LITMIR.BIZ

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own coffee and pie. To defuse the situation she smiled, winked and said, “Why don’t you just marry the poor guy and put him out of his misery?”

      Grace gave the young girl a wide, unconcerned, very calm grin. “Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.”

      The waitress’s eyes widened in surprise. Ray lifted a lazy hand. “Tamara sweetheart, this is Grace. Mrs. Ray Madigan number one.”

      He leaned back in the booth and watched Grace walk away, and the smile he’d worn all through lunch faded. Her thick dark hair, longer than she used to wear it, bounced around her squared shoulders. She didn’t toss a glance back as she walked away; he didn’t expect her to. Gracie Madigan didn’t look back, ever.

      In her silly moss green suit and sensible low-heeled shoes she looked joyless. Annoyed. And too damn good. His gaze lingered on her legs, well revealed beneath an almost too-short green skirt. She’d always had great legs, he mused as she disappeared from sight.

      Well, he’d known she wouldn’t like the idea of him going back into narcotics, though he hadn’t expected her to lose her temper. After all, they weren’t married anymore, hadn’t been for six years now. As of two months ago, they’d been divorced as long as they’d been married.

      He knew too well what Grace thought about his chosen profession. She hated it. After all, that was the reason she gave for leaving him. Yeah, she was real good at walking away when the going got tough.

      “So that’s number one,” Tamara said as she began to efficiently clear the table, balancing plates and glasses on a small round tray. She flashed him a wicked smile; too wicked for one so young.

      “Yep,” he said.

      “She’s pretty,” Tamara said, careful to keep her tone conversational. Just a trace of curiosity crept into her soft voice to give away her interest.

      “Yep.” Pretty and sexy, the kind of unforgettable pretty and sexy that got under a man’s skin and stayed there. Having Grace back in his life in such a platonic way was torture; a torture he wasn’t about to give up. A friendly lunch every two weeks or so was better than nothing, so he purposely refrained from talking about the past. He kept the conversation light and friendly and safe, so she wouldn’t run off again.

      Until today.

      Hellfire, this was getting complicated. The best thing he could do for himself would be to hurry back to the office, call Stan, and agree to be in Mobile on Monday.

      He paid for his lunch and walked back to the office, trying to enjoy the sun on his face and the gentle breeze that wafted past. Spring in Alabama was always a reminder of why he stayed here, why he’d made Huntsville his home. Up north they were still fighting snow and ice in some places, but down south the girls had started sunbathing and the kids ran around in shorts and T-shirts after school. Dogwoods bloomed, birds flitted and chirped, summer was just around the corner.

      And Mobile was just a hop, skip and a jump from Gulf Shores, the Redneck Riviera.

      There wasn’t anything on his calendar that couldn’t be farmed out to another P.I.; an insurance fraud case he was about to close up and a couple of divorce cases—the least favorite and most profitable part of his business.

      But beach or no beach, he wasn’t leaving just yet. Gracie was the one who did the running away, not him.

      The modest offices of Madigan Investigations were situated on the ground floor of an old redbrick building in the heart of downtown Huntsville. The furniture was cheap, the sign painted on the glass door discreet and tasteful. He got a lot of his business from the lawyer on the second floor.

      “You had two phone calls,” Doris said the minute he opened that door. She waved two pink slips of paper before her and then dropped them on the desk. “One about business, one from that second ex-wife of yours. She’s getting married again, and she wants you to give her away.” Doris showed her disapproval with a wrinkling of her nose and a pursing of lips. “Can I go to lunch now? I swear, every time you have lunch with that first ex-wife of yours I end up half starved before I get out of here.”

      In Doris he’d found the perfect secretary. Built square and solid, she was old enough to be his mother, sassy one minute and mothering the next, more than competent where her secretarial duties were concerned, and—most important—he’d not been tempted even one time to ask her to marry him.

      “Take the rest of the afternoon,” he said, well aware that his lunches with Grace usually ran long. “I can answer the phone for a couple of hours.”

      Doris smiled as she walked by, stopping just long enough to reach up and give him a maternal pat on the cheek. “You’re a good boy, Ray.”

      Rather than go into his own inner office, he sat at Doris’s desk to read his messages. One of his most persistent clients had called; a man who was certain his wife was cheating on him, even though Ray hadn’t been able to discover that the woman did anything more illicit than floor it through the occasional yellow light. When he read the other message he smiled.

      He’d have to call Trish, wish her luck and decline her request. He hadn’t met her fiancé, but even the most saintly man would have to balk at having his bride walk down the aisle on the arm of her ex-husband.

      Oddly enough, he wouldn’t actually mind giving Trish away. She was a sweet girl and he wanted to see her start a new, wonderful life. She deserved it. And if Patty ever married that doctor she’d been seeing for the past year, he’d be there with bells on, he’d toast the bride and groom and wish them a long and happy life together.

      If Grace ever decided to get married again…his smile faded. Hellfire, no matter how nonchalant he tried to be about Gracie, he couldn’t quite pull it off. No matter how hard he tried—and dammit he gave it his best shot—he still thought of her as his wife.

      To take his mind off of a subject he’d rather not ponder, he recalled a more pleasant memory; the look on Dr. Doolittle’s face when the dentist had opened the door to his fine home two weeks ago and found Ray standing there. The way the creep had paled when Ray had very calmly threatened to rip out his spleen if he ever harassed Grace again, and then threatened to do the same if he ever felt the need to share the details of their conversation.

      Hell, a man could live without a spleen, Ray thought as he positioned his locked hands behind his head and leaned back in Doris’s chair.

      Since the house she rented was situated near downtown Huntsville, Grace had the pleasure of taking her morning jog down quiet streets lined with old houses and even older trees. A small neighborhood park was especially beautiful in the spring, with the flowering dogwoods and pear trees in bloom growing gracefully around a small pond.

      On occasion she’d see another runner, but most mornings she had the sidewalk and the park path to herself. It was worth getting up while the sky was still dark, leaving the house before the sun actually peeked over the horizon. She loved jogging in the gray light, watching the day come alive.

      Ray lived close by, a fact she’d been well aware of when she chose her house. He rented an apartment over a garage, just a few streets north. She’d told herself, more than once, that knowing Ray was near had nothing to do with her decision. Living in Madison or South Huntsville would require driving every day in rush hour traffic on the Parkway or I-565. The house she rented, a rather small old house that had been recently remodeled, was convenient. And she liked the neighborhood. In order to convince herself of this truth, she never ran down Ray’s street. In fact, she made it a point to run in the opposite direction.

      This morning she couldn’t completely clear her mind, as she usually did when she ran. She kept thinking about Ray, wondering if moving back to Huntsville had been such a good idea, after all. It had seemed so when she’d made the decision. The offer from Dr. Dearborne had been a good one, and besides, she needed to get over Ray, to put what they’d had in the past and move on. As long as she continued to make him more than he was, in her mind, that would never happen. A good dose of reality would remind her of the reasons she’d left him in the first place,

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