by Emma Douglas
“Someone missed you,” Faith said as she came jogging up behind him. She reached down and picked up the ball. When she threw it back in the direction they’d come from, Stewie left off harassing Mina, apparently satisfied that she hadn’t abandoned him forever, and charged after it.
“Sorry,” Mina said. “Was he a pain?”
“No,” Faith said. “He whined a bit when it started getting dark but he settled down. He always does.” She smiled then frowned. “I didn’t expect to see you for hours. What time did you get home?”
“Around three,” Mina said.
“Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”
“I woke up. Thought I’d come grab Stewie so you and Caleb could get on with your day. I can sleep later.” Not too much later though. She still had painting to do.
Faith nodded and looked back over her shoulder at Stewie. Who was digging at something in the sand and didn’t seem like he’d be bringing the tennis ball back any-time soon. She turned back to Mina. “Will still asleep?”
Mina blinked. “How did you know Will was at my place?”
“The security guys buzzed to see if it was okay to let him in last night. They knew you weren’t home.”
“What time was that?”
“About one?” Faith said.
Two hours? He’d waited for her for two hours last night. She hid the wince. “Sorry.”
“We weren’t asleep,” Faith said. “I wanted to know you were home too.”
This time she did wince. “Sorry. In that case, you should still be in bed too.”
“I will be heading back there soon,’ Faith said. “But Stewie needed out.” She paused, twisted a length of hair that had come free of her messy bun around her finger. “Was Will … okay?”
“Why wouldn’t he be?”
“He seemed pretty worried last night. He came back to the diner after he’d dropped you off. Borrowed my spare key to your Jeep so he could bring it up to the station for you.”
“Will did that?” She’d assumed it had been Faith or Caleb who had brought the Jeep into town for her. They’d done it before when she’d been called out from somewhere and hadn’t had her car with her.
Faith nodded. “Yep. He insisted. He’s a good guy, that one.”
Yes. He was. That was the problem. “I know.”
“Are you two—”
Mina held up a hand, cutting Faith off. “It’s temporary. We agreed.”
“Agreed?” Faith was wearing sunglasses, but Mina was fairly sure she was rolling her eyes. “Whose dumb idea was that?”
“It’s not a dumb idea,” Mina said. “Will’s a good guy, he’s just not—”
“Is this because he runs a bar?” Faith said. “You know that’s kind of idiotic, right?” She sounded cranky. But then she smiled, shaking her head at herself.
“It’s my life, Faith.”
“I know,” Faith said, shaking her head again. “You know, I always seem to end up having heart-to-hearts on the beach. Maybe we should build a little stand here. Like in Peanuts. Make a little ‘the doctor is in’ sign for these chats.”
“Last time I checked, you weren’t a doctor,” Mina said.
“No, but I am an expert in dumb relationship rules. After all, mine almost cost me Caleb.”
“Caleb’s different.”
“Only because I was smart enough to realize I couldn’t let him get away,” Faith said. “Will obviously cares about you. Don’t you think you should at least give him a chance? Entertain the possibility that maybe he’s the one you shouldn’t let get away?”
“I already had that guy,” Mina said. This conversation was so not the one she wanted to be having on two hours of sleep.
“Adam wouldn’t have wanted you to be alone forever. God, Mina, you’re only twenty-three.”
“Which means I have plenty of time to find another guy. One who doesn’t make his living from selling booze.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Faith said, frowning at her. “I drink. Caleb drinks. Even Lou drinks. Ninety-nine percent of the people you know probably drink. You haven’t cut any of us out of your life.”
“Consuming alcohol is different from having your whole life be about it,” Mina said.
Faith’s expression softened. “Oh honey. Will’s not Dad. And he’s not the guy who hit Adam. That guy wasn’t even drinking at Salt Devil.”
“Trust me, I’m well acquainted with the facts of the accident that killed my husband,” Mina snapped. She looked past Faith, hoping to catch Stewie’s eye. She needed to leave. But Stewie was paddling in the water, not even looking in her direction.
