Page 33 of Trusting Fate (Hope Falls: Brewed Awakenings 2)

As she walked down the stairs, she couldn’t get over how much she loved the décor they’d chosen. It was a mix of rustic, and modern. The furniture was fairly modern but they were mixed with older pieces. Grace had really loved an antique mirror that was at the bottom of the stairs. It reminded her of a mirror that had hung above their dining room table growing up. The dark hardwood floors grounded the space and the matching exposed beams drew your eye to the high ceilings.

Those high ceilings were what she was looking at when she heard her name.

“Hi Grace.”

She looked down and saw someone seated on the couch in front of the fireplace. And not just any someone. Easton Bishop. He stood as she continued down the stairs.

The moment she saw him, her heart turned into Thumper’s foot when the girl bunny kisses him in Bambi. “Easton. What are you doing here?”

“I’m staying here.”

“You’re the long-term guest?”

He nodded.

Fate, it’s fate. Her mother’s voice sounded in her head.

No. Grace dealt with facts not fate. Coincidences happened, but that did not mean there was some cosmic reason. Hope Falls was a small town, which meant there weren’t that many places to stay. It wasn’t ‘fate’ that both she and Easton had ended up at the sole bed and breakfast.

She was being ridiculous acting like a schoolgirl with a crush. That wasn’t Grace. Grace was always in control. She held the power in all her relationships, not the other way around.

This shift in the power dynamic was not okay. It was not her. She needed to get back on equal footing and she knew exactly how to do it. She needed to put some emotional distance between herself and Easton. She needed to be the Ice Queen.

* * *

Easton had knownthat he was going to see Grace again and he’d thought he’d been prepared. But it turns out, he hadn’t been.

Her long blonde hair was falling over her shoulders and framed her face. She was wearing a blue sweater that perfectly matched the shade of her eyes and black jeans that molded to her generous curves.

She looked stunning, breathtaking.

“I thought you said that two of your brothers and your cousin lived in town. Why are you staying here?”

Easton sensed a shift in Grace’s demeanor. She sounded cold and detached and he wasn’t sure why she would be upset about him staying there. This morning when she’d left, she’d been offering to stay and give him a ride. Now she wanted to know why he wasn’t staying with his family.

Maybe she thought he was going to cramp her style. Maybe she had plans of bringing men home and him being there would make things uncomfortable.

The thought of her being with another man caused him to feel another emotion he wasn’t familiar with. The last time he’d felt it was the summer before third grade. He’d asked for a BMX bike for his birthday but instead he’d gotten baseball cards.

Jimmy Coleson from down the street who happened to be born on the same day as Easton had gotten the bike he’d asked for. He remembered looking out his parents’ picture window and feeling jealous of his friend.

That same feeling on steroids washed over him now as he thought about another man touching, kissing, and tasting Grace.

His reaction was even stronger than what he’d felt when he thought Grace and Josh might have had a shared romantic history. This was present day and as much as it had bothered him thinking of her hooking up with someone in the past, the thought of her doing it now was ten, no a hundred times, worse.

“I could ask you the same thing. Don’t all three of your sisters live here?” he heard the sharpness in his tone, and he immediately regretted speaking to Grace like that.

He hadn’t meant to. She just brought it out in him. Nervousness. Jealously. Those were two emotions he had no experience dealing with and obviously he needed to work on his response to them.

Her spine stiffened and she adjusted the purse strap on her shoulder. In an icy cool tone she grinned, a grin he’d never seen her give him before and one he hoped he’d never see again. “I’m not going to be here long. I’m actually headed over to see a realtor now.”

She turned and almost made it out the door when he took a step toward her. “Grace, I’m sorry.”

She stilled and didn’t turn around right away. But after a few seconds pivoted back. “Excuse me?” she asked as if she hadn’t heard his apology.

He knew that she had but he repeated it anyway. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that. I...” He took a deep breath. “You make me feel things that I’m not used to feeling and I’m not handling it very well.”

She stared at him for a beat, and he couldn’t quite tell what she was thinking or if she was going to accept his apology. Her expression was unreadable as she asked, “What do I make you feel?”

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