by Bria Quinlan
Relief flashed through her. Of course he’d know how to start. This is what he did.
“Right. This way.” She turned to head down to the harbor. “I grew up here. We traveled a little, but my dad left when I was four. I’m the youngest of three, so the town is really most of what I know about the world. That sounds dumb. I’m not an idiot. I went to college in Rhode Island and studied in Paris for a year before coming back. But we didn’t do vacations all over the place. A week in Arcadia. Driving down to my mom’s family in Rhode Island. So most of my favorite places in the world are here.”
“Paris, huh? I loved Paris. I got to spend a week there on my way to Asia the year before senior year. It was more of a rush of night clubs, museums, and hostels than a tour of the great cafés, though.”
“Oh, I don’t want to say you missed out, but you totally missed out. I’m still trying to perfect my croissant.”
“That’s not what I heard.” He grinned and she glanced up at him, wondering exactly what he’d heard that was so great. “On your Yelp page, they—”
He cut himself off, his gaze dashing from hers out to the water below them. A rush of red painted his neck from the collar of his T-shirt up.
Lyra watched him realize what he’d just said and its implications. She knew in her heart of hearts that even if his site were responsible for what had happened to her business, he actually would never have personally created the situation himself.
She would place money on the fact that if he’d known what would happen with this article, he would have done it differently.
It was clear from what he’d said as they discussed details for the exposé earlier that he was not just put out that he was having to do this, but deeply, deeply embarrassed. Perhaps even ashamed.
Of course, she was also sure that he put some of the weight on her as well. And true, maybe she should know better how to live on the Internet.
People needed to get off the Internet.
He was here, looking to help, even if he was trying to split the responsibility in a different way than she would, so she was willing to move forward.
And, no. That wasn’t the flip-flops speaking.
“Why don't we put that aside for the next couple days and handle it like you would any of your travel things."
He grinned, more sheepishly than he had before. She was surprised. It was a look she hadn’t see on him. Defensive, angry, frustrated… The only one she’d seen that was positive was the way he’d looked at her cake.
And, for that moment, before it all went sideways, the way she thought he was looking at her.
“Tell me about your time in Paris.”
She paused, surprised by the detour. But, maybe knowing where else she’d been would help him to see her home more clearly.
“It was just the year. I went to Johnson & Wales, so I came home fairly regularly.” She’d known after one semester that she was there to study and stretch but that Starlight Harbor was her home. “My mother expected me to stay for good when I left for my semester in Paris. My brother’s job keeps him on the road and at events most of the year, and my sister is an import-export specialist.”
She internally rolled her eyes at that. She still bet spook.
“That's still a lot more traveling than some people." He followed her as she turned and led him down the sidewalk alongside the docks.
"Paris is beautiful, but it doesn't have the ocean." She waved a hand in front of them at the view. ”I never understood how people could live without this. Not just how beautiful it is, but everything. It's constant and changeable at the same time. It brings the town its income and threatens it with storms. The harbor has us snuggled in safely, so we forget we're completely exposed. And just beyond that horizon? Is forever."
She glanced up at him and saw his gaze track up toward the horizon. He stared out over it with a new sort of wonder that surprised her. She felt herself warm. The idea of someone standing here on Starlight Point looking out and really seeing the ocean for the first time was humbling.
Gazing out, she wished she could see it anew without losing how her entire being was tied to it.
"Maybe you should be the writer. The exposé is all there in your head already."
Laughing, she swatted at him, knowing the joke for what it must be. She knew where her gifts lay: sugar, flour, and eggs were her keyboard and words.
It was easy to talk about something when you loved it to someone who is willing to listen.
She shouldn't have been surprised when Spence took the camera wrapped sideways across his chest up to his gaze and clicked away furiously.
"It never works the way I want, but I hope that I can get a little bit of your forever in that picture." He turned his attention back on her, still sharp and focused and potent, the cocky look of a man doing what he was good at and loved.
"Where is it you're taking me?" Spence asked as he eased the camera back down to his side.
Lyra smiled and tried not to blush, because the place they were going she’d never taken anyone before.
Part of her hoped he wouldn't put it in his story, even going so far as to consider asking him not to. But she knew to truly show him Starlight Harbor, she had to show him the magic. And to do that, she had to bring him to one of the places that held her heart, kept it safe when she was away, and welcomed her home with open arms.
She reached out and took his hand, letting those feelings flow out of her.
Here she was, asking him to become a believer, and the first step in that was having someone believe in him.
Lyra asked her heart if she could be that person. Could she believe in him?
She was afraid the answer was more of a yes than she was willing to consider yet.
12
Spence nearly jumped out of his skin when he felt her small hand wrap around his larger one, surprised to feel how strong they were with the little calluses on the tips from where she worked her baker stuff all day.
And then, something absolutely crazy happened. A feeling of safety and well-being like he hadn’t experienced since he was young swept over him.
