Letters and Lace (The Ronan's Harbor Series)

by M. Kate Quinn

  “Oh, my God, Gigi, this is a tiny little town. Who knows how many people witnessed my display out on that dance floor? I’m mortified. How am I going to face people? Or worse, face him if I run into him again?”

  “Will you please just relax, girl?” Gigi said. “For crying out loud, so what? You had a nice, fun night out. Who gives a crap if it wasn’t your typical style? Come on, admit it. You had fun.”

  Sarah’s mouth twisted sideways. Well, her body had had a good time, a blast even. But now, she was left to face its actions. She could still feel Benny’s arms around her. His scent was embedded in her pores. A pathetic-sounding whimper escaped her lips.

  “Is that acknowledgement?” Gigi asked with a grin.

  “Fine, yes. It was fun. Now, please let me go home and wallow.”

  “Bask. Go home and bask.”

  Back home, and inside her refuge, Sarah locked the door behind her and leaned against it. She closed her eyes. The musky, sandalwood aroma had followed her in and threatened to stay. She needed to get a grip.

  She trotted up the stairs to her apartment with a mission. She peeled her clothes from her body, kicking herself out of the garments like they were repulsive rags. She bunched them in a wad and stuffed it into the dry cleaning bin.

  She turned on the shower and let the full force run steamy hot before stepping inside. She lathered herself good using Hannah’s fruity body wash. The apple-scented liquid filled her senses with its sweetness, eradicating any hint of him.

  She toweled off with vigor, her skin pinking. She relaxed into her cottony pajamas, brushed her teeth, and gargled for more seconds than her norm. Her minty mouth had forgotten entirely about that kiss. It was gone.

  She slipped into her terry mules and went back downstairs for her nightly regimen. She doused the light in the parlor. She stood for a moment in the darkness, willing the inn’s comfort, needing its embrace.

  She was tired and eager to flop into her bed. She needed sleep but more, she needed to close the book on this day.

  Sarah made her way back to the front door and wrapped her hand around the brass knob, giving it a jiggle. That’s when she noticed it.

  Something peeked in from under the front door. Instantly, she flipped on the porch light and opened the door. There was no sign of anyone. The only disturbance was what she realized to be an envelope wedged in the rubber flashing.

  She tugged it out producing a gash of black across the front of the white envelope. Her name was printed on the front in blue ink, all the letters capitalized. The word “confidential” was jotted at the lower corner, and underlined twice.

  Gigi had been gone for less than a half hour. Had someone been watching and waiting for her to be alone? The hairs on her neck pricked at her skin.

  She shoved the door closed and locked it, testing the knob again. Then, she bolted up the staircase and locked the door to her apartment behind her as well. She didn’t like the feeling of being watched. Her nerves were raw. What now?

  Chilled, Sarah climbed into bed and pulled the quilt up over herself. She tore open the envelope.

  The stationery was a sandy-toned page with pale watercolor seashells decorating its top edge. The message on it was simple, also written in all capped blue ink. “Please stop the wedding. You’ll regret it if you don’t.”

  It was as though the words flew from the page and ringed themselves around her neck, squeezing her ability to breath. This was going too far.

  Whoever protested her plans was now using fear tactics and she simply wouldn’t have it. She didn’t know much about legalities but this little note sounded like a threat.

  She closed the light and tried to sleep but her mind raced. She began a mental list, a habit she’d given up combating a long time ago. Lists made her happy, kept her grounded. At the moment her cozy bed and locally-crafted quilt weren’t providing comfort.

  She needed an inventory of possible action plans. Call the police in the morning? Maybe. Call Gigi? Definitely. Tell Hannah? Never.

  Another list emerged in her head, a cataloging of all the craziness that had begun in a nanosecond of her life and was now snowballing in a convoluted trail.

  She tried to let it go, but her mind zeroed in on a taboo direction—to the music of Bailey’s combo at the Pier House and the new guy in town whom she’d publicly molested. This night sucked.

