by Kris Calvert
“For a little while. He has to pull the night shift so he’ll be gone early.”
“I want to meet him.”
“You’re going?” Danielle asked with surprise.
“I’m going.”
“And who might I ask are you going with?”
“I don’t want to talk about that right now. I have a business question for you,” Matt said, changing the subject. He knew Danielle wouldn’t let him off the hook completely. She would circle the wagons and have him talking about his date before he would get a chance to have all of his questions answered.
“What?”
“If I wanted to go into a business partnership with someone who was losing their business, other than paying off debt and receiving a percentage of the business what would I need?”
“Is it a viable business?”
“Probably not. More a labor of love.”
“You’re killing me, Matt. You’ve got to give me details.”
Danielle loved her brother terribly but wasn’t in the mood to be a mind reader. She would never let him get involved in something that could ultimately mess with his long-term goal of giving for the rest of his life.
“I want to partner with Grace Bartel and buy out one half of her wine shop The Seller.”
“Has she made you an offer to partner?”
“No.”
“I’m confused, Matt.”
“She’s losing her wine shop. The insurance company built it back and she got money for the inventory that was lost, but she’s never been able to make it viable again. Not many people in this town have disposable income like they did before the storm.”
Danielle nodded. “What are her marketing plans?”
“I have no idea,” Matt confessed. “She has poets, writers and artists in each Friday night to read or display their works. She feeds hungry people in the alley behind the shop. She’s got a huge heart and it’s inside this tiny little red-headed body.”
Danielle could tell her brother was interested in more than Grace Bartel’s wine shop. He was interested in Grace Bartel. “Does she want you to be her partner?”
“I’ve not asked her. But I thought if I had a good marketing program to present to her with my proposal to buy out half of her shop, she’d be more likely to say yes.”
“Why would she ever say no?” Danielle asked sarcastically. “You’re going to pay off her debts and get her flush—do you even know how much she owes?”
“No.”
“There’s inventory and upkeep, employees and health department regulations. Matt,” she sighed. “You really have no idea what you’re asking to get involved with.”
“I know who I’m getting involved with, Danielle. And sometimes a person with a big heart and a small pocketbook needs a little…”
“What?” she quipped. “Money?”
“Inspiration.”
“What are you asking me to do for you, Matt?”
“Marketing and PR. I need a plan to help grow the business. I’ve helped you establish your business here, now I want you to help her.”
“Don’t you mean us?” she asked.
“What?” Matt was confused and felt like Danielle was starting to circle the wagons.
“You said you wanted to help her. If you’re a partner it’s no longer helping her or helping you. You become an us.”
“Fine then,” Matt announced as he stood and leaned in to kiss his sister. “You’ll be helping us.”
Matt hurried into the wine shop anxious to speak with Grace. He was so excited to tell her what he thought should transpire he didn’t stop to consider what Grace might think of his idea.
He blew through the door, and once he was face to face with her didn’t know where to start, or even exactly what to say.
“Good morning,” Grace said with a smile as she emptied boxes behind the bar. “You’re out early. Can I get you a cup of coffee or something?”
“Good morning.” Matt stood in the doorway not knowing exactly where to begin. He took her up on her offer for coffee on one condition. “Will you sit with me for a moment?”
Grace was surprised to see Matt again. After his reading last week she’d hidden herself in the back room. Matt’s overt gestures made her altogether happier than she had ever been and scared her shitless all at the same time.
“Sure,” she sighed as she tossed the last empty box aside. “I can take a moment.”
Matt watched as she disappeared into the back room and thought carefully about how he wanted to approach the subject of offering to buy fifty percent of her business. When she reappeared with two steaming cups of coffee he took a deep breath and decided he had nothing to lose and everything to gain.
“Grace,” he began as his voice quivered unexpectedly. “I wanted to ask you something.”
Grace’s shoulders rose and fell as she took a deep breath and she hugged her coffee mug with both hands for comfort. “Okay.”
“You mentioned the other night that things weren’t going so well here at the wine shop and I was wondering if there might be something I could do to help.”
Grace smiled and leaned back in her chair, causing it to give off a loud moan. “Oh, Matt. I wish there was something you could do. But I think what I need at this point is a miracle.”
“Okay,” Matt agreed with a smile. “Let’s make a miracle.”
Grace gave him a smile back knowing that everything that surrounded her would soon be gone – again. “How are we going to do that, Matt?”
“I don’t know. Let’s talk about what has to happen for the miracle to occur.”
“Are we speaking abstractly?” Grace asked.
“No.”
“Well then…” she paused. “I don’t know that there’s enough fairy dust in the world to make my miracle happen, Matt.”
“C’mon,” Matt coaxed. “Say it. What needs to happen?”
“I need more than one.”
“How many?”
“Seventy-eight thousand five hundred and twenty two,” she confessed as she looked to her coffee.”
