“Hold on, hold on,” Logan said, cutting him off. “I didn’t say there was no room. Of course we’re going to accommodate your family’s tree stand. The entire town would rise up and lynch me if I didn’t find space for you, and it was our mistake.”
“So, what’s the problem? I mean, clearly, there’s a problem.”
“Possibly. Small one. Or . . . maybe not so small.”
“Seriously, bro, just—”
“The only space big enough to accommodate your needs is the big empty lot next to Beanie’s.” He said it all very fast, too fast, and kept on, without taking a breath. “There’s even that field on the south end of it, which we’ll have cleared and plowed for folks to park in. I know you wanted to come unload today, and I’ve already talked with Owen about getting all the proper permits and getting you the generator hook you’ll need, and of course the old trailer you use for the office is still available. We’ll have it moved over, our expense. So it’s looking like we can get you in by Tuesday, maybe late tomorrow.”
Ben let him talk until he ran out of breath. Then he waited an extra beat, and maybe a few more, before saying, “So, I guess you heard from Kerry about what happened at the Rusty Puffin.”
“Actually, it was Hannah. But, uh . . . yeah.”
“So, just the three of you know then?”
“Well, there were two guys playing pool in the back.”
Ben’s chin dropped all the way to his chest and he smacked the phone against his forehead twice, eyes squeezed shut all over again, before taking a short breath and bringing the phone back to his ear. “So, the whole town knows.”
“Pretty much.”
“So after you get done putting me on my ass, then—”
“There will be a line of folks waiting to do the same, uh, yep.”
“Ah.” He waited a beat again, only this time he was hoping Logan would fill the break. He didn’t. He finally sighed, then swore under his breath, then sighed again as the silence continued. “I was a complete dumb-ass hopped up on hormones and the goddess I thought your oldest sister was back then. I was an ass regularly to Fiona, even though she gave as good as she got. In my defense, I thought of her as my bratty kid sister.” He stopped, searched for the rest of the words that would keep his oldest, dearest friend from beating the ever-living snot out of him for being in any way the cause of his younger sister’s very public humiliation. “As for still being an ass to her as a fully grown adult . . . guilty as charged. I didn’t—” He broke off, swore again. “I didn’t think of it that way. The nickname. I mean, I guess if I’d taken a half second to think it through, it would make sense, but we were kids and she’s like family and I just . . . I didn’t know. Sure, I liked to yank her chain back then, but I would never have knowingly hurt her, not like that. Hell, I’d have pummeled anyone who hurt any of your sisters. Still would. Jesus.” He scrubbed his hand over his face. “I feel awful. Worse than awful. I’ve been trying to figure out how I’m going to set things right with her.” More silence. He’d rather have Logan beat the crap out of him than endure this silent treatment. “There’s no way to make this right, is there?”
“First off, we were all assholes when we were that age, and I never told you to stop, so I’m equally guilty.”
“Logan—”
“You had your say,” he said, and for the first time in, well, possibly ever, Ben heard an actual edge in his best friend’s voice. Not that they hadn’t had their falling-outs over the years, but that had been as kids. They were both grown adults now, and what Ben heard in Logan’s voice was not something that would simply blow over. Ben was family, but he wasn’t a McCrae. There were three things that would come before him—four now, counting Alex, he supposed—and all of them had the last name McCrae.
“You’re right,” he said, soberly. “Go on.”
“I didn’t realize,” Logan said, “what it was doing to her. No one did. But we know now.”
Ben opened his mouth, then shut it again, all but biting his tongue off to keep from speaking, from continuing his apologies, even as he knew Logan wasn’t the one who needed to hear them.
“So maybe this lot screw-up thing is a blessing in disguise.”
“I’m sorry, what?” Ben was certain he couldn’t have heard Logan correctly. “Because parking my family’s tree lot next to the one person in town who has every good reason to hate the current owner and operator of said tree lot is a good thing? For who?”
“You. And Fiona.”
