Читать книгу Hot Date - Amy Garvey - Страница 7

The bell at Priest Antiques jangled when Grace pushed the door open and stepped inside. The big front room to the right, which had been the formal parlor before the house became a store, was as dim and cluttered as she remembered, as if the crisp afternoon sunshine wasn’t allowed inside. But the dust and the quiet and the faint smell of age were comfortingly familiar. She’d spent a lot of time here with Toby in junior high and high school.

“Hello?” she called into the hallway that extended between two more rooms in the middle of the house. They were arranged roughly according to category, as always—furniture in the front room, glass and china and collectibles in the room to the left, and pretty much everything else in the third room. That one had always been her favorite. You could find everything from old bundles of love letters to Victorian Christmas ornaments to funky plastic jewelry from the 1970s in there.

When no one answered, she hoisted her bag higher on her shoulder and started down the hall, stopping to set in motion a little rocking chair with an embroidered seat as she passed. “Toby?”

Still nothing. She was going to have to talk to him about this. If she wanted to, she could walk right out the front door with a set of vintage Wedgwood or a poodle lamp or even a love seat. Well, maybe not a love seat, but still. Where was he?

She set her bag down on the floor and peeked into the little room to her left, which had once been a generous closet. Celeste, Toby’s aunt, had turned it into an office years ago. Empty. The desk was strewn with papers and empty coffee mugs that looked a little furry, even from a distance, and a dinosaur of a computer monitor, humming idly.

Maybe Toby would hire her as a cleaning woman.

She headed back to the kitchen, ignoring the “Private” sign tacked to the swinging door—and ran smack into Toby, who was holding an iPod and humming off key.

They shrieked in unison, as if they’d practiced it, and then Toby threw his arms around her. “Grace! What on earth are you doing here?”

She removed his ear buds gently and handed them to him with a bright smile. “Moving in?”

“He wanted you to move to Chicago?” Toby said a half hour later, when they were settled at the kitchen table with fresh coffee.

Grace shrugged. “It’s a good job for him.”

“But…Chicago? That’s…way over there,” Toby protested, waving a hand wildly. He was all eyes now that he’d taken to shaving his head, and the new silver hoop in one ear made him look like a pirate. A gentle, good-hearted pirate. “What is he thinking?”

She considered the box of donuts Toby had produced. Everything was better with a chocolate frosted in hand. “That it’s an excellent career move. Which he totally deserves.”

Toby frowned, and reached across the table to squeeze her hand. “But what about you, Gracie?”

She met his eyes and smiled. “I get to make a career change, too.”

“Grace.” Toby’s smile was sympathetic, his hand on hers light and familiar. “You don’t have a career.”

“Well, there’s no time like the present, right?”

Toby snorted. “I guess so.”

She smeared chocolate frosting on his nose. “I’m serious. This is my life, and I can’t just get swept along anymore. The idea of moving to Chicago made me realize that. Maybe because it would have meant moving to Chicago with Robert.”

“Gracie.”

She reached out to wipe the chocolate off with a napkin. “But it’s all right, you see? Because it’s not fair to Robert to have a wife who doesn’t really love him, not the way he should be loved. Who won’t even move to Chicago with him. He’ll figure that out. Sooner or later.”

He would, too. Robert certainly wasn’t stupid. He was a good man, a smart man, and she’d wondered more than once in the past two weeks why she didn’t love him more. Why she didn’t love him the right way, with all her heart. Why she wasn’t thrilled to move to Chicago with him, instead of sitting here in Toby’s kitchen, excited that she was going to make her own plans, without him.

“The shop looks good,” she said. It was only a little white lie, and she wanted to change the subject.

“It’s a mess,” he retorted, waving a careless arm toward the front of the house. “As always.”

“You know, I could introduce you to a remarkable invention,” she said lightly. “It’s called a dust rag.”

“I’ve heard of those.” He rolled his eyes, which wrinkled the smoothly shaved surface of his head. “Evil things. Never touch ’em.”

She crossed the kitchen and dropped a kiss on his smooth head. Even though he’d spent most of his life in the shop, he’d never been what she would call happy about it.

“I can help out while I’m here, you know,” she said, resting her cheek on his skull for a second. “Cover my room and board.”

Toby turned his face up to hers, his brown eyes serious. “About that…,” he began, just as the bell over the door jangled again. “Oops. Saved by the bell. Right back.”

Not so fast, buddy, Grace thought, following him out into the store, where Nick was standing, scowling, with her suitcase and two of the dozen cardboard boxes she’d managed to pack this morning with Regina’s help.

God, he looked good.

“Nick.” Toby tilted his head to the side, considering the sight. “Taking up a part-time gig as a chauffeur?”

