A Wedding on Lilac Lane

by Hope Ramsay

  In truth, there wasn’t much Dylan could do for any of these patients.

  “Why?” He looked up from the files.

  “Because you’re going to be the man in charge around here sooner or later. Sooner if I have my way.”

  “What?”

  Dad leaned forward. “I’ve been working my tail off here and at the clinic for almost thirty years. While I plan to keep seeing patients, I also want to step back a little and enjoy life. After your mother died, I buried myself in work and the job of raising you. When you left for college, I doubled down on the work just to keep loneliness at bay.

  “It’s time for me to kick back and do some traveling. Brenda and I want to go to Italy for our honeymoon. We’re thinking about taking a whole month off. Which is why I need you to start looking after some of these patients.”

  “You’re taking a month off?”

  “Yeah. We’re making the plans now. And that’s another thing. Our practice has gotten larger over the years, what with the new developments up the coast. I think we need to consider adding a nurse practitioner.”

  Dylan was so surprised he could hardly wrap his brain around what Dad was saying. Was Dad abandoning him in every way?

  “I know,” Dad said. “No one will believe it until we leave for the airport. But trust me, the reservations have been made, so it’s time for you to start planning for my vacation.”

  “I always thought you wanted to go to Ireland.”

  “I do, but Italy is on Brenda’s bucket list.”

  Damn that woman. What was she doing to his father?

  * * *

  Ashley Scott, the owner of Howland House, Magnolia Harbor’s five-star bed-and-breakfast, laid her grandmother’s cake plates on the quartz countertop. She’d placed the squares of Mississippi mud cake she’d made this morning on the serving platter Grandmother had always used for sheet cakes. Then she laid out dessert forks and cloth napkins.

  The Piece Makers, Grandmother’s quilting group, which Ashley had inherited along with Howland House after her grandmother’s death, would be arriving any minute. And the ladies had been served scratch-made cake for literally decades.

  Grandmother had started the quilting group back in 1942, not long after Pearl Harbor. Many of the original quilters had passed on, but their daughters, all of whom were senior citizens now, had continued on. Ashley was a third-generation quilter—the only third-generation quilter, although Jenna St. Pierre joined them every once in a while.

  And sometimes, like right this minute, she wished she hadn’t inherited the group. The ladies gossiped the way some people breathed. And to a woman, they all expected her to bake a cake every week. Just like her grandmother had.

  Maybe she was being hard on them. When Ashley had first come to live with her grandmother, right after her husband, Adam, had been killed in action in Afghanistan, baking those cakes had been a distraction from her grief.

  But things had changed. After Grandmother passed, she’d been forced to turn Howland House into a B&B just to make ends meet. Now that she’d become a successful businesswoman, with guests coming and going, the weekly Tuesday-evening meetings had become one more thing she had to manage.

  And sadly, she was still missing Adam as if he had died just weeks and not years ago. That grief had settled into her and showed no sign of ever leaving. She hated to think about how many nights she still cried herself to sleep.

  She turned away from the cake and dashed up the stairs to the third floor. “Homework done?” she asked her nine-year-old son, Jackie, who was propped up in his bed reading a graphic novel about Blackbeard, the pirate.

  “Yup.” He looked up from the page and gave her a metal grin. It seemed ridiculous that he needed braces at the tender age of nine. They made him look older. Her boy was growing up.

  Although, judging by his reading material, he’d not yet grown out of his fascination with pirates. At least he wasn’t reading about the infamous William Teal, who had lost his life during the 1713 hurricane as he was trying to return to Rose Howland, his lady love.

  Rose, Ashley’s six-times-great-grandmother or some such thing, was widely regarded as the town’s founding mother. According to local legend, she’d mourned Captain Teal so profoundly that she’d planted daffodils all over the island in his memory. The wild daffodils still bloomed every year in late February, giving Jonquil Island—the sea island where Magnolia Harbor was located—its name.

