WHEN Vanessa strolled into Cuppachino a little before eight on Friday morning, she found a few of the Charles Street merchants already at the table they favored near the front of the room. She waved to them on her way to the counter to order her usual-half decaf, half regular, whole milk, half an artificial sweetener-and joined them after Carlo, the owner, served her in her personal mug. It was brown and had BLING! in pink in the same feminine script as on the sign that hung over the shop’s door and on the shopping bags in which her customers carted home their purchases. Carlo’s wife was a potter, and every merchant in St. Dennis who frequented their shop had their own mug decorated with the name of their business. He kept the mugs lined up on a shelf behind the coffee bar, in order of their geographic location on Charles Street.
“Morning, Vanessa.” Barbara Noonan, the owner of Book ’Em, the book and magazine shop several storefronts down from Bling, moved over to make room for Vanessa. “Grab a chair from that next table and sit for a few.”
“Yes, have a seat,” Nita Perry, whose Past Times sold antiques, chimed in. “Bring us up-to-date on the wedding.”
“It’s rolling right along,” Vanessa told them. She slid a chair across the floor from one table to the other. “So far, so good.”
“I was just saying how nice it was that Beck found such a lovely girl.” Grace Sinclair held her mug between her hands as if to warm them. Grace actually had two mugs on Carlo’s shelf, one for the Inn at Sinclair’s Point, which technically belonged to her son, Daniel, now that she’d signed it over to him, and one for the St. Dennis Gazette, the newspaper she inherited from her father. Today, in honor of the upcoming wedding, Grace was using the Sinclair’s Point mug.
“God knows he took his time looking.” Barbara grinned. “There’s going to be a lot of broken hearts in St. Dennis come Saturday.”
“There aren’t too many young, eligible men left,” Nita added. “I don’t know where these young girls are going to go to get a date.”
“I heard Wade MacGregor will be back for the wedding,” Grace said.
“That’s one, and he doesn’t count since he won’t be staying. Besides, that one always was a handful.”
“I always rather liked Wade.” Grace smiled.
“You didn’t live next door to him.” Barbara frowned with disapproval. “Him and that batty old aunt of his…”
“Great-aunt.” Grace corrected her. “Berry is his great aunt.”
“Beryl Townsend was nutty as a fruitcake when she was a girl, and she’s even nuttier now that she’s an old woman,” Barbara huffed. “My mother told me some stories about her that would singe your eyebrows.”
“Watch who you’re calling an old woman.” Grace’s eyes narrowed. “Berry isn’t so very much older than I am.”
“Yeah, well, you grew up.” Barbara raised her mug to her lips. “She never has.”
“Berry’s just a wee bit of a free spirit. Always has been. She was a stage actress in her youth, you know,” Grace told them.
“I guess that’s where Dallas got the acting bug,” Nita chimed in.
“Dallas was always a lovely girl,” Grace recalled. “And Wade was a good boy. He was just a little unsettled. After all, his only sibling grew up to be a huge Hollywood star. I think after she became famous, people more or less forgot there was another Mac-Gregor. That couldn’t have been easy for the boy.”
“I still say he was a pain in the butt, regardless of the reason.” Barbara turned to Vanessa. “Now, where do you go to look for a nice young man these days?”
“Who, me?” Vanessa shook her head. “I’m not looking.”
“Pretty young girl like you ought to have lots of dates,” Barbara persisted. “You don’t want to end up an old spinster like me or Nita.”
“Speak for yourself,” Nita said. “Besides, I was married. Once.”
“Well, I think Vanessa has plenty of time to look for someone. When she decides she wants one.” Grace patted Vanessa’s arm. “Seemed to me that handsome brother of Mia’s had his eye on you at the wedding rehearsal.”
Vanessa felt a tinge of pink creep upward from her collar to her hairline.
“Oh, were you at the Inn last night?” she said to divert attention from her blush.
“I was on the veranda,” Grace explained. “I think everything is going to be beautiful once Olivia decorates the trellis leading into the rose garden and the chairs are all lined up on the lawn. I heard that the weather is going to be spectacular tomorrow.”
“We’re keeping our fingers crossed.”
The door opened and a small crowd of tourists came into the coffee shop.
Barbara glanced at the newcomers, then at her watch. “It’s only eight-fifteen. Unusual for this time of year.”
