LITMIR.BIZ

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hugged her, too. No one made cake like Georgia, and no one except Georgia had ever bothered to ask if Grace needed a woman to talk to once in a while. Her son could be a pain in Grace’s ass—when he wasn’t being surprisingly, intensely sexy all of a sudden—but Georgia definitely wasn’t.

      “Hey, Grace,” Nick said. He was slouched in his chair, a scowl already settled on his face, and he didn’t look happy to see her. She didn’t blame him. She wasn’t exactly thrilled to see him, either. She had splinters in both hands and sore shoulders from carrying junk down to the basement.

      Then again, it was easier to deal with him when they were squared off like they always had been. It pushed the idea of kissing more than his cheek to the back of her imagination. Almost.

      She nodded coolly. “Nick.”

      “Sit down, sweetie.” Mason pulled out the chair beside him and patted it. “You don’t mind if we eat with Georgia and Nick, do you? Nick brought Georgia here for her birthday. Isn’t that nice?”

      Nick scowled harder, and Grace bit back a grin. That was Nick, the reluctant hero, the Good Son through and through.

      She’d known it even way back when his dad had taken off. Nick was just twelve. Left with his mom and his sisters, Katie and Meg, Nick had turned into the man of the house overnight. He took over mowing the lawn and putting out the trash; he shoveled the snow and killed spiders. He didn’t always like it, and it wasn’t as if he never complained, but he’d stepped right up, all business. Katie and Meg used to complain that Nick was stricter than their dad had ever been, and way more of a worrywart. They weren’t wrong, either.

      She smiled as Mason handed her a menu and wound his arm around her shoulders. “I’m proud of you, Gracie. I think you did the right thing, coming home. We can keep an eye on you here, help you through this.”

      Oh, perfect. She narrowed her eyes at Nick, but he just shrugged. What exactly had he told them before she arrived? She was almost thirty years old. She didn’t need anyone “keeping an eye” on her. That was the point here. She was going to make a success of her life this time, figure out what she wanted, what mattered to her. Just because she’d taken a few admittedly ill-advised shortcuts so far didn’t mean she was being reckless or stupid.

      She’d just bet he’d embellished the whole fender-bender story and had her heaving whole pieces of furniture out the window like some freak.

      “I agree, Grace,” Georgia offered. Beneath her cloud of faded brown hair, her expression was soft. “It’s bound to be a bit confusing, starting over this way. We’ll all be here to help.”

      “I don’t think I need it, but thank you,” Grace said pointedly, and relished a glow of pleasure when Nick glowered and looked away. “I’m an adult, and I’m perfectly capable of making my own decisions. This is a second chance for me, guys! I’m actually very excited about it. Getting a divorce isn’t the end of the world.”

      “Of course not,” Mason said hastily, and smiled up at the waitress who had appeared beside their table.

      “What can I get everybody?” she said cheerfully, and Grace glanced at her menu.

      “I’ll have a cheeseburger, medium rare, with fries and an iced tea,” she said, and sat back.

      If only the girl could bring her a skewer to use on Nick, it would have been a perfect meal.

      Chapter 4

      “How’s it going?”

      Grace looked up from the pile of books and china she was sorting in her room on Sunday afternoon and sighed at Toby. “Slowly. Celeste had serious pack rat issues.”

      “You know you’re procrastinating, right?” He came in to sprawl beside her on the bed, dressed in old jeans and a faded Lucky Charms T-shirt. His feet were bare, and he hadn’t even put his hoop in that morning. “You could just carry all this stuff down to the basement and dump it. You don’t have to sort through it.”

      She rolled her eyes. “Have you seen the basement? It’s already a fire hazard. I’m actually not joking.”

      “Just don’t put it down in the shop. We already have more stuff down there than I’ll ever sell.” He looked morose, and a moment later he flopped on his back to stare at the ceiling.

      “But there’s good stuff up here,” Grace argued, elbowing his thigh. “Take this, for instance.” She held up a delicate china cake plate decorated with a pattern of swans and scrolled white ribbon. “It would be a perfect wedding gift. You just don’t know how to merchandise.”

      “Merchandise?” He sounded dubious.

      “Group things together,” she explained. “Make displays. Remind people that antiques can be gifts, not just stuff for the mantel at home.”

      He made a face. “Such as?”

      “Well, start with this,” she said, and waved the plate at him. “You could create a wedding table using candlesticks, old lace, tablecloths, picture frames, a hundred different things. And then spruce it up with some white tulle and ribbons, so anyone looking at it would know what you were suggesting.”

      “That sounds like work.” He closed his eyes and tugged her pillow out from under his head and laid it over his face. “I don’t want to work,” he muttered, his voice muffled.

      She elbowed him again, harder this time. “Well, unless you’re independently wealthy and haven’t told me about it—in which case, hello, not very nice of you—I don’t think you have a choice.”

      “Well, neither do you,” he argued, and sat up. “And you’re up here sifting through forgotten crap instead of figuring out how you’re going to get on with your life, so there.”

      She set down the plate, mostly to resist the temptation to break it over his head. “I’m thinking about it,” she said. “There are a lot of things I can do, you know. I’m considering opening my own business.”

      He lifted an eyebrow. “Really?

      She sat up straight, trying to look convincing. “Really. I’m just not sure what kind yet. But I’ll get started for real as soon as I have this place cleaned up and suitable for inhabitation.”

      “So, roughly two years from now?”

      “Shut it, you,” she said, but she was smiling.

      “Seriously, Grace.” He twined one of her curls around his index finger. “I know you have…experience and all, but what kind of business could you start? It’s not easy, you know. And I don’t know if there’s much call for a kind of pastry chef slash part-time wedding planner slash almost photographer.”

      She smacked him lightly on the arm. “There are other things I can do. It’s just…”

      “What?”

      “I want it to be fun.” She turned her head to look at him. “I don’t want to do something boring. This is my chance to figure out how I’m going to spend the rest of my life. Working as a bank teller or in real estate or something, that’s not…fun.”

      “It’s work, Grace,” Toby said softly. “It’s kind of the anti-fun, you know?”

      “It doesn’t have to be,” she argued. “This place could be a lot of fun, for instance. You just don’t see it.”

      “You know what I see?” he said, twirling another piece of her hair between his fingers. “A business that got left to me because there was no one else. A business I never really much liked. And a guy in Boston who does sound like fun, if e-mails can be believed, and whom I’ll probably never meet because I’m stuck here in Wrongsville, with the business I don’t like.”

      She wriggled her head away from him and sat up. “What guy in Boston? And do you really hate it here that much?”

      “A guy in Boston

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