A Month at the Shore

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  Corinne sucked in her breath. "He didn't."

  But Laura could easily imagine the scene; she had faced the withering blast of her father's temper too many times to be shocked by it. "I'm surprised you didn't have him thrown in jail," she said evenly.

  "Oh, I admit I considered it," Barclay said, leaning back a little farther and tapping his fingers on his grand mahogany desk.

  He was watching her now, assessing her as carefully as she was him. Their gazes locked. They were in some kind of contest, but Laura had no idea how the game was played or what the prize for winning was. She tried not to notice his square chin, or the faint shadow of his beard, or the way his dark hair threatened to go unruly if he gave it the chance. She tried to see a heartless snob, but all she could see was a rock-solid and very sexy man.

  Over a galloping pulse, she said, "You considered having him arrested—but?"

  "He was a Shore," Barclay said simply.

  Laura started to say something, then saw her sister's warning look and stopped herself.

  Ever so briefly. "Yes, well, I remember your father," she blurted, picturing the aloof banker as he cut various ribbons at various town functions. "He would've called the cops in a heartbeat."

  "You may be right. But I'm not my father."

  "I can see that. Let me just get this straight. You didn't give my father a loan although he was a Shore, but you didn't have him arrested because he was a Shore."

  "That's right. Make sense?"

  "None at all."

  "What can I say?" he said with a sigh. "I try."

  "I'm sorry," she said in stiff apology. "I suppose I still have issues where my father is concerned."

  "Don't we all."

  Was he being snotty or simply candid? Laura couldn't tell. She only knew that she hated borrowing money from this man. It made her feel not only beneath him but beholden to him. She hadn't realized how hard it would be to come to him hat in hand. Until now.

  She tried to make it seem as if she were doing him a favor by throwing some business his way. "I assume that your rates are competitive?" she asked.

  "As low as a point over prime."

  Which was a competitive rate indeed. "Well! You're not predatory," she acknowledged with a grudging smile.

  His look was both amused and suggestive. "Not usually."

  You don't have to be; women must hunt you down, she couldn't help thinking—because she was damn sure that they weren't talking about money anymore. She wondered who he was seeing, and then instantly wondered why she was wondering.

  Aaagh. This is a business meeting, you twit.

  "Well, sir," she said with perky irony, "it's good to know that when we finalize our plans for Shore Gardens, we'll be able to seek the funding locally."

  "But ... isn't that what we're doing?" Corinne asked, bewildered.

  Barclay leaned forward on his leather chair and laid his forearms on the desk. They were solid, muscular. Unnerving. Laura found herself pressing into the soft back cushion of her chair, edging away from his strength.

  "Look," he said, "what it boils down to is this. I assume—I know—that Great River has called in your loan. I know that your property has plenty of equity. What I don't know is the amount that you need."

  A pause. "Seventy-five thousand," Laura said with sullen iciness.

  "Not a problem. You have, what, a week or so to produce it for Great River?"

  Laura clenched her teeth. "Yes." God, how she hated this. Hated him. It was the haves versus the have-nots, all over again. Her life in Chepaquit, all over again.

  "All right. I'll have an appraiser out there this afternoon. See my assistant Nancy about the paperwork. And ... best of luck to you," he said with a nod that somehow seemed perfunctory.

  Had he seen the resentment in her face? Well—good.

  "Oh, thank you," said Corinne, springing up from her chair. She forgot to slouch, forgot to seem timid or cringing or anything else but happy.

  Not Laura. She felt oddly cheated by the entire interview. She had come there expressly to show off her marketing savvy, but he clearly wasn't interested. "But ... what about a business plan?" she said. "I've brought one wi—"

  "Corinne says you're a very smart woman. I trust her judgment," he said, letting his glance slip down before coming back up to meet her gaze. Had he stopped at her breasts? She couldn't tell, and she was embarrassed even to have had the question pop into her head.

  She was embarrassed, too, to be endorsed by her kid sister when it was supposed to have been the other way around.

