“We are going to dance. It’s an imperative. You have to waltz in the rain once in your life, and neither of us has done it yet.”
His chin fit neatly on the top of Barrie’s head. She knew the steps; Mark had loved to dance, and Eight swept her into the movements with all the authority of a hundred cotillion lessons.
It occurred to her that all the bad parts of life, the sad parts, the frightening ones, were meant to be offset by moments and memories like this. She had to be present in it, right here, right now. Too often, people didn’t have the opportunity for even a single one.
Mark hadn’t.
“We will, Bear,” Eight whispered. “We’ll have a lifetime of them.”
Barrie wanted to believe him. In that moment, the urge to tell him about Obadiah was overwhelming, but the dry mouth and painful stickiness in her throat at the thought of Obadiah’s name reminded her that she had made a promise. Whatever it took, she decided, even if it meant doing what Obadiah asked of her, she was going to find a way to make him break the Beaufort gift while leaving hers intact.
Eight drew back and studied her, as if he’d caught what she was wanting. She concentrated very hard on only wanting him, wanting his lips on hers, wanting his breath and his skin and his heat and his touch.
His hands slid back around her waist, burrowed beneath her shirt until the bare brush of his thumbs raised goose bumps across her stomach. Just looking at her like that, he produced so much want, it threatened to short-circuit her brain.
Fisting her hands in his shirt, she pulled him closer and stood on her toes to reach him. “Why are you standing there instead of kissing me?”
“Well, when you put it that way.” His smile was lazy against her lips, and his kiss began painfully, excruciatingly slow. Barrie’s heart thundered so loud, she suspected he had to hear it. She pulled him even closer.
He lifted her, anchored her while she wrapped herself around him as if she could eliminate the last millimeters of distance, because even those were too much. His heart beat fast, loud, and deep, and his breathing was as ragged as her own. He burned a trail of kisses across her jaw and down her throat and every cell in her body came alive beneath these kisses, woke in ways she had never even suspected a person could feel.
And she knew.
She knew.
No matter what else transpired, she and Eight deserved to have a chance together.
Whatever it took, she had to make that happen.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Keeping a grip on that decision was harder once Eight had gone back across the river. Barrie tiptoed back into her room, wondering if he was smiling, too, wearing the same kind of boomerang grin that kept coming back to her as she thought about dancing with him in the rain.
But what was he going to do when he found out they had spent most of the night together and she hadn’t told him about her plans or mentioned Obadiah? She hadn’t even told him she and Pru had been to the funeral. She could have—should have—told him at least that much. Obadiah had been clever to tie the incentive of removing Eight’s gift with the threat of taking away her own. If she told Eight, or even Pru, they would be all too happy to have Obadiah do as he had threatened. They hated the magic and the gifts, but finding things had been a part of Barrie as long as she could remember. The binding, that was new. It had come only once she’d arrived at the plantation after her mother’s death—after Barrie had finally started listening to what Watson’s Landing and the yunwi were trying to say. Neither Pru nor Eight had ever felt that connection to the land, to the yunwi, and the magic, so how could they understand what losing it would mean?
The main difference between this second encounter with Obadiah and the first was Barrie’s ability to remember. He had to be confident that his threat would work—and that made her even more worried about what would happen if he did take away her gift. And about what he wanted in the first place. She almost wished he had taken away her memory of him again. Maybe then she would have felt less like she was betraying Eight and Pru by keeping what she was doing from them.
Still weighing his motives the next morning, she went downstairs to find Pru and Mary already bickering cheerfully at the kitchen table, their chairs drawn close together. As fast as Pru was writing, Mary was leaning over and scribbling things out.
“No cold soup.” Mary scratched out the latest line Pru had jotted in the menu notebook. “Folks’ll want good Southern food.”
“Not at the prices we’re going to have to charge. They’ll want something more special.”
“Cold raspberry soup isn’t special. It’s stuck up, and raspberries don’t keep.”
“They do if we stick to local vendors.” Pru carefully erased the scratch marks. “Anyway, there’s nothing wrong with a good chilled soup in the summer.”
Barrie stopped just inside the swinging door. “You’re working on the menu without me?”
“Morning, sweetheart.” Pru smiled at her. “You look tired. Did you sleep well?”
Barrie shook herself and crossed to the coffeepot. She poured a cup before turning to brace her hips against the counter. “I thought Eight and I were supposed to be in charge of the menus and the decorations,” she said, keeping her voice steady, “and you two were going to do the business stuff?”
Pru and Mary exchanged a glance. “We’re just figuring out the framework. That, and all right, we did get excited and carried away with everything. Come sit down with us and help.” Pru patted the chair beside her. “Later, though, once Eight gets here, I need you to do me a favor. Mary’s granddaughter is going to do the website for us, but she’ll need a ride over after she’s got someone to watch the rest of the kids.”
“Sure.” Sipping her coffee, Barrie wondered what parallel universe she’d wandered into where Pru knew about websites, but then she realized the idea had to have been Mary’s. She peered over Pru’s shoulder at all the lines Mary had scribbled out and did her best to swallow down the feeling that she’d been left out and pushed aside. Of course, she wanted Mary and Pru to be excited. She wanted them to feel the restaurant was theirs. She just didn’t want to feel like it wasn’t hers or Eight’s anymore.