Nick scowled harder, and Grace hurried over to him. “Not exactly,” she explained to Toby. “We sort of bumped into each other.”

“And by that she means she bumped into me,” Nick growled. “With a VW bus older than she is.”

Toby sputtered a laugh, and Grace elbowed him in the ribs. “Well, if you’re going to be technical about it, yes.”

“You’re technically lucky you didn’t do more damage,” Nick said gruffly, but his eyes had softened. “And you’re very lucky I was nice enough to bring all this stuff over here once they towed the bus away.”

“It was incredibly generous of you,” she said, and tried to ignore the flutter of awareness in her chest when his gaze darkened.

“There’s more in the Jeep.”

“I’m coming right out,” she promised, and winced when he let the door slam behind him as he left, nearly knocking the bell off its hook.

“He seems so happy to see you,” Toby said, eyebrows raised and his arms folded over his chest.

Maybe not happy, she thought. But…not unhappy, either. And neither was she.

But what she said was, “Oh, you know Nick. Now, come on.” She grabbed his arm and dragged him toward the door. “That stuff isn’t going to carry itself.”

An hour later, everything Grace had crammed into the back of the VW was in the upstairs hall, piled against the wall outside the spare room. Which wasn’t exactly spare anymore, Grace saw with dismay.

Once, it had been Toby’s old bedroom, complete with New Kids on the Block posters and a lava lamp and Spiderman sheets that Toby had always detested. Long before Toby’s parents had died, Celeste had turned the biggest bedroom upstairs into a sitting room and used the second biggest bedroom as hers, and Toby had adopted that room as his when she was gone. His old room was now stacked rafter to floor with boxes, old furniture, mismatched china, candlesticks, dozens of books, and what looked like an amateur taxidermist’s first experiment with a rabbit, just to start.

“Is that real?” Nick said, stepping inside and poking the stiff, yellowed animal with a tentative finger.

“Once.” Leaning against the doorjamb, Toby shrugged. “It came as part of a lot. I’m fairly certain there’s not much market for it, though.”

“Gee, do you think?” Grace glared at him and promptly tripped over a doorstop shaped like an old flatiron as she followed Nick inside. “Where’s the bed?”

“It’s…under there,” Toby said, waving vaguely. He glared back at Grace. “It’s not like you told me you were coming, you know. I was trying to explain downstairs…”

Nick was smirking this time, and Grace resisted the urge to glare at him. He knew where the VW had been towed, after all.

“What about the other spare room?” she said, fighting to keep the desperation out of her tone. The fourth small bedroom was over the kitchen, a servant’s room, Celeste had once told her, and she had always used it as a junk room.

Toby snorted, then waved for her and Nick to follow him down the hall.

“Second verse,” he said, opening the door with a flourish—until it smacked into something. “Just like the first.”

“It’s even worse than the other one,” Nick said in wonder. “I bet Jimmy Hoffa’s in there.”

Grace stared at the wall of cardboard cartons, stacked chairs, and piles of old newspapers and realized she couldn’t even see the window on the other side of the room.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” she muttered, rolling up her sleeves, “but the other room is better. I can clean it up. I will clean it up. I am not staying with my father.”

“You’re going to clean it up?” Toby asked doubtfully, looking her up and down.

“I’m starting my life over.” She dug in her pocket for one of the elastics she always carried and scooped her hair into a ponytail. “I figure if I don’t get a little bit dirty, I’m probably not doing it right.”

“Oh, God,” Nick mumbled. “That sounds dangerous.”

Toby grunted in agreement. “You’re not kidding.”

“Hey!” She smacked him. “You’re supposed to be on my side. And when did the two of you get so chummy, anyway?” Toby was her friend, which had always meant he was slightly suspicious in Nick’s eyes, since any friend of hers was bound to aid and abet her, in his words, if not make trouble of his own.

“Um, Grace, we’re grown-ups now,” Toby said in the tone of voice people used to talk to not-very-bright first graders. “And besides, he kept some kids from breaking into the store the last time I was away.”

Nick shrugged when she looked at him and asked, “You did that?”

“It’s kind of my job, Grace,” he said in the same tone. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I was actually doing my job before you ran into me.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, and grabbed his arm before he started down the stairs. “Thank you. Really.” Without thinking about it, she stretched up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. It was remarkably warm, with a hint of scratchy stubble against her lips, and a jolt of surprise flashed through her when she realized how good he smelled.

Like…evergreen, and cool spring days, and big strong man.

She blinked and moved out of his way.

Nick blinked back at her, his face warmer now, almost ruddy. He muttered a good-bye and something about the bus, then jogged down the steps as Toby folded his arms over his chest, smiling, Grace could tell, like the proverbial Cheshire cat.

She turned to face him, and he tipped an invisible hat. “Welcome to your new life, Grace Lamb.”