Herons Landing

by JoAnn Ross

  “Yes. I have. In my case, it’s a house.”

  “Oh, wow!” The cat-lined eyes widened. “You’re the one who’s going to restore Herons Landing.”

  Brianna laughed, not as surprised as she might have been. “Word gets around.”

  “It’s all everyone was talking about the other day in Cops and Coffee.” She glanced at Brianna’s cup. “I see you’ve already discovered it. I love those guys, even if, in another life, they might have wanted to take me to the gallows for witchcraft. You taking on a project like that also reveals that whatever you say about being a rule follower, you’ve got an adventurous streak because, like everyone’s saying, you’d have to be crazy to even try a project like that. Which, thinking about it, gives you and Seth Harper a lot in common. It was obvious he loved the house when he bought it to keep it from greedy developers.”

  Brianna was saved from responding to any of that flurry of topics when the door opened and an apple-shaped elderly woman wearing an orange-and-yellow hibiscus-printed top with a pair of tangerine cropped pants greeted her with an even wider smile than Velvet’s.

  “You’d be Brianna Mannion,” she said. “Ethel told me to expect you.”

  Of course she did.

  “I’ve been living in Las Vegas,” Brianna said, though she suspected the shop owner already knew that. “And before that, Hawaii. I haven’t owned anything appropriate for the Pacific Northwest for a very long time.”

  “Well, you’ve come to the right place. I see you’ve already met Velvet. She’s been a godsend to Doris and me. Doris is my twin sister. After nearly nine decades, she still has a tendency to play the older sister card, despite having only beat me here by four minutes. At any rate, although we didn’t want to give up working when we lost our lease on the Oregon coast, we also worried whether or not, at our age, we’d be able to handle all the orders and paperwork and such that running a business entails. But then Velvet showed up. She’d just graduated with a degree in marketing from WSU and was looking for work. So, here we are. Still kicking.”

  She waved her into the store that, from what Brianna could tell, was divided in half, one side offering neutral colors, the other as bright as the talkative woman herself. One look at Doris, and Brianna understood the division of the store. Although they might be twins, while Dottie looked ready to take off on a Caribbean cruise, Doris could have fit easily into San Francisco, or New York. She was wearing a black twinset over tan slacks, and in contrast to the dangling shell earrings her sister was wearing, a pair of discreet but very good pearls adorned her earlobes.

  “Sister, look who it is!” Dottie said. “Sarah’s girl, home from the desert!”

  “Ethel told us you might be dropping in. It’s lovely to meet you.” Doris’s voice was as reserved as her clothing, but still warm, as she held out her hand. “Your mother has wonderful taste. She was the one who helped us arrange the store, which works much more efficiently than the jumble we had in our previous two locations.”

  “It was Sarah’s idea to create zones,” Dottie explained. “But the best thing is how she suggested we hang separates together, to encourage customers to mix and match between the brights and neutrals.” She waved her hand, tipped with turquoise nails, at the wall displays that did, indeed, offer enough possibilities to have shoppers considering items they might have overlooked or weren’t sure about pairing together.

  “I like that idea. I’ve gotten used to colors, but thought I’d have to switch entirely back to Pacific Northwest colors. Then Mom showed me the variety of natural shades I’d always taken for granted.”

  “Dottie worried about giving up colors, too,” Doris said. “Because most people think browns and dark greens because of the forests. And gray from the rain and fog. But we’ve always had a mix that reflects our disparate tastes. Your mother showed us how to display them.”

  “And Velvet pointed out that we were missing the wedding market,” Dottie popped in. “After all, this is Honeymoon Harbor, so taking advantage of that natural customer base only makes sense. She built us a website and had us reprise our old slogan we had back in our first store in Coldwater Cove.”

  “You bring the groom; we’ll provide the dress,” Velvet said. “They were afraid it’d sound old-fashioned, like snagging a guy was still a woman’s main goal, but I convinced them it was old enough to be retro.”

