Hot Date. Amy Garvey

wait and pounded up the porch steps and into the store.

      “Hey, Nick,” Toby said from the hallway, a cup of coffee in his hand. “Can I get you—?”

      “Not now,” Nick growled, and took the stairs to the second floor two at a time.

      Grace was in the spare bedroom, which was at least passable at this point. A meandering path cut through the accumulated junk, although the piles to either side of it looked taller than they had the other day. He had only one foot over the threshold when Grace peeked briefly into a cardboard box and then heaved it out the open window.

      “Grace!”

      She whirled around, hand to her chest, and smiled as she unplugged a pair of iPod ear buds. Outside, he could hear the box land with a thud. “Hey, Nick. What’s up?”

      He glared. “What’s up? I think the question is what’s down, Grace. What the hell are you doing?”

      She blinked at him in surprise. Her hair was scooped on top of her head in a messy knot, curls springing out every which way like an exploded Slinky. “I’m…cleaning. It’s sort of obvious, Nick.”

      “You’re throwing things out the window,” he bellowed, and didn’t even care when she flinched.

      “Well, yeah. It’s a lot easier than carrying everything downstairs,” she said, and took a step backward when he growled.

      “Grace, will you stop and think for a minute? Please?” He rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Half of it’s ending up in the Garritys’ side yard. And you can’t just leave it there. Someone is going to have to pick it all up and set it by the curb, or put it in a dumpster. Which would be on the other side of the house, in the driveway.”

      “A bonfire would be quicker,” she said thoughtfully, and threw up her hands in defeat when he glared at her. “Okay, okay, no more tossing it out the window. You’re a total buzz kill, you know that?”

      He ignored her last remark with effort and slouched against the door frame. “I have news about the VW, if you’re interested.”

      “Good or bad?” she said idly, squinting at a faded water-color of a landscape she’d taken off the top of the nearest pile.

      “Not great.”

      She set down the painting and frowned. “Uh oh.”

      “It’s not going to be cheap. It’s drivable, but if you want to return the car in the shape you found it, it’s going to cost you. With a car that old, just finding the parts costs money.”

      Her face fell. “Oh. That’s bad.”

      He shrugged, but his heart squeezed in pity, just for a second. She looked so appalled, so confused—and strangely adorable with her hair corkscrewing all over the place, and her cheeks warm with the hard, dirty work of cleaning out the spare room.

      There went his brain again, whispering, Kiss her. Kiss her!

      He shoved the thought aside and straightened up just as she sagged into the one empty chair in the room. “Does your friend need the car back right away?”

      “No. But I can’t return it all banged up,” she said disconsolately. “It’s Regina’s baby.”

      He folded his arms over his chest. Maybe that would cure the urge to reach out and stroke her head.

      He still couldn’t believe that he wasn’t tempted to shake her instead. You couldn’t just run off and start a new life without a plan, without money, without reliable transportation, but would Grace admit that? Never. It was just like her to charge into making life-altering changes without thinking about it, but for the first time ever he couldn’t muster up enough indignation to yell at her.

      Maybe because this time, she actually looked a little bit worried about what she’d gotten herself into.

      But he couldn’t be the one to pick her up and dust her off, not now. Not when he kept seeing this new Grace, instead of the old one he was so comfortable with.

      Not when all the pieces of his life were finally in place, and he was about to get out of Wrightsville himself. He couldn’t fix this for her, not this time.

      So he said, in his most casual tone, “Could you ask Robert to help out?” He leaned one elbow on a stack of cartons, and jumped back when it wobbled.

      She raised her face to his and blinked incredulously. “Robert? Why on earth would I do that?”

      Right. Why? He shrugged. “Well, he is your husband.”

      “And I left him,” she pointed out, looking at him as if he were a particularly stupid kid. “I can’t ask him to finance it.”

      Time to plunge in. Throw the proverbial piece of spaghetti against the wall and see if it stuck. Even so, he found himself looking at his shoes as he said, “Maybe it’s not really over. Maybe you just needed some time to cool off. Maybe, just maybe, you miss him. Maybe you should—”

      He looked up just in time to see her stand up, wielding an empty plastic water bottle which she obviously intended to introduce to his head. He ducked toward the door. “Okay, maybe not. Sorry.”

      She was sputtering, he realized, actually sputtering as she followed him into the hall, the water bottle still clutched in one hand and her cheeks bright pink with outrage now.

      “It’s over,” she finally managed. There went her eyes, blazing like a freshly set fire. “And I do not need you or anybody else to suggest different!”

      “Got it,” he said, and backed down the stairs, hands up in surrender. “Sorry. Leaving now.”

      “Good!” she yelled, and turned on her heel, disappearing into the spare room with a slam of the door.

      “Don’t ask,” he said to Toby, who was waiting at the bottom of the steps with his hands on his hips.

      It just proved how dangerous being impulsive could be, he thought as he strode out to his truck. It never paid to do something without thinking it over first, and that was a lesson he didn’t need to learn twice.

      No, Grace’s problems were her own now. And he had his own life to live.

      He flinched as another piece of furniture shot out of the window and hit the ground with a crash.

      The sooner he remembered that, the better.

      Two hours later, Grace was reheating a cup of coffee downstairs in the kitchen. The morning sun had given way to a gray drizzle, and Mr. Garrity had already called twice to complain about the “refuse” on his lawn, which was now wet and was a lot heavier to carry around the house to the driveway than it had been going out the window.

      Damn Nick, anyway. He was always right. She hated that in a person.

      And she hated how guilty she felt. Toby would never say no to her, and she knew he loved her, but showing up on his doorstep unexpectedly was something she had done on Saturdays in the ninth grade. When you were supposed to be a grown-up, it probably left something to be desired.

      Toby pushed open the swinging door just as she was getting up to retrieve her coffee from the microwave. “I have a surprise for you,” he said with a sly grin.

      She arched an eyebrow. “A cleaning woman?”

      “Nope, it’s me,” came a female voice, and then Casey Peyton pushed past him and into the kitchen. “When Mohammed doesn’t come to the mountain…”

      “Casey!” Grace squealed, and scared the baby in Casey’s arms, who immediately wrinkled up his face and began to cry.

      “Jack, it’s okay,” Casey murmured, and brushed her lips across his peach fuzz head. “It’s Aunt Grace. Loud Aunt Grace.”

      “Hey, Jack,” Grace said softly, and inched forward to drop a kiss on his mother’s cheek. “I haven’t seen you since