Amazing Gracie Read online

  Bobby Ray remained stonily silent, which was answer enough. It was also warning enough to Kevin not to bring Gracie’s name into the conversation. If he told his cousin to stay away from her, it would be like waving a red flag under his nose. Bobby Ray could charm the devil, if he put his mind to it. There was no telling what he’d do if he thought Kevin cared about Gracie. Kevin wouldn’t have her caught in the crossfire between them.

  “Get out,” he said finally.

  “Not just yet,” Bobby Ray said, facing him stubbornly. “I still need that cash.”

  “You’ll get it when pigs fly.”

  “Blast it, Kevin, that money’s mine.”

  “And you’ll get every penny…eventually.”

  Bobby Ray looked as if he might explode again, but he reined himself in. “What if I brought the paperwork by so you could check it yourself? It’s a sound business decision, Kev. You’ll see that.”

  Recalling what Gracie had told him about giving Bobby Ray the benefit of the doubt once in a while, he nodded reluctantly. “Okay, bring it by.” He met his cousin’s gaze evenly. “Just tell me one thing, though. Why would you want to do business with a man who’s sleeping with your wife?”

  Bobby Ray came up out of his chair like a boxer heading for the center of the ring. “Where’d you hear that? It’s a damned lie.”

  His quick reaction only confirmed Helen’s report, as far as Kevin was concerned. “Where I heard it’s not important,” Kevin said. “I can see it’s true. Is she worth it?”

  His cousin’s expression turned rueful. “Yeah, she is. Isn’t that a kick in the pants? I walked out on Marianne to make a point. Ginny was just a plain, old mistake. Now I’ve finally found a woman I could stay married to and it turns out she’s got a wandering eye.”

  “Maybe that’s the fascination. You don’t have a hold on her. She’s a challenge.”

  “Could be,” he agreed. “But it feels like love to me and I’m going to fight for her.”

  “Is it love or pure cussedness?”

  “Could be a little of both,” Bobby Ray conceded without rancor.

  “And you think going into business with her lover will help?”

  “If I can tie him up designing jewelry to meet the demand on the shopping channel, maybe he won’t have any time left for her,” Bobby Ray explained.

  “An interesting strategy,” Kevin agreed. “Risky, though. What if he gets enough money to take her away to some fancy Caribbean island for a quickie divorce?”

  “At least I’ll have given it my best shot.” He grinned. “And if he makes that much, then I’ll be rolling in dough myself. I’ve got the deal worked in my favor.”

  Kevin actually chuckled at that. “Damn, Bobby Ray, maybe you have some business sense in that thick head of yours after all.”

  “Always told you I did,” he said, as he headed for the door. “If I’d stayed in school, I’d be head of a multinational corporation by now, instead of running to you for pocket change all the time. I’ll bring the papers by later today.”

  When he was gone, Kevin sighed. He didn’t envy his cousin being so hung up on a woman that he’d let her tie his life into knots. In fact, he couldn’t imagine letting anyone get under his skin like that.

  Of course, Gracie MacDougal’s kiss had been mighty tempting. Downright irresistible, in fact. He could see how a thing like that might sneak up on a man. He’d have to be very, very careful how often he indulged himself.

  Gracie discovered she liked digging in the dirt. After years of spending her days in prim little suits, neat as a pin from head to toe, she thoroughly enjoyed getting filthy. She’d started spending every morning after breakfast weeding her garden. She’d even gone to the bargain store for some cheap shorts and a few T-shirts.

  She gardened with abandon, too. She got on her hands and knees and poked around between the flowers Kevin had planted, looking for those clever little weeds that had dared to spring up overnight. She plucked them out and tossed them aside with startling ferocity. It felt good to have control over something. Goodness knew, the rest of her life was out of her hands.

  At the moment, Kevin Patrick Daniels controlled her destiny and she didn’t like it. She didn’t like it one bit. If she’d run across another available house that was half as interesting as that old Victorian, she would have snatched it up in a heartbeat and avoided all future dealings with him.