  “So, if you’re ever in the market for a wedding dress, you won’t have to go to Seattle or Tacoma,” Dottie said. “And if we don’t have what you want, Velvet can get it for you from anywhere in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

  “That’s handy to know.” Brianna had no idea how fast a lamb shook its tail, but since she didn’t foresee herself buying a wedding dress anytime soon, it didn’t matter.

  “This is the one Kylee chose.” Velvet had gone over to an alcove that showcased the gowns and brought back a black strapless midi dress with oversize, embroidered and beaded red, yellow and purple flowers.

  “It’s stunning.” And perfect. Trust Kylee not to go with traditional white.

  “Isn’t it? We ordered it from Italy. She’d met a designer on a train while traveling there and apparently swore if she got married, she was getting her gown from her.”

  “Mai’s wearing a western-style white strapless sheath gown, with a red kimono sash embroidered with gold butterflies that falls down her back, instead of a train.” Dottie reached beneath a shelf and brought out a sketched design. “In Japan, apparently it’s traditional for brides to wear white for the ceremony, then change into red for the reception. So, wanting to be modern, but also wanting to pay homage to all the women in her family who were married in the traditional style, she decided to embrace both looks in one dress. We’re having this custom-made by a seamstress we work with.”

  “It’s beautiful.” Which was a wild understatement. “My mother told me they were carrying red and yellow tulips from Blue House Farm,” Brianna remembered. “These will be perfect.”

  “Won’t they? It’s going to be a lovely wedding,” Velvet said. “Thorn is playing.”

  “They booked a rock band?” Somehow Kylee had forgotten to mention that part when talking about her upcoming wedding.

  “Oh, no.” Velvet laughed. “He graduated from the famous Berklee school of music in Boston. He can play anything. In fact, he did a chamber music gig last weekend in Tacoma. He and Kylee have been working on the playlists for weeks. It’s going to be a nice mix of a bit of everything.”

  “I’ll be needing a dress.”

  “Of course. Kylee will want you to go with whatever you like,” Dottie said.

  “But we can show you what the other two girls chose,” Doris suggested. “I think the style would suit you well.”

  She turned the pages to a dress with short capped sleeves, a tightly fitted bodice and a shirred skirt that flared out just above the knees.

  “Chelsea chose purple because it works so well with her hair. Amanda went with yellow, which is a hard color to pull off, but with her coloring it works. I think red would be very flattering with your hair.”

  “Red always stands out,” Brianna demurred. “I’d feel conspicuous, and although no one can outshine Kylee, it doesn’t feel right on her special day.”

  “How about this?” Dottie jumped in, pulling out a swatch of material. “This deep blue will be amazing with your hair and eyes. I swear, when all you girls get together, it’s going to look like a garden sprung up in their backyard.”

  “Which already has a pretty special garden.” Brianna ran her hand over the piece of silk and decided that Dottie and Dorothy arriving in town must’ve seemed like a godsend to all the women in Honeymoon Harbor.

  “Oh, so you’ve seen the house?” Doris asked.

  “Yesterday. I love everything about it, including the landscaping. I’ve organized a lot of hotel weddings, but from what I’ve heard, this is g
oing to top them all.”

  “Oh, it’s going to be beautiful. Seth did such an amazing job on the house. It reminds me of something from a fairy tale,” Doris said, revealing an inner romantic Brianna wouldn’t have guessed was hiding inside her.

  “Seth did an amazing job,” Dottie echoed. “He’s going to be a member of the wedding party.”

  “Oh?” Brianna did her best to hide her surprise, even as she wondered why he’d left out that salient fact.

  “Well, it’s only right, given how close they’ve all become. And it’ll be good to see him have something to celebrate,” Doris said. “It’s been painful watching him grieve.”

