Everything Changes Read online

  He took a sip of his beer and dug into the food. Good as it was . . . it needed salt.

  “How is this work you’re married to?”

  Same questions . . . different day. “Work is good. And I’m not married to it.”

  “So you’re dating?”

  He poked his fork into another bite of chicken and waved it in the air. “I won’t tell you about my sex life, and you won’t tell me about yours.”

  “So you have a sex life.”

  He was not stepping in that minefield. “Mom.”

  “Sex isn’t love. What about your love life?”

  “If there was someone special in my life, you would know.”

  She reached across the table, picked up his beer, and took a drink. “That’s what I thought. You’re married to your work.”

  Next would be the reminder that she wasn’t getting any younger and she wanted a daughter-in-law and grandkids.

  Dameon stood from the table and retrieved a fresh beer from the fridge. He popped it open and handed it to his mom.

  Instead of saying no, which she normally did, she took it from him and tilted it back for more than a sip.

  He waited for the inquisition and guilt.

  Lois picked up her knife and fork and silently cut into her food.

  Seconds passed.

  Only the chime of the grandfather clock in the hall filled the room.

  No harping. No more questions.

  No banter whatsoever.

  What he saw on his mother’s face was worse.

  Sadness.

  If there was one thing Dameon hated more than anything, it was letting his mother down. Wasn’t that why he crawled under her sink because she asked? Why he would find a job, even if it was delivering lunch to the employees, for Tristan if he ever grew up.

  An image of Grace flashed in his head, and his mouth started moving. “I did meet someone.”

  His mom’s eyes shot to his faster than a bullet left the chamber of a gun.

  “We just met, so don’t get too excited,” he said.

  “What’s her name?”

  Was he really going to say this? “Grace.”

  That sadness melted away with his answer. “That’s a lovely name.”

  “She’s clever and confident.” He thought of Grace in that dress, freezing her butt off outside the Hyatt. “Beautiful.”

  “How long have you been dating?”

  To lie or not to lie?

  He channeled his inner politician instead. “It’s new, Mom.”

  Thankfully that’s all he needed to say.

  “This makes my heart happy.”

  It would make her heart equally unhappy to know the complete truth. And since his mother didn’t venture too far outside her neighborhood and friends, he wasn’t worried she’d stumble upon the facts.

  Now that the wedding was over, it was time for Grace to dive into Christmas.

  With a glass of wine to help with the spirit, she pulled the plastic tabletop tree out of a box she had in the small storage space in her single car garage. She plugged it in, grabbed the decorations, and within fifteen minutes her decorating was complete.

  Pathetic . . . but complete.

  She looked around her condo and took in the space.

  It had everything she needed. A small kitchen that cooked for one. There had been painfully few men who had spent the night, and even fewer that were worth cooking breakfast for. She had space for a dining room table for four. A living room with a sofa, a chair, a floor lamp, and a coffee table. The TV lived mounted on the wall. She had two bedrooms. One doubled as her home office and guest room, but the bed was full of boxes and stuff she’d accumulated before and during the wedding planning that had yet to find a permanent place. Most of it could probably be tossed, but that would require work, and Grace had no desire to clean it up. She had two bathrooms, one in the hall and one in the master bedroom. She had a small balcony that overlooked the courtyard of the complex. And since she was on the third and top floor, she didn’t hear neighbors, and her ceilings were vaulted, giving the illusion of more space.

  She’d bought the condo with a little help from her parents shortly after getting the job with the city. Within two years she’d paid her parents back for their loan, even though they said she didn’t have to. She could walk to work if she wanted to, but could count on one hand how many times she’d actually done that. The mall and all the restaurants around her were easier to get to on foot. Especially this time of the year when the parking lots were stuffed with Christmas shoppers. The only drawback was carrying bags home.

  Her space was perfect.

  Her brothers had opted for houses on the other side of town, but she stayed much closer to where her parents lived. Not that anyone lived far away. Only traffic dictated the time it took to get from one place to another. And traffic in an expanding city like Santa Clarita was a problem.

  That was where she came in.

  Men like Dameon Locke and their companies wanted to plop subdivisions and strip malls in and often didn’t think about the impact on the roads. The houses would sell, of that she had no doubt. The business properties in outlying areas, however, didn’t always fill up. With all the new tax and employment laws making small businesses struggle, there were lots of shut doors. But that wasn’t her concern. She concentrated on roads and zoning and infrastructure to handle the expansion. Bridges and drainage and even the impact on the schools to a lesser extent. She at least needed to identify the potential issues and make sure someone was on it.

  “And why are you thinking about work on a Friday night?” she asked herself.

  She set her half-full glass of wine aside and slid off the couch. Maybe a couple of Christmas pillows would add to her decorations and make the space more inviting. Not that anyone came over, but maybe if the right guy . . . Her thoughts shifted to Dameon.

  Tall, broad shoulders, with a devil that lived in his brown eyes. Not brown . . . more like honey with a hint of gold. And that voice. Just thinking of it had her tongue moistening her lips.

