‘Ulaanbaatar,’ he said triumphantly, and Gracie suppressed a smile. Her son had an insatiable knowledge for facts and was constantly begging her to quiz him. When she ran out of questions to ask, he started quizzing her and left her both amazed and humbled by his knowledge.
‘Teeth and bed,’ she said now, and with a dramatic sigh Sam rose from the table in their small kitchen. For the last ten years Gracie had been living in the converted apartment over her parents’ garage. A tiny kitchen, living room, and two bedrooms and a bathroom were all it comprised, but it was homey and hers and she was grateful to her parents for giving her the opportunity.
Ten years ago, when she’d told them she was pregnant, and by a near stranger at that, they’d been shocked and, yes, disappointed. But they’d rallied around her and Sam, and she’d never once regretted her choice. If she occasionally wished for some way to flee the sometimes stifling confines of her life—well, that was normal, wasn’t it? Everyone longed for adventure once in a while. It didn’t mean she wanted out.
And there was no out, because she needed her part-time job as a classroom assistant at the elementary school, just as she needed her parents’ support, even if it came with the occasional sigh or frown, and the knowledge that out of six children she was known as ‘the Jones screw-up’. The girl who’d gone to Europe and come back pregnant—a warning to any other dreamy teens who might hope for adventure the way she had.
While Sam got ready for bed, making a ton of noise as he did so, Gracie tidied the kitchen, humming under her breath. From the window over the sink she could see the white clapboard house she’d always called home, with its bowed front porch, American flag, and neat flower beds of begonias and geraniums.
Her parents had been incredibly thoughtful about giving Gracie her own space, but the reality was she was living in her parents’ backyard. It wasn’t exactly where you wanted to be when you were staring down the barrel of thirty years old.
Still, Gracie reminded herself as she wiped the table and turned on the dishwasher, she was better off than some. She had a job she enjoyed, a home for her and her son, a few friends who she went out with on occasion. If life felt a little quiet, a little dull, well, so be it. Plenty of people felt the same.
She’d just put Sam to bed when a gentle knock sounded at the front. ‘Gracie?’ Jonathan called.
‘Hey, Jonathan.’ Gracie opened the door to see her brother standing on the top step of the outside staircase, a worried frown on his usually smiling face. ‘Is everything okay?’
‘There’s someone here to see you.’
‘There is?’ Gracie didn’t get too many visitors at home. Since her apartment was so small, not to mention so close to her parents’ house, she tended to meet her couple of girlfriends in town. ‘Do you know who it is?’ she asked. Everyone pretty much knew everyone in Addison Heights.
Jonathan shook his head. ‘I’ve never seen him before. But he’s kind of scary-looking.’
‘A scary-looking man is here to see me?’ Gracie didn’t know whether to be amused or alarmed. She supposed Keith at the service station was a little bit scary-looking. He’d asked her out last week and she’d firmly rebuffed him. She wasn’t interested in dating, and certainly not Keith, not with Sam to consider. She didn’t think the mechanic would actually come to her house, though.
‘Well, I’d better go see who it is,’ she said lightly, and rested a reassuring hand on her brother’s shoulder. At twenty-seven, Jonathan lived at home and worked part-time bagging groceries at a local supermarket. He also spent several afternoons at a care facility for adults with disabilities, and, while he was more than content with his life, change or uncertainty made him nervous. And the last thing Gracie wanted was for Jonathan to be nervous.
They walked across the yard just as dusk was beginning to fall and the crickets started their incessant chorus. It was early June and already hot, although the twilight brought some needed cool. Gracie came around the corner of the house and then skidded to a complete halt when she saw the man who stood, or really loomed, on her parents’ front porch.
Malik.
He looked incongruous amidst the begonias and white weathered wood in his dark suit, expensively cut and tailored. Utterly forbidding. His face was unsmiling and severe.
He turned to look at her, and for a single second the whole world felt suspended, transformed. Gracie felt as if she’d catapulted back in time a decade; she could almost hear the buzz of a moped, the tinkle of water as they stood by the Trevi Fountain and Malik threw a penny over his shoulder...
Then she landed back in reality with a thud so hard it left her breathless. No, they weren’t in Rome, caught up in an impossible, ridiculous one-night romance that hadn’t been real anyway. They were in Addison Heights, and it was ten years on, and everything had changed, even if for a few seconds she’d felt as if it hadn’t.
But why was he here?
‘Malik...’ she whispered, and found she couldn’t say anything else.
‘You know him, Gracie?’ Jonathan asked. He was looking at Malik with unabashed curiosity. Yes, she acknowledged distantly, Malik was kind of scary-looking now.
Malik’s gaze snapped to focus on Jonathan. ‘This is your brother. Jonathan.’
His voice was the same, a gravelly husk, and it reached right inside Gracie and squeezed. And then came an even more painful realisation: he remembered. How...? Why?
‘Yes,’ she managed, her voice barely a breath. ‘Malik, what...what on earth are you doing here?’ It felt strange to say his name, and she saw the answering awareness flare in his own eyes. Memories tumbled through her, painful and sweet and shockingly fierce. Laughter and kisses, dancing in starlight, holding hands... Gracie took a deep breath. ‘I never expected to see you again.’
‘So you hoped.’
She blinked at the cold remark. What...? And then she realised. He knew about Sam. Of course he did. And she had no idea how she felt about that.
Jonathan tugged on her sleeve. ‘What’s going on, Gracie?’
‘This is just...just an old friend, Jonathan. We, ah, need to talk in private.’ Gracie tried to smile at her brother, but her face felt funny and stiff. If Malik was here because of Sam...what did he want?
She watched as her brother eyed them uncertainly before climbing the weathered steps of the front porch and disappearing inside.
Gracie looked back at Malik, her eyes memorising and remembering him at the same time. Those long, powerful legs. The broad shoulders. The silvery, intense gaze, the kind smile... Except he wasn’t smiling now. He hadn’t smiled since she’d seen him here. His face was as inscrutable and unyielding as a statue’s, beautiful and so very cold.
‘We can’t talk out here,’ she said.
‘Is there somewhere private?’
As reluctant as she was to invite him into her tiny home, Gracie couldn’t see any other option. She couldn’t leave Sam alone for too long. ‘I live around the corner,’ she said. ‘We can talk there.’
Malik inclined his head in a terse nod and Gracie turned to head back to her apartment. Malik followed, pausing only when she reached the front of the garage.
‘You live in a garage?’
‘Above it. There are stairs around the back.’ She led him to the outside staircase that ran along the wall. Her hands were shaking so much she fumbled with the knob before it swung open and she breathed a sigh of relief.
Malik stepped into her cosy kitchen, his tall, broad form making the small space seem even tinier. He looked so out of place amidst the colourful riot of houseplants, the cheerful yellow walls. Gracie retreated to the sink, its edge pressing into her back. She had no idea what to say, to think,