No Wedding Like Nantucket (Sweet Island Inn Book 3)

by Grace Palmer

  She had to continue. But on nights like this, when Hogan’s words seared into her brain and she could see only Gavin’s smug scowl every time she closed her eyes, she felt like doing anything but that.

  Sara counted to one hundred, slowly. Then she forced herself to get to her feet. No more self-pitying. She’d had plenty of that for the evening.

  Most of the staff had filtered out, leaving only Cassandra and Jose behind. She dismissed them both with a wave of her hand. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow night,” she murmured. “I’ll lock up. Don’t worry about it.”

  They shrugged, bid her good night, and left out the back entrance. Sara picked up her things and followed them out, pulling the door shut and locking it behind her.

  She weighed her options. The night was clear and crisp, unusually cool for the time of year, with a nice breeze coming in off the water. She’d told Joey when he dropped her off that she wanted a ride home, but now she was changing her mind. It’d be good to walk the long route back to the apartment they shared.

  Maybe the Nantucket night air would clear her mind.

  7

  Brent

  Tuesday afternoon.

  Five days until Eliza’s wedding.

  Brent and Marshall had taken a group of fraternity brothers on a half-day fishing trip. They’d caught a whole bundle of bluefish, stripers, and bonita, so everybody was in a good mood by the time they made it back to shore.

  Brent had made quick work of cleaning Marshall’s boat up and getting it back on the trailer. With the success of the charter fishing business over the last year, they’d recently upgraded their craft to The Tripidation III, adding another four-stroke motor and eight feet in length, which made for nice fishing and a smooth ride no matter where they went. It also let them take a few more people out at a time, so that had been a nice bump to the bottom line as well.

  “Mind if I duck out early?” Brent asked Marshall, his partner and best friend. “I wanna catch Rose on her lunch break.”

  “Say no more, Triple B!” Marshall replied with his trademark bombast. “Love waits for no man!”

  Brent laughed and took off for his truck. His hands were still dripping with saltwater. It was 11:49, according to his watch, and Rose’s lunch break ended at 12:05, so he had to hustle if he wanted to get to her in time. It was just a quick jump over from the marina to the school, though, so he was walking through the front doors and waving hello to Vivian again about four minutes later.

  “Back so soon?” she asked brightly.

  “Can’t stay away,” he said with a wink. “I’ll be right back. Promise not to tell on me?”

  “I’ll pretend I didn’t even see you,” she said, winking back.

  Brent gave her a smile and thumbs-up and went jogging down the hall towards the cafeteria. It was mayhem inside—kids seated along either side of the long lunch tables, laughing and squealing playfully. Brent spotted Rose at the teachers’ table in the far corner. He waved her over urgently. Frowning, she got up and made her way over to him, stopping halfway to separate two kids who were trying to throw grapes into each other’s mouths from across the table.

  “Everything okay?” she asked with a wrinkled brow when she finally reached him.

  “Better than okay,” he said. “C’mon. Quick field trip. I have a surprise for you.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her through the double doors.

  “You gonna tell me what’s going on?” she asked, half laughing as he tugged her down the hallway and back out the front doors, waving to Vivian as they exited.

  “You’ll see when we get there.” He opened the passenger door to his truck and helped her in, then went around to his side to fire up the engine. “Buckle your seat belt.”

  Rose checked her watch. “I have to be back in eleven minutes,” she said. “You better drive fast, Mr. NASCAR.”

  “You got it, princess.” He floored the engine and they took off bumping down the road, with the radio cranked up loud and the wind rippling through their hair.

  They turned down Howard Street three and a half minutes later and pulled to a stop in front of the house he’d grown up in.

  Brent looked over to Rose and grinned. “Surprise,” he said.

  Her forehead furrowed as she looked around for the surprise. Finally, stumped, she turned back to him. “I don’t get it.”

  He pointed out the window at the house. “That’s the surprise.”

  “What is?”

  “That.”

  “What’s in the house?”

