resentment vanished. She had everything that mattered. It was all tied
up in a bright-eyed, curly-headed little angel just in the next room.
"I'll make you up some dinner before I go."
Ethan turned back, took another look at her. She was getting some sun,
and it looked good on her. Warmed her skin. She had a long face that
went with the long body--though the chin tended to be stubborn. A man
could take a glance and he would see a long, cool blonde--a pretty body,
a face that made you want to look just a little longer.
And if you did, you'd see shadows under the big green eyes and weariness
around the soft mouth.
"You don't have to do that, Grace. You ought to go on home and relax a
while. You're on at Shiney's tonight, aren't you?"
"I've got time--and I promised Seth sloppy joes. It won't take me long."
She shifted as Ethan continued to stare at her. She'd long ago accepted
that those long, thoughtful looks from him would stir her blood. Just
another of life's little problems, she supposed. "What?" she demanded,
and rubbed a hand over her cheek as if expecting to find a smudge.
"Nothing. Well, if you're going to cook, you ought to hang around and
help us eat it."
"I'd like that." She relaxed again and moved forward to take the bucket
and mop from him and put them away herself. "Aubrey loves being here
with you and Seth. Why don't you go on in with them? I've got some
laundry to finish up, then I'll start dinner."
"I'll give you a hand."
"No, you won't." It was another point of pride for her. They paid her,
she did the work. All the work. "Go on in the front room--and be sure to
ask Seth about the math test he got back today."
"How'd he do?"
"Another A." She winked and shooed Ethan away. Seth had such a sharp
brain, she thought as she headed into the laundry room, off the kitchen.
If she'd had a better head for figures, for practical matters when she'd
been younger, she wouldn't have dreamed her way through school.
She'd have learned a skill, a real one, not just serving drinks and
tending house or picking crabs. She'd have had a career to fall back on
when she found herself alone and pregnant, with all her hopes of running
off to New York to be a dancer dashed like glass on brick.
It had been a silly dream anyway, she told herself, unloading the dryer
and shifting the wet clothes from the washer into it. Pie in the sky,
her mama would say. But the fact was, growing up, there had only been
two things she'd wanted. The dance, and Ethan Quinn.
She'd never gotten either.
She sighed a little, holding the warm, smooth sheet she took from the
basket to her cheek. Ethan's sheet--she'd taken it off his bed that day.
She'd been able to smell him on it then, and maybe, for just a minute or
two, she'd let herself dream a little of what it might have been like if
he'd wanted her, if she had slept with him on those sheets, in his
house.
But dreaming didn't get the work done, or pay the rent, or buy the
things her little girl needed.
Briskly she began to fold the sheets, laying them neatly on the rumbling