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

  “Are you kidding? Do you know how many of those D.C. pols would be staying here? How many could conceivably come back if they like what they see?” He shook his head. “I can’t even begin to tell you what we could do with the revenue, Luce.”

  “Let me see what I can work out with Bonnie. I’ll do the best I can, Dan.”

  “I know you will. I’m sorry to put you in this position—I really am. But I had to ask. Thanks, Lucy.”

  “Right now I have to run up and change.” She stood, gathered her bags, and went to the door.

  “You going somewhere?” he asked.

  “Yes. I have a date,” she told him as she walked out of the office. Over her shoulder, she added, “Don’t wait up.…”

  Chapter 15

  “Wow.” Lucy studied the menu at Lola’s Café. “When did fine dining come to St. Dennis? Other than at the inn, of course.”

  “Seriously?” Clay peered over his menu. “Was that supposed to be a serious question?”

  “It was,” she replied. “It is.”

  “You’ve been away from home for way too long if you have to ask that. In addition to Lola’s—and of course the inn—there’s now Bancroft’s on Charles Street right before you go over the bridge to Cannonball Island, and McClaren’s over on New River Road. Not to mention Let’s Do Brunch, which is gourmet from its sandwiches to its frittatas.”

  “Sounds like I’ve been put in my place.” She smiled in spite of the mild rebuke she detected in his tone. “Looks like I have a lot of catching up to do.”

  “Hey, the foodie movement is alive and well in St. Dennis.” He put the menu down. “I’m pleased to say that I’ve played a modest part in its success.”

  “Because your patronage keeps all these restaurants in business?”

  “I don’t deny I like to dine out. After all, I’m a lonely bachelor, living by myself …” He unconvincingly faked a sad-sack face.

  “Baloney. I’ll bet you know your way around the kitchen.”

  “I have my moments.”

  “But back to your contribution to the success of all these new dining establishments.”

  “They all buy from me. Every one of them. Whether they buy some of the produce I raise, or only certain things, or just herbs … every chef around buys from the Madison Farms.”

  She detected the note of pride in his voice, and it made her smile. She understood what it meant to do something really well, then stand back and take a look at it through someone else’s eyes. “You really do love what you do, don’t you?”

  “I’m a farmer. I never wanted to be anything else. I’ve never spent one day wishing I were somewhere else, doing something other than farming.”

  “Do you think you’ll be able to continue to supply the customers you have now once you get more into the business of brewing beer?”

  “I admit time is occasionally going to get tight. I grow certain specialty items for restaurants outside of the Eastern Shore. D.C., Baltimore, Philly, New York. I wouldn’t give up that business. It’s not only lucrative, but it’s fun.” Clay grinned. “Besides, I’m determined to get MacGregor out there in the fields with me.”

  “I take it that Wade’s not much of a farmer.”

  “Not on his best day. But he’s willing to learn because he wants to be involved in the total process. He can’t afford to have the business collapse if something happens to me, so he has to know his way around the crops. Just like I have to learn his end of it. He’s the one who knows how to brew a great beer, the one who has the formulas for all those flavored beers he wants to make.”

  “I thought beer’s flavor was just beer.”

  “In the hands of some, that may be so.” He raised an amused eyebrow. “But Wade’s sort of a mad scientist when it comes to brewing beer.”

  “I’m conjuring up an image of him wearing a white coat puttering around in a lab full of bubbling test tubes.”

  “He’s maybe more like Dr. Frankenstein, taking a little of this and a little of that for his creations.”

  The waiter stopped by for their orders, refilled their wineglasses, and took their menus.

  “So what exactly are you growing that Wade will turn into flavored beers?”

  “Chili peppers, heather, basil, oregano, raspberries, cherries, nasturtiums—”

  “Whoa.” Lucy held up a hand for him to stop. “You lost me at chili peppers.”

  “Wade said his chili beer was a big seller for him in Texas.”

  “The Eastern Shore isn’t Texas,” she reminded him.

  “I think there’s a market for it. As far as the fruit beers are concerned, they’ve been around for a long time. It’s going to be an adventure to see what we can come up with and what sells for us, but we both agreed we have nothing to lose. I think the experimentation we do over the next year or so will pay off. Wade had a really successful brewery and he’s applying everything he learned to this effort. He believes MadMac can be even more successful because we’re able to cut costs by growing so many of the raw materials ourselves. Besides cutting out the supplier, we’ll have total control over the quality of our ingredients. We can make the best because we’ll grow the best, and it can all be organic.”

  “Sounds like a plan that can’t fail.”

  “Right. Unless, of course, the weather is too cold or too hot or too wet.” He grimaced. “Or if our hops get hit by a fungus or insect invasion. Other than that, yeah, it’s foolproof.”

  “I think it’s admirable that you’re willing to get into a totally new venture, to use your resources in a whole new way.”

  “Small farmers face a challenge. The big agricultural concerns dominate the marketplace. It’s become harder and harder for legacy farmers to hold on. So anything I can do to keep my farm relevant, to make it prosperous enough to keep it going, I will do. I feel like I owe it to my dad and my granddad and all those other farmers in my family to keep it going.”

