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She shrugged. “I guess. I don’t know because it’s all I’ve ever known. And taking care of my family is all I’ve ever known.”
His hand settled on hers. “Eat your chili before you go rushing off to rescue your brother.”
She closed her eyes and tried to find a reason why his command, the softness of his voice, would make her want to cry. Maybe it had to do with exhaustion catching up with her? The past six months of planning the wedding had felt like being tied to a race car and dragged around the track with no way to escape.
“It will get better,” his voice continued, smooth and reassuring.
Gracie looked up at him, studying the handsome face, brown eyes the color of coffee with just enough cream. She blinked a few times to clear her thoughts. She somehow convinced herself it was that exhaustion thing again.
“Yes, it’ll get better. But I should go.”
“Of course.” He started to say something but a knock on the door interrupted.
“And you have company.”
“I wasn’t expecting company.”
“Another perk to living in a small town. Always expect company and usually when you least expect it.” She finished the last bite of chili and carried the bowl to the sink.
Patrick watched her for a brief second and then he answered the repeated knock on the door. Gracie grabbed her purse and keys. When she walked around the corner, Patrick was standing in the doorway. Willa Douglas, single and pretty, stood on the landing with a casserole dish in her hands. Her eyes widened when she saw Gracie.
Gracie smiled at Willa and then at Patrick. “See you tomorrow, boss.”
As Gracie hurried down the stairs, she told herself that what she felt wasn’t disappointment or even jealousy. She’d had enough of men in her life. She definitely wasn’t the type of person to have a rebound relationship just days after ending an engagement.
Patrick Fogerty was a decent man. Maybe even a friend. She liked that idea. He could be her friend. Friendship was easy and uncomplicated. A friend wouldn’t break her heart.
Chapter Four
Early Wednesday morning, Patrick walked down the sidewalk with a steaming cup of coffee from the Cozy Cup Café. He’d been the first customer, and he and Josh Smith had talked shop. Josh needed some repairs to a door that someone had tried to open during the night. Patrick had questions about his store computer. Everything these days was computerized, even the cash register. For a guy that liked to hit a few buttons, have a drawer pop open and be done with it, it was hard to adjust.
The two of them had also talked about the upcoming block party that the store owners were organizing with Gracie’s help. They would have door prizes and other programs to draw in business. But lately the biggest draw was one Gracie Wilson. The Bygones Runaway Bride, as she’d been renamed, was bringing in more business than anyone could have expected.
Who knew that people would be that curious about a woman standing up a man at the altar?
He paused as he crossed Bronson Avenue. Of course, there was no traffic at this early hour. In the distance he heard trucks at the Wilsons’ granary and he could see a car or two coming up Main Street, probably to get something at the Sweet Dreams Bakery. He had considered stopping in but he needed to get down to his store and do some last-minute stocking before he opened the doors.
As he continued down the sidewalk, past the freshly painted brick buildings that the town seemed to be having a hard time accepting, he thought about the conversation he and Josh had just had about the benefactor of the town, the person responsible for funding the face-lift of the downtown area and the money for the new businesses.
The speculation had turned to Robert Randall, owner of the recently closed Randall Manufacturing. Maybe the old guy had felt guilty for what he’d done to the town, closing the plant and all. That had been Patrick’s thought lately.
Patrick sipped the best cup of coffee he’d had in a long time and slowed to look in the store windows. He passed his shop and looked in the window of the Fluff & Stuff pet store. He’d been thinking lately that it would be nice to have a dog. He hadn’t had a pet since his teen years. He’d just been too busy for anything other than himself.
His family hadn’t been pet people, anyway. They’d traveled. They’d worked. His parents had ignored each other.
Behind him he heard a shrill voice calling, “Yoo-hoo, Patrick.”
He turned and smiled at Ann Mars as she crossed the road, her long white hair stacked on her head in a knot that seemed to continuously slip to one side. She was a tiny thing, and he always had a strange urge to pick her up and set her on something so he wouldn’t have to lean to talk to her. He smiled at the thought. She was a dynamo and would probably swat his hands if he tried anything like that.
“Miss Mars, good morning.”
“Hello to you, too, Patrick, and don’t call me Miss Mars. My goodness, you are a tall drink of water.” She craned her neck to look up at him.
“I am?” He took a sip of his coffee and waited.
“I thought I’d check with you to see how our Gracie is doing.”
Our Gracie? He cleared his throat and started to object, but he didn’t. He was learning to be small town, and he knew that if he tried to deny Gracie, he’d be in serious trouble. She might have left Trent Morgan at the altar, but to these sweet ladies, both Ann Mars and Coraline Connolly, Gracie seemed to be the victim. They probably knew more about the situation than he did.