  “I still miss my Harold.” Dottie put a hand over her heart. “He passed last year when a brain aneurysm we didn’t even realize he had burst. I wasn’t there, but his pickleball partner told the EMTs that he was running to return a serve, then just collapsed. And that was it.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “So was I. Especially since I felt guilty for not having been there when it happened. Fortunately, I had Doris and Hayden, Harold’s twin brother, to lean on. It was Doris’s idea that we open this shop. She thought I needed a new challenge.” Eyes that had moistened brightened. “And she was right. Then Velvet and Thorn joined our little family, and now it’s going to be like we’re having a grandchild.”

  “Since my parents are still in Spokane, and Thorn’s snooty, uptight parents don’t approve of our lifestyle, you’re going to be the main grandparents,” Velvet assured them, gathering them into a group hug that Brianna could tell invaded Doris’s personal space a bit more than she would have liked, but the elderly woman was kind enough to join in.

  “I love this dress,” she said. “I don’t usually wear jewel tones, but I think this will work.”

  “It’ll be fabulous,” Dottie assured her.

  “And elegant,” Doris said.

  “You’ll rock the garden,” Velvet assured her.

  Getting down to business, the sisters fluttered around the shop like sandpipers skittering along the waterline, gathering up clothing from display racks. Doris, unsurprisingly, chose taupe, black and cream, while Dottie dove into the bright hues and floral prints. While they had her down to her underwear, they also measured her for the dress that would be custom-made by a local seamstress.

  Nearly an hour later, longer than Brianna had ever spent shopping, she was wearing a pair of cropped khaki pants, a T-shirt with a bright blue heron printed on the front and a pair of blue-and-fluorescent-green tweed sneakers.

  “We just got that shirt in yesterday afternoon,” Dottie told her as she cut off the tag.

  “Which is prophetic,” Velvet claimed. “It’s absolutely a sign that you were meant to be living in Herons Landing.”

  Just as she’d never believed in the ghost, despite her Irish heritage, Brianna had never been much for prophecies and other woo-woo ideas. But as she left the shop with bags bearing the store’s dancing deer logo filled with jeans, shirts and several of the Pacific Northwest’s ubiquitous hoodies, all in various weights designed for layering, and a scarlet red slicker, she decided she liked that idea. A lot.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  SETH ARRIVED AT Kylee and Mai’s house before his father. Deciding his old man must’ve gone fishing—he’d been talking about wanting to get out on the rivers and it wasn’t as if he was needed today—he walked through the rooms one last time, making sure everything was in order. Which it was. All it needed now was a final cleaning and polish, which was about to happen when the bright blue Highlander with The Clean Team written on it pulled up outside.

  Megan Larson, who’d been a couple years behind him in school, jumped out, wearing a T-shirt with her business’s logo on the front and a pair of crisply pressed jeans.

  “So, you finished ahead of schedule,” she said as she popped open the back of the Highlander and began pulling out a bucket, mop and various other tools. “Never thought that would happen.”

  “You doubted me?”

  “Not you,” she said. “But I’ve watched Kylee and Mai in action just choosing what movie to go to while standing in line. I figured you’d spend a third of your time in negotiations.”

  “They were great clients.”

  She laughed at that. “I’ll bet you say that about everyone.”

  “Of course I do.” He helped her get the rest of the stuff out of the SUV. A toddler’s car seat was strapped down in the back seat. At the moment it was being used to hold a mesh bag of microrags.

  Megan had dated Gabe for a few weeks, but since his goal had always been New York City, she’d ended up marrying a local guy shortly after high school. Jake Larson seemed to spend a lot of time at the casino while she’d attended Clearwater CC, taking business courses, because it was obvious that her husband, who was always into some crazy get-rich scheme he’d read about on the internet, was not going to be able to support a family on his own. Or at all.

