by JoAnn Ross
“There was a time when I wasn’t,” she said mildly. “But then one day I learned that happiness and optimism could be a choice. So I chose those. Instead of the alternative.”
“You make it sound easy.”
She gave him one of those long, deep looks that suggested she had more layers than she readily revealed. Had there been a time when the sun hadn’t always shone for her?
“No,” she said. “It’s not at all.” The smile was back, but didn’t quite reach her eyes. “But nothing worth having should come easily, should it? Otherwise you wouldn’t appreciate it as much when you achieve it.” She turned away, to continue studying the books. “May I take this one out?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Anyone who buys books by the crate probably wouldn’t care what you did with them, as long as they got put back to look good.”
She opened the oxblood red book carefully, the way someone might touch an original parchment copy of the Constitution. “Oh, wow. Somehow a 1913 edition of Dickens’s David Copperfield slipped into the mix.” She turned the pages with that same near-religious reverence he’d witnessed when she’d first seen the room. “He’s most famous for The Christmas Carol, which became iconic, but this was his most autobiographical book.”
“Is that so?” He wasn’t all that interested in the book, but he was definitely interested in the woman who was interested in it. Which made it a second-degree interest.
She nodded. “The headmaster’s sadistic brutality and the grim, run-down atmosphere of Mr. Creakle’s establishment were taken from his two dreadful years spent at Wellington House Academy. Dickens was very much alone in the world during his early years. And very poor, which gave birth to his affinity for the working class.”
She carefully, as if holding a delicate piece of glass, put the book back on the shelf. As he watched her fingers run lingeringly down the book’s worn spine, Gabe remembered waking up with the imagined touch of the Viking woman still warm on his chest.
“I wish the reading adventurers could see this,” she murmured. “So many of them don’t have the money for any books, which is why it’s so important to keep the library well-funded, to make reading available to everyone. Some of the children probably don’t even have the concept of a personal library, collected just for the love of the stories.”
“You could bring them here,” he heard himself saying, even as a voice in the back of his mind was screaming What the hell are you doing?
She blinked. Slowly. Seriously. Like that owl he’d heard again last night before falling to sleep. “You’re suggesting I bring them here? To this house?”
“After the boat shop,” he suggested. “If you can keep them from running wild all over the place.”
Her spine stiffened as she lifted her chin. “The reading adventurers are very well behaved,” she said. “Granted, they have a lot of energy because they’re children, after all. But they certainly know library manners, which they will demonstrate at both your boat shop and here, if you’re serious about the invitation.”
“I am.” He found himself smiling. “You know, for a moment, you reminded me of Mrs. Henderson when she had me dusting shelves to pay off my library fines. But you’re a helluva lot better looking.”
“She was very beautiful when she was younger. I’ve seen a photo of her on her honeymoon. When anyone mentions my looks, which isn’t that often, it’s more along the lines of cute, which annoys me. Baby elephants are cute. Puppies and kittens are cute. But I suppose it’s better than the other description I read in the Honeymoon Harbor Herald when I was appointed to take over Mrs. Henderson’s head librarian position.”
“What was that?”
“The girl next door.” Her brows furrowed, and her mouth drew into a tight line. “Why would the reporter even feel the need to mention that in the article? Especially when they didn’t bother to mention my BA in Literature and MLS? That’s blatant sexism.”
“There’s a lot to be said for the girl next door.”
“I wasn’t fishing for compliments.” She waved his words away. “You’ve already let me into the house, shown me this magnificent library and are cooking me dinner. Fresh-off-the-boat salmon, no less. I’d say you’ve definitely made up for however rude you may have been.”
“None of that’s a big deal,” he said with a shrug.
Now that was a lie. Because every minute he spent with this woman, he was becoming more and more intrigued. And not just because she was beautiful, inside and out.
“It will be a very big deal to those kids,” she said. She studied him again. Deeper. Longer. “You know, you and your father couldn’t have chosen more opposite lifestyles. Him growing Christmas trees, you making money hand over fist in a city which, as the song goes, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.”
“I can’t argue that.” Wasn’t that what he’d planned for as far back as he remembered? He loved his dad. Respected him. But he’d wanted a larger life. A richer life, and not just in wealth, but experience.
“Yet at heart, where it counts, I suspect that you’re both a great deal alike.”
That was a surprise. His father had spent two years in Tibet in the Peace Corps, teaching people sustainable agriculture. After receiving dual degrees in business and agriculture, he’d stood up to his father and turned his back on a career working in Honeymoon Harbor’s first bank, established by a Mannion, to grow Christmas trees. Because they made people happy. In that way, he’d broken with family tradition, yet he’d also, like many Mannions before him, taken on the job of mayor. The unpaid job.
While Gabe made money. More than he could spend in a lifetime. Which was why he’d started investing in small startup businesses, like his soon-to-be sister-in-law’s skin care line. And the mobile pet-grooming business of a former Iraq veteran who’d been so successful that Gabe figured he’d be able to start selling franchises within the next five years.
“You don’t believe that,” she said, when he didn’t immediately respond.
