by JoAnn Ross
“You always did have a thing for that house. Did it live up to your memories?”
“It did. Except for a new paint job, it looks as if all the outside needs are some sod, trees and gardens.”
“That’s probably the easy part. From what I hear, the inside is a wreck.”
“The first floor is a work in progress,” Brianna admitted. “But it’s not that bad. The second will be a challenge, but Seth had some wonderful ideas for that. I’m meeting with him tomorrow to go over the plans.”
“Definitely moving fast,” he murmured. “Like mother, like daughter.”
She wasn’t going to argue that. “Mom was a great role model. I love the idea that she’s starting her own business.”
“She’s never let any moss grow beneath her feet, that’s for sure. Having watched fun, loving, married friends turn into frazzled, overworked parents, I’ve no idea how she managed five kids of her own, as well as an entire school of teenagers, while helping run the farm and keep the house going. So, getting back to your formerly crumbling old house...”
“The third floor is amazing.”
“I remember bats. Including one who tried to nest in your hair.”
“It wasn’t nesting.” She didn’t think. But that didn’t stop the memory from giving her shivers again. “It accidently flew into me while trying to get out of the attic. But Seth assures me that the bats are gone—they now have their own house outside—and it’s an amazing space for a penthouse. I’m going to move in as soon as I round up some basic furniture pieces.”
“You’re going to live there during the remodeling?”
“That’s the plan.”
“You know, I had Harper Construction do the pub and the brewery. And as much as I like living over the place now, I’m not sure I’d recommend you living there while the work’s being done.”
“Are you suggesting I’m not as tough as you?”
“No. I’m merely saying I’m a guy. So being surrounded by guys didn’t bother me.”
“I grew up surrounded by brothers, who happen to be guys,” she reminded him. “I’m sure I’ll manage just fine. Besides, it occurred to me that if I’m on-site, I may be able to save money by doing some sweat labor.” Not that she needed the money. But she liked the idea of taking part in bringing the house back to its former glory.
“When was the last time you took down a wall?”
“Smart-ass. Probably the last time you did,” she shot back, but with a smile in her tone. “That doesn’t mean I can’t paint. Maybe hammer some baseboard. Or work on the yard. We certainly got enough practice with that growing up.” Including trimming the trees every spring so they’d grow in their traditional Christmas pyramid shapes.
“Aiden always accused Mom and Pop of having five kids for the free labor,” he remembered with a smile.
“To which Dad told him to be grateful he hadn’t grown up on a potato farm.” Her mother had grown potatoes in her kitchen garden, and digging the crop up every year would leave Brianna’s fingernails dirt-stained for days. And those bags got heavy fast!
“And now that we’ve settled that, it’s your turn to answer my question about whether or not you had any adjustments. Besides construction noise.”
“Yeah, sure.” His broad shoulders stretched the seams of his Mannion’s Pub & Brewery T-shirt when he shrugged. “There were adjustments. Outside my own legal circles, I could be anonymous in the city. At the gym, going into a Starbucks, even when I asked a woman out, the only history she might have on me is what she could dig up on Google. Here, folks have known me all my life. And not only do they know my history, they probably know that I bought two glazed crullers at Cops and Coffee for breakfast this morning.”
“I gained ten pounds from the aroma alone just walking in the door today. And admittedly, I hadn’t given a lot of thought to the lack of privacy.” Even though that had been precisely why she hadn’t chosen to live on-site at the Midas.
“It’s a fishbowl. A well-meaning one, but a fishbowl just the same.” A grin creased his cheeks. Their brother Burke had inherited the same creases from their father, but he’d also lucked out with a pair of killer dimples. “After an unfortunate too-personal encounter with Mildred Marshall in the market, I learned to buy condoms online.”
She laughed. “Given that she’s at least seventy and been married four times, I suspect she’s familiar with that particular item. But thanks for the heads-up.”
“No problem. On the other hand—”
“Says the star of the high school debating club.”
“As I was saying, while this town is a fishbowl, everyone will jump in to support their own. Like they’ve tried to do with Seth Harper. Who’s pretty much become a hermit since losing Zoe.”
“Understandable. They’d been a couple forever.”
He looked up at the ceiling. Dragged his hand through his hair. “Okay, I’m uncomfortable with this, but family probably outweighs the guy code, so I’m going to warn you that he’s in a dark place and it could be risky for you working with him.”
“Surely you’re not suggesting he’s dangerous?”
“No. Not in any go-whacked-out-crazy-with-a-nail-gun way. But if you’re thinking of trying to fix him—”
“That didn’t even occur to me.”
“Maybe not yet. But it will. Because that’s what you do. You’re like Mom. You fix things. It’s probably the reason you were so good at your job. Same as my debating made me a good lawyer. But it’s a rocky road that could end up bad. For you, and probably for him, too. Because he’s a good guy who’d beat himself up for breaking your heart.”
“How could he break my heart?”
“Because you were sweet on him for years.”
“He never, not once, looked my way.”
“Doesn’t matter. The heart wants what the heart wants.”
“Now you’re quoting Emily Dickinson?”