“Well, as I said, the weather’s been glorious all week and it’s going to last right through the weekend,” Grace said. “All that sunshine always brings the visitors out.”
“I’ll bet if Beck had known that there’d be so much traffic coming into town today, he’d have gotten married last weekend. You know how he likes to keep an eye on things,” Nita noted.
“Well, he deserves to have a lovely wedding day.” Grace set her mug down. “I can’t remember when that boy took off more than a few days at a time. He deserves to have a week off.”
“Two weeks, actually,” Vanessa said. “He’s taking two full weeks.”
“Good for him.” Grace smiled. “Like I said, he deserves it.”
The door opened again and another group came in. The coffee shop was beginning to get crowded, the noise level rising.
“It looks as if you all have a busy day ahead of you,” Grace noted.
“From your lips to God’s ears, Gracie.” Nita toasted the older woman with her coffee. “The antiques business has been slow so far this year. Slower than I can remember.”
“Books are holding their own,” Barbara told them. “A little mystery, a little romance, a little crime fiction. Add a cup of good coffee, and for a lot of people, you have the perfect day.”
Vanessa had just raised her mug to her lips when she got that feeling of unseen eyes boring into her again. She turned in her chair and glanced around. The room was packed now, and she saw no one overtly staring in her direction.
“I should get going.” Vanessa stood and drank the rest of her coffee. “I need to get over to the shop and see what’s what before I open.”
“Ness, what do you have in dangly earrings?” Barbara asked.
“I have lots. What are you looking for?”
“Something fun to wear to your brother’s wedding,” Barbara explained. “Just because you’re not interested in Mia’s good-looking brother doesn’t mean no one else is.”
“He’s young enough to be your son,” Grace reminded her. “That makes you a dirty old woman.”
“The term these days is cougar.” Barbara pretended to be in a huff.
“Ugh. What a gross term. I don’t want to hear about it.” Vanessa covered her ears and grimaced as she made her way to the counter. She smiled at Carlo and handed him her mug. Once outside, she had to move to avoid a group of five or six women who were headed in.
“Be careful,” someone whispered in her ear, “or you’ll get knocked to the ground. I heard that the coffee stampede around here can get ugly.”
She looked over her shoulder and into Grady’s eyes.
“Hey, I know how it feels to need that first cup of the day.” She laughed.
“You’re on your way out?” he asked.
Vanessa nodded. “I have to get my shop opened.”
“I knew I shouldn’t have gone back for that extra forty winks. We could have had coffee together.”
“That would have been nice.” She moved out of the way of a couple who were intently studying the visitors’ guide. “So who won the dart game last night?”
“The game turned into a tournament. In the end, Hal was the last man standing. He beat Andy in the last round. That man can throw a dart.”
“I should have warned you. He and Beck play all the time. They’re both pretty good.”
“I noticed. Beck was the one who knocked me out in the second round.”
“So where are you off to so early?” she asked.
“Hal is taking me out on his boat to do a little crabbing. He said no one should visit the Bay without having eaten crabs he’s caught himself.”
She nodded. “That’s Hal’s idea of going out to pick up lunch. He knows all the best spots. You should have a good day.”
“You know, I never did get that tour of St. Dennis that you promised,” he reminded her.
“If you can wait until Sunday, I’d be happy to show you around.”
“It’s going to have to be early. I’m leaving on Sunday.”
“Oh. Well, you’ll be staying for brunch, right? Maybe we can fit something in then, before or after. Whatever works best.” She looked across the street to her shop, where several women were gathered in front of the window.
“I have to go. My customers are arriving before me.”
“I’ll see you tonight, then.”
“Right. Dinner at Lola’s,” she recalled. “Seven o’clock.”
“Seven. Right.”
She turned and crossed the street. She looked back while she unlocked her door, but he’d already disappeared into the coffee shop.
“Good morning, ladies.” She greeted the group who stood by patiently. “Welcome to Bling…”
It had been a hectic day. Vanessa called Nan to ask her to come in early, but she wasn’t available until two, and could only stay until six, which wasn’t ideal, but it was better than no Nan at all. Vanessa hoped for a break so she could reorganize things a bit, but the customers seemed to come in waves for hours. As Grace had noted earlier that morning, the warm weather brought the tourists. Well, St. Dennis was a great place to spend a few hours on a sunny day, Vanessa mused during one of her few brief lulls. You could shop, have a great lunch, take a walk along the dock, or, she smiled, you could shop.
