Betting on Grace Read Free Page A

to let me invest the money in my trust fund.”
    Alex groaned. Liz choked on her partially swallowed swill. Kate let out a sound of pure disgust.
    “Are you nuts?” they said simultaneously.
    Grace felt her cheeks burn. “Like I said, this is just in the chatting-up stage. I tossed the idea on the table last week when Charles took me to dinner. His call this morning is the first I’ve heard back from him. Didn’t MaryAnn tell us he was wrapped up in some pro bono insurance claim business?”
    MaryAnn Radonovic, their cousin Gregor’s wife, had been Charles’s personal secretary for just over a year. Gregor, who was Liz’s age, was the girls’ paternal uncle’s son. In addition to being part of the family, Gregor and MaryAnn were also neighbors, living just two houses down from Yetta.
    Liz blew out a sigh and turned to the sink to rinse out the green residue in her glass. “I can’t vouch for the pro bono aspect of his business, but I know we’ve been seeing a lot of referrals from Charles’s group lately at DesertWay Medical.” She’d joined the staff at DWM after her ten-month sojourn in India. “But you’re trying to change the subject again and it’s not going to work. You know what Dad had in mind when he set up the trust accounts.”
    Grace knew. A wedding. As old-fashioned as it sounded, Ernst had always referred to the four trusts he and Yetta had established for their daughters as “dowries.”
    “Well, none of you used your trust money for that purpose. Why should I have to?” Grace asked.
    She’d known the question would come up and she’d given the matter some serious thought. Alex’s money had been earmarked for a wedding until her plans fell apartat the last minute. Then she’d drawn from the fund to buy a house and set up The Dancing Hippo Day Care and Preschool. Liz’s nest egg had paid for grad school, several trips abroad and the down payment on her house. Kate’s money had been invested—and lost—by her scoundrel ex-husband. Only Grace’s trust remained untouched.
    “Listen,” she said, trying to sound businesslike, “Mom has final say on how I spend the money since she’s the trustee. I just thought I’d feel you guys out first. You know how distracted she’s been lately.”
    “Boy, that’s true,” Alex said. “I wonder how much of that has to do with our new guest.”
    “Yeah,” Kate said after taking a swig of Coke, which, as usual, she’d tried to disguise by putting it in a coffee mug. “I have to say I’m not wild about some stranger moving next door.”
    “Did anybody do an Internet search on him?” Liz asked.
    “I did, and nothing came up. Nada. Which is probably a good sign, right? But I still don’t know why I’m the one picking him up,” Grace said, relieved that the focus of conversation had finally shifted away from her obviously unpopular declaration.
    They might not approve of her idea, but, at least, she’d managed to keep mum about the weird dreams she’d been having lately. Talk about disturbing. In one, a sinkhole opened up in the street and was slowly swallowing the entire neighborhood. Grace was frantically trying to talk Kate out of her car, which was slipping trunk first, down the hole, when a stranger grabbed Grace from behind and pulled her to safety. She’d awoken, heart pumping and breathless—not because ofthe catastrophe but because of the stranger. She came from a long line of Gypsy fortune-tellers and she knew one thing: Strangers were never a good omen.

CHAPTER TWO
    Y ETTA R ADONOVIC PAUSED just outside the threshold of her kitchen, where she’d been listening to her daughters’ weekly breakfast summit. Eavesdropping, she’d learned, was by far the best way to find out what was going on in her family.
    “The reason you’re meeting Nikolai’s plane, Grace, is because Elizabeth is taking me shopping,” she said, walking into the room. Her daughters all stopped what they were doing to look at her. “Alexandra has a