C.C. Coburn - Sweet Home Colorado

His eyes narrowed. “My relationship with the church, and why I left, is none of your business.”

Dammit! She was intrigued and couldn’t let it go. “Did you fall in love with one of your parishioners?”

“And you just stepped way over the mark.” He gave her a tiny salute, saying, “Goodbye, Gracie,” turned on his heel and headed to his truck. “I’d say it’s been a pleasure. But it hasn’t.”

“It’s Grace!” she shouted to his back. “Not Gracie.” How dare he just walk away like that!

He shrugged and pulled open the door of his truck. “Whatever,” he said, and climbed in.

“Wait!” she cried, and hobbled toward his truck, one shoe on and one off.

She went to rest her arms on the passenger’s side window frame, then noticed it was dusty. She touched the frame with her fingertips and leaned in. “I’m sorry, Jack. I didn’t mean to pry.”

“Yes, you did.” He started the truck.

“You can’t leave me here like this! You promised to give me an estimate.”

“I promised Mike I’d give him an estimate. That was before I knew who his doctor client was. Goodbye, Grace.”

Chapter Two

Jack hated being played for a sucker. Mike knew exactly who he was dealing with, that was why he’d avoided using the doctor’s name. And Mike knew that Jack wouldn’t want to have anything to do with Grace. She’d left town, and him, without a backward glance after winning a full scholarship to a college in Boston faster than a snowflake melted in July. For too many years he’d tried to forget her. Now here she was, back in Spruce Lake and acting as if there’d been nothing between them.

And why shouldn’t she? She’d moved on, married, probably had kids. It cut deep that she hadn’t recognized him right away. He’d obviously spent too much time loving someone who didn’t feel the same way about him.

It hadn’t helped that during his time in the peace corps he’d been posted to remote places, often without internet access. They’d exchanged letters for a while, but Grace was always slow to respond, and when she did, it was all about college, the people she was hanging out with, how much she loved life in Boston.

Jack eventually realized she was letting him down as nicely as she could. He later heard she’d graduated from college early and gone to medical school. Then she’d married. Lost, Jack had entered the seminary, believing he could help others. He’d wasted too many years dreaming of Grace. Now that she was here in the flesh, he had no intention of letting her under his skin again.

He put Betsy in gear, ready to get out of there—make a symbolic break with Grace. He glanced at her manicured fingertips still resting on Betsy’s window frame, hoping she’d take the hint and move.

“Mike didn’t tell you it was me who wanted the estimate?” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

Her frown and confused tone had him cursing under his breath. He turned off the ignition and scratched the inside of his elbow.

“I wonder why not,” she said, a little too loudly now that Betsy’s engine was no longer thumping away.

Jack wasn’t going to tell her why not. Mike knew that if Jack had any idea who the client was, he’d have refused outright. He wanted to hit himself upside the head for not making the connection. Mike sure had suckered him. He’d suckered Grace, too. He scratched the back of his neck.

Suddenly Grace was climbing into the passenger seat. An erotic fantasy—involving him and Grace in Betsy’s cab—filled Jack’s mind as she ran her hand down the inside of his elbow. Then she leaned in close to look at the back of his neck before he could react and tell her to get the hell out of his truck.

“Whoa! What are you doing?” he demanded, pulling away from her, worried his fantasy might come true. Half-worried it might not.

“Taking a look at your arm. And your neck.”

Jack edged farther away from her, embarrassed about the rashes.

“What if we make a deal?” she said.

“About?”

“If I cure you of these rashes, will you do the renovation for me?”

Much as Jack wanted to be done with the rashes and all the scratching, he had a prior obligation to his brother. “Nope,” he said, and resisted the urge to scratch the back of his knee. He felt as if he was carrying a contagious disease and wondered why Grace was even sitting in the truck with him. Apparently she wasn’t afraid of catching it.

She jumped as Al stuck his head through the passenger window. Al had the stocky build of his Mexican father and the height of his English-born mother. But Jack doubted it was Al’s physique that had Grace scooting across the seat. It was more likely the snake tattoo that ran from Al’s right wrist up his arm, disappeared into the sleeve of his T-shirt and emerged to coil around his throat. Several times. Grace couldn’t take her eyes off it.

“Hey, boss,” he said to Jack, and nodded to Grace.

Jack’s cell rang. He retrieved it from his pocket and saw that the call was from Adam. If it had been from Mike, he would’ve ignored it.

“Hey, Adam. What can I do for you?”

“You know how you’re supposed to start work on our house?”

“Ye-es,” Jack said slowly, suspicion creeping up his spine.

“Well, I’m wondering if you have anything else you could do instead. Carly wants to stay closer to the hospital until after the baby arrives. She has short labors and she’s worried the extra distance from the new house will mean the difference between giving birth in the hospital and giving birth in the car. To tell you the truth, I’d prefer the first option.”

This had Mike’s meddling written all over it. “I thought you were spilling out of the house on Washington?”

“We are. But that bothers me a lot less than not making it to the hospital in time.”

“So you want me to delay starting your renovation?”

“If you could.”

The tentacles of suspicion crept further up Jack’s spine. “Has Mike called you today?”

“Mike who?”

Jack’s lips thinned. So now it was a conspiracy involving Mike and Adam to throw him and Grace together for the summer. He glanced at Grace. She looked completely innocent.

“I’ll get back to you,” he said, and shut off his phone.

“Grace, this is my foreman, Al Hernandez.”

She offered her hand and Al shook it vigorously.

“I’ve been waiting for you at the back of the house, boss,” Al said. “Yet I find you here, making time with the prettiest señorita this side of the Front Range.”

Jack climbed out of the truck while Al stood back and opened the door for Grace. She slipped past him with a whispered “Thank you” and hobbled to her vehicle. Jack enjoyed the view as she bent to remove her other shoe, opened the trunk and fished around inside it. She straightened, dropped a pair of fancy flip-flops on the ground and stepped into them.

“That’s better,” she said, coming over to them. “I’m Grace Saunders, by the way.” She flashed Al a smile and Jack could see his burly foreman melting under her charms.

Jack cleared his throat. “Shouldn’t you be getting home to Maria and the children?” For some stupid reason he needed to let Grace know that Al was spoken for, even though he was the one who’d prevented Al from getting home by asking to meet him here.

“Just as soon as we’ve done this estimate, boss.”

The three of them headed toward the house, going in through the squeaky front gate and up the weed-covered path. Al continued to the back of the house, saying, “I’ll finish measuring up the outside. Do you have a key?”

“Nope.” Jack reached inside the smashed pane of one of the front windows, releasing the catch. He pulled up the window and hoisted himself inside. Before he could open the front door, Grace followed him in, climbing over the sill.