The Chesapeake Diaries Series 7-Book Bundle: Coming HOme, Home Again, Almost Home, Hometown Girl, Home for the Summer, The Long Way Home, At the River's Edge

by Stewart, Mariah

  “I remember you had a call.”

  “I didn’t want to leave, because …”

  She looked up at him. “Because …?”

  “Because being with you that night … you were so beautiful and so …” He tried to find the right word to describe what she’d been to him that night. Finally, he had to settle for, “Steffie.”

  She smiled. “So is ‘Steffie’ an adjective now?”

  “You were just so you. Fun and lighthearted and so beautiful … did I say ‘beautiful’?”

  “You did, but it’s okay if you repeat yourself.”

  “Well, you were. I felt as if I’d been transported to another planet that night. Music and dancing and a beautiful woman to share them with.” He bit his lower lip. “I hated to leave, Stef, but I had to get back to Robin. I felt guilty enough for having left her, and I felt guilty for having such a terrific time with you when she was suffering so much.”

  “I bet Robin would have been very happy to know that you had a good time, even for just those few hours,” Stef said.

  “Yeah, but still …” His voice trailed off.

  “I’ll bet if she were here, she’d be really pissed at you for thinking so little of her.” She moved up a step to sit next to him. “I’ll bet she understood how much you’d sacrificed for her even more than you did.”

  “It never felt like a sacrifice, Stef.”

  “I wonder whatever happened to the Wade MacGregor I knew when I was a kid,” she mused. “You know, the one who almost got kicked out school about five times every year from elementary school right through twelfth grade? The one who used to race his aunt’s Mercedes on the road to Ballard in the middle of the night? The one who broke more hearts in St. Dennis than—”

  “All right. Enough.” Wade laughed in spite of himself.

  “It was a wonderful thing you did for your friend.” She paused. “What you’re still doing for her.”

  “Stef, can you please keep this to yourself? It isn’t something that I want out there. Dallas and Berry know, of course, but no one else.”

  “Grant?”

  He nodded. “Right. Grant knows, but Dallas has threatened him with all manner of terrible things if he tells anyone.”

  “He wouldn’t tell,” she said softly. “Your secret is safe, Wade.”

  “I know. I wanted you to know what really happened, but I don’t want it to get around.”

  “Got it.” She pretended to zip her lips.

  She rested her head against his shoulder for a moment.

  “Thank you,” she said simply. “For telling me about Robin. I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet her. I think I would have liked her.”

  He nodded. “She would have liked you, too.”

  “Well,” she said, “I don’t know about you, but I feel as if I’ve had my guts ripped out. How do you walk around with all that inside you? It must hurt like hell.”

  “It’s what is,” he said simply.

  “Thank you.” She leaned over, kissed him softly on one side of his mouth. “Thank you for trusting me.”

  They sat with her head on his shoulder for a few long moments, Wade too wrung out to say much more. Finally, she said, “I just heard the church bells from St. Mary’s. They ring out the hour. It’s eleven, and I have a very early morning.”

  “I’ll help you close up the house,” he told her, but made no attempt to move.

  “That’s not necessary, I can—”

  “I’m not going to leave you here alone. You never know who’s going to be passing by and see the lights on …”

  “That didn’t bother you, that Jesse stopped by …?” She stood and brushed the dust off the seat of her jeans.

  “Nah.” He dismissed the thought.

  She smiled as if she knew it for the lie that it was.

  They gathered up the pieces of wallpaper that had been stripped and filled several large plastic bags. Wade waited in the front hall while she turned off the kitchen and dining-room lights.

  “All set?” she asked when she came back into the foyer, and he nodded.

  They walked out together and he waited while she locked the front door. At the end of the walk, he pushed open the gate and it creaked loudly, as if it were complaining.

  “I’ll do something about that,” he told her. “It sounds like it’s screaming in pain.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “I want to.”

  He saw her to her car, and kissed her before she got in. He stood at his own driver’s-side door and watched her drive away, her hand emerging from the window to give a little wave. He sat behind the steering wheel in the Jeep and felt raw inside. He wondered if there would ever come a time when thinking about Robin didn’t make him feel sick.

