Olivia continued. “Yesterday Rose and I reached an agreement that will make her co-owner.”
Some women not only had all the money in town, they had all the luck as well. Talk about a sure thing. The charming McClanahan cottage, with its stone facade, red enamel door, and rose-covered trellis. A fragile china pot filled with fragrant Earl Grey. A platter heaped high with warm scones dripping with sweet butter or maybe delicate madeleines or tiny tarts bursting with vanilla-laced custard and topped with cherries and grapes glistening with sugar. And—no doubt about it—a cash register bulging with receipts as a line of customers snaked its way down Shore Road all the way to the library.
Separately both Olivia and Rose were formidable women. Together they just might be unstoppable.
“Wow,” she said as the picture sank into her brain. “You two are going to rake in the bucks.”
“We think so, too,” said Olivia, “but we need you to make it work.”
“I have an extra ten bucks. Would that make me a silent partner?”
“You misunderstand,” Rose said. “We don’t want your money. We want you.”
“Me?” Her bark of laughter made her cringe. “I pull drafts at O’Malley’s, ladies, for a group of old men, sports nuts, and slumming yuppies. If you’re looking for a waitress for your fancy tea shop, you’d better—”
“We want you to be front and center,” Olivia interrupted. “Both Rosie and I have our other businesses to run. We know you’re the one who kept O’Malley’s afloat on a day-to-day basis before Aidan came aboard full-time, and we also know you’re the one responsible for those sinful macadamia chunk cookies.”
“We’re asking a lot from you,” Rose said. “In the beginning, you might be doing some of the baking, acting as hostess, welcoming customers, making sure they’re happy, overseeing the small waitstaff.”
“You’ll be well-compensated.” Olivia quoted a figure that made Claire’s eyes pop.
“And we’d be willing to consider a partnership if things work out.”
“I’m already a partner at O’Malley’s,” she reminded them. “Twenty hours on a slow week, forty in high season.” And O’Malley’s was family, a fact she wasn’t likely to forget.
“And you’re barely scraping by. Tell me most of the proceeds aren’t being plowed back into the expansion Aidan’s been working on.”
“Olivia,” Rose said in a tone that would cause a normal person to rethink her position before uttering one more syllable. “That’s none of our business.”
Claire considered planting a big, wet kiss on Rose’s forehead, but it would take more than Rose’s indignation to stop Olivia when she was on a mission.
“She needs a change,” Olivia said to Rose. “She told me herself.”
“And she’s sitting right here,” Claire snapped. “If you have something to say, say it to me, Liv.”
Olivia could be unnervingly direct when she put her mind to it. “As long as you’re a fixture at O’Malley’s, you’ll never be able to move on with your life. You’ll be stuck in time and place until Aidan closes the doors and retires to Florida with Maddy and their seventeen grandchildren. Don’t you ever wonder what else is out there?”
For a second Claire thought she was going to choke on regret. It tightened her chest and filled her throat like thick, black smoke from a two-alarm fire. Olivia fought dirty. She always had. A friend wasn’t supposed to take your truths and shine a light on them for all to see. A friend didn’t fashion your dreams into something tangible, something so close you could reach out and grab it if you only had the guts.
“Why don’t you think about it overnight,” Rose suggested, clearly uncomfortable with the battle going on between Claire and Olivia. “You’re bound to have a lot of questions. We can all meet tomorrow and—”
“I have a better idea,” Olivia broke in, speaking directly to Claire. “Why don’t you decide now. You know what you want to do, and you know the excuses for why you won’t do it. O’Malley’s... Billy . . . the four other children who don’t even live here anymore . . . take your pick.”
Olivia had given her the perfect out. Sure it was sarcastic and meant to inflame, but it was a way out just the same. Olivia was already in a snit, so that wasn’t an issue, and Rose would simply be relieved to see this discussion come to an end.
“So what will it be?” Olivia prodded. “You can save us all a lot of trouble and just say no right now, and we’ll ask someone else.”
