Page 6 of Two Hearts

J ack walked with her onto the patio, where some of the party guests milled around, sipping drinks from cut-crystal glasses.

Grace leaned on him, but she was the one leading the way.

They moved slowly to the farthest corner from the house, and down the steps to the ground below.

The beautiful people glanced their way, but no one made comment.

This was the golden child of Harrison Phelps and one of the men from his group of chosen ones.

At least, that must be how it appeared to them. So what could they say?

They took a path lined in white gravel, and the moment they were out of sight, Grace’s mysterious limp vanished. She stopped leaning on him and walked easily, sending him a mischievous smile.

“You never fooled me for a minute, you know,” he said, his voice low, his body at odds with his mind.

Hell, he knew she was too good for any kind of fling, and he also knew anything more was impossible.

She wasn’t cut out to be a cop’s wife. Hell, they’d had seminars on this kind of stuff.

The divorce rate, the depression rate, the suicide rate.

But Jack didn’t need seminars. His father had been a cop.

And he’d watched the stress and the strain of that reality slowly wear away at his mother, making her old, making her hard long before her time.

And his mother had been tough. Strong, cut from burlap… not silk, like Grace Phelps.

Yet, here was Grace, looking up at him with eyes bluer than the sky…waiting for him to…kiss her.

Yeah. That was it, no doubt. She’d stopped walking, and was leaning now with her back against a flowering apple tree, all in blossom.

The smell of the flowers was intoxicating and heavy and sweet.

Little paper petals of white with a touch of pink tinting them at the edges.

Growing in bunches, and raining down like confetti every time one of them moved.

And Jack thought for the thousandth time that he was only human.

So he leaned in, and he kissed her. She slid her arms around his neck, and she kissed him back.

And he fought with everything in him to keep it sweet and tender.

No tongue, no grinding of hips, though damn, how he wanted to add those elements.

She wasn’t like that, though. She was crystal glasses and he was paper cups.

She was as pristine and delicate as one of the petals that drifted to the ground around them.

Still, her body pressed to his, and his to hers, and his arms held her tight, and he kissed her long and slow amid a shower of apple blossom petals.

And it was just like magic.

* * *

A month later Jack sat in the Five-Alarm Diner on Main, across from his partner of more than a decade, and he broke the news.

“What do you mean, you’re quitting?” JW sat there looking at him as if he’d grown a second head.

“Look, I can’t start out married life with a lie this big hanging between us. I just can’t.”

“No, you’re right. You can’t. So tell her, Einstein. Tell her you’re a cop.”

Jack shook his head slowly. “She couldn’t handle it.”

“I think you’re underestimating her.”

“Look, what makes you think I want to be a cop all my life, anyway? Huh?” He averted his eyes when he said it. “The way Harry Phelps has things set up, I can practically pick a job and name the salary.”

JW sipped his coffee, then set the cup carefully in its saucer. He ran a hand over his widening bald spot and the thick dark hair that surrounded it like a horseshoe. He sighed. “You don’t want to work for your father-in-law, Jack. Believe me, it’s not—”

“I wouldn’t be working for my father-in-law. He has friends. Tons of them. They like me.”

“You mean, they like the guy they think is you. Jack McCain, security consultant, the guy with the expensive suits and shiny shoes that are costing you every bit of your paycheck. They don’t even know the real Jack McCain, the cop who spends ten hours a day with the scum of the earth.

” JW shook his head. “And come to think of it, neither does your bride-to-be.”

Jack faced him slowly. “That’s right. And she never will.”

“You’re making a mistake, Jack.”

“She’s worth it, JW. I don’t want this garbage touching her. I’ve seen what it can do. My mother—” He bit his lip, cut himself off. “I just don’t. You understand?”

JW nodded. Sighed heavily, rolled his eyes, but nodded.

“I knew I could count on you.”

“Yeah. You always could.”

“I’ll, uh, be needing a best man.”

JW lifted his head. “Do I have to use a pseudonym?”

“Knock it off.”

“So how long before I get the incomparable joy of breaking in a new partner, buddy?”

Jack licked his lips. This had been the toughest conversation of his life. But at least this part of it wasn’t going to feel like a betrayal. “Not until we bag, tag and deliver that scurvy little dealer, JW. I won’t bail on you in the middle of a case this big.”

Jack could almost see his partner slump a little bit as the air left his lungs. Relief. But then JW frowned. “How the hell you gonna manage that? The wedding’s in two weeks!”

“Doesn’t matter. As much as I hate to lie to Grace…it would be worse to walk out in the middle of this. No. I’ll stay on until we wrap it.”

Jack had been having nightmares. Of course he hadn’t told anyone.

Who could he tell, anyway? Not Grace; she didn’t know the truth.