  He sighed. So much for a storybook moment. “The house is the surprise, you turkey.”

  Rose looked back and forth between him and the house, him and the house. It took three or four double takes before the truth of what he was telling her actually clicked into place. When it did, the color drained from her face. “Brent, you cannot be serious.”

  His grin spread one notch wider. “Serious as a heart attack, my love.”

  “You … you …”

  “… I bought my mom’s house,” he finished for her. His cheeks hurt from grinning so much, but he couldn’t stop it if he tried. “Well,” he corrected, “I’m going to buy it. But it’s more or less a done deal.”

  Rose still had no clue what to say. Her mouth was flopping open and shut like a fish out of water.

  Laughing, he took mercy on her and explained everything that was going on. Over the last year, as he’d built up his contracting business and taken on an equal partnership with Marshall on the charter fishing trips, he’d been quietly putting away as much money as he could into a secret savings account. It’d been killing him to do it without telling Rose—or any living soul, for that matter. But he knew that an opportunity of some kind was going to pop up sooner or later. So when Mom had started making noise about selling the house on Howard Street now that she and Dominic were the owners of the Sweet Island Inn, he knew that the stars were aligning.

  But Brent had had enough of pity over the last two years. He didn’t want to just move into the house like a squatter or a deadbeat son. After all the work he’d put in to build himself into a respectable man, a handout was the last thing he wanted. To that end, he’d hired a realtor to represent his interests in buying the property anonymously. With the money he’d saved up, he had enough for a decent down payment and a year’s worth of mortgage payments. Just this morning, he’d gotten a text from the realtor that it was looking good; the house was almost certainly his.

  Thus, the lunch break surprise.

  It’d been an awfully hard secret to keep. But the look on Rose’s face in this moment was absolutely worth it. She looked like she didn’t know what to do with her hands. As he gave her the rundown on everything, she kept touching his wrist, her jaw, the window, like she thought she could reach out and pluck the house off the ground herself to give it a squealing hug.

  Finally, she took a deep breath, steadied her nerves, and looked at him with an enigmatic smile on her face. Her honey-colored eyes were swimming with a complex mix of emotions. “I can’t believe you did this,” she said. He could tell that she wanted to say more but didn’t quite know how to put it in words. That was fine with him. That smile was all he needed to be certain that he was doing the right thing.

  “I did it for us,” he said. “I wanted us to have a place to call our own. Is that … is that okay with you?”

  “Oh, Brent!” Her only answer was to grab his face in both hands and kiss him like her life depended on it. She broke away reluctantly and looked down at her wristwatch. “I could sit here and cry for hours, but I have to be back in the classroom in two and a half minutes.”

  He smiled and turned the keys in the ignition once again. “Say no more,” he told her. “This was all I wanted to see.”

  Brent was still buzzing by the time Rose got home from school later that evening. He’d let himself into her house and was just getting started cooking dinner for the three of them. Susanna came bursting through the door ahead of her mother and went boun
ding straight up to Henrietta. The two of them had become best friends over the last year. Normally, Henrietta would’ve been just as excited to see Susanna as Susanna was to see her. But tonight, Henrietta shied away from Susanna’s embrace and retreated into a corner with a whine that Brent had never heard her make before.

  “That’s weird,” he muttered to himself, looking at her quizzically.

  In all the time he’d had her, Henrietta had always been friendly and playful with just about everybody, especially Susanna. It was highly unlike her to run away from contact instead of seeking it out. Come to think of it, she’d been weird for a few weeks now. Not eating as much, giving up sooner on their morning runs. Maybe she was sick. He oughta take her to the vet soon just to get things checked out.

  “Hi, babe,” Rose said as she set her stuff down and came in. “What’re you doing?”

  “Gonna whip us up some dinner.” His mind was still on Henrietta, who had now slunk away down the hallway.

  “Did you forget?”

  “Forget what?”

  “We’ve got dinner at your mom’s tonight, space cadet.” She tapped him on the forehead. “Remember?”