  “There’s Mississippi mud cake downstairs. You can come on down after the ladies arrive and help yourself to a piece,” she said to her son.

  “Thanks,” Jackie said before turning his attention back to his picture book. He read more than graphic novels these days. In fact, he was turning into a bookworm. She supposed there were worse things, but she wondered what Adam might think about his bookish son. Jackie was not a chip off the old block, even though he reminded Ashley of Adam sometimes when he cocked his head just so.

  Ashley left her son and returned downstairs just as the first quilters began to arrive. For the next twenty minutes, she served cake and coffee and listened to the local gossip.

  Barbara Blackwood grumped about her granddaughter Jessica, who was insisting on a small October wedding instead of the June extravaganza Barbara wanted. But what else was new? Barbara lived to complain.

  Barbara’s sister, Donna Cuthbert, didn’t complain as much as Barbara. She gossiped instead. She had juicy news about Bobby Don Ayers, who was apparently seeing Lessie Snow, Dr. Killough’s receptionist, on the down low.

  “And what about you?” Donna asked, placing her cake plate on the kitchen counter and turning toward Nancy, whose eyes grew round behind her glasses.

  “I’m not seeing anyone on the down low,” Nancy said in a voice that was slightly louder than her usual near whisper.

  “Of course you aren’t,” Donna said, waving her hand in dismissal. “But I did hear from Cathy Conseca down at the post office that you filed a change of address. Nancy, did you buy one of those new condos down on Redbud Street?”

  The members of the group turned toward Nancy almost as one. Piece Makers never made life decisions without fully discussing them over the quilting frame.

  Nancy met the collective stare. “I got my house fixed up, and it seemed like a good time to sell.”

  “Did Bobby Don talk you into this?” Karen asked.

  “No. I just wanted to downsize.”

  “And you didn’t tell us this last week?”

  “I hadn’t decided last week. I decided on Wednesday.”

  “But you must have been thinking about it on Tuesday,” Donna said.

  “I was, but I didn’t feel that I needed to talk to anyone. Although…” Her voice faded out.

  “What?” asked Patsy Bauman, who fancied herself the leader of the pack because her husband was a member of the town council. “Are you regretting the decision?”

  “No. But…”

  “But what, for goodness’ sake?” Barbara said in her grumpiest tone.

  “Well, y’all know that Doc Killough proposed to my daughter.”

  “That was last week’s news,” Patsy said, glancing Ashley’s way.

  Ashley had been the source of that bit of gossip, even though she hadn’t intended to blab anything secret to the ladies. She’d naturally assumed that Nancy knew about her own daughter’s engagement. Evidently, the starry-eyed lovers had neglected to inform Brenda’s mother that they intended to marry.

  Nancy shook her head. She looked deeply troubled. “Y’all, I think maybe I should have had a conversation with someone before I signed those condo papers. Because with Brenda getting married and Jim deciding to move into her beach house, there isn’t a spot for Ella. And I neglected to think about Ella when I was getting excited about the idea of downsizing.”

  “They’re kicking Ella out of the beach house?” Karen asked.

  “No. They’ve told her she can stay, but the girl is uncomfortable about that. It’s a small house with
only one bathroom. I gather that Brenda simply assumed Ella would move into my house, but now Bobby Don says the old house should sell in no time at all.” She sighed heavily.

  “Y’all, this is a classic example of what happens when people make bad assumptions. What a disaster,” said Patsy. “Girls, we need to find Ella a place to stay. We can’t have her leaving again, even if Brenda is getting married. It took so long to get her back here in the first place.” Patsy tapped her upper lip for a moment before her eyes sparked, and she turned toward Ashley.

  Ashley braced for Patsy’s words. The woman could be so bossy. “You’ve been looking for a kitchen assistant ever since Judy decided to move to Colorado, right?” Patsy asked.

  Ashley nodded, her gut clenching. The Piece Makers did this to her all the time.

  “That’s perfect,” Nancy said.

