Brambleberry House

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “Good luck with your pies.”

  “Good luck with your stairs,” she responded. “Send Simon up if you need to.”

  He nodded and headed out the door, probably completely oblivious that he was leaving two females to watch wistfully after him.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ABOUT HALFWAY THROUGH helping Julia peel the apples, Maddie asked if she could stop for a few minutes and take a little rest.

  “Of course, baby,” Julia assured her.

  Already Maddie had made it an hour past the time when Julia thought she would give out. School alone was exhausting for her, especially starting at a new school and the effort it took to make new friends. Throw in an hour of after-school activities then picking the apples and it was no wonder Maddie was drooping.

  A few moments later, Julia peered through the kitchen doorway to the living room couch and found her curled up, fast asleep.

  Julia set down the half-peeled apple, dried her hands off on her apron, and went to double-check on her. Yes, it might be a bit obsessive, but she figured she had earned the right the last few years to a little cautious overreaction.

  Maddie’s color looked good, though, and she was breathing evenly so Julia simply covered her with her favorite crocheted throw and returned to the kitchen.

  Her job was a bit lonely now, without Maddie’s quiet observations or Simon’s bubbly chatter. With nothing to distract her, she found her gaze slipping with increasing frequency out the window.

  She couldn’t see much from this angle but every once in a while Will and Simon would pass into the edge of her view as they moved from Will’s power saw to the porch.

  She had nearly finished peeling the apples when she suddenly heard a light scratch on the door of her apartment over the steady hammering and the occasional whine of power tools.

  Somehow she wasn’t surprised to find Conan standing on the other side, his tail wagging and his eyes expectant.

  “Let me guess,” she murmured. “All that hammering is interfering with your sleep.”

  She could swear the dog dipped his head up and down as if nodding. He padded through the doorway and into the living room, where he made three circles of his body before easing down to his stomach on the floor beside Maddie’s couch.

  “Watch over her for me, won’t you?”

  The dog rested his head on his front paws, his attention trained on Maddie as if the couch where she slept was covered in peanut butter.

  “Good boy,” Julia murmured, and returned to the kitchen.

  She finished her work quickly, slicing enough apples for a half-dozen pies.

  She assembled the pies quickly—cheating a little and using store-bought pie shells. She had a good pie crust recipe but she didn’t have the time for it today since Eben and Chloe would be returning soon.

  Only two pies could cook at a time in her oven and they took nearly forty minutes. After she slid the first pair in, she untied her apron and hung it back on the hook in the kitchen.

  Without giving herself time to consider, she grabbed the egg timer off the stovetop, set it for the time the pies needed and stuck it in her pocket, then headed down the stairs to check on Simon.

  It was nearly five-thirty but she couldn’t see any sign of Anna or Sage yet. Sage, she knew, would be meeting Eben and Chloe at the small airstrip in Seaside, north of Cannon Beach. As for Anna, she sometimes worked late at her store in town or the new one in Lincoln City she had opened earlier in the summer.

  She followed the sound of male voices—Will’s lower-pitched voice a counterpoint to Simon’s mile-a-minute higher tones.

  She stepped closer, still out of sight around the corner of the house, until she could hear their words.

  “My mom says next year I can play Little League baseball,” Simon was saying.

  “Hold the board still or we’ll have wobbly steps, which won’t do anyone any good.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Baseball, huh?” Will said a moment later.

  “Yep. I couldn’t play this year because of Maddie’s bone transplant and because we were moving here. But next year, for sure. I can’t wait. I played last year, even though I had to miss a lot of games and stuff when Mad was in the hospital.”

  She closed her eyes, grieving for her son who had suffered right along with his sister. Sometimes it was so easy to focus on Maddie’s more immediate needs that she forgot Simon walked each step of the journey right along with her.

  “Yeah, I hit six home runs last year. I bet I could do a lot more this year. Did you ever play baseball?”

  “Sure did,” Will answered. “All through high school and college. Until a few years ago, I was even on a team around here that played in the summertime.”

  “Probably old guys, huh?”

  Julia cringed but Will didn’t seem offended, judging by his quick snort of laughter—the most lighthearted sound she had heard from him since she’d been back.

  “Yeah. We have a tough time running the bases for all the canes and walkers in the way.”

  Julia couldn’t help herself, she laughed out loud, drawing the attention of both Will and Simon.

  “Hi, Mom,” Simon chirped, looking pleased to see her. “Guess what? Mr. Garrett played baseball, too.”

  “I remember,” she said. “Your Uncle Charlie dragged me to one of his summer league games the last time I was here and I got to watch him play. He hit a three-run homer.”

  “Trying to impress you,” Will said in a laconic tone.

  She laughed again. “It worked very well, as I recall.”

  That baseball game had been when she first starting thinking of Will as more than just her brother’s summer-vacation friend. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him.

  What, exactly, had changed since she came back? she wondered. She still couldn’t seem to stop thinking about him.

  “My mom likes baseball, too,” Simon said. “She said maybe next month sometime we can go to a Mariners game, if they’re in the playoffs. It’s not very far to Seattle.”