  “I guess I feel the same way about the inn,” Lucy said. “An ancestor of my dad’s built that place, and while it didn’t start out as an inn, it’s had a long and happy life as one. I didn’t realize until today how much responsibility I feel for it.” She stopped to take a sip of wine as her thoughts gathered.

  “What happened today?”

  “My brother told me that there were two events that could greatly benefit the inn financially which would require my planning, one this summer, one in September.”

  “More weddings?”

  “One is a party for a family who are longtime guests of the inn who have to be rebooked because of the Magellan wedding. Dan said they agreed to move their booking to July but only if I do this party for them. I believe there may have been a lawsuit implied.” Lucy sighed. “The other one—the September event—is Senator Francis’s daughter’s wedding.”

  “Oh, no pressure there.”

  “No kidding.” Lucy tapped her fingers on the side of her glass. “If I say sure, no problem—which is what my brother is hoping I’ll say—I’ll end up neglecting my own business. I mean, the logistics of the senator’s wedding … the time involved. It would take me most of the summer to pull that one off.”

  “So you’d be in St. Dennis all summer?” he asked.

  “Pretty much, yes.” She watched his eyes, saw the wheels turning, and she laughed in spite of herself. “Yes, I would be home for much of the summer, and I can see that possibility doesn’t bother you at all.”

  “Not a bit.” He toasted the prospect with a tilt of his wineglass before taking a sip. “I understand your dilemma, though. You’re thinking you have to choose between your business and the family’s business, and you’re torn because you don’t want to see either of them suffer.”

  “Yes. You get it. That’s it exactly.” She put her glass down. “Of course, I feel some responsibility to my brother. He’s had to carry the inn for years by himself. He took over when my dad passed away, and he’s done a remarkable job in making it the success that it is. He’s broug
ht it up to date as much as he could afford to, he’s reinvented it so that it’s almost a resort with all the activities, the tennis courts, the playground for the kids, the kayaks and the boats … he’s been a genius at that. He’s the one who started having weddings and big gatherings there, even before destination weddings became as big as they are now. He really has made the Inn at Sinclair’s Point what it is today.”

  “I’ll bet you worked just as hard to make your business successful,” Clay pointed out, and she nodded.

  “Bonnie and I have worked very hard.” She thought of all the hours she put in on a daily basis, the weeks and the months—and yes, the years, when time off was almost nonexistent. There was no way she’d let Shaefer & Sinclair go off the rails. “I can’t let that go.”

  “You don’t have to. Do both.” He reached across the table and took her hand. “You’re talking about one event in July and the other in September. So you set up a temporary office here for the summer to do what you have to do, and then you go back to California after the senator’s daughter’s wedding and get back into your groove.”

  “That’s pretty much the conclusion I’d come to,” she confessed, pleased that he’d seen her predicament for what it was and understood why she couldn’t abandon either. “Dan’s giving me a small office to handle the Magellan wedding, and I suppose I could use it for as long as I have to. It would mean handing off a lot of work to the staff in L.A., but I suppose if I have Ava and Corrine working the planning stages now, it would work …” She mentally ran through the events that were already on the books. There were one or two for which no substitution would be acceptable, but most of the others, she thought, would be fine with either of the other planners and, of course, Bonnie.

  She became aware of someone at her shoulder. She looked up to find their server, holding their salads and apparently waiting for her to move out of the way.

  “Oh.” She flashed a smile. “Sorry …”

  When the waiter was finished and had walked away, Lucy looked across the table at Clay and said, “That’s exactly what I’m going to do. I’ll have two offices this summer and divide my time according to where I’m needed when.” She sighed happily and dug into her salad.

  “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help,” he said.

  She speared a tomato and raised the fork to her mouth, then paused. “Maybe you can. I’ll be meeting with the chef at the inn this coming week to go over the menus for the Magellans. If he has any special dishes in mind, maybe we’ll ask you to grow whatever it is he needs.”

  “I already grow for the inn,” he told her, “but sure, tell Gavin to let me know if I have to put in anything special, though we’re running short of time if I have to start something from seed.”

  She took a bite of the tomato. “I’ll keep that in mind when I meet with Susanna. I’ve been trying to pin her down on the menu for the past month. If I tell her the farmer needs to plant now, it might spur her on.”

  “Tell her if she plays her cards right, there might even be a specialty beer available.”

  “Oh, that would be fabulous.” Lucy put her fork back down. “If we could offer a special beer—like, call it Magellan or something—exclusive to them for a limited time …” Susanna would love that, she knew. “Is that possible? Can you make a beer between now and the end of June?”

  “Not from our crops, but I’ll talk to Wade.”

  “That would be really something.” Her mind began to take off. “Oh, and maybe when you get your brewery up and running, you could make a beer that would be exclusive to the inn.”

  “I can talk to Daniel about that,” Clay told her. “We’ll call it LuLu Beer.”