  He’d said her name aloud tonight, which was something he almost never did anymore. It felt as if he were invoking the dead, and after all Robin had been through, he wanted nothing more than for her to rest in peace.

  His mind went back to that moment when his lips brushed against Steffie’s. He’d felt a spark, he could swear he had, a quick little charge that had gone right through him. He reminded himself that kissing her had not been part of the game plan for the night. Talking—explaining—that had been the plan. But once he’d found himself that close to her, there hadn’t been any conscious thought or any decision. He’d just been drawn to her, and while his brain may have been thinking I want to talk to you about Austin’s mother, his mouth had been thinking kiss.

  Moth to flame …

  He turned the key in the ignition and drove back to Berry’s on all side roads, meandering around town because he needed a little time alone. He sensed that he’d taken a step in his relationship with Steffie that night on more than one level. He just wasn’t sure he knew where they were heading. In another week, he’d be off to Connecticut. So where, he asked himself, did that leave her?

  “So how’d it go last night?” Vanessa knocked once on Scoop’s back door before letting herself in and making herself at home.

  “How’d what go?” Steffie frowned, her concentration broken. “Here. Taste this and tell me what you think. Too much vanilla? Not enough?”

  She handed Vanessa a spoonful of ice cream the color of buttermilk.

  “Oh, yum!” Vanessa’s eyes widened. “What is this?”

  “You like it?”

  “Love it. What’s in it?”

  “Honey and lavender. I’ve been having a devil of a time balancing the flavors.” She picked up a spoon and swiped a bit for herself. “I’ve been experimenting with different flavors of honey and different strains of lavender, and I don’t know which I like best.”

  She tasted again.

  “Still not right,” she mumbled.

  “Lavender? As in the herb? The flower?” Vanessa asked.

  “Right.”

  “No wonder it smells so good.”

  “I’m more concerned with the way it tastes.”

  “It’s delicious, Stef. It’s not like anything I’ve ever had before. You’re not going through all this for the ice cream for Saturday’s run, are you?”

  “Nah. That’s strictly a vanilla and chocolate day. If I tried to do something too complicated for that many people, I’d have a breakdown. It’s been stressful enough trying to come up with this.” She held up her plastic spoon and took one last lick before tossing it into the trash.

  “Well, what’s this for? Flavor of the month?”

  “Dallas’s birthday. Grant asked me to make a special ice-cream flavor just for her. What do you give the woman who has everything if not her own ice-cream flavor?”

  “How romantic is that?” Vanessa leaned on the end of the counter and sighed. “And you just invented this, just like that?”

  “Not really invented. I found a ton of recipes on the Internet. What I’m doing is modifying what I found.” Stef grinned. “Perfecting, if you will.”

  “And I will.” Vanessa picked up a clean spoon and took another swipe at
the container. “It’s a beautiful idea—not to mention an extremely tasty one.”

  “Well, I hope she likes it. It took me forever to come up with the concept. I mean, when you look at Dallas, what do you notice first?”

  Vanessa mulled over the question for a moment, then began to nod her head. “Her eyes. Lavender eyes. Lavender ice cream.” She grinned broadly. “Genius!”

  “Thanks. I still want to tweak it a bit, but I have a little time before I have to start making enough for the party. Grant said she’s invited a ton of people, but he doesn’t have the count yet. I told him this morning he really needs to pin this down for me so that I know how much I have to make.”

  “Why don’t you just call her and ask?”

  “He wanted it to be a surprise.”

  “So speaking of MacGregors, we saw a certain Jeep parked in front of your house last night.” Vanessa helped herself to a bottle of water from the refrigerator, then pulled a wooden stool closer to the worktable and sat.

  “Wade dropped off a ladder.”

  “And …?”

  “And … we stripped wallpaper.” She shrugged nonchalantly. “And we made out a little.”

  “Nice of him to help …” Vanessa blinked. “Run that last part past me, would you?”

  “You heard me.” Steffie grinned.

  “Whose idea was that?”

