Amazing Gracie Read online

  In truth, there was very little she hadn’t pitched in and done at one time or another to keep the hotel operating smoothly. Which meant, she concluded thoughtfully, that surely she could run a small little bed-and-breakfast in Virginia on her own. It would be an investment in her future, to say nothing of a home, something she hadn’t had since she’d sold off her family’s property, such as it was, in a long-dead Pennsylvania coal mining town.

  There had been nothing charming or quaint about the place where she’d grown up. It had fallen to ruin years before, leaving behind citizens who were every bit as depressed as the local economy. She had been all too eager to see the last of it. She had known when she left after her mother’s funeral, less than six months after her father’s, that she would never go back there.

  Seagull Point, Virginia, however, had promise. In only a few days she had seen that. There was hope in the burgeoning business district and in the freshly painted and recently renovated homes along the river. The people were friendly and upbeat. They were rooted, not in misery as her old neighbors had been, but in life. Gracie had seen evidence of prosperity in the packed seafood restaurants and actual traffic jams at the town’s main intersections on weekends.

  There weren’t enough hotel rooms, either. She’d stayed in the only national chain hotel in the entire area. The others were all small, family-owned motels with a very limited number of rooms. A bed-and-breakfast, especially one in a house with historic charm and architecture, would fit right in. She didn’t have to make one of her notorious lists to add up the pluses and minuses. Fiscally the decision was sound. Emotionally, well, in the last couple of days she had developed a surprising longing for roots, sparked by that surprising and devastating discovery back in Cannes that she had no real ties in the world.

  It wouldn’t hurt to ask a few questions, check on the property’s availability. Gathering facts wasn’t the same as making an impulsive offer. It was testing the waters, not jumping off a bridge. She would make a few casual inquiries, assess the possibilities. She would approach the whole thing in a slow, logical manner.

  Famous last words.

  “Not available,” Johnny Payne told her succinctly when Gracie asked him about the old Victorian.

  Naturally that stirred her competitive spirit. Overcoming obstacles was her specialty. She thrived on it. “Why?” she asked.

  He regarded her as if she had a screw loose for asking such an obvious question. “Because the owner don’t want to sell,” he explained patiently.

  “How do you know? Have you asked?”

  “It’d be on the market if they wanted to sell, now wouldn’t it?”

  Gracie decided on another tack. “Johnny, what would that house be worth in today’s market? Can you give me a ballpark figure?”

  “Don’t know,” he insisted. “Never thought about it.”

  “You’re in real estate. It’s your business to know property values in the area. Surely you have some idea.”

  He shook his head. “You ask me about a cottage on the riverfront, I could tell you in a heartbeat. That old Victorian’s one of a kind. It’s been in the same family since it was built as their summer home way back at the turn of the century or before, when this place was bustling with tourists running away from D.C. Haven’t been inside it myself in a dozen years or more. Can’t say what condition it’s in now, though from the looks of it, it can’t be good.”

  He peered at her curiously. “Why are you asking so many questions? You thinking of sticking around, after all? If that’s it, I could probably get you a deal on that place you’re in. It’s more your size, anyway. You’d just be rattling around in that big old Victorian. Must be ten, fifteen rooms in there, altogether. The place sprawls all to hell and gone.”

  Gracie wasn’t prepared to show her hand. If the owner thought there was an anxious buyer out there with plans for the house, the price could escalate beyond her reach. Assuming this mysterious owner could be located in the first place. Johnny was as tight-lipped as a clam about the owner’s identity. Maybe he feared he’d be cut out of a deal if she decided to contact the man directly.

  “Could you at least look into it for me,” she pleaded, partly to reassure him that the deal would be his, if one were struck. “What would it hurt?”

  “I don’t go around begging folks to sell their property,” he retorted. “It’s not polite.”

