Grace Anne by Kathi S. Barton Read Free Book Online

sure, but he thought
she was making fun of him. He didn’t really care. Not if she looked at him like
she was. He slid into her car, closed his eyes, and thought about the woman who
punched nothing at all like a little bitty girly-girl, but a longshoreman on a
three-day leave looking for a brawl.
    ~~~
    Grace hated to lose her temper. And
when she did it made her cry, and that just wouldn’t do. She wiped again at the
tears and looked out the window of the cab she’d flagged down outside the
building. She shouldn’t have lost her temper.
    The phone calls were getting
worse. And the horrible part was that whoever it was had her home phone and her
business line as well. She hadn’t even answered any phone for several days. Monday
had been bad enough. She’d been right, someone had found her.
    Long ago she’d had a phone number
that she’d given everyone, including her mother. The phone calls from
California had been frequent back then; her mother would call for money and
Grace, stupidly, would send her some. Her father would call to tell her that
she needed to be more dutiful and she would simply hang up on him. Until later,
that was.
    About five years ago she’d stopped
giving her parents anything, including speaking to them. Guinevere had become
verbally abusive. And not just that, but her father had threatened her
physically as well. Grace had never let her family come to visit her and, in
the beginning, had had a nice apartment, but she’d since moved into the
warehouse and had a security system put in. Her father had been to see her more
than once and had called her to tell her to let them come stay with her, to
recoup their losses. Grace had refused.
    Then he’d been killed. Not his
fault, her mother had said. He’d been a victim of the whore, Alyssa. If she’d
done this or that, he’d be alive. And then Ginny and Verrie had started calling
her too. That was when she’d had her phone disconnected and her number made private.
She’d told her sisters and brother not to give Guinevere her number and she’d
been fairly happy since. Until the day of Trace’s birthday party.
    Grace glanced at the phone on her
way past it. She didn’t bother listening to the twenty-five messages. They were
probably the same as they’d been all week. She was going to die. Her days were
numbered, and the one that scared her the most was the one telling her what she’d
had on that day and then the way the person was going to peel her skin off her.
Grace went to the refrigerator, pulled out the pitcher of tea, and poured a
glass. The buzzer at her door had her scream. Shaking, Grace went to the
video-cam to see who was there.
    Mrs. Cunningham stood there with a
large man and Trace. Grace leaned her forehead against the wall and thought
about just simply not answering, but when she heard her phone ring behind her
she suddenly wanted company, even if it was the Cunninghams.
    Without bothering to say anything
Grace released the lock and watched as the three of them walked in. She’d met
Mr. Cunningham at the party, so she knew who he was. She went to the kitchen
again and looked for something to give to Trace, who she knew would be hungry. Kids
that her employees had were always hungry at that age. She let them in when she’d
unearthed a bag of her favorite cookies.
    “I have no idea what it is you
think you might want from me, but if you want to agree to the sale of the
building then I’ll sign it for you and you can be on your merry way.” Grace sat
on the couch and Trace gobbled up the cookies as he sat next to her.
    “No, I don’t want to discuss the
building. Though now that I’m here, I can see why you were reluctant to sell.
It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Joey sat on the other couch and looked around. “I
love all the color. You must get that from what you do.”
    Grace had a headache and she’d not
been sleeping well or, she thought, maybe she might have been a little more
polite. Instead, she simply asked what