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So why had he kissed her?
“I’m sorry, Grace. I guess I just—I mean it’s been a long time—”
That was why. Grace smiled sweetly, but she simmered inside. “Has Gracie been cramping your style?”
Johnny stilled in the act of pushing his hand through his hair. She could still feel the softness of those dark strands on her fingers. “Yeah. That explains it.”
Johnny looked so relieved, Grace wanted to smack him. But Gracie was waiting outside for him, so all she said was, “Apology accepted. You’d better go see to Gracie.”
“Yeah. I’ll do that.” Johnny turned away in unflattering haste. Then he turned back. “Gracie really does need me. She needs us. Just think about my offer, about the mortgage and getting married.”
Johnny left the room. A moment later Grace heard the screen door softly close.
Think about us getting married.
There’d been a time when she hadn’t dreamed of anything else. Then Johnny had left town and unwittingly broken her heart.
She couldn’t let that happen again.
She went to the kitchen and jerked open the refrigerator door, reaching for lemonade, letting the blast of cold air chill her face before swinging the door shut.
Who else but Johnny had the nerve to return after ten years to ask a favor like marriage? Why, Johnny had no more desire to be married than he did to sell his Harley for scrap metal. As for raising a child—Grace let out a breath of disdain. Johnny had never been responsible for anything but cleaning the carburetor on his bike. That was play to him. That was why he’d made it his life’s work.
Grace poured lemonade and fixed sandwiches. She plunked the glasses, along with the plates, onto a tray and marched with it out the front door. While she arranged their lunch on the redwood table, Johnny led little Gracie from beneath the tree and into the house to wash her hands.
The screen door banged behind them. Grace stared as it settled, contemplating their mission in a different light than she once would have. If Johnny had his way, he’d be responsible for making sure Gracie washed her hands until she was grown.
He probably still had trouble remembering to do so himself.
When they returned, Gracie ate quickly, wanting to get back to the kittens. When the little girl scampered over to the elm, Johnny turned to straddle the bench, resting his elbow on the table top. He watched Gracie so long, so intently, Grace thought he must have forgotten she was there. She saw the way his mouth alternately tensed and curved as he watched Gracie, the way his eyes grew light, then dark with worry. Grace’s anger lifted with the breeze that ruffled through Johnny’s hair.
He finally said, “Janelle was a wonderful mother, and Grant a great father. That’s a tough act to follow.”
She didn’t detect any resentment there, just a genuine lack of confidence in his ability to raise his niece—a justifiable doubt, she had to agree. Johnny seemed to truly love little Gracie, to want this role he’d chosen in her life. But Grace couldn’t help thinking of all he must have given up to do so.
“For Gracie’s sake, my parents have agreed there will be no interim hearings and no scenes in front of Gracie. Still, things haven’t been easy for her. I talked to her doctor and he agreed that bringing her here to the country would do her good.”
As if in affirmation, Gracie held a kitten to her cheek and smiled, her eyes closing in what Grace thought must be a rare moment of peace in the recent turmoil of her young life.
“You’d be good for her, too,” Johnny said quietly.
Grace filled her lungs with warm summer air. She wanted to help Janelle’s child. But it was hard not to imagine having her heart broken in the process.
And, like Johnny, she lacked confidence in her ability to meet Gracie’s needs. “I don’t know much about kids, Johnny. I never even baby-sat when I was a teen.”
“You’re a woman. Child rearing is supposed to come instinctively,” Johnny said with the blithe ignorance of a man.
“That’s a myth. Even women have to learn about children. I’ve spent more time with the elderly than I have with kids.”
Johnny grinned then. “Same thing. We all revert as we get older. We start watching cartoons again, start wearing bright colors. We actually decrease in size. By the time we kick the bucket, we’re bald as babies and have just as many teeth.”
Grace couldn’t help laughing. Johnny was irreverent. He always had been, and all the girls had been in love with him for it, herself included. But her laughter dwindled and Johnny’s did, too. There was so much at stake where little Gracie was concerned.
“She wakes up at night crying.” Johnny spoke as if the very image his words conjured pained him. “She cries if I leave her, afraid I won’t come back.”
Oh, Janelle. Tears burned Grace’s eyes, for she knew little Gracie’s unhappiness would break Janelle’s heart. She reminded herself that Janelle was at peace in heaven with Grant. But Gracie... Gracie needed her.