  His eyes lit up with sudden excitement. “Hey, Mr. Garrett, you could come with us! That would be cool.”

  Will’s gaze met hers and for an instant she imagined sharing hot dogs and listening to the cheers and sitting beside him for three hours, his heat and strength just inches away from her.

  “I do enjoy watching the Mariners,” Will said, an unreadable look in his eyes. “I’m pretty busy next month but if you let me know when you’re going, I can see how it fits my schedule.”

  “We haven’t made any definite plans,” Julia said, hoping none of the longing showed in her expression.

  She hadn’t realized until this moment that Simon wasn’t the only one in their family who hungered for a man in their lives.

  And not just any man, either. Only a strong, quiet carpenter with callused hands and a rare, beautiful smile.

  She decided to quickly change the subject. “The stairs look wonderful. Are you nearly finished?”

  Before he could answer, they heard sudden excited barking from the front of the house.

  Julia laughed. “I guess Conan needed to go out. It’s a good thing he has his own doggy door.”

  “Hang on a minute,” Will said. “That’s his somebody’s home bark.”

  A moment later they heard a vehicle pull into the driveway.

  “Conan!” a high, excited voice shrieked and the dog woofed a greeting.

  “That would be Chloe,” Will said.

  By tacit agreement, the three of them walked together toward the front of the house. When they rounded the corner, Julia saw a dark-haired girl around the twins’ age with her arms around the dog’s neck.

  Beside her, Sage—glowing with joy—stood beside a man with commanding features a
nd brilliant green eyes.

  “Hey, guys!” Sage beamed at them. “Julia, this is Chloe Spencer and her dad, Eben.”

  Julia smiled, though she would have known their identities just from the glow on Sage’s features—the same one that flickered there whenever she talked about her fiancé and his daughter.

  “Eben, this is Julia Blair.”

  The man offered a smile and his hand to shake. “The new tenant with the twins. Hello. It’s a pleasure to meet you finally. Sage has told me a great deal about you and your children the last few weeks.”

  Sage had told her plenty about Eben and Chloe as well. Meeting them in person, she could well understand how Sage could find the man compelling.

  It seemed an odd mix to her—the buttoned-down hotel executive who wore an elegant silk power tie and the free-thinking naturalist who believed her dog communicated with her dead friend. But Julia could tell in an instant they were both crazy about each other.

  Eben Spencer turned to Will next and the two of them exchanged greetings. As they spoke, she couldn’t help contrasting the two men. Though Eben was probably more classically handsome in a GQ kind of way, with his loosened tie and his rolled up shirt sleeves, she had to admit that Will’s toolbelt and worn jeans affected her more.

  Being near Eben Spencer didn’t make her insides flutter and her bones turn liquid.

  “And who’s this?” Eben was asking, she realized when she jerked her attention back to the conversation.

  Color soaked her cheeks and she hoped no one else noticed. “This is one of my kiddos. Simon, this is Mr. Spencer and his daughter, Chloe.”

  “I’m eight,” Chloe announced. “How old are you?”

  Simon immediately went into defensive mode. “Well,” he said slowly, “I won’t be eight until March. But I’m taller than you are.”

  Chloe made a face. “Everyone is taller than me. I’m a shrimp. Sage says you have a twin sister. How cool! Where is she?”

  He looked to Julia for an answer.

  “Upstairs,” she answered. “I’ll go wake her, though. She’s been anxious to meet you.”

  As if on cue, her timer beeped. “Got to run. That would be my pies ready to come out of the oven.”

  “You’re making pie?” Chloe exclaimed. “That’s super cool. I just love pie.”

  She smiled, charmed by Sage’s stepdaughter-to-be. “I do, too. But not burnt pie so I’d better hurry.”

  She tried to be quiet as she slid the pies from the oven and carefully set them on a rack to dry, but she must have clattered something because Maddie began to stir in the other room.

  She stood in the doorway and watched her daughter rise to a sitting position on the couch. “Hey, baby. How are you feeling?”

  Maddie gave an ear-popping yawn and stretched her arms above her head. “Pretty good. I’m sorry, Mama. I said I would help you make pies and then I fell asleep.”

  “You helped me with the hard part, which was picking the apples and washing them all.”

  “I guess.”

  She still looked dejected at her own limitations and Julia walked to her and pulled her into a hug. “You helped me a ton. I never would have been able to finish without you. And while you were sleeping soundly, guess who arrived?”

  Her features immediately brightened. “Chloe?”

  “Yep. She’s outside with Simon right now.”

  “Can I go meet her?”

  She smiled at her enthusiasm. One thing about Maddie, even in the midst of her worst fatigue, she could go from full sleep to complete alertness in a matter of seconds.

  “Of course. Go ahead. I’ll be down in a minute—I just have to put in these other pies.”

  A few moments later, she closed her apartment door and headed down the stairs. The elusive scent of freesia seemed to linger in the air and she wondered if that was Abigail’s way of greeting the newcomers. The whimsical thought had barely registered when Anna’s door—Abigail’s old apartment—slowly opened.

