looked around the efficiency apartment. The place reminded him a bit of his own snug lodgings in the former carriage house at his grandmother’s estate. Not a lot of room, but clean and bright and large enough for her to be comfortable here. And happy.

  Seeing Gracie’s smile made his own mouth turn up at the corners.

  Jake’s thoughts turned briefly from the intriguing woman in front of him to his father. See, Old Man, combining some compassion with your career can be done. I can’t wait to get into that board meeting tomorrow. I’m going to be able to show them the condo deal is done and I didn’t have to hurt anyone in the process. Trust isn’t necessarily bad for business.

  Now, Jake needed Gracie to reconsider his lunch invitation. Last night on the beach, he told her how he knew she cared about her students and they cared about her. But he carefully guarded the thought that he’d started to see Gracie in a new light.

  Now that things seemed to be working out for both of them, he could allow himself to admit that Gracie’s students weren’t the only ones who cared about the feisty teacher with the sun-kissed skin. Before, he’d pushed those thoughts aside. He had to remember he still needed to pass muster before the Peoples Property Group board.

  Even with that thought foremost in his mind, Jake couldn’t help but notice the other businessperson in the equation. Gracie didn’t take things for granted. She’d come with her family to Port Provident to create a new life. She’d built a business through hard work. And when that business came under threat, she hadn’t lied and played games the way the last client he’d worked with in Austin had. Gracie tackled the challenge head-on.

  More than that, she’d relied on her faith and been open about it. Jake had never met an entrepreneur who consulted God instead of going to a board of advisors. He’d been raised to believe that churches were nothing more than buildings and showing up on Sundays was nothing more than an appointment on the calendar. You needed to see and be seen, then move on with the other six days in the week.

  Jake knew he didn’t want to do business in the same cold, calculating manner as his father had. That conviction made him leave Port Provident in the first place, and even though his law practice hadn’t worked out, his convictions hadn’t changed. But Gracie’s partnership with God challenged Jake’s ideas of corporate relationships.

  Somehow, Jake knew that long after the ink dried on the City Council’s resolution and they’d gone their separate ways, Gracie would not disappear from his mind.

  “Jake?” Melissa pulled him back into the here and now. “As her current landlord, you’d be able to get a reference pulled together for Gracie, right? Could you do it by this afternoon?”

  Jake noticed Gracie’s shoulders stiffen at Melissa’s question. She remembered Mitch’s admonishment the other day. He’d deferred to Mitch then, but knew he now needed to step up and be the leader of Peoples Property Group in both name and in action.

  “Sure. I’ll call Anne. She or one of our other administrative assistants probably already has a reference letter on file that can be customized for Gracie. I’ll have her fax it over to you.”

  Beyond the effect Melissa’s real estate listings had on Gracie, wouldn’t Carter Porter and the rest of the City Council be surprised when he showed up with an actual solution? Jake knew he’d pretty much surprised himself by taking this assignment seriously and solving the issue for both parties. Surely revealing this to the board of directors would demonstrate his work ethic. He’d found a solution when the local government only expected a minimal effort.

  But could he explain to his hard-nosed board of directors that he had the pastor of a church to thank for the inspiration behind the plan?

  “Gracie, you’re smiling. Do you like this location?” The sight made Jake even more glad he’d called Melissa.

  “I do, Jake.” She walked to the front window and looked out across downtown. “Thank you. I hope I can make this work.”

  “Great.” The real estate agent picked up a black leather portfolio off the table and began to write down a few notes. “I’ll be waiting for the go-ahead call from you, Gracie, and the reference letter from you, Jake. We can present the offer this afternoon.”

  The three of them headed back downstairs. Gracie stopped a few steps down the sidewalk and looked back at the building.

  A gulf breeze caused the wide ruffle of her long white sundress to flutter around her ankles. The sun’s rays brushed across Gracie’s shoulders, causing her cappuccino complexion to take on a golden glow. Another small puff of wind picked up the ends of her thick ponytail, then dropped it down in a casual tousle.

  Jake couldn’t turn away. “Gracie? You sure I can’t take you to lunch? We’re less than a block from the Starfish Grill.” He couldn’t stand to let it end.

  “I really should get back and start plugging in those numbers, Jake. I’d like to have an answer for Melissa today. Plus, I still need to go to the post office and check my mail.” Her dark eyes met his and dropped kindling on the fire inside him.

  “You can’t think on an empty stomach. I’ll even pick up the tab. And then, we’ll swing by the post office on our way back to your school.”

  “I don’t know, Jake.” Gracie’s gaze began to dart around in a distracted manner.

  “Yes, you do. Don’t look for a reason to say no. I’ve made you an offer you can’t refuse.” Jake unlocked the truck. “Take the cannoli.”

  “Take the what?” Her head tilted, one eyebrow raised skyward, the other crinkled inward toward her nose. Confusion was spelled out gently across every inch of her face.