  “Exactly,” said Patsy. “Ashley can give Ella that job and let her stay in that extra bedroom she has on the third floor.” Patsy spoke as if Ashley weren’t even standing there.

  The ladies turned toward her as one.

  Cornered again. “Sure,” she said.

  Chapter Five

  Ella moved her things into Granny’s spare bedroom on Saturday afternoon even though Mom insisted that it wasn’t necessary until after the wedding. But by the time Mom got married, Granny’s house would probably be sold, and Ella wanted to live in the old place for a few weeks before that happened. Besides, Mom and Jim deserved some privacy.

  And Granny’s house had been the scene of many happy childhood memories from Thanksgiving and summer visits. She would savor this last visit to the house she loved so much.

  In the meantime, she had nothing but time on her hands, so she could help Granny pack up and get the house ready for the market. She dived in, spending several days up in the attic poking through Granny’s memories, boxing up china and books, and driving stuff to the Salvation Army in Granny’s car.

  It kept her busy, but by Tuesday afternoon, all that frantic activity gave way to the mother of all pity parties. She sat up in her mother’s old bedroom, feeling lonely and unsettled. What was she going to do after Granny moved? Where was she going to live for the rest of her life? She couldn’t continue to let time pass her by without a plan.

  She got out a piece of paper and started making a to-do list. She’d done this many times before. Her wastebasket at the beach house had overflowed with to-do lists that hadn’t gotten done. Not this time. This time she had to pick herself up and move on. Like Mom and Granny were doing.

  The summer season was just starting. Maybe she could get a job waiting on tables, or maybe there were gigs to be had in the town’s many tourist traps. She was studying the Help Wanted listings on Indeed when her phone rang.

  It was probably Cody…again. He’d been calling her two or three times a day recently. And she’d been hiding from him because she knew what he wanted. Urban Armadillo, his outlaw country band, usually started their summer tour in March, and Ella was sure he hadn’t been able to find a fiddler.

  In truth, she needed that job, but she had been resisting because Cody was toxic to her mental health. But in a moment of weakness, she glanced at the caller ID.

  Glory. It wasn’t Cody. The number was local but unknown. Intrigued, she pressed the connect button. “Hello.”

  “Hey.” The voice on the other end was low and masculine and familiar, although she couldn’t quite place it. “I was wondering if you had time this evening. You know, to grab a bite at Rafferty’s.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Oh. Uh. It’s Dylan.”

  She made a mental note to put Doctor D’s number into her contact list. He was about to become her stepbrother, after all. Even if he did have a crazy-ass plan to break up Mom and Jim’s romance. That being the case, she was less than enthusiastic about having dinner with him.

  “I’m kind of busy and—”

  “Look, I thought we should get to know each other better,” he said.

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to know him better, although that would certainly please her mother. And he was offering her a free meal, which was ten times better than staying home making a to-do list filled with things she wouldn’t actually do.

  “Okay,” she said. “Rafferty’s is fine. What time?”

  “You mean you’ll actually have dinner with me?” He sounded truly surprised that she’d accepted his offer. Probably because he’d been so unpleasant last week.

  Which was the point, wasn’t it? Having dinner with her wasn’t his idea. Someone—probably Jim—had put him up to it. And Jim had done that because Mom had complained about him. She couldn’t let him off the hook, could she? He needed to do penance.

  “Of course I want to have dinner with you. I mean you’re going to be my stepbrother, right?” She had to work hard to sound all happy and bubbly about this prospect.

  “Yeah, I guess. So, um, I’ll meet you at Rafferty’s in half an hour?” He didn’t sound happy or bubbly.

  “Sure.”

  An hour later, after a shower and a change of clothes, Ella strolled into Rafferty’s Raw Bar, the biggest restaurant on Harbor Drive. The bar area and patio were completely overrun with college kids celebrating spring break, but the back dining room wasn’t nearly as crowded.