  An hour later she still hadn’t attained sleep. She needed a cup of tea. She wanted the new blend she’d come up with for Hannah’s wedding. She yearned to savor the pungent aroma, have it encircle her in the comforting reminder that nothing would stop her renovation of the sunroom and the wedding would happen as planned, no matter what.

  She padded down the stairs to the main part of the inn, where she’d left the bag of loose tea she’d named “The Wedding Tea.”

  In the stillness of the inn’s kitchen—the big, old expanse of white porcelain appliances with the butcher-block island set in the center of the room—she prepared the tea. One deep sip hit the spot, calming her immediately.

  When the cup was empty, Sarah climbed the stairs again and went up to bed where gratefully sleep eventually arrived.

  ****

  After his run, Benny trudged back to the house. Bracing against the cold April wind, his head angled away from the air that stung his eyes. He climbed the rickety steps, feeling the old wood give with his weight. Damn it to hell.

  What the hell was he doing here? He snapped on the small living room’s overhead light. His eyes caught the stack of cartons piled up in the corner. Four boxes of belongings. That had been all he’d bothered to bring with him when he gave up his apartment in Montclair. Everything else had been disposable.

  He kicked the bottom box with a tap of his toe. That was all his worldly worth, four measly boxes of stuff that easily could have been narrowed to two.

  He sat on a lumpy, stuffed chair, his body’s pressure releasing a scent of dampness that startled his nose. He yanked open the top box and began the search.

  That brochure he’d saved from his last trip to Key West was in one of these boxes. Right now he needed to see it, devour every word, believe the day would come soon when he’d be there.

  He found sweaters and shirts, a faded bathing suit. He pushed the box aside and grabbed the next, tugging against the hold of the packing tape. Most of it was stuff he’d saved last minute from the Goodwill pile he’d hauled off to the mission.

  As he rummaged, his mind fought him. His thoughts boomeranged back to the nice, unsuspecting innkeeper whose life’s plans he’d messed with. Anger brewed in his belly. Sal had painted a much different picture of the whole scenario. Benny could kick himself now for not remembering that Sal always twisted things for his own purposes.

  He’d toyed with picking up the phone and calling the fine captain, waking him up in the middle of the night just to tell him off once and for all. But, first, where the hell was that pamphlet?

  Benny reached for another box, knowing immediately when he heard the contents rattle that in it was the junk that really had no purpose. For the life of him he didn’t know why some of the crap had come along for the ride to the shore when it should have been rotting at the bottom of the dumpster of his apartment complex.

  He tore it open anyway. He picked up the first thing he saw, a carved wooden box. How long had it been since he’d actually held the compass, the so-called heirloom that his father had willed to him? He snickered to no one.

  The memory of that day flooded back to his mind. He and brother Sal sat on stiff-backed chairs in their father’s attorney’s office for the reading of the will.

  The old man’s meager assets had been split down the middle with no surprises. At the end of the brief meeting, the lawyer presented each son with a token of remembrance that their father had specified they receive.

  He now pictured Sal’s gleaming face when he learned Pop had left him his antique coin collection, a treasure worth a major wad of dough. And, Benny—he’d gotten the tarnis
hed antique brass pocket compass.

  He wondered then, and he wondered now, if there had been a subliminal message from the old man when he doled out the memorabilia to his sons? The question hadn’t formed in his brain for a long time now. Usually when it had, there’d been a six-pack in his system.

  But alone in this foreign place the truth suddenly growled inside of him like hunger. He didn’t need a pawnbroker to tell him which son had received the more valuable bequest. And there was just one real interpretation of that shitty fact.

  He lifted the object from the faded satin-lined box. It was cold in his palm. He pressed the side button and the cover popped open. The compass face was clear and unmarred despite its age. The north-pointing arrow quaked in his grasp.

  Yes, the old man had made it loud and clear. His younger son didn’t know where the hell he was going, and never had.

  Benny’s eye wandered to a gash of turquoise poking out from beneath a couple of useless old photo albums. He knew instantly what it was. He pulled the Key West brochure into his grasp, letting the compass slip back into its box.