She stepped into the back room she used for an office and saw the white eyelet dress still hanging there. She was tempted to return it to the floor, but hesitated, remembering how the woman’s eyes had shined when she looked at the dress.
It can wait another day or so, Vanessa reasoned. Just in case she does come back over the weekend. I’d hate for her to be disappointed. She looked like a woman who’d had her fair share of disappointments.
The bell jingled over the door and she went back out to the floor. Three very stylish-looking women clustered around the jewelry counter.
“Welcome to Bling.” Vanessa smiled. “Was there something you wanted to see in the case?”
“The wide silver cuff there… the one with the red stone.” One of the women pointed a well-manicured finger at the top shelf of the glass case. “That is silver, isn’t it?”
Vanessa slid behind the counter and unlocked the case. “The wide cuff with the big hunk of carnelian? Yes, that’s solid silver, and the stone is real. Would you like to try it? There’s a pendant that matches, by the way…”
Before ten minutes had passed, the bracelet and the pendant had been sold, along with a pair of long, dangly citrine earrings that Vanessa had thought to put aside for Barbara to try. She probably should have taken them out of the case when she first arrived that morning, but she’d barely had a minute to breathe. Who could have predicted such crowds on a Friday afternoon weeks before the season began?
Her last customers left at seven-ten. She’d hoped to have them out of the store sooner, but they’d lingered over the belts she’d unpacked earlier in the week, and she sold three of the pricey accessories to a woman who purchased one for herself and one for each of her daughters. Vanessa straightened up stacks of shorts and sweaters as quickly as she could, tucked all the hangers back onto their racks, checked the dressing rooms and the displays where handbags and scarves had been moved around. One last look to ensure that everything was neat for Nan to open in the morning, then she locked the cash in the safe and the front door behind her.
Vanessa dashed across the street to Lola’s, where Grady greeted her with a warm smile that sent a tingle down to her toes.
“I was just about to walk over to your shop to see if you’d forgotten,” he said.
“I was so busy today, I could hardly keep track of who was coming in and who was going out.” She looked for the waiter. “I could really use a glass of wine.”
Grady grabbed a bottle from the table. “Is white okay, or would you rather have red?”
“White is fine, thank you.” She eased into a chair and sighed as she slipped her feet out of her shoes.
“Would you like a glass, or should I ask for a straw so you can drink it straight from the bottle?”
“A glass would be fine.” She laughed.
“So you were saying you had a busy day.” Grady took the chair next to her.
“Amazing. I’m usually not this busy until the end of May. Caught me totally unprepared.” She spotted Mia in the group at the other side of the table, and blew her a kiss.
“Don’t you have help?”
“I have an employee, Nan, who comes in part-time, several days each week starting in June, though she’s helping out this week. I may have to add a full-time person, though, if this keeps up. Not that I’m complaining-I love that my shop is doing so well-but it’s hard keeping up.” She took a sip of wine and leaned back in her chair. “Steffie is loaning me someone to close for me tomorrow night, though, so that I don’t have to make the choice between closing up in the afternoon or leaving the reception at seven.”
“Steffie owns the ice-cream shop?”
Vanessa nodded. “She’s a good friend.”
“I stopped in there with Hal today, after we got back from crabbing. I had two scoops of Mocha Berry Vanessa, by the way.”
“What?”
“She said it was a brand-new flavor. Mocha Berry Vanessa.”
Vanessa thought about her deal with her friend, and the way Steffie’s eyes lit up when she first saw herself in the dress.
“She really did it! She named an ice-cream flavor after me.” Vanessa laughed. “What’s in it? And more importantly, was it any good?”
“Mocha ice cream and raspberries. Highly recommended with a sprinkling of chocolate chunks and pecans.”
“I’m definitely going to have to sample that before she retires the flavor.” She took another drink, then sat the glass on the table. It felt so good to be off her feet, sipping a glass of excellent wine. She had to admit, the company went a long way to improving her mood. “So you crabbed today. Where did Hal take you?”
