Chapter Nineteen
Grace
"Mr. Wall—Adam, are you okay?" I called from the porch where I sat peeling the potatoes Verity needed for dinner. It was a warm afternoon, but porch provided shade and the afternoon breeze made it quite pleasant. I'd watched Adam and Honor walking back up the road toward the house and wondered what they were talking about. Honor was a tough nut to crack, so if Adam had found a way to communicate with her, I was grateful.
"Yeah, fine," he said turning toward me. In his dress shirt, gray pinstripe pants, and fancy shoes, he looked completely out of place on our Amish homestead, and even more handsome than he'd seemed laying on the couch in the front room. His broad shoulders stretched his shirt to its outer limits, and with the two top buttons undone, he looked more than a bit like the models from some of the edgier clothing line ads in the magazines I had sent to my apartment back in the city. "Grace?"
"What?" I said.
"I asked if you needed any help with the potatoes," he said with a lazy grin as if he knew what I'd been thinking.
"All good!" I replied a little too cheerfully as I looked down and tried to hide the blush that I could feel spreading across my cheeks. I'd dated several men in Chicago, and I'd even gotten somewhat serious about one of them, but that had fizzled when he'd accepted a job in New York. We'd both agreed that a long distance relationship was more than we wanted to try and maintain, so we'd wished each other well and parted friends. That seemed to be where all the men in my life wound up, somewhere deep in the friend-zone. I told myself it was because of my upbringing and that once I'd worked my way through the teenage years I'd missed out on, I'd be ready to find a real partner. But in the six years I'd been living in the city, I hadn't found anyone who had made me feel like this English stranger did.
"Grace?" Adam said as he leaned forward in the chair next to me on the porch.
"Where did you come from?" I asked startled by his presence. "You were just out in the yard!"
"Um, I walked over and climbed the steps and took a seat," he said looking at me quizzically. "I thought you saw me."
"No, I was..." I trailed off.
"Daydreaming about how good I'd look in clean clothes and after having shaved?" he said with another half-smile that set my pulse racing again and that frustrated me. Adam Wallace was rather arrogant and he reminded me of the men in the accounting business who assumed I was a secretary rather than a CPA. As soon as they realized they'd made a mistake, they'd compound the problem by then flirting with me. The difference with Adam was that I felt myself responding to his flirtation and that confused me.
"You're mighty full of yourself, aren't you?" I asked as I turned my attention back to the potatoes and started peeling.
"I don't know that I'm so much full of myself as I am confident," he said as he leaned back and began rocking.
"Confidence, arrogance, tomato, tomat-oh," I said.
"Now that's not very nice of you," Adam said as he looked away. "But then I guess you country girls don't have to worry so much about manners, do you?"
"Wow, you've really set your sights on insulting me," I said feeling my frustration welling up and threatening to spill over.
"No, I'm just making an observation about the way in which you're being rude to me," he said turning back to face me. There was something about the way he looked at me that sparked a primal desire in me. It was complicated by the fact that right now I wanted to both punch him and kiss him.
"I'm being rude to you?" I said as I shot up out of the chair, sending the potatoes in my lap rolling across the porch. "I'm not the rude one! You were rude to me the other night before I even opened my mouth!"
"You're really quite volatile," he said as he winced and pushed himself out of the chair and began gathering the rollaway potatoes.
"I'm not volatile, I'm just annoyed by the fact that you keep making these assumptions about me, but you never ask any questions," I said yanking a potato out of his hand. "You come down here all high and mighty expecting that the country folk will just bend to your will and do your bidding. We may be plain folk, Mr. Wallace, but we're not stupid!"
"I never said you were," he said calmly placing the potatoes he'd gathered in the pot by my chair before moving closer. He was less than a foot away from me and I could smell the scent of his cologne as I tried not to stare at the triangle of bare skin exposed by his open shirt. I looked up into his eyes and saw that he was smiling warmly as he looked down at me.
"What?" I said trying to make my tone slightly less defensive and not succeeding.
"You're quite pretty," he said holding my gaze.
"You mean for a country girl?" I shot back.
"No, for any girl, really," he said as he reached out and pushed a stray piece of hair away from my face. I shivered as I felt his fingers lightly caress my cheek. He tucked the hair behind my ear and I inhaled deeply as he cupped my face with his warm hand. Then he bent down and brushed his lips across mine whispering, "Grace."
I whimpered as my mind spun in a whirling vortex of yes and no and yes. Just as I had opened my mouth to reply, I heard a buggy turn into the drive and I jumped back away from Adam knocking over the pot of potatoes near my feet. Again, the vegetables went rolling across the porch as a familiar voice called my name.
"Grace! Grace!" Gabe yelled from the driver's seat of the buggy. "I was hoping I'd catch you at home!"
"Hi, Gabe," I called trying to force myself to sound cheerful as Adam and I gathered up the potatoes for a second time. "Yes, I'm home."
