Page 22 of What Remains of Grace

6

The Offer

By the time the second week rolled around, the logistics no longer felt impossible. Numbers, at least, could be contained, lined up in columns, balanced, solved.

Between the sale of her company’s assets and the condo, she could cover the funeral expenses, the severance packages, the remainder on the condo loan, and the last payments on the trucks and equipment. What was left was modest but workable, a small renovation budget for the house and bakery, a cushion for bills, enough to replace the rusted ovens and the espresso machine that coughed more than it steamed. And two cars. One for her. One for Emmie.

Jenna had enough. Barely, but enough. The rental was bleeding her dry anyway.

She folded the receipts and notes back into a folder labeled Transition, slid it onto the end table beside the couch, and rubbed her eyes. She was still sleeping there. Somehow it felt wrong to move into Grace’s room, and the office wasn’t much better. Every time she stood in the doorway, the air shifted, like the ghost of Grace’s routine still lived there. Jenna could still hear the hum of Grace’s sewing machine, the scratch of pen on invoices, and even the faint clink of a mug on the desk.

So, Jenna stayed in the living room. Biscuit seemed fine with it.

Emmie, on the other hand, still kept her distance. They coexisted politely, trading short comments about groceries, school emails, and the weather. But each conversation ended with the same unfinished silence. Maybe the new car would help; at least it was something tangible she could give.

Jenna stretched, glancing through the front window toward the bakery. She’d been scoping both properties in her head all week, measuring in her mind, noting what needed repair and what simply needed care.

She could handle design decisions and logistics, but not the exterior paint, the warped floorboards, or the water spots in the ceiling.

What she needed now was a good contractor.

She’d just opened her laptop to start calling around when someone knocked at the front door.

Biscuit bolted from the couch, tail puffed. Jenna pushed the hair out of her eyes and crossed the room, half expecting Aunt Marilyn or a neighbor with another sympathy card.

When she opened the door, her face came level with a man’s chest. Not something that happened often.

He was tall, easily a head taller than most men she knew, with caramel skin, two-day-old scruff, and big hands holding a white pastry box tied with blue ribbon. There was a faint smear of paint on one cuff, like he’d come straight from a job site. For a second, she just stared, caught off guard by the sheer presence of him, before he stepped back slightly to meet her eyes.

“Hey,” he said, voice low and even, that velvety Tarpon drawl still there under the surface. “Jenna Hart?”

“Yes.”

The air shifted as she looked up, sunlight framing a body that filled her doorway. His shirt clung in places she didn’t expect to notice, and his jeans were worn but clean, the fabric stretching over solid muscle. His hands, broad and capable, the kind that built things and fixed what broke, held the pastry box so gently it almost looked absurd. The smell of cedar and paint drifted off him. For a split second, she forgot to breathe, unsure whether it was recognition or something older, more instinctive, that made her pulse quicken.

“Cole Bennett,” he said, offering a gentle smile. “We were in school together—Grace’s year. You were a couple behind us.”

It clicked after a second. “Right. You played basketball.”

He gave a modest shrug. “Still do, sometimes. Church league. Not as fast as I used to be, but the shot’s still there. Didn’t think you’d recognize me.”

She didn’t actually recognize him. Just the name. Back then, he’d been lean and restless, all elbows and speed; now there was a steadiness in him that made her throat tighten. The years had squared his jaw and deepened his voice into something low and sure. She caught herself watching the way his hands moved when he talked, the flex of his forearms beneath sun-worn skin.

Jenna laughed. “You were good,” but the sound came out thinner than she meant it to, her eyes meeting his. The moment held just a second too long, the kind that left her aware of every inch between them. His voice wrapped around her when he spoke again, steady and unhurried, with that deep drawl that felt like warm honey. He didn’t rush to fill the silence, just let it stretch comfortably, as if he understood that silence could be its own kindness.

He grinned, the expression widening enough to show the dimple she didn’t remember. “Are you sure I wasn’t just tall? People confuse that with talent.”

Jenna tilted her head, a teasing spark flickering before she could stop it. “Didn’t you outscore an entire team by yourself once? I’m pretty sure the yearbook called it a massacre.”

Back when you could use that word in a yearbook and no one blinked.

He laughed, deep and genuine, the sound rolling through the stillness between them. “I can’t believe you remember that.”

She didn’t, not really, not until now. “I was on the yearbook staff.”

“Oh, yeah!”

The silence between them thickened. She caught herself wondering if he could hear the way her heart was thudding before he shifted the box in his hands.