No Beach Like Nantucket

by Grace Palmer

  Typical man, she thought again. But he was her typical man.

  That was marvelous, too.

  ELIZA

  No one had ever told Eliza Benson that wedding planning was so freaking difficult.

  Actually, that wasn’t true. Lots of people had told her. Just like lots of people had told her that motherhood was hard. She hadn’t listened to that, either. Wrong on both counts, as it turned out. Wedding planning was hard. Motherhood was hard. She really ought to start listening to others’ advice.

  Lord, was she getting stubborn as she approached her mid-thirties! She was becoming more like her sister Sara. And, now that she thought about it, Sara was becoming more like her, too. Like a strange, Freaky Friday-esque switching of bodies and personalities. Sara the business owner? Eliza the headstrong? That was completely backwards.

  And yet, it was the state of the world these days. Such is life, she had learned. We grow, we change, we all turn into our parents. It was both a blessing and a curse.

  Speaking of parents, Mom was thriving these days. It made Eliza’s heart sing to see her so happy with Dominic. It was still weird, of course, to see her mother in the arms of a man who wasn’t her father. But Dominic was a good man; he loved Mom and he treated her well.

  Happiness was by no means limited to Nantucket’s Sweet Island Inn, either. Eliza’s house was full of joy, full of her daughter’s laughter and her fiancé’s music.

  After their spontaneous, preemptive, quasi-but-not-quite-honeymoon to Bermuda, the burgeoning Patterson family had come home to Nantucket brimming over with love. They were tan and they were all in love with each other. Eliza loved Oliver, Oliver loved Winter, Winter loved Eliza. Winter, coming up on eighteen months, loved lots of things, actually. She loved clapping and the song “Wheels on the Bus” and waddling around the house at breakneck speed. She had a little toy guitar that she played while Oliver made up words to songs, and when he picked her up and raced down the hallway with her, Winter squealed with that little girl laughter that instantly melted Eliza’s heart.

  As a matter of fact, that was what they were doing right this second. Oliver called the game “Rocket Ship.” He made the sound effects to match as he zoomed up and down the hallway in his socks, sliding across the hardwood with Winter held out in front of him so she could feel the wind on her face.

  “You know, some of us are trying to work!” Eliza hollered after him with a smile on her face. She was seated at the computer that lived in one corner of the living room, working out the kinks of a new set of Facebook ads for the Sweet Island Inn. Since Dominic’s purchase of the inn from Aunt Toni, Eliza had been officially installed as the inn’s business manager. Dominic had even ordered her business cards, which was both thoughtful and completely unnecessary. Honestly, the inn did all the work for her. Who could resist the allure of Nantucket in the sunshine? Beaches and lighthouses and quaint shops lining the cobblestone streets—sign me up, please, was the standard response. Eliza checked on the set of ads she’d pushed through this morning. There were already a few comments from potential customers.

  OMG—how do i get here?? said one.

  Heaven on earth, said another.

  Eliza grinned. Well, they weren’t wrong.

  “Work, shmork!” Oliver shouted back as he vroom-vroom-vroomed back down towards Eliza. Winter was still cackling like a maniac.

  “You better make sure she breathes,” Eliza warned. “I can see all the blood rushing to her face already.”

  “This is literally the greatest moment of her life thus far,” Oliver shot back as he got a running start and went skidding down the hallway once more. “Until tomorrow’s session of Rocket Ship, that is.”

  She could only laugh and shake her head. She might be getting more stubborn these days, but she was no match for her fiancé. Oliver did what Oliver wanted, no matter the time or place. Luckily for her, what he usually wanted was to treat her like a queen and make her laugh. Sure, he got on Eliza’s nerves every now and then, but what kind of couple lived a perfect life around the clock? She was far from perfect, and so was he. But their cracks lined up nicely.

  A ding on the computer drew her attention as Oliver and Winter collapsed onto the living room carpet, giggling. Winter immediately crawled over to the toy bucket in the corner. She picked up her favorite toy—an oversized purple bubble wand—and handed it to Oliver. “Bub-bub!” she cajoled, clapping her hands together. “Bub-bub!”

  Oh goodness. As if Eliza’s heart hadn’t melted enough already. She and Oliver might not be perfect, but Winter was an angel sent from the heavens above. Well, most of the time.

  She watched as Oliver pretended to consider Winter’s request. He was going to give in, of course—duh; he was a softie for their little girl—but they both held back laughter as Winter’s eyes got big. She tugged on his wrist and said it again and again—“Bub-bub! Bub-bub!”—until he cracked a huge smile, unscrewed the wand, and started to fill the living room with huge, iridescent bubbles that drifted around in the lazy draft of the fan overhead. Winter stood stock-still in the middle of it all, reaching out one chubby little finger in wonderment. Every time a bubble popped near her, she jumped a little in surprise and giggled.

  Another ding on the computer drew Eliza’s attention. Turning back to the monitor, she saw that an email had come in. Oliver must’ve left his email account open. “Babe, you got an email,” she called over.

  “Check it for me,” he replied. He looked occupied with trying to top his personal record for how many bubbles he could get going at once.

  Shrugging, Eliza double-clicked the notification and pulled his email up. She read it, blinked, read it again. “That can’t be right …” she mumbled under her breath.

  “Everything okay?” Oliver asked.

  “Uh, yeah, all good,” she said. “It’s, uh … just check later when you have time.”

  “Sure thing, babe.” Scooping up Winter, he went to scrounge up some snacks in the pantry.

  Eliza sagged back in the chair, brow furrowed. It wasn’t like Oliver to