  "Thank you, in that case," Laura said, completely upended by the swirl of her emotions. "I'm sure you—your bank—will not regret the decision."

  "I rarely regret a decision I make," he said, his smile relaxed. He was enjoying himself now.

  "Really!" she answered. "I myself would have had second thoughts about that tie."

  With a surprised but good-natured laugh, he said, "It was a gift from my niece. She's seven."

  Corinne said quickly, "I love the colors!"

  He rose and shook Laura's hand again. No lingering grip this time; she barely allowed him to make contact with her.

  He accompanied the two sisters to the door. His assistant appeared from another office as if by telepathy to take them under her wing.

  They'd made it through the application interview in under ten minutes. It took longer than that to order a cappuccino from Starbucks.

  Chapter 10

  "Two words," Laura droned. "Curb. Appeal."

  "I get it, already," Snack moaned as she pushed and prodded him from job to job.

  No matter; Laura was relentless. "We could have as much product as Home Depot and Wal-Mart put together," she warned. "If we don't get people to turn into the lot, we don't stand a chance."

  "For crissake, Laura—they're turning, they're turning!"

  Snack was right. There were almost always a couple of cars parked in front of the main store, which was far more attractive now that they'd put up huge window boxes overflowing with Corinne's famous bright red geraniums. Something about bright red flowers against weathered, silvery shingles simply cried out "Cape Cod" to passing vehicles.

  Even the parking lot looked trim and pretty. Snack had filled in and overlaid the potholed area with a truckload of new gravel, and he'd replaced all of the missing stiles of the rustic fence that lined the road. Laura had attacked the fallen roses that lay in a tangle below the fence, trimming away the deadwood and somehow getting the roses to tumble attractively over the stiles again. For her effort, she carried away scratches up and down her arms and legs, but she didn't care. She was on fire with her mission now.

  All three of them were on fire. They worked like demons from sunup to sundown and (with the help of the truck's headlights) sometimes beyond. They dug, hammered, painted, fertilized, arranged, primed, deadheaded, sprayed, and watered, watered, watered. Then they showered, collapsed, and the next dawn they started all over again.

  A month was a very short time.

  ****

  Laura and Corinne were trying to decide what to do about the toolshed. It was hardly worth fixing, a ramshackle affair with holes in the roof, and an even worse eyesore than the main greenhouse with its broken and missing panes.

  "Do we have time before the grand reopening sale to bulldoze the shed?" asked Corinne. She deferred to Laura for virtually every decision now, a practice from which Laura was soon going to have to wean her.

  "I do hate the sight of it," Laura confessed.

  "We all do."

  Laura knew what her sister was thinking: it was to the toolshed that Snack had been taken for a whipping whenever he'd get into trouble, no matter how harmless.

  To the shed for a whipping. How quaint it sounded.

  Except that after the last beating, the worst beating, Snack had run away. He hadn't come back after that except in times of illness or of death, and he hadn't even come back for one of those.

  Standing with Corinne in
front of the shed, Laura could still hear her own hysterical crying as she'd pounded on its door that night, screaming for her father inside to stop. To this day, she had no idea what Snack's offense had been, other than coming home late on that particular night; he never afterward would talk about it.

  The memory was still so vivid. She was there again, in her pajamas again, shivering and screaming in the fog under a pale, watery moon. So futile, so pointless. Her father couldn't possibly have heard her; Snack had been howling too loudly for that.

  She remembered racing back to the house to call the police, only to realize that their only phone had been torn from the wall. Her mother—well, her mother. What could she have done? Shy, timid, and cowed, Alice Shore had been beaten by her own father; she'd considered it a blessing that her husband mostly spared their two daughters and aimed the roughest punishment at their son.

  "We'd have to empty out all of the tools and equipment first," Laura said softly.

  "Yeah. And then where would we put everything?"

  It would be a time-consuming project. Founders Week was about to kick off, and with it, the future of Shore Gardens.

