She could just picture Mary Pat with this news. No warm milk and cookies from her sister. Mary Pat would be tapping her foot like the velociraptor in Jurassic Park, waiting for her to get over it. It didn’t matter if the wound was still bleeding. Mary Pat slapped a bandage on it and sent you back outside. Her sister had no patience with underachievers. She hadn’t a clue how it felt to fail at something, because she had never failed at anything in her entire life. Neither had her husband. Or her kids. They were all just one big fat freaking success story after another. Good thing it hadn’t worked out for Stanley down there. The poor dog would have ended up shampooed, permed, and winning Best in Show at Westminster.
Ellen might be a tad anal, but at least she allowed you to live your own life. Not Mary Pat the control freak. Her older sister was the type of person who slept with her Day Runner under her pillow. She had seen Mary Pat photocopy her address book “just in case.”
In a twisted kind of way it would be fun to pick up the phone and dial her sister. Guess what, Mary Pat? I managed to get fired from a job I never had in the first place.
Not even Mary Pat could top that one.
* * *
Megan had loved fancy restaurants. They used to save spare change, then bring it to the coin machine at Stop and Shop, where they dumped all the pennies and nickels and dimes and quarters onto the tray and waited while the machine counted it all up for them. She would pore over Zagat’s, circling possibilities, comparing menus and price lists, calling for reservations. He had always wondered if she liked anticipating the dinner more than the food itself.
He used to hate those dinners even though he never let his wife know how he felt. Rich sauces and sky-high architectural desserts didn’t do it for him. Terrine of this and mélange of that just weren’t his speed. Give him a broiled steak with a baked potato, some creamed spinach on the side, and a bottle of Sam and you had him for life.
Deirdre said they had reservations out on the patio and the maître d’ nodded politely, then showed them through the dining room and out onto the biggest, greenest lawn he had ever seen. It made a country club golf course look neglected. He had heard the term “rolling lawns,” but he had never been able to conjure up an image to explain it until now. The lawns at Crooked Isle Inn actually didn’t just roll, they undulated all the way down to the harbor. Round white tables with furled yellow umbrellas dotted the lawns. They reminded him of the dandelion flowers in his front yard and he grinned.
“What’s so funny?” Deirdre asked after they settled down at their table.
He told her and to his surprise she laughed, too.
“You’re right,” she said. “Do you think it was deliberate?”
He glanced around at the obviously wealthy clientele at the surrounding tables. “I don’t think anyone here even knows what a dandelion is.”
Lisa, their waitress, introduced herself and supplied menus. “We have a few specials tonight you might be interested in: grilled salmon in a lemon dill sauce; breast of free-range chicken sautéed with leeks and served with a balsamic reduction; and—my personal recommendation—shrimp with garlic and fresh tomatoes served on a bed of angel hair pasta.”
Deirdre put down the menu and smiled up at the waitress. “I’ll have a bacon cheeseburger with fries and a margarita.”
He put his menu on top of hers. “And I’ll have a New York steak, medium rare, with a baked potato and a bottle of Sam Adams.”
“Can I interest either of you in the house salad?”
They both shook their heads.
“But if you have any fresh bread and butter, you won’t hear us complain,” Deirdre said.
“And a bucket of creamed spinach.”
“Be right back,” Lisa said and she was barely out of earshot when they burst into laughter.
“A fellow carnivore!” Deirdre reached across the table to shake his hand.
The handshake was brief, but he liked the way her hand felt in his. Her fingers were long and delicate with calluses on the tips. Strong and capable and lovely. He remembered how much he had liked the feel of her body against his last night on the beach.
“Our numbers are declining,” he said leaning back in his chair as Lisa deposited a basket of bread and a crock of butter on the table between them.
“Probably the cholesterol,” Deirdre said as she helped herself to a muffin bursting with blueberries.
He grabbed a warm dinner roll and slathered it with butter. “Could be.”
“In my own defense, I have to admit I don’t always eat this way.”
“You don’t owe me any explanations. I’m not the Food Police.”
She bit into her muffin and sighed with delight. “My sister Mary Pat polices the kitchen like it’s a demilitarized zone. Dining out with her is like picking your way through a minefield.”
“And I’ll bet you make sure you detonate every single one you can find.”
“One night I ordered a porterhouse steak with herb butter and followed it up with cheesecake and a visit to the friendly neighborhood cardiologist.”
She made him laugh. Laughter felt almost as good as her soft warm body against his.
“You’re not really going to stay here all weekend, are you?”
She shrugged. “It’s not like anyone’s expecting me someplace. I might as well.”
“Then where will you go?”
Suddenly he understood. She relied on her quick wit to keep the world at bay, but the expression in her eyes gave her away every time.
“Maybe I’ll drive down to Savannah. Lots of inns around there. Somebody’s bound to be looking for a harper to play the dining room.”
“Can’t your manager find that out for you?”
“Screw him,” she said. “He didn’t exactly score a home run this time around, did he?”