  He unfolded the glossy paper with a careful, almost reverent gesture. He scanned the photos of silhouetted fishermen, spectacular sunsets, and must-see tourist landmarks. But what appealed most to Benny was the warmth, yet remoteness of the locale.

  He savored the italicized page banner that boasted the island as the continental United States’ southernmost point. Any further away from his old life and he’d need a boat.

  He pulled the compass back into his hand and held it appropriately to his chest. Glancing at the details in the brochure he’d laid open on his lap, he turned the housing and aligned the needle. It would take a while, but he’d get to the place located at latitude twenty-four degrees north and longitude eighty-one degrees west.

  For now, one thing was sure. Benny knew exactly where he was headed tomorrow and he wouldn’t need a compass for the destination.

  Chapter Three

  Sarah sat on a wooden stool at Gigi’s flower shop workbench. While her friend arranged a spray of yellow roses as part of a sizeable funeral order, Sarah’s anonymous note from last night sat open on the table’s pocked surface.

  “I’m with you one hundred percent,” Gigi said as she eyed her project. She looked up. “That little love note’s got to be from whatever asshole made the complaint. Somebody really wants to stop your plans. You want me to go with you to the police department? I know some of the guys down there.”

  “I know you do, Miss Popularity,” Sarah said. “But, no. I’m heading over now.”

  “Okay, call me.” Gigi added a satin bow embossed with a golden statement of devotion. “Old Mr. Griswold sure loved his wife.” She smiled appreciatively at her creation. “She carried yellow roses when they got married more than fifty years ago and he insisted on them now. There’s a real message in that simple gesture, huh?”

  “Yes.” Sarah sighed. There were bigger issues in the world, greater obstacles than what she faced. She let the idea of timeless love between a man and a woman warm her.

  She reached for the cryptic piece of stationery. This was no tragedy. This was merely an annoyance that she’d nip today, right now, damn it.

  She waved the page in Gigi’s direction. “I’m on my way. Hopefully, the police will decide this little message is a threat, something illegal—or at least unethical enough to, I don’t know, have the township committee take pity on me and let me go ahead with the work and the wedding.” She refolded the piece of stationary, carefully placing it back in its envelope.

  She got up and turned to leave. “Wish me luck.”

  A wide grin broke out on Gigi’s face. “Go get ‘em, sister.”

  ****

  Benny Benedetto pulled his Jeep into the Glendale Police Department’s visitor lot.

  He climbed the familiar steps to the front door and entered the building that had been his employment home for twenty-five years. Nothing had changed. The threadbare chairs in the waiting area, the fake potted palm in the corner in need of a good dusting, the overcrowded cork bulletin board on the wall, were all just as they were when he had been an officer on the little Northern Jersey police force.

  He made his way past the front window, waving at the ladies behind the glass, old faces and new faces watching him and exchanging comments he could not and did not care to hear.

  With each step down the corridor toward the Captain’s Office Benny felt the acid in his stomach churn in defense and self-reproach. Why the hell he agreed to go in on the purchase of that beat-to-shit beach house with his arrogant, sleaze-ball brother was beyond him. But now, Captain Salvatore Benedetto was going to hear it but good.

  Paula, Sal’s secretary, grinned with recognition when Benny walked up to her desk. “A sight for sore eyes,” she drawled, tilting her chin. Benny’s tension eased a bit at her familiar flirtation, although he wasn’t, and never had been, interested.

  “Hey, Paula,” he said. “He in?”

  “He’s been expecting you, Benny.” Paula patted her starchy hair and gave him an appreciative look.

  His older brother sat tall behind the laminate desk as though it were a judge’s bench, squaring his broad shoulders in a regal posture. “Benny Boy, how’s the beach?” Sal boomed. He motioned for Benny to sit in the vinyl chair positioned opposite his throne.

