by Nina Lindsey
He was silent. She felt his regard like the graze of his hand against hers. Like the first time he’d touched her.
“Come on.” She started toward her van parked in the alley. “I still won’t tell you the Mariposa Street secret, but Bliss Cove has a few other secrets I can share.”
“What about you?” His low, quiet question rubbed against her skin.
Tightening her hands on her keys, she turned to find him watching her with a pensive, shuttered expression. “I already told you my secrets.”
“Not all of them.” He moved closer, his dark eyes sliding from her face to her chest.
Her heart fluttered. He reached out and lifted the pendant around her neck. The brush of his fingers on her skin shocked her with heat.
“What kind of stone is this?” He rubbed his thumb over the crystal.
“Red amethyst. Destiny gave it to me.” She gazed at the raw amethyst nestled in his big palm. “She believes crystals have healing powers.”
“Why do you need healing?”
She shrugged, tugging the pendant gently out of his grip. “Buildings require regular maintenance, right? They get weather-beaten and need fixing up the older they get. People are the same way. If you have a strong foundation and are solidly built, and if you’re lucky, then maybe you’ll need less repair work than others. But as time goes on, we all need a bit of restoration.”
A smile tugged at his mouth. “I’ve never heard anyone compare houses with people.”
“Places are important.” Aria opened the van door and climbed into the driver’s seat. “My building is more than just stones and mortar. It was a home to my ancestor and her family and to other people through the years. Now it’s mine, and it’s where orphaned cats can find security and love before moving to their forever home.”
“Your plan worked.”
“For the first time.” She pulled the van on to Starfish Avenue. “What about your plan? How far along are you now?”
“Not far enough.” He turned his head to look out the window. “And maybe too far.”
Chapter 16
Hunter had never spent much time at the beach. He knew plenty of people who vacationed in Florida and the Caribbean, but the idea of lazing around at an oceanfront resort didn’t appeal to him, and he’d never had much interest in a bunch of sand and water.
But this. The red glow over the Pacific horizon illuminated the rough, rocky coastline edged with sea-plants and cypress trees. Waves splashed against the outcroppings, birds soared, and a cluster of sea lions lolled on a large rock not far from the shore. The Bliss Cove lighthouse, which he hadn’t yet visited, stood like a soldier guarding the bay.
“Have you been to the boardwalk?” The silver bracelets on Aria’s arm jingled as she pointed to the boardwalk that ran parallel to the ocean.
“Not yet.” He peered through the front window. The place was in full-swing on a Saturday evening, lights blazing and the Ferris wheel spinning in a multicolored circle. “Was that your local hangout when you were a kid?”
“Oh, definitely. We’d take in a movie at the Vitaphone…that was when it was the only theater anywhere nearby, but now Rainsville has a multiplex that’s taken away a lot of the Mortimers’ business…and then come to the boardwalk for ice cream or funnel cakes. We also spent a lot of time at the Mousehole and Ruby’s Kitchen or just wandering Starfish Avenue. Then in our teen years, it was all about sneaking around underneath the pier or going up to Lighthouse Point to make out.”
“Wish I’d known you back then.”
She shot him an amused look. “Somehow I don’t see you as the type to sneak around under a pier. Even as a teenager.”
“I wasn’t.” He gazed out the side window. The coastal hills melted into denser forests packed with redwood trees. “I didn’t have much of a social life in high school. I was laser-focused on my grades and the extracurriculars that would get me into Harvard.”
“Do you ever regret it? The path you took, I mean.”
“No. I made the path.”
“Still. It doesn’t sound like much fun.”
“I didn’t do it for fun.” He squinted at the rugged mountains. “Must be some good camping and hiking up there.”
“Tons of it, on the public land, at least. Some of it is private.” She guided the van around a curve hugging the coastline. “The redwoods have inspired a lot of fantastic stories about Bigfoot, fog spirits, Dark Watchers, even a rumored elf maiden. But the forest doesn’t give up its secrets easily.” She tossed him a smile. “Kind of like someone I know.”
“Maybe it just takes the right person to discover the secrets.” Hunter turned his attention to an outcropping of rocks jutting into the ocean. “This must have been a great place to grow up.”
“Yes, but like many things, I didn’t really appreciate it until later.” Aria pulled on to a narrow dirt road, and the van rattled to a stop in front of an old wooden house. “But I guess it’s better to figure something out late rather than not at all.”
She hopped out of the driver’s seat. Hunter followed, casting a glance over the weathered front porch and salt-encrusted windows. An Open sign was displayed in the window.
As Aria pushed open the door, a bell jingled to announce their arrival. The smells of salt and redwood filled the air. The gift shop held glass cases of jewelry, a rack of T-shirts, and several shelves of books and beach-related knick-knacks—sea animal statuettes, lamps, and snow globes.
“Aria.” A man in his mid-fifties with graying hair shuffled toward them, peering over the tops of his glasses. “It’s about time you stopped by. Lucifur has been wondering where you are.”
He indicated the gray cat lounging in an old chair, whiskers twitching and ears perked. Aria smiled and stroked her hand over the cat’s back.