It hadn’t seemed real to Grace – the idea that the bank was going to take everything from her. It hadn’t seemed real until the moment she said the words out loud. It felt frightening, and yet at the same time she felt a little liberated, so she said it again. “Seventy-eight thousand five hundred and twenty-two,” she repeated.
She looked up to see Matt smiling at her and then quickly taking a sip of his coffee. “So that’s it then.”
“Yup. And fifteen cents.”
“It’s not that big of a miracle,” Matt offered.
“It is if you only have the fifteen cents,” Grace laughed.
Matt joined her and then took her hand and gave it a squeeze.
“It’ll be fine,” Grace said. “I’ve survived worse.”
“Like what?”
“Wow, I feel like you should have on a robe and some silks around your neck. This is like a confession,” Grace joked.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“No,” Grace whispered as she looked to their hands, their fingers still entwined. “Why stop now?”
She sat up in her seat as if it would help her gain the courage she would need to tell the whole story. “The night of the storm I’d had a fight with Banks. He was angry with me for not getting a case of wine to his fiancée Jill’s house for a party they were throwing for the Fourth of July. I’d forgotten and he’d fussed at me just enough to make me angry. I called Jill and told her I’d be over to bring the case in a half an hour. The storm had just really started to kick up at that point. She told me not to worry, she’d come by and pick it up.”
Grace looked into Matt’s eyes as she paused and then to her hand as she flexed and recoiled her fingers inside Matt’s huge palm.
“Anyway, by the time she got on the road to come here, the sirens had gone off. Matt got to her place and saw she was gone and hopped in his truck and drove here. We wer
e in the wine cellar when the tornado hit. Matt got here just in time to try to close the door, but the wind and debris pulled it off its hinges. Glass, bottles and crates of wine were flying. Banks did his best to protect us—that’s been his job his whole life, protecting me—but the storm was too strong and we were all injured. Jill died in Banks’ arms. I’d lost so much blood and had an open wound from my chest to my pelvis. When they pronounced Jill dead, Banks thought I was next. It was weeks of recovery in the hospital and years of therapy. For both of us.”
Matt stood from his chair and pulled Grace up with him by her hand. “You are the bravest, strongest woman I’ve ever met.”
“I’m not.” She looked to the floor and saw Matt’s enormous feet and thought of how she watched through the massage table when they’d first met. “I’m damaged and I’m tired, Matt.”
“You’re beautiful and strong,” Matt insisted as he lifted her chin with his hand. “Hardships prepare ordinary people for extraordinary things.”
Grace smiled at him, but knew all the words in the world wouldn’t keep the bank from foreclosing on her business on the fifteenth of July.
“Grace.”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to kiss you. And then I want to tell you something.”
“What?”
“Yes, in that order. Kiss then tell.”
“You’re so romantic, Matt. I feel like you’re giving me the play by play before the action begins.”
Matt walked behind the bar and pulled out a large crate and brought it back to Grace’s side. Without asking, he picked her up and stood her tiny body on top of it so he could look her directly in the eye.
“So this is what it’s like to be tall,” Grace whispered. She knew he was going to kiss her and the air between them was thick with anticipation and electricity.
Matt held her face in his hands and spoke, “How many loved your moments of glad grace, and loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, and loved the sorrows of your changing face.”
“Are you going to kiss me or recite Yeats?”
“Both,” he said as he guided her lips to his.
Matt Trask breathed her in as he kissed her with all the passion he had in his being. Every touch of her naked body, every glance, every chance meeting of their eyes, it all came to this one moment. Matt couldn’t get close enough to her as he pulled her to him over and over again. He parted her lips with his tongue and she sighed as he explored her mouth, accepting him in punctuated gasps.
Matt fed from the sweetness of her lips but wanted more. He picked her up and as she wrapped her legs around his hard body he kicked the crate aside. Grace’s gasp made his growing arousal ache with need as he carried her to the back room.
He sat her on the tasting table and pushed himself between her open legs, rocking her body as he slid his tongue between her parted lips. Grace grabbed his t-shirt and pulled it from his jeans, quickly lifting it up and over his head. His hard body and tight muscles shown in the dim light of the tasting room and Grace was overcome by the tingle that shot through her core.
What Matt wanted most was a taste of Grace on the table, but when she pushed his hand away as he reached under her thin t-shirt, he stopped short of what he wanted – to feel and love Grace Bartel from the inside out.
“Oh God. I’m sorry,” she gasped.
Matt pulled away and showered her face with kisses from her forehead to her chin. “Don’t apologize. Just know that I want you. I want all of you – your humor, your beautiful sense of compassion for others, your fiery temper and your beautiful red-headed body. All of you.”
“What about the rest of me? The imperfection, the debt, the hot mess – that’s the real me.” She sighed as she hugged him tightly. “You don’t want a part of that. No one does.”
Matt took Grace’s face in his hands and leaned their heads together giving her one last kiss. “I do.”
His hard body pressed into Grace and she could feel his sex against her open leg.
“I have a confession to make,” said Grace with a blush.
“What’s that?”
