Heart of Grace (Return to Grace Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  ALSO BY ABIGAIL EASTON Prodigy

  Heart of Grace

  Book One in the Return to Grace Trilogy

  Abigail Easton

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No portion of this book may be copied, retransmitted, reposted, duplicated, or otherwise used without the express written approval of the author, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review.

  Copyright © 2014 Abigail Easton

  All rights reserved.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  ISBN-13: 978-1495916205 ISBN-10: 1495916200

  Preface Heart of Grace is the story of woman who finds redemption in the last place she expected to find it: home. When I sat down to type those first words about a business woman returning to the hometown she had escaped fifteen years earlier, I had no way of knowing the pain and redemption that was about to occur in my own life. Through the years and the numerous rewrites of Heart of Grace I endured a failed marriage and several more devastating heartbreaks, each one reflective of a void I had been desperately trying to fill with the wrong things.

  My search for home took me on a journey that I now see echoed in Angela’s story. My hope is that you will see at least part of your own story, and that you will be encouraged in knowing that through whatever pain we must endure, there is help and healing available.

  God bless,

  Abby

  For Caitlyn and Emily

  ONE Angela Donnelly raised her face to the rain. The water stung her eyes, but she blinked through it and fought back tears. The lights of Manhattan towered high above her, drifting endlessly toward a black sky.

  The rain and the bone-rattling chill were drastically different from the place she had just left. The harsh reality of nature and the splatter of passing cars were a welcomed change to the soft melodies and gentle light of the restaurant. This cold tempest suited her mood better, she mused as she lifted a hand to hail a cab and the wind whipped around her legs.

  She braced as a cab pulled up to the curb and splashed water over her shoes and pant legs. Water dripped off her ruined suit and onto the vinyl seat as she slid into the back, the delicate fabric clinging to her legs. She yanked the door shut.

  “Where to?” The driver snapped.

  “Fifth Avenue and Tenth Street.”

  “What you doin’ out without a umbrella?” He shook his

  head and maneuvered into traffic. Angela back leaned against the seat and watched the rain bead up on the window and then wash away in rivulets. “Oh, is it raining?” she quipped. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Yeah, you got my cab wet.” He glanced back with a smirk. “Should ring out before you get in my cab.”

  She was certain her mascara was streaked down her cheeks, no doubt made all the more pathetic by her pale skin and long rain-matted hair. She could let the tears fall and no one would notice; she was already a mess. But she stiffened and raised her chin. “I’m on tenth, just east of fifth. It’ll be the fourth brownstone on the right.”

  The rain came down harder as the driver made his way across town. When he pulled up to the curb Angela hurried out of the cab and up the stone steps of her Greenwich Village walkup. She fumbled with the key, her fingers frozen and numb, and then rushed inside. The outside lamps cast flickering shadows across the small lobby, mottled by rain drops falling on the glass door. She inhaled the scent of wet brick and her own perfume and tried to shake off the feeling of the walls closing in on her.

  She had lived in a similar walkup when she had majored in business at New York University. Five girls crammed into two rooms, all writers and artists. Angela had been the odd woman out. She preferred working with numbers and market predictions over discussing the works of Hemingway and Van Gogh; the logical over the whimsical.

  Her contract with Sykes and Steeple Investments included an apartment of her choice. The same day she had received her first paycheck she had paid for her first tailored suit and moved into this apartment. She could have chosen one on the Upper West Side, or midtown overlooking the lights and movement, but she liked Greenwich Village with its tree-lined streets and Sunday morning farmers’ market.

  Angela’s paychecks had grown through the years, but not nearly as quickly as she had hoped. Her diet consisted mostly of yogurt and overripe fruit. She justified her only luxury – a closet full of expensive suits – by thinking of it as an investment. But in spite of her budding career as a business analyst, she was beginning to think the predictions she had made about her own life were destined to always fall flat. Someday might never come, regardless of her ability to predict market fluctuations almost as well as she could predict the next train.

  Sometimes the cost wasn’t worth the payoff.

  She retrieved her mail from the brass box and hurried up the stairs, her stocking feet sloshing inside her shoes.

  Men like her last client were not all that hard to come by. Her life had amounted to a compilation of shady business and even shadier men. All she had to show for it was the anticipation of an evening spent with cheap wine in a vain attempt to pretend that mountain of regret did not exist.

  Angela pushed wet hair off her shoulder and slid her key into the lock. The doorknob turned too easily. The door was unlocked. She pushed it open and walked through the small foyer and into the living room. Jeffrey Sykes sat on her sofa.

  The low melody of a saxophone streamed from the digital player on her bookshelf. In contrast to the heated thoughts screaming in her head, the room was warm, the music quiet. The patter of rain on the roof and windows the only other sounds. Jeffrey had lit one dim lamp so that it illuminated him from an angle, casting shadows across his face. The glass he held caught a glare from the light. Angela recognized it as one of the glasses from the set he had bought her during their trip to Vermont last fall.

  “Breaking and entering.” Angela flicked off the music. “I wouldn’t think you capable of it.”

