Sweet Home Colorado

“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.

* * *

MEMORIES FLOODED GRACE—memories she wasn’t prepared for. She staggered and Jack caught her arm.

“I was going to open the door for you,” he said.

Grace wasn’t going to correct his misunderstanding that climbing through the window had caused her to lose her balance.

“You’re whiter than a ghost,” he said. “Would you like to sit down?” Without waiting for an answer, he led her to the stairs.

She sank gratefully onto the first step and forced herself to smile up at him. “I’m just tired. My body’s two hours ahead of my brain and the altitude is bothering me.”

“Is there anyone I can call for you? Your husband?”

Grace shook her head. “My...ex-husband is back in Boston.”

“You’re divorced?”

“I certainly hope so. Otherwise, Edward could end up in a lot of trouble with the law. He’s planning on getting married again come September. To his first ex-wife.”

Jack’s grin lit up his face. He’d always had a great smile.

“I heard your half of the conversation with your brother. Since he doesn’t need you, what do I have to do to sweet-talk you into restoring this place for me?”

What was she saying? Only a moment ago she was dreading spending any time with Jack for fear he’d discover her secret and now she was practically begging him to take the job!

Jack scratched the inside of his elbow again.

“That offer of a cure is still open, if it’ll clinch the deal.”

Jack’s eyes narrowed. “What are you really doing here, Gracie?”

“Grace,” she corrected. “I want this house restored.”

“And then what?”

“And then what, what?”

“Stop talking in riddles. Are you going to stay—or are you heading back to Boston?”

“You mean now?”

“Yes. Now. And then when the place is restored, are you flipping it, never to return to Spruce Lake?”

“My life is in Boston.” No way was she staying in this backwater where everyone knew everyone else’s business and the sidewalks were a death trap for expensive shoes. If Jack took the job, she wouldn’t have to hang around Spruce Lake supervising. She could get out of there, away from Jack, away from any fear that he’d discover her secret.

“Then I suggest you go back there. I’ll help you find another contractor who won’t mind putting his heart and soul into restoring a place only to have it sold off.”

“I’m not selling it, Jack. It has to stay in the family. That’s a promise I made to Aunt Missy.”

Before he could respond, she said, “I’m going to travel around Europe for the next couple of months.” She wondered where that had come from. In truth, Grace hadn’t given much thought to anything the past couple of days, not since little Cassie Greenfield died.

Her patient’s death—one of too many—had been the catalyst for Grace’s decision to throw everything in, get away from Boston and dying children and an ex-husband about to remarry and all the people who wanted to remind her of that while trying to set her up with their cousin, or brother or—heaven forbid—their uncle!

Just because Edward had been more than twice her age didn’t mean she was looking for another older man. It didn’t mean she was looking for another man, period! Edward had been a far from satisfactory husband or lover. But she’d married him in her first year of med school, when he was already a well-respected neurosurgeon. She’d craved the respect and financial security marrying Edward would bring. She’d basked in his compliments and ignored the thirty-year age gap—the age gap that meant he didn’t want any more children. He had two daughters and a son by his previous wife. They were all horrible to Grace—as was his ex-wife—whenever they happened to cross paths at social functions.

When Cassie Greenfield, a little girl who’d fought so hard and so bravely—like so many of her patients did against cancer—had died, something had died inside Grace. Cassie was the same age her daughter, Amelia, would be now. Her and Jack’s daughter.

The guilt she felt at having given up a healthy child, and the cumulative effect of treating so many who weren’t healthy, had come to a head that day.

Grace’s love of medicine and her belief in herself, that she could cure all the hurt and pain in the world, were shattered. She’d needed to get away, regroup, maybe think about another medical specialty. One that didn’t involve dying children.

There was a good reason she’d chosen to specialize in pediatrics—to atone for her sins. The guilt of giving her baby away bit deep. But the real sin she’d committed twelve years earlier was in not telling Jack—of not giving him a chance. That was the one she really needed to answer for. How she could even start to do that, Grace had no idea.

Jack scratched his elbow again. She knew that what he was suffering from was something she could easily cure. With no chance of Jack dying.

“What do you want from me, Jack?” she asked.

His eyebrows rose speculatively.

“Apart from that.”

He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Did I say anything?”

She grinned. That would doubtless be very nice. She wondered what it would be like to have a young, virile man like Jack make love to her. Instead of a selfish older man like Edward who was also a lousy lover.

Wondering what sort of lover Jack would be, now that he was a man—not a fumbling teen—Grace felt her face heat.

“Are you okay?” Jack asked. “You look flushed.”

“I’m fine,” she said, working to recover her equilibrium. “But can we negotiate? I’d very much like you to restore this house for me.”

“Then you’ll have to help with it,” he said, and glanced pointedly at her manicured nails.