Suddenly Claire had her answer, and it wasn’t what anyone, least of all Claire herself, expected. “You’ll find someone else over my dead body.”
Come to think of it, once she told Aidan, it just might come to that.
Chapter Twelve
CRYSTAL SKIDDED INTO the kitchen like Priscilla on a rainy day and stopped just shy of Maddy.
“Peter has a problem!” she announced, and Maddy swore she could see cartoon dialogue balloons swelling over the younger woman’s head.
“Another one?” Uh-oh. Wrong thing to say. This wasn’t your ordinary garden-variety pain-in-the-neck guest. This one took notes. Maddy forced a smile and tried valiantly not to notice the quintuple piercing marching around the young woman’s left nostril. “What can I do for him?” This time.
“You don’t have high-speed access,” Crystal said in a tone of voice usually reserved for the reporting of UFO sightings. “How can we transmit files without high-speed access?”
Count to ten, Maddy, and maybe she’ll disappear.
“You’re welcome to use my dial-up connection in the office.” Her jaws ached from all the fake smiling she had been doing since the PBS crew checked in that morning.
“Dial-up? Pete’s gonna freak.”
“Tell Pete to consider it a reenactment of The Candlelight’s original Victorian charm.”
Crystal considered her for a moment. “Good one,” she said, “but I don’t think he’ll buy it.”
“I’m afraid he’ll have to. Our high-speed access went down last week, and the technician won’t be out to fix it until Friday.”
“Where’s the office?”
Maddy dried her hands on one of Rose’s fancy dish towels, then led the girl down the back hall toward the office. She popped the phone cord out of the computer and stretched it across the top of the desk. “Primitive,” she said, “but effective.”
The girl eyed it the way Maddy might eye a rampaging garden snake. “I’m not sure . . .”
“I’m sorry, but it’s the best we can do,” Maddy said. “Your other choice is to wait for the library to open tomorrow morning and log on down there. Now, if there isn’t anything else . . .”
“We’d love a pot of that great coffee and maybe some of those cookies you had out this afternoon. You can set it up right here on the desk.”
Count to twenty this time, Maddy, and remember assault and battery is punishable by law. “There’s an assortment of snacks available in the parlor. I’ll make sure there’s a fresh pot of coffee waiting for you in there.” She would be damned if they dribbled Kona roast onto her keyboard; not on her watch.
Crystal thanked her, then raced off to relay the information to the rest of the crew.
Kelly was standing at the counter grinding coffee beans when Maddy returned to the kitchen.
“I thought you weren’t coming in tonight,” Maddy said, sidestepping Priscilla, who was lurking near the doorway. She bent down to give the puppy a quick cuddle. “Rose said you weren’t feeling well.”
“I think I had one of those twenty-four-hour bugs. I started feeling better this afternoon, so I figured I might as well.” She poured more beans into the hopper. “I thought you’d be at Aunt Claire’s poker party.”
“I will be as soon as Rose gets home.”
“I can take care of things for you if you want to go now,” Kelly offered. “I know Hannah’s bedtime drill.”
“You’re a doll,” Maddy said, as she washed her hands at the sink. “I’d take you up on it except o
ur PBS pals just put in a special request for—” She registered the coffee grinder and the bag of beans. “Are you psychic?”
“Lucky guess.” Kelly grinned. “I see them drinking pots of the stuff at Julie’s every day.”
Maddy reached into the cupboard for the large cream pitcher and the matching sugar bowl. “They’re going to be setting up shop in my office tonight. They need an Internet connection, and the high-speed isn’t working.”
“Your office?” Kelly shouted over the racket of beans being ground into submission. “Poor you.”
“Is it just me, or are they extremely annoying?”
Kelly turned off the grinder. “It’s not you, and they are extremely annoying.” She measured four scoops of ground beans into the filter basket, then switched on the machine. The room instantly came alive with the rich, unmistakable aroma of brewing coffee.
“Have they interviewed you yet?” Kelly asked.