  She laughed, and suddenly everything that she’d been fretting about over the past few months—the overbookings, the botched scheduling, floral designers who got their orders mixed up and caterers who backed out at the last minute, DJs who didn’t show, cranky brides and their near-impossible mothers—all seemed somehow less important than they had just a few days earlier. In the flicker of candlelight, she saw the boy she used to laugh with, the boy who’d kept her early secrets and who shared the carefree days of her childhood, and she saw the man he’d become. The boy had once been her best friend. Something told her that the man still could be that friend, that keeper of secrets—and a lot more.

  A whole lot more, judging by the way he looked at her.

  The waiter brought them the dessert menu after they’d finished their meals, but Clay handed them back with a thank you and a smile. To Lucy he said, “I have a better idea.”

  “But they serve your sister’s cupcakes here,” Lucy protested. “I saw it noted on the menu.”

  “I know where there’s a private stash of Brooke’s best chocolate raspberry cupcakes, baked this morning.”

  Lucy raised her eyebrows. “And where might they be?”

  “On my kitchen counter.”

  “Oh, wait.” A smile played at the corners of her mouth. “Is this the Madison equivalent of ‘want to see my etchings?’ ”

  “Much better. Etchings aren’t edible. Besides”—he signaled for the check—“I never was much of an artist.”

  “Not much of a baker either, if you’re relying on your sister to deliver the goods.”

  “Ouch.”

  “However, since I have tasted your sister’s cupcakes, I’d be a fool to decline.”

  “A wise decision. Best baker on the Eastern Shore.”

  He paid the bill and helped her drape her jacket over her shoulders. They walked out into the spring evening and he took her hand.

  “This is such a beautiful time of the year here,” she said as they walked across the street to the parking lot. “I too often forget the little things that make it special.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the daffodils and the tulips that are blooming everywhere. The English wood hyacinths. The dogwood and the azalea and the weeping cherry trees. The colors are just so perfect, and the air is so delicately scented. It’s why you always think of pastel colors when you think about spring. In my head, spring is always soft yellow and pink and lavender and pale green like new grass.”

  “What colors are summer?”

  “The colors of heat. Red and bright yellow,” she replied without thinking.

  “What about blue and green? Where do they fit in?”

  “They’re summer as well. The colors of the Bay, and shade trees.”

  “And fall …?”

  “Browns and golds, rusty reds and deepest orange.” She smiled, anticipating his next question. “And winter is white and silver.”

  “And back in California?” he asked. “What do your seasons look like there?”

  “Where I live?” She thought about it for a moment. “For me, mostly yellow and green all year round. There are other colors, I suppose, but that’s what I think of, when I think of the colors of L.A. And haze on the freeways, but I don’t know how to describe the color of that.”

  He laughed. “We get haze here as well, don’t forget.”

  “But only in July and August, if my memory serves. When it gets so hot and the heat rises off the sidewalks and the mist rises off the Bay. That’s a different kind of haze.”

  As they approached the Jeep, Clay opened the car with the remote and walked Lucy to the passenger side.

  “I can get it,” she said when he reached for the door handle.

  “I’m sure you can,” he replied as he opened it.

  “If my grandma were here, she’d say that the Madisons raised you right.”

  “They did their best. Some of it stuck.” He closed the door behind her, walked around to the driver’s side, and got in.

  Lucy rested her head against the back of the seat and watched from the corner of her eye as Clay fastened his seat belt and started the car.

  “It’s a pretty night,” she said as he turned onto Charles Street.

  “We have a lot of pretty nights here. I’m glad you’ll be
around for some of them.”

  “Me too.”

  When she’d set out for St. Dennis early that morning, spending the summer here was the last thing on her mind. Funny, she thought, how sometimes things happen and you realize that the something was exactly what you’d wanted—what you needed—without even being aware that you wanted or needed it. She hadn’t spent a summer in St. Dennis since she was in high school, and suddenly it was the only place she wanted to be.

  “Penny for them,” Clay said as they approached the farm.

  “I was just thinking that it would be nice to spend the summer here, that’s all.”

  He parked the car close to the house and turned off the engine.

  “Think you can still hold your own when it comes to crabbing?” he asked.

  “With a net or with a line?”

  “Either way. I’m betting you’ve lost your touch.”

  “That’s a bet you’re going to lose.” She turned in her seat to face him as she released her seat belt.

  “You’ve been away a long time. I doubt you’ve maintained any of your old technique.”

  “I figure it’s a lot like riding a bike.”

  She welcomed his embrace when he reached for her, lifted her face for his kiss. She waited for that momentary hesitation that always accompanied the first seconds of intimacy of any kind, whether the hug of a friend or the first exploratory kiss of a new relationship. She waited, determined to push past it, because she’d wanted Clay to kiss her, wanted to kiss him back, wanted to push back against the years and the darkness that every once in a while arose in her. She waited, but the little click she usually heard inside her head—that instinct that told her to run, she was in danger—never came.

  It was an anomaly she’d ponder later tonight when she was back in her room at the inn, but for now, she simply wanted to savor the sensation of this beautiful man kissing her, of kissing him back. She held his face in her hands and let the warmth of his touch spread through her as his tongue teased the corners of her mouth. She found herself wanting more.

  When had she ever wanted more?

  This is what it’s like when you’re not afraid, she thought. This is what it’s like when you’re with someone you trust.…