“Not really.”
Her smile lit up her face and, again, touched that well-guarded place inside him. “Well, the way you helped Jolene’s business get off the ground, and letting the adventurers come here, plus the fact that I read on Facebook that you’re generously putting the faering up for auction for Welcome Home tiny houses, when you could probably sell it for a tidy profit, is proof that you’re wrong.”
“Since my mother taught me enough manners not to argue with a guest, how about I get you a glass of wine, then start on dinner?”
“I’m impressed at how deftly you changed the topic. And thank you, I’d love a glass of wine.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
WHEN THEY RETURNED to the deck, the lake was putting on quite a show, its water still as glass, with only the sudden splash of a fish here and there to disturb the mirror image of the mountains. He opened a wine cooler that was next to the sink on the outdoor kitchen and took out a bottle of a Washington chardonnay, uncorked it and poured it into a glass.
When she reached for it, he pulled back the glass and set it on the table between the two chairs. “Why the hell didn’t you say anything about your hands?”
“My hands?”
He grabbed hold of one and turned it over. “You have blisters.”
“Undoubtedly because, not having had any urgent reason to row lately, I didn’t build up calluses.” Chelsea flinched a bit as she glanced down at her palm. Sometime on her seemingly endless trip across the lake, as her calves had burned, and her back and arms had begun to ache so badly, the pain in her hands had faded into the background.
“These need to be cleaned and bandaged. I saw a first aid kit in the kitchen. Stay here.”
Since his gruffness seemed to come from concern, she decided not to point out that he’d just spoken to her as if she were a dog who was expected to roll over, sit and stay on comman
d. “I’m not going anywhere until I get the apology salmon.”
His lips quirked in something close to a smile. Gabe Mannion smiling, wine, seeing that amazing library, the beautiful view and a grilled salmon dinner were all worth the blisters. Though she still hadn’t figured out how she was going to get the boat back to Bert’s.
He was back in less than three minutes, and taking hold of her wrist, so as not to grab her injured hand, led her over to the outdoor sink, where he carefully washed both her hands, then dried them with a clean white linen towel he’d brought with him. His touch was gentle and soothing, and for a moment took her back to a long-ago time when she’d fallen off her bike when it had gone downhill too fast and she’d scraped her knees. It had been before Annabelle began having those stomachaches that had taken away her appetite and mystery bruises had started appearing on her pale skin. When Chelsea had arrived home, limping and crying, pushing her bike up the driveway, her mother had run out of the house, given her a big hug, dried her tears, dug the gravel out of her knees and treated her with much the same care as Gabriel was doing now.
Despite the burn in her palms, Chelsea liked the feeling of his hands on hers. And wished she could feel them on other parts of her body. Like all over.
Gabriel Mannion was turning out to be one surprise after another. Granted, all Chelsea knew about the world of New York finance were movies like Wall Street, where Michael Douglas pronounced greed to be a good thing, but if that plot was even partly true, Gabriel would have had to become city hardened to survive.
Which, she considered, as she sat back down, careful of her bandaged hands as she sipped her wine, and watched him grill the salmon and vegetables with an ease that was another surprise, may have been why he’d seemed so uncomfortable by the comparison to his father. All his family were generous in their own way. His father serving as mayor and giving the town such a wonderful Christmas festival every year, which the Mannions certainly didn’t need to do to sell trees.
Aiden, whom she remembered behaving in rebellious ways that these days would be called acting out, had not only gone on to serve his country with multiple deployments, but was now serving Honeymoon Harbor as chief of police. And Brianna, who’d left a high life of travel and glitz and glamour to rescue a landmark Victorian from crumbling to dust.
Then there was Quinn, who’d also been living what must have been a wealthy, high-powered life in Seattle, but was now brewing beer, serving the people of the town, giving them a welcoming place to gather. And he probably had more people confessing at his bar than Father O’Malley had at St. Peter the Fisherman.
She’d found Quinn to be a natural listener, never judging, and while never offering direct advice, still gently steering a person in the right direction. She’d certainly talked things over with him on more than one occasion, and last year, he’d been the one to call a cab to drive her home when, against his advice, she’d drunk too much on an anniversary that years later continued to break her heart. She hadn’t been falling-down drunk, though she was admittedly perhaps too tipsy to drive. Along with her outward extraversion she’d learned to put on each morning before leaving her apartment, she’d always had a strong amount of self-discipline. Except for once a year.
So, try as hard as he might, Gabriel wasn’t going to convince her that his generosity wasn’t part of either his upbringing or DNA. Perhaps, she decided, it was probably equal parts nature and nurture.
“I envy you,” she heard herself saying her thoughts aloud. Damn. That was the problem with living alone. You tended to get into the habit of talking to yourself. Perhaps she ought to get a cat. Though wouldn’t an unmarried librarian with a cat be a stereotype?
“Me?” He gave her a look over his shoulder. “I’m guessing not because I live in New York. Or have money.”
“No. Although,” she added on second thought, “it must be nice to have enough that you can change people’s lives. That part would be lovely.”