“Two prelims,” Maddy said, stifling a yawn. “I think I’m scheduled for the comprehensive interview sometime next week.”
“How’d you like it?”
“It’s a little scary,” Maddy said. “You go in thinking you know exactly what you’re going to say—and what you’re not going to say—and suddenly you’re spilling your guts. I was actually disappointed when we ran out of time.” She had said far more about her relationship with Rose than she had ever intended. So much so that the Witness Protection Program was beginning to sound good.
“That is scary,” Kelly said. “They’ll know every secret in town by the time they finish.”
“For four generations back. God only knows what juicy tidbits my aunts have served up.”
“I saw stacks and stacks of printouts in Crystal’s room when I went in to turn down the bed. Grandma Irene’s was on top.”
“Did you peek?” Maddy grinned. Aidan’s daughter was the last person on earth who would ever peek.
“I thought about it,” Kelly said with an embarrassed shrug of her slender shoulders. “I caught myself just in time.”
Being so wonderfully predictable wasn’t always a bad thing. Kelly was proof of that. People expected the best from her, and she always delivered.
“Aidan told me they had pulled every interview she ever gave to the press and it totaled over three hundred pages of clips. They could do the whole Paradise Point segment on Irene alone and have enough information left over for two sequels.”
“Grandma would’ve loved this,” Kelly said. “She knew everything there was to know about Paradise Point.”
“She put this town on the map.” Irene O’Malley had been one of the first successful female restaurant owners in the state, and as time went by, O’Malley’s became one of the most popular establishments on the shore.
“Dad never paid much attention to Grandma’s stories. I guess he’d heard them all so many times they stopped meaning anything to him, but I always listened. It was like she was sharing something special with me, a part of herself I’d never see any other way.”
Maddy was twice Kelly’s age and, if she was lucky, half as perceptive.
“I wish I’d paid more attention to my Grandma Fay’s stories. I used to zone out every time I heard the words, ‘Now, back in my day . . . ’” What she wouldn’t give to introduce Hannah to Grandma Fay. “Did you know my grandmother cooked for FDR once right here at The Candlelight?”
Kelly’s eyes widened with interest. “Back when it was a boardinghouse?”
Maddy nodded. “Rose has the clippings upstairs in a box of stuff she’s been gathering for Lassiter. Apparently FDR came through here during the 1932 presidential campaign and stopped to visit with the locals.”
“Wow,” Kelly said. “If these walls could talk.”
Maddy faked a violent shudder. “If these walls could talk, I’d be on my way back to Seattle. Rosie and I fought a lot of battles in this house. I think my old room still echoes with some of them.”
“The PBS crew is really wired about the wedding.” Kelly wiped out the grinder with a damp cloth, then dried it carefully. “You’d think nobody in town had ever gotten married before.”
“Tommy Kennedy told me some of those smart alecks at O’Malley’s are taking odds on whether or not your dad and I make it to our first anniversary.” She stifled another yawn. “I told him to put fifty on you bet we will for me.”
Kelly grinned. “Crystal did another preinterview with me last week, and all she could talk about was how many times your aunts and cousins have been married. Your family is legendary.”
“You’d think our last name was Gabor.”
Kelly frowned. “Who?”
Nothing like an outdated celebrity reference to remind you of the passage of time. “Ancient Hollywood history, Kel. Hand me the cream, would you please?”
Kelly pulled a new quart of half-and-half from the fridge and handed it to Maddy. “Crystal and the others are all so skinny. I can’t believe they use cream.”
How long would it be before Hannah started worrying about calories and cellulite? The thought of what lay ahead made Maddy terribly sad. She had spent much of her own life trying to diet and exercise herself into someone else’s ideal of beauty and would trade five years of her life for the chance to save Hannah from the same fate.
“I wish you’d seen them at lunch. You would’ve thought they were coming off a five-day fast.”
“I wish I could eat like that and stay so thin.”
“You’ve lost a little weight lately, haven’t you?” Maddy said carefully.