  Benny’s eyes drifted to the wall behind Sal, scanning the haphazard display of his matted and framed narcissism. He viewed the engraved plaques from local organizations and diplomas Sal had earned ranging from his academy graduation to his karate certificate.

  There was a cluster of framed thank-you letters in all shapes and sizes from local muckety-mucks. A new addition, a framed press piece of Sal receiving some award from a local organization, all smiles for the camera, hung right above his fat head.

  “I’m sure you didn’t come all the way up here to count my awards.” Sal let out a string of chuckles.

  The smile fell from Sal’s face when Benny did not return a cheery greeting. “What’s up, brother?”

  “You didn’t tell me this woman with the inn just wants to make her sunroom look good so she can have her kid’s wedding in it.”

  “Semantics, little brother.” Sal sighed and pinched his mouth into a one-sided bunch. “The fact remains her plans could totally screw us up.”

  Benny folded his arms across his chest. “How have you come to that conclusion?”

  “Her bed-and-breakfast is one of four in Ronan’s Harbor.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “They’d all like nothing better than to get the town ordinance changed so they can all start expanding and throwing parties, adding traffic and congestion to the town. Do I need to spell this out for you, Benny? You want to make dough on this house we bought or not?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  Sal placed his big hands onto the desk top and rotated his swivel chair a quarter turn. He rose and stepped around the desk’s corner and positioned his backside at its’ front edge.

  “Trust me, Benny. This can’t happen. It won’t. You got that? I’ve already put the skids into motion. This B&B, The Cornelia Inn…” he paused to snicker mockingly at the name, “is run by a ding-bat that ignored the need to get a permit. It’s illegal.”

  “I still don’t get why we should we care, Sal. What’s it to us what she does at her establishment?”

  “Look, Benny,” His face contorted with impatience. “We don’t want it because this sleepy little town has to stay just as it is if we’re going to sell that house of ours and make the big bucks.”

  Sal blew out a long breath. “Can you imagine if all of the inns decided to start having big bashes? How many nice, American families are going to want a beach cottage in a noisy, overcrowded honky-tonk town? Huh, Benny? How many?”

  Benny swallowed his urge to argue the point. The only thing that mattered to him right now was getting the shack ready for sale. The sooner he would be rid of a
ny ties to his shyster brother and headed to Key West, the better.

  “What exactly have you ‘put in motion’?” Benny said, not caring that his voice rang with accusation. He knew what lurked inside the bullish egotist. “This isn’t anything shady, is it Sal? Because if it is—”

  “Benny, Benny, Benny.” Sal laughed like a politician in a polyester suit. “Up and up. It’s all good. Just trying to look after our interests, pal. I contacted a buddy of mine down there and put a bug in his ear. Our luck is that the owner didn’t have any permits for either the work or the event she’s planning. Basically she’s screwed.”

  Sal pointed a fat finger at Benny. “I’ve started it. Now you finish it. Got that? Stop this broad. We’ll paint and tidy up our little place and sell. Then I won’t care what the hell they do in Ronan’s Harbor. I need to count on you.”

  Sal sounded just like their father. The old man had boomed his commands at them as they grew up. Sal had been his pathetic yes-man, Benny the odd guy out. So frickin’ what? He’d never pleased his father up until his dying day. And to his big brother he’d just been a screw-up, a poor excuse for the great Benedetto name in the police world.

  The image of Sarah’s face last night in the bar was unrelenting. Doesn’t it just figure, he thought, that the one time I decided to pay attention to a nice lady like her that it turns out I’ve already treated her like shit? This was one for the record books, even for him.

  So, yeah, Sal could count on him this one last time. There was nothing more important than severing this fool alliance with Sal. If that meant proving to this Sarah that he was a jerk, that was just par for Benny. If nixing the inn’s plans meant selling, moving on, and putting the stupid little town in his rearview mirror, then, sure, he was on board, full-throttle.

  He pushed the image of Sarah from his thoughts. It was a blessing in disguise, really. The last thing he needed was involvement with a woman. In the long run he’d have disappointed her anyway. Hell, he already had. Who needs it?