Falling For Gracie

“Anything else?”

Gracie hesitated.

Alexis pulled up in front of the Landon family home and turned off the engine. “What?” she demanded.

“Riley is going to talk to Zeke about where he goes.”

Alexis dropped her head to the steering wheel and moaned. “Tell me you’re kidding.”

“I’m not, but it’s not such a bad idea. You’re not willing to talk to your husband about it and someone has to get the truth. Once you know he’s not running around, you’ll feel better.” Gracie touched her sister’s arm. “If you’d just talk to him yourself,” she began.

Alexis opened the driver’s door. “You don’t understand. It’s not that simple. I’m not sure I want to know what he’s doing. If he is fooling around...” She swallowed. “I don’t want to have to leave him, but I will.”

Gracie didn’t want to be having this conversation or any other, at the moment. She had only been home a couple of days and already a week of root canals seemed so much more pleasant.

“Why don’t you wait and find out the truth?” she asked softly.

“Good point. I will. Are you coming in?” Alexis jerked her head toward the house.

At this point Gracie was more than ready to escape to her rental, but she nodded and stepped out of the car. She would duck inside, yell out a greeting and leave. She could rationalize the decision by saying she had to unpack, but the truth was she wanted to be gone because she needed some distance. Too much family stuff too quickly, she thought.

They walked toward the house. As Alexis pulled open the front door, Gracie realized she could hear shouting inside.

“That can’t be good,” she said.

“Sounds like Vivian.” Alexis shook her head. “I hope the wedding isn’t off again.”

“What? Off?” But before Gracie could press for details, her sister had stepped into the house. Gracie trailed after her.

Vivian stood in the center of the room, her face streaked with tears and bleeding mascara, her hands on her hips, her mouth petulant. Their mother sat on the sofa, several brides magazines open on the coffee table.

When she saw Gracie and Alexis, their baby sister sniffed. “I hate Tom,” she said defiantly. “He’s selfish and mean and I’m not going to marry him.”

“Of course you are,” Alexis said soothingly. “You just had a fight. Now tell me what you were arguing about.”

“The bachelor p-party,” Vivian said over a sob. “He said I couldn’t come. But if I’m not there, how will I know what he’s doing? I don’t care about movies and drinking and stuff, but I don’t want him to have s-strip-pers.”

“Does he want to?” Alexis asked.

Vivian hiccupped. “He s-said it wasn’t up to me. He s-said until we were married, he didn’t have to do what I said.”

Gracie wanted to be anywhere but here. She didn’t know if she should simply excuse herself and make a quick dash for her car or pretend an urgent need to use the bathroom. Then she stunned herself by opening her mouth and talking.

“Did you explain that your being at the bachelor party isn’t so much about you telling him what to do as it is about making sure you can begin your marriage in a state of love and trust? I’ve never understood the need for men, or women for that matter, to have a big party where plenty could go wrong that could potentially destroy the relationship they’re trying to celebrate with a wedding.”

Everyone turned to stare at her. Alexis shook her head, as if trying to discourage a not-very-bright child, her mother rose and walked over to Vivian, who had started a fresh storm of sobbing.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Gracie murmured, feeling more out of place by the second.

“It will be fine,” her mother said as she pulled Vivian close. “You and Tom will talk in the morning and things will be better.”

“I g-guess,” Vivian mumbled against her mother’s shoulder. “I j-just want him to love me.”

“Of course you do. It’s all right. Everything will be all right.”

Gracie waved toward the door. “I should leave you to deal with this. I’ll just be going.”

“Good idea,” her mother mouthed.

Gracie did her best not to feel as if she’d made a difficult situation worse and headed back out into the night. She drove across town to her rental house and gratefully walked into the dark quiet.

A few clicks of light switches took care of the gloom and a glance around the kitchen restored her spirits.

She’d already put away her special cooking pans, slipping the ones that wouldn’t fit anywhere else into some open shelves meant for cookbooks. Her cooking schedule was magneted to the refrigerator and she’d used poster tape to tack up her two-page spread from People magazine. The one with the headline What’s Gracie’s Secret?

She crossed to it now and traced the picture of the popular sitcom star from Olive’s Attic as she fed a piece of luscious Gracie-made wedding cake to her husband at the wedding. The second page showed several of Gracie’s cakes, along with a picture of her carefully decorating one of them.

That was her world, she reminded herself. Her house in Torrance, her orders, her perfect kitchen with three full-sized ovens, built-in cooling racks and southern exposure. It was a world she understood—where she was just Gracie. Not anyone’s sister or daughter. She didn’t mess up there. She didn’t feel as if she didn’t belong.

Had it been a mistake to try to come home? The decision had been made and there was no unmaking it.

“Just a few weeks,” she reminded herself. Then she could walk away from all of this and never look back.

CHAPTER THREE (#ua5e9af8c-5631-5cbc-a27c-08281319131b)

GRACIE WALKED INTO Bill’s Mexican Grill promptly at noon only to find her friend Jill already seated and waving her in.

“You’re always early,” Gracie said as she approached.

Jill stood and hugged her. “I know. It’s a disease. I’m thinking I need a twelve-step program.”

Gracie stepped back from her friend and looked her over. “Very fabulous,” she said. “Would I recognize the designer?”

Jill wiggled her hips as she turned in a slow circle, modeling her tailored shirt and trim pinstripe slacks before she took her seat.

“Armani. I’m still working through my big-city lawyer clothes. Tina, my assistant, keeps ragging on me about dressing too fancy for Los Lobos, but if I don’t wear them to work, where will I?”

Gracie sat next to Jill and fingered the sleeve of her silk blouse. “I’m guessing not for cleaning the bathroom.”

“Exactly.” Jill leaned forward and grinned. “I’m so happy to see you. It’s been ages. What? Five months?”

“Just about. We were last together at your wedding up in Carmel, where I have to say you were far more interested in the groom than in me. This despite the fact that I made you a pretty fabulous cake. What is up with that? I’m your oldest and dearest friend. He’s just some guy.”

Jill laughed. “You’re right. He’s some guy. Some great, amazing, hunky—”

She broke off when the waitress approached to take their drink orders. Gracie asked for diet soda while Jill chose iced tea.

Her friend had changed, Gracie thought. In the past few years Jill had been on the legal fast track at a huge law firm in San Francisco. She’d worn stiff suits, worked impossible hours and had tamed her fabulous curly hair into a sleek, painful bun at the nape of her neck. Now she looked... Gracie smiled. Soft. All feminine and comfortable in her skin. Long cascades of curls tumbled down Jill’s back. The shadows were gone from under her eyes and she seemed to glow.