  “Isn’t that carrying southern courtesy to an extreme?” Gracie asked. “Maybe they just haven’t thought of selling. Given the look of the place, maybe they’ve forgotten all about its existence. Or maybe they figure they’d have to pour too much into repairs to put it on the market. Coming to them with a prospective buyer and a firm offer could be an easy commission for you.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Johnny, for heaven’s sakes, tell her the truth,” Jessie prodded. “You haven’t said one word to Kevin Patrick Daniels since he beat out your boy for all-state in basketball their senior year.”

  Gracie stared from Jessie to Johnny’s suddenly beet-red complexion. “This reluctance of yours is due to some old feud over basketball?”

  “Around here, folks take their high school basketball seriously,” Jessie explained. “Don’t they, Johnny?”

  He scowled at her. “You’ve got a big mouth, missy.”

  Jessie gave him an impertinent grin. “Truth’s truth. You wouldn’t talk to Kevin Patrick if there was a million-dollar commission in it for you.”

  “The man stole that title from my boy,” he muttered. “Ruined his scholarship chances, and for what? Not a damn thing. He didn’t need a scholarship. He was already headed for the University of Virginia, just like his daddy before him and his daddy before that.”

  Jessie shook her head. “Kevin Patrick could hardly help the fact that he was named to that all-state team. He’d been high scorer here for his entire high school career. Derek was second best and that’s no reflection on him. It’s just that Kevin Patrick had a gift. He had one of those exceptional, once-in-a-lifetime records. It was too bad they went through school at the same time. Any other season, Derek would have been the superstar.”

  “Damn right,” Johnny said.

  “Let me get this straight,” Gracie said, trying to grasp the conflict between the two men. “You’re refusing to even check on this house for me because it would mean dealing with a man you blame for cheating your son out of a college basketball scholarship?”

  “In a nutshell,” Johnny confirmed without embarrassment.

  “How many years ago was this?”

  “Eighteen. Right, Johnny?” Jessie said.

  “That’d be about right,” he agreed.

  “Eighteen years? You’ve carried on this feud for eighteen years?” Gracie was incredulous. “Why not put the screws to him, then? Make him sell me the house for a fourth of what it’s worth. Think what a laugh you could have over that.”

  “Can’t do it,” Johnny said with finality. “I refuse to be in the same room with the arrogant, no-good son of a gun. You want to deal with him you’re on your own, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. The man’s a cheat and a scoundrel. He’s been managing that property for the past few years and you’ve seen it. He’s let it go to seed.”

  Cheats and scoundrels were among Gracie’s favorite people. Negotiating with them and winning thrilled her almost as much as terrific sex. Not that she’d had much experience with either lately.

  She studied the real estate man carefully. “You’re sure about this, Johnny? Selling real estate’s how you make your living. You don’t mind if I track down this Kevin Patrick Daniels and deal with him directly?”

  “Suit yourself,” he said with an indifference that rivaled Max at his worst.

  “Where can I find him?”

  When Johnny remained stubbornly, steadfastly silent, it was Jessie who gave her directions. “Believe me, you won’t be able to miss it. There’s not another place like it on that road. Think of Tara and then exaggerate.”

>   The man lived on a blasted plantation and he allowed that beautiful old Victorian to fall to ruin? Gracie decided she might come to dislike Kevin Patrick Daniels almost as passionately as Johnny did. That would make buying the house for a pittance of its worth all the more satisfying.

  If, of course, she decided she really wanted it.

  Which she didn’t, she insisted. This was purely an exercise, a gathering of facts. Nothing more.

  Two hours later she was searching a country road for the lane that would take her to Kevin Patrick Daniels, current manager of the property. If that run-down state was his idea of management, he ought to be a quick sell.

  She knew the type. Never spend a dime unless the roof is actually falling down. Which it was. No doubt he’d rather accept her offer than put a new coat of paint or a new roof on the place. Her adrenaline pumped just thinking about the negotiations. She felt more alive than she had in months. Hopeful.