  “Oh!” Brent slapped himself upside the head. “That totally slipped my mind, actually. Welp, guess this will be leftovers.” He scraped the stuff he’d started prepping into a Tupperware container and tucked it away in the refrigerator.

  Rose laughed. “I’m just gonna freshen up and change real quick, and then we can go.”

  “Sounds good.” He looked over to where Henrietta had gone. “Think we should leave Henrietta here?” he called to Rose as she went to the bedroom in the back. “She’s been acting kinda strange lately.”

  “Really?” came Rose’s voice floating down the hall. “I haven’t noticed anything.”

  “Let’s just leave her,” he decided. “Maybe she just wants some space.”

  “Whatever you think is best, babe.” Rose reemerged a minute later wearing blue jeans and a flowing white blouse. “Ready to go?”

  “Yep. Suz, you ready?”

  “Yep!” The little girl bounced over from the corner where she kept all her toys, smiling. Rose and Brent each took one of her hands, and together, their little family headed out for dinner at Mom’s.

  8

  Eliza

  “Only five days left, Oliver,” Sara teased as she poured herself a glass of chardonnay. “Getting cold feet yet?”

  “Not if he knows what’s good for him,” Eliza cut in with a joking smile.

  Oliver raised his hands, pleading his innocence. “Of course not. No cold feet.” When Eliza nodded, satisfied with his answer, he leaned over to Rose, who was sitting next to him at the inn’s big dinner table, and fake-whispered, “Besides, these Bensons are crazy. She’d hunt me down in no time.”

  Rose choked on a bite of carrot she’d been halfway to swallowing. Brent, seated on her other side, patted her on the back as she spluttered and rushed to get a sip of water from her glass.

  Dinner at the inn tonight had been fun. It was just another Tuesday night, but there was a vibe in the air that this was a special one. Eliza hadn’t ever considered herself super religious—though she’d done Sunday school growing up, had her first communion, all that jazz. But in this moment, she had a sudden flashback to something she’d learned way back then: the primary requirement to make a space holy was to have enough people gathered together with love in their hearts.

  That’s how it felt to have her whole family and all their loved ones here. It felt sacred.

  “Speaking of the wedding, here comes the future monster-in-law,” Holly added with a grin as Mom came swooping into the room with a massive pot full of steaming corn on the cob.

  She sat it down with a thunk in the middle of the table, took off her oven mitts, and promptly used one to swat Holly on the top of the head. “Mind your manners, young lady,” Mom scolded, biting back a smile of her own. “Your own husband will tell you that I am nothing if not loving to all my children’s spouses.”

  Pete, who already had a mouthful of corn on the cob, nodded fervently. He looked like a kid who’d been asleep at his desk in the back of the room when the teacher called on him to answer a question.

  Holly rolled her eyes.

  “Like I said, nothing if not loving.” Mom turned to go back to the kitchen to retrieve the chicken she’d been baking.

  “She’s not all sugar and spice, you know.” Eliza chuckled. “But she sure is good at acting like it.”

  “I heard that!” called Mom over her shoulder as she retreated into the kitchen. Her disembodied voice floated around the corner as she added, “And just because it’s the week of your wedding doesn’t mean I won’t give you a swat over the head, too!”

  “Thirty-six years old and my mom is still threatening me with physical violence.” Eliza groaned. “I thought I would’ve grown out of that by now.”

  “Be nice to your momma,” Oliver chided. “She cooked us up a serious spread tonight.”

  That, at least, was inarguable. The table was straining under the weight of carrots, green beans, corn on the cob, chicken, sausage, shrimp, mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, three different kinds of pie, and several bottles of wine. Most of the adults—with the exception of Brent, who was going on almost two years sober—had already polished off a glass or two of vino. Eliza had barely touched hers, though. She was feeling a little nauseous. Something about the wine and the smell was unsettling her stomach a bit, so she decided not to drink too much.