“Everywhere. Name someplace. That man knows more places where crabs hide. We were in the river-”
“The New River? The one that runs along St. Dennis, then into the Bay?”
He nodded. “And we went out to some island, then along a cove. To a nature preserve to see the migrating birds.”
“Ah, you got the full tour.”
“Only by water. After we docked, we went back to the police station and steamed the crabs we caught.” He took a sip of beer. “Don’t forget, you’re walking me around town on Sunday.”
“I won’t forget.” She paused, then asked as casually as she could, “What time are you planning on leaving St. Dennis?”
“I’d like to be on the road by around three.”
“Are you catching a flight back to Montana?”
He shook his head. “No, I’m driving to Virginia, staying over, and doing a hike on Monday morning.”
“Oh.”
“Bull Run Mountains. I heard it was a good climb. I’ve been looking forward to it.”
“Oh,” she said again, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say.
The waiters came in to serve dinner, and everyone sat at the table. More toasts were made again this night, and more tears shed. By the end of the evening, Vanessa’s head was pounding, mostly, she thought, from all the champagne she drank at the end of every toast. When she got up to leave, she wobbled.
“Whoa, there.” Grady stood and took her elbow.
“Sorry. Just a little unsteady. Sorry. I’m not used to this much champagne.”
“I’ll walk you out to your car.” He was still holding on to her arm.
“Actually, I walked to work this morning, so I’ll be walking home.” She leaned on the back of the chair to steady herself.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Hey, you try standing in these four-inch heels for…” She checked the wall clock. It was nine-thirty “… thirteen and a half hours.”
He looked at her feet. “I don’t think they’d fit.”
She peered down at his. “Well, the straps are adjustable.”
“Yeah, but I don’t know how that plum color would look with my white athletic socks.”
“Oh, dear God, don’t put pictures like that in my head,” she groaned, and Grady laughed.
“Come on,” he said, “I’ll drive you home.”
“I need to say good night to everyone first.”
“Let’s do that.”
They made the rounds-hugs and kisses and see-you-in-the-mornings-then made their way out to Grady’s rental car.
“You just go to the stop sign and take a left at the first street,” she told him as he opened the passenger-side door for her.
“I remember.” He slammed the door and walked around to the driver’s side and got in. “Your house is almost to the end of the third block. Lots of pink and purple tulips in the front yard.”
“Right.” She smiled to herself, pleased that he’d remembered, that he’d opened the car door for her, that he’d offered her a ride home. “Thanks for the ride, Grady.”
“I couldn’t have you walking three blocks after”-he checked the clock on the dashboard-“fourteen hours in those shoes.”
She was still smiling when he pulled into her driveway.
“So what do you think of our little town?” she asked.
“I like what I’ve seen of it, land and sea. I noticed a lot of old buildings-like, late 1700s, early 1800s-around the square. But I’m not going to ask about them now. I’m saving all that for my tour on Sunday.”
“I wouldn’t think of spoiling it for you.” She unbuckled her seat belt. “But I will tell you, that’s the oldest part of town. Hal lives up in that area, right off the square. His great-grandfather built the house he lives in.”
“He’s one really interesting guy. While we were out on the boat the other day, he was telling me about how when he was younger, he played with a minor-league baseball team. He might have had a shot at the majors if he hadn’t been sent to Nam.”
Vanessa nodded. “All true. He has a scrapbook with all these press clippings in it. Pictures of him when he was a young man. He was quite the good-looking fellow in those days.”
“I guess that’s around the time when your mother met him.”
She stared at him for a long moment. Before she could respond, he said, “Sorry. Wrong thing to have said, apparently, judging from your reaction. I apologize.”
“It’s not that. I just wouldn’t have expected him to bring her up. And yes, that’s when my mother met Hal, when he was a dashing, soon-to-be-professional ballplayer.”
“He talked about her when we were out on the boat today.”
“He did?” Vanessa was wide-eyed. “He never talks about her to me or to Beck. What did he say?”
“Just pretty much what he said last night, that he’d always thought he’d have a family, but it didn’t work out for him the way he thought it would. That having Beck in his life, even if he hadn’t had him as a little boy, and having you, even as late as you came to him, made it all right, in the end.”
“He said that?”
Grady nodded. “He’s really proud of both of you.”