  And they still hadn't done anything about the mountainous compost pile.

  "Let's just pretend the shed isn't there for now," Laura said with a shrug, and together they turned their back on it.

  Corinne went on her way, and Laura went to work arranging an outdoor display of flowering thymes on a carefully spontaneous pile of flat rocks. At the last minute, she decided to add some creeping rosemary to the display; she was hauling a cartload of it from one of the greenhouses when she saw Kendall Barclay coming her way.

  Oh, great. Now what? If he was there to take back his money, he was fresh out of luck. They'd handed it over to Great River Finance.

  He smiled and waved. Anyone would have thought they were friends. She felt as if they were friends, seeing that smile, seeing that wave. He was wearing the usual—khakis and blazer—but his tie this time was sober and banklike. She hated it.

  "I've been wandering around, looking for you," he said as he drew near.

  "Looks like you've found me," she answered, instinctively cautious. Her cheeks felt suddenly warm and her hands, as usual, were covered in dirt. She put on her gardener's gloves, not only to hide her chipped and broken nails but because it was something to do.

  "So. What can I do you for?" she asked lightly as she began emptying the big-wheeled cart of its pots of rosemary. "You're not here about the loan, I hope?"

  "In a way," he said, and immediately her heart plunged. "I wanted to know how it went with Great River," he went on.

  "God, you scared me," she confessed with a far too nervous laugh. "I thought you wanted your money back."

  Now why did she have to tell him that?

  He took a pot of rosemary out of the cart and passed it over to her. In his hand, the plant looked impossibly small, a rip-off at two ninety-nine. "Thanks," she said as she took it from him, "but, really, I've got it under control."

  He didn't take offense at the rebuff, but seemed content to watch her work.

  She didn't want him watching her. Something about his nearness had set her nerve ends humming, and it was impossible to focus on which rosemaries looked best where. She dumped several pots on the stones and began moving them around haphazardly, like a flim-flam artist working a shell game on a street in New York.

  With a glance at him over her shoulder, she said, "I want to thank you again for putting our loan application on the fast track. We were thrilled to be out of the clutches of Great River Finance. Corinne said she felt as if she'd been tied to the railroad tracks, and you came along just in time and saved her."

  Chuckling, he said, "Your sister has a vivid imagination."

  "Not as vivid as mine—believe me," Laura said, straightening up from her work and looking him in the eye.

  It would have been extremely satisfying to say flat out, I know what you're after, buster: our land. As far as I'm concerned, you're Great River all over again, but in a good-looking suit.

  With a boring tie. "I think I liked the hot-air balloon one better," she said, nodding at his chest before she took up several pots from her cart.

  "The hot—? Ah. Hey, that's easy enough." With practiced ease, he undid the knot and stuffed the tie in his pocket. It was probably silk, probably Saks, but what did he care? There were more where that one came from.

  She tried to match his offhand manner. "I wonder what you'd do," she said dryly, "if I said I didn't like the cut of your pants."

  He blinked. Paused. Smiled. And actually said, "Try me."

  Why was she provoking him? It was insane. "Can we talk about something other than your money and your clothes?"

  Apparently chastened, he took it down a peg. "You've made amazing progress here. The nursery looks great. Your display is looking nice," he said genially, pointing to her work in progress. "Even I want to buy some, and I don't know what the hell they are."

  "Thyme. Rosemary."

  "Oh. Herbs. Like parsley, right?" he offered in a display of knowledge.

  "Impressive, but I'm afraid you don't get the job," she said. Still, there was a smile in her voice that she was sure he could hear.

  He startled her by taking out a handkerchief from his hip pocket and lifting the square to her face. The temptation for her was to step back from his outstretched hand, but the greater temptation was to let him do what he was going to do: wipe her cheek.

  "You have a smudge," he said gravely.

  "Only one?"

  "It's a big one; there isn't room for two," he said, rubbing gently.

