The One Who Stays

by Blake, Toni

  Even so, though, Meg’s own smile relaxed—it had been manufactured up to now, a thing she’d put in place to be cordial—but for a stranger, salesman or not, he somehow made her feel at ease.

  Well, when his body wasn’t plastered to hers anyway. The memory brought a fresh heat to her cheeks—thank God the day was bright and hopefully made the blush seem like a result of the sun.

  And blushing aside, she couldn’t argue with what he was offering. She’d always found that dealing with charmers was fine as long as you remembered you were being charmed and didn’t agree to anything you wouldn’t have otherwise. So she stood up, offered her brush to him, and said, “I’ll go find another.”

  She rummaged in the toolshed, selecting one from the drawer where she kept them stored. She stayed a minute longer than necessary, though, trying to clear her head. He was cute—more than cute, hot—and he knew it. And it was fine to be friendly, but she still hoped he wouldn’t pick up on her unwitting responses to him. She wasn’t some lonely older woman in need of male attention and she didn’t want to risk coming off that way.

  Though as she approached him through the yard while gazing out over the vast waters in the distance, the red-and-white-striped lighthouse off the south shore in view, she was glad he’d come along. Not only for practical purposes—but for personal ones he didn’t know about. Doing all this alone would have kept her fretting and fuming over Zack’s morning’s departure. As it was, working alongside Seth Darden was keeping her on her toes a bit, distracting her, making her day a little more interesting—just like the view from Suzanne’s window.

  “Always been yellow?” he looked up to ask.

  The question caught her off guard. “What?”

  “The house. Has it always been yellow?”

  “Yes.” But then she remembered. “Well, no. When my grandmother was growing up here, it was blue with black shutters. I have a few pictures of it from back then. But when she turned it into an inn after my grandfather died, she painted it yellow with white trim, just like it is now. It’s like the sun, she always said. The color of a perfect summer day.”

  Seth paused his paintbrush, tilted his head. “That’s nice,” he said. “A nice idea.”

  Meg smiled. “She used to say the color kept her warm in winter, and always reminded her that summer would come back eventually.”

  “Gets awful chilly up here, huh?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Surprised me at first,” he said. “How cold it is, even now, at the start of May.”

  “It always used to surprise me, too,” she confessed. “Year after year. We usually came in summer, my family, and it was beautiful most of the time. But whenever we visited in any other season, I always forgot how cold it would be until we got here.”

  “You stay here all year round?” he asked, squinting slightly at her under the afternoon sun. Just like on neighboring Mackinac Island, many residents didn’t winter here, which he must have already discovered.

  “Yes. My great-grandparents lived here all year round when they built the place, and my grandparents after them. And my grandmother never even thought of leaving for winter, even after my grandpa passed. So I guess sticking out the winters here is...kind of a family tradition.” She ended on a shrug and a smile.

  In fact her younger sister, Lila, in Chicago, and her parents in Ann Arbor as well, always offered her a place to stay. “Why go home right after the holidays?” her mother asked every single year. “Stay for January. Or longer.” But something about it had felt wrong. To leave the inn for that long. Her grandmother never would have, so she didn’t, either.

  It surprised her, though, to hear her handyman say, “That must be nice.”

  She shot him a glance, eyebrows rising. “To stick out the winters here? Most people think it’s a little crazy.”

  He only laughed in that easy way she’d noticed about him. “No, I meant just to...have a history like that someplace. Strong ties to where you live.”

  Maybe she took that for granted. It struck her that most people who had that probably did. And it begged the question. “Where are you from?”

  The inquiry—one which, as an innkeeper, she asked people commonly—drew from him another of those captivating grins. “Here, there, and everywhere,” he told her. “Pennsylvania as a little kid, but raised mostly down south—Mississippi and some other places. And since then, I just see where the road takes me on any given day.”

  Hmm. So he was a true drifter. The kind you saw in old movies.

  Only this was now. And someone with no ties like that, no real home...surely it came with a story. And maybe—probably—not a happy one.

  If Suzanne were here, they’d probably be exchanging glances right now, because perhaps a guy who made the road his home was, in fact, someone to steer clear of.

  And yet...it seemed a little too late for that, didn’t it?

  But he’s only doing a job for you. He doesn’t need to be a saint for that. So it’s fine.

  As the day wore on, the sun grew hotter and they made more conversation. She checked the thermometer mounted near the front door to see it was over seventy—and explained that the day had grown extraordinarily warm for May. He said it was nothing compared to a Mississippi spring, reminding her he was used to far more heat than he’d find on Summer Island any day of the year.

  The shutters on the ground got painted, two coats, front and back.

  When he resumed removing more from the house, she sheepishly confessed that she had an electric screwdriver but just hadn’t thought to charge it and would do so overnight. He smiled and told her he had one of his own he’d be happy to bring tomorrow with the rest of his tools to make getting the shutters back up a little easier than getting them down had been. It made her realize that he’d never once complained about it all day, not with all the hundreds of turns of that screwdriver he’d had to make.

