A Season of You

by Emma Douglas

  “Was that Will’s Mustang I heard this morning?” Faith was clearly trying not to smile, but one of her dimples popped to life in her cheek.

  There wasn’t much point trying to deny it. Lulu had a distinctive sound and Faith, like Mina, had grown up with Grey’s car habit. She probably knew just as much as Mina about classic cars. Plus she and Caleb went to Salt Devil quite often, so she probably knew Lulu quite well.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Faith squealed and hugged her. Then let go and held up her hand for a high five. “Way to go, little sis.” She waggled her fingers when Mina didn’t immediately hit her hand. “C’mon, high five.”

  Reluctantly, Mina completed the gesture. “Don’t get too attached,” she warned. “It’s just temporary.”

  “I am applauding the step, not who you’re taking it with.” Faith said. Then frowned. “Though, to be clear, I’m just fine with it being Will.” Her expression turned approving. “Because he’s pretty—”

  “How about we don’t finish that sentence,” Mina said. “And just focus on the festival. We have a whole lot of Christmas to get through.”

  chapter fifteen

  The next week passed in a blur for Will. Between the Christmas Festival and the bar and trying to sneak a few hours with Mina, he hadn’t really had time to think. He and Mina had put those hours to good use … the memory of just how good was the only thing that filled his brain when he did get a minute to think. So good that a few hours here and there weren’t nearly enough. But he couldn’t push her. He had to give her space. And time to paint. No way was he going to be the reason she didn’t get everything she needed for the show done in time. That would only make her resent him. Not the emotion he was going for.

  But lack of time with Mina and a stupidly busy schedule aside, life was good. Even if today was starting far too early.

  He hid a yawn as he helped Stefan wrestle a sack of grain into the storage shed.

  “Something keeping you up at night?” Stefan asked when the grain was safely shelved.

  Will watched his brother give the pile of grain sacks a proprietary pat and shook his head. “Nothing. Just looking forward to getting through Christmas and then putting these babies to work.” He eyed the full storage shed. All being well, they’d get another batch of whiskey barreled in the new year. And then, come summer, it would finally be time to finish their very first batch, the one they’d laid down when they’d first moved to Lansing. It was a long game, whiskey, and he tried not to think too hard about all the money tied up in the rows of barrels from each year since then currently sitting in their rackhouse quietly ageing and hopefully turning into something that would sell.

  They’d agreed on five years for the first batch. Longer could be better but they had to start selling at some point to know whether Stefan’s theory of salt air and whiskey would pay off. They’d been tasting along the way of course, and so far they both liked what was happening. But that didn’t mean anyone else would. Neither of them had talked about what would happen if Salt Devil whiskey flopped. The bar did well enough, but they’d set it up mostly as cash flow for the distillery. If they couldn’t pull that part of the business off, then they’d just poured both their life savings down the drain. He shook off the thought. Worrying about it wouldn’t help. “I’ll admit, life would be easier without this Christmas Festival but from the figures Angie has put together on accommodation and ferry bookings over the next month, it’s looking like it may pay off.” Salt Devil had definitely been busier than usual for the time of year last night.

  Stefan raised a bushy dark eyebrow at him, clearly not missing the obvious change of subject, but didn’t comment. Will knew he wasn’t fooling anybody, least of all Stefan. After all, his brother was the one picking up the slack at the bar the times Will negotiated some time off. Stefan wasn’t dumb. He wouldn’t be assuming Will was off doing Christmas Festival administration at eleven at night. But apparently Stefan wasn’t going to give him grief.

  They worked in easy silence a bit longer, getting the various grains sorted and stacked in place, and then locked up the storehouse, activating the climate control system. Temperature variations helped the ageing process for the whiskey in the rackhouse, but damp winter air wasn’t a good thing when you were trying to keep grain dry. The island made transportation of bulky goods like grain a challenge and sometimes they had to wait for several orders over a few weeks to gather enough grain for a batch. Including sometimes taking deliveries on the weekend. Which was why they were both up earlier than usual on a Saturday, having met the goods ferry at the ungodly hour of seven a.m. down at the harbor in Cloud Bay. Not so easy when Will had finally crawled into bed around two after a busy night at the bar.

