by JoAnn Ross
Some of the guys on his Sea Lions football team had envied his receiving skills, which, honestly, were more due to Burke Mannion’s mad, crazy QB talent that could make any receiver look good. It was hard not to break the school’s all-time receiving record when the passer put the ball on your numbers. But every single one of them, even Burke, who’d been a year ahead of him and would go on to be a superstar NFL quarterback, had been envious that Seth had been the one Zoe slow-danced with at the after-game dances in the gym.
“Whenever I walk by her room, I expect to hear her chatting away on the phone to you or Brianna, or Kylee,” her mother said. “And many nights, on the way to bed, I imagine a light shining from beneath the door because she’s staying up too late reading... She was so special,” Helen said, sniffling. “Wasn’t she?”
“She was one of a kind.”
“Broke the mold when they made my baby girl,” Dave said, sounding suspiciously choked up himself.
“Anyway.” Helen blew out another breath and wiped her eyes and nose with a tissue she’d pulled from her apron pocket. “The counselor at the parents’ grief group I go to helped me see that I’d gotten myself stuck in time. Like those dinosaurs in amber from Jurassic Park.”
“Which is a fictional story,” Dave pointed out.
“The story might be,” she allowed with a flare of renewed spirit. “But that doesn’t mean the problem isn’t real.” She reached over to touch Seth’s hand again. Greeks, he’d discovered, were touchers. Harper men were not.
“I know it sounds selfish, Seth, dear, but I have to move on. I’ll never forget my daughter—how could I?—but I can’t stay in this place where everywhere I go and everything I do reminds me of how we lost her.”
“I get it.” Seth turned his hand and linked his fingers with hers. “I really do.” Not only did he admire her ability to reclaim her life, he was tempted to ask her secret. “I think it’s the absolutely right thing for you to do.”
She managed a smile even as her dark eyes, so like her daughter’s, glistened again. “Thank you for understanding. And, of course, you’re always welcome to visit. You’d like the desert. Especially all that bright sun in the winter when you want to escape gray skies.”
“Sounds like a plan.” They both knew that wouldn’t happen. That he was another of those painful memories she needed to move on from. Because with her daughter’s widower still in her life, it would continue to be difficult to look back on their wedding and marriage without her heart breaking.
“Your mother volunteered to take over the gardening at the cemetery.”
Growing up, having never had an up-close-and-personal encounter with death, Seth had never found the Harborview Cemetery a depressing place. It was pretty, with its tall trees and rolling lawns overlooking the water. Not that the residents could enjoy the view, but visitors could. He knew that, along with planting dahlias at Zoe’s grave, Zoe’s mother would also add seasonal bedding plants and go out every Sunday after church and “tidy things up.” He knew because she told him, not because he ever went out there. He hadn’t been to the cemetery since that day they’d handed him a folded flag that was a damn poor substitute for his wife.
“Mom’s always liked gardening,” he said mildly. “And she loved Zoe.” Who, Caroline Harper would always say, was like a second daughter.
“Everyone loved Zoe,” Helen said with another sniffle, this time dabbing her moist eyes with the corner of her napkin since she’d already shredded the tissue. Oh, yeah, this was turning out to be a fun evening.
“Okay. So, I told you he’d be okay with it,” Dave told his wife. “Can we eat now?”
“Just one more thing.”
Seth’s father-in-law didn’t quite roll his eyes, but he came close.
“We’re hoping to put the house up for sale next month, because our Realtor says spring’s a good time to sell. Since we’ll be moving into a condo, we’ll have less room. So, if you wouldn’t mind coming by when you have a little time to choose what you’d like to keep...”
“Sure.” The idea of dragging home even more than the stuff he’d spent the past two years of Thursdays looking through was less appealing than drilling an electric Phillips screwdriver through his eyeball. “Why don’t you choose first?” he suggested. “Then give me a call when you’re ready for me to collect the rest of her things.”
“Great idea,” Dave said, digging into his meal. “Now let’s eat.”
* * *
BEN HARPER SAT in what these days guys were calling a man cave, sipping Crown straight and watching the Mariners spank the Rockies at Seattle. It was potting soil night at the stadium. “Only in the Pacific Northwest,” he muttered. Which might not be true, but it seemed everyone he knew went crazy this time of year, planting all sorts of stuff. While flowers were pretty much useless to his mind, at least the vegetables made sense, except those radical organic farm-to-table folks got on his last nerve.
He glanced out the window at the garden, which was, after a long winter, a mess. By now Caroline would’ve had him turn the soil for new plantings to go along with the azalea bushes and rhododendrons, which, luckily, seemed to care for themselves. At least they were beginning to bloom, no thanks to him.
Although it grated, he had to admit that he hadn’t noticed all she did around here. Not only had she taken over all the company’s bookkeeping, she’d drawn those illustrations that she’d framed to hang in the public areas of the office. When she built a website, she put them up there, too, and kept the social media pages going, which was a good thing since there was no way in hell he’d ever go chat with strangers on Facebook. But it had brought in business from all over the country, so, hey, he couldn’t complain.