  She learned he’d only arrived yesterday and that other than picking up a few groceries at Koester’s on the way to his cabin, today was his first real visit to town. “Farther than I thought from looking at the map before I came,” he told her. Then grinned and said, “Good thing I like to walk.”

  “Most people here ride bicycles. There’s a rental,” she added, pointing up the street.

  And when he just nodded and left it at that, she decided maybe he didn’t look much like a bike rider. Unless it was a Harley-Davidson.

  When she recommended a few places to eat, like Dahlia’s, he said, “Thanks, but mostly I’m just living off sandwiches, saving money. Until I make some anyway.” He punctuated it with a quick wink.

  By the end of the day, all the shutters were down, most were sanded, and half were painted. Every time she glanced at the inn, she thought it looked strange, naked, without them, and was glad when Seth said he thought they could have them all back in place by the end of the day tomorrow. “As long as we get an early start.”

  “Sounds good to me,” she told him, still a little caught up in how odd the house looked this way, like part of its identity had been stripped away. She always forgot that. This was the third time she’d taken down the shutters to repaint them since owning the place, but only when they actually came off did she remember how strangely dismantled and barren it made the inn appear.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked her.

  She tossed him a glance along with a small, tentative smile. “This may sound crazy but...”

  “I’ve probably heard crazier, so go ahead.”

  That was how he did it, how he made her feel at ease. So she said, “Well...my grandma always said that every house has a soul. And I guess I was just thinking that this house is feeling kind of embarrassed right now—like it wants its shutters back.”

  He let out a lighthearted laugh, then stood back and looked himself. “I think you might just be right. But it’ll be okay
for one night. Good for it to get out of its comfort zone a little, don’t ya think?” The almost suggestive raise of his eyebrows landed right in her solar plexus.

  Yet she shook it off with a laugh and a smile, same as she had with everything about him so far. Players gonna play; charmers gonna charm.

  Though as they set a time for him to come back in the morning and he turned to head down the front walk, he still had her thinking about comfort zones. He tossed an easy glance over his shoulder to say, “Thanks for the work, darlin’, and the hospitality, too.” Then flashed what she already thought of as a typical Seth grin.

  “You came along at just the right time,” she assured him, “so it turned out well for both of us.”

  Then, as he walked away, she shifted her thoughts to what came next. She was tired and her muscles ached—a hot shower and a book sounded good. Though she still had two steaks in her fridge to deal with. She supposed before the shower she’d take the time to grill them both—eat one, save one. Though the very notion made her scrunch up her nose. What fun. The first night alone was always the hardest.

  Unless...she found a way to make it less hard.

  Maybe the same way the day had been less hard?

  She never usually minded eating alone, but...tonight she didn’t want to.

  “Seth,” she called once he’d reached the street. She hadn’t thought it through, at all, but he’d round the bend soon and then it would be too late.

  He stopped, looked back.

  And she said, “I have an extra steak and some wine. If you want to stay for dinner.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  AN HOUR LATER they sat across from each other at the small tiled café table for two that she had already pulled up next to the firepit, planning for the anniversary dinner with Zack. Eating the same steaks, drinking the same red wine, sitting next to the same small blaze, everything the same as it would have been—except being with a different man, a stranger, left Meg feeling a little off-kilter. Part of her couldn’t believe she’d invited Seth to stay. But on the other hand, she couldn’t come up with one single reason why it was a bad idea. At least Zack’s steak wasn’t going to waste.

  Of course, she hadn’t gotten to shower, but she had run upstairs and changed her sweat-soaked tank for a fresh, clean tunic, which she’d topped with a pastel cardigan sweater. Though not the big, thick kind that Gran swore made living here easier—a thinner, prettier one in yellow that she sometimes wore over a sundress on cool summer evenings out with Zack or Suzanne.

  Dusk fell over Summer Island dramatically on this particular night, bringing a sky slashed with streaks of purple and pink. Seth had offered to do the grilling, claiming with yet another grin that he possessed mad skills in that department, so she’d merrily handed him the supersize grill spatula and tongs with a challenge: “Prove it.”

  Now they sat over plates brimming with seasoned steaks, baked potatoes wrapped in tinfoil, and early corn on the cob that had been grilled in the shucks, and all she’d had to do to contribute was uncork and pour the wine.

  “Warm,” he’d said after his first sip.

  “Red isn’t supposed to be served chilled,” she told him. “Though some people do anyway.”

  Across from her, Seth Darden playfully raised sandy eyebrows. “Didn’t know Summer Island would be so fancy, educating me on serving wine exactly the right way.” He laughed. “And I didn’t know any wine was supposed to be served warm.” Then he took another sip. “But I guess it’s okay this way.”

  She pointed toward the house. “There’s beer in the fridge if you’d rather. Chilled,” she added teasingly. Zack’s. But if he wasn’t here, it didn’t really matter who drank it.

  Seth declined, though, with a shake of his head. “Nah, I’m good, darlin’. Funny thing I’ve always found about pretty much any alcohol—the more you drink of it, the better it tastes.” Ah, that grin again. “And if it doesn’t, you know you’ve got hold of something really bad.”