Kelly beamed an enormous smile at her. “You can see it?”
Maddy nodded. “Don’t lose any more,” she cautioned. “Don’t get too thin.”
“There’s such a thing as too thin?”
“Did you take a close look at Crystal? You can count her ribs through her T-shirt.”
“So?”
“So you’re beautiful exactly the way you are. Don’t mess with perfection.”
“You sound like my father.” She rolled her eyes. “He’s always telling me to stop dieting.”
“Listen to the man. He knows what he’s talking about.”
Crystal popped up in the doorway, and Maddy and Kelly both jumped in guilty surprise.
“Do you think we could have some popcorn?” Crystal asked. “Cheese popcorn if you have it. Ray the camerman’s not into refined sugar. Thanks!” She disappeared back down the hallway to Maddy’s office.
Kelly rolled her eyes in mock dismay. “I’d put a padlock on the fridge tonight if I were you.”
“The heck with the fridge,” Maddy said with a guilty laugh. “I’d like to put a padlock on the front door.”
“Better not let Mrs. DiFalco hear you say that.”
“I know. That was very uninnkeeperish of me.”
“I hear you’re not going to be an innkeeper much longer,” Kelly said as she arranged cups and saucers on an enormous wooden tray.
“What?”
“I heard you’re going to manage that tea shop Ms. Westmore’s opening up.”
Maddy looked up from pouring cream into the pitchers. “Where did you hear that?”
Kelly’s cheeks turned red. “I wasn’t eavesdropping,” she said. “At least, not exactly. I dropped something off in Aunt Claire’s mailbox on my way here, and Mrs. DiFalco was there and she—”
“Talks kind of loud,” she said. “I warned her about it. One day we won’t have any family secrets left.”
Kelly leaned against the kitchen counter and fiddled with the fringed end of the dish towel. “Is Aunt Claire really going to leave O’Malley’s?”
Danger. Reduce speed.
“I don’t know, Kel. Rose and Olivia are talking to her about it right now.” And taking an awfully long time, come to think about it. Her mother was supposed to be home by seven to watch Hannah and the inn so Maddy could claim her seat at the poker table.
“Does my dad know?”
Proceed with caution. Black ice ahead.
“Are you excited about running a tea shop?”
“Yes, I am.” At last! Her first genuine smile of the day. “They’re going to put me in the back where I can’t upset the paying customers. It’s a match made in heaven.”
“What about your radio show? I thought—”
“So did I,” Maddy said, “but it doesn’t look like my big break is going to happen anytime soon.”
“But you love the radio program. You can’t quit.”
“Who said anything about quitting? I can broadcast from Cuppa. It’s only once a week. Rose and Olivia think it will be great publicity for the shop.”
“You can’t give up on your dreams,” Kelly said with surprising force. “Just because something unexpected comes your way doesn’t mean you stop reaching for the things you really want.”
“I’m not giving up my dreams, Kel, but I’m not independently wealthy, and neither is your dad. I have to think about the future—Hannah’s future in particular—and this was too good an opportunity to let slip by.”
“I thought Hannah’s father was rich.”
“Tom is very comfortable,” she said carefully, “and he has provided well for Hannah, but that has nothing to do with me or my responsibilities.”
“You lived with him for a long time, didn’t you?”
Where was Crystal the Tattooed Wonder when you needed her? “We split a few months after Hannah was born.”
Kelly looked down, but not before Maddy saw the look in her eyes. She thought she was pregnant. Any woman who had ever been late knew that look of fear and wonderment in the girl’s eyes.
“Would you have married Hannah’s father?” The question broke what was quickly becoming an uncomfortable silence. “I mean, if he had wanted children.”
“Tom already had children,” Maddy was quick to point out. “Grown children and grandchildren. He felt he was too old and settled in his ways to start again.”
“So you decided to do it on your own.”
“There was no decision involved,” Maddy said simply. “I wanted Hannah from the second I knew she was on her way.”
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