“I get more back than I give.”
“I can understand you believe that. And, although I certainly hadn’t planned to bring it up, I envy you your family. My younger sister died of leukemia when I was eleven. She was seven.”
* * *
HELL. GABE HADN’T been expecting things to turn so serious. “I’m sorry.” Which sounded like a cliché, but what the hell did you say to someone who’d dropped a bombshell like that on you?
“So was I,” she said. “Then my dad left six months later. Some marriages are made stronger by a child’s incurable illness. Others break apart. My parents were the second kind. By the time he packed his clothes and drove off to accept a new position at a hospital in California—he’s an anesthesiologist—it was so shattered there was no picking up the pieces.”
“That’s tough.” And wasn’t that an understatement? “I don’t really know what to say,” he admitted.
“You don’t have to say anything. I didn’t mean to bring it up. To be honest, I never talk about it. Although, of course, a lot of people knew. Fortunately, there wasn’t a Facebook page back then to chronicle the life and times of the Prescott family cancer journey.
“Although,” she considered, “if social media had existed back then, Annabelle probably would’ve become one of those small-town celebrities. The darling, brave little girl who spends too much of her energy trying to cheer everyone else up... The kind who sometimes make the final segment of the nightly news. Then there might be an update when she died, but probably not, because hey, that’s supposed to be the feel-good segment of the evening, right?”
There was an edge to her tone, one that had him understanding why she’d purposely chosen happiness and optimism. It also had him wondering how long she’d lived with the pain.
“We don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to.”
“No.” She polished off her wine, then held out the glass. “It’s okay. But I think it’s going to be a two glasses of wine night.” She glanced down at the boat bobbing beside the dock. “Though I won’t be able to row back if I have another one.”
“You won’t be able to row back with those hands anyway.”
As he took the glass and refilled it, she glanced down at her bandaged palms. “Good point. A guy I went to school with has a taxi business. I can call him.”
“Or you could stay here. It’s a big house with two wings. You wouldn’t have to worry about me jumping you in the dark.”
That drew a hint of a smile. “Too bad.” She took another drink of wine. “I have a position of responsibility in town. I’m sort of a role model to the kids. I don’t want to end up on the Facebook page as having spent the night with you.” She held up the bandaged hand that wasn’t holding the glass. “And before you try to assure me that news flash wouldn’t happen, you haven’t been home long enough.”
“Yeah. Bert would probably mention you coming out here to someone. Then it’d be all over town. I’ll give him a call after dinner and ask if he can come over with his grandson, take care of getting the boat back to the marina, and driving your car back to your place. Then I can drive you home.”
Her lips curved in a faint smile. “Thank you, that’s a very sensible solution.”
“That’s what I get paid for. Solutions.”
“I suppose you do... Looking back on it, I realize that Mom and Dad tried to keep up a positive front. At least in the beginning. But then Dad started spending more and more time away. I suspect being a physician who couldn’t cure his own child must have left him with terrible survivor’s guilt.”
“Cancer wasn’t his specialty.”
“No. But still, how would you feel?”
“Exactly the same,” Gabe admitted, knowing that even if he worked on empathy until doomsday, he probably wouldn’t ever truly know the pain her family had suffered.
“He did have a doctor friend prescribe Mom Xanax. And antidepressants.”
/> Gabe was starting to feel like when he and his brothers, sister and Seth would break into Herons Landing, creeping through the night shadows in the long-abandoned Victorian house, waiting for something or someone bad to leap out at them. It was usually only a mouse or bat, but there’d also been a raccoon who’d decided to have her babies in a pile of old rags in what had been, at that time, the kitchen. When he and Aiden had stumbled across the raccoon nursery, she’d made it perfectly clear with a snarl that showed surprisingly sharp teeth that she was prepared to do anything she had to to keep them safe.
Which, in turn, had Gabe wondering who’d been keeping Chelsea Prescott safe.
She glanced down at her wine, as if seeing those difficult days in the straw-hued depths. He thought about how devastated he would’ve been if he’d lost Brianna when he’d been as young as Chelsea had been.
“Unfortunately, as we know from all those PSAs, drugs and alcohol are a deadly combination.” She took another drink of wine. “Mom overdosed my freshman year of college. It was ruled accidental. I choose to believe that’s true.”
“Hell. I’m so sorry.”
“Me, too. And I’ve no idea why I’m telling you all this. While it’s not a secret, it all happened so long ago, no one talks about it anymore. Though I did get some comments from my parents’ generation when I first came back. Apparently they were pleased that my miserably broken life had turned out well.” That edge was back in her voice.
“This town can be a fishbowl. Quinn told me that after a too-close-and-personal encounter with Mildred Marshall while shopping at the market, he started buying condoms online.”
She laughed at that, as he’d meant her to. Then he turned serious again as the unexpected turn in conversation demanded. “The positive thing is that people care enough not to indulge in harmful gossip. And mostly tend to be supportive.”
“I don’t know what I would’ve done without Mrs. Henderson. And your sister went out of her way to be nice when we lost Annabelle.”