Except she wasn’t here now to do that. He didn’t know how to log on, but by clicking on the little square box on the website, he’d gone to the page this afternoon and noticed that there’d been no new postings for a month. But since they were doing okay, he didn’t see any reason for writing anything, even if he could think of anything to say. And God knows, there was no way he wanted his down-in-the-dumps son posting. Hell, if that sandwich-stealing mutt, Bandit, could type, he’d probably be better than either one of them.
The truth, which he’d never admit to anyone, especially his boy, was that he missed his wife. And not just her cooking, and cleaning, and bookkeeping, and the flowers that had once filled the home he’d built for them when they’d married. But because she’d always been the bright and shining sun around which his entire life had revolved.
Since that very first day. She’d always called their meeting kismet.
Caroline talked that way, using words he’d have to look up. He’d called it luck. Because it was, flat-out, the damn luckiest day of his life, the second being when she’d agreed to marry him, followed by her telling him that he was going to be a father. Which had scared the piss out of him, but he’d never felt more pride than when he’d stopped at the diner the next morning and told the guys chowing down on their early Lumberjack Specials before work, and casually, as if it were just any other day, of his impending fatherhood to everyone in the place. Dinah, who’d run the diner forever, had insisted the special occasion called for a breakfast on the house. She’d also planted a big kiss on his cheek, which had caused more hooting than he would’ve cared for.
It had been summer when Caroline Lockwood had driven into Honeymoon Harbor with three girlfriends on a cross-country trip to explore various regional arts. He hadn’t seen her arrival because he’d been working on building a set for a play put on by the Theater in the Firs group for the annual Harbor Days festival. The work didn’t pay much, but while he might admittedly not be the most sociable guy on the planet, Ben realized that if he wanted locals to hire him, he needed to be part of the community. The work, compared to remodeling hundred-year-old houses, was easy, and he had to admit that the theater group, most of whom could have
come from a different planet than the one he’d grown up on, were friendly. Although they often had to take up collections to pay for paint and other supplies, they never once missed paying him for the work.
So he hadn’t seen Caroline and her girlfriends drive off the ferry in that pink Cadillac. Nor had he been there when she’d checked into the Lighthouse View Hotel. But he had been working the lighting the night the three woman had shown up to see a production of the story of the town’s name change. Being a distant descendant of Nathaniel Harper, the one man who’d voted against the change, Ben wasn’t enjoying the annual retelling of the story all that much. Especially since the director had talked John Mannion, who’d just returned home from two years in the Peace Corps—which was having everyone treat him like a damn hero, although all he’d been doing was building gardens and planting trees, not fighting the enemy like Ben had done as a Marine—into playing the Teddy Roosevelt role.
Sitting at the back of the action, Ben was able to watch Mannion and Sarah Harper huddled together in a cozy way that suggested they hadn’t been talking about the weather. They’d been a couple for a while in high school. Then her parents had managed to break them up by sending her off to one of those fancy women’s colleges back east. Not that they could afford it on Jerome Harper’s fisherman’s salary, but being supersmart, she’d managed to get scholarships and a work study program that took care of the costs.
John’s return had definitely put a monkey wrench in her parents’ plans.
He’d been thinking that Mannion was probably going to get lucky that night when the sight of a pretty blonde in a pair of sprayed-on purple jeans, a blinding pink top and a multicolored flower jacket hit him like a sledgehammer. She was flirting with Mike Mannion, John’s artist brother who’d painted some of the scenery. Like the Mannions didn’t already have enough going for them? Not only was the family practically damn Honeymoon Harbor royalty, they had to get all the good-looking women, too?
He’d just decided the blonde and the artist would probably hook up for the night, when suddenly he got lucky. Although Caroline would later laughingly insist it was fate, a sudden downpour sent everyone running to wait the rain out in the building the theater company used to store equipment.
The outdoor bleacher seats had all been filled, and the building wasn’t that big, so Ben found himself squeezed into the back with the blonde in those purple jeans whose voice had him imagining moonlight, magnolias and mint juleps. Which, he’d thought, probably meant he’d been spending too much time around the theater people, because guys like him never dreamed of women in picture hats sitting on wicker chairs on Southern verandas.
But on this rainy night, Ben sure as hell did think of that. And a lot more.
She’d been impressed when he’d told her he’d built the sets. And although he feared it might give Mannion more points, he told her that he hadn’t painted those forest scenes. He’d just done the construction.
“Without you, they wouldn’t have had anything to paint,” she’d said. “So you’re indispensable.”
No one, in his entire life, had ever used that word to describe him. Ben had never been much of a talker, but bedazzled as he was, he could only mumble something incomprehensible.
“And you do the lighting, as well?” she asked, making him think she might have noticed him behind the bank of lights.
“It’s not that hard.” He tried to shrug the compliment off, but his chest swelled with pride. Although he’d only graduated high school, he’d studied damn hard to get those working right. “Until recently, you’d need different lights for different colors. Now they’re automated.”
“Yet you still need to know how to utilize color and varying levels of brightness to set the proper ambience,” she said. “Where did you study?”
