The Ways of Grace by Linda Francis Lee

Author:Linda Francis Lee [Lee, Linda Francis]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Romance, Erotica, Contemporary, Fiction
ISBN: 9780307417497
Google: dR_geP4Jsh8C
Amazon: 0804119953
Publisher: Ivy Books
Published: 2002-08-26T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

It didn’t take much more convincing before Calder promised to arrange for little Ruth Colebrook to stay with Grace until a suitable family could be found. Now Grace had a week to prepare.

Those long, desperate minutes in the ER were gone, the leftover feelings of despair pushed back by the promise of a child coming into her life. New purpose, deeper meaning. A sign that at every end of the road, a new path unexpectedly could pop open.

Twenty minutes after leaving her mother’s, Grace stepped into her apartment and found herself stunned, excited, and amazed that she would be caring for a child. Questions rushed through her. What would Ruth be like? Sweet and cuddly. Sweet and shy. It hardly mattered. Grace would make this child feel safe and loved at a time when she must be so sad.

The answering machine blinked at her, and when she pushed the button, Jack’s voice played through the room.

“Grace, are you there?” He sounded half exasperated, half amused. Then silence, before his voice lowered, that deep rumbling sound that sent shivers pricking along her skin. “Call me, Grace. We need to talk.”

The message clicked off, and the machine rewound. She shook sensation away. She might have a bad habit of ending up in Jack’s bed, but he had a bad habit of wanting to talk about it. She didn’t return his call.

She didn’t waste a second getting prepared for Ruth’s arrival. First thing she had to do was return all the wedding gifts. She worked like a madwoman, and in less than three weeks from her derailed wedding, the deed was done. It was the end of February, and the relief she felt when the last box passed across the post office counter was enormous, but her only celebration was cleaning every corner and crevice of the apartment.

During that time, Grace made good on her other promise to avoid Jack, which wasn’t easy considering he was making a determined effort to see her. He knocked on her door, called her apartment, even rang her buzzer from downstairs a time or two. But she didn’t want to see him. Primarily because she was half afraid that with just one look she’d throw herself at him.

She would not fall into his arms again.

She remembered the hospital, remembered the trauma that had careened around her and in her head at all that had gone on. The intensity she had felt for life, for Jack. Wondering how she could survive this crazy world. Then the very next day, out of nowhere, she was given the chance to take care of a child. The despair turned to joy.

On the fourth day she finally opened the closet that contained the stairway leading to the attic that the real estate woman had said could be cleaned up and made into a master suite or extra bedrooms.

Grace walked up the very narrow staircase into the dim and dusty upper regions. At one time the entire brownstone had been a single-family dwelling, this attic reserved for the servants needed to run a household.

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