“No. I think I’m quoting some country song. The thing is, you had a thing for him. Maybe you still do.”
“I don’t.” Seth and Zoe had been the happiest couple Brianna had ever met. Their love, laughter and affection had always been absolutely genuine, and later, she’d often thought that they could have been naturals to play themselves in a Hallmark movie.
“Maybe it could come back, like the chickenpox, once you’re together every day. Which brings me back to my point that he could hurt you. Even though he’d never mean to.”
“Well.” She blew out a breath. “Thanks for the advice, counselor, but I’m an adult who’s had my heart bruised from time to time. I know the pitfalls. And how to avoid them.”
“Can’t say I didn’t try.” He shrugged again. “It’s your life.”
“Exactly.”
“So, putting that in the never-again-to-be-discussed category, the bottom line is that Honeymoon Harbor’s glacial pace can be good for fresh starts. And for rebooting your life.”
“Thank you. I bow to your wisdom.” She could smell the chicken frying. Like the salt air and tang of fir trees, it, too, smelled like home. “We’d better go down before Mom sends Dad to look for us. She says you’re doing some interesting things at the brewery.”
“The Captain Jack Sparrow,” he said. “Yeah, it took a few tries to get the alcohol bitterness from the rum barrel out of the beer, but we found that cutting the aging time, then blending it with the same blend that hadn’t been in barrels, solved the problem. We’ve had a couple big breweries sniffing around to license it.”
“Which you didn’t do.”
“I came home because I wanted out of the rat race,” he pointed out. “No point in jumping back in with a new set of rats.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Brianna said, thinking of one doctor rat in particular. “It’s going to work,” she said. “I’ll make it work.”
He
tousled her hair, the same way he had when she’d been seven and fallen off her bike while going too fast downhill from the lake and scraped her knee on a rock. The cut had taken seven stitches and she still had the faint scar. “I have not a single doubt.”
“Thanks. And although we have a lot of time before it opens, I’d love to talk to you about adding brewery tours to my local attractions list. I noticed you weren’t offering them—”
“Because it’s a working brewery.”
“True. But just give it a thought. We’d work around your schedule. And just think, after the tour, people would drop into the pub for a meal. It’d be a win-win for both of us.”
He laughed. “That’s quite a persuasive argument. Maybe you should’ve been the lawyer.”
“Absolutely not.” One of the things she’d loved about her job was trying to help people avoid conflict. The law seemed to thrive on it. “Besides, it sounds as if we’re both exactly where we belong. Doing what we were meant to do.”
“Just keep that in mind when the tile saw is still screeching in your sleep.”
“Oh, ye of little faith.” Weighing the idea of hammers and tile saws on one hand, and spending the rest of her working years putting up with rude, narcissistic guests like Doctor Dick on the other, the choice was a no-brainer. “You’ll see. I’ll make it work and it’ll be wonderful.”
“If it’s what you really want to do—”
“It is.”
“Then I’ve not a single doubt you’ll pull it off.”
She leaned up and kissed his creased cheek. “Thank you. Don’t tell the others, but you’ve always been my favorite brother.”
“Which is exactly what you tell the others.”
Because it was true, Brianna laughed.
CHAPTER TWELVE
AS USUAL FOR a Mannion family dinner, the long wooden table was laden with enough food for an army battalion. Over her mother’s famous fried chicken, potato and pasta salads, along with dressed tossed greens from the garden, mac and cheese, grill-roasted corn on the cob and obligatory deviled eggs from Caroline Harper’s Southern family recipe, Brianna was filled in on all the local gossip about who’d married whom, who’d had babies, who’d broken up, who’d started businesses and who’d closed them.
Her uncle Mike had shown up, thankfully without Seth’s mother, which could have made the evening a bit strange.
Now, at a break in the conversation, Brianna took a sip of wine for liquid courage and prepared to break the news. Which, she hoped, since it meant she’d be returning home, surely everyone would take positively, so there wasn’t any reason to be so nervous. Maybe because once she shared her plans out loud with everyone, she’d definitely crossed that burning bridge from her old life to new. “I have news.”
“You’ve come back to marry that Harper boy,” her grandfather Harper guessed.
“Jerome!” Harriet snapped at her husband.
“Dad!” her mother said at the same time.
Her father merely exchanged a look with Quinn and shrugged.
“No,” Brianna said. “That never crossed my mind. Why would you think that?”
“Maybe because it was as plain as the nose on your face that you had a thing for him ever since you were knee high to a toadstool.”
“You’ll have to forgive your grandfather,” her grandmother told her. “The filter between his head and his mouth isn’t all it should be these days.”
“I’m fine,” he shot back. “I just believe in speaking my mind.”
When the others exchanged looks, Brianna sensed something was going on. Something they were keeping from her. “What aren’t you telling me?” she asked.
“It’s nothing that serious,” Sarah said, not sounding convinced herself.
“Which is what I keep telling you all,” her grandfather said, folding his arms across his broad chest. He’d spiffed up for her welcome-home dinner in his dress overalls, she noticed. They were the original dark denim, showing little wear and sharp creases. “It was just a glitch,” he said. “Everyone made a big fuss about it. Even had me flown to Harborview in Seattle.”