  Grace moaned and reached for her purse. “Enough of that.”

  She put on a sweater and boots that complemented her jeans but weren’t needed for any unwanted weather. While it was cool, it wasn’t raining or snowing . . . or any of those other weather things that happened elsewhere in the country this time of year. It was Southern California, and it hardly ever rained until late December.

  Well, except the year before when the clouds parked over the region and dumped for months.

  Not this year. At least not yet.

  Grace grabbed her purse and slung it over her shoulder before heading out the door.

  She hesitated as she walked by the coffee shop where she’d stumbled upon Dameon just five days earlier. He wouldn’t be there, of course, since he lived in LA. Grace still patted her back on how she’d managed to gather that information. Stealth. Yeah . . . that’s what she was. He had no idea that she was thinking about him. And there was no way the man was thinking about her.

  Except there was the double squeeze.

  She dismissed the thought and pulled open the door to her favorite restaurant, or more to the point, favorite bar, and walked inside. People were lined up out the door. Grace walked past all of them to the open seating. She zeroed in on a barstool sandwiched between two couples.

  “Hey, Jim,” she greeted the bartender.

  “Hey, Gracie, how you doin’ tonight?” He placed a coaster on the counter as he walked by with someone else’s order.

  “Better than you, this place is slammed.”

  “It’s the holidays. The usual?”

  She nodded an affirmative, and he scrambled off to fill her order.

  One look to each side of her and Grace realized she’d be talking to herself. She pulled out her phone and did what just about every single person did on a dateless Friday night. She opened up Instagram and started scrolling through posts. The first images to pop up were Parker’s. It l
ooked like the honeymooners had managed to get out of the hotel room long enough to take some beach pictures. But the image of her brother in a grass skirt standing with a bunch of tourists shaking their asses was what had her laughing out loud.

  Jim dropped off her martini. “You eating tonight?”

  “Chicken wings.”

  Jim winked, placed a napkin on the bar, and walked away.

  She looked up long enough to realize everyone at the bar was deep in conversation or busy watching one of the many sports that played on the monitors mounted on the walls.

  From Instagram she went on to Facebook. Some of the same pictures she’d seen on one app were on the other, courtesy of having the same friends as she did followers.

  She picked up her drink and took a sip at the same time she clicked on “Friend Requests.”

  Dameon Locke’s image, name, and page had her sucking in a breath instead of swallowing her drink.

  She came up sputtering, dripping vodka down her shirt.

  Grace managed to set the drink down without spilling more and reached for the napkin. Her throat burned, and people around her started to stare.

  Jim came to the rescue with a glass of water. “You okay?”

  After coughing several times, she managed a thumbs-up and a deep breath while her eyes watered.

  She looked at his name for several seconds. Before accepting anything, she moved to his page.

  It was public and looked like a giant advertisement for Locke Enterprises.

  After a good minute she concluded that Dameon hadn’t friended her. Locke Enterprises had. Which wasn’t shocking since she, too, had a public page and often talked about the new things happening in the city.

  Someone in his office was obviously in charge of these things.

  The debate in her head that followed was a tennis match of should she accept or should she deny. A corporate gesture being denied felt wrong. The CEO of the company asking to be a friend, even on social media, felt equally erroneous. Saying no was petty. She closed her eyes and hit “Confirm.”

  “Whatever. It’s nothing,” she said to herself. She tried her martini a second time after putting her phone away.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Grace walked out of the bar with the vodka buzzing her head and the chicken filling her belly in search of something festive.

  Half of the mall was outside, with hundreds of white lights strung between the buildings. An explosion of red and green, gold and silver adorned every possible open space to remind shoppers that it was time to help the businesses get into the black. Maybe not in such an obvious way. More by way of encouraging people to spend more money than they should to make others happy one day a year.

  Her family did a Secret Santa and a white elephant gift exchange. One where they picked a name and the other didn’t know who got it . . . and another where outlandish, crazy gifts were bought and wrapped without names. That was always a good time. Everyone was given a random number, and the person with number one opened any gift of their choice. From there a person could steal the gift from number one, or open something new. It became quite a fight and often ended up with a tug-of-war over the best, or funniest, gifts in the mix.

  Grace was on the hunt for a gift for Erin.

  The woman could buy whatever she wanted for herself, so the gift had to be personal and thoughtful. And that was hard. But Grace was determined.

  Inside Pottery Barn, Grace found holiday pillows to pump up her space. She browsed the store, attempting not to knock over the many breakable items while maneuvering around other customers. She set the pillows on a nearby table to check the price of a battery-operated candle.

  No sooner had she picked up the glass holding the candle than her phone rang.

  She fished it out of her purse and lifted it to her ear. “Hello?”

  Forty-five bucks? Seriously?

  “Grace?”

  Smoky voice filled with sexy could only be one person.

  The glass in her hand started to slip. She managed to catch it, but as she did, the glass bit into the waxy surface of the candle, completely screwing up the stupid thing. “Dameon?”

