LITMIR.BIZ

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      “My closest friend in the city,” she told him, patting the mangled front of the bus with a ginger hand. “A wonderful, if slightly eccentric, woman who just happened to have a car I could borrow. I don’t think she’s driven it for a while, actually. God only knows what it costs her to keep it in a garage, even if the garage is in Hoboken.”

      Nick scoffed. “Couldn’t you rent something? From this century, maybe?”

      She gave him what she hoped was a withering look. For a cop, Nick had a lot to learn about tactful questioning. “I couldn’t afford it. And I wasn’t about to let Robert pay for it,” she added before Nick could interrupt. “This is all me now. New start, new life.”

      She glared when Nick smirked. God, she remembered that look, older and wiser and incredibly superior in the face of what he thought was one of her impossible schemes. Tommy had always simply rolled his eyes and gone back to his car magazine, but Nick…Nick liked to show her just what he thought about her plans. “So you’re staying with your dad.”

      “Absolutely not,” she snapped, and stalked over to the driver’s side door of the VW. “I’m staying with Toby.”

      Nick raised his eyebrows when she added, under her breath, complete with a prayer to the gods of unconditional friendship, “Even if he doesn’t know it yet.”

      Chapter 2

      The bell at Priest Antiques jangled when Grace pushed the door open and stepped inside. The big front room to the right, which had been the formal parlor before the house became a store, was as dim and cluttered as she remembered, as if the crisp afternoon sunshine wasn’t allowed inside. But the dust and the quiet and the faint smell of age were comfortingly familiar. She’d spent a lot of time here with Toby in junior high and high school.

      “Hello?” she called into the hallway that extended between two more rooms in the middle of the house. They were arranged roughly according to category, as always—furniture in the front room, glass and china and collectibles in the room to the left, and pretty much everything else in the third room. That one had always been her favorite. You could find everything from old bundles of love letters to Victorian Christmas ornaments to funky plastic jewelry from the 1970s in there.

      When no one answered, she hoisted her bag higher on her shoulder and started down the hall, stopping to set in motion a little rocking chair with an embroidered seat as she passed. “Toby?”

      Still nothing. She was going to have to talk to him about this. If she wanted to, she could walk right out the front door with a set of vintage Wedgwood or a poodle lamp or even a love seat. Well, maybe not a love seat, but still. Where was he?

      She set her bag down on the floor and peeked into the little room to her left, which had once been a generous closet. Celeste, Toby’s aunt, had turned it into an office years ago. Empty. The desk was strewn with papers and empty coffee mugs that looked a little furry, even from a distance, and a dinosaur of a computer monitor, humming idly.

      Maybe Toby would hire her as a cleaning woman.

      She headed back to the kitchen, ignoring the “Private” sign tacked to the swinging door—and ran smack into Toby, who was holding an iPod and humming off key.

      They shrieked in unison, as if they’d practiced it, and then Toby threw his arms around her. “Grace! What on earth are you doing here?”

      She removed his ear buds gently and handed them to him with a bright smile. “Moving in?”

      “He wanted you to move to Chicago?” Toby said a half hour later, when they were settled at the kitchen table with fresh coffee.

      Grace shrugged. “It’s a good job for him.”

      “But…Chicago? That’s…way over there,” Toby protested, waving a hand wildly. He was all eyes now that he’d taken to shaving his head, and the new silver hoop in one ear made him look like a pirate. A gentle, good-hearted pirate. “What is he thinking?”

      She considered the box of donuts Toby had produced. Everything was better with a chocolate frosted in hand. “That it’s an excellent career move. Which he totally deserves.”

      Toby frowned, and reached across the table to squeeze her hand. “But what about you, Gracie?”

      She met his eyes and smiled. “I get to make a career change, too.”

      “Grace.” Toby’s smile was sympathetic, his hand on hers light and familiar. “You don’t have a career.”

      “Well, there’s no time like the present, right?”

      Toby snorted. “I guess so.”

      She smeared chocolate frosting on his nose. “I’m serious. This is my life, and I can’t just get swept along anymore. The idea of moving to Chicago made me realize that. Maybe because it would have meant moving to Chicago with Robert.”

      “Gracie.”

      She reached out to wipe the chocolate off with a napkin. “But it’s all right, you see? Because it’s not fair to Robert to have a wife who doesn’t really love him, not the way he should be loved. Who won’t even move to Chicago with him. He’ll figure that out. Sooner or later.”

      He would, too. Robert certainly wasn’t stupid. He was a good man, a smart man, and she’d wondered more than once in the past two weeks why she didn’t love him more. Why she didn’t love him the right way, with all her heart. Why she wasn’t thrilled to move to Chicago with him, instead of sitting here in Toby’s kitchen, excited that she was going to make her own plans, without him.

      “The shop looks good,” she said. It was only a little white lie, and she wanted to change the subject.

      “It’s a mess,” he retorted, waving a careless arm toward the front of the house. “As always.”

      “You know, I could introduce you to a remarkable invention,” she said lightly. “It’s called a dust rag.”

      “I’ve heard of those.” He rolled his eyes, which wrinkled the smoothly shaved surface of his head. “Evil things. Never touch ’em.”

      She crossed the kitchen and dropped a kiss on his smooth head. Even though he’d spent most of his life in the shop, he’d never been what she would call happy about it.

      “I can help out while I’m here, you know,” she said, resting her cheek on his skull for a second. “Cover my room and board.”

      Toby turned his face up to hers, his brown eyes serious. “About that…,” he began, just as the bell over the door jangled again. “Oops. Saved by the bell. Right back.”

      Not so fast, buddy, Grace thought, following him out into the store, where Nick was standing, scowling, with her suitcase and two of the dozen cardboard boxes she’d managed to pack this morning with Regina’s help.

      God, he looked good.

      “Nick.” Toby tilted his head to the side, considering the sight. “Taking up a part-time gig as a chauffeur?”

      Nick scowled harder, and Grace hurried over to him. “Not exactly,” she explained to Toby. “We sort of bumped into each other.”

      “And by that she means she bumped into me,” Nick growled. “With a VW bus older than she is.”

      Toby sputtered a laugh, and Grace elbowed him in the ribs. “Well, if you’re going to be technical about it, yes.”

      “You’re technically lucky you didn’t do more damage,” Nick said gruffly, but his eyes had softened. “And you’re very lucky I was nice enough to bring all this stuff over here once they towed the bus away.”

      “It was incredibly generous of you,” she said, and tried to ignore the flutter of awareness in her chest when his gaze darkened.

      “There’s more in the Jeep.”

      “I’m

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