“He looks great. Bert adopted Lucifur…that’s F-U-R…from the café last month,” she told Hunter. “Bert, this is my friend Hunter.”
Friend. Though she seemed to say the word without even thinking, it sounded almost foreign. A flush colored her cheeks, as if she’d just realized what she said.
“Good to meet you.” Hunter stepped forward to shake the older man’s hand. “Nice place you’ve got here.”
“Take your time looking around, and feel free to head into the museum.” Bert pointed to a curtained doorway leading to another room. “I need to check on something in the oven, but I’ll be right back to show you around.”
He disappeared through another door, and Hunter shot Aria a quizzical look. “Museum?”
“The Sea Glass Museum.”
“Sea glass?”
“Glass that’s been polished by the ocean.” Gesturing for him to follow her, she walked to the back room and pushed the curtain aside. “Say a hundred years ago, someone drinking a bottle of soda on the boardwalk carelessly threw the empty bottle in the ocean. The glass would break, and the waves would toss and tumble all those jagged pieces, smoothing out the edges and giving them a frosted patina. That’s sea glass. Discarded bottles and containers that the ocean has turned into something new.”
Though Hunter’s immediate reaction was to wonder how someone could create a museum out of trash, he followed Aria into the room. Display cases held hundreds of pieces of silky, frosted glass, all arranged by color, as well as whole bottles and jars with barnacles still clinging to the surface. There was a display of marbles that had been found in the sea, each one smooth and clouded.
Bert returned to give them a tour, and Hunter learned more about sea glass than he even knew existed, from the value of different colors to its increasing rarity.
“Red glass is extremely rare.” Bert paused beside a case displaying several red pieces. “Usually it comes from car taillights or perfume bottles.” He opened a case and took out a piece of glass. “This is fire glass, which was melted before the sea took it over. That’s why it has all those different colors.”
Hunter lifted the piece to the light. Dark green curled through a fusion of red
and clear, cloudy glass. If he were a poetic type, he’d make some correlation about how an ordinary piece of glass could become something both colorful and extraordinary after being consumed by fire and then endlessly tossed around by the ocean waves.
“Pretty.” He handed the glass back to Bert.
They looked around for another hour before Aria told Bert she had a few more Bliss Cove secrets to show Hunter. After they got back into her van, she drove to a sprawling Victorian mansion with multiple stories and towers. A wooden sign in the front yard stated Bliss Cove Library.
“Bliss Cove has a long history extending back to Native American settlements,” she explained. “But during the Gold Rush, it was officially founded as a shipping and fishing port by John Marcus, a sea captain from Maine. He built this place…” she gestured to the mansion, “…after he got married and lived here until he died in 1899. The property was sold several times, but the new owners always left shortly after moving in because they claimed it was haunted. They heard music coming from the conservatory even though no one was there, footsteps on the stairs, and a strange singing that sounded like a man singing old sea shanties. No one wanted to live here, so eventually, the town bought it and turned it into the library.”
“Is it still haunted?” Hunter peered through the front windshield at the mansion with its wide front porch and arched pediment.
“Of course.” Aria shifted into reverse and backed out of the parking space. “We’ll go in one day when it’s open. People often report seeing the figure of a man pass in front of the window on the third floor, even when the library is closed and no one is there.”
Any other time, Hunter would have scoffed at the idea of a haunted library. But if there were such things as ghosts, and if Captain Marcus was one of them, then the hulking old mansion would be a perfect place for him to hang out and scare people.
“The library has a haunted house every Halloween.” Aria turned down Starfish Avenue, where all the trees and lampposts were illuminated with white lights. “Interestingly, no one has reported seeing or hearing Captain Marcus on Halloween. I guess he considers it his day off.”
She grinned. Her eyes sparkled. An odd tightness gripped Hunter’s chest.
Aria pulled into a parking spot and cut off the engine. He followed her out to the sidewalk. He was beginning to think he’d follow her anywhere. And that he’d like it.
Shaking the thought out of his head, he fell into step at her side.
“Have you been to the Mousehole Tavern yet?” She slipped her purse over her shoulder. “Home of Bliss Cove’s famous artichoke soup.”
“No. That guy Grant doesn’t think much of me,” Hunter said. “I did want to try the soup, though. At the Artichoke Festival, I tried fried artichokes, artichoke ice cream, artichoke cupcakes, artichoke burritos, and artichoke hummus. Strangely enough, I couldn’t find a booth to try any artichoke soup.”
Aria laughed. “That’s because Grant only serves the soup at the tavern. He bought the Mousehole a few years ago, and he inherited the secret recipe. He claims it has to be cooked in the same pot, on the same burner on his stove, and then served right away or it loses its flavor. So the tavern is the only place in town where you can have a bowl of artichoke soup.”
She walked off the main street to a cluster of four ramshackle wooden buildings with steep roofs and ivy-covered walls. Light glowed through the windows, and music drifted on the air.
“Welcome to the Mousehole.” Aria pulled open the door of the main building and stepped inside. “This used to be a stagecoach stop until about 1865, I think. Then it changed owners over the years until Grant bought it and moved into the house in the back. There’s also a cottage. This is the restaurant and bar, and that fourth building is kind of a free-for-all space that’s been used for everything from ballet classes to birthday parties.”
