Batter of Wits (Green Valley Chronicles #22) - Smartypants Romance Page 0,105
about her, my sweet, angry girl. She was both.
“You think Grace needs you to protect her?” he asked carefully.
“No, I think she can take care of herself, because for all the big heart, she’s tough as hell. I just think she pushes the tough to the surface so people see her that way.” I straightened to my full height. “But I’m in love with your sister, and I’ve done a shit job of showing her that. So she might not need me to protect her, but I want to. I want to be right there with her.”
Grady shook his head and stared past me to the trailhead. The one where, ostensibly, it all began. The first time Grace thawed to me, the first time I saw a crack in that shield. And it made me want to pry it loose and see what was underneath. I should have known then that I would’ve done anything, sacrificed anything to have her in my life.
“You have no idea how badly I want to tell you to go screw yourself.” His gaze came back to mine, and when it did, I knew he’d help me. My shoulders relaxed from the sheer, overwhelming relief that swept through my body. Grady dug into his front pocket and handed me a thumb drive. “But I won’t.”
I took it. “This is all of them?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“Thank you.”
“Stupid Buchanan curse,” he mumbled.
My head snapped up. “What did you say?”
Grady held up his hands. “Nothing.”
“No, you said something. And I swear,” I shook my head, trying to figure out what it meant, “I swear it’s exactly what Grace said when she left my house after we argued. I heard her. It just didn’t make any sense.”
Grady looked up at the sky, much in the same way I did before he arrived. Like he was searching for divine intervention.
“This is not my problem, you know,” he said, then pointed a finger at me. “It’s not my problem. All I wanted to do was move here, be outside, have a job that didn’t keep me chained to a computer staring at ones and zeros. That’s it. I didn’t move here to fix my sister’s relationship issues. I delivered what you asked for, and my part in this is done. That’s it.” He swept his hands out in a rough gesture that had my eyes widening. “No more. It is not my responsibility to explain some family legend bullshit that I don’t even think is real.”
“What are you talking about?”
Grady groaned, covering his face with one hand. “Son of a bitch. I’m really going to have to do this.” He dropped his hand wearily, came next to me, and set a hand on my back. “Tucker, I’m about to tell you something really, really strange.”
I glanced at my watch. “You have ten minutes, because I’ve got a lot of work to do.”
He nodded. “Ten minutes it is.”
I unhooked the tailgate on my truck and gestured for him to sit. He hitched himself up and took another moment to stare into the woods as I sat next to him. Inside, I was itching like crazy to get to work, but if this was anything that could help me with Grace, I’d sit and listen.
“I can’t believe I’m going to say this,” he muttered. “In the Buchanan family, or most of it, anyway, we were told about this nutty family legend. A love curse, if you want to call it that.”
And then he told me the craziest, most impossible to believe story I’d ever heard in my life.
Ten minutes later, everything made perfect sense, in the most nonsensical way conceivable, and I was driving back into town with a smile on my face, and a thumb drive in my pocket that would hopefully wipe all the worst kind of weight off my back, and bring Grace into my arms again.
Chapter 29
Grace
I showed up at the fairgrounds just as the first runners of the Headless Chicken 5K were crossing the finishing line. Someone in a … was that a … yup, a chicken suit that had no head, just a clean slice at the top, held one side of the ribbon, the mayor of Green Valley holding the other.
"You sure about this?" my companion asked me.
With an arm around her shoulders, I started walking toward the kissing booth, making sure I was letting her set the pace.
"I think the question is are you sure about this?"
She chuckled, patting my arm. "Oh sure. It'll be the