  “Cannoli. It’s a line from The Godfather. I said I’d made you an offer you couldn’t refuse...” Jake trailed off, seeing she still didn’t know what he alluded to. “It’s a movie.”

  “I haven’t seen a whole lot of movies. When I was younger, my parents were pretty strict about what Gloria and I could watch. And now that I’m older, I just don’t have the time.”

  “But do you have the time to go to lunch with me?” He opened the passenger-side door with a small flourish.

  She raised her hands halfway, in an abbreviated gesture of surrender. “You drive a hard bargain, Jake.”

  “Always.”

  Maybe he did have some of his old man in him after all.

  * * *

  Jake’s weekly dinners with Nana usually took place at the Starfish Grill. He knew what he wanted to eat before he even walked through the door. Gracie, however, took her time. She opened the menu, closed it to read the specials on the back, then opened the folder again without ever saying a word.

  “Want me to recommend something?” Jake offered.

  “That would be great. I’ve never been here before, although its reputation precedes it.” She looked over the top of the menu. Her warm, brown eyes stoked a reminder of his favorite item on the dessert tray, molten chocolate cake.

  “Do you prefer seafood, or an entrée like chicken?”

  “I like
seafood. I’m always pushing Mamí and Papí to add more daily specials with local catches at their place, Huarache’s.”

  “Then you’ll love the snapper à la Starfish. It’s red snapper, caught right out there in the Gulf of Mexico, grilled to perfection and topped with a cream sauce containing shrimp, scallops and asparagus.”

  “Sounds rich.” She closed the menu and laid it gently on the table. “Decision made.”

  “You won’t regret it. I usually tell myself to try something different, but then I remember how heavenly the snapper is. My order never changes.”

  The waitress came and brought the Caesar salads they’d decided on as an appetizer, then took the order for two snappers à la Starfish.

  Jake watched Gracie from across the table. Her posture seemed more relaxed than he’d ever seen it, including during their walk on the beach.

  “I want to thank you for setting up the showings with Melissa, Jake.” She speared a piece of romaine lettuce. “That went above and beyond what I could have expected from this whole mess.”

  Jake gave complete honesty in return for her compliment. “Look, Gracie, I didn’t give much thought to how presenting that eviction notice would affect you. But in the meantime, I was forced to think about it. But I don’t want to make you uncomfortable right now by talking about the eviction paper. Let’s just enjoy lunch as friends.”

  “Thank you. Your big meeting is tomorrow, right?” She took the opportunity to change the subject.

  “Yes. I’ll be presenting my work on the Provident Plaza Condominiums to the board of directors of the Peoples Property Group as an interview of sorts. I’ve been the interim CEO for a little while now, but I need their approval to make the position official. It’s more or less a formality. The company is run by the family, but the board has to give their thumbs-up. In my case, though, there’s a lot of bad history between my father and me that needs to be overcome. Sometimes I’m afraid the board will dig up some second cousin of mine and say they’d rather have him as CEO than me because he comes with less baggage.”

  The waitress brought their entrées and set them carefully on the table. The smell of garlic and spices combined with the sweet aroma of pan-fried snapper almost made Jake lose his train of thought.

  “This looks wonderful, Jake. I can’t wait to taste it.” Gracie pushed her fork into the fish and swirled the bite around in the sauce. “I remember you said you’d been living in Austin. What brought you back to Port Provident? The job?”

  “After my dad died, Nana asked me to come home. My law practice in Austin had folded and, as I told you, I’d filed for bankruptcy because of it. I needed a job to pay off my settlement. I didn’t have any good reasons to tell her no.”

  “Your family’s company has been around for a long time. I guess you always knew you’d run it some day, right?”

  “That’s a logical assumption, but no.” Jake assembled a final bite of the succulent snapper as he talked. “My father and I didn’t get along. I went to law school just so I wouldn’t have to work for the company. He didn’t care who he stepped on, as long as he got his way. After eighteen years of growing up with that, I left for college and never looked back.”

  The years peeled away as he spoke. In his mind, Jake saw every detail of that last showdown with his father before leaving for the University of Texas. “In my heart, I always wondered how we could be related. I’ve never been able to treat anyone—especially family—the way my father treated his only son. I don’t have that innate ruthless distrust. Anyway, there came a point when I wanted to remove myself from his presence and stop the doubts in my head about why we never got along. I needed a change of scenery to do that.”

  “So that’s why tomorrow is so important to you? You need to prove your father and those who listened to him wrong.” Gracie laid her knife and fork carefully at the top of the plate. “I understand the need to prove doubters wrong.”

  She reached her hand across the table, then covered Jake’s own and gave it a quick pat. The spontaneous gesture of solidarity surprised him. “I once had someone in my life who said I was important to him,” she said. “Then, little by little, David started to treat me as though who I was, where I came from and the people who made up my friends and family weren’t good enough for him. He thought I should have been grateful to him to become a part of his world and leave my own behind. It took a while, but I had to learn to stand up for myself and the things that made me the person I am.”