  Today was going to require coffee. All the coffee. Or a nap. He was meeting Mina for one of the first Christmas Festival events he’d been able to fit into his schedule this week, a sand snowman sculpture competition down on the town’s main beach. But that wasn’t until two. That should leave time to hit the sack again and try to catch up on some sleep.

  “So, seeing as we’re up here, want to haul some barrels around?” Stefan asked.

  Damn. He’d been hoping Stefan might have been keen to catch a few more hours of sleep too. But he should have known better. Once Stefan was up, he was up. The guy could run on four or five hours sleep for days at a time if he had to. Will sometimes suspected he mainlined espresso, but had never caught him at it. “Sure,” he said, trying to sound enthusiastic. Full whiskey barrels were heavy bastards. And moving them around the rackhouse, even with the assistance of their forklift, often required more manual labor than Will preferred first thing in the morning.

  Stefan grinned at him. “Look at it this way. Do it now and that’s one less thing to do during the week. And, hey, only three weeks until Christmas as of today.”

  Will nodded, trying to look as though that was a good thing. Three weeks until Christmas meant only one thing this year. Three weeks until Mina intended cutting him loose and sending him on his merry way. Which left him with less than three weeks to figure out how to convince her not to.

  * * *

  Sand snowmen sort of sucked, Mina thought as she arched her back, trying to ease the kink forming at the base of her spine. Making one sounded like fun and the actual building of one was fun—kind of. It might have been completely fun in summer. But standing on a beach on a wintry day playing with wet sand and cold water sucked. She and Will had arrived at the beach a little after two and now it was closing in on four, and she was over the whole thing.

  Luckily the sun was shining—though the shadow their creation was casting on the sand was rapidly lengthening. And the wind coming off the sea was starting to pick up. The combination of cold air and water and wind had somehow made the experience colder and more uncomfortable than making actual snowmen. At least with those, you got to keep your snow gloves on.

  “Whose idea was this again?” she muttered to Will as they tried to get the shells they were using for buttons to stay where they wanted them. She didn’t think their snowman was going to win any prizes. His head had fallen off three times during construction, and their last hurried attempt at replacing it wasn’t exactly the smoothest sphere. In fact, he looked a bit more like Frankenstein than Frosty. But she had to admit it was fun watching Will trying to figure out how to hide that fact.

  She was definitely going to make sure she was busy the remaining two Saturdays before Christmas though. Angie had scheduled a repeat of the sand snowman competition every weekend. Her theory being that there would be some turnover in the tourists from week to week.

  Mina didn’t know if that was true or not but she wasn’t going to volunteer to be back on the beach to find out. She could handle painting fifty giant Christmas trees, but cold wet sand sculpture was not her thing.

  By the time they were done, her fingers were throbbing from cold. She would have mugged a small child for a hand warmer of some sort. Shoving her hands into her poc
kets at every opportunity only resulted in sandy pockets and hands that were still frozen.

  But despite the cold and the unpleasant conditions, she’d gotten to hang out with Will. And that had made her happy. The first fifteen minutes or so after they’d arrived she’d felt as though every local on the beach had been watching them, but then she’d relaxed. Scheduling time together this week had been like trying to do a particularly fiendish jigsaw puzzle in the dark. She didn’t want to waste her time today feeling weird.

  Even if she’d rather be home in her big bed with him doing all those inventive things to her body than standing on the beach, she was determined to enjoy herself. And she did.

  Will, she was coming to realize, was easy to enjoy. He was solid, she knew that. He had depths. And some of them were playful depths. Grey would have been uber competitive at an event like this and, thinking about it, Adam probably would have too. Will, on the other hand, clearly cared about figuring out how to do the job well but didn’t seem to care about winning.