  Except, maybe, for an occasional kiss. She really hadn’t minded that kiss at all. It had been an explosive experiment. In fact, she’d thought of little else for the past twelve hours. She’d even dreamed about it and awakened as hot and bothered as if it had just happened.

  Let that be a warning, she told herself. Dealing with Kevin from now on was going to be very tricky. The man apparently had enough time on his hands to plan all sorts of sneaky strategies for distracting her from her goals.

  Even this garden was a distraction, she thought, wiping perspiration from her brow and leaving behind what she imagined was a streak of dirt. She ought to be inside plotting strategy of her own. She ought to be dressing up and slipping down to the county courthouse to pore over property records. Something was bound to give away the information she needed about the real owner of that house.

  In fact, the more she thought about it, the more convinced she became that if she was ever to get her hands on that property, she was going to have to do some down and dirty investigative work.

  She yanked one last weed out of the garden, then wiped her hands on her shirttail, grimacing at the mess. She would kill to be able to ship her clothes off to the hotel laundry about now, instead of having to do them all herself.

  “Get used to it,” she muttered as she headed inside to shower. If she opened that bed-and-breakfast, she was going to be doing more laundry than she’d ever dreamed of…personally.

  An hour later she was all dressed up in a pair of linen slacks, a silk blouse, and leather flats. Casual but businesslike, she concluded, surveying herself in the mirror. She added her favorite Cartier gold earrings and a matching bracelet, a set she’d splurged on one Christmas. Now she just had to practice her charm to see which little birdie in the courthouse she could coax into singing.

  The drive to the county seat in Montross along Route 3—Historyland Highway, as it was dubbed—took her past the entrance to George Washington’s birthplace, then past the turnoff to Stratford, birthplace of Robert E. Lee. She was in Montross with its oak-shaded square in less than a half hour.

  She studiously avoided the temptations presented by a couple of antique shops and a display of bedding plants. She found the new courthouse complex a quarter-mile or so behind the impressive old courthouse with its faded brick facade and white pillars. The modern structure was far less interesting, far more institutionalized. Still, there was the promise of computerized information inside, and that was all that mattered. Maybe later she’d take the time to poke around in the local museum for some historical perspective on the property she wanted to buy.

  A Mrs. Wilkes, according to the nameplate on her desk, offered to help her in the tax assessor’s office.

  “Do you have the location? A plot number?”

  “No, just an address,” Gracie said.

  “Okay, let’s see if we can work from that.”

  Her eyes seemed to widen ever so slightly when Gracie gave her the address. “Yes, of course. One moment, please.”

  Rather than going to the computer, Mrs. Wilkes disappeared behind a closed door. When she returned, empty-handed, she smiled brilliantly at Gracie. “It won’t be long now.”

  “Aren’t you going to check it on the computer?”

  “I have someone checking in back,” she assured her. “Why don’t you have a seat?”

  Since she couldn’t think of any alternative, Gracie sat. She tapped her foot, glancing repeatedly at her watch and the clock on the wall. Ten minutes passed. Twenty.

  Twenty-two minutes later precisely, the main door opened and in strolled
Kevin. He winked at Mrs. Wilkes. “Thanks, Etta Mae.”

  He slipped onto the seat next to Gracie. “Hey, darlin’.”

  Gracie shot a wicked look at the woman she’d previously thought to be so kind. “I suppose she called you,” she said sourly to Kevin.

  “Of course she did.”

  “Why?”

  “I figured you’d be turning up here sooner or later. I asked her to call.”

  “And naturally, like all women, she couldn’t wait to do you a favor.”

  “Etta Mae and I go way back, don’t we, Etta Mae?”

  “Way back,” she agreed, beaming at him. She stood up. “Think I’ll go to lunch now.”

  “Good to see you,” Kevin called after her.

  “You, too. Anything else I can do, you let me know.”

  “I surely will.”

  “Is there anybody in this entire county who doesn’t owe you a favor?” Gracie grumbled.