Ben barked out a sharp, humorless laugh. “Are you high?”
“Not since that time behind old man Warshack’s shed.”
“God, what a nightmare,” Ben said.
“You mean Warshack finding us and threatening to tell my grandfather and your folks, and making us work for him for free until he felt we’d repaid our debt to society? Or being forced to park your ass next to my sister until the two of you find a way to fix this thing?”
“Is this a trick question?”
Logan sighed, then said, “I’m afraid not.”
“I’m not actually the one in charge of running that satellite lot. Or any of them, actually. I’ll be back at the farm overseeing the main operation. I have three of our return college hires running the lots, you know that.”
“I do. But that’s going to change, for this year at least.”
“Logan, with all due respect, you can’t tell me how to run my family’s business.”
“With all due respect, you hurt Fiona, and that gives me the right to tell you how best to fix that.”
“Even if I could find a way to make it happen, I’m not sure your solution is going to give you the hoped-for result. Even if I want it to. Don’t you have enough to contend with, given your sister’s impending Hatfield-and-McCoy wedding ceremony? You don’t need a second blood war over Christmas trees, do you? And if you’re right and the whole town knows, then—”
“Then you’d better find a way to mend fences so you can go back to running the farm, the town can fixate on a new topic of interest, and I can figure out a way to keep my sister’s wedding from turning into this country’s second civil war.”
“Logan—”
“Fi’s hurt, Ben. I haven’t talked to her, and I don’t want to. It’s not what we do, not about that kind of thing. The girls keep that stuff between them. But Alex has sort of been an impartial observer, and she’s talked to me, and . . . I know we’re all adults now, and bygones might otherwise have been bygones, but . . . you need to find a way to make things right.”
Ben let out a long, slow breath. “I know. I know. For what it’s worth, I hate that she’s hurt. I have no patience for bullies and I never thought I was one. It kills me that that stupid nickname ever made her feel bad—still makes her feel—” He broke off, swearing under his breath. “She was like my sister. It was only—God, just shoot me, okay?” He thought about his reaction when she’d taken off her black coat in Eula’s, proving just how unbrotherly his thoughts were of her now, and immediately shut that mental track down. That was the very last thing he needed complicating things further. “She’s a smart, attractive, successful woman,” he said, and it was absolutely the truth. “I’ll make sure she knows that’s how I think of her. I’m not sure what else can be done. This might not be fixable, Logan. And I might not deserve for it to be fixed.”
“Well, you better damn sure try,” Logan said. “Because I really don’t have time to come kick your ass.”
Ben gave a weak chuckle. “Nothing against you, bro, but if I had to pick between you giving me a beat down or facing Fiona every day for a month across a crowded tree lot? I’d take the beating every time.”
Logan let out a tired laugh then, too. “Well, then I think my work here is done. Good luck, old buddy. You’re going to need it.”
Chapter Eight
Fiona was nailing a brightly colored Wellie to a wide plank of the fence that ran along the west side of Beanie’s property—her property, she corrected her
self—when one of the town work trucks pulled into the empty lot next door and started unloading equipment and a big roll of something white out of the back. She didn’t pay much attention at first, until the image of a Christmas tree on the roll of white caught her eye and had her turning to see what was going on.
The two older men were busy attaching long metal poles to each end of the wire fencing that ran along the sides of the front part of the lot. That part was mostly sand, gravel, and crushed shells. The rest was dirt, grass, and weeds, though most of those were dead and gone now that winter had arrived. At the moment, all of it was under a fair amount of snow, but Fiona had already made a note to contact the town council to see who owned the property and what could be done to tidy it up a bit once spring arrived. By then, she hoped her business would be up and running full steam.
As the two men continued to unfurl the white roll, which proved to be a big sign of some kind, she stopped working completely and gave them her full attention. Was it possible that someone was taking over the space? It had stood empty for as long as Fiona could recall, certainly as long as she’d been alive. Just her luck that someone would buy the land with plans to do something bizarre with it. “Well, they won’t be doing anything to it until mud season,” she muttered, thinking she would pay Owen a visit later that afternoon and get the lowdown on what was going on. If she was going to have a new neighbor, she wanted to know who it was, and what business they’d be operating.
