Amazing Gracie

Realizing that there was not one single destination in the entire world where someone would be waiting for her hit her like a blow. She sank to the edge of the bed.

“What now, Gracie?” she whispered.

Though her decision to quit had been far from impulsive, never once had she considered the next step. Now she had just abandoned the most exciting, rewarding, wonderful job she’d ever had, one she’d worked very hard to get. She was twenty-nine-going-on-thirty. Her last three relationships had been total disasters. All three men had ended up married to someone else—someone who stayed put—within days of breaking up with her.

The relationships weren’t worth talking about, but her career, well, that was not something she was quite so willing to walk away from without a fight. She had loved the hotel business from the day she first discovered room service. In Monopoly, hotels were always her primary objective. In her mind’s eye, they were always small, elegant and discreet.

Worldwide had always exemplified that image. At least until recently. Shifting gears to accommodate all of the executive changes had turned a dream job into a nightmare. She’d been right to quit, she consoled herself. It was a smart decision.

So why did she feel so lost and empty?

A knock on her door prevented her from having to come up with an answer for the inexplicable “Yes?”

“Gracie, it’s Max.”

“Go away.”

“I think we should talk.”

“I disagree.”

“Would you open the blasted door and let me in, please. Or do you want the entire hotel to hear our conversation?”

That caught her attention as nothing else might have. She opened the door. She did not move aside to let him in. Max was much too forceful a presence to allow herself to be alone with him while she was in such a vulnerable state. He’d tried too many times to turn business conversations into something personal for her to trust him—or herself, at the moment—in such intimate surroundings. She might not much like the man at the moment, but he had a very attractive shoulder she could cry on.

“Yes?” she said.

He peered past her to the row of suitcases. “You’re determined to leave, I see.”

“I told you I was going.”

“Where?”

Ah, she thought, that was the million-dollar question. Money wasn’t a problem. Her heart was the problem. The only place she wanted to be was at the center of a thriving hotel. Her parents were dead. There had been no brothers or sisters, not even an extended family of aunts and uncles she’d been close to. She’d made a few close friends in college, but over the years, thanks to so much job-related traveling, she’d lost touch with all of them.

“That’s none of your business,” she said, hedging.

“No place to go, huh?”

“Of course I have a place to go,” she snapped. “I’m going to…Virginia.” She seized the destination out of thin air, based solely on some distant, idyllic memory of a family vacation in a small beach town there twenty years before.

“Virginia?”

Max said it as if he weren’t quite familiar with the state or even the country it was in. He’d obviously been in Europe way too long. Maybe she had been, too.

“Yes,” she said, warming to the idea. “It’s lovely there this time of year.”

“How in hell do you know that?”

“It’s spring,” she said. “It’s lovely everywhere in spring.”

“Of course,” he said wryly. The worried frown was back between his brows. “You’ll stay in touch?”

“Why?”

“In case you decide you want to come back, of course.”

“I won’t,” she said with certainty. Whatever happened, whatever she decided to do with her life, she would not come back to Worldwide as long as it was in the hands of Maximillian Devereaux.

“You’ll always have a job with us,” he said anyway. “Remember that when you tire of watching the dogwood and the cherry blossoms bloom.”

“I’d keep the flower references out of the conversation, if I were you. Flowers are what brought us to this impasse, remember?”

“You’ll be back,” he said with arrogant confidence. “You and I have unfinished business.” His gaze settled on her and lingered. “Professional and personal.”

She refused to be shaken by the intensity of his gaze, but only because there was no responding, wild leap of her pulse. She stared straight into his eyes and slowly shook her head. “Don’t bet the wine cellar on it, Max.”

And then she slammed the door in his face. Forever after, she thought she would remember with a great deal of satisfaction his thoroughly stunned expression. She doubted Max could recall the last time a mere mortal, especially a woman, had ever said no to him and not left the door open for a yes.

Gracie checked her bank balance and gave herself five months—the rest of spring and the entire summer—to pull herself together. She made that decision on the plane. Then, exhausted and emotionally drained, she slept the rest of the way to Washington.

At Dulles Airport, she bought a map, rented a car and started driving east on the Beltway, turning south on I–95 to Fredericksburg then heading east again. Seagull Point was a tiny speck on the map, tucked between Colonial Beach and Montross, right in the heart of history as the guidebooks liked to say.

Passing gently rolling farmland along the Rappahannock River, she began to have her doubts. Would she be able to survive for long in the middle of nowhere? True, the dogwoods were blooming in profusion, their white and pink blossoms standing out against the budding green of giant oaks. Tulips and the last of the daffodils bobbed in the lilac-scented breeze. The scenery was idyllic, but the only town she passed through, King George, was hardly a metropolis. There wasn’t even a traffic light in the middle of town. She barely had to slow down until she hit the intersection with Route 205 and made the turn toward Colonial Beach.

Pausing at the next red light at Route 301, she considered turning left and heading north, across the Potomac River Bridge, back to D.C. or maybe Baltimore. Instead, though, she kept going, determined to follow the plan she’d set for herself. Making plans, seeing to details, was something at which she excelled. It was why, until recently, she’d been such a valued Worldwide employee. She was organized to a fault.

By three in the afternoon she’d found a small hotel on the Potomac River. No one would ever confuse it with a Worldwide property, but it was clean and the mattress was firm, just the way she liked it. It would do until she could find a rental property for the summer, she concluded.

By five she’d finished a take-out carton of Kung Po chicken, showered and watched the early news out of Washington. Though she’d intended to shift her body onto local time by staying awake until nine at least, by five-thirty she was sound asleep. Naturally, because of that, she was wide awake before dawn.

Years of starting the day while others slept made the early hour seem almost normal. Except there were no lists to make, no calendar to check for meetings, no details to see to. There was absolutely nothing demanding her attention and no reason at all to get out of bed.

“Go back to sleep,” she coached herself, forcing her eyes shut and trying to stay perfectly still. She willed herself to relax. After fifteen increasingly restless minutes, she realized she didn’t know how.

“Tomorrow will be better,” she promised herself as she dressed and headed out to find someplace serving breakfast.

Over scrambled eggs and toast at the Beachside Cafe, she read the Washington Post. As she lingered over coffee, she dug in her purse for paper and made a list of things to do, starting with contacting a real estate agent about available rentals. She wanted something small, facing the river so she could sit on the porch and drink her morning coffee or her evening tea and watch the play of colors on the water.

“More coffee, miss?”

Gracie glanced up at the waitress and smiled, noting that her name was Jessie and that she had the reddest hair Gracie had ever seen, especially on a woman who had to be in her sixties. “Yes, please. Any idea what time I’ll be able to find a real estate office open around here?”

“Oh, it’s catch as catch can until nine or so, though Johnny Payne usually stops in here around eight. If he doesn’t have what you’re looking for, he can find it for you.”

Gracie glanced at the clock behind the counter. “Maybe I’ll just stick around then. Do you mind?”

“Be my guest. We’re never full on a weekday till after the season starts. I’ll send Johnny over when he comes in. Having breakfast with a pretty woman for a change will make his day. Those old coots he’s usually with ain’t nothing to look at.”