“She seems to be surviving the uproar, Ann.”
“That’s because she survives, Patrick. She’s survived everything.” She hooked her arm through his. “Walk with me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“She’s survived losing her mother. She has survived that rowdy bunch of men in her home. She’s cooked, cleaned and taken care of everything since she was just a little girl. She’s going to handle this situation, too. She’s going to do what she always does. She’s going to hold her chin up and take care of everyone. And she isn’t going to let on that she’s hurting at all.”
“I see.” He pulled the store key from his pocket as they made their way back up the street to his store. His store. He admired the light-colored brick, the windows painted simply with The Fixer-Upper and the green awning over the wide glass-and-wood door. He turned his attention back to the tiny woman at his side, smiling down at her. “She has good friends. I know you and Miss Coraline will help her through this.”
“And so we will. But you’re going to have to keep an eye on her while she’s here. People are circling like buzzards after roadkill, and if that Morgan woman hasn’t showed up, she will.”
“I’ll do my best.”
He unlocked the door, and Ann Mars stared up at him, her mouth twisted and her eyes scrunched nearly closed. “Patrick Fogerty, you’re a gentleman and I’m counting on you.”
He thought that this was the place in the conversation where someone would hand him a manila envelope and tell him his assignment, should he wish to accept it, was inside. But Gracie Wilson wasn’t his assignment. He had a business that needed his attention. He had a new life here in Bygones, and it was already complicated enough without the SOS committee becoming the Save Gracie Foundation.
He doubted very seriously that Gracie Wilson wanted him as a bodyguard. He’d been around town long enough to know she had five overprotective brothers who took their duties seriously. Shed complained in the past that they could be a little overwhelming at times.
“Ann, I’m not convinced that Gracie and Trent won’t work things out. Maybe the wedding will still take place.”
“Why in the world would you think that?”
“Because people get cold feet.”
Ann pursed her lips again, a sure sign that he wasn’t saying what she wanted to hear. “Gracie doesn’t run from anything.”
He pushed the door open. “I should get in here and get things ready to start the day.”
“And I need to get back up the street to my place,” Ann Mars replied.
“I’ll see you later.”
He watched as she marched away, her arms swinging as she hurried off toward This ’N’ That. For a woman in her eighties, she had a lot of energy. He smiled, shook his head and stepped inside the hardware store.
As he walked through the store, he stopped to flip on lights. He turned on the cash register and checked to make sure the coffeepot had started brewing. A car honked outside. He turned and watched as a dog walked slowly across the street and then down the sidewalk. The animal, a medium-size brown mutt with wiry hair, had been around for a few days. He thought maybe someone had dumped it in hopes the Fluff & Stuff pet store would take the animal in.
He liked dogs as much as anyone, but the mixed breed with wiry brown hair and floppy ears seemed to think the best place to hang out was the front door of The Fixer-Upper. Since it had started hanging around Bygones, he would often find it curled up on the sidewalk in front of his store.
The front door opened and the bell chimed to announce a customer. He glanced at his watch and started to tell the woman entering the store that he wasn’t open yet. But she didn’t look like a woman he wanted to argue with. Her short hair was perfectly cut. Her suit, a skirt, jacket and blouse, looked expensive. And she looked angry.
“Where is she?” The woman marched down the aisle between the saws and drills, her mouth a tight line of disapproval.
“I’m sorry?” He reached for the dark green work apron he wore in the store.
“Gracie Wilson. Where is she?”
And then it hit him. Mrs. Morgan. Lovely woman. He wondered why the dog hadn’t barked. A good dog would have barked a warning.
“She isn’t here yet.”
“When do you expect her?”
He glanced at his watch and caught the groan before it slipped out. “Soon.”
“Then I’ll wait.”
He caught sight of an old farm truck and he knew that Gracie would soon walk through the back door. The dog out front seemed to be waiting for her. It stood, wagging a wiry brush of a tail. That confirmed his suspicions that the dog might be getting fed here at the store.
“Maybe if you come back later it would be better.” He took the woman by the arm, nearly choking on the cloud of perfume that clung to the air around her.
“I need to speak to Miss Wilson because there is the small matter of what she owes me.”
The front door opened again. Patrick didn’t know if he should breathe a sigh of relief or pray for mercy. A hardware store, at least the one he’d grown up in, was a man’s world. He knew about building things, fixing things. He didn’t know about small-town politics, drama and what appeared to be women on the warpath.