And certainly not JW, since he was the one getting blown away by some punk who thought himself a kingpin in the recurring dream that had been haunting Jack since he’d made this decision.

He didn’t know if the dream meant anything. He only knew he couldn’t walk out on his partner in the middle of a case this volatile, because it could happen. And Jack couldn’t live with that.

* * *

“What do you mean, you’re quitting?”

Charlie sat on the foot of Gracie’s bed, gaping at her. Hope sat on the far edge, and Grace was curled at the head, pillows pulled around her as if she needed something to cling to.

“He is marrying a delicate, society miss, not a jock who spends way too much time at a smelly gym on the bad side of town, Charlie.” Grace sighed, lowering her head.

“Besides, all that stuff was…childish. I’m not a kid anymore.

I’m a grownup. I’m going to be a wife…and a mother, eventually.

I mean, how many mothers do you know with black belts, anyway? ”

“Not nearly enough,” Charlie said.

“But…but Grace, what about basketball?” Hope asked.

Grace shrugged at her sister. “What about it? I played on a college team. College is over. It’s not even an issue.”

“Well, of course it’s an issue. Grace, you’re good. You love the sport too much to just…just let it go. What about those kids, huh?”

“What kids?” Then Grace’s brows went up. “You mean, those girls from the gym? How the hell do you know about them, Hope?”

Hope looked guilty. “One of them called for you yesterday while you were out. And we…talked.”

Grace got to her feet, taking a pillow with her and flinging it to the floor. “How did those kids get this number? Good grief, what if Mom had answered the phone?”

Charlie picked up the pillow, plumped it and settled it back on the bed. “You need to stop being so afraid of what your mother might think, Grace. You gotta be honest. Those girls were starting to depend on you.”

“I didn’t ask for that,” Grace said, battling a surge of guilt. “I was just trying to be nice, giving them some pointers when they showed up at the gym.”

“Yeah, and then they started showing up three times a week, same as you, just like clockwork. And you started ‘giving them pointers’ for an hour before you went about your business every single time.”

“So?”

“So, you were coaching them, Grace. Maybe it wasn’t official, and maybe you were never asked, but that’s what you were doing. And you know it, and I know it.”

Lowering her head, Grace closed her eyes. “Maybe…I can keep going down there a couple of times a week…for the girls.”

Hope smiled. “You should, Grace. I don’t think those kids have much else to look forward to.”

“Yeah, and I think you were enjoying it as much as they were,” Charlie put in.

Grace nodded. “Yeah, I guess I was. Besides, Jack doesn’t have to know about it.”

Hope looked at Charlie and rolled her eyes.

“Stop it,” Grace said. “You guys just aren’t getting it, are you? I love this man. I love him. ”

“So you love him! So what? Does that mean you have to lie to him?” Charlie demanded.

“I am not lying to him!”

“You are so!” Charlie snapped.

“Grace, she’s right,” Hope whispered, putting her soft, perfectly manicured hand over Grace’s. “You can’t start out married life pretending to be something you’re not.”

“That’s just it. I’m not pretending. I’m…I’m changing.” Grace paced the room slowly, turned and paced back. “I can be the kind of woman Jack thinks I am. The kind he fell in love with. I know I can. And it’ll be fine. I promise you guys, it’ll be just fine.”

Charlie sighed, lowering her head and shaking it slowly. “Where did I go wrong?” she muttered.

“I blame myself,” Hope said.

“Knock it off, you two. We’ve got tons more to do than discuss my retirement from sports, at the moment. I’m getting married in two weeks.”

Hope sighed, ignoring her sister’s attempt to change the subject. “He’d love you, anyway, you know. That’s what you’re afraid of, isn’t it? That he wouldn’t?”

Grace stared at her sister for a long moment, struck by how hard she’d hit the mark.

Their mother’s love had always been conditional.

Be what she wanted, act the way she wanted, do what she expected, and you would be showered in her love.

Yet always, always, both girls had kept parts of themselves hidden away, secret, out of fear they would lose that love if they revealed themselves to be less than the image their mother demanded.

Grace had led a double life, and she sensed Hope, too, was hiding more than anyone knew.

But understanding why she felt the way she did certainly did nothing to change the feeling or make it go away.

Jack had fallen in love with the belle of the ball that night.

With the elegance and grace she’d had to practice for hours to pull off with any degree of success.

He was always telling her how sweet she was, how delicate and pure.

Those were the qualities he loved in her.

And she loved him so much…he was the only man she’d ever felt this way about.

No. She couldn’t risk everything, not now.

She wouldn’t.

Two weeks later she stood near the swan pond on the grounds of her parents’ home and vowed to love, honor and respect the man who’d stolen her heart. And he promised to do the same in return. When he kissed her, her heart melted and her blood warmed.

And it was all pretty much downhill from there.