From her vantage point, she could only see the back of the sign. The road her shop was on led straight from the heart of town, then began to curve along the harbor, beginning with the lot next to hers. Beanie’s—her—shop was set back farther off the road, with a tidy front yard filling the space between the deep front porch of the small saltbox cottage, which had been converted to commercial use even before Beanie owned it, and the sidewalk and curb. The tall, wide plank fence she was decorating with the brightly painted and patterned rubber boots marked the boundary between her shop and the house that sat on the lot next to hers. There were three other houses of various architectural styles, all also commercial use, all kept in good repair, that lined the rest of the road as it headed toward town. The one next to her was owned by Martin Firestone, tax and business accountant, then beyond that was the Mane Event hair salon, and last on the block was the town’s veterinary clinic. It was kind of an eclectic grouping, each with its own style, but collectively they had the sort of quintessential coastal New England vibe that suited Fiona’s design ideas perfectly. They weren’t too far from the main business area at the heart of the Cove, and they were just a few blocks above the now growing commercial area along the harbor. Perfect really.
All four houses sat on nice big lots, and all faced Half Moon Harbor in a straight row. The natural rising slope of the land provided her a view over the buildings on the streets below to the outer reaches of the harbor, far beyond the piers of Blue’s Fishing and the newly relaunched Monaghan’s Shipbuilding. She had a small gravel lot that ran parallel to the side of the house, marking the boundary between her property and the empty lot. A low white picket fence lined that side, with a wide gate and trellis arch, giving patrons entrance to the walkway up to the porch from the parking area.
The road curved along with the shape of the harbor, just past her property, causing the gravel lot at the front of the empty lot to be pitched at an angle half toward the harbor, and half toward her business. She sent up a silent prayer that whoever was posting signs and potentially developing the place was opening a nice quiet law office or something. Though she doubted a lawyer would be putting up a big, billowing sign.
It was the sound of the wind snapping at the unfurling white sheet that brought her wandering thoughts back to the situation at hand. She noted there were rows of little precision-cut flaps all through the sign so the wind would move through it, but that didn’t keep the steady breeze off the water from making the job a bit more challenging than it otherwise might be. Fiona smiled as she watched the older men positioning and repositioning their stepladders. There was definitely a two-stooges kind of entertainment value to watching their repeated attempts as they balanced on their ladders and tried to hook their respective ends up simultaneously.
She swallowed her laughter as the swearing turned to bickering, and her curiosity finally got the better of her as the sign was now unfurled enough to read. She walked out toward the sidewalk so she could turn and look back at the front of the sign. Which was when her smile faded.
“You have got to be kidding me.” Only she knew that if there was a joke being played, it was going to be on her. Again. “Isn’t it somebody else’s turn by now?” she muttered as she read the full, fluttering, finally secured banner proclaiming the space as the future home of the Campbell Christmas Tree holiday lot. Opening November 27, the day after Thanksgiving. It was Monday. Thanksgiving was Thursday.
Which meant she had four days to figure out how she was going to deal with Ben Campbell’s business being right next to hers again. Literally.
She turned and walked straight back to the porch, her current project forgotten as she stepped inside, closed the door, then called her brother. As the phone rang, she calmed herself a little with the thought that it was unlikely Ben himself would be spending much, if any, time at the lot, so there was that. But any hope she had of the town latching on to some new bit of gossip was definitely doomed. “I wonder what the odds would be of convincing Hannah and Calder to get married on Thanksgiving instead of Christmas,” she murmured, belatedly realizing she was straining to look out the side window so she could watch the workers as they packed up their ladders and tools.
Turning her back on them, she willed her brother to answer, praying he wasn’t out on a call somewhere. Having the town police chief in the family had both its up and downsides.