  She’d been three months pregnant when Jake had left town with the female partner in his latest venture, flipping houses after he’d cleaned out their savings account and maxed out their credit cards paying for seminars assuring him that he and his partner/lover would be the next HGTV stars. Leaving Megan with an empty bank account and creditors calling day and night until Quinn, who was still licensed to practice law in Washington, had written a cease-and-desist letter for what had been harassment. He’d also used some legal eagle stuff to extricate her from the expenses Jake had taken on after he’d run off, and he handled her divorce pro bono.

  Megan had moved back in with her parents, and from what he’d seen, she was a lot happier than she’d been when married to the dickwad.

  “I’m lucky that all my clients are good ones,” she said. “The ones who aren’t, I fire because they’re not worth the effort, you know?”

  “I definitely know that.” Looking back on it, there’d been something sketchy about both couples who’d bailed on Herons Landing. But at the time he’d been so eager to get his hands on the house that he hadn’t paid enough attention to those inner alarm bells. He glanced around as he took the mop and a bucket stuffed with cleaning supplies from her. “Are you on your own today?” She ran a tight ship of five employees, was always on time and left a finished project so clean you could probably perform surgery on any of the floors or counters.

  “Betty’s coming right after she gets back from taking her mom to the doctor for her annual exam. But, unlike some contractors on the peninsula, you leave a house so clean, I could’ve polished it up by myself.”

  They both turned as Brianna’s convertible pulled into the driveway. She jumped out, dressed more like the native she was in a T-shirt, khakis and a pair of bright sneakers that suggested she’d paid a visit to the Dancing Deer.

  “I thought we were meeting at your place,” he said, trying not to notice how her breasts bounced beneath that gray shirt as she ran over to them.

  “We are. I was just passing by and saw the truck, and...” She paused, narrowed her eyes. “Megan?”

  “About time you made it home,” Megan said. “I heard you’d come back and hired our local hunk with a tool belt to fix up that old haunted house.”

  “Geez,” Seth complained.

  “If you’re going to have to deal with all the hassles of remodeling, it’s a plus to have a good-looking hottie to watch hammering and other building guy stuff.” She flashed Seth a smile. “And you don’t have to look so embarrassed. You know you’re hotter than Sven Olson, who’s the only other contractor in town.”

  “I hope so. Sven’s thirty years older.” And was bald with a beer gut.

  “Age doesn’t necessarily matter,” Megan said. “I’d do George Clooney in a heartbeat.”

  “He’s married. And a father of twins,” Seth pointed out.

  “True. But since the chances of me ever having an oppor
tunity with the guy are slim to none, if you don’t mind, I’m going to overlook the wife and kids in order to maintain a good fantasy life.”

  If there was one thing Seth didn’t want to talk about, it was any woman’s fantasy life.

  “So, you saw the truck, and...?” he asked Brianna, trying to steer the direction back to the original topic.

  “I thought I’d stop and talk to whoever it belonged to. I don’t mind changing beds and cleaning bathrooms, but I realized that if I want any kind of life that doesn’t revolve totally around business, I’m going to need someone to do a deeper clean, probably once a week.”

  “Well, you’re in luck. Because I’m your girl,” Megan jumped in. “And you don’t have to worry about it being such a big place, because I have five women working for me now, so there will be no problem handling it. You’re going to be a B and B, right?”

  “Right.”

  “In the middle of the day guests will be mostly out and about, which means we won’t be disturbing them. I’ll wait to give you an actual quote until I see how many rooms you and Tool Guy here end up with, but I think you’ll find me reasonable.”

  “The Clean Team is the best on the peninsula,” Seth said. “Probably the state.”

  “Make that the entire Pacific Coast, and you won’t get any disagreement from me,” Megan said with a bold, strong laugh. Then turned thoughtful. “Do you think you could use any help with the daily stuff? Like dusting, making those beds you were talking about, light housekeeping?”

  “I might. Especially in the beginning because although I grew up cooking with Mom, I think I’ve got a pretty big learning curve ahead of me turning out a B and B worthy breakfast for a crowd.”