  “I guess it was his, but I think the spirit probably moved us both at the same time.” Steffie made a face. “And this after my vow to keep my distance from him. I was going for immunity but that didn’t work out so well. I caved at the first opportunity. Gotta work on that willpower thing.”

  “So?”

  “So what?”

  “Don’t make me hurt you.” Vanessa poked Steffie on the arm with the blunt end of her spoon.

  “So it was …” Stef paused to search for the word. “It was one perfect kiss.”

  “Just one?” Vanessa frowned.

  “Hey, no one was more disappointed than I was,” Steffie shot back. “And there would have been more—probably a lot more—if Jesse Enright hadn’t arrived on the scene.”

  “Jesse Enright? The guy we figured out was the handsome stranger we saw around the docks a couple of weeks ago?”

  “Right. He’s my mom’s family lawyer, and now he’s mine as well. He handled all the paperwork on the house. His grandfather actually wrote the will for Horace.”

  “So wait … I need to picture this.” Vanessa closed her eyes. “You and Wade are getting it on in the kitchen and Handsome Stranger rings the doorbell—”

  “Didn’t even ring. Knocked, then walked in,” Stef corrected her. “My own fault for leaving the front door wide open.”

  “Oooh, how’d the Brew Meister like that?” Vanessa’s eyes popped open.

  Stef shot Vanessa a look that clearly said, Not much.

  “Fancy that,” Vanessa replied.

  “Jesse only stayed for a few minutes. He made some polite comments about the house and then he left. I think he realized he’d walked into a ‘situation.’ ”

  “Nice of him to stop by, though. So you think he’s interested?”

  “Maybe.” Steffie paused. “Yeah, I think he might be.”

  “You?”

  “I feel so conflicted about Wade.” She grimaced. “I’ve spent half my life conflicted about Wade. I’ve waited forever for him to put a lip-lock on me like he did last night, but …”

  “But …?”

  “But he’s been breaking my heart since I was a kid.” Stef put down her measuring spoons. “Jesse, on the other hand, is really a nice guy. Not the heart-breaker type.”

  “I am a fan of the nice guy myself, since I happen to have snagged me a truly nice guy who also happens to be a very hot guy.”

  “A nice, hot guy.” Stef nodded. “What every girl wants.”

  “So true.”

  “Oh!” Steffie remembered the heart on the dining-room wall. “Horace drew a huge—I mean huge—heart on the dining-room wall and wrote ‘Horace loves Daisy’ inside the heart, then covered it with wallpaper. Wade found it when he was stripping the paper in there.”

  “Who is Daisy?”

  “We don’t know. Mom doesn’t recall ever seeing Horace with a lady friend.” She measured cream for a new experimental batch in a clean ice-cream container. “We’re assuming that Horace drew it, anyway. You need to see it. It’s very cool.”

  “I bet Miss Grace would know who Daisy was, if Daisy was from St. Dennis.” She took a sip of water. “Stef, I know this sounds off-the-wall, but you know my Ouija board?”

  Stef nodded and measured sugar and added it to the mix, muttering, “Maybe another egg, maybe make this more like a French vanilla …”

  “Well, maybe the spirit’s name isn’t Daz, as in ‘dazzle,’ but Daz, as in ‘Daisy.’ ”

  Stef looked up. “Huh. Horace’s Daisy could be your spirit guide?” She shook her head as if to clear it. “Listen to me, I’m starting to sound like you.” She laughed and went back to her recipe.

  “What? You don’t think I have a spirit guide?”

  “No, I don’t. I think at this point you’re subconsciously directing that little plastic triangle to spell out ‘D-A-Z.’ ”

  “Stef, I swear, I am not.”

  “ ‘Unconsciously’ means you’re not aware you’re doing it.”

  “I know what the word means. And consciously or unconsciously or subconsciously, I am not pushing that little …” She paused. “I wonder what that little triangle is called …”

  “I have no idea. But your Daz and Horace’s Daisy can’t be the same because ‘D-A-Z’ doesn’t exist.”

  “Well, the next time you’re at my house, I will hand over the board and the little thingy and you can try it yourself and then you’ll see.” Vanessa screwed the cap back onto her bottle.