  Just then, Marshall Cook came bursting through the front door, arms spread wide like a hometown hero returning from war. He had the biggest, goofiest smile Eliza had ever seen on his face. Which, to be fair, was pretty much par for the course. In all the years that he and Brent had been best buddies, Eliza could count on two fingers the number of times she’d seen Marshall without his trademark mega-watt grin.

  “Family, I’m home!” His voice, like always, had a tinge of laughter at the edges, as though he might start guffawing at a moment’s notice. It was hard not to smile when he was around.

  “Who invited him?” Brent groaned, burying his face in his hands.

  “Hey, Marsh,” Rose said, waving.

  “Well, well, well, who all do we have here?” he boomed.

  Everyone else offered hellos and how are yous as Marshall walked around the table shaking hands and kissing cheeks like a politician running for office. He was also not-so-sneakily sampling every one of the dishes on display.

  As he moved around the table, he rattled off nicknames like a dad-joke machine gun. Everybody received one upon first meeting Marshall. They were inevitably horrible and inevitably permanent.

  “Hemingway! Dinosara! Mojo JoJo! Party Pete! Showstopper! Frizzy Lizzy! Big Slick! Roosevelt! Triple B!”

  Everyone followed Brent’s lead in groaning and rolling their eyes. Marshall couldn’t have cared less. When his circuit was completed, he pulled up a chair, sat down, and started filling up a plate of food at once. “Oh man, this all looks incredible.”

  “Marshall Cook, where’s the love for me?” Mom scolded as she reemerged from the kitchen once more.

  Marshall leapt up at once and embraced her, planting a sloppy kiss on her cheek. “Momma Bear!” he crowed. “You know I could never forget you.” He took his seat again, still grinning from ear to ear, and resumed loading up his plate. “Where are the little gremlins?” he asked, looking around for the children.

  “Well,” Eliza answered with a bemused smile as she rose to her feet, “Winter was sleeping, and I believe Susanna was quietly coloring. But I have a feeling your grand entrance might’ve stirred the pot a little bit.”

  Sure enough, when Eliza got up to check on the pack ’n’ play crib where Winter had been peacefully snoozing, she found her daughter wide awake. Susanna was standing on her tiptoes, peering over the edge.

  “Is the baby awake?” Susanna asked Eliza.

  “Looks like she is.” She scooped up Win
ter, who was still batting sleep out of her eyes, and offered her hand to Susanna. “C’mon, hon,” she added, “it’s time to eat anyway.”

  They went back over and settled into their seats. Eliza started spooning mashed potatoes onto a plate to feed Winter. Marshall was mid-story, but she was only half listening.

  “… So I’m checking out the radars this morning, like always—”

  “Huge weather nerd,” Brent interrupted by way of explanation.

  “It’s called meteorology, you peasant,” Marshall corrected, lobbing a bread roll at Brent’s head, “and as I was saying before I was so rudely cut off, I’m checking the charts and boom, my prediction comes true! Huge system pops up out of nowhere. Well, not nowhere. If you know where to look for this stuff …”

  Weather talk couldn’t be more boring to Eliza. She tuned out as Winter missed her mouth with the spoon—she was insisting on trying to feed herself these days, with decidedly mixed results—and dropped a huge dollop of mashed potatoes and gravy onto Eliza’s leg. As she was cleaning off her jeans, though, something Marshall was saying caught her ear.

  “… Could even be an early hurricane by the time it gets here on Saturday.”

  Eliza froze, then whirled around to face Marshall’s end of the table. “What’d you just say?”

  He looked at her quizzically with a mouthful of food. “Which part?”

  “A hurricane? Here? On Saturday?”

  He nodded slowly. “Yeah. Maybe. Still pretty far out; hard to tell. But looks likelier than not.”

  The color drained from Eliza’s face. Everyone else had gone stock-still, too, with the exception of Marshall, who had swallowed one bite of food and launched back into a new tangent of his monologue. It took him a few long beats before he realized that the entire table was frozen.