by Hope Ramsay
The confidence she’d shown last Thursday when she’d run into Harry Bauman and Caleb Tate had evaporated. She was in over her head.
She looked up through the windshield at the house she’d inherited. She’d taken a mortgage out on the place for her start-up money. If she didn’t make a success of her business, she would probably have to sell the house. And she couldn’t bear the thought of that.
Her eyes filled with tears. She was such a screwup.
Her phone rang.
It was Topher. She couldn’t talk to him now, in this state, so she sent the call to voice mail, and then, with fingers shaking, she called the only person who might understand why she’d just freaked out.
“Hey,” she said when Hillary Barnwell’s voice sounded on the phone’s tinny speaker. Hillary had been at Longwood Academy with her. And without Hillary’s courage and friendship, Jessica might never have survived being banished from her family for something she hadn’t done.
“What’s wrong?” Hillary asked, her voice low, sober, intense. After all these years, Hillary could still read Jessica’s tone of voice, even over the phone.
“I freaked out,” Jessica said. “I had a panic attack. I haven’t had one of those in years.”
“What happened?”
In a shaky voice, Jessica summarized everything that had happened from the moment she’d stepped onto Bachelor’s Delight until Topher had grabbed her by the wrist.
“And what did you feel? Did he scare you?” Hillary asked when she got to the last of her story.
Oddly, the question stopped Jessica cold. “Yes. No. Yes.”
She couldn’t quite make herself explain how Topher’s touch had been gentle and strong and like a jolt of electricity that branded her. And at the very same time, it had frightened her.
“Look, no one says you have to do anything that makes you feel unsafe,” Hillary said.
“That’s the thing. I mean, he touched me, but he didn’t hurt me. It was just confusing, you know.” She didn’t give voice to what had really upset her. How in that moment she’d felt a jolt of unwanted attraction.
How could she possibly be attracted to Topher Martin? How could she be attracted to a man who thought it was okay to grab her like that? Down deep, a familiar shame churned in her gut.
She pushed the uncomfortable feeling away and focused on the important thing: She was not stupid enough to be attracted to the myth of the big strong man. But she wasn’t ready to talk about the way Topher made her feel, not even to Hillary.
So she changed the subject. “It’s not just him, you know. It’s…everything.”
“What?”
Reluctantly, she told her friend about Colton’s suggestion that they give the gossips of Magnolia Harbor something to talk about.
Hillary laughed.
“You’re laughing at me? Really?”
“Yeah, but in a good way.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Honey, when are you going to realize that Colton St. Pierre checks off every box on the husband-material list.”
“Stop.” Jessica climbed out of her VW and slammed the door. “I know what you’re about to say, but you’re wrong. I’m not in love with Colton, and I’m not looking for a husband. I know you’ve found wedded bliss, but that’s not for me.”
“Sweetie, do you even know what love is?”
That stopped her. Did she know? Probably not. She’d never really been loved. And she’d never been in love. She’d had a few bed buddies, so she was no longer the little virgin who’d been sent away to a tough-love school for troubled teens. But relationships were complicated.
“Look, this is not about me being in love, okay? It’s about me trying to salvage my friendship with Colton. Just the other day, he took my landlady out to dinner, and I’m thinking I should try to encourage that. You know, find him a wife. Because once he’s married, we could lay the gossip to rest and just be friends.”
“Are you out of your mind? You want to start matchmaking?”
“Well, okay, when you put it that way, it’s kind of over the top. But if Colton checks off every box on the husband-material list, then he deserves to have a wife, right?”
“Yeah. But—”
“My landlady is single.”
“Oh, please. Don’t go there.”
“I’m serious. She’s, like, the best-looking single woman in town. And she’s got a business, and she’s nice, and she’s perfect.”
“You’re perfect.” The piercing wail of an infant interrupted Hillary’s well-worn sermon on the subject of Colton St. Pierre. “Damn. The heir is up and needs milk. Hang on a sec,” Hillary said.
“How is the darling boy?” Jessica asked.
“He weighs fifteen pounds and he’s cutting a tooth.” Hillary’s voice sounded soft.
Jessica continued into the house, down the hall, and out to the back porch. She sank down into one of the Adirondack chairs and watched the surf as it pounded the shore. She loved the back porch on her grandmother’s house.
“I’m back. So, I would not recommend matchmaking,” Hillary said, “unless you’re matching your own self up with Colton.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right about the matchmaking part. I’ll just let nature take its course on that. Kerri is gorgeous and successful.” She blew out a sigh. “And in the meantime, I’m in trouble. I may fail at this business, and I may have to sell MeeMaw’s house.”
“No, you are not in trouble. You are a strong woman making a place for yourself in the world and facing challenges you will overcome.”
“Right, and I let an overbearing jerk scare me today.”
“So go back and face him.”
“You think that’s wise?”
“My opinion doesn’t matter. Look, I don’t know the guy. If you think he’s going to attack you or hurt you or something like that, then stay far, far away. But if this was just a freak-out panic attack, then you should go face your fear.”