"Well hello, Mr. Wallace!" Gabe said as he reached into the back seat of the buggy and pulled out a small, leather suitcase and matching briefcase. "Mamm said you needed these, so I volunteered to bring them over."
"Thank you, Gabe," Adam said gingerly descending the stairs and attempting to take the bags from the tall man with the bowl-shaped haircut. Gabe's bare face told me that he wasn't yet married, and I wondered what he was waiting for. There were plenty of eligible young women in the Corner Grove community, and I was certain that there were at least a few who had their eye on him.
"Oh no, let me take them inside, sir," Gabe said holding the bags back. "It's the least I can do."
I could see that Adam was visibly relieved by Gabe's offer, but I was not. If Gabe came into the house, then we would have to invite him to stay for supper, and then he'd want to take a walk with me after we ate. I wasn't in the mood to have a conversation with him.
"I can get them," I said reaching out to grab the handles of both bags. Gabe lifted the bags up as he climbed the stairs before I could stop him. He set one bag down and pulled open the front door and went inside.
"Grace, where do you want me to put Mr. Wallace's bags," he called from the living room. I sighed as I followed him into the house.
"Put them in the front bedroom," I said without emotion.
"But Grace, that's your—"
"The front bedroom," I said cutting him off before he could say anything more. Gabe nodded and followed my directions without further protest.
Before Gabe emerged from the bedroom, I looked to see that Adam had stayed on the front porch. I was grateful that he'd extracted himself from the interaction between Gabe and me.
"Grace, what are you doing?" Gabe whispered as he returned to the living room. "You know that you shouldn't have him in your house. What would your Dat say about this?"
"I think he'd say that we're put here on this earth to be useful," I said irritated that Gabe had drawn my parents into the discussion. I knew perfectly well what Mamm and Dat would have said. They would have been polite to Adam, but they never would have offered to let him stay in the house with our family.
"That's not what I mean," Gabe said with a concerned look. He stepped closer and I quickly backed away. "Grace, this isn't appropriate. You have to think of Verity and Honor. Your Mamm would not like this."
"Yeah, well, she's not here, is she?" I shot back angrily as the stress and grief welled up inside me and threatened to spill out.
"Don't be mad, Grace," Gabe said as he cautiously stepped toward me. "You know I'm only trying to help. I'm just worried about you and the kids."
"Well, don't be!" I hissed. "We're just fine! I've taken care of everything, haven't I?"
"Grace—" Gabe said as he put an arm around me and patted my shoulder. I wavered for a moment, but the feeling of his calm familiar presence cracked my facade and I began crying. I raised my hands to my face as I tried to choke back the sobs and cover the tears that flowed fast and hot down my cheeks. Gabe simply wrapped his other arm around me and said nothing as he waited for the storm to subside.
"I don't know what I'm going to do," I said in a small voice. "Everything's a mess and I don't know how to fix it. I want to go home!"
"You are home, Grace," Gabe said quietly. "This is your home. This is where you belong."
"No," I said as I stiffened. He quickly withdrew his arm and moved a short distance away from me.
"How can you say that after everything that's happened?" he asked.
"I'm not like you, Gabe," I replied wiping the last of the tears from my cheeks and straightening my kapp. "I love my family, but I have a life outside of this community, and I want to go home to it."
"I don't understand your need to put yourself before your family," Gabe said sadly.
"And that's precisely the problem," I shot back. "You've never understood anything about me."
"I love you, Grace," Gabe said. His expression was sad, but calm. "I always have and I always will. And no matter how hard you try to push me away, I'll always be here. Waiting for you."
"Gabe, don't," I said shaking my head. "Just don't. I'm not coming back."
"Grace?" Verity called from the kitchen. "Is Gabe staying for supper?"
I looked at Gabe and raised an eyebrow silently asking the question. He simply shook his head and headed for the front door.
"No, he's not staying," I called as moved back out to the porch watching Gabe walk across the yard, unhitch the horse and then swing himself up into the front seat of the buggy. He slapped the reins and the horse took off, heading for home as I stood silently watching him go.
"Your boyfriend seems like a nice guy," Adam said startling me.
"Huh? My boyfriend?" I said looking down at him holding the pot of peeled potatoes in his lap. “What on earth did you do?"
"Thought I'd help out," he shrugged giving me a lopsided grin and I could feel my pulse begin to race again. "You know, earn my keep and all. It looked easy enough. Did I get it right?"
I nodded as I took the pot from him and balanced it on my hip so that I could take it inside to Verity. I searched for something witty to say, something that would make me seem more cosmopolitan than I felt dressed in my plain clothes, but my mind was blank.
"Thank you," I said as I pulled open the front door and slipped inside.
"Don't mention it," Adam said, and then I heard him add, "I hope you two can work out your lovers spat."
I opened my mouth to reply, and then quickly shut it. I wasn't going to let Adam Wallace see that he could get to me—not when I had bigger issues to deal with in order to get back to my life in Chicago.