  He spent his time teasing some of the other teams, and he and Caleb had bucket-filling races, but he just laughed if he lost. And when she started get cranky as the cold set in, he turned his sense of play on her, making her laugh too as he goofed around with seaweed and sand and stole moments of touch in a subtle way that warmed her blood a little without the kind of obvious display of affection that would have made her feel like she was under the spotlight again.

  Then there was that thing where he really wasn’t hard on the eyes. The easy way he moved and wielded the various tools they’d been presented with reminded her a little of Grey with a guitar in his hands. A man in his element, sure of himself. Would he look the same way behind a bar? Or doing whatever it was he and Stefan did at the distillery?

  Not that she was going to see him there.

  As they lined up beside their lopsided creation for the final judging, Mina heard a snort of laughter from Faith and looked over to see her sister collapsing in giggles against Caleb as their sandman started to crumble. Caleb looked resigned and then not at all bothered as Faith stretched up to kiss him next to the wreckage.

  “Well, I guess we’re not coming dead last,” Mina said to Will as she turned back to regard their own creation, trying not to laugh as well.

  Will nodded. “I need a bit more practice. Snowmen I can do but it’s a long time since I made a sandcastle.” He tilted his head at the lopsided figure. “I thought your islander skills might help.”

  “Sandcastles I can do,” Mina said. “But sand sculpture is a whole other thing. Besides, in summer my dad was usually touring. We didn’t always spend a lot of time on the island until the festival rolled around. At which point the beaches get crowded and the pool was more fun.”

  “Your beach is private, isn’t it?” Will asked, dribbling more water onto Frankensnow’s head and smoothing the sand. Then he straightened, looking over Mina’s shoulder. She turned to see Angie and Ryan approaching.

  The mayor was the judge of this particular contest, which meant that they would have been well and truly screwed even if they’d made the best damn sand snowman in the world.

  “It is. Not that we stick to that rule. But during CloudFest, we have to keep the fans off it. Too close to the house. Most fans are lovely but you never know when someone might get … overenthusiastic.”

  “I guess so,” Will said. “Was that weird, growing up with security?”

  “Not really. I didn’t know any different. Frustrating and annoying at times, yes. But mostly kind of comforting knowing they were there. Especially good when you’re trying to get in or out of a venue or hotel when the band was touring. But as a kid, you want your dad to be safe. Grey had a few encounters where things got weird—I think all the Blacklight guys did. Still do. But security was always there to get them out of it.” She stopped as Angie came up to them, forcing a polite smile onto her face. She hadn’t crossed paths with Angie since their argument about the trees, having spent most of the week madly painting in her studio, happily ignoring anything that wasn’t watercolor or Will. She’d gone to the first round of the Christmas cookie-off—because, cookies—but had stayed at the back of the town hall and out of Angie’s way.

  The trees had obviously dried in time as they were safely installed along Main Street. They looked good.

  “Mayor Rigger, Ryan,” she said, nodding to Ryan as Angie studied their sculpture. Ryan flashed a tight smile but didn’t reply. His usual slick style was somewhat marred by the rubber boots he’d chosen as winter beach footwear and he looked distinctly out of his element.

  Angie didn’t answer either, though she smiled at Will before she and Ryan moved on to Faith and Caleb.

  “Is it just me or did the temperature just drop a few more degrees?” Faith said to Mina after Angie had moved on again. “I know Angie doesn’t like me but she wasn’t giving you any love either, sis. What’s up?”

  “Nothing,” Mina lied. “Everything’s cool.”

  “Literally,” Faith said. She shivered theatrically. “I don’t know about you two, but Caleb and I were thinking about grabbing a coffee and something to eat while we thaw out. Want to join us?”

  “I have to be back at Salt Devil by five thirty,” Will said. “But coffee sounds good.” He turned toward her, eyebrows lifting in a “What do you think” expression.

  There was no reason to say no. After all, half the town had seen them together today. But for some reason a double date with Faith and Caleb felt very … official. And this was supposed to be casual.