She stared out the window. “I don’t know what I’d be doing, or where I’d be, if not for Hal. It’s really hard to explain what he means to me.”
“The father you never had. I get it.”
She shook her head. “That isn’t the half of it. I mean, yeah, it’s true that he filled that role, since I never had a father, but it isn’t the whole of it. Before I came here, no one had ever had any expectations of me, including me. I never figured to amount to very much.”
“Why would you feel that way?”
“I was the girl in high school who wore too much makeup and who dated guys who were way too old for me. The girl with the flighty mother who moved around a lot. I never asked much of myself because I didn’t know I could-or should. No one ever had. Hal was the first person in my life to believe in me, to make me understand that I could be more than what I was, but that I had to demand more from myself.” She shrugged. “I was late catching on.”
“Hey, that’s a lesson that some people never learn.”
“You know, if he and Beck had just been friendly and cordial to me when I first came here, I’d have gone back to where I came from, or gone somewhere else and had the same kind of life I had before, because I didn’t know any better. But they took me in, right away, made me family, never asked a damn thing of me, gave me a place, but even more than that, they made room for me in their lives. And because of them, now I do know better. And I will never go back and I will never settle for less.”
She cleared her throat, surprised that she’d said so much, revealed so much. “Too much information, right?”
“Not by a long shot.” He shook his head. “Not enough.”
“Well, maybe enough for tonight. Right now I have several dozen unglazed cookies waiting for me and I have an early day tomorrow. I appreciate the ride home.”
“It was my pleasure. But I could help out with those cookies, you know.”
“Thanks, but I can handle it.”
“If you’re sure…”
“I am.” She unbuckled her seat belt and opened the car door and stepped out onto the drive. She turned to say, “See you tomorrow,” when she realized he’d gotten out of the car, too.
“I’ll walk you to your door,” he told her.
She smiled to herself. Does the cowboy think he’s about to get lucky?
He took her arm, but when the space between her fence and the car narrowed, his hand slid down her arm to her hand, and they walked single file to the sidewalk. He began to say something, when Vanessa stopped cold in her tracks.
“Oh my God. What the hell…?” She stood openmouthed at the foot of the path leading to her front door.
He followed her gaze to the ground, where here and there, tulips lay scattered, bent and broken.
She could barely believe her eyes. “It looks like a tornado went through here.”
“How do you suppose this happened?”
“I don’t know. Cujo, maybe.”
“Cujo?”
“The Kleins’ dog. They live behind me and over a couple of properties. They have this dog that gets out every chance he gets. He always runs through my yard on the way to the park.”
Grady squatted and picked up a broken stem. “How much does this dog weigh?”
“Probably forty or fifty pounds. Why?”
“Because whatever flattened this flower had some heft behind it. I’m guessing more than forty or fifty pounds’ worth.” He picked one up and held it for her to see. “Any kids in the neighborhood who might be prone to a little vandalism now and then?”
“The Carr boys from around the corner get into trouble once in a while.” Vanessa began to pick up the flowers that lay on the ground, gathering the ones with stems intact into a bouquet.
“What kind of trouble?”
“Eggs behind the car tires and toilet paper in the trees on mischief night. That sort of thing. Nothing serious. But I wouldn’t want to accuse them. I’ve never had a problem with any of them myself.” She held the flowers in one hand. “If you knew how long it took me to plant these bulbs… damn. I was so proud of my little garden.”
“Why don’t we just clean this up right now,” he suggested.
“There isn’t enough light out here,” she said. “I think it’s going to have to wait until the morning.”
“You sure?”
She nodded. “I picked up the ones I could see in the porch light, but if I start raking up the broken ones and the leaves, I may end up making an even bigger mess. I planted different varieties so they’d bloom at different times. I figure I have another few weeks of blooms to go yet. If I try to clean up in the dark, I’m likely to break some of the ones still in bud.”
“I’m sorry you had to come home to this. I can see it’s upset you.”
“Well, like I said, more will bloom over the next few weeks, and of course, they will bloom again next year.” She smiled wistfully. “Maybe by then the Kleins will have decided to fence their yard.”
She held the bunch of tulips in her arm while she searched her bag for her keys.
