Amazing Gracie Read Free Page A

The asking price was so reasonable, Gracie saw no reason to argue about it, though Johnny Payne looked a little disappointed when she didn’t.
    By nightfall, Gracie had swept and vacuumed and dusted away cobwebs. She’d left the windows open to the cool April breeze off the water. More than once she’d slipped outside to sit on the porch for just a minute and take in the view of the wide, wide Potomac with theMaryland shore in the distance and a peek at the banks of Robert E. Lee’s birthplace, Stratford Hall, off to one side.
    After dinner, her muscles aching and her clothes and hair an untidy wreck, she took her cup of herbal tea onto the porch for one last time. An unfamiliar feeling stole over her as she sat there with the sky darkening and the waves lapping on the narrow patch of beach across the street. She felt at peace. Worldwide Hotels and Maximillian Devereaux were very far away. She could almost imagine a time when neither would so much as enter her thoughts.
    That moment couldn’t possibly come soon enough to suit her.

2
    B y the end of the week Gracie had established a routine. Still up at the crack of dawn, she went for a walk along the river, always winding up at the Beachside Café for breakfast.
    On her second visit, Jessie and everyone else in the place already seemed to know that she had just rented the Taylor place on the waterfront. They knew she wasn’t from the area and that she planned to stay at least through summer.
    “I’m surprised they haven’t nailed down my credit rating,” she commented to Jessie, laughing at the accuracy and thoroughness of the waitress’s report.
    “Oh, Johnny has that, too, I’m sure, but there are some things he manages to keep to himself.” She eyed Gracie with curiosity. “Why here? You look like a big-city girl to me. I’ll bet you don’t even own a pair of jeans.”
    That was true enough, but Gracie decided not to confirm it. “Maybe I’ve just had a little too much of big-city living,” she said, which was the truth as far as it went.
    “The fast pace’ll kill you, that’s for sure,” Jessie agreed, then peered at her thoughtfully. “Or was it a man?”
    She nodded sagely, though Gracie hadn’t said a word.“It usually is, if you ask me. At the heart of any woman’s troubles there is guaranteed to be a man.”
    “Not this time,” Gracie replied, even as an image of Max popped into her head. Max wasn’t a problem, not for her heart, anyway. He was just a simple pain in the neck, professionally speaking.
    Unfortunately, her conversation with Jessie had stirred up the very memories she had been trying so hard to forget. Thanks to Max she was in a strange place, completely at loose ends. Listening to Jessie’s curious speculation reminded Gracie that this little sabbatical of hers would end sooner or later. What then?
    Maybe thinking about the sorry state of her life and the dim prospects for her future explained why she noticed the house, the huge Victorian with its dilapidated, sagging porch and its intricate gingerbread trim. It was hidden away behind an overgrown hedge and a heavy wrought-iron gate.
    Gracie figured she must have passed it half a dozen times before as she strolled along lost in thought, but this morning with the sun glistening on its fading white paint and grimy windows, it caught her eye.
    Three stories tall, with a widow’s walk on the top, it was like something out of a book, albeit a Gothic horror novel at the moment. It was the kind of place kids would assume was haunted.
    But despite its state of disrepair, Gracie could envision it all primped up with fresh paint and shining windows. In her mind’s eye, pots filled with bright flowers decorated the front porch and the lawn was tended, the hedge neatly trimmed. She could also imagine a simple, discreet sign hanging by the gate, declaring it a bed-and-breakfast.

    “Ridiculous,” she muttered the minute the idea struck. She hurried her step as if to escape her own