  It was casual, she told herself firmly. So there was no reason not to eat cake and coffee with the man. Coffee was the definition of casual. And coffee meant another hour with Will today. Ignoring the small twinge of worry in her stomach, she smiled up at Will. “Lead me to the cake.”

  * * *

  Will pushed aside his empty plate and tried to ignore the urge to order more cake. Jin’s Diner was a Cloud Bay fixture, serving an odd mixture of burgers and Chinese food. And cake. Very good cake. Jin herself had retired, but now her daughter and son-in-law carried on the tradition. The coffee was pretty good too—not as good as his maybe—but it was hot and had done the job of thawing them all out. Mina had peeled off her coat and looked much happier than she had half the time on the beach. He had to admit, as much as he’d enjoyed figuring out how to build a sand sculpture, spending two hours wrist deep in wet sand or cold sea water wasn’t the most pleasant experience. The weather hadn’t been particularly cold for this time of year, but the beach was windy and the wind had found every damp patch on his clothes. He’d have to make sure that the committee came up with another idea if the Christmas Festival had a second year.

  The kids at the contest had seemed to be having fun, but it wasn’t going to do Cloud Bay any good if a tourist got hypothermia. Sand sculpture contests could be saved for summer.

  Still, after two cups of coffee and a slab of chocolate cake that would have fed three people, he was mostly thawed out. And he wasn’t going to complain about an afternoon spent with Mina. The only thing that could have improved the day would be if he managed to sneak Mina away for an hour of privacy at the end of the contest. But Faith had invited them for coffee and that had been the end of that hope.

  Faith, who was sitting opposite him in the booth, sipping hot chocolate and talking about some singer he’d never heard of with Mina. From time to time he’d caught her watching him through those big gray-green eyes so like Mina’s. He wasn’t yet convinced Faith didn’t have an ulterior motive for the coffee invite although he thought she knew him well enough that she shouldn’t have wanted to play the old “vetted by the big sister” card. But maybe things had changed now that he was actually dating Mina—at least as far as Faith knew, that was what they were doing.

  On Faith’s side, Caleb sat, adding the odd comment to the conversation but mostly seemingly content to sit and watch Faith. Will wasn’t sure when he’d ever seen a guy so clearly in love and not giving a
crap who knew. It made him feel weirdly jealous. He was pretty sure if he shot Mina the kind of look Caleb gave Faith, she’d run a mile.

  So he settled for resting his thigh against hers and making nice with her family while the weather turned nasty outside, rain hitting the diner window hard enough to make it rattle. That might put a cramp on the night’s crowd at the bar. Rain made the tourists stay in. Maybe he’d get an early night after all. One with Mina.

  He was just starting to think that he needed to make a move toward leaving when Mina suddenly started rummaging in her purse. She pulled out her phone, frowning at the number on the screen before she answered.

  “Bill, hey,” she said. “What’s up?”

  Her frown deepened as she listened to the answer and then slid out of the booth, walking quickly out of the dinner.

  “Crap,” Faith said. “That’s not good.”

  “What’s not good? I thought Mina was on leave this week,” Will said, trying to ignore the twist in his gut that told him that Faith’s assessment was right.

  “Which means if Bill’s calling her then there’s something going on. An all-hands-on-deck type something.” Faith nudged at Caleb who eased out of the booth to let her out, but before she could go after her sister, Mina came back into the diner, moving fast.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I have to go. We have a call out.”

  “In this weather?” Will said. The rain moved from annoying weather quirk to alarming in his estimation.

  “That’s kind of what we do,” Mina said, with a tight smile.

  “What’s wrong?” Faith said.

  “Boat in distress,” Mina said. “We’re scrambling everyone.”

  Will didn’t know exactly what that meant, but it didn’t sound good. In fact, it sounded like Mina was about to get on a boat and deliberately head out into the storm brewing outside.

  His gut twisted tighter. Crap. He’d never thought too closely about what Mina working for search and rescue really meant. She’d told him she worked the radio. But this didn’t seem like that.