  “So you do remember my voice.”

  Standing in the middle of a traffic pattern of customers, Grace held the glass vase to her chest and candle in her hand while juggling her phone. “It’s not exactly forgettable.”

  “So I’m told.”

  Grace moved aside for a woman with a huge bag filled with stuff. “How did you get my number?”

  “Facebook. I’m calling you from Facebook.”

  She pulled her phone away from her ear to look at the screen, put it back. “Seriously? Who does that?”

  “I could call you directly, if you like. What’s your number?”

  Another shopper walked by and picked up one of her pillows. “Those are mine,” she shouted.

  The lady dropped it with a scowl.

  “Where are you?” Dameon asked.

  “Christmas shopping. Like everyone else in this town.”

  “You sound frazzled.”

  “You called me from Facebook. No one on the face of the earth does that.”

  “I’m unique.”

  Her vision was starting to clear. “Why are you calling, Mr. Locke?”

  There was a pause. “I like it better when you use my first name.”

  Grace unloaded her armful of overpriced goods made in third-world countries on the table holding her pillows and purse. “This is highly inappropriate.” Erin would call him a stalker and confirm it with facts.

  “You accepted my friend request.”

  “Are you listening to yourself right now? I thought it was a corporate gesture.”

  “It’s a personal page,” he said.

  “That’s filled with your corporation’s accolades.”

  He paused. “My mother does think I’m married to my work.”

  Grace placed one hand on her hip. “If that’s your personal life, then your mother isn’t wrong.”

  “I’ll tell her you said that.”

  This conversation was bordering on ridiculous.

  “Why are you calling, Dameon?”

  “That’s better.” He sounded so smug.

  “Mr. Locke,” she corrected herself.

  “We’re back to that?”

  Grace closed her eyes and shook her head. “We never got past that.”

  “I want to take you to dinner.”

  There were few times Grace found herself without words.

  This was one of them.

  “Are you there?” he asked.

  “I’m here.”

  “So?”

  “No.”

  Silence filled the line.

  Finally, he said, “I didn’t know you worked with the city. Not at the hotel when we saw each other through the window. Not at the coffee shop. You felt something.”

  “I didn’t.” Her denial was too quick. Even she heard the lie in her voice.

  “You were scattered and blushing in the meeting. Don’t try and pretend.”

  Grace licked her lips and ignored the stares of those around her walking by. “This isn’t appropriate, Dameon.”

  He paused, and she knew she’d let her true feelings be known. “Maybe not. But it is.”

  This conversation needed to end. He was doing a very good job of getting things out of her she didn’t want revealed. “I have somewhere to be, Mr. Locke. Why don’t you try calling during business hours, since that’s the context in which I know you.”

  That husky voice rumbled when he laughed.

  It was the first time she’d heard it, and it made quite a dent in her belly. “Okay, Grace. I’ll call you on Monday.”

  “That’s better.”

  “I’ll talk to you then,” he said.

  “Not on a Facebook phone line.”

  “I’ll call your office.”

  “Good.”

  He laughed a second time. “Good night.”

  Why did that s
ound personal? Like something a lover would say sheepishly over the phone.

  “Good evening,” she said instead.

  Even as he hung up, he was chuckling.

  Five minutes later, she exited the store with a half-broken overpriced candle and the desire for two pillows she couldn’t afford.

  “It’s called practice,” Grace told Erin as she tugged on a pair of bowling alley–issued shoes.

  Around them, lanes were filled with families and couples and even a few single bowlers who were obviously born for the sport.

  “Our league doesn’t start until January.”

  Grace had talked her brothers and their significant others into joining a league. Because there were an uneven number of them, they decided to have the girls on one team, and the boys on another. Matt was trying to convince one of his friends to join their team, but if he didn’t succeed, they’d do without and use a blind player score.

  “I know.” Grace plopped her foot down on the ground and stood in her awkward shoes. “But I like to win. Or at least beat my brothers.”

  “Then you probably should have invited someone else to be on your team. The last time I bowled had to be at a birthday party when I was ten.”

  Grace moved to where the house bowling balls sat and started sifting through them. “There’s a thing called a handicap.” For the next ten minutes, Grace explained how league bowling worked so that everyone had a chance to win. Obviously, the better bowler you were, the chances of you winning increased so long as your team improved as the weeks went on.

  “. . . and if nothing else, we have happy hour somewhere else while getting some exercise,” Grace concluded.

  “I’m just happy to be out.” Erin had spent the greater part of the last two years of her life hiding from her past. In doing so, she isolated herself from social situations. Despite her best efforts, her abusive ex-husband had found her and attempted to end her life. The man damn near succeeded, but in the end, it was her ex that found himself on the wrong end of a gun. Unfortunately, it was Erin who had squeezed the trigger. She was in therapy and working through her demons. Thankfully, she had Matt at her side.

  Grace loved her brothers. Matt was one of the good guys.

  When Erin’s therapist had suggested she join social clubs to keep busy and find where she fit in her new world, Grace had suggested bowling.