Charming Grace (35 page)

I didn’t know
what
to think. I had gone into this meeting with the hope that Roarke would simply encourage Boone to keep drawing houses, maybe say “send me any new design ideas you come up with, Noleene.” The news that Roarke had been following Boone’s life since his prison days was a big enough shock. And I hadn’t known Roarke’s homes were featured in leading design magazines.

Most of all, I didn’t know what Roarke intended to do or say next. G. Helen’s sly expression said she had a clue but wouldn’t share it. He didn’t keep me in suspense for long.

“I want to show you some designs Helen and I agree would be perfect for the building sites up here on the ridge,” Roarke told Boone over iced dessert coffees. “I’d like your opinion. I’ll be back in a second with the drawings.” Roarke headed for his SUV. I gave my grandmother a look.
What are you up to?

She rolled her eyes.
You worry too much.

When Roarke returned, he held a handful of papers. He sat down, jabbed a pair of reading glasses onto his nose, then spread draftsman-quality exterior drawings on the cleared table in front of Boone. “These are reduced photocopies of the originals. The details don’t show up well. But see what you think. I really like this architect’s work.”

Boone went very still. “Those are
my
drawings.”

Roarke smiled. “I know. I want to buy them.” He paused to let that news sink in, first. When Boone looked sufficiently recovered, Roarke added, “And I want you to quit your job with Stone Senterra and come to work for me.”

“
Mon Dieu
,” Boone said.

Grace and I stood at the chin of mountain rock where my fantasy bedroom window overlooked the creek. I was still in shock. She’d led me off through the woods on a walk, since I was speechless after Roarke’s announcement. She watched me like a worried bird. By the time I realized we were following an old deer trail to the chin, there we stood. “My favorite spot,” she said quietly. My favorite spot was her favorite spot. It had been quite a day.

“Gracie, you should have told me you gave Roarke my drawings.”

“I couldn’t. You would have asked me not to do it.”

“Yeah. Because I can’t quit workin’ for Stone. Besides, I’m not an architect. I never even went to college.”

“Van Gogh never went to art school.”

“And look how that turned out. He had to cut off his ear to get attention.”

She smiled. “You don’t need to cut anything off. You don’t need a degree in architecture, either. A diploma’s just something to hang on the wall. It doesn’t have much to do with talent.”

“Just a little something about professional standards and engineering.”

“Roarke can have a certified engineer approve your designs. That’s just a formality. So why not sell him the plans, at least?”

“I could do that much, I guess.”

“Good. Why can’t designing houses for Chestatee Ridge be your long-distance
hobby
? I see the gleam in your eyes. Admit it. This is the kind of work you want to do.”

“All right. Yeah. I want to jump up and down and yell and hoot with excitement and grab you and—” I stopped. A deep, sexy pink mask spread across her cheeks and nose. Not a blush. A butterfly of color some women get when they’re excited. And I don’t mean about house designs.
Don’t touch her. Don’t feed the temptation. You fall off the wagon even once, and you’re a lost cause.

“—I’m happy, yeah,” I finished dully.

She took a deep breath and stepped back a little. “Good.”

“But I work for Stone Senterra. Period. Armand’ll be out on parole this fall, and I’ll have to stick close by him while he settles in as a bodyguard for Stone —”

“Some day you’ll
have
to trust Armand to lead his own life.”

“He took care of me when we were kids. I’m gonna take care of him, now.”

“I understand. But do this much—just don’t tell Jack Roarke
No.
Tell him you’ll give him an answer about the job by the end of the summer.” She stared me down, unblinking, the pink sex butterfly glowing under hard green eyes.

I caved. Every bone in my body wanted to work with Jack Roarke. Well,
almost
every bone. One hold-out was dedicated to Grace and Grace alone. To being the man Grace thought I could be. “All right. I’ll let him know by summer’s end.”

Grace exhaled slowly then faced forward, looking down into the wild, pretty creek bottoms. “Good. Now, about this land. This is a special place. I want your opinion on it. Which house would you suggest Roarke build here?”

Miserable and aching to touch her, I faced forward, too. “The log-and-stone Adirondack.”

“Perfect. I was hoping you’d say that. I’ll tell him.”

“So you like that little model I sent you? It’s made of scrap wood from stalls I helped build for the Angola rodeo. When you look at it, try not to think of killer prison bulls.”

She laughed. “No bull, I promise.” Her laugh faded off. “That house belongs here. It’s special. It would suit a place like this—a place with so much sacrifice and determination behind it.” When I looked at her curiously she pointed. “See down there in the creek hollow? Just to the left of the big beech tree.”

“Yeah.”

“See the hint of an old clearing? There are three more huge beeches in that tangle of forest.”

“I see the other beeches. Yeah.”

“Seventy years ago, those beeches were the shade trees around a little mountain farm house. All along these creek bottoms there were corn fields. The corn was grown for one purpose. Making illegal corn whiskey to sell. The farmer was a good man, just poor and uneducated, making a living the best way he knew how. No worse than a lot of dirt-poor farmers around here, back then. But he was caught by the revenue agents for making whiskey, and convicted, and sentenced to five years on the chain gang.”

“A hard stretch. Road work, quarry work. Poor bastard.”

“Yes. He died on a hot Georgia road with an iron cuff around his ankle. His family never stopped grieving for him and never forgave the government.” Grace hesitated. “He was G. Helen’s father. She was born and raised down in that moonshine hollow, among the beech trees.”

