He climbed into his car, started the engine and turned on the radio. Bass-heavy Metallica blasted through the speakers, and he let it surge over him, praying that it, too, might drown out the David Bowie song. He turned the radio’s volume up so high, he didn’t hear his cell phone ringing.
He felt it vibrating against his thigh, however. Pulling it from his pocket, he peered at the screen, turned off the radio and cursed.
He should just ignore the call. But it was hard to ignore your mother—even when she had left scars across your psyche that would never fade. Sighing, he thumbed the connect icon and lifted the phone to his ear. “Yeah?” His voice emerged as a growl.
“Don’t be like that,” his mother said. “It’s been ages since we talked.”
He took a minute to subdue his reflexive anger at the sound of her voice. “I’ve been busy,” he said.
“One of the shutters fell off in front of the house. A living room window. I thought maybe you could stop by and rehang it.”
Sure. There was nothing Nick wanted more than to do freaking repairs for his mother. “Like I said, I’m really busy.”
“Nick.” Her voice took on a familiar wheedling tone. When he was a kid, the syrupy sweetness of her voice had made him feel loved, made him feel as if she would keep him safe and protect him from his father’s wild temper. Not anymore. Now, when she said, “I’ll make you dinner. You can come, hang the shutter, and I’ll make manicotti. You love my manicotti,” all he could think of was that he loved her manicotti a hell of a lot more than he loved her.
Still, she was an older woman, living alone. Her body was worn down by time, loneliness and the abuse his father had inflicted on her. The old man had specialized in discreet punches and slaps, leaving bruises no one could see, and emotional abuse that left bruises no less real, even if they were also invisible—the fear, the caution, the constant anxiety that one wrong word or gesture might change the abuse from emotional back to physical.
Nick had a master’s degree in social work. He knew about domestic violence. Growing up, he’d had a front-row seat in the boxing ring of his home. So from a clinical standpoint, he could sympathize with his mother.
But he’d fought in that arena, too. He’d fought harder than his mother ever had. His sympathy had limits.
“Hire a handyman,” he spoke into the phone. “Someone who knows how to hang shutters.”
“I can’t afford—”
“I’ll pay for it,” he said, thinking again about how much he’d like his salary to ch-ch-change. “Look, Mom, I have to see someone right now. I’ve got to go.”
“Call me,” his mother whined. “Come visit. I’ll cook something nice.”
He rolled his eyes, muttered good-bye and tapped the disconnect icon. And cursed again.
He was in no longer in the mood to shop for a shower curtain. Nor was he in the mood to drive home and listen his mother’s plaintive voice alternating with the Bowie song on that audio loop in his mind. He wasn’t even in the mood for a blast of Metallica.
He tore out of the community center parking lot, his tires spitting loose pebbles behind him. Instead of heading west toward his house or south to the shopping district on Rte.1, he steered to Atlantic Avenue, the road paralleling the retaining wall, the beach, and the ocean beyond. The sky to his right was fading to dark as he cruised north, the last light of dusk bleeding out of the day. Although the evening air was cold, he rolled down his windows and let the sea breezes whip through his car.
A cigarette would have helped—if he still smoked. A glass of something strong—if he wasn’t driving. A mother he could trust—if he could swap his own mother for a better one.
The houses along Atlantic Avenue were tightly packed, barely a sliver of space between one and the next. Land was precious this close to the shore; a large yard would spike the already prohibitive costs of ocean-view properties even higher. Further north, Brogan’s Point featured plenty of mansions owned by gazillionaires. Along the stretch of the Atlantic Avenue closer in to town, though, single-family homes nestled shoulder to shoulder with triple-deckers, summer rentals, and rambling old houses transformed into quaint bed-and-breakfasts that catered to New Yorkers and folks from Western Massachusetts who came to enjoy a long seaside weekend in a town they could reach in just a few hours.