“Eight and I had talked about doing elevated Southern food,” she began.
“What kind of a word is that? ‘Elevated’?” Mary sniffed as if the word itself were rancid. “Tourists want somethin’ that’ll make them think of what might’ve been served here. That’s what’s always worked in the tearoom.”
“But we don’t just want tourists,” Pru said, then she and Mary both glanced at Barrie and then instantly looked away, guilty as hell of something.
“What have I missed?” Barrie set down her coffee cup. “Is there a problem you don’t want to tell me about?”
Pru fidgeted with the pencil. “When I was thinking all this through last night and then talking it over with Mary this morning, it struck me that we don’t want to have to rely on tourists. Especially not at first, with all that’s going on. But if we do it right, people will come from Watson’s Point and Charleston for the romance of dining out here. For special occasions. If it works, we could keep it going all year round.”
Pru’s expression was both eager and wary, and Barrie tried to grasp the many decidedly unenthusiastic thoughts that were chasing one another through her head. One of them was that it would be hard for something to keep feeling magical when you had to do it day in and day out . . . forever.
But that was selfish, and she wouldn’t allow herself to be that petty. “I’ll try, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to help out as much once school starts.”
“We wouldn’t expect you to!” Pru swiveled in her chair. “I know Mary and I have taken your idea and run away with it. Of course, you can help as much or as little as you want, and we can hire a chef for most nights of the week.”
Barrie felt small and petty for not being able to summon up the enthusiasm her aunt so obviously wanted. She thought of Pru and Mary when she had first opened
the door a few minutes ago, their cheeks flushed and the words flying between them.
“No,” she said, cheerfully. “It sounds like a great idea.” She reached for one of the apple turnovers Pru had set out on a platter.
How had she managed to, once again, lose control? There were too many things going on that threatened to overwhelm her. The restaurant was supposed to be the fun thing. Maybe that was the risk. When going after life with a pitchfork, occasionally you were bound to catch something bigger than you expected.
Dropping into the chair beside Pru’s, she made herself concentrate on the list of menu options that were already written down:
chilled raspberry soup
crab soup
tomato, roasted corn, and boiled peanut salad
mesclun salad with goat cheese and candied pecans
fried green tomatoes
pickled shrimp plate
shrimp and grits
bacon and cheddar hush puppies
Those were just the appetizers.
“At the restaurant Mark and I went to, they had only one or two dishes and everyone ate family style. That was part of the fun,” she said.
“We’ll have Seven and Eight to help us read people to see what they really want to eat. Then we can narrow it down and create a smaller, more permanent menu.”
“Seven?” Barrie’s head came up. “What does he have to do with it? Having a restaurant was Eight’s fallback plan for after he retired from baseball. That was what first got me thinking about having a restaurant at all.”
“We’re not trying to take that away from Eight.” Pru and Mary shared another look. “Seven just pointed out that Eight won’t be here once college starts, and with the delay, we’ll barely be getting established by then. We don’t want you two bogged down with all this. You need time to enjoy yourselves, and you’ve said yourself that Eight hates using the gift on people.”
Teeth clamped firmly to her tongue, Barrie pushed back her chair. She needed a minute to get her equilibrium back, or she was going to say something she might end up regretting. “I think I’ll go get my sketchpad and try to work up the logo for the flyers and the website.”
“You’re not upset, are you?” Rising along with her, Pru put her hand on Barrie’s shoulder. “I thought you liked Seven. I know he can be a little . . . overwhelming sometimes.”
“Sometimes?” Barrie asked.
Pru’s cheeks went pink. “Most of the time. But he means well, and he wants to help. We both agreed that we don’t want to put too much of a burden on Eight.”
“He doesn’t want to give Eight any incentive to stick around here, you mean.”
“He wants Eight to have some experiences before he’s stuck here for good.”
“Experiences that don’t include me!” Barrie strode toward the door before she said something that opened up a whole big conversation she couldn’t have with Pru. Then Pru’s words sank in, and she turned back around. “Seven told you about the binding, didn’t he? He told you Eight doesn’t know, and instead of being mad that Seven’s basically doing the same thing to Eight that Emmett did to you and Lula, you’re on his side.”
“There’s a world of difference between Seven and Emmett: Seven wants what’s best for Eight.”
“Too bad he doesn’t seem to have a clue what that is.” Leaving Pru standing behind her with the door propped open, Barrie stalked down the corridor and up the stairs, feeling more pushed into a corner with every step, and at the same time even more determined.
She would find the lodestone for Obadiah, and when the threat to the Watson gift was gone, when he had proven he could safely remove the curse without hurting anyone, she would do whatever it took to get him to help Eight. She wasn’t going to feel bad about Cassie’s gold, even if that was what Obadiah was really after. The gold wasn’t even there.
What would he do when he realized Barrie couldn’t find it?