“Well, anyway, thanks for driving me home. I’ll see you tomorrow at the wedding.” She brightened at the thought of the wedding. “Wait till you see your sister. She’s going to be the most glorious bride ever.”
She located her keys and went up the porch steps to the door. As she did, the flowers slipped in her arms and the keys clattered to the ground.
“Let me do that.” Grady came up behind her and placed one hand on the small of her back while he picked up her keys with the other. He fitted the key into the lock and started to push the door open, then stopped. He stood behind her, one step lower, so that when she turned around to thank him, there was barely breathing room between them.
Later, she tried to decide who had moved first. She thought it might have been him, but she wasn’t sure, because at that moment, the urge to kiss him had been overwhelming. All she knew for certain was that one minute she was looking down, watching those sure fingers unlock her front door, and the next minute, her mouth was locked with his. She hadn’t been expecting it, but by the time she realized that she was kissing him back, the kiss was over and those lips that had been pressed to hers were whispering, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Right.” She’d managed to nod. “See you tomorrow.”
He’d started down the sidewalk, walking backward the way he’d done on Thursday. “Go on in, now,” he’d said. “You know I can’t leave until I know you’re safely inside your house.”
“What do you think could happen between now and the time you get into your car?”
“Old habits die hard,” he’d told her, and she’d gone in and locked the door behind her.
From the dining room window, Vanessa watched him get into his car and back out of the drive, then onto Cherry. She watched until the tail lights disappeared halfway into the next block. She listened to a few voice-mail messages-Nan reminding her that she would be leaving the shop early on Saturday, so she hoped Vanessa had found someone to lock up-and Steffie thanking her again for the deep discount on the dress she’d be wearing to the wedding because “I realized just how hot I look in that dress and I saw Wade MacGregor this afternoon when he hit town, and if I ever needed to look spectacular, tomorrow would be it. To celebrate, I named a flavor after you… which Mountain Man sampled when he stopped by, you should know. Just sayin’…” There were two hang-ups then, and she checked the caller ID, but both calls were from private numbers.
She kicked off her shoes near the bottom of the steps and left them there, then went into the kitchen. She checked the glaze on the cookies and found it had hardened to an acceptable degree.
She ran upstairs and changed her clothes, then came back down and slipped on her apron. She looked amid the clutter on her kitchen counters for the lemon-glaze recipe. She found it, but before she started to gather the ingredients, she flipped through a box of CDs. She wanted something she could sing along with, something with a little bit of beat. She decided on Keith Urban, slipped the disc into the little Bose system she kept in the kitchen on one of the wide windowsills, turned up the volumn, and began to sing.
Tomorrow, before she went to the Inn, she would box the cookies and tie them up with the pink grosgrain ribbon Mia had picked out, then load them up and drive them to the Inn, where they’d be placed on the table with the guests’ name cards.
It was almost two by the time she’d glazed every last one of the cookies and turned out the light on her bedside table. She lay back against her pillow, closed her eyes, and raised her fingers to her lips to touch the place where Grady’s lips had been. Judging by that one kiss, she’d have to rate him pretty high on the kissing scale. It had been, she’d decided, a pretty damned fine kiss. She tried to remember the last time she’d really, really wanted to be kissed, and realized that she couldn’t. She fell asleep wondering whether she’d get the chance to kiss him again.
Diary-
Daniel has been beside himself getting the Inn ready for Saturday’s wedding and reception. I’ve been telling him for the past year that he needs to hire an event coordinator, but he says he just hasn’t gotten around to it. I say he isn’t willing to hand over control of anything connected to the Inn to anyone else. For example, I said that he could ask his sister to come home and do her wedding-planning thing right here at the Inn, but no. “Lucy will come back when she’s ready, and apparently she isn’t ready yet.” Says he. Hmmph, says I.
Anyway-earlier this evening I just happened to be on the balcony off my suite enjoying my after-dinner coffee when the bridal party arrived to rehearse! Mia looked so tiny walking up the aisle between her two brothers-Hal said their father died last year, so it’s nice that she has them to accompany her. I just happened to be in the flower shop today when the flowers for the wedding arrived-such glorious colors! Oh, the shades of pink! The peonies! The roses! The hydrangeas! I can’t wait to see what magic Olivia performs with those blooms!
I daresay this will be a wedding everyone will be talking about for a long time to come!
– Grace