  Jake almost couldn’t believe Gracie’s story. What kind of man could tell a woman he cared about her, but she’d have to change in order to keep his affections? The cruelty inherent in that made Jake think back to a different relationship in his own life—the one with his father. He never knew exactly why his father treated him coldly, but from his earliest memories, he knew he didn’t measure up.

  Jake knew what it felt like to be rejected for who you were, and the knowledge that someone would try to crush Gracie’s fiery spirit and the dreams that her family and culture had shaped infuriated him. Jake had brought Gracie to see new properties today as an olive branch, an opportunity to do the right thing. But now, he wanted more. He wanted to protect Gracie from people who didn’t show her the proper respect—a mistake he’d made when he first showed up on her doorstep.

  Frustrated, he pushed back from the table, the shove to the chair having to substitute for the shove he’d like to give this David character.

  Learning this new facet of Gracie’s past made Jake see just why she wasn’t backing down in the present. Jake had once doubted Gracie and her motivations. Not anymore.

  Tomorrow, he hoped the board of directors of Peoples Property Group would say the same about him.

  Chapter Six

  Gracie shuffled through the collection of envelopes in her post office box. She saw letters from relatives in Mexico, a few bills, and some other correspondence—but not the one item she really hoped for.

  Another pound of weight settled on Gracie’s shoulders with each step she took back to the truck.

  “So?” Jake’s good-natured inquiry came as soon as Gracie opened the door.

  “The letter still hasn’t come.” She held on to the door handle and boosted herself inside. “I can’t move forward with leasing that new place until I know if I’ve been awarded the grant. Without it, I’m back at square one. I hate this.”

  She would give anything to lose this heaviness and stand up straight again.

  Jake pushed a button on the dashboard, silencing the stereo system. “What do you mean?”

  “At the beginning of the week, I was the proud owner of a small business that both made ends meet—albeit tightly—and made a difference. Now, all I can think about is how I don’t have enough money to continue my work.” She placed her elbow on the edge of the door and rested her chin in the cup of her hand, looking blankly at the ocean as they turned onto Gulfview Boulevard. “I never used to think about money all the time. I used to believe that, like the lilies of the field, God would provide everything I needed.”

  Jake steered the car into a U-turn. “What’s changed, Gracie?”

  “What do you mean?” Jake’s sudden deviation from the route back to her school made Gracie’s sense of control fall even more.

  “I mean, why can’t you trust anymore?” He continued west on Gulfview, toward the end of the island. “It seems to me that not much has changed. You were pinning your hopes on that grant check long before my company’s condo project ever entered the picture.”

  The reality of Jake’s words hit Gracie with full force, buffeting her with the impact of his truth.

  “Gracie, when I was in Austin watching my career and my law practice go through the shredder, I thought I couldn’t stop moving. I was afraid that if I quit pushing forward, I’d lose my momentum and it would all crumble. It all fell apart anywa
y, and when the last card came down, the exhaustion of not taking the time for myself consumed me.” Jake pulled the car into the entrance to Surfside Beach. “You said your sister was here at the beach. I’m taking you for a break.”

  Gracie began to protest, then stopped herself. Maybe Jake had the right idea. Maybe she needed a few minutes to refresh.

  “Thank you, Jake,” she said simply.

  “Which one is your sister’s car?” Jake pointed at the front edge of the sand-covered parking lot.

  “Um...that one.” Gracie scanned the rows of cars. “The red Chevy SUV in the far corner.”

  Jake gave the truck some gas, pushing it across the top of a patch of powdery sand. The maneuver marked Jake as an experienced beach driver. Going any slower on the soft surface would have been a sure way to get the heavy vehicle stuck.

  “Here you go.” He pulled up behind Gloria’s car, applied the brake and unbuckled his seat belt. “Do you see her out there?”

  “Actually, I do. That purple umbrella near the shore is hers.” Gracie looked forward to seeing no-nonsense Gloria, who always knew just what to say when her little sister needed words of wisdom. At the same time, Gracie felt reluctant to leave Jake’s presence. He’d proven to be so much different than her original assessment.

  He wasn’t a heartless privileged son. Jake Peoples was a man who wanted to do the right thing. He wanted to take over his family’s company so he could set the record straight about his own life and to ensure that the business was run fairly. He believed in people, even sometimes to his own detriment. And he would go the extra mile to do the right thing.

  They came from different worlds, but she and Jake had a lot in common.

  The realization made Gracie smile.

  “You look really pretty when you do that, you know.”

  “Do what?”

  “Smile. It lights up your face. You’re a beautiful woman, Gracie. Especially when you forget to be worried.”

  “Oh, Jake, I don’t know about that.”