Forever Grace Read Online Free PDF Page A

push up onto the knee, his casted leg extended awkwardly to the side. He wiggled his fingers for the other crutch. She frowned, foreseeing impending disaster if they continued with his plan. “Wait. I have a better idea.”
    She leaned the crutch beside the door and went back into the cottage. The kitchen table was flanked by two benches rather than the chairs she was looking for, but when she leaned her weight on one, she found it solid and sturdy. Far more so than a pair of wobbly crutches. She lifted the end of the bench and dragged it across the floor, over the doorsill, and onto the deck.
    “Good thinking,” he said.
    She slid the glass door closed and picked up the bench end again. “Let’s hope,” she grunted, tugging it over the planks to his side.
    Between them, they positioned it for maximum support, and then she took the crutch from him and set it aside with the other—along with the shotgun.
    “Right. Let’s give this a try.”
    It took two attempts and very nearly flattened both of them, but at last her neighbor was upright. Almost. Grace retrieved the crutches from beside the sliding door and handed them to him. Standing back, she watched him tuck one under each arm and then, at last, stand tall. A look of sheer pleasure settled over his face as he stretched out his spine.
    “That,” he said, “feels incredible.”
    Grace pulled her gaze away from shirt buttons straining across a muscled chest. Ignoring the inexplicable increase in ambient air temperature, she herself smile. “I’m just relieved we managed it. Now let’s get you inside so I can get back to the kids.”
    She went back to the sliding doors, gripped the handle, and tugged.
    Tugged again.
    Oh, hell.
    She rested her forehead against the air-chilled glass. Hell, hell, hell.
    “Tomorrow,” the man announced behind her, “I will fix that. You have my word.”
    She squeezed her eyes shut.
    “Hey,” he said. “It’s not the end of the world. You can just go through the other…”
    His voice trailed off. Grace squeezed harder.
    “You locked it, didn’t you?” he asked.
    Had any voice ever sounded so carefully neutral?
    “It’s a habit.” She lifted her head at last and turned to face him. “I wasn’t thinking. I’m so sorry.”
    “Well,” he said, his face half hidden and unreadable in the shadows. “Well.”
    “I’m guessing that means you don’t have a spare key hidden outside.”
    “The one I used to let myself in because I forgot mine in Ottawa? Yeah, no.”
    “Ah. Window open that I can crawl through?”
    “The bathroom one can be jimmied open with a bit of work, but I don’t think you’ll fit, and it’s too dark to give it a try right now.”
    “Shit,” she said.
    “My sentiments exactly.” He sighed. “Good thing you brought those blankets out earlier, I guess.”
    Grace realized his intent, and for a moment actually considered the idea. Then guilt—and reason—kicked in.
    “You can smell the rain in the air as well as I can,” she said. “There’s no way you can spend the night out in that. Even if you didn’t catch pneumonia, your cast would be mush by morning. You’ll have to come back to my place.”
    He tipped back his head, and in the faint light reaching him from the interior lights, she saw his eyes close and his jawline go tight.
    “That path will be hell on crutches,” he said.
    “I still have my flashlight.” She pulled it from her pocket. Thank heaven she’d tucked it in there instead of setting it on a counter inside. “We’ll go as slow as you need to.”
    More silence. More jaw tightening. A sigh.
    “In that case…” He lifted his right hand from its grip on the crutch and extended it. “Sean McKittrick.”
    Grace’s stomach did an uncomfortable flip-flop, and she bit the inside of her cheek. The idea of telling him her name raised every warning flag she could imagine. What if he mentioned it to someone? Ottawa wasn’t that big a city. People knew people who knew