He kept heading north until he reached the driveway to the Ocean Bluff Inn. The entry was flanked by short stone pillars topped with lantern-shaped lights. As he steered up the winding drive to the imposing white clapboard structure spread across the grassy ocean-view bluff for which it was named, he slowed the car, took a few deep breaths and shook his head, hoping to clear it.
He cleared some of the anger, some of the static. But the damned David Bowie song remained.
Why had he driven to the inn? Diana probably wasn’t here. Or if she was, she might be with her fiancé, that clean-cut dude who’d been with her at the Faulk Street Tavern on Saturday night. That proper gentleman who’d planted a massive chunk of crystalized carbon on her ring finger.
Nick was an idiot to have driven to the OB. Seeing Diana made no sense.
Except that not seeing her made even less sense.
He shut and locked his car—the oldest, shabbiest vehicle in the guest lot—and walked to the front steps, his footsteps crunching on the crushed shells and sea-smooth pebbles that paved the path leading to the building. He climbed three shallow steps to a broad veranda furnished with a few heavy wooden Adirondack chairs and rockers. It was still too early for the inn to put lightweight wicker furniture on its front porch; winter hadn’t released New England from its grip yet. The green tips of daffodils and crocuses were beginning poke through the soil and a few trees were dotted with leaf buds, but no one would be shocked if the region saw a few more inches of snow before spring officially arrived. Winter usually took its time departing from Massachusetts.
Nick crossed the porch to the heavy oak door, swung it open and stepped inside. He was immediately embraced by the heated indoor air. The inn’s lobby was small and welcoming, the walls painted a soft white and adorned with framed seascape paintings and photos of old sailing ships, the hardwood floor covered with thick patterned area rugs. Along one wall ran a counter of polished oak—the hotel equivalent of Gus’s bar, he thought with a wry smile. A bowl of apples stood at one end of the counter, an urn holding brightly colored flowers at the other. Halfway between them, a clerk in a dark blue blazer and khaki trousers was stationed. The clerk eyed Nick curiously, then asked, “Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for…” Nick paused, hearing a woman’s voice emerging through the arched doorway leading to a parlor off the lobby. Diana’s voice. “I think I found her,” he said, moving toward the doorway.
Diana stood in front of a window in the parlor, her back to Nick, a cell phone pressed to her ear. “No,” she said, her voice tight with tension. “I’m sorry you feel that way, but—” She listened for a moment. “I will when I’m ready,” she said. Another pause. “Peter. Don’t be this way. It’s not—I’m fine. Really. Right. Okay. I’ll call you tomorrow.” She lowered the phone, jabbed her finger against the screen and muttered, “Screw you.”
This must be the evening for unpleasant phone calls—and Nick shouldn’t have eavesdropped on Diana’s. She’d hidden herself inside this small parlor, which was furnished with overstuffed chairs and a sofa, a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf stacked with weathered hardcovers, and a fireplace with an ornately carved mantel. Maybe she’d hoped for privacy. But if she’d truly wanted privacy for her phone call, she should have gone to her room. The parlor was a public space, sort of.
Nick gave her a moment to simmer down, then cleared his throat. She spun around and gasped. “Oh!”
“Sorry—did I scare you?”
“No.” Even from across the room, he could see the tension seeping out of her spine, her shoulders relaxing as she let out a long breath. “You just startled me a little. What are you doing here?”
Good question. “I…was pissed off,” he said.
Her huge eyes clouded with concern. “At me?”
He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “No, of course not. But I thought…” God, this was going to sound odd, no matter how he expressed it. “I thought seeing you would cheer me up.”
“And instead, you found out that I was pissed off, too.” She slid her phone into her purse. “I guess you overheard that argument.”
“Just the tail end.” He smiled again. “Maybe you’re pissed off, but you’re cheering me up.” It was true. Simply standing in the same room with her eased his tension, deleted his mother’s phone call from his memory, and muted the Bowie tune.
Diana took a step toward him, then halted. The room wasn’t large. One more step and she’d be close enough for him to touch her.
“You want to grab some dinner?” he asked.