  And that was before she glimpsed the Daniels estate. Jessie hadn’t exaggerated a bit. It was Tara on steroids. Every bush was tidily trimmed, every blade of grass on the rolling hillside had been neatly shorn to the precise same length. The house and the columns across the front were pristine white, which probably required regular touch-ups. The windows, tall and stately, glistened.

  Oh, yes, indeed, Gracie thought, staring at it with a mixture of awe and disgust. Stealing that neglected Victorian from Kevin Patrick Daniels was going to make her day.

  3

  The discussion had gone on for an hour, about fifty-nine minutes longer than it needed to, Kevin thought. Most of it had covered the same ground over and over. It was time to put an end to it.

  “Absolutely not,” he said with finality, leveling a look straight into his cousin’s eyes. “I will not finance another one of your ridiculous, get-rich-quick schemes, Bobby Ray. It’s time you grew up and got a job, like the rest of us.”

  “When did you ever hold down an actual job?” his cousin retorted. “All you do is play around with your inheritance—and ours, I might add—like it’s Monopoly money.”

  “That Monopoly money has kept you and Sara Lynn afloat for the past five years,” he reminded Bobby Ray. “That’s about four years longer than the marriage would have lasted without it.”

  Bobby Ray didn’t even flinch at the shot. Kevin’s opinion of his marriage was clearly old news to him by now. Kevin had repeated it often enough. He’d seen Sara Lynn for the little gold-digger she was from the minute she took up with Bobby Ray. His cousin, reeling from his second divorce and unable to handle life as a bachelor, had jumped straight from the frying pan into the fire.

  “If I’d had that money, I could have been a rich man by now instead of living off what you dole out,” Bobby Ray complained bitterly. “I feel like a damn beggar.”

  They had been over this turf again and again. Kevin actually felt a certain amount of sympathy for the position his uncle had left Bobby Ray in, but Uncle Steven had known what he was doing. Bobby Ray might be the same age as Kevin, thirty-six, but he had the attention span of a five-year-old. He was on his third wife, even though it was Kevin’s opinion that his heart remained with the first one. Kevin had lost count of the number of jobs he’d had and the number of failed business ventures he’d tried, then lost interest in.

  “Unfortunately, you gave your father proof-positive that you lack a certain financial savvy,” he said, wishing there were a kinder way to state the obvious. There wasn’t, so he hammered home his point…again. “Be grateful your father had the foresight to put your trust into my hands so you couldn’t blow all of it. Maybe if you’d shown the slightest evidence of responsibility, he wouldn’t have done that. Instead, you took thirty thousand dollars from him and sank it into a taco stand.”

  “It was a fried chicken franchise,” Bobby Ray protested, his expression sullen.

  “Oh, yes, that’s right. Next door to a Kentucky Fried Chicken,” Kevin reminded him.

  “This chicken was better. It was Ella Mae’s recipe. Everybody in the Northern Neck of Virginia loves Ella Mae’s chicken.”

  “Maybe so, especially when she cooked at your mama’s house and served it up free. But you don’t take on a national franchise with a thirty-thousand-dollar investment and an advertising budget of zilch. The only people who ever ate there were related to you, and as big as our clan is we couldn’t support an ice cream stand on the boardwalk in summer, much less an entire restaurant year round. This latest scheme of yours is every bit as ill conceived. Get a job, Bobby Ray. It’ll do you good.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “No doubt about it,” Kevin said. Bobby Ray Daniels wasn’t the first member of his family to wish him a speedy end and a fiery destination.

  The Daniels family wealth, accumulated over generations, thanks to wise investments and savvy handling, had never once been endangered until the current crop of cousins had landed on earth. Thanks to some very unfortunate marriages, the genetic pool had spawned—with one or two notable exceptions—an entire generation of irresponsible males and throwback southern belle females, who wouldn’t deign to lift a finger if the house was burning down around them.

  Entrusted with what was left of the family fortune, Kevin had his work cut out for him. He wasn’t sure which his cousins resented most, the fact that he held the purse strings or the fact that he didn’t give a damn about the money they craved. He’d have given them each their fair share and been done with it if he hadn’t known they’d be back on his doorstep within a year, desperate for more.