  Great. A dirty face to go with her dirty hands. She said with a defensive sigh, "You know what? I'm working. Gardening is dirty work—clean work, but dirty, too, if you understand what I mean." She went back to her task, as if she were on the clock.

  He shoved the hanky back in his pocket, then said, "You're used to sitting in front of a computer all day; this must be a real shock to your system."

  "You forget that I was born and raised here."

  He shrugged. "I guess I thought you'd left it all behind."

  "I did—for more than one reason," she said pointedly. Before he could request that she list them all, she added, "But I'm enjoying myself. Really. Everyone's happiest in a garden; it goes without saying."

  "Except that this is a nursery. Ratchet any pleasure up high enough, it can turn into pain."

  "Very profound," she said, not necessarily in sarcasm.

  "Laura."

  She turned. He gave her a look that made her frown and then—for whatever reason—blush. There was just something about the look.

  But he said innocently enough, "Corinne tells me that in addition to all of your other talents, you have a gift for landscaping. Is that in the works—a career change?"

  "Hardly," she said, balking at the suggestion. "I'm not planning to stay here any longer than a month." No need to hide that any longer.

  His eyebrows shot up. "That's not what your sister says."

  Laura sighed and said, "My sister is wrong. She wishes and she hopes, but the reality is that I have a career as a software consultant in Portland, on the other side of the country."

  "But can't consultants consult anywhere? Couldn't one consult ... for example, here?"

  "It helps if there are customers available. With all due respect to Chepaquit, there is no 'here' here."

  "Mm," he said with a reluctant nod. "Still, it's a nice place to live. Clean air, great light, warm water, inspiring views, and all the sand you could ever want for a backyard sandbox."

  Laura smiled politely. "Except for the water temperature, I have all that in Portland, Oregon."

  She had emptied the cart of her load of pots and was simply standing there, mystified by his chattiness. "Well, sir, I envy you your banker's hours, but around here, we don't stop until the sun goes down, and usually not then. So thank you again for moving along so smartly on the—"

  "D
amn it, Laura, look ... I wanted to ask you ... to see you ... to do something with—"

  Exasperated, he tried another tack. "Things got complicated once the loan request became a reality. I felt it was best to wait until after the approval process was over. Now it is. And so—"

  She couldn't suppress an incredulous snort. "You're asking me ... out? Oh, that wouldn't be the best idea. Really. I've already said that I'll be leaving the Cape soon—"

  "Oh, sure, well, naturally. But uh-h ..." he said, clearing his throat. "What I was trying to find out was: would you have time in your schedule to look over my property and give me a few landscaping tips? The front lawn is a dead-grass disaster, and the backyard is basically an all-you-can-eat buffet for deer and rabbits. I need advice, and fast."

  "Oh!"

  "I'd pay you, of course," he added.

  "You'd—oh."

  "I don't know how anything ever grew anywhere on the property; my mother must have stood guard with a broom," he said with a pained chuckle. "But she's moved to a condo in Boston, and since I've taken over the family homestead, I haven't been able to convince her to come back once a week and beat up the deer."

  His eyebrows went up over a hopeful smile, and then drifted back down again in resignation. He sighed. "No, I can see how flat-out you are here. I understand."

  A tour de force of diplomacy, Laura thought. And an expert application of guilt.

  It didn't seem possible that she could be mortified in his presence in so many different ways. Surely by now she should have exhausted the possibilities. Confused and thoroughly humbled by her own presumptuousness—she assumed he was going to ask her out!—she said, "I could steal an hour or two after work, if you like. Say, tomorrow? No charge," she added breezily.

  "Oh, but I would have to insist."

  "No, I would have to insist," she said, scraping together what crumbs of dignity she could. "I'll be there at six-thirty tomorrow night, if that's all right with you."

  "That's perfect. I'll come for you."

  "Not necessary, thanks," she said, lifting her cart by its bale. "I'm sure I can find you."

  God, what a fool she'd been. Ask her out!