He had been expecting to find nothing in Starlight Harbor except frustration and anxiety. And yet here he was, getting sidetracked by exactly the person he couldn't let distract him.
But, with an instinct he was sure he could rely on, he knew Lyra wasn't using her adorable sexiness to get him to do things the way she wanted.
He gave himself permission to shake off his doubt, allow himself to accept that today—even if it was just for today—he could trust that this feeling of happiness he felt with her was something of a gift for him to enjoy.
A connection that few people got to experience with such fresh newness.
His parents had been like that. Even his dad laughingly admitted that he spent two minutes in his mother’s presence and just “gave up the fight.”
He’d always thought they were joking, but here he was, literally giving up a fight for her. Sure, he could still get his site sold and himself out of debt if he could just make the stars align with this exposé.
He’d been so focused on the future, all of it shrouded in negativity, that this time with her was like an emotional vacation. He promised himself that no matter what, he would do justice to the little town she loved so much.
“Tell me about this magic place you’re going to show me.” He slid his hand round to settle it more firmly in hers.
Maybe she hadn’t meant to take his hand. Maybe it was just to get his attention. But he realized, once it was there, he had no plans of letting it go.
Today. He reminded himself. He had no intention of letting it go today.
“To the lighthouse.”
She pointed out to the edge of the harbor to a lighthouse, its red stripes setting off against the sky in a quintessential New England pattern.
“Can we get to it from here?” he asked.
“Only if you’re up for it.” She gave him a saucy grin. “It’s a hike,
and the only other way out is through Mr. Ross’s yard. Which is an absolute no-go. Even now that we’re not kids.”
“Does he live in it?”
She shook her head and turned them down the road that ran parallel with the shore, waving to the men working on the docks as they brought in their afternoon catches.
“No. Not in years. There’s a house on the property. The road goes to the house, and there’s a path he can take an ATV or sled out to it in any weather.”
“It does take a bit away from the romance of it all.”
“Have you ever been inside a lighthouse? There’s not a lot of romance to most of them. Especially here in Maine where so many of them are on a crag instead of on the mainland. At least here the keeper had rooms inside before the town built the house.”
“So, no romanticizing the lighthouse.”
She gave him a shy smile. “We’ll see.”
The docks fell away, and a few smaller cottages with big decks faced the water.
“I bet those are great at sunrise.” He pointed at the two cottages.
“The mini-inns?” She glanced back at them as the paved road turned to dirt. “They’re town rentals.”
“The town owns rentals?”
“Yup. For overflow for large families who fill the inn to capacity or small families who want privacy.” She gave him a sad smile. “Often people coming home don’t want to be in an open setting, and if we can’t promise the innkeeper is the only other person there, they’d rather have the smaller spaces and make their own meals.”
Spence mm-hmm’d, because what were you going to say to that?
“We also have families who return off schedule to relax somewhere familiar. And, we’ve had our share of memorial services since this might be the last time a service person got to spend time with their family before they lost them.”
At the catch in her voice, he gave her hand a small squeeze.
He was such an idiot, simplifying something far more important and beautiful than he knew.
He cut himself some slack because there was no way he could have known, but still. It was his job to verify things before he shot off his mouth.
Or in this case, his website.
The dirt road turned to a sandy path then to dunes. Lyra leaned over and pulled her little girly dress sneakers off and waited while he followed suit. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d walked anywhere barefoot outside his own apartment. There was something amazing about feeling the sun-heated sand shifting under his feet, sliding between his toes.
He realized she was watching him make mouse-size sand dunes with his feet when Lyra laughed at him. Spence was surprised to feel another rush of heat on his neck. He wouldn’t have thought he was young enough to blush anymore, but here he was, feeling the pink on his cheeks as sure as if he were seventeen.
It was this girl, this crazy amazing girl.
Before he could do anything, say anything even, she turned back and was running up the dune, sand flying in her wake. He took a moment of enjoyment to watch her long, bare legs fly, her skirt flip back and forth over them, as she reached the top and laughed back down at him.
She was already turning to drop over the other side as he rushed after her, the sand shifting beneath his feet in more ways than one.
At the top, he saw the long stretch of rocks with a sharp drop to the water and an open plain of sea grass out to the point where the lighthouse stood, a beacon for a blue-on-blue horizon.
Up ahead, Lyra stood, the wind whipping her hair and skirt behind her as she looked back, her hand blocking the sun from her gaze and wavering him on.
Instead of rushing to catch up, he raised his camera and shot. Just one picture before she laughed and turned to keep going.
He didn’t need to look to know it was perfect.
He was a little afraid that she was right. From up here, you could see forever.
13
Lyra turned and walked them along the edge of the cliff where the sand met the rock, pointing out to Spence the places he should be careful of loose gravel or sand making it easy to slip.
“You used to come out here alone when you were young?” he asked, a bit in awe. “You were a little daredevil.”