  What every single one of them needed, far more than they needed cash, was self-respect. Kevin didn’t have a clue how to go about giving them that, except by forcing them to actually work for a living. He’d opened door after door, only to have them blow the chances. He was running out of friends who’d hire them. There was a chance that Dick Flint in Richmond would find something for Bobby Ray. Dick had half a dozen used car dealerships and a penchant for losing at poker. He owed Kevin bigtime.

  “I’ll call Dick Flint, if you’d like,” he offered.

  Bobby Ray stared at him as if he’d suggested he take up sky-diving. “You want me to be a used car salesman?” he asked, as he straightened the monogrammed cuffs on his two-hundred-dollar shirt.

  “I want you to do something that would excite you, something at which you’ll succeed.” Something that would justify those expensive, imported shirts and pay for the fashionable lifestyle to which Bobby Ray and Sara Lynn aspired.

  “Well, it sure as hell won’t be selling those broken-down heaps Dick Flint passes off on an unsuspecting public,” Bobby Ray snapped. “One of these days you’re going to push me too far, Kevin. Me or one of the others.”

  Kevin was tiring of Bobby Ray’s idle threats. One of these days he was simply going to pummel some sense into the overgrown jerk, just as he’d tried to do on more than one occasion when they were kids. Come to think of it, it hadn’t worked then, either. Instead, he leveled a look straight into his cousin’s eyes.

  “Meaning?” he asked, his tone icy.

  Not even Bobby Ray was able to mistake the fact that he’d gone too far. “Forget it,” he grumbled. “Just forget I stopped by. Forget I exist.”

  As if I could, Kevin thought as his cousin stormed out of the house. The wills of various and sundry uncles had made sure of that.

  As it always did, talking to Bobby Ray had worked up a mighty big thirst. Kevin wandered into the kitchen of his ridiculously huge house and found a pitcher of lemonade in the refrigerator. Molly, the housekeeper as far back as he could remember, made sure they were never out, just as she’d always kept the cookie jar crammed with ginger snaps, once she’d discovered he was partial to them.

  Kevin filled a tall glass with ice cubes, then poured the lemonade right to the brim. He took a sip and felt his lips pucker. Perfect. Just enough sugar to take the edge off but not enough to ruin the sour taste of lemons. There was nothing better on a hot summer day.

  Not that
it was summer yet, but it sure felt like it. The temperature had hit eighty by noon and was still climbing. The humidity was every bit as thick as it was in mid-August. It struck him that was a sure-fire indication that he ought to spend the afternoon doing just what he always did in the middle of a sultry summer heat wave…absolutely nothing.

  Carrying his lemonade and a handful of cookies, he headed outside and settled into a hammock spread between two massive oaks. Why work up a sweat—mental or physical—when he didn’t have to. He’d dealt with just about as much family business as he could in one day without throwing up.

  First, Cousin Carolanne had dropped by hoping for a handout to pay off her charge cards. Then Tommy had called from North Carolina needing money for a lawyer to get out of his latest jam. Bobby Ray had been the final straw. A nice nap seemed called for.

  He was just drifting off when he heard the roar of a distant engine. Since Greystone was not exactly on a superhighway, the sound was enough to disturb his rest and cause speculation about who was coming calling unannounced. With any luck at all, it wouldn’t be another of his devilish cousins. Of course, he’d had enough practice saying no today to be getting really good at it. He supposed uttering it a few more times wouldn’t be a strain. He probably wouldn’t even have to sit up and glower at them fiercely to make his point.

  He took a long, slow sip of lemonade and watched the lane leading up to the house until he spotted a flashy red convertible zipping along the cedar-lined drive. Since he hadn’t seen any bills from auto dealerships on his desk that morning, he had to assume it didn’t belong to anyone in the family. He relaxed again and closed his eyes.