“You’ve got to be joking! You have a foreman, so I assume you have a crew of workers. How would I be able to help?”

“You can sweep up, run down to the hardware store for supplies. Make lunch for the gang. Paint walls. Stuff like that.”

“And my trip to Europe?”

“You and I both know you just made that up.”

Grace chewed her lip. Jack was pretty shrewd. “I’d like to go to Europe sometime.”

“Then you can. When we’ve finished this project.”

We. The word scared her, especially in relation to Jack. They’d dated for two years but had only made love once—the night before Jack headed off for the peace corps and she left for college. Jack had excited her far more that fateful night than Edward ever did the entire time they were married.

And Jack had given her what Edward never could.

Why they’d waited so long to make love, she had no idea. But six weeks later, feeling as if she had a bad case of the flu but suspecting worse in spite of their use of birth control, Grace had purchased a pregnancy test.

When it came back positive, Grace knew she had only two options. Since the first went against her beliefs about preserving human life, she started making inquiries about adoption. If she’d known Jack was in town, Grace would never have come back to Spruce Lake. Her fear that he would discover her secret was too great. She was sure her guilt was written all over her face.

“What’s up?” he asked. “Your face is flushed again.”

To prevent Jack from asking any further questions she stuck out her hand. “If I agree to your outrageous terms, do we have a deal?”

What was she saying? She couldn’t get out of town fast enough to prevent Jack from somehow discovering the truth, yet here she was agreeing to stay and help. Then again, it wasn’t like she had anything else to do for the next few months—so why not stay? She owed him that for making time in his schedule and she really needed to have the house restored before it completely fell to pieces. She couldn’t live with that sort of disgrace.

And besides, how hard could it be watching Jack working under the hot sun? Seeing him again, she couldn’t get rid of the notion they had unfinished business. Business that had nothing to do with the child they shared, but a whole lot to do with sex.

She’d kept her secret safe this long. She could keep it to herself a bit longer.

Jack took her hand and held it. “Deal.”

His hand felt warm and strong. Grace didn’t want to let it go. Where was Jack when she’d broken down at the hospital the other day? She was sure if she’d had his strong shoulders to lean on, she wouldn’t have had such a public meltdown.

Chapter Three

“Boss!”

They jumped apart at Al’s shout.

“I’m done with the estimate for the outside. I’ll leave the rest to you, okay?” he said. “Maria’s giving me hell about getting home for dinner with the kids tonight.”

“Sure, sure,” Jack said. “Stop by Mrs. Carmichael’s and pick up a big bunch of flowers for that wonderful wife of yours.” Jack drew his cell out of his pocket. “I’ll call Mrs. C. She’ll be waiting outside her shop.”

Al’s face broke into a wide smile. “I knew there was a reason I worked for a slave driver like you!” He saluted Grace. “Bye, ma’am.” A moment later he disappeared through the front door.

Grace listened while Jack called the florist. He seemed to be close to her since he could order flowers over the phone without credit card details. And have the woman waiting outside her shop to hand Al a bouquet as he drove by!

Jack hung up and said, “Now, how are you going to cure me of this itching? And please don’t say it’s bedbugs!”

* * *

GRACE LAUGHED. JACK LOVED the sound of it, deep-throated and sexy as hell. He’d been a hormonal teen when he’d first laid eyes on Grace in his English class fifteen years ago. He fell for her hard. After they started dating, he’d assumed they’d eventually marry, stay in Spruce Lake, have kids. He made a face at the memory of his teenage delusion.

Turned out she’d had other plans, ones that didn’t include him in her future.

During his time in the seminary, he’d worked hard to suppress his memories of her, his desire to hold her and make love to her again.

Grace touched his arm and he reveled in the warmth and silkiness of her fingertips on his skin.

“If I suspected you were suffering from bedbugs, trust me, I’d have hightailed it back to Boston.”

He tried to smile, but the thought that Grace might leave again filled him with dread.

“You have eczema.” Her voice became serious as she examined the angry red rash. Her hands felt warm on him. Too warm. Too good. “It’s not contagious and it’s easily curable. Do you suffer from allergies?”

“None that I know of. Why?”

“Because it’s often due to an allergic reaction, either to grasses or something you’ve been eating. Stress can set it off, too. Does asthma run in the family?”

“Mom has it, but nothing severe.”

“Uh-huh. Do you drink acidic juices, like orange, pineapple, stuff like that?”

“Not usually, but lately I’ve been swigging OJ as a pick-me-up.”

She nodded. “That’s about the worst thing you can do. I’ll make a list of foods to avoid and write you a prescription for a medicated cream. That should take care of it.”

“How can a Massachusetts doctor write me a prescription?”