  Jeffrey sipped his wine, standing only after he had taken a moment to savor the taste. The handsome lines of his olivetoned face and the contrast of his dark hair and blue eyes were more pronounced in the low light. He demonstrated knowledge of that fact by eyeing her across the bridge of his nose. His position as Senior Analyst and Partner at Sykes and Steeple Investments warned her to tread carefully, but the true threat came from that familiar stab of physical desire.

  “I still have my key.” He produced it from his coat pocket.

  Angela grabbed it. “You gave up the right to use this.”

  He chuckled. “I have another spare in my office. I do, after all, hold the lease to this quaint abode.”

  She lifted her brow and curled her fist tightly around the key.

  “You can’t still be upset.”

  “Upset?” Angela moved into her bedroom and partially shut the door to keep out of his view. “What do I possibly have to be upset about?” she called out sarcastically as she stripped out of her wet clothes and donned a light robe. “All things considered, I think the only thing I’m truly upset about is the fact that I had to fire my assistant over this. She was a really good assistant. Unless you count that tiny little issue of her sleeping with my boyfriend.”

  She went into the bathroom and quickly washed her face. “But we are both adults,” she said as she patted her face dry with a towel and caught the bewilderment of her hazel eyes in th
e reflection of the mirror. “I think you and I have come to a proper understanding. In spite of the animosity between us, and the fact that I now find myself living smack dab in the middle of a cliché, we’ve seemed to maintain an agreeable working relationship.”

  She walked back into the living room to find him standing just outside her bedroom door. “Of course,” she added icily, “the definition of agreeable is subjective.”

  Just as her client, Mr. Ikomish, had done an hour earlier, Jeffrey ran the back of his fingers across her cheek. “Angela, it was over a month ago, surely we can move on from this.”

  She leaned away from his touch, but kept her eyes locked with his. “Is that why you’re here, to see if my tiff has worn off yet?”

  “I wanted to see you,” he whispered, the smell of wine on his breath.

  “I wanted to see you, too.” Angela stepped back, her arms crossed over her chest.

  Jeffrey grinned, undeterred by the distance she had put between them. “Well, here I am.”

  “Yes,” she said, tongue-in-cheek, “here you are.”

  With an arrogant lift of his chin and a charming smile – the same look he used in the boardroom – Jeffrey took another step toward her.

  She let him pull her into his arms, but she raised her gaze defiantly. “Mr. Ikomish liked your proposal better than mine.”

  That wiped the grin off his pretty face. “He approached me.”

  “Liar. He’s not the first client you’ve stolen from me. You know how hard I worked on that account.” She pushed him away. “Is that how this works, Jeffrey? I reel them in, and you take the glory?”

  “No.” He spread his hands out in front of him. “That is absurd. Does it matter who receives the glory, as long as the firm is benefited?”

  “But you advised me to not pursue his business,” Angela pointed out, irritated with herself for coming so close to whining. “You said he wasn’t high-end, that he was hardly worth the effort. You just wanted him for yourself.”

  “I didn’t think you should pursue him because he’s not high-end enough for you.” Jeffrey’s voice softened, a clever trick of his. “Angela, you have a very promising career ahead of you, and it will do you no good to waste your time with mediocre accounts. You need to fill your portfolio with high profile clients. Let me handle the smaller stuff.”

  “So this is for my benefit?” She let out a harsh laugh. “How kind of you. And why should I bother with pesky financial matters when my true contribution to the firm is so much more valuable? Keep the clients happy. Is that all you think I’m good for?”

  Jeffrey knit his brow, feigning confusion.

  Feeling as though the floor might tumble out from beneath her, Angela sat on the sofa and pressed her fingers against her forehead. “Ikomish hit on me, and he was not subtle about his intentions, nor the source of his assumption that I’m fair game.”

  “You’re a beautiful woman, Angela. Things like that happen in this business. It can’t be avoided.”

  “Yes it can. I quit.”

  Jeffrey stared at her incredulously. “You can’t do that. You wouldn’tdo that.”

  “I just did. Oh.” She curled in, her head on her knees, and told herself she’d let the fear take over for only five seconds.

  When she reached the count of four she felt the sofa cushion give beside her. “Angela,” Jeffrey soothed, his hand on her back, “you’ve had a rough night. Okay. Fine. Mr. Ikomish is yours. I’ll give you the commission. It’s a pittance to me, but I know it would mean a great deal to you. Is that what you want? Does that make it better?”

  “No.” Angela stood and shuddered, shaking off the feel of Jeffrey’s warm hand on her back and his slick voice in her ears. “You need to leave.”

  He doggedly followed her into the foyer, but he made no move for the door. “You can’t just quit because a client hit on you. Do you have any idea what you are giving up?”

  She gathered the mail she had collected from the lobby; a stack of bills she would never be able to pay without a job. Her cell phone buzzed. It was past ten. No good news ever came from phone calls that late.

  Jeffrey shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his fingers rapidly tapping his thigh.

  Angela exhaled sharply, slapped the bills back onto the entryway table, and pulled her phone from her purse. Her brother’s name flashed across the screen.

  Michael.