I absorbed that amazing news for a second. So G. Helen’s papa had been a con. “That explains a lot about her.”

Grace nodded. Slowly we faced each other. Her eyes gleamed with hard tears. Green gold eyes. Tough moonshine eyes. She’d gotten them from her grandmother. “G. Helen has a soft spot for helping men who deserved better than life handed them. Men like Harp. And you. I learned from her example. I. . .inherited her inclinations.”

“What are you tellin’ me?”

“It’s this simple: You deserve to be an architect, and you deserve to build that special house here.”

“I don’t know what I deserve. I only know what I want.”

“What do you want?”

“Right now I’d settle for kissing you.”

She made a soft, urgent sound and reached for me. I reached for
her
.

My damned cell phone rang. Grace jumped as if an alarm clock had just cut her off in mid-dream. I grabbed the phone off my belt and said some silent words that could have melted it. The caller was Mojo.

“The Kangaroo and the Princess just flew in,” he said. Security buzz words. The Secret Service had nothing on us when it came to nicknames for our VIPs.
The Kangaroo and the Princess.
“Stone wants you to take the Kangaroo and the Princess out to Camp Senterra. He wants you to brief the Kangaroo and the Princess on Grace. The Kangaroo and the Princess have rented townhomes at Birch River. Overlooking the club house and the golf course. You can pick them up there. Their managers know to expect you. ”

“Tell the Kangaroo and the Princess I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Oh, and remind me to take you off my Christmas card list.”

“Uh, sorry. I must have bad timing.”

“Never mind.” I put the phone away and looked at Grace.

She was livid. “You have to take care of a
kangaroo
? Has Stone added a
kangaroo
to the movie? What—does the script now call for Diamond to kickbox with a
kangaroo
? And a
princess
?”

I chewed my tongue. “I wish I could tell you the details, but it’s Stone surprise. A surprise for you. Gracie, I have to do my job. We agreed. I have to get back to work, now. And I can’t talk about it.”

She snapped to attention, mad as hell. “I’ll see you—and your kangaroo—and your princess—later, then.”

The light went out of her, and had already gone out of me.

The Kangaroo and the Princess. A surprise for me. I couldn’t figure that out, and Boone was duty-bound not to tell me, and so, still sad over the Chestatee Ridge tiff, I showed up at Stone’s private/public Fourth of July party with my warning radar set on
high
.

In Dahlonega, the Fourth of July started early in the morning on the town square with speeches by anybody and everybody who had the word ‘Honorable’ in front of his name. Then there was an ugly-dog dress-up contest, bluegrass music at the square’s gazebo, free watermelon, cheap barbecue, old-timey mountain folk music at the new-timey Folkways Center, and an all-day arts-and-crafts show. By dusk, several thousand happy, barbecue-filled, watermelon-soaked people were camped out under the trees and on the grassy slopes around North Georgia College’s ROTC drill field, for the fireworks show.

Naturally, Stone was a bigger attraction that year than even the Big Twirly Screamer Rockets that burst in multi-colored spirals overhead. Considering his showmanship repartee with the crowd, plus his huge, private canopy—sheltering cherry-wood lawn chairs, boom boxes playing Sousa marches, and a buffet table piled with ribs and all the trimmings from the locally famous Pappy Red’s Barbecue—he was far more entertaining than the Screamers.

“Somebody make a note!” he yelled above the whistle and
ka-boom
of the fireworks and the applause of all the people who’d crowded close around the roped-off tent to watch Stone watch the fireworks. “We need a Fourth of July scene in the movie!”

An assistant scribbled on a Palm Pilot. From their miniature lawn chairs, Stone’s daughters clapped to the Sousa marches and pointed up at the exploding, candy-colored pyrotechnics. Diamond lounged, bored and snake-like in black bike shorts and a designer-ripped gold T, on a lawn chair beside some over-stuffed Italian bodybuilder she was dating. On lawn chairs beside mine, Leo and Mika held hands and dreamily watched the pulsing rays of the third moon of Luna 7, or whatever else the fireworks resembled in their imagination
vis-à-vis
their latest computer game simulation.

“I want
you
to make a note about your
diet
,” Kanda said to Stone with stern affection. She poked her fingers into the pocket of Stone’s Hawaiian shirt, retrieved a forbidden piece of pecan fudge from the
Fudge Factory
, and tossed it to Boone.

Stone scowled benignly, kissed Kanda, then bellowed at Boone, “Noleene, you ratted me out.”

Boone palmed the candy. It disappeared behind his big, agile fingers. “What fudge?”

“Feed it to Mel and then take him for a walk.” Mel Gibson had just received some kind of directing award, so Shrek was back to being Mel. Stone chortled at Boone. “Have fun, fudge squealer. Pecans always give Mel gas.”

Boone maintained a stoic expression as the crowd beyond the ropes laughed and applauded. He dutifully fed Shrek the contraband, and Shrek happily slobbered on Boone’s hand.

I darted poisoned-fudge looks at Stone. Stone, of course, didn’t notice.

“Fireworks!” he said again, and gave me a grinning thumbs-up. “A fireworks scene showing you and Harp being patriotic! Wha’d’ya think, Grace?”

“Harp hated crowds. He never came to town for festivals. And he wasn’t patriotic. Not in a wrapped-in-the-flag way, at least.”

“Whatever! It’ll be a great scene!”

I got up from my lounge chair and went to the edge of the tent. My eyes burned. Before me, the sky turned into an eye-popping climax of fireworks. Giant chrysanthemums of color bloomed against the gray-black night.