Chapter 46

Lacey

Something very weird was going on. I mean, something really weird. I couldn’t get a straight answer from anyone. Forrester was acting like a school boy who’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Grady ran out of the kitchen when I entered. Faith and Jackson weren’t answering my calls. Even Sam wasn’t answering my texts, which was a first.

I knew it was because of Grant. What had he done? Had he told everyone we’d made love again? Were they all upset with me about that? Or even worse, had they all been involved in his decision to interfere with my engagement to Rob? Had it been some sort of intervention?

I decided to find out.

Grant liked to think of himself as an expert tracker. He said he could follow a car for a hundred miles without them even suspecting he was there. Well, I gave him a taste of his own medicine.

He slept a little later than usual, showered, had cereal in the kitchen, looked around the house, I assume for me because he went to my bedroom, and when he finally left the house in his ’67 Mustang, I was right on his tail. I followed him into the city and he didn’t notice a thing.

The hunter had become the hunted. I was pretty proud of myself for not losing him and not being spotted, especially considering how heavy traffic was on the freeway into the city.

I was surprised when he got off the highway at a residential area, then I realized it was the same area we’d gotten off at together when we went to the flower market. What was he up to?

I tailed him along numerous streets until he arrived right at the very same old house I’d wanted to stop at last time. I parked down the street and watched him. What was going on? He got out of his car and greeted the orphan boys I’d spoken to when I was there.

Then he took the For Sale sign out of the ground and threw it into the back of his car. I wanted to get out and find out what was going on, but I was torn between being discovered and maintaining my cover.

I mean, technically, I was still mad at him. Although I did find it hard to stay mad at him. I had no idea what he’d said to Rob, what the circumstances of their conversation had been, or who’d initiated it, but with every passing minute, I realized more and more that he’d been right. Rob wasn’t the man for me, and if Grant had decided to do something about that, he’d probably had a good reason.

In fact, I was grateful. I didn’t want to marry Rob. Whatever led to him calling off the wedding was a good thing. I’d felt so free and full of relief since finding out. I knew it was only my own stubbornness that made me mad at Grant. I couldn’t admit I’d been losing control of my life and whatever he’d done had been a help.

I decided to swallow my pride and find out what was going on. I locked my car and walked up to the house.

“Hey,” I said to one of the boys who was on the porch. “What’s going on here?”

Grant was inside the house with the rest of the boys.

“Lacey?” the boy on the porch said.

“Yes,” I said, too startled to ask how he knew my name.

“Grant explained everything to us. Don’t worry. We’re all in school, and we’re all going to graduate. I swear it.”

“What’s your name?” I asked him.

“Arnold. I’m the one Grant put in charge. I already had the heat and power hooked up. The water is running. The Internet and cable guys are coming today. We’re going to make this work.”

“Make what work?”

The boy smiled, as if he knew I was asking a rhetorical question and already knew the answer.

“Everything, Lacey. We’re going to make you real proud of us. Whatever your father did for Grant and the other brothers, we want you to do for us, and we won’t let you down. You won’t find another group of kids more committed than we are.”

It was at that moment that Grant stepped out of the front door.

“Lacey,” he said, obviously surprised to see me.

“Grant,” I said.

“What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

Grant told Arnold to go wait inside with the others. Then he came down the steps of the porch to me.

“This was supposed to be a surprise,” he said.

“For when?”

“For when you weren’t mad at me,” he said, sheepishly.

I smiled. “I’m already not mad at you.”

“Really?”

I nodded. “I don’t know what happened between you and Rob, but I’ve decided I don’t want to know. Whatever it was, it was guy stuff.”

“Well,” he said, obviously relieved, “that’s great.”

“Now, tell me what on earth are you up to here?”

“What you said, when we were here. It got me thinking,” he said. “I could tell you wanted to help these boys.”

I thought back to the last time I’d been there. It was true. I had wanted to help. “I did,” I said.

“Well, now you can. In fact, you already have. You bought this house.”

“I what?”

“It’s in your name. The paperwork will be arriving at your lawyer’s office on Monday.”

“I bought this house? Why?”

“Because you’re your father’s daughter.”

“What does that mean?”

“Your father changed my life. He changed Jackson’s, and Forrester’s, and Grady’s too. He saved us.”

“But what’s that got to do with me?”

“Well, when I was watching you here the other day, I knew you had the same impulse inside you. The same goodness that was in your father is in you, and I thought it would make you happy to be able to show it by helping out these boys, and others like them.”

“So you bought this house?”

“I bought this house, I got services connected, and I promised these boys that you and I would teach them the things they’ll need to know to make themselves successful.”

“Wow.”

“And I told the boys, if they want to live here, they’ll have to stay in school.”

“Grant, that’s … I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t say anything, Lacey. The hard work is yet to come. Keeping them to their word.”

“But you’ve made a start.”

“For you.”

“For me?”

“It wasn’t just your father who saved me and the other brothers, Lacey. It was you too. You inspired us. You told us we could keep going when we wanted to give up. Who was it that helped me through all my issues with the law?”

“Me.”

“And who convinced Forrester to keep working with that parol officer when he first got here?”

“Me.”

“And who got Grady out of trouble with that gang of bikers from LA?”

“Me.”

“And who helped Faith when she first arrived, pregnant with Sam.”

“It was me, Grant.”

“It was you, Lacey.”

I didn’t know what to say. I was utterly overcome with emotion. It was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for me. Grant didn’t just give me the chance to help the boys who lived in this house, he also showed me I’d already been helping the people I loved my whole life.

Everything he said was true. I had been helping the brothers. If it wasn’t for me they wouldn’t have gotten half as far, or done half as well, as they had. It was strange to realize how much of a difference I’d actually made to other people.

“I’m just giving the eight boys who live in this house the same chance you gave all of us in your father’s house,” Grant said. “And I’m doing that by introducing them to you. You’re the key. You’re the gift, Lacey. It’s always been you.”

I followed Grant into the house to meet the boys. They were kind and courteous to me. Grant had obviously prepared them, and they treated me with every respect. They seemed genuinely eager to work with us, and learn from us, in order to give themselves a better future.

Even the house had been cleaned. Everything looked neat and homely. It wouldn’t be easy. I had no illusions about that. It would take many years to build those boys into the men they could be, but it would be a rewarding journey, for all of us.

I knew I wouldn’t have to live in the house with the boys, they were practically men, but it would take a lot of one on one time with them. Eventually, once we got to know them, they might even move up to the mansion, but that was a ways off yet.

I looked at Grant after we left the house. We were going to go buy some new beds for the boys. It was one of the most urgent things they needed, as well as some clothes and school things they could buy themselves with Grant’s credit card.

“Thank you,” I said to Grant, as we got into his car. “This really means a lot to me.”

“You don’t mind that I did it without asking you first?”

I smiled and shook my head. “I love it,” I said, and I meant it.

I loved what he’d done, and I loved him.