Pondering that along with all the other questions, Barrie found it hard to feel creative or even patient once she got back to the kitchen. Twenty minutes later, crumpled sketchbook pages spilled over the table and onto the floor, and she’d had enough of Pru and Mary bickering over table placement and the choice of hush puppies or shrimp and grits.
She balled up her latest attempt at drawing a logo and tossed it aside. “You’re turning this into something that sounds exactly like every other restaurant. We don’t need a menu with fourteen appetizers, or the same entrees that anyone can order up in Charleston. It should feel special. Like a celebration.”
“It will,” Pru said.
“When I told you about the idea and said it should be more like a private party, I meant the menu, too. We could greet people with champagne on the dock when they first arrive, and serve bite-size hors d’oeuvres at different stations on the path up here to the porch.”
“Why the porch? It wouldn’t be as magical. The garden has the twinkle lights laced through the trees. . . .”
“There are lights on the underside of the balcony, and we can add more. Not to mention the candles and lights on the water. We could still have dessert and dancing by the fountain, too, but having the tables up here would give people less time to wander around unsupervised.”
Pru pushed back her notebook. “I do love that idea.”
“It would be like throwing a dinner party three nights a week, instead of serving the same thing every night. We’d get to cook something different all the time. That was what Mark and I loved best about trying out the new restaurant recipes we made. Every meal was a surprise.”
Barrie thought of Eight as she said the words. Remembered dancing in the rain with him. Remembered floating through the air not seeing where she was going, not needing to see. Sometimes, not knowing how things would turn out was half the fun.
A night scene in the garden snapped into focus in her mind: the path, the trees, and the river all lit up. She was hunched over her sketchpad with her pencil, feverishly drawing a logo when Eight and his sister knocked at the kitchen door a scant second before letting themselves inside.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Kate Beaufort looked very little like Eight or Seven. Her enormous brown eyes filled her narrow face, and her mouth was always on the verge of laughing. Everything about her was edged with barely contained energy, like a coiled-up spring. Her movements, though, had the same athletic grace as Eight’s, and like him, she was sun-browned as if she spent innumerable hours outside.
“It’s great to meet you finally,” she said to Barrie, plopping herself down at the table and picking up the various notebooks to have a look. “Daddy and Eight have been talking about you nonstop. It’s like they don’t even care that I’m home, and then Daddy spent half the morning calling around trying to find a satellite dish and someone to put it in so you could have Internet. It was starting to give me a complex.”
“Ignore her, Bear. Kate’s been a natural whiner and a daddy’s girl since the day she was born.” Eight reached for a plate and scooped out one of the last pieces of apple turnover.
“Trust me.” Kate grinned and shook her head. “I’m the last person who’s going to whine about Daddy managing someone besides me for a change.” She snatched a piece of the turnover off Eight’s plate and popped it into her mouth.
He swatted her hand away. “Get your own, would you?”
“Borrowed calories don’t count,” Kate said. “If I take some of yours, I’m saving you from getting fat, and I’m not endangering my own waistline.”
“There’s genius thinking for you.”
“I prefer to think of myself as a nonlinear thinker.”
“That’s on the rare occasions when you bother to think.” Eight stuffed the rest of the turnover into his mouth to keep Kate from taking any more.
A flutter of envy hit Barrie low and hard. Cassie should have cured her of wanting a sister, but she wondered if she would ever stop feeling a twinge every time she ran into a relationship as easy and trusting as this. But
then she remembered that nothing was ever as easy as it seemed. Even before their mother died, Pru must have been in Seven’s heart, casting a shadow across their seemingly perfect family.
Was it possible to love two people at once? Or did Seven only remember he wanted Pru when he was near her? Barrie wondered if that was another consequence of the Beaufort gift. Maybe his wife wanting him had made him forget about Pru. Maybe he had wanted to forget.
Or had it been simpler than that? When Lula had run away and Emmett had told everyone she was dead, Seven must have believed Pru was going to inherit the Watson gift.
Had he given Pru up the same way he wanted Barrie to give up Eight?
The thought knocked Barrie back into her chair. Feeling fractured, she tried to consider the implications. Had Seven married someone else because he’d assumed Pru was out of reach?
If that was the case, then there wasn’t any reason they couldn’t be together now.
Listening absently as Pru and Mary explained the new restaurant idea to Eight and his sister, Barrie found Eight watching her. He edged closer and said, “You all right there, Bear? You look a little shell-shocked.”
“Shocked” was a good word for it, and mad, and hurt for Pru. Because Seven had just given up.
But she couldn’t say any of that to Eight.
“I’m going to have to give you a quota of how many times a day you’re allowed to ask me that,” she said instead. “I’m thinking ‘none’ would be a good starting number.”
He laughed and held up his hands. “I promise, I won’t bring it up again.”
“You keep making promises, and yet no results. . . .” She smiled at him fiercely and climbed out of her chair. “I need a ride into town, baseball guy. Mary wants us to pick up her granddaughter so she can do the website.”
Leaving Kate to help Pru and Mary, Eight followed Barrie out into the corridor and grabbed the keys to Pru’s ancient boat of a Mercedes off the side table in the foyer. Outside, he caught Barrie’s arm, spun her toward him, and pulled her close while her pulse sped up with dread and excitement.
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