It didn’t seem like that complicated a question, but she took a full minute to mull over her reply. “I was going to eat here at the inn,” she said. “I’ve been doing these tasting menus.…” She bit her lip, then shrugged and smiled. “The hell with that. Let’s go somewhere else. You must know some good local restaurants. That place where we had coffee this morning—”
“Riley’s. Great for breakfast, not so great for dinner. You like seafood?”
“I’d better, if I’m spending time in Brogan’s Point.”
“I’ll take you to a good local place. No atmosphere. Lobster right off the boat.”
“It sounds perfect. Let me run up to my room and grab my coat.” She neared him, then moved right past him, denying him the chance to take her hand or brush a stray lock of hair back from her cheek. Just as well. He had no business wanting that kind of contact, that connection. She was a visitor, a Boston woman. Already taken.
“Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll wait down here.”
He followed her into the lobby and watched her walk up the grand stairway to the second floor. The main building had four floors, so he assumed there must be an elevator somewhere. But Diana was a jogger. It figured she would take the stairs.
Five minutes later, he watched her descend that double-width stairway like a debutante—one wearing tailored slacks, a wool coat and a colorful silk scarf rather than a gown, but just as regal, just as elegant. Just as beautiful.
She was smiling.
And she wasn’t wearing her diamond ring.
***
Chapter Five
“I love this place,” Diana said.
The Lobster Shack was the antithesis of the Ocean Bluff Inn’s fancy dining rooms, and of any Boston restaurant she’d ever dined at with Peter. It was located in a small converted warehouse across Atlantic Avenue from a wharf lined with commercial fishing boats, back in port after a day’s harvest. The restaurant’s walls were paneled in splintery shingles draped haphazardly with woven ropes and trawling nets. Its tabletops were unvarnished planks topped with butcher paper. Its lighting was uneven, some bulbs in the ceiling fixtures emitting a glaring silver light and others a softer amber glow. The lobsters were served boiled to a bright red, accompanied by a cup of drawn butter, a saucer of coleslaw and a basket of greasy French Fries. The waitress had brought glasses along with their bottles of beer, but she hadn’t bothered to pour the beer, and when Nick took a slug straight from the bottle, Diana decided not to bother with her glass, either.
He looked ridiculous wearing a plastic bib with a cartoon drawing of a smiling lobster on it—ridiculous but adorable. She’d donned a bib, too. He was a lot more adept than she was at cracking lobster shells with the hinged metal nutcrackers the waitress had provided for them, but then, Diana wasn’t used to eating lobster this way. Peter always argued that eating boiled lobster straight out of the shell was too sloppy and uncivilized. To make him happy if they were dining out together, she would order a “lazy man’s” lobster, the meat already removed from the shell.
Breaking the shell and wrestling the steaming pink and white flesh out with a tiny fork was challenging and messy, but it was fun. It also kept Diana and Nick too busy to talk about anything other than how delicious the lobster tasted. Prying chunks of succulent meat from the claws required her full attention. It distracted her from thinking about her argument with Peter an hour ago.
He’d phoned her while she’d been staring blankly at some of the inn’s catering menus and wondering why none of the elaborate descriptions of the food tweaked her appetite. She ought to have been starving, since she hadn’t eaten lunch. The thick slice of toast she’d consumed with Nick that morning had filled her up, and once she’d hit the road, she hadn’t wanted to stop for food.
She’d gone to three antiques dealers Claudia had suggested to her, all of them located on a winding country road leading northwest out of town. The first two had been stocked with glorified trash—as she and her colleagues at Shomback-Sawyer always joked, these were the sorts of shops that ought to have signs reading, “We Buy Junk—We Sell Antiques” hanging above their doors. The third dealer had operated out of a barn not far from the New Hampshire state line, and it was there that Diana had scored a major coup, purchasing a pair of authentic Tiffany lamps for eighty dollars apiece. They were dusty and their bronze bases were crusted with dirt, but they were genuine. Given the price the dealer had charged her, he apparently hadn’t known how to tell a real Tiffany lamp from a reproduction. But Diana had rubbed enough crud from them to spot their Tiffany Studios stamps and numbers. The dealer had rolled his eyes when she’d asked him to pad them with yards of bubble-wrap. She’d offered to pay extra for the wrapping, and he’d pretended he was doing her a big favor by charging only twenty bucks to wrap the lamps and nestle them into a sturdy box.