“Hey Fi,” he said, on answering. “Did Alex finally get a hold of you about Thursday?”
She frowned, momentarily thrown from her very one track mind. “What about Thursday? I mean, other than we’re all eating Thanksgiving dinner together. Did something happen? Have plans changed?”
“No, we’re still all convening out here at the Point. Alex is really excited to be hosting this year, and I have to admit, she’s gotten me in the spirit as well.”
Fiona smiled then. She loved hearing the sincere happiness in her brother’s voice these days. Not that he’d been exactly unhappy before Alex had come into all of their lives, but the change in him now that she was part of his world was not minimal. Everything about his life had been enriched, and it was infectious. Alex was like that. “I haven’t chatted with her,” she told him. “What’s up?”
“She was hoping maybe you could help her with some decorating ideas. I told her it was just us, and she rolled her eyes at me, so I’m steering clear. We know you’re neck deep in planning Hannah’s big day, so maybe she changed her mind after all, but—”
“I’ll give her a shout. She’s pretty much a DIY dream come true. I’ll point her in the right direction and I’m sure she’ll take it from there.”
“Great,” he said, and she laughed at the relief she heard in his voice.
“Who’d have thought the great Logan McCrae, proud owner of Pelican Point, vaunted police chief of the whole of Blueberry Cove . . . reduced in less than a year to henpecked husband.”
“If you ever so much as breathe that phrase to my lovely wife, I will not only find code violations on that new enterprise of yours, I will make some new ones up if I have to.”
Fiona was grinning now. “I guess I shouldn’t say that to Kerry, then, either.”
She heard a groan, a few choice swear words, and a thunk that sounded like his hard head hitting against something.
“And here I thought I’d found eternal peace when the three of you left the Cove to conquer the world. I let one woman into my life. One. And now somehow I’m overrun with all of you again.”
“You get hot meals waiting for you from your amazi
ngly great cook of a wife, not to mention, as Kerry pointed out to me, regular sex. So shut up.”
He chuckled, then said, “Well, yeah. There is that,” making her laugh too. “So, what’s up?” he asked.
“What?” Then it all came rushing back. The smiling ended. “Oh. Right. I think I’m mad at you.”
“Me? Why, what did I—? Oh.”
“Oh?” she repeated. “As in ruh-roh oh? So this was you. Seriously, Logan, this is not the solution to our problem. The solution is he gets his family’s farm through the holiday season, then he trots back on down to Portsmouth, and we go back to not being in each other’s orbits on a regular basis. I was really happy with that solution. Yes, the town is being a major nosy pain in my backside about my little scene at the Rusty Puffin, but Thanksgiving will surely bring with it some huge family blow-up somewhere, and if not that, then I’m pretty sure Hannah’s wedding will take me way off the gossip mongers’ front lines. It’s just a matter of time. Time I’m spending planning said wedding and starting to set up shop. I didn’t have to look at, think about, much less see Ben Campbell. Only now? Now he’s right next door. I don’t need this, Logan. I have enough on my plate. More than enough. Stop trying to fix things. We didn’t break any laws, so this isn’t under your purview.”
“You’re my sister,” he said with irritating patience, once he’d waited for her to finally lose steam. “He hurt you. Badly. If he was anyone else, I’d have taken matters into my own two hands.”
“Oh for God’s sake, this is not medieval times. And I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself. Yes, he hurt my feelings. A very long time ago. When it came up again, I made it clear I wasn’t really thrilled by that ridiculous nickname. Because I’m a grown woman who takes care of herself now. It sucks that I happened to do it in front of an audience, but that’s on me. Beyond that, end of story. We go on with our lives. Our separate lives. I’m not the walking wounded, and I’m not some helpless damsel in distress. It’s bad enough he was too boneheaded to realize his stupid nickname was hurtful, but don’t go compounding his bonehead-edness by insulting me and making it look like I ran to my big brother to fight my battles for me.”
Snowflake Bay Page 9