“I took the precaution of getting licensed to practice in Colorado a couple of years ago, in case Aunt Missy was ever moves to a care home in Denver and needed me around for a while.”

He considered this, then said, “Doc Jenkins has given me creams before.”

“Probably not the right ones. Has he ever talked to you about your diet?”

Jack shook his head, tongue-tied because Grace was absentmindedly stroking the inside of his arm. Didn’t she know what it was doing to him?

“Doesn’t sound like much of a doctor to me.”

“You got that right. He should’ve retired years ago, but he’s the only family doc in town, so we’re stuck with him.”

“You mean to tell me, after all the years I’ve been away, there’s still only one doctor in Spruce Lake?”

Not wanting to imply that the town only attracted worn-out old coots like Doc Jenkins, he said, “There’s a couple of orthopedic guys who come for the winter. They do very well out of all the skiers and snowboarders who break their bones.”

“And if a woman would prefer to see a female doctor?”

“Then she has to go to Silver Springs.”

“Which, in spite of its proximity to Spruce Lake, is an inconvenience.”

“You could always set up practice here,” Jack suggested.

“I’m a pediatrician,” she said. “Not an OB/GYN.” Grace wandered into the kitchen and turned back to him. “If you want to do your estimate, I can swing by the pharmacy and get your cream.”

“Sounds good. But first you’d better tell me what you want done with the place.”

“We’ll get to that in a moment, but since you’re insisting I stay in town, I’d like to live here while you do the renovations.”

“Hoo, boy.”

“You seem to think that’s a bad idea.”

“Do you realize how much dust’ll be involved?”

“No.”

“That was a rhetorical question. Trust me, you’d be better off renting somewhere during the reno.”

“Since I won’t be earning an income while the renovations are going on, I don’t want to waste money on rent.”

“Yet you were about to embark on an expensive trip through Europe for a couple of months?”

“I seem to remember foolishly offering to pay you double your estimate to get the work done,” she said with a shrug.

Jack grinned. “Yeah, there is that.”

Grace flashed him one of her brilliant smiles and he said, “I wasn’t going to take you up on that, so go find somewhere else to live. People post ads at the supermarket all the time.”

“Great idea.”

“So how is it you came to inherit the house and not your father?” he ventured.

“I didn’t inherit it—I bought it from Aunt Missy years ago. You might remember we lived here rent-free in exchange for my dad taking care of the place.” She grimaced and Jack understood what Grace meant by it. The house could’ve been better looked after. Things had come to a head—there’d been accusations of money going missing and Grace’s parents had moved on. Grace had stayed to finish high school.

“I was the only person in the family who kept in touch with her. A couple of years after I graduated from med school she wrote and offered me a deal—I buy the house at a reduced rate and she could then afford to move into the Twilight Years. She wanted the house kept in the family. Aunt Missy knew full well that if she willed it to my father, he’d sell it and fritter the money away, so she came up with a plan. Since she was asset-rich but didn’t have a lot of savings after my parents fleeced her, and I’d started working and had enough for a down payment, I took out a mortgage and bought the place from Aunt Missy. It was a pretty sneaky way of keeping my father’s hands off both the house and the profit he’d make by selling it, but it’s what Missy wanted and I was happy to help her out. Aunt Missy moved into the Twilight Years and I rented out the house to help with the mortgage payments. When Missy died, my father flipped out because there was nothing for him in her will and he tried to get me to sign the house over to him. Forget it!”

Jack said, “You and Aunt Missy were sure cut from the same cloth. Smart as whips. And your relationship with your parents?”

“Not good. Not that it ever was. I worked hard to win that scholarship to a college so far away partly because I wanted to get away from them.”

* * *

IMMEDIATELY AFTER SHE’D said it, Grace wanted to take the words back. Jack would think she wanted to get away from him, too. But that was far from the truth.

She wished, for one fleeting moment, that when she’d discovered she was pregnant with Jack’s baby, they could have married, kept their child. But after weighing the pros and cons, she’d decided that if they followed that path, there was no way she’d be able to stay in college and keep up her grades. They’d have struggled financially for the rest of their lives. Grace had been there, done that with her parents and she had no intention of repeating their mistakes.

Her lip curled as she thought, Yet here you are, a dozen years later, with a rewarding career, a lot of money and no one to love. That’s some definition of success.

“I’m sorry your relationship never resolved itself, Grace. I couldn’t imagine not being part of a close family,” he said. “I love everyone in my family. And I love that all my brothers are married now and have wives and children. It’s the cycle of life.”

Grace smiled. “That is such a nice compliment to them. They’re very lucky to have someone like you in their lives.” If only I had someone who truly cared about me.

* * *

HER HEARTFELT WORDS filled Jack with warmth. He was about to ask her more about her family when Grace turned and headed toward the stairs.