“I guess you could say I’m self-taught.” Another shrug as he tried to untie his tongue. He could tell she was easy with conversation. Ben was not. “I restore old houses, so I’ve had to learn about electricity. When the theater company asked me a few years ago if I could do the lighting, I read up on it and realized I enjoy it.” The same as he’d always enjoyed creating the proper lighting in the town’s old Victorians.
And weren’t those the most words he’d strung together in a dog’s age?
“It shows. I can tell when someone loves their work. Your lighting deepens the emotional experience.”
Ben had no answer to that, but it didn’t matter, because she continued on, as if not expecting a response. “I’m a student at the South Carolina School of Art and Design,” she said.
“Are you a theater major?” She was damn well pretty enough to be a movie star.
Her laugh was rich and warm, and made the back of his neck sweat. “Heavens, no. I’m already the black sheep in the family,” she confessed, dimpling pretty in a way that reminded him of Vivien Leigh charming the Tarleton Twins. He wasn’t much for that kind of movie—he was more a John Wayne guy himself—but his mother had made the family watch it once when it showed up as the Saturday night TV movie.
“Daddy’s one of those ‘respectable’—” she made air quotes with fingers tipped the same bright pink as her blouse “—Southern lawyers. Mama comes from a long line of famous belles and if I ever considered acting, she’d undoubtedly swoon from the vapors. Bad enough I decided that I wanted a career, but I managed to win them over by choosing to major in interior design. I’m certain they both believe that once I get married and start having babies, I can dabble in designing pretty living rooms and nurseries for my friends.”
“But you have other plans.” He could hear the steel beneath her soft Carolina drawl.
She bobbed her blond head. Squared slender shoulders in that pretty flowered jacket. “I most certainly do. Oh, I’ll probably get married someday,” she allowed. “Because I do want to be a mother. But it would have to be to a man who considered me an equal. And not some decorative arm candy. I’ll probably go to Atlanta. Or maybe even New York City. Then, once I get established, I’ll start looking for a man who ticks all my boxes.”
Despite his lack of social graces and not being a high and mighty Mannion, Ben had never had trouble getting women. He knew he was good-looking, but except for when he was shaving, wasn’t one to spend any time looking in a mirror, because in his business you could probably look like Sasquatch and still get work if you knew what you were doing. Which he did.
But he’d never, ever, met a female who had him feeling so undermatched. Which was why, once the rain had stopped and everyone began leaving the barn, he was amazed when she’d put her hand on his arm.
“Are you doing anything later?” she asked, looking up at him with eyes as clear and blue as Lake Crescent, the jewel of the Olympics, where, years in the future, their son would get married.
“Later?” The warmth of her touch on his bare skin had tied his tongue up in knots again.
“After the play.” Her stroking fingers were as light as thistledown, but still made his head start spinning like he was out of control on the Tilt-a-Whirl at the county fair. “I thought maybe you’d be hungry after working all day.”
“Are you asking me out to dinner?”
“Well, since I had the feeling you weren’t going to ask me, the answer to that question would be yes.” Her smile brightened her big blue eyes. Ben could tell that she was teasing him. And the thing was, he didn’t give a rat’s ass. Just as long as she kept talking. “I realize that convention requires me to wait on you to make the first move. But I told you I’m the family’s black sheep.”
She swept a long, considering look over him. From his boots to the top of his head, then back again. As if he were a sofa she was considering buying for one of her girlfriends’ living rooms.
“I like the cut of you, Ben Harper. And unless all my feminine instincts have gone on the blink, I believe that you’re interested in me, too.”
He gul
ped. Then managed to admit, “I am.”
“Well, then. Why don’t you pick me up at the Lighthouse View Hotel? About eight? Surely there’s someplace on this peninsula where we can find a late supper.”
“What about your friends?”
She laughed again. Damn, he could get hooked on that soft, musical sound. “They can find their own men.”
She hadn’t gone to bed with him that night. Although she might be a black sheep, she’d told him that she never slept with a gentleman their first night together. But she had let him kiss her at the door of the inn. A long, deep kiss that had tasted like honey and left him going home with aching balls.
It had been a small price to pay when the next night, on a blanket on the bank of Mirror Lake, beneath a slice of crescent moon, she’d given him her virginity. Which had come as one helluva surprise because he would’ve figured that a fancy, worldly woman like Caroline Lockwood would’ve had her share of admirers.
Which she had, she’d assured him when he’d cautiously brought that up afterward as they lay on a blanket on the deck, bare arms and legs entwined, while shooting stars streaked across the midnight sky. But she’d been waiting for the right man. She’d kissed him again. Turned into him, breast to chest. “My forever man,” she’d said, as she’d taken his hand and led it down to those silky blond curls between her legs.
They’d made love three times that night. Even though he’d been no virgin, he’d never done that before. But this sweet-talking Southern belle had Ben doing a lot of things he’d never done before. The most important of which had been to fall in love.
She’d been his forever woman. And, as far as he was concerned, she still was.
She’ll come back, Ben reassured himself as he turned off the TV, poured himself another glass of Crown, tossed it back, feeling the burn go straight to the gut, then headed off to the king-size bed that these days seemed even larger. Colder. And a helluva lot lonelier.