Before she could tell Maria that all she wanted to do was use the bathroom, wash up, and pass out until morning, a loud grumble cut her off. It took her a second to recognize that the sound was coming from her stomach.
Maria’s eyes sparkled as she bit her bottom lip, trying in vain to hide her smile. Giving up on her denials, Grace just hoped for a hole to open up underneath her feet so that she could just disappear into it and never face the other woman again.
“So, yes, dinner will be ready soon. I still have to eat myself, and it’s no trouble to make another plate. Sit. Get settled. I’ll comm you when it’s done.”
What else could she do? She was too tired to argue.
“Okay. Sure. Sounds great. Thanks.”
With a nod and a smile, Maria left, making sure to close the door to the Sunflower Room behind her. Grace waited for a second, then crossed over to the door, checking to see if the locks were activated yet. They weren’t, and she immediately put them out of her head as her bladder screamed a warning that she needed to go now.
It wasn’t until after she finished up and was washing her hands in a beautifully-carved marble sink that Grace even thought to wonder why a quaint bed and breakfast in a teensy-tiny town needed a security system as intense as that one.
There was a story there. Had to be. But, so long as Maria didn’t push for answers from Grace, she wouldn’t ask any uncomfortable questions, either.
Something had been bothering Tommy since they got to the hotel.
He refused to go too far from where they found the tracker; it was the last spot where they could place Grace at. So Boone used the dash computer to pull up the closest luxury hotel and brought Tommy there. Between Tommy’s name and Boone’s persuasion, they snagged a connecting residential suite since neither of them knew how long they would have to stay there.
It wasn’t the presidential suite, but it was good enough. Besides, he was attempting to travel under the radar. If Henry Mathers got word that Grace had run off on him again, his father might start up with that tired bullshit about him giving up on the ballerina and finding a woman who really wanted to be with him.
Tommy was convinced that he already had. So what if she was playing hard to get? Just because his brother barely had to try with his wife, that didn’t mean that Grace wasn’t worth the time and effort. She was. And maybe he shouldn’t have locked her in his penthouse apartment without staying behind and making her understand how badly he needed her at his side.
She didn’t get it. That was his fault. He thought Grace knew how much he loved her, how far he would go to show her that. Obviously not, otherwise she wouldn’t have used his housekeeper—former housekeeper—to help her get away.
He refused to make that mistake again. This time, when he had her back in his grasp, he wouldn’t waste his time in trying to remind her why she fell in love with him in the first place. He’d make it legal first, then he’d have all the time in the world to make sure she didn’t want to leave him.
Now if only he could find her.
He was antsy. As he paced the length of his suite, skirting around the sofa, resisting the urge to smash the glass coffee table in with one frustrated kick, he couldn’t shake his nerves. One way or another, ever since he first found her during that fateful performance of Cinderella, Tommy knew where Grace was, who she was with, what she was doing.
He might not have made it so obvious; it was easier to keep an eye on her when she wasn’t already running from him. It was only when he couldn’t stop himself, when he had to get some kind of reaction out of her, that he showed his cards.
Sometimes she played right into his hands. And sometimes she was spooked.
Grace was spooked right now. He could sense it. She wasn’t just running blind—she had a plan. But what was it?
There was something, something that nagged at him, and it had everything to do with the tracker. Why would she drive all the way here, take a trip that would’ve had her in the car more than five hours by his estimate, only to ditch his tracking device in the middle of nowhere?
Okay. So maybe the heart was a bit much. At the time, he thought she would understand the meaning behind the gesture; it didn’t occur to him until later that leaving a bloody heart in a gift box might’ve been too literal. The coffee he brought up to her door was a peace offering. It shouldn’t have sent her running across state lines.
But it did. There was no question about that or he wouldn’t be currently pacing in a hotel suite.
The question he did have?
When did Grace find the tracker? She had to have known it was there, otherwise she wouldn’t have gotten rid of it. It didn’t make sense for her to hold onto it all the way from Dayton. It had to have been closer to where Boone discovered it in the grass.
Which meant that Tommy needed to go back and have another look.
9
“You didn’t have to do this.”
Maria hushed her with a wave of her orange dishcloth. There was a smiling pumpkin printed on it. “I told you. I was cooking anyway. Sly’s gonna need to eat, and I’m sure he’ll be poking his nose in again before the locks engage.”
Grace remembered the look Sly gave her before he drove off in Maria’s car. Oh, yeah. There was no way he wasn’t not coming back to Ophelia tonight. She’d only been in town for about an hour, barely met three of its locals, and she was beginning to think Lucas might’ve actually managed to downplay the whole hating outsiders thing.
Well, except for Maria. She was a freaking sweetheart.