  She instinctively gasped, then flushed crimson when Will walked out, a measuring tape in hand.

  What had she expected? The ghostly specter of Abigail, complete with flashy costume jewelry and a wicked smile?

  “Hi,” she managed.

  He gave her an odd look. “Everything okay?”

  “Yes. Just my imagination running away with me.”

  “I was double-checking the measurements for the new moldings in Anna’s apartment. I’m hoping to get to them in a week or so.”

  “All done with the stairs, then?”

  “Not quite. I’m still going to have to stain them but the bulk of the hard work is done.”

  “You do good work, Will. I’m very impressed.”

  “My dad taught me well.”

  The scent of freesia seemed stronger now and finally she had to say something. “Okay, tell me something. Can you smell that?”

  Confusion flickered across his rugged features. “I smell sawdust and your apple pie baking. That’s it.”

  “You don’t smell freesia?”

  “I’m not sure I know what that is.”

  “It’s a flower. Kind of light, delicate. Abigail used to wear freesia perfume, apparently. I don’t remember that about her but Anna and Sage say she did and I believe them.”

  He still looked confused. “And you’re smelling it now?”

  She sighed, knowing she must sound ridiculous. “Sage thinks Abigail is sticking around Brambleberry House.”

  To her surprise, he laughed out loud and she stared, arrested by the sound. “I wouldn’t put it past her,” he said. “She loved this old place.”

  “I can’t say I blame her for that. I’m coming to love it, too. There’s a kind of peace here—I can’t explain it. Maddie says the house is friendly and I have to tell you, I’m beginning to believe her.”

  He shook his head, but he was smiling. “Watch out or you’ll turn as wacky as Sage. Next thing I know, you’ll be balancing your chakras every five minutes and eating only tofu and bean sprouts.”

  She gazed at his smile for a long moment, arrested by his light-hearted expression. He looked young and much more relaxed than she had seen him in a long time, almost happy, and her heart rejoiced that she had been able to make him smile and, yes, even laugh.

  His smile slid away after a moment and she realized she was staring at his mouth. She couldn’t seem to look away, suddenly wildly curious to know what it would be like to kiss him again.

  Something hot kindled in the blue of his eyes and she caught her breath, wanting his touch, his kiss, more than she had wanted anything in a long time.

  He wasn’t ready, she reminded herself, and eased back, sliding her gaze from his. No sooner had she made up her mind to step away and let the intense moment pass when she could swear she felt a determined hand between her shoulderblades, pushing her forward.

  She whirled around in astonishment, then thought she must be going crazy. Only the empty stairs were behind her.

  “What’s wrong?” Will asked. Though his words were concerned, that stony, unapproachable look had returned to his expression and she sighed, already missing that brief instant of laughter.

  “Um, nothing. Absolutely nothing. My imagination seems to be in overdrive, that’s all.”

  “That’s what you get for talking about ghosts.”

  She forced a smile and headed for the door. Just before she walked through it, she turned and aimed a glare at the empty room.

  Stay out of my love life, Abigail, she thought. Or any lack thereof.

  She could almost swear wicked laughter followed behind her.

  * * *

  DAMN IT. He wasn’t at all ready for this.

  Will followed Julia out the door, still aware of the heat and hunge
r simmering through him.

  He had almost kissed her. The urge had been so strong, he had been only seconds away from reaching for her.

  She wouldn’t have stopped him. He sensed that much—he had seen the warm welcome in her eyes and had known she would have returned the kiss with enthusiasm.

  He still didn’t know why he had stopped or why she had leaned away then looked behind her as if fearing her children were skulking on the second-floor landing watching them.

  He didn’t know why they hadn’t kissed but he was enormously grateful they had both come to their senses.

  He didn’t want to be attracted to another woman. Sure, he was a man and he had normal needs just like any other male. But he had been crazy about his wife. Kissing another woman—even wanting to kiss another woman—still seemed like some kind of betrayal, though intellectually he knew that was absurd.

  Robin had been gone for more than two years. As much as he had loved her, he sometimes had to work hard to summon the particular arrangement of her features and the sound of her voice.

  He was forgetting her and he hated it. Sometimes his grief seemed like a vast lake that had been frozen solid forever. Suddenly, as if overnight, the ice was beginning to crack around the edges. He wouldn’t have expected it to hurt like hell but everything suddenly seemed more raw than it had since the accident.

  He pressed his fist to the ache in chest for just a moment then headed for the backyard, where he had set up his power tools. His gaze seemed to immediately drift to Julia and he found her on the brick patio, laughing at something Sage had said, the afternoon sunlight finding gold strands in her hair. He could swear he felt more chunks of ice break free.

  She must have sensed the weight of his stare—she turned her head slightly and their gazes collided for a brief moment before he broke the connection and picked up his power saw and headed for his truck.

  On his next trip to get the sawhorses, he deliberately forced himself not to look at her. He was so busy not looking at her that he nearly mowed down Eben.

  “Sorry,” he muttered, feeling like an ass.

  Eben laughed. “No problem. You look like your mind’s a million miles away.”