“Then you need to start accepting it was an accident. That guy was over the limit, yes. But it was raining too. And late. He made a stupid decision. He paid for it. Adam paid for it. Don’t make Will pay for it too. Not if that means that the one who’s really paying for it is you.”
“Well, that’s my decision, isn’t it?” Mina said, digging her fingers into the sand against the urge to just get up and walk away.
Faith held up her hands. “Yes, yes it is. And I won’t keep bugging you about it. But you need to think about this. God knows, Grey wasn’t the world’s best male role model when we were growing up, and most of his friends weren’t either. And yes, he was an alcoholic. But I’ve never seen Will drunk, and he and Stefan are fierce about cutting people off at the bar if they think they’ve had enough. He likes whiskey, yes. But he’s not trying to ruin anybody’s life.”
No. Maybe not. But Mina was getting the feeling that he was going to ruin her heart.
chapter seventeen
Will hesitated at the door to the town hall, feeling weirdly nervous. Which was dumb. There was nothing about a Secret Santa exchange that should make a grown man feel nervous. Except he’d managed to draw Lou as his giftee. Which had added a whole new layer of pressure to the thing. What did you buy for the woman who was, for all intents and purposes, the mother of the woman you were hung up on but who didn’t know that? It didn’t feel right to go the gag gift route or to give Lou a boring box of chocolates or bottle of red.
It had taken him nearly a week of trying to come up with ideas as well as trying to subtly pick Faith’s and Mina’s brains before he’d finally bought his gift the previous day. Which was cutting it kind of fine, but part of his usual Monday errands included picking up the bar’s grocery and meat orders for the first part of the week from Cloud Bay, so he’d managed to deliver his gift to the collection point at the mayor’s office just before the midday cut-off time.
But now he was second-guessing his final choice. He’d been planning to get her a cookbook but when he’d dropped into To Be Read, Cloud Bay’s sole bookstore, and confessed the reason for his visit to Patty Bleecker, she’d told him that she had the latest murder mystery by Lou’s favorite author out back, waiting for the release day on Tuesday. She’d let him have a copy and told him she’d put Lou off if she came looking for it before then. So he’d left with that and a bag of the chocolate sea salt caramels that Patty’s wife, Evie, had made and that was that.
It was a good gift. The right gift. What better gift for a woman who taught English than a book by her favorite author? But somehow, he was wondering if he should have gone for something simpler. Not because Lou wouldn’t like the book but because, if he was honest, he was worried that Mina would think he’d gone to a lot of effort to figure out the gift. It had been a week since she’d been called out during that stupid storm and even though she hadn’t raised the subject with him again, he knew she’d been … well, “alarmed” wasn’t quite the right word but “surprised,” at least, by his reaction. Or overreaction.
Not his finest moment ever. Here he was trying to play it casual and see if he could win Mina over slowly, and then he’d screwed it up.
Mina had been … different since. He’d thought they’d been moving in the same direction, and now she’d drifted a little. She hadn’t refused to see him, though she was still working furiously to complete her
paintings, and she hadn’t kicked him out of her bed. But there was something about her that made him feel like she was floating just a little out of his reach. And he had absolutely no idea how to pull her back to him. She liked him, he knew that. They managed to talk for hours when they weren’t tearing each other’s clothes off. But he got the feeling that getting her to admit she liked him … maybe more than liked him … was going to be difficult.
Still, he’d agreed to their deal. Hell, he’d proposed it in the first place. So he was going to have to suck it up if Mina actually stuck to it. But he’d have paid a million dollars—not that he had a million dollars—to find a way to make sure she didn’t.
He moved through the room, looking for her. The town hall was large and echo-y, and between the Christmas carols being piped through the speakers and everyone talking, the noise was nearly deafening, so it wasn’t likely he’d be able to hear where she was. A smarter man would have arranged to meet in a certain spot, but he hadn’t been that smart lately. Plus he’d been trying to keep things light. There were plenty of faces he recognized, and he paused to speak to several people while he tried to circle the room, but so far Mina hadn’t appeared. So, maybe she was running late.
Should he have offered to pick her up?