“My parents won’t give Gracie the love she needs,” he said simply, and Grace wondered if he realized how revealing that sentiment was where he and Janelle were concerned. “And there’s little chance the court will let me keep her unless I marry.”
He turned to her then, more serious than she’d ever seen him. “I realize we won’t have one of those one-in-a-million kind of marriages like Janelle and Grant had. But we’ve got friendship going for us, haven’t we?”
Grace couldn’t deny it. Hadn’t Johnny always fixed the chain on her bicycle? Driven her and Janelle into town to see the movies?
Friends...
Johnny was watching her, his blue eyes intent and warming her clear to that place in her heart that had always been just for him. She recognized the yearning inside her, just as she saw quite clearly that Johnny knew no such feeling, that because of his parents, he had no true concept of what love was.
He reached out and tentatively covered her hand with his atop the table. The yearning within her spread and deepened. Instinctively, Grace curled her fingers into a protective ball.
He let go of her hand. “I know it’s asking a lot. But I’m asking for Gracie’s sake. Will you marry me, Grace?”
A warm breeze fanned her face; the sun flashed through the tree leaves into her eyes, making them burn, making her blink.
Hadn’t she seen right away that Johnny would do anything for Gracie?
Even marry her.
And Grace said softly, “Yes. I’ll many you, Johnny.”
Chapter Three
She’d said “yes.”
Standing on the porch with his hot palm curled around an icy glass of lemonade, Johnny watched Grace as she reclined on the grass with Gracie, playing with the kittens. He was going to be married. Moisture dripped from the sides of the glass onto his sneakers.
He couldn’t remember ever feeling nervous over anything. Except maybe that time the police impounded the Harley...
But he felt nervous now, all those worries over being a parent compounded by the prospect of marriage—even a short-term marriage. He’d never given much thought—any thought—to either possibility until Janelle and Grant had died.
Gracie laughed out loud at something Grace whispered to her, and a sense of gratitude welled within him. No one could stay in a shell around Grace. It was like trying to stay out of the sun in a desert. He’d been right to think she could make Gracie happy.
He’d been wrong to expect she would still seem like a sister to him.
After he kissed her, he’d started to tell her how much she’d changed, and how much she hadn’t, and how much the combination affected him. Thank God she’d misunderstood and thought he was suffering from sexual frustration.
Grace stretched in pursuit of a kitten, her skirt creeping tantalizingly high. Tension skittered through him. He was suffering from sexual frustration.
Grace settled back, and Johnny’s pulse relaxed, too. He watched her and little Gracie herd kittens between them and swore once again that he would keep his hands to himself. Gracie’s future depended on him. Taking a long pull of cold lemonade, he walked over and sat atop the picnic table.
“What are their names?” Gracie asked, corralling the kittens, and Johnny smiled over every word directed at Grace.
“Well... they could use good names,” Grace said, and Johnny knew that she’d already named them, that she was letting Gracie give them new ones. “Do you know any good names?”
“I know the names of the Seven Dwarfs.”
“All seven names?”
“Grumpy, Dopey, Sleepy, Sneezy...Doc and Happy and Bashful.” Gracie scooped a wandering kitten into her hand and held it close to her face. “He’s smiling. His name is Happy.”
Caught up in the game, Grace picked up another kitten. “This one looks kind of Grumpy.”
“No, Grumpy is the man at the store. He’s...” The kitten yawned and Gracie named it appropriately. “Sleepy.”
Johnny was enchanted by little Gracie as he’d never been before. Since Janelle and Grant’s deaths, she’d never been this animated with others, not even when he was right there with her.
Gracie seemed to have forgotten him, seemed to have found peace. As that sense of peace flowed over him, too, Johnny realized how closely his emotions were tied to little Gracie’s.
Gracie traded her kitten for the last one, who tried to hide its face ostrich-like in her hands. “He won’t look at me, so he’s Bashful. Grandmother Tremont calls me Bashful when I won’t look at her. She said I’m just like my mother.”
Johnny’s serenity vanished with Gracie’s words. Damn his mother’s thoughtlessness. As if being like her mother was something Gracie should be ashamed of.
He was no shrink, but he figured if you told an impressionable kid she was shy too often, she would start to. believe it, and to accept it. He straightened, planning to undo his mother’s damage, when Grace’s soft voice stopped him.
“You are like your mother.” Johnny saw the effort with which Grace tempered her words for little Gracie. “She was my best friend, did you know that?”
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