Something about the ridiculous version of her pasted a happy grin on her face. She’d always been the good child, the easy child. The sweet little girl.
Her brother grew up to be a rock star and her sister grew up to be in the CIA.
Or that import-export business Lyra was sure she used as a cover.
The daredevil tag would never be put on her compared to the other two. It was nice to look a little dangerous in someone’s eyes.
“It was a secret. So no one knew I was a daredevil.”
They came around the backside of the lighthouse, and she turned him toward the ocean.
“That view, right? You should see it when a storm is coming in. A Nor'easter. It’s like a wall of destruction coming at you, and you’re out here and for a moment you forget that there’s a whole world behind you. Instead it’s just you and the lighthouse and the storm.”
She leaned against the sun-heated outer wall and glanced up to where Spence copied her actions.
“Did you do that a lot?” he asked. “Sneak out to watch a storm come in?”
“Not as much as I would have liked. My brother and sister used to accuse me of wandering off too often, so they’d be aware of my absence.”
“What about your parents?”
“When my dad left, it was just us and my mom. And my mom is kind of…she’s a free spirit.”
“How can you be a free spirit with three little kids?”
“Well, that’s the thing about free spirits. They don’t typically realize they have responsibilities. They think those things are optional. We’re lucky she was responsible enough and we lived in probably the safest town in the world.”
“Except for those Nor'easters,” he answered with a grin.
“Except for.”
He patted the wide base and leaned his head back, looking up, up to the widow’s walk circling the lantern room.
“Did you ever go in?"
Lyra smiled, not because she had gone in—which she definitely had—but because no one else would have asked that. The lighthouse was strictly off-limits, and for some reason it was one of the rules all kids followed. All but her apparently.
Looking back, it was surprising she hadn't run into anyone here looking for a space for privacy as teenagers. Late at night, after the games…
Not that anyone would have ever thought to bring Lyra Grigor out for that kind of privacy. Nope. She was everyone’s little sister.
"Yup.” She peeked up at him from under her lashes. ”Mr. Ross moved out about fifteen years ago."
She closed her eyes, pushing at the idea that after fifteen years she finally brought someone here. Not for romance. Absolutely not. Because she needed him to understand Starlight Harbor like she did, to completely fall in love with it. But she wasn't sure she was being honest with herself.
"This lighthouse has quite the history." She glanced up to make sure she had his attention. "You've heard about Starlight Harbor’s most current tradition. But there’s an older tradition that goes back centuries, not just generations."
"All right, Cupcake. I’m not gonna lie. It sounds very intriguing. But can you live up to the hype?" Spence grinned down at her, obviously teasing.
"I'm pretty sure I can. And this lighthouse plays a huge part in that history." She slid down the wall until her butt hit the ground and tucked her skirt around her knees, waiting for Spence to join her on the foundation. "Starlight Harbor was founded centuries ago by several families from a few clans in Scotland who were struggling against extinction during the British clearances. Together, they came and founded Starlight Harbor, which back then had a nearly unpronounceable Scottish name."
"My Gaelic isn't too bad. Want to give it a try?” Spence asked.
"Really?"
&nb
sp; "Nope, not even close. Totally joking. I don't think I even know yes or no."
"It's not just aye and nae? Have I learned nothing from Outlander?"
Spence laughed at her and made a motion to continue.
"One of the things that these couple of close clans were known for was their ability to thrive on a rocky coast, to catch a boat full of fish even in the roughest seas, and to be able to ride those seas at night around the taxman running everything from wool to whiskey to French brandy to wine."
"Let me guess. A fresh start on a completely new continent was no reason to stop with the tradition that went back too far to count?"
"However did you know?" Lyra was enjoying her opportunity to play tour guide more than she expected. She still wasn't willing to admit how much that was because of her audience.
"Lucky guess." Spence laughed, knowing that neither one of them believed that. "How does the lighthouse play into it?"
"A lighthouse’s job is obvious: act as a warning system for boats about rocky or dangerous coastlines. A very pragmatic building, this lighthouse." She reached up and patted the side of the building with affection.
She couldn't help but notice that his grin seemed interested, maybe in more than her story? Not as if he was humoring her like so many of the people in her life did when she spouted her more romantic ideas.
Of course, her sister said she got that from their mother.
"I take it this lighthouse is more than just pragmatic."
"My forefathers probably thought it was when they sent off wool and received whiskey,” she pointed out. “It's easy in Starlight Harbor to romanticize smugglers. They weren't pirates and felt no one was getting hurt but the taxman, who they swear was out to harm them anyway. They were nearly destroyed by a country that claimed taxes were one of the few things they wanted but instead tried to bring them near extinction. You can see why they might think smuggling was a continuation of the good fight."
With a sweep of the hand, she brought his attention back to the sky, the water, the shape of the coast. Spence had been staring out at the ocean, and she could only guess what he was thinking.