He hadn’t—again, because he was trying to be casual, but maybe that had been dumb.
Stefan had agreed to open the bar late tonight, Will having convinced him that ninety percent of the locals would be at the Secret Santa anyway, so it wasn’t as though they’d been losing money by staying closed a couple of extra hours. And, looking at the size of the crowd gathering, that had been the right call.
Angie had been smart to schedule this particular event for Monday night. Monday meant most of the weekend tourists would have left and, because it was still nearly two weeks out from Christmas, the tourists who might be coming for longer stays hadn’t yet arrived. So most locals were free to attend.
Which was kind of nice. There were things about living on an island—other than being surrounded by the ocean—that were frustrating sometimes, but he had to admit that he did like the sense of community. His mom had been too busy working after his dad had passed away to take them to too many events like this. And the neighborhood they’d been able to afford hadn’t really been the kind of place that held them. His mom had been more focused on him and Stefan getting good grades so they could go to college and get out of there than getting to know the neighbors.
Which they’d done. And now he and Stefan were here, in the middle of the ocean, trying to make whiskey and screwing up their love lives. At least, he was screwing up his. Stefan seemed to have given up on the idea altogether. Probably not what his mom had in mind.
She’d be happier if they’d settled down and produced grandchildren rather than barrels of whiskey. He caught a glimpse of a dark head through the crowd and felt the quick tug in his gut that told him it was Mina.
He straightened his shoulders. His mom hadn’t raised him to be a quitter. So he wasn’t going to give up on being able to tell her that he’d found someone just yet.
* * *
Mina saw Will making his way across the room and felt the now familiar wave of happiness and guilt sweep through her when he smiled, looking delighted to see her. She smiled back, hoping the expression didn’t give her away, and turned her attention back to the small stage at the end of the room where Angie was standing at a wooden lectern, dressed in a gorgeous red suit. Ryan stood beside her dressed as an elf. He looked like he wanted to be anywhere else, barely hiding his annoyance at having to wear a dorky costume with what Mina could only imagine was a major effort of will. But at least he was trying to hide it. Angie, on the other hand, looked irritated whenever she looked over to where Mina and Faith were standing with Caleb.
“What’s up with the mayor?” Will asked as he joined them. “Did one of you steal a reindeer or something?” He grinned at Faith and Caleb as he slid an arm around Mina’s shoulders.
“No, we were just born Harpers,” Mina said, shaking her head at him.
“What?” Will said.
“In case you haven’t noticed, the mayor is not a fan of our family,” Faith said. “Though usually she hides it a little better than tonight. Not sure what we’ve done in particular right this minute.”
“At a guess, showed too much Christmas spirit,” Mina said.
“Isn’t the whole point of having a Christmas Festival to let people enjoy the holiday?” Caleb asked, sounding baffled.
“Yes. But by turning up we’re ruining Angie’s perfect theory of how the Harpers are out to destroy Cloud Bay.”
“We’re what?” Faith said, her voice rising in volume. Her eyes narrowed at Mina. “Does this have anything to do with you insisting we cover all the festival events?”
“It’s not really the time to discuss it,” Mina said. Crap. She hadn’t meant to let that slip out. The last thing she needed was for Faith to decide to confront Angie here in front of practically the entire population of the island. Which her sister was more than capable of doing. Crowds and public scenes didn’t exactly faze Faith.
“I think it’s the perfect time—” Faith said.
But just then Angie tapped the microphone and the room went quiet.
“You’re going to tell me exactly what’s going on after this is done,” Faith hissed at Mina. She stepped back to stand beside Caleb, pasting a smile onto her face that probably looked genuine to anyone who didn’t know her well. Faith’s eyes had deepened to the stormy green that meant trouble. Or maybe that was just the reflection of the green dress she was wearing. The dress, the color of the fresh tips of pine needles, looked perfectly simple, hugging Faith from neck to knee, but somehow—teamed with the tiny diamond snowflakes winking in Faith’s ears and around her neck—perfectly evoked Christmas and managed to make Angie’s red suit look boring in comparison. Mina, on the other hand, had stuck to black trousers and a crimson cashmere sweater that suddenly felt way too warm in the crowded room.
