Page 74 of Drop the Mitts

Grace said nothing. She sat still, legs crossed at the ankle. When they pulled onto her street, her chest tightened with every passing house.

André turned onto her drive with mechanical precision, braked with calm indifference, and didn’t even glance her way as he threw it into park.

“I’ll grab your bag.” His voice was still low and clipped.

She hesitated. “Thanks.”

The back door opened. Country murmured something she didn’t catch. Jenna gave her a small smile, but none of them had the words to address this.

André didn’t meet her eyes as he dropped the suitcase on the step. No cheek kiss. No hug. No smart-ass comment. No offer to carry it inside.

He turned back to the truck, and Grace’s heart crunched like a Christmas ornament under a boot.

“See you,” he said under his breath.

“Yeah,” she murmured. “See you.”

The taillights flared red as he backed out. She stood motionless as the truck rolled down the street, turned the corner, and disappeared.

Grace dragged her suitcase up the last step. Fumbled with her keys. The lock turned with a click, and the door opened into the familiar hush of her temporary Calgary life.

She stepped inside.

It smelled like lemon cleaner and wood polish. The heating had kicked on sometime before they arrived. The radiator ticked quietly beneath the window.

She dropped her bag. Kicked off her shoes. The door shut behind her, and she leaned her back against it. For a long moment, she just breathed as one voice echoed in her head.

What are you going home to?

Chapter

Twenty-Five

André

André welded the final corner,sparks spitting like fireworks against the sheet metal floor, the acrid tang of burning steel clinging to his tongue. He didn’t flinch anymore. Not from the heat. Not from the sound.

But today he was distracted. His bead line wobbled slightly, just enough to piss him off. He stopped, leaned back, and yanked his welding helmet up, blinking through the sweat slicking his temples.

The gate was a beast. Seven feet wide. Arching across the top in a precise curve that took two full hours of coaxing out of the raw stock, not to mention the forged embellishments—a scrollwork of vines and thistles that his client wanted to match the crest on their summer property. He’d already spent sixteen hours on the damned thing. Should’ve taken ten.

He should’ve been proud of it. It was clean work. Elegant. A little gaudy, if he was being honest. But he couldn’t feel any sense of accomplishment.

His body was finally starting to regulate, not feeling quite so desperate from nicotine withdrawals, but Grace was in his head like a fever. He didn’t know which was worse.

Because after all his fantasizing, now he knew what she tasted like. What she sounded like when he pulled her out of her head. What she looked like beneath him, around him, on top of him.

It had been two days since they drove home Sunday morning. It felt like six months.

He reached for the shop towel slung over the edge of the bench and wiped the sweat from the back of his neck, glancing toward the office door where his laptop sat open. A new commission had come in that morning. A big one. A hand-forged balcony railing for a restored heritage house in Banff. The kind of project he used to dream about.

He felt nothing.

Pathetic.

He tossed the rag onto the bench and went back to the gate, running a gloved hand over the metal scrolls, checking for snags. The detail work was tight. He’d used a new radius bender for the curves, set the vines to wrap through the vertical bars in a perfectly asymmetrical pattern.

It was beautiful. So why did he feel like throwing a wrench through the wall?

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