Page 25 of On the Chase
Grace shivered and immediately hoped he hadn’t noticed. By his expression, however, he’d seen it. He looked like a smug house cat, ready to pounce on a trapped mouse. “It’s none of your business. So I’ve moved around a lot. That’s not a crime. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Then why are you lying?”
“I told you.” To her annoyance, she couldn’t hold his gaze. Turning her head, she stared at one of the kennels. “I’m not lying. Go away. I have to get back to work.”
She started spraying down the kennels again. The entire time, she felt his gaze on the back of her neck, as hot as sunburn on her skin. It made her crazy that he could bring out such a reaction in her, when she was just a suspect to him. Every time Hugh was nearby, her skin buzzed and her blood flowed faster, and when he left, she felt let down and lonely. He was a cop, and an annoying one at that. Why did she allow him to affect her like this? When she reached the end of the row, she couldn’t take it anymore. Turning, she huffed, “Would you please just…”
He was gone.
She glanced around, but she was alone. Moving over to the door, she looked out and saw Hugh limping slightly as he made his way to the squad car.
It was her turn to watch him. Crazily enough, she felt slightly deflated now that he’d left. Shaking off her idiotic thoughts, she firmed her jaw and turned back to the kennels.Forget Hugh, she told herself firmly.There’s poo to clean.
Even so, she couldn’t resist a final glance out the open door.
* * *
“Do you hate working there?”
Grace opened her mouth to tell the truth, but what came out was the complete opposite. “No.”
The relieved look on Jules’s face made the lie worth it. “Oh, I’m so glad! Nan loves you already, said you’re such a good worker and that she is already hoping that you’ll keep working there forever.”
With a forced smile, Grace mentally hunted for something positive to say. “Nan’s nice.”True.“And the dogs are cute.”Also true.
Jules beamed at her, giving her arm a pat with the hand that wasn’t holding the coffeepot. “That’s wonderful! I’m so glad you found a job you like.”
It took considerable effort for Grace to keep her false grin from turning into a grimace. “Sure is.” Her cheeks were starting to ache from the effort. “I think that family over there is trying to get your attention.”
After glancing over her shoulder, Jules turned back to Grace. “I’d better actually, you know,work. You’ll be okay?”
“I’ll be fine.” Her smile became a little more genuine. Jules was just so sweet. She never seemed bitter about giving up her life to move to this pokey little town to play mom to her siblings and keep their disaster of a house upright using only strength of will and duct tape. Sometimes, Jules would make a joke that reminded Grace of Penny, and she’d miss her friend so much that it felt like her heart was being yanked out of her chest. “Go on. They look hungry.”
With a final arm pat, Jules headed for the family’s booth, and Grace could finally slump down and wallow like she’d wanted to do since she’d started her new, poo-filled job several days ago. One of the hardest things about living with five other people—four of them kids—was that she couldn’t just mope around the house after work, eating ice cream and watching trashy television and fully indulging in a flat-outmy-life-suckssulk. Her room wasn’t much of an escape. When she’d tried to hide the previous night, Dee had knocked, asking if Grace was okay, if she wassureshe was okay, if she wasabsolutely positiveshe was okay, sounding more and more worried until Grace had plastered on a smile and emerged from her room to prove she was indeedokay. Dee had then talked her into playing one game of checkers that had turned into four.
Shortly after Grace had escaped, one of the twins had pounded on her door, saying that they’d been playing a modified game of curling in the dining room, during which there had been an incident with one of the broom handles, and now theremightbe atinyhole in the ceiling that theyreallywere hoping to fix before Jules got back from a parent-teacher conference.
After a semi-decent attempt to fix the dining room ceiling that involved homemade papier-mâché and some of Dee’s white poster paint, Grace had ended up watching television with the kids for the rest of the night. It had all been so very…domestic.
Staring into her coffee cup, Grace wondered how this had happened. How had she gone from her wonderful, sparkling life to where she was now, sitting in a VFW-turned-diner in the shrinking town of Monroe, Colorado, and dreading her upcoming shift at adog kennel?
“What’s wrong?”
No. Please, no.Grace pushed her coffee out of the way so her forehead could hit the counter with a thump.Why do you hate me, God?
“Are you sad because Oliver’s evil twin cheated on Constance with Tatiana?”
“Stop!” Sitting up abruptly, Grace covered her ears and glared at Hugh. He looked all amused and hot and cheerful sitting there on the stool next to hers—rightnext to hers—and that made her even crankier. How could he look so good when she was always such a mess around him? “Quit it, you nasty spoiler!”
He lifted his hands, palms out, as if to protect himself from her eye daggers. “Sorry! That was yesterday’s episode, so I assumed you saw it. Oh, wait… That was during coverall fashion-show time, wasn’t it?”
Since she could still hear his stupid voice, even with her ears covered, she dropped her hands and reached for her coffee again. She sipped it, pretending it wasn’t as cold as Hugh’s rotten, spoiler-y heart. Maybe if she ignored him, he’d go away.
With a groan that Grace knew was for dramatic purposes only, Hugh stretched out his leg. Since their stools were so close together, that put his foot right under hers, which were hooked on the bottom rung of the stool. For some dumb reason, her heart rate sped up.
From rage, she told herself, even as she recognized the lie.Sheer rage.
He shifted, and his knee bumped hers. When she transferred her glare from her coffee to his face, Grace caught the tail end of his smirk. That little knee touch had been intentional. “Respect my personal-space bubble, please.”