  “None I can think of,” he conceded. “How about some lunch? There’s a place that serves the best North Carolina barbeque you’ve ever put in your mouth not too far from here.”

  “I don’t want to have lunch with you.”

  He relaxed in the chair next to her, crossed his legs at the ankles, and seemed pretty much settled in. “Suit yourself.”

  “I’m going to get that house, Kevin. Get used to it.”

  He grinned. “If you say so.”

  “I never back away from a challenge.”

  “Me, either.”

  She slanted a sideways look at him. “North Carolina barbeque, huh?”

  “The best.”

  “You lead. I’ll follow in my car.”

  “I don’t think so, darlin’. It’s just down the road apiece. We might as well go in one car.”

  “You don’t trust me, do you?”

  “Not from here to the door,” he agreed.

  “That’s insulting.”

  “That’s the honest-to-goodness truth. If I left here ahead of you, you’d slip right back in and go poking around in that computer all by yourself, wouldn’t you, especially without Etta Mae here to put a stop to it?”

  Gracie sighed at the accuracy of his guesswork. “Come on, then. This barbeque had better be very good.”

  “It’ll make your mouth water,” he promised.

  Gracie was less concerned about the tastiness of the barbeque than she was about how soon she could shake Kevin and get back to the courthouse and give old Etta Mae Wilkes a piece of her mind. Maybe she could point out the error of her ways in conspiring with a lowdown sneak like Kevin.

  “She won’t change her mind, you know,” Kevin commented as he drove through Warsaw, crossed the Rappahannock River and headed into Tappahannock.

  “Who won’t?” Gracie asked, feigning innocence.

  “Etta Mae.”

  “Who said anything about trying to change her mind?”

  “You didn’t have to. I know how you think.”

  “You do not.”

  “You were going to plague her with some song and dance about sisterhood and women sticking together and all that hogwash. It won’t work. Etta Mae’s very liberated. She makes up her own mind about things.”

  “I don’t know about that. She fell for whatever story you fed her, didn’t she?”

  “Nope. She was just doing her job.”

  “Reporting my presence to you is her job?”

  “Doing what a county supervisor asked,” he corrected.

  “You’re on the board of county supervisors?”

  “Yep.”

  “Well, hell.” She frowned at him. “Etta Mae’s not the only one in that courthouse on the lookout for me, is she?”

  “Not by a longshot. Hers was just the first call I got. Not the last.”

  It was definitely a complication she hadn’t counted on. But, in the long run, it would just make things more interesting. She smiled at him, clearly disconcerting him.

  “What’s that gleam in your eye all about?” he asked suspiciously as they walked into Lowery’s.

  “Nothing,” she insisted in a way that suggested exactly the opposite, that she had all sorts of devious things in mind.

  “Nothing, my patootie,” he retorted. “You’re up to something. What?”

  “Just you wait and see,” she said cheerfully and proceeded to concentrate on the biggest, juiciest minced barbeque sandwich she’d ever had in her life. That and the bemused, worried expression on Kevin’s face almost made up for the morning’s failure.

  11

  As she was finishing up her walk the next day, Gracie spotted an old woman sweeping her porch next door to what she’d come to think of as her Victorian. Mrs. Johnson, no doubt, the woman who’d called her about that supposed intruder.

  Gracie saw an opportunity to get a little information about exactly how that turn of events had come about. She waved. “Good morning.”

  The woman’s gaze shot up and something that might have been worry creased her brow. “Morning, miss.”

  “Are you Mrs. Johnson?”

  “Who’s asking?” The woman’s expression was suspicious.

  “Gracie MacDougal. I believe you called me the other day when you thought someone had broken in next door.”

  She nodded then, but her expression was no more welcoming. “You’re that gal who wants to buy the place and turn it into some sort of fancy hotel.”

  “A bed-and-breakfast, actually.”

  “I’m not sure I like the idea of a lot of strangers coming and going next door. Always been a quiet neighborhood. I’d like to keep it that way.”