“You were in the hospital? And no one thought to tell me?”
“It wasn’t any big deal,” he insisted as the others exchanged looks. “I didn’t want to worry everyone. Hell, Quinn’s the only one of you kids who knew, only because he was living here at the time.”
Brianna shot her brother a look even sharper than that her grandmother had speared her grandfather with.
“Hey.” He lifted his hands. “Gramps swore me to secrecy.”
“It wasn’t a little glitch,” Brianna’s grandmother said firmly. “It was a stroke.”
“A stroke?” Her own head felt on the verge of exploding.
“A TIA,” her mother broke in. “Transient ischemic attack.”
“Transient being the key word,” her grandfather pointed out. “As in temporary.”
“I know about TIAs,” Brianna said. “A guest once had one during dinner at the hotel in Hawaii. I also know that it’s impossible to tell whether it’s a TIA or a major stroke because the symptoms are the same.”
She’d personally driven the man’s sixtysomething wife to Honolulu’s Queen’s Medical Center and stayed with her for hours. She’d learned that night that TIAs were often labeled “ministrokes” because although they didn’t leave permanent damage, “warning stroke” was more appropriate given that they could indicate the likelihood of a coming major stroke. Which had her worried about her grandfather, but she knew not to push. Not now, during her homecoming dinner.
“The point I was trying to make, before everyone got on my case about a stupid little head thing, which may or may not have even been a TIA, since I’m not forgetful enough to know that those don’t show lasting damage and I sure as heck don’t remember having one—”
“Which proves our point,” Brianna’s mother pointed out.
“Getting back to what I was saying,” the older man forged on, “I wouldn’t mind another Harper joining this family.”
“It’s not that way, Gramps. Seth is only an old friend.”
“You say that now,” he allowed, gentling his tone, “but you’re a pretty girl, Bri. And smart as a whip. A boy would be a blame fool not to snatch you up. Especially one who’s been moping around as down in the dumps as a rooster in an empty chicken coop.”
“Great simile, Gramps,” Quinn murmured.
“It’s the truth,” Jerome Harper said. “I realize it’s got to be hard, losing his wife, especially the way he did, but life moves on. I sure as hell missed my Bonnie when I lost her.” The story of the tree limb falling on the house where he’d lived as a young man with his new bride was archived in the museum as one of the tragedies of a historic massive winter storm that had swept in from the Pacific, picking up power and ice as it roared over the Olympics.
“But if I’d let myself turn hermit like Seth Harper has, I never would’ve met your grandmother, who gave me a wonderful daughter, your mother, who in turn gave us you. When you get to be my age—” he said, using his accumulated years to bolster his argument, despite having always been more likely to dismiss them, “—you can look back and see that life’s a chain, with every event and every person just another link.” He winked at her. “And you, my beautiful, bright granddaughter, are one of the golden ones.”
She smiled despite her continued concern, not to mention her discomfort with the renewed topic of any relationship with Seth Harper other than her contractor, and hopefully still friend.
“Now that you’re back home again, maybe you and that boy are meant to be each other’s next links.”
Her mother suddenly stood up. “Who’d like pie? I picked the rhubarb fresh this morning.”
Everyone at the table immediately agreed. “Can I help?” Brianna asked, looking for a means of esc
ape.
“Thank you, darling, but I’ve got everything under control. This is your night, after all. John, why don’t you clear?” The warning look Sarah shot her father before leaving the room slid off him like water off the back of a trumpeter swan. “And you, Dad. Please behave yourself.”
“I remember when I was the one telling that girl what to do,” Jerome harrumphed. “The pecking order gets all mixed around when you get old. I’m not real fond of that.”
“Being old’s better than the alternative,” Brianna’s grandmother reminded him.
“Got a point there, honeybun.” Proving that his short-term memory hadn’t been affected, he returned to the topic. “So, you think you and Harper might be forever-after links?”
“I’m not planning to be anyone’s link right now,” Brianna said mildly.
“Life happens when you’re making plans,” he said, causing her to wonder if this man’s genes were where her brother’s debating skills might have come from. He’d always been up for an argument, but this was one of the few very times when Brianna had found herself in the crosshairs. “Just ask your mom and dad.”
According to family lore, her mother’s parents had done everything to keep them apart. But in the end, love had won out.
“I came back home with plans I hope you’ll all be excited about.”
Over the pie, which was the perfect blend of tart and sweet with a golden, flaky crust, Brianna told everyone what she’d told her brother upstairs.
“That’s great,” her uncle Mike said. “If you need some art for the walls, say some scenery, and maybe some industry fishing, lumbering, like in the foyer mural, I’d be happy to pitch in.”
“I’d want to pay.” Thinking of what his work commanded, inside Brianna went pale, but her concierge calm-during-all-storms smile stayed put.
“In the first place, you couldn’t afford me,” he said on a laugh, echoing her thoughts. “In the second place, you’re family. And it’ll be cool to have my work hanging in a historical house we all grew up breaking into.”