Coraline Connolly marched down the aisle, her nose in the air and her pace brisk. She wasn’t a big woman, but she walked with the authority of a woman who had been a school principal and knew how to handle problems.
“Mrs. Morgan, my goodness, imagine seeing you here.” Coraline smiled a frozen smile that Patrick was pretty glad he wasn’t the recipient of.
“Coraline, this has nothing to do with you.”
Coraline moved Patrick aside. “Oh, I know that. I just thought the two of us could take a little walk. We have some fund-raisers coming up in town and I’d love to be able to put your family name on the list of benefactors.”
“I need to speak to Gracie.” Mrs. Morgan pulled her arm from Coraline’s grasp.
“I’m sure you do, but I have other appointments and you are so great at organizing events. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee,” Coraline offered. “I’m sure Gracie will be here by the time we’re finished.”
Mrs. Morgan glanced around the store and finally sighed, giving in to Coraline. Patrick watched as the mother of Trent Morgan was escorted from the store.
“Is it safe?” Gracie walked through the door, peeking around the store for any sign of the woman who, had things been different, would have been her mother-in-law.
Patrick walked to the front of the store and looked out the window. “For now.”
“Good.” She slipped her work apron over her head. “I’m going to have to face her eventually.”
“Probably.”
Gracie tied her apron and reached for a coffee cup. “I’m sorry this is becoming your problem. It shouldn’t be. I’ll talk to her. I need to give the dress back, and maybe that will start the road to making things better.”
Giving the dress back would be a step toward making this real. She obviously couldn’t explain that to her boss; the man seemed pretty uncomfortable with the conversation.
“Are you sure you don’t want to think about this before giving the dress back?”
The coffee overflowed on her hand. She pulled back, reaching quickly for a napkin to wipe her scalded hand and then the drops of brown on the floor. She glanced up at Patrick as she straightened to throw the napkin away.
“I’m positive I don’t want that dress or a chance to think.”
He shrugged and let it go, handing her a wet wipe for her hand rather than commenting further.
“I stopped at the Gazette and put the ad in for the Workshops for Women.” She shifted topics because she was tired of the current subject. Trent. It was time to move on. The workshops would be a great way to bring in customers. And it gave them something to talk about other than the wedding.
“That’s good, thank you.” He glanced at his watch and groaned. “Will you be okay here for an hour or so? I got a call last night from a woman who needs a light installed.”
“Did you?” She smiled because even though she was done with romance, that didn’t mean everyone should be. At her church’s ladies’ meeting last night she’d told Annabelle to give Patrick a call, because he had to be the greatest catch in Bygones.
“I did.” He had started toward the front door but he turned. “Why is it you don’t seem surprised?”
She thought about avoiding answering. Instead she smiled her best innocent smile and told the truth. “Because last night a friend mentioned needing a light installed and I told her you do great work.”
“Thanks, I think.”
Gracie ignored the growing lump in her throat because in the shadows she saw something on his face, a sadness, or loss. It had to be her imagination. And maybe the way her heart shook a little was her imagination, too.
“Would it help if I said she’s pretty and very sweet?”
“Not really.” He cleared his throat. “Gracie, I’m really not looking for someone.”
“No one ever is. Sometimes the right person happens into our lives when we’re least expecting it.”
“Happens. As in, they come along unexpectedly, not because everyone in town is helping it to happen.”
She laughed a little and felt the lump dissolve because his smile had reappeared. “Isn’t it great living in a small town?”
He flipped on the open sign and headed back in her direction. She felt that tightness in her throat again. He was tall and broad-shouldered, his dark hair always looking a little messy. Last night one of the ladies at the church meeting asked why Gracie wanted to push such a handsome man off on someone else. Gracie had to admit she didn’t have a clue. Self-preservation maybe?
“Oh, I also submitted information about the block party on Main Street. Coraline said it would be great for the school to put together fund-raisers, maybe baked goods, candles, that type of stuff.”
“Changing the subject?” He pulled off his apron and tossed it on the counter.
The door chimed. Saved by the bell. She exhaled and grinned up at her boss. “Not at all, just filling you in on everything.”
“Do you have a list I should know about? Ad for workshops. Check. Article about block party. Check. Get Patrick married off. Check.”
“Something like that. I can give you a full list later.”
“Thanks, I’d appreciate that.” He grinned and pulled keys out of his pocket. “Does she have the light fixture or do I need to take one?”
“She has it.” She grabbed a piece of paper off the counter and wrote out the address. “Here you go.”