  She laughed because she’d actually found the same thing to be true, though she’d never admitted it to anyone before.

  And then the conversation fell away, leaving silence other than the chirps of birds in tall trees and the crackle of a fire she’d built while he’d manned the grill. He smiled at her and she smiled at him—but she suddenly felt bashful about that and let her gaze drop. After which she raised it cautiously back—to find him still looking. And she realized this was...flirting.

  Which wasn’t at all her intention.

  Was it?

  “So tell me, Seth Darden,” she asked—maybe simply to move on from the moment and not have to think about it too hard, “what brings you to Summer Island?”

  He used a table knife to run a small slab of butter over his corn until it melted. “I told you earlier—work. And it seemed like a nice place to spend a little time.”

  But she shook her head. “No, I mean—why here? There are a million summer tourist haunts where a handyman could be handy this time of year—Mackinac is bigger and busier and right on the other side of the pass. What made you choose this place?”

  He didn’t rush to answer—seemed totally comfortable taking his time. He even cut off a bite of steak and ate it while she waited.

  “Suppose I liked the idea of so much solitude,” he finally replied. “Aren’t many places you can’t get to by car.”

  “You have to ferry to Mackinac, too,” she pointed out—then feared it sounded like she was interrogating him.

  Yet he seemed unfazed. “I actually almost went there instead—but I heard Summer Island was quieter and more laid-back in comparison. Maybe I thought it seemed like...a simple place to be.”

  Meg had, in fact, always thought of the island as Mackinac’s smaller, less popular sidekick in the Great Lakes. She nodded knowingly and said, “If that’s what you came looking for, you’re in the right place.” But she’d noticed the way he’d said maybe, and she’d thought it sounded...vague, like he was making it up as he went. “No other reason, though?”

  He stopped eating, took a sip of the Merlot she’d poured for him, met her gaze, and leaned back in his chair. When he began to speak, she almost got the feeling he was about to tell her a secret. “Truth is... I think it’s possible I came here once, as a little kid. Can’t remember it much, but figured if I was right, it’d be nice to go back. And besides—” he shrugged easily “—everybody’s gotta be somewhere. I just happen to be here. No real reason, I’m afraid.”

  She took that in, turned it over in her head. She wished there were a reason—but she wasn’t sure why. Maybe she wanted him to have some direction, more purpose behind his drifting than just...drifting. Because she liked him. And didn’t want to find reasons not to.

  “And what brought you here, Meg Sloan?” he asked, back to eating again.

  She took a sip of wine and laughed. “I thought we already covered that, more or less. The place was my grandmother’s.”

  He pointed at her with his fork and said, “More or less being the key words in that answer. How’d the place become yours? Where were you before you were here?”

  Meg thought back to a girlhood that felt like a lifetime ago. “I grew up in Ann Arbor. Got a degree in marketing from Michigan. Wasn’t sure what I planned to do with it—but that’s how it is with marketing degrees for a lot of people. It’s like taking business classes in high school—you just figure it’ll cover a lot of bases and get you a good job somewhere. Even without being sure what I wanted to do, though, I was...ready to take on the world back then.” She remembered that precise moment in time—fear and excitement mingling. A whole future ahead of her and a million different directions it could go in.

  “And did you take it on?” he asked, brows lifting slightly. He appeared sincerely interested—making her sorry her reply would be a letdown.

  “Yes and no,” she said softly, wit
h only the slightest hint of self-deprecation. Mostly, she’d let that go. And she’d let go of the girl who’d been so ready to be brave and adventurous. Other things had gotten in the way, taking the brave and adventurous right out of her. “Afraid it’s a long and fairly tragic story.”

  Across the table, Seth tilted his head—and looked a little sad. Because she was letting too much leak out here. Damn wine. “Will you tell me?” He asked it softly, as if hoping he wasn’t stepping on her toes.

  “You might be sorry you asked,” she warned.

  “I’m tough—I can take it,” he assured her, his expression somehow both playful and supportive at once, encouraging her to go on.

  She took a deep breath, thought about where to begin. She actually seldom had to tell the whole story—most people here knew at least parts of it, and it was such old news. A thing that was with her always, dwelling quietly, and yet she didn’t often have occasion to think through the details. They might be hard to say. But something in his eyes made that okay.

  “Well, at first I had it all. I got a great job with an ad firm in Chicago. And within a year I was engaged to an up-and-coming executive and we moved in together.” Drew had been the man of her dreams, everything she could want in a guy, their courtship the stuff of fairy tales. And just mentioning him had, that easily, brought back certain pangs—painful memories of how good things had been between them. Blips of recollections flitted through her brain like images in an old-fashioned slide show—picnicking at Grant Park, Cubs games at Wrigley because he was a big fan and had turned her into one, too, hanging curtains together when they’d rented their apartment. Life had stretched before them so grandly, with plans for buying a condo after the wedding, and eventually a house in the suburbs when it was time to have kids.

  “I’ll admit I’m intrigued to hear how you went from there to here. Seems like two different worlds.”