  She swiped the “reject” icon.

  “Angela.”

  She sucked in a breath and dared herself to look at Jeffrey.

  “I know you’re upset,” he said, “but you don’t really want to quit, do you?”

  He found a way to look sympathetic, although she could still see the annoyance in his eyes. Even so, there was a shimmer of the thing that had attracted her to him in the first place. He had come there for one purpose; he’d left no misconceptions about that. For a moment, Angela considered taking the distraction, but then the image of Jeffrey and her assistant, together in his bed, flashed in her mind.

  “Of course I’m upset,” she said, turning her thoughts away from the disturbing memory. “I’m upset that you’re here, Jeffrey. I believe I asked you to leave.”

  “I think you’ll reconsider everything once you have had time to calm down.”

  He leaned his face close to hers. There was a weakness in her that almost met him halfway. With some effort, she backed away and refused to look at him. “You’ll receive my written resignation via email. Goodnight.”

  He leaned in again, but then thought better of it, efficiently thwarted by the flick of her seething eyes. “Fine.” He opened the door. “You have forty-eight hours to clear out your personal items before I have the locks changed. The apartment comes with the job. No job, no apartment.”

  Jeffrey stood firm, his hand on the doorknob. He waited for her reaction.

  She stayed still and silent, as though she were looking from the outside in at herself and she might wake up from this dream at any moment. Perhaps she had only to close her eyes and she might awake in an unfamiliar bed that first morning in her new apartment, her new suit still hanging in plastic on the back of her closet door.

  But this was no dream and the threads of that first suit had worn away years ago. She kept her eyes glued to Jeffrey’s and tried to remember him as he had looked the day he interviewed her. He had enchanted her with the way he studied her from his throne behind the mahogany desk, his eyes dancing with pleasure. Tonight those same eyes darkened with contempt.

  “Goodnight, Jeffrey.”

  She knew he wanted to urge her again to stay, and part of her hoped he would. He bit down on his words and walked out the door.

  She leaned against the wall. The sound of the door clicking shut, and the finality of it all, like a gunshot through the quiet room.

  The phone buzzed again.

  Angela closed her eyes and slid down the wall until she was sitting on the hardwood floor beside the entryway table. She waited for the buzzing to stop and for the room to settle back into silence.

  Thunder rattled the walls and broke through the quiet. Angela jerked back against wall, her hands fisted in her hair. The rain continued to fall. Street lights shined through the windows, illuminating the things she had collected through the years.

  You have forty-eight hours to clear out your personal items.

  She shook her head to empty Jeffrey’s voice from her thoughts, the weight of a mountain on her shoulders. An envelope sat on the shelf of the table beside her. She’d tucked it there more than a week ago. She reached for it and removed the letter inside. The paper was soft, the edges worn.

  The letter was from an attorney, informing her that her father had willed his rodeo arena to her upon his death. She wanted nothing to do with anything that had belonged to Henry Donnelly. She had refused to go to his funeral, convinced that nothing good would come of returning to the small ranching town where she had grown up. Grace, Montana was filled with too many demons, but as she
re-read the letter for the hundredth time she wondered if they were any worse than the demons taunting her now.

  ****

  Had Cole Jordan not been poised above a ticked-off bronco, he might have reflected, with some sense of wonder, on the full crowd and the thousands of eyes trained on him. Waiting as he waited.

  But the veteran rodeo star from Montana focused only on his adversary.

  His hands gripped the thick fence rungs and he sucked three consecutive breaths through clenched teeth. His opponent snorted, angry at the confines of its pen. Cole settled onto its bare back and wrapped the rigging around his hand. He heard only the thrumming in his veins; felt only the muscles of the bronco beneath him.

  He tipped his hat and the chute swung open, punctuated by the eruption of shouts from the crowd. He would not notice that roaring excitement until later, and only after he had lost the battle between man and beast.

  He always lost. There was no taming this one. It was only a matter of how long he’d be able to hang on.

  He leaned back, one hand thrown up and to the side, spurring his legs to stay balanced on the beast’s back. The bronco bucked and snorted, desperate to rid itself of this human interference.

  The crowd was a blur in Cole’s peripheral, a kaleidoscope of colors and shapes. He knew when eight seconds had gone by. The shapes jumped up, the energy intensified.

  He stayed on past the buzzer, waiting for an opportunity to either jump off or for his relief to scoop him to safety. Neither situation presented itself. He gripped his knees around the bucking mass of fur and muscle, counting the rest of the seconds in his head: 9, 10, 11…until the strength of the beast overcame the strength of the man. His hand slipped from the rigging and the bronco reared back sharply, throwing the man from its back.

  Cole slammed into the chute and fell onto the damp dirt, waves of adrenaline coursing through his veins. He struggled to stand, but to no avail. Each of his limbs moved in a different direction. His head rang from the impact and the first surges of pain exploded through his arm. As the clowns herded the bronco back through the gate, Cole’s body gave up the fight and he crumpled back to the ground. Somewhere amongst the terrified murmurs of the crowd he heard the rush of his own heartbeat and the echo of his own breathing.