  Dylan sat at a corner table, looking like a card-carrying member of the Young Republicans Club. Did the guy own anything other than a white shirt and bow tie? Maybe she should start calling him Doctor Dull. Although the smile he sent in her direction was pretty nice. He was handsome and clean-cut, and his teeth were really white against his tan. He looked as if he spent time outside. Living in Magnolia Harbor, he probably loved sailing or fishing. Now that she thought about it, he looked exactly like a member of the yacht club.

  He lifted his gaze. Was he judging her faded jeans and favorite peasant shirt? Or was he annoyed because she’d kept him waiting? Did he realize she was late on purpose?

  His eyes were blue, but not nearly as brilliant as his father’s. And he didn’t wear his emotions on his face the way Jim did, so he was hard to read.

  “Hi,” she said, slipping into the chair facing him.

  “You’re late.”

  She shrugged. “Sorry. I was all dusty from packing stuff in Granny’s attic. I needed a shower.”

  “You want a beer or something?” he asked. His half-empty glass suggested he’d been waiting a while. Good.

  “I could go for some wine.”

  He waved at a passing waitress, who immediately stopped in her tracks. Doctor D gave the impression that he ate at Rafferty’s a lot and was a fave among the female waitstaff. And why not? He was all buttoned up and smoothed down, except for a little curl of dark hair that fell over his forehead Superman style. It suggested that his Clark Kent identity was a flimsy disguise for something else altogether.

  But what?

  She ordered a glass of rosé and one of Rafferty’s Caesar salads. Dylan ordered the biggest steak on the menu, which surprised her since he looked fit and trim and was also a doctor. But then, who said doctors couldn’t eat red meat?

  “So,” he said, when the waitress left them, “I want to apologize.” His words sounded totally rehearsed.

  “What exactly are you apologizing for?” she asked, lobbing the conversational ball back into his court.

  He pressed his lips together for a moment, telegraphing surprise. He must not have expected that she would challenge his apology.

  After a too-long moment, he finally said, “The other day, when we met to discuss the engagement party, I shouldn’t have said what I did about Dad moving into your mother’s beach house.”

  “You only told me the truth. There’s no need to apologize for that.”

  “Maybe it was the truth, but it wasn’t my place to tell it. And besides, I was being…” His voice trailed off.

  “What?” she asked. He seemed almost contrite. Did he get it? Really?

  “I’m sure I left you with the impression t
hat I’m unkind.”

  So typical. Instead of talking about her feelings, he was talking about himself. She was so tired of guys who did that. Cody was a master of this particular game. He never really apologized for anything.

  “Look,” she said, leaning forward. “I can deal with the truth. And being nice to me now isn’t going to convince me to help you break up Mom and Jim. So save your breath, okay?”

  Their gazes locked, and his eyes turned midnight blue, but without any stars in them.

  “I understood you the first time you told me that,” he said.

  “Good. Now, just so we’re clear, I know why you asked me here for dinner. It’s because I told Mom what you said last week, and she told Jim, and then your father demanded that you come apologize. So let’s just drop it, shall we?”

  He had the temerity to give her another smile, this one without flashing his beautiful teeth. She liked this one better. It was kind of sexy, which was a little startling since he was going to be her stepbrother.

  “You’ve read the situation accurately,” he said.

  “Of course I did. I know how Mom’s mind works.”

  * * *

  Dylan snatched his beer from the table and took a couple of big gulps while he regrouped. Ella was not the sensitive little thing Dad thought she was. She was, in fact, kind of incredible.

  And just like that, he realized he’d been looking at this situation from the wrong end of the telescope. He’d misstepped with his opening gambit. Trying to make her angry about the living situation had only stiffened her resolve to support her mother.

  He should have worked to win her trust first because if she trusted him, she might divulge important clues to her mother’s personality and give him exactly what he needed to expose Brenda as the absolutely wrong woman for his father.

  He put his glass down, suddenly enthused by this new idea. He didn’t have to be Ella’s enemy.

  “So, can we start again?” he asked.

  “Start how?” she asked in a suspicious tone. Gaining her trust was going to be hard.