  This wasn’t a reaction she’d expected. Gracie opened the gate and stepped inside. “Do you have a minute? I could explain what I have in mind. I don’t think you’ll find it half so troubling once you understand.”

  Mrs. Johnson seemed to be debating the wisdom of letting her set foot on the porch. Finally she nodded. “Okay, come on up and sit a spell. I’ll get us some iced tea.”

  “That’s not necessary. I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”

  “No trouble,” she said, and disappeared inside.

  She was gone so long, Gracie anticipated seeing Kevin turn up any second, just as he had the day before at the courthouse. Eventually, though, Mrs. Johnson returned with two glasses of tea and a plate of cookies on a silver serving tray. She put it onto the table between two rockers.

  “Help yourself. Baked the cookies this morning. Doctor doesn’t like me eating sugar, so I’m taking most of them over to the church later. You turning up gives me a chance to sample one.” She chuckled. “Have to prove to my guest they’re not poisoned, don’t I?”

  Gracie grinned at her, relieved that the old woman’s attitude seemed to be mellowing. “Absolutely.”

  “Okay, then, tell me about this bed-and-breakfast thing. Never been to one myself.”

  “Basically, you’re right about it being a hotel, just a very small one,” Gracie explained. “In this case, probably four rooms, by the time I enlarge a couple of the bedrooms and add private bathrooms.”

  “You ever run one of these before?”

  “No, but I’ve run several hotels in Europe.”

  “In Europe? You don’t say. Which ones?”

  “Most recently, the Worldwide Hotel in Cannes, the Maison de Sol.”

  “Lovely place. I was there once, years ago, of course, before your time. Any others?”

  “Before that, I was at the one in Baden-Baden, and before that in Geneva.”

  “And Worldwide, that’s the chain that prides itself on luxurious surroundings, isn’t it?”

  “It did,” she said, unable to hide the trace of bitterness.

  Mrs. Johnson regarded her intently. “That why you left? Were they paying too much attention to the bottom line and not enough to the comfort of the guests?”

  “Exactly.”

  “That’s the way the world’s going these days,” Mrs. Johnson lamented. “Fast food, inexpensive motels, econo
my cars, fake copies of great art. Nobody cares about the finer things in life the way they used to. In my day, it was better to have a few nice things than to load up on cheap knock-offs. My Charles, rest his soul, always wanted the best for me.”

  She reached out and rubbed her gnarled fingers over the silver tray. “You see this? He gave it to me on our silver wedding anniversary. How many people do you see nowadays using silver to serve? Not many, I’ll warrant. They fire up their barbeques in the backyard and serve everything on plastic.”

  “I won’t be using plastic,” Gracie said quietly. “I want my bed-and-breakfast to have an old-fashioned elegance.”

  “Proper bed linens, ironed fresh?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Flowers from the garden in every room?”

  “Of course.”

  “You collecting antique china or using whatever you can get from the department store?”

  “I actually hadn’t considered that.”

  “Go with antiques. Won’t matter if the sets match. It’ll still be a nice touch. Now, what about the breakfast part? You plan on dumping cereal and sliced bananas into a bowl and calling that breakfast?”

  “That depends,” Gracie conceded ruefully.

  “On?”

  “Whether I can master cooking. It’s not my strong suit. All the hotels had very fine chefs. I never had to learn to cook. Now I’m starting from scratch, and I must admit, my attempts have been pretty disastrous.”

  Mrs. Johnson looked appalled. “You can certainly read, can’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then all you need is a good cookbook and a little daring.”

  “I have the cookbook, but you should see the results of my experiments. Most of them are inedible,” Gracie confessed. “Even the cats that wander by turn up their noses.”

  “Then what you’re missing is the daring,” Mrs. Johnson declared. “You can’t be afraid. You come over here this afternoon at four o’clock, after my shows go off. I’ll teach you.”

  Gracie regarded her with astonishment. “You will?”

  “Why not? I don’t have anything exciting going on in my life. You’ll be a challenge.”