Hot Date. Amy Garvey

and he gathered her into his arms. It was a comfortable feeling, curled up together that way, a little bit like two shipwreck survivors, with the pale sunlight coming through the window and nothing to do but hole up together for the rest of the afternoon.

      She held on to him, snuggled in so he could stroke her head, and then sat up so fast she bumped his chin, hard. “I know! You should go up to visit him! You haven’t met yet, have you? You could tell him you’re coming up on an antique-buying trip and set up a date, and stay a few days, and then you’ll fall in love, and—”

      “Grace!” He was laughing, but he was also shaking his head. “I’m stuck here with the shop, remember?”

      “No, you’re not.” She waited until he got it, and sighed when he didn’t. “I’m here! I can run the shop while you’re gone. Maybe a few days away is just what you need.”

      He bit his bottom lip, thinking. “It’s definitely what my love life needs…”

      “Do it!” She poked his stomach playfully. “You know you want to. And I’ll be fine here.”

      “That’s where the plan seems a little dangerous,” he began, and she poked him harder.

      “It is not dangerous.” She scrambled off the bed and held up her hand, oath-taking style. “I will not burn the place down, or succumb to con artists, or throw anything else out the window. Except possibly Nick, and only if he really pisses me off.”

      “Grace.”

      “I mean it, Toby.” She gave him her best persuasive smile. “It’s a chance. It’s a possibility. Take it.”

      “It’s crazy,” Toby said, but he was grinning now, and he stood up to take her hands and swing her around the room. Since toppling over one of the stacks of accumulated junk was a sure bet, he danced her into the hallway and then scooped her up in a hug. “I can’t wait to e-mail him. Where should I stay? I don’t even know what I can afford.”

      He turned into the cluttered mess of his own bedroom and stopped dead, facing her with a stricken look. “Oh, my God, there’s a huge problem.”

      Her heart sank. “What?”

      He spread his hands in surrender. “What the hell will I wear?”

      This is crazy, Toby thought, seated at the desk in the office downstairs, e-mail open and a half-finished message to Charlie typed out, the cursor blinking at him patiently.

      Completely, wildly, breathtakingly crazy. One conversation with Grace and he had a flight to Boston booked—thanks to a credit card he hadn’t managed to max out—a suitcase half packed, clothes flung all over his bedroom, and his ears were ringing with the buzz of adrenaline in his blood.

      “This is stupid,” he muttered softly, reading over the e-mail to Charlie yet again. He’d managed to come off as desperate, overly enthusiastic, confused, and slightly pretentious all at the same time. “He’s going to think I’m insane.”

      “He’s going to think you’re adorable,” Grace contradicted him, appearing in the doorway to the office with a smug grin and a glass of wine in her hand. “Here. Dutch courage.”

      “Oh, yes, because drunk e-mailing is even more attractive,” he said with a groan, but he took the glass anyway.

      “You’re not going to get drunk, silly.” Grace dropped a kiss on the top of his head and perched on the edge of the desk. “And I told you what to say! You’re coming up anyway, maybe the two of you could get together, very casual and breezy. If you’re right about this thing between the two of you, he’ll be thrilled.”

      He turned his face up to hers, a sudden wave of nausea rolling in his gut. “And if I’m wrong? If you’re wrong?”

      Her grin softened with sympathy. “Then you’ll get a trip to Boston out of it. Some free time. A little vacation from the shop. There’s no bad here, buddy.”

      How could she say that? he wondered, turning back to the computer screen. What was most shocking, to him anyway, was that she believed it.

      His skepticism must have showed on his face, because she leaned over to hug him, pure Grace, spontaneous and a little clumsy, knocking a pile of mail onto the floor in the process. “You need to do this,” she said kindly. “Take a chance. I am. And I’m not just taking off to maybe have a hot date, am I? I’m starting my whole life over. You can fly to Boston for a few days, I know it.”

      The tension eased out of him in a gentle breath. She was right. He could do this. He would do this.

      “You know I’m either going to thank you or curse you later,” he muttered, deleting the worst of his babbling e-mail and preparing to start over.

      She laughed. “I’m counting on it.”

      On Monday afternoon, Grace pulled Toby’s old Celica into the driveway after dropping him at the airport.

      “Wish me luck,” he’d said as he headed toward the security checkpoint.

      “I’ll go one better,” she’d called after him. “I wish you lust!”

      It was sort of amazing what scandalized people these days, she thought now, jerking the parking brake into place and turning off the ignition. As if half of them weren’t home downloading porn off the Internet all the time, anyway.

      Toby had reminded her that the garbage went out tonight and given her a list of two dozen other things to remember: the funny noise the refrigerator sometimes made, the customer who was picking up a little mahogany escritoire on Wednesday, and a casual mention of her painful death if she ate the rest of the Girl Scout Thin Mints stashed in the kitchen cabinet. She was going to have to hunt down another Girl Scout posthaste since she’d finished them last night after he went to bed.

      But for now she would start with the garbage. She was outside anyway, and it was definitely going to take more than one trip after her purging spree. The sun was out, and it finally felt like spring, warm and soft with possibility in the air. Leaving her bag on the hood of the car, she marched back to the trash piled by the garage and gathered an ambitious armful. A small cardboard box of assorted sewing notions and rusty scissors slid off the top.

      A bored female voice floated down from somewhere above her. “You dropped something.”

      She looked up, craning her neck over the plastic bag of moth-eaten old clothes wedged on top of the pile in her arms. “I noticed. Where are you? Wait, who are you?”

      “Up here.”

      Well, that was helpful. Grace twisted around and caught sight of a teenage face framed by a dark, glossy pageboy in the next-door neighbor’s upstairs window. “Um, hi.”

      “You’re throwing out a lot of stuff there,” the girl said.

      “You’re quite a detective,” Grace said wryly. “Want to help?”

      The girl seemed to consider this, then disappeared.

      Was that a yes? Shaking her head, Grace trudged to the curb and dropped the bags. When she turned around, the girl was three feet away, her hands stuffed into the pockets of a loose pair of overalls as she waited at the foot of the driveway.

      “Oh,” Grace said. “Great.”

      “Quinn Barnett,” the girl said without offering a hand or even cracking a smile. “I live next door.”

      “I gathered that.” Grace brushed her hands off on the back of her jeans and offered one to Quinn anyway. “I’m Grace Lamb, a friend of Toby’s. I’m going to be staying here for a while.”

      Quinn stared at her for a minute and then shook her hand. Her fingers were like bird bones, delicate and almost brittle. “How come?”

      Grace was so busy comparing this girl, all self-possession and cool disinterest, to the way she had behaved at Quinn’s age, that it took her a minute