  “I know who Austin’s mother was,” Stef confided. She’d known she wouldn’t be able to resist telling Vanessa something—not everything that Wade had told her, but she couldn’t lie to Vanessa and she couldn’t withhold everything.

  “We are sitting here talking about ice cream and Ouija boards and all this time you’ve known about Austin’s mother?”

  Steffie took Vanessa by the arm and led her out the front door to the tables outside. There was no one in sight, but still, Stef lowered her voice as she and Ness took seats.

  “Listen, if I tell you something, you have to promise—you have to swear—not to tell anyone. Not even Grady.” Stef was certain that Vanessa would tell Grady every word, but she had to impress upon her the importance of not passing it on to anyone else and definitely not sharing over coffee.

  “I swear.” Vanessa’s eyes were large with anticipation. “So spill already.”

  “Her name was Robin Kennedy and she was Wade’s business partner, but we knew that part from Miss Grace.” Steffie took a deep breath. “She was also his best friend, but they’d never been more than friends. Wade married her because she was dying. She had an affair that turned out badly and then she found out that she was pregnant and then she found out that she was terminally ill. Wade married her before she died because she was so afraid of what would happen to Austin.”

  “Oh God, that’s so sad.” Vanessa’s eyes filled with tears. “And that’s so noble of him, why—”

  “Vanessa, you can’t tell anyone.”

  “I know, I said I wouldn’t, but …” She sighed deeply, then sat up straight and asked, “You don’t think Wade was making that up about them just being friends so that he could make a fancy move on you and not look like a tool?”

  “No. You had to see his face, Ness. It was obvious that it was killing him just to talk about it.”

  “That is just the saddest thing I ever heard.” Vanessa took a tissue from her bag and dabbed at her eyes. “So I guess he sold their business and came back to St. Dennis because he couldn’t bear to stay in Texas after she died.”

  “I guess.” Steffie knew better, but she wasn’
t telling that part.

  “Poor Wade. Poor Austin.”

  “I saw a picture of her,” Steffie said softly.

  “He showed you a picture?”

  “Uh-uh. I looked her up.”

  “What do you mean, you looked her up?” Vanessa frowned. “Looked her up where?”

  “On Google,” Stef admitted.

  “You Googled Wade’s dead wife? Didn’t that feel a little creepy?”

  “A little, yeah. It did.”

  “So what did she look like?”

  “She was very pretty.”

  “Very dark hair, dark eyes, I imagine.”

  “You’re thinking of Austin’s coloring. I expected that, too, but no.” Stef shook her head. “She was sort of fair, light brown hair. I couldn’t tell what color her eyes were.”

  “Anything else?”

  “There were several articles about an accident her parents were in years ago. They were both killed.”

  “That poor girl really had the worst luck, didn’t she?” Vanessa’s eyes reflected sympathy. “I’m sorry she had such a bad time of things.”

  “I am, too,” Stef agreed. “My heart just aches for her, and for Austin, and for Wade. The whole thing is just beyond tragic.”

  “Tragic.” Vanessa agreed as she glanced at her watch. “I have to get back to my shop. I left Nan in charge and told her I’d be back in a half hour so she could leave, and I’m late.”

  “Did you want anything special?”

  “Yeah, I wanted to pump you for information about Wade.” Vanessa smiled. “Mission accomplished.”

  “But you won’t forget and you won’t tell …”

  Vanessa shook her head. “Never. We won’t even speak of it again.”

  Steffie seriously doubted that but she let it pass.

  “As long as you’re here, take a little of the butter brickle for the road. I made it earlier this morning and it totally rocks. You need to try this flavor.” They walked back into the shop.

  “Well, in that case”—Vanessa grabbed a small container from the top of the counter—“don’t mind if I do …”

  Steffie was interrupted four more times that afternoon: once by a teacher from the local nursery school wanting to arrange for a class field trip to Scoop; once by several old friends of her parents who stopped in to let her know that they’d registered for Natalie’s Run and how wonderful it was that the family had found such a nice way to honor Nat, who they remembered as a “precocious little thing” before she fell ill; Jesse stopped in right after lunch, and later in the afternoon, Clay Madison popped in.