She led him through the maze of tables. “Oh, there’s the singing fish I told you about. I think Grant keeps it around partly to annoy Rory.”
She indicated the mounted plastic fish behind the bar, where Grant was helping customers. Aria waved and gestured to a table by the window. “Can you bring us a couple of soups please, Grant?”
He nodded, slanting a narrow glance at Hunter. The scattered wooden tables were covered in red-and-white checked cloths and each held a single glowing lantern. The chairs and barstools were filled with locals drinking and talking. Weathered wooden rafters crossed the high roof, and a massive stone fireplace dominated one end of the room.
Despite Grant’s wariness of him, Hunter knew businesses. Though he’d reviewed the Oceanview plans a hundred times over, he suspected that no matter what kind of high-end bar or restaurant opened up there, it would never replace this local hangout.
Aria left for a moment and returned with a couple of beers and a basket of hot sourdough bread. “I worked here for a summer when I was in college.”
Setting the basket between them, she took her seat again. “A tourist from LA offered me five hundred dollars for the artichoke soup recipe.”
“Were you tempted?”
“No, but even if I was, I couldn’t have gotten it for him.” She tilted her head toward the bar, causing her hair to slide over her shoulder. “Everyone who’s owned this bar over the years claims the recipe isn’t written down anywhere. It’s passed in secret from owner to owner. Now Grant is the only one who knows it, and he keeps it locked in the vault of his brain. The only thing anyone knows for sure is that it contains artichokes.”
Her mouth curved with a smile, and her blue eyes shone in the light from the glowing lantern. Tearing his gaze from hers, Hunter took a piece of bread. The tightness in his chest intensified, as if he were trying to contain something that wanted to get out.
Know your opponent.
The strategy was supposed to make it easier to win the battle. But the more he learned about Aria, the less he wanted to negotiate. He just wanted to know even more about her. It was like slowly uncovering a treasure—you couldn’t wait to see the whole thing.
“Here you go.” Grant appeared with two wooden bowls filled with soup, which he plunked in front of them before narrowing his eyes at Hunter again. “Anything else?”
“This is great, thanks, Grant,” Aria said.
He nodded and slouched back to the bar.
“You think he spit in my soup?” Hunter eyed the creamy, green soup warily.
“No.” Aria smiled and draped her napkin in her lap. “He’s not that type. But he was the first person to sign my petition. Sorry.” She twisted her mouth with a grimace. “I didn’t mean to bring up the thing.”
Hunter shrugged and picked up his spoon. The thing seemed increasingly less relevant. “We have a truce, so it doesn’t matter. We’ll hash it all out at the debate.”
She spooned up a bite of soup and blew on it. Her lips pursed, drawing his attention to the rosebud of her mouth. His shoulders tensed with the urge to kiss her again.
“You were on your high school debate team, weren’t you?” she asked.
“How’d you know?”
“Easy guess. Ivy Leagues look favorably on forensics, from what I understand.” She rolled her eyes slightly. “Not that I ever thought about the Ivy Leagues. That was Callie’s domain.”
“What was your college major?”
“English literature.” She ate another bite of soup and darted her tongue out to lick her bottom lip. “Because I like to read, not because I thought I could make a career out of it. I didn’t want to be a teacher…again, Callie’s domain…and I couldn’t figure out what else to major in. Then a friend told me about a non-profit animal organization that was looking for help up near Seattle, so I dropped out and moved up there. Not my greatest decision.”
“You wouldn’t have known that if you hadn’t gone, though.”
“Sadly, it was one of many bad decisions.” She blew her breath upward, stirring a tendril of hair at her temple. “I also once joined an adventure travel company that fold
ed six months later. I went broke on a spur-of-the-moment road trip. I’ve put my savings into countless business ventures—a wildlife rescue program, an online macramé art store, a mail-order soap business—but I could never get anything off the ground. Or I couldn’t stick with it long enough. Anyway, I have a terrible track record of going the distance with anything. How’s the soup?”
Hunter blinked. He’d been too preoccupied listening to her and staring at her. He ate a spoonful of soup and nodded. “Really good.”
She tapped the menu at the side of the table. “Grant’s soup always gets the starring role here, but the supporting cast is excellent. When we’re done, we’ll split a piece of olallieberry pie. It’s my sister Rory’s favorite. It’ll ruin you for all other olallieberry pies.”
He didn’t bother telling her he’d never heard of or had an olallieberry pie in his life. As they shared the sweet, tart pie and homemade vanilla ice cream, and as he grew increasingly captivated by her murmurs of pleasure, the way she closed her lips around the spoon, the flash of her smile…he began to suspect he was being ruined in more ways than one.
Smothering his unease, he set down his fork and indicated that she should finish the pie. After they were done and he paid for their dinner, Aria drove him back to the Outside Inn and parked beside the front gate.
“There’s still more to see, and I can even tell you a few things about pirates, believe it or not.” She pulled up the parking brake, her bracelets jingling. “But I hope that was a good start.”