“Everything okay?” Will whispered as Angie made a show of inviting Santa aka Bill up on the stage and Ryan started to call out names to come up and get their gifts. They started with the kids—who ranged from wide-eyed, tiny adorable to teenage-hiding-their-pleasure-under-embarrassment-and-coolness and all of them cute enough to make her smile—and then did the adults in alphabetical order, so there was plenty of time before it would be Mina’s turn. She’d drawn Leah for her Secret Santa recipient, which had made life easier. She’d just had to buy her a box of her favorite mint candies and a terrible zombie movie and could relax knowing that Leah would love them. Nice to get someone she knew well for once. The previous year she’d had one of the assistants who worked at the back office at the ferry company. Someone Mina didn’t think she’d ever even spoken to, though she knew who she was.
“Everything’s fine,” she said to Will. “But if Faith tries anything with Angie later on, I might need you to run interference.”
“Sure,” Will said. “But you’re going to have to tell me what this is all about.”
“Later,” Mina said. Angie was watching them again, and Mina didn’t like her expression. She had a feeling the mayor was up to something.
The parade of gift giving rolled on. By the time Faith’s name was called, Mina was very glad she’d worn flat shoes and that she had Will to lean on. Next year, if they were going to have this many people attending, they were going to have to change the format. At least set out chairs. She watched as Faith climbed the stairs to the stage, accepted her gift from Santa, and then came back down without saying anything to Angie at all. Mina let out a breath of relief as Ryan then called her name.
She moved quickly to the stage, wanting to get the whole thing over and done with as soon as possible. But as she took the gift from Bill in his Santa suit and dropped a kiss on one of the few inches of skin left bare by his impressive Santa beard, Angie stepped up to the microphone. Instead of announcing the next name on the
list—Lizzie Hermann if Mina was remembering correctly—Angie said, “I’m sure everyone will want to join me in congratulating Mina, who’s going to be having an art show at the DeVitt Gallery in L.A. in January.” Smiling poisonously at Mina, Angie started clapping. “Such a coup for one of Lansing’s favorite daughters.”
Mina, still wondering if she was hearing things—how the fuck had Angie found out about her show?—tried to find a smile. The room broke into a round of applause and Bill leaned over to say “Congratulations, kiddo” as Mina fought the urge to drag Angie off the stage and into a back room where she could tear her a new one.
Somehow she made it off the stage and back to Will.
Faith, standing next to him, was smiling but her eyes gave her away. She was pissed. She grabbed Mina and made a show of hugging her.
“I thought your art show was a secret,” Faith hissed into her ear.
“So did I,” Mina hissed back.
“Then how the hell did Angie find out about it?”
“I have no idea.” Mina said. God. Angie had just killed any chance of her doing this under the radar. A whole island couldn’t keep a secret. The news would be out in no time at all. “Fuck,” she muttered. “Don’t make a scene,” she added as she pulled back from Faith.
“Oh, I won’t. Not yet,” Faith said but she didn’t go back to stand next to Caleb. Instead, she reached out and pulled Caleb over to stand next to the three of them. A united front, Mina assumed. Meant to send Angie a message.
It should have made her feel better, but she really just wanted to get out of there. But she wasn’t going to give Angie the satisfaction of making her retreat. So she set her teeth and pretended to pay attention to the rest of the gift exchange. It seemed to take an eternity but it eventually ended. Though any hopes Mina had of making a speedy getaway after that were dashed when people started coming over to congratulate her.
It should have been fun. A moment of victory when the town learned about her good news. Instead Angie had turned it into torture. Lou and Seth made their way over and joined the wall of Harper unity as Mina smiled endlessly and said thank you to each well-wisher, operating on autopilot. At least she’d had practice with having to deal with crowds and being polite when she wasn’t in the mood. Grey had taught them the importance of maintaining a good front and how to work a room when they needed to. Mina had never expected to have to use that lesson here in her hometown, but she was glad she had learned it.