“The day I came into your studio for my massage, I fantasized about how big your hands and feet were and what that meant. I fantasized the entire time you had your hands on my body.”
“I fantasized the entire time I had my hands on your body too,” he admitted.
“Wait. Is that normal? Do you think that about all the women you massage?” Grace asked as she pushed Banks away just enough to see his face clearly.
“No. It had never happened before. That’s how I knew.”
“Knew?”
“That you were special,” Matt replied.
“You’re the special one, Dr. Trask. Why didn’t you tell me you were a literature professor?”
“Because I’m not – at least not anymore. I’m a licensed and practicing masseuse.”
Grace raised her eyebrows in suspicion at Matt. “And thereby hangs a tale.”
Matt picked her up off the table and sat her in a chair, kneeling between her legs.
“So let’s talk about your miracle.”
“C’mon Matt,” she begged. “This has been the best twenty minutes of my life and now you’re going to take me straight back to reality.”
“Seriously, Grace. I want to talk about it.”
Grace looked him up and down and couldn’t decide if she was going to give in to the lovemaking. She knew she had to give in to the talking. “Fine. But you’re going to have to put your shirt back on. It’s too distracting.”
Matt laughed and stood to slip his shirt back over his head while Grace admired the waistband of his boxers peeking from his jeans as they hung sexily from his waist. The bulge she’d felt against her leg was visible to her now that he’d stepped away and Grace was completely turned on.
“Better?” Matt asked as he slid another chair from under the table and sat facing what he hoped would be his new business partner.
“You’re still incredibly hot,” she smiled.
“The teasing is killing me, Gracie. Listen, I have a proposition for you,” Matt began.
“Really? I thought we’d already been through that,” Grace laughed.
“I’m serious.”
“Sorry.”
“I wanted to know if you would be interested in taking on a partner – here at The Seller – fifty-fifty.”
Grace shook her head in confusion. “Matt, did you not understand what I told you earlier? The Seller is going under.”
“It doesn’t have to.”
Grace looked into his eyes as he stared through her. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I would pay the note at the bank, and get The Seller back on its feet and we would be partners. You’d have to teach me more about wine –”
“I doubt that,” Grace interjected. “You seemed pretty knowledgeable the other night.”
“Is that a yes?” he asked as he pulled her hands from her lap and to his chest.
“Matt, where would you get that kind of money?”
“I have it. I’d like to be your partner.”
Grace dropped his hands and began to pace the room. “Are you doing this to get into my pants? Because it’s really not necessary. I think you’re amazing. I mean, before you offered and I’ve not been with many men, really, my roster is short, but…” She paused her nervous rant for only a moment. “Are you serious? Like seriously serious?”
“I am deadly serious,” Matt said as he took her shaking hands again into his. “I would like to give you seventy-eight thousand miracles. I’m sure it’s not half as many as you’ve given out yourself over the years.”
Matt kissed her face and moved to her lips once again. Pulling away he said, “I’ve been watching you. I know what a good soul you are.”
“You’re like a guardian angel,” Grace whispered.
“Just like you’ve been to so many.”
Tears rolled down Grace’s c
heeks and she nodded, unable to choke any words from her mouth.
“Is that a yes?” Matt asked excitedly.
“Yes.”
July 2nd
Kitty Clark waited impatiently for the automatic doors that stood between her and the ER to open with a whoosh. She didn’t have time to wait on anything today. Kitty Clark had some decisions and plans to make. More than anything, she wanted to talk to her best friend.
She waited in the doctor’s lounge for Seth to arrive. She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat on the old green vinyl couch that had seen its fair share of doctors pulling call and doing other unmentionable deeds. She looked to the lockers that had a fresh coat of paint and stood cracked each just an inch to allow for proper drying. Inside were extra socks, shoes and clothes the doctors would bring and or leave behind as the occasion arose. There was usually a toothbrush, mouthwash and a comb or brush of some sort.
Kitty walked to Seth’s locker and began to innocently look through what he’d stashed there. While taking inventory, she popped a couple of his spearmint Tic Tacs in her mouth and continued to dig only to find a crumpled post-it note that read, I don’t know how to say goodbye. I can’t think of any words.
“What are you doing back here, Miss Clark?”
Seth’s booming voice caught Kitty off guard and she immediately jumped and slammed the freshly painted locker completely closed.
“Dude…” Seth droned. “Did you just shut my locker? The locker that the maintenance man in the hallway just said not to close for the next couple of hours?”
“Ummm,” Kitty winced. “I think I did.”
“Damnit, Kit. What are you doing back here anyway?” he asked as he walked to the locker to have a closer look.
“I was waiting for you. I wanted to talk with you about something,” she said as she sat back in the spot she should’ve never left – the couch.
“What?” he asked with exasperation as he put his hands on his hips and sighed as he realized he couldn’t get into his locker without messing the fresh paint.
“Banks. I want to talk with you about Banks,” Kitty said coyly.
“Yeah,” he sighed, still trying to figure out how to open the locker. “What about him?”