She’d driven about a mile back toward Brogan’s Point before pulling off the road and phoning her boss. “Really? The lamps had Tiffany stamps?” James Sawyer had said.
“Stamps and numbers. They aren’t the most magnificent specimens I’ve ever seen, but they’re the real thing.”
“In that case, stay up on the North Shore as long as you want. Maybe you’ll find some more treasures for us. Use the company card. Good job, Diana.”
After stashing the lamps carefully in her room at the inn, she’d strolled down the hill toward town until she’d found herself at the entry to the Faulk Street Tavern. She’d gotten lucky with the lamps; maybe she’d get lucky with the jukebox, too.
She hadn’t, and she’d left the bar bewildered and strangely edgy after her conversation with Augusta, the tall, lanky bartender who had implied that the jukebox was somehow magical. Turn to face the strange, she’d recited, song lyrics that must have lodged themselves in Diana’s soul on Saturday night. Her day had certainly turned strange.
And then Peter had called and turned her day from strange to infuriating. He wanted her to come back to Boston. He didn’t like her “wasting time”—his words, not hers—in Brogan’s Point. He’d decided he didn’t like the inn at all. He wanted to have the wedding at that ostentatious mansion in Newport. He thought Diana was too stubborn. Her parents were worried that she hadn’t come home with him. He didn’t care that James Sawyer had urged her to stay on at Brogan’s Point and check out some more antique dealers in the area. She needed to come home. Now.
She’d ridden an emotional rollercoaster all day. From the high of discovering the Tiffany lamps hidden in that gloomy barn full of mediocre Depression glass and not-quite mint-comic books to her bewildering conversation with Augusta at the bar, to her phone conversation with Peter…to this moment, eating the simplest, freshest, most delicious lobster she’d ever tasted and wearing a plastic bib. If Peter saw her in this bib, in this eatery, he’d probably break off the engagement on principle. No future wife of his ought to be seen in public wearing a plastic lobster bib.
“So,” Nick said, leaning back in his chair. His hair was tousled, his cheeks and chin wearing a day’s growth of stubble. His eyes were unfathomable, so dark. She had to avert her gaze so as no
t to be drawn in by their beauty. “You took off your ring.”
Right. She was wearing the bib, and she wasn’t wearing her engagement ring. She’d been so angry with Peter after his phone call, she’d taken it off and hidden it inside a pair of rolled socks in a drawer when she’d gone to her room to fetch her coat. She hadn’t considered whether Nick would notice.
How could he not notice? The stone was three carats, as ostentatious as the Newport venue where Peter wanted their wedding to take place.
“I was annoyed,” she said, hoping that was enough of an answer to satisfy Nick. She didn’t want to think too much about the implications of her not wearing her ring while she ate dinner with an irresistibly attractive man who wasn’t her fiancé.
He remained silent, gazing at her.
His silence forced her to acknowledge that, in fact, she did want to answer the questions he was too polite to ask. Something in his piercing gaze, something in the angle of his head and the set of his jaw and those strong, rugged hands of his, hands that just that morning had lifted her off the beach and into his world, compelled her to open up to him. “My fiancé can be kind of…domineering. That was who I was talking to when you showed up at the Ocean Bluff Inn. And he was…well, being domineering. It ticked me off. So I removed my ring.” It doesn’t mean I broke off the engagement, she wanted to say. But the words wouldn’t come.
“You must feel ten pounds lighter,” Nick joked.
Despite the fury inside her when she thought about Peter’s imperious attitude, his judgmentalism and his downright bossiness, she laughed. “It’s a silly ring, isn’t it.”
Changes (The Magic Jukebox Book 1) Page 5