Oh, yeah, she was hurting big time. Behind the flip comments and the big sunny smile was exactly what you would expect. She was hurt. She was embarrassed. She was scared shitless.
Lisa sailed up to them with the margarita and the bottle of Sam and a glass.
“To whatever lies beneath,” Deirdre said as she raised her glass.
“To whatever the hell that means,” he said as he lifted his bottle. “Slainte.”
She paused, glass halfway to her lips. “Slainte?”
“It means ‘cheers.’”
“I’m an O’Brien. I know what it means. I’m surprised that you do.”
“My mother was a Dougherty.”
“Irish and Italian,” she said. “Now, there’s a combination for you.”
“I’ve heard all the jokes.”
“I’ll bet you have. You should hear some of the ones Ellen’s heard.”
“Did you hear the one about the rabbi and the priest who—”
She burst into laughter, which he suspected was really the flip side of her earlier tears. She radiated pure emotion. Joy. Despair. Longing. She couldn’t hold back if she tried. No wonder her music had moved him to tears. She put her heart and soul into it because she didn’t know any other way.
Same with that big dog of hers. So what if she had no money and no place to live. The mutt needed her and she stepped up to the plate. It screwed up her plans big time, but she did it anyway because it was the right thing to do.
He took a long pull on the bottle of Sam. Of course, she wasn’t exactly Mother Teresa. She had badgered the hell out of him about her Hyundai and wasn’t exactly shy about letting him know that her plans were much more important than his, which made his offer to drive her up to Bar Harbor even tougher to understand. She had landed on her sister’s doorstep strictly as a matter of convenience. She had the slightly off-kilter sense of right and wrong that kept you wondering what she was really after, but before you could put up your defenses, she knocked them back down again with those eyes and that bawdy laugh.
The more she badgered him at the garage, the more Jack rode his ass about her, the more he started to look forward to those visits. He h
ad found himself listening for the swish of her skirts in the doorway, the click-click of Stanley’s toenails against the cement floor, the faint whisper of her perfume wafting above the heavy smells of axle grease and old tires.
“Wouldn’t you love to sneak down to the docks and grab one of those?” She gestured toward the brightly colored boats thumping gently against the docks.
“Nope. I’m not the sailing type.”
“An Irishman who doesn’t love the sea? Impossible!”
“You ever see Jaws?”
“Maybe a million times.”
“They don’t make a boat big enough to get me out there.”
“I’ll take you sailing one day. I promise you’ll love it.”
“So you’re coming back to Shelter Rock after all.”
She took a sip of her margarita. “My car’s there. Stanley’s there. Of course I’m coming back.”
“But not tonight.”
“I love my sister, but she doesn’t have a Jacuzzi.”
He opened his mouth to press his point, then stopped. Let it go, asshole. What’s it your business if she stays here all summer?
“And here we go!” Lisa popped up next to their table with a tray of food. “New York strip for you with baked and a side of spinach, and bacon cheese with fries for you.”
“Listen!” Deirdre tilted her head to the right. “I’ll bet we can hear our arteries shutting down.”
“Right now I don’t give a damn,” he said. “This is about as good as it gets.”
“Oh, I agree!” She popped a fry in her mouth, then handed him one. “I’ll bet this is the last place you thought you’d be tonight.”
“You’re right. I—” He looked down at his watch. “Shit. I was supposed to pick up the parts for your car in Lincolnville.”
“So pick them up tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow I’ll be back in Shelter Rock.”
“Where is this Lincolnville anyway?”
“Closer to here than it is to there.”
“That tells me a lot.”
“This is going to screw things up for you. I probably won’t be able to get your car fixed before Tuesday now.”
“Great. I’ll stay here until it’s ready.”
He gestured to Lisa for another bottle of Sam. Deirdre asked for another margarita.
They ate and drank in silence for a while. He had figured her for the type who talked nonstop, but she continued to surprise him. There was a mellow side to her he hadn’t suspected, and he discovered he liked it a lot.
“So enough about me,” she said as Lisa cleared away their empty platters. “Tell me how a mechanic from Boston ends up stargazing in Maine.”
“Same way a harper from Boston ends up in Bar Harbor.”
“Your manager called you with a job offer, too?”
“I sold off my old man’s garage and was trying to figure out what to do next when I heard about the opening and jumped on it.” All true, just not the whole story.
“Just like that?”
“There’s more.”
“I kind of thought so.” She popped another fry into her mouth. “How does the stargazing figure into it?”
“Long story,” he said. “I was halfway to a degree in astronomy when my old man got sick and I had to step in and help him out.”
“So you dropped out of school?”
“Things happen,” he said. “I met someone. We got married. We bought a house. Next time I looked we were up to our eyes in debt and there was a baby on the way.”
And then he blinked and they were gone.
“You miss them.”
“Yeah,” he said, reaching for the bottle of Sam. “I miss them.”
“What happened? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but I’d like to know.”