Jessica watched the waves for a long time. “Maybe it was bad memories of that time in the locker room. I don’t like him much. He was the quarterback of the football team who spread all that gossip about me. And he was friends with the running back who cornered me in the locker room that time and then turned around a few months later and called me a slut in front of half the student body.”
“Okay, there is that. So here’s the choice. Walk away if he truly makes you feel unsafe. Or you could just make him pay a whole lot for this house he wants.”
“He’s paying me double my regular rate.”
“Oh, honey, you should have asked for more than that.”
“You’re suggesting revenge?”
“Well, maybe. I prefer to call it justice. You could build him a lemon or something.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“Of course you wouldn’t. You’re the nicest person I know.”
Jessica leaned back and let go of a long breath. “I’m really not that nice. On the inside.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Oh, well, it probably doesn’t matter. He hated my design.”
“Look, sweetie, I know what you’re thinking. I know the voice that comes at you when you’re most vulnerable, telling you that you’re no damn good, will never be any good, and are destined to fail. But you know that voice is wrong, right?”
“Yeah.” She said the word, and she knew Hillary was right, but it didn’t change the way she felt.
When she ended her call with Hillary, Jessica decided not to go back to work. She didn’t have any projects now that the Martin residence had blown up in her face, and she certainly wasn’t in the right frame of mind to think about marketing.
What she needed was a hard run or a long swim, or she could just put on her overalls and start painting the upstairs hallway.
She’d finally decided on a color called “butterfly yellow,” which was rich and sunny and reminded her of MeeMaw. She hoped MeeMaw wouldn’t mind this new coat of pa
int. As it was, there were some things Jessica had trouble touching or changing about the house. Like the collection of Limoges figurines on the bureau in the master bedroom.
Those little porcelain figures of French aristocrats in their wigs, knee britches, and big, elaborate dresses were about as far away from Jessica’s design preferences as knickknacks could get. And yet they had been MeeMaw’s treasures, so they stayed on the bureau.
The hallway was merely a passage from one room to another, so it didn’t hold a ton of memories. A few weeks ago, Jessica had started patching and sanding the walls, and they were ready for paint.
She got to work, rolling the sunny new color onto the walls, the Zen of the work emptying her brain for a few hours. By the time she’d finished, cleaned her brushes, and showered the paint splatter off her skin and out of her hair, she was in the right frame of mind to listen to the voice message Topher had left hours ago.
She didn’t know what to expect when she pushed the playback button. Jerks were good at apologizing. But listening to his voice didn’t send shivers of dread up her spine. Maybe she had overreacted.
She needed this job. But she’d have to set limits. She would not tolerate his rudeness or his anger, even if he was going through a bad time in his life.
And she’d need to fully understand where she’d gone off the tracks with the design. Because even though the concepts hadn’t been fully fleshed out, she’d been pretty certain that she’d captured what he wanted.
She sucked in a big breath and called him back. Of course she got his voice mail, which was supremely frustrating considering how much courage it had taken to dial his number.
She left a message and then got up from the kitchen table and paced around the room, her mind as flighty as a caged bird.
Maybe this was one of those times when she should just take the bull by the horns and face her demons head-on.
Without thinking too hard about it, she jumped in the car and headed toward Howland House. Twenty minutes later, she opened the garden gate and stepped onto the footpath leading to Rose Cottage. It was after six o’clock, and she was pretty sure Topher would be home. She hurried up the porch steps and knocked on the door.
“He’s not there.”
Jessica turned to find Ashley standing in the middle of her rose garden. The innkeeper’s body language was anything but welcoming. She’d been cutting flowers and putting them in a wicker basket. But she stood now, with shoulders squared and chin up.
“Your flowers are pretty,” Jessica said, trying to be sociable.
“They’re for the house. The Piece Makers are meeting tonight.”
Oh, great. Jessica checked her watch. She had about an hour before Granny would be arriving for the weekly quilting bee. Did the old biddies gossip about Topher? Did they think she was crazy for helping him build a house in the middle of nowhere?
Probably.
It was a universal truth about her life that, no matter what she did, she could never win widespread approval. She fought the urge to turn and head for the garden gate.
“So, uh, do you know where Topher has gone?” she asked instead.
“He’s down at the beach,” Ashley said, pointing toward the other end of the inn’s expansive lawn.
“He’s sunbathing?”
“He’s swimming.”
“Oh. Thanks,” Jessica said, turning in the direction Ashley indicated. She followed the path across the lawn to a set of concrete stairs, which led to a ribbon of sand. The small beach was deserted except for a striped towel with a walking cane and an eye patch lying across it.
She cast her gaze over the bay and found Topher about fifty yards offshore doing a fairly strong freestyle. She leaned against the stairway’s metal railing and watched him for a while.
She should go. Trying to win back a client when he was dripping wet and without his eye patch went too far. She headed back up the stairs.
