Close Enough to Touch. Victoria Dahl
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from the bus station to the apartment? Laughing at the image of herself crawling down the street with the bag balanced on her back, Grace opened her eyes and took a deeper breath.
“Mmm,” she hummed. The air smelled…nice. Really nice. Crisp and fresh and clean. Maybe she could live with less oxygen. Just for a little while. It wasn’t like she was going to stay in this ridiculous little town.
It was cute, though. The Old West part of town had morphed into a slightly Victorian feel. Little gingerbread houses, separated by the occasional 1960s ranch house. Grace had never lived in a small town before. Maybe it would be okay, temporarily.
As if to show her just how wrong she was, the jingle of a bike bell interrupted her thoughts. A bicycle passed by. An honest-to-goodness bicycle built for two. Both riders waved as they rode away. Grace grimaced at what looked like an advertisement for happiness. This town was going to rub her own misery in her face.
Once the bike had passed, she lifted the bag and trudged on. Another bike appeared, this one with only one rider, but with an old-fashioned bike horn that the rider honked before he waved. Yeah, L.A. was bad enough with all the sunshine, but this town was just too much.
Vancouver would be better, hopefully. There was a big enough movie industry there. She had a job waiting for her if she could get there in six weeks. And if she did a good job, maybe she could get steady work as a makeup artist up there where nobody knew she was difficult to work with. Difficult, as in she wouldn’t put up with handsy actors or abusive bosses. That seemed totally reasonable to her, but in L.A., ass kissing was a way of life.
Grace turned onto Sagebrush and started watching the addresses.
When she finally spotted number 605, she was pleasantly surprised. The Victorian building didn’t look like it had anything to do with a farm. Or studs. It wasn’t the prettiest house on the block, but the paint was fresh and bright royal-blue. The trim around the windows and the porch was vivid white. The place looked perfectly respectable.
Then her eyes slid to the building next door.
The saloon next door.
She knew it was a saloon because of the wide plank of wood over the door that screamed SALOON in big black letters. Barstools lined the ancient porch and, unlike the building Grace was standing in front of, this place looked as though it hadn’t been painted since 1902. In fact, it looked like a barn that hadn’t been painted since 1902. She was pretty sure that was some sort of hayloft door near the roof.
Grace’s shoulders were protesting the delay, so she adjusted the bag’s strap and walked up the sidewalk to the house. As soon as she stepped in, she saw two doors marked A and B. The only other possible route was a wide staircase that led to the second floor. Grace dropped the bag and dug out the letter from her great-aunt, praying that her apartment was on the ground floor. She wasn’t sure she could make it up the stairs without passing out.
“Apartment A,” she breathed. “Thank God.”
She was reaching for the door when she realized the mistake and paused. She didn’t have a key. And—she looked at the letter again—her aunt hadn’t given a phone number.
Feeling stupid for even trying, she reached for the knob and tested it. It didn’t budge, of course. Who would leave a vacant apartment unlocked?
“Crap.”
Grace stood on her tiptoes and ran her fingers above the door frame. Nothing.
“Shit.”
When she looked down, she saw that her black boots were planted right in the middle of a doormat that said Howdy! inside a circled lasso. Her last hope was this rectangle of Western kitsch. Holding her breath, she stepped off and picked it up. Nothing.
“Damn it,” she groaned, letting her lungs empty on a growl of frustration as she glared down at the envelope in her hand. Her aunt’s return address was a P.O. box. She’d communicated only via letter to the friend’s address that Grace had used for return mail. And Grandma Rose never answered her cell phone.
On the off chance that it was the one time of day that her grandmother turned her cell on to check messages, Grace pulled out her crappy pay-as-you-go phone and dialed Grandma’s number. A few seconds later, Grace heard the beep of the voice-mail message starting, and her heart dropped. However Grandma eventually went, it wasn’t going to be from “radio wave brain cancer,” at least according to her.
Grace looked back to the letter in her hand, feeling hopeless. What was she going to do? Wander around town asking everyone if they knew her aunt? She’d been on a bus for two days. She’d thought she was about to get a break. Just a few hours to rest and let her guard down.
“Damn it, damn it, damn it!” She hauled back one boot and kicked her bag as hard as she could. It wasn’t hard enough. She pulled back her foot to do it again. The bag held everything she owned in the world, but right now, that seemed like the perfect reason to kick it. This was her life. Right here. Her whole crappy life in this beat-up, dirty camouflage bag.
“Damn it!” she screamed one more time as she kicked it hard enough to slide it six inches across the floor.
“That bag must’ve done something really shitty to get a little thing like you all riled up.”
Grace stomped her foot onto the floor and spun to face the low drawl, her heart slamming into a crazed beat. A man stood in the doorway of the other apartment. He leaned against the doorjamb, arms crossed and mouth turned up in an amused smile.
“Excuse me?” she snapped.
“Just wondering why you’re kicking the tar out of that bag, darlin’.”
“First of all, I’m not your darlin’. Second, it’s none of your business.”
His smile widened, revealing dimples in his tanned face. His tanned, granite-jawed, handsome face. “Really? None of my business? When a crazed banshee of a woman stands on my doorstep cursing her heart out on a beautiful Friday afternoon? Tends to pique my interest.”
“It’s my doorstep,” she corrected, hoping she was right. Hoping her aunt hadn’t decided to lease the apartment to somebody else in the week since she’d written.
His eyebrows shot up, and the man pushed up to his full height. “Your doorstep? Are you sure?”
Grace went for bravado and snorted. “Of course I’m sure.”
He shrugged one wide shoulder, and Grace was suddenly very aware that his plaid button-down shirt wasn’t actually buttoned down. It looked as though he’d just shrugged it on to come investigate the commotion in the hall, and when he moved, a long strip of skin showed from his neck all the way down to his waist. And then there were his jeans and the affectionate way they clung to strong thighs.
The Stud Farm, she suddenly remembered. What kind of place was this?
She shook off her thoughts. The man was wearing cowboy boots, for godssake. He was wholesome and homey. His thighs were none of her concern. But the sight of his boots reminded her that she was in Wyoming, which reminded her why she was in Wyoming and what a mess she’d made of her life. “Anyway,” she said with a scowl, “still none of your business.”
She grabbed the handle of her duffel bag and pulled it up with shaky arms. She couldn’t leave her bag here, but she didn’t know what she was going to do with it. She didn’t know what she was going to do with herself.
A surge of anger gave her the strength to bounce the bag higher in her grip, but she wasn’t going to make it to the curb, much less walk to… Where, exactly?
“Let me get that.” A large hand closed over the handle and lifted the weight from her grasp.
“Hey—” she started, but he’d already transferred the bag to his possession. He held it with one hand as if it were a pocketbook. Even more skin showed past his shirt now. Skin and muscle and golden hair.
While she was staring, he reached past