Megan’s unhappiness. Colin’s tears. Her big plans for California. His big plans to sell the garage and surprise her there. A second chance. That was what they needed. A second chance to get it right. They still loved each other. All they had needed was a little luck, a change of scene. He would have done anything to make it work, but in the end he didn’t have the time.
He wanted to tell her the whole fucking story, but the words wouldn’t come.
“I’m sorry.” She reached across the table and touched his hand. “I shouldn’t have pushed.”
“You didn’t push.”
“Sure I did.” She gave him a quick smile. “I’m known for it.”
They waved away dessert and he waited while she signed the check. She reached into her bag for her wallet, but he stopped her and left Lisa a tip that opened Deirdre’s eyes wide.
“Are you always that generous?”
“Did you ever work for tips?”
She groaned. “More times than I can count.”
“So did I.”
They stood up to leave. “It’s such a gorgeous night. Let’s walk down to the dock and sit for a while.”
“I should get moving,” he said. “It’s a long drive back.”
“You’re not going anywhere yet,” she said. “You had three beers and half a margarita. You’d better walk it off.”
“Two beers and I didn’t touch your margarita.”
“Can’t blame me for trying.” She lightly punched him in the forearm. “Come on. Be a sport. We’ll sit out on the docks for a while and watch the moon rise over the water. Whaddya say?”
No would have been a good place to start. No would have been the smart thing, the wise thing. She was too vulnerable. He was too raw with need.
And the night was too damn beautiful to trust.
* * *
They sat on the dock while the sky went from pink to red to blue to midnight black. One by one the stars blinked on until it seemed the entire sky was ablaze with light. Deirdre was almost thirty-five years old and had seen more night skies than she could count, but Scott the Mechanic made it all seem brand-new.
“Hold your arm straight out,” he told her, “and make a fist.”
She took a sip from the champagne bottle they had found back at her suite. “Anything you say, Peretti.” She curled her right hand into a fist and extended her arm. “I feel like I’m in a bad World War II movie.”
“We’re going to use the width of your fist as a tool of measurement and locate a few stars.”
“I think I’m a lost cause,” she said. “I’ve never been able to find the Big Dipper.”
“Line up your fist against the right side of the moon.”
“Okay.”
“Now move three widths to your left.”
“Got it.”
“Now move down four.”
“One... two... three... four.”
“See the angle?”
“What angle? I can’t see past the stars.”
He didn’t laugh. The man was very serious about his stars.
“Look closely. Forget individual stars and look for patterns.”
“I don’t—wait! I think I see what you mean.”
“Eight stars of the same intensity—”
“In a kind of boxy shape.”
“That’s the Cradle.”
She could barely hear him. His voice had dropped to little more than a whisper. “The Cradle?”
“Where the children of the gods sleep.”
Maybe it was her mood or the sadness that seemed to pour off him in waves. Or maybe it was the fact that she had been wearing her emotions on her sleeve since they pulled into the parking lot at the Crooked Isle Inn, but that cradle of stars was her undoing and she started to cry.
“Pay no attention,” she said, trying to pull herself back together. “This just hasn’t been my best day.”
“It’s the champagne,” he said. “It depresses the hell out of me, too.”
“Stinking champagne. What the heck were we thinking anyway?” She emptied the rest of the bottle into the harbor. “I hope that doesn’t kill the fish.”
He peered down into the darkness. “Doubt if the
y’ll even notice, since the bottle was empty.”
“We drank the whole thing?”
“And I don’t even like the stuff.”
She swayed forward and would have tumbled into the harbor if he hadn’t reached out and grabbed her.
“We’d better get you back to your room.”
“I don’t want to go... it’s so beautiful out here.” She leaned against his chest and closed her eyes. “I want you to show me more stars.”
He helped her to her feet and she giggled as her legs seemed to fold beneath her like tired chair springs.
“Put your arms around my neck,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll make it up the slope on your own.”
She did as told and melted against him. She hadn’t meant to, but her body seemed to have a mind of its own. Damn champagne. The world was spinning. The lawn rolled under her feet. If she didn’t hold on to Scott the Mechanic, she just might fly away.
Finally he scooped her up into his arms and carried her back to the suite. Good thing they had already fired her. Things like this simply didn’t happen at the Crooked Isle Inn.
“The bed is moving,” she said as he set her down. “Make it stop.”
“Lie down,” he said as he slid her flimsy sandals off her feet. “It will stop soon.”
“I need some water.”
‘Not a good idea. Just lie down and close your eyes.”
That was the last thing she heard.
* * *
He couldn’t leave her. Not like this. She looked so young, so vulnerable, so miserably unhappy as she lay there on the bed. The combination of disappointment and too much champagne was going to make her feel a hell of a lot worse before she felt better. The thought of her waking up alone in the middle of the night, in a strange place, the place where she had already suffered a major embarrassment, didn’t sit right with him.
And what if she woke up in the middle of the night, stumbled to the bathroom, then fell and cracked her head on the sink? She would lie there on the cold tile floor for hours until housekeeping showed up to change the sheets.
Girls of Summer (Shelter Rock Cove - Book #2) Page 27