But something made her stop and look over her shoulder. A strange foreboding, or maybe just one last glimpse. She would never know.
But it was a good thing because something radically changed in his swimming rhythm. He pulled up abruptly, and then his head dropped below the surface.
Decades-old training kicked in. She’d been a swimmer all her life and had earned her certification as a lifeguard at the age of sixteen.
She moved without thought, shucking her ballet flats and grabbing the emergency life ring from its spot on the stair rail. She took the rest of the stairs two at a time and hit the water at speed.
His head bobbed above the waterline again just as her feet splashed into the bay. Hope flared, but his head went down again.
She dived, the water cold against her skin, and her chinos and blouse dragging at her as she swam toward the spot where he’d gone down.
He bobbed again, thrashing.
She corrected her bearing, making sure to approach him from behind. He went down again, but she managed to grab him under the arms, the buoyancy of the water helping her even as he fought her touch.
“Stop fighting me,” she yelled into his ear. “Take this.” She shoved the life ring into his chest and tried to haul his big body onto it. He resisted her efforts.
“Ow, ow, ow,” he screamed.
“What’s wrong? What hurts?” she asked.
He didn’t answer, but his body posture suggested that one of his legs had cramped up.
There was nothing she could do about that. But she went to plan B. The best way to save a panicked swimmer was to get him to lie back on the flotation device.
She grabbed him around the waist and used the life ring to raise him out of the water. He was utterly incapable of kicking, so she continued to hold him under the arms, letting the life ring buoy him. She began towing him back to shore using a sidestroke.
She was a long way away, and the task seemed daunting, but she focused on making slow, easy strokes. A minute or ten later, as the adrenaline left her system, she registered the warmth of his skin next to hers. He’d stopped resisting her efforts.
Had he lost consciousness? Did she even remember how to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation? It had been a long time since her training. But she’d done it once on a boy at the yacht club. The EMTs said she’d saved the kid’s life.
She turned her head, ready to panic, but she found him looking up at her out of his one good eye. The other was naked.
She hadn’t known what she expected to see under his mysterious eye patch. An empty socket? Something so horrible it might make her look away.
But it wasn’t like that at all. The cornea of his injured eye was cloudy, and the skin around it puckered with scars. The sight of it didn’t horrify her at all.
“You scared me,” she said, redoubling her efforts to get them to shore. It still seemed a long way to the beach. She swam laps regularly, but here she had to fight wind and current.
“Shame on you,” she continued, looking away from his intense stare. She took another long pull against the water. “Don’t you know better than to swim alone?”
“I was trying to get stronger,” he said, “so I could climb the lighthouse stairs.”
His words hit with the force of a hurricane, rocking her to the core and sending a chill through her body. What if her truthful but ultimately unkind comment about the lighthouse stairs had led to his death?
What then?
Chapter Seven
He was stupid. Stupid to think he could make himself stronger. Stupid to have come out here in a fit of rage and remorse. Stupid to have pushed the leg farther than it wanted to go. And yes, stupid for swimming so far from shore without anyone there to help him when the crap hit the fan.
Which begged the question: Where the hell had Jessica Blackwood come from? Like an angel of mercy, she’d appeared in his hour of need.
And he’d been so sure that she’d left him forever this morning after he’d let his emotions get away from him.
“Why are you here?” he asked, as the last shre
d of pain faded away, leaving the offending limb quivering where it trailed in the water.
She didn’t reply. Typical.
“Answer me. Why are you here? Why did you come to my aid, especially since I was such a jerk this morning?”
“You were drowning this afternoon,” she said in an infernally logical tone. She had a way of speaking the truth in a blunt, unemotional way. He found it refreshing…and annoying.
He rolled his head, supported by the flotation device. They were still a ways from shore. “Are you okay?”
“I’ll get there,” she said, swimming with a strong kick.
“I remember the time you saved Randy McGinnis at the yacht club. I was very impressed.”
“What?” She turned toward him, her eyes flashing. Why did he get the feeling he’d just pissed her off?
“I never met anyone who saved a life before,” he continued. “I guess that’s two in your column.”
She didn’t respond, and he settled back and started to help propel them, using his arms.
“Thanks,” she finally muttered.
When they reached shallow water, he rolled off the flotation ring and tested his leg. It was okay. Painful, but what else was new.
“You didn’t answer my question. Why are you here?” he asked again, as she stood up beside him and had the temerity to offer her shoulder up under his left arm. He availed himself of it, conscious of how small she was and yet with a backbone as strong as the cane he’d been so desperately trying to jettison from his life.
“Well,” she said as they walked out of the water, the unrelenting pull of gravity weighing him down. “I came to see if I could keep you as a client…and to tell you never to touch me again.”
He stopped and tried to stand on his own.
“Not now. It’s different now.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. It’s just different. I’m not scared of you now.”
That was a slap in the face, wasn’t it? He’d never scared a woman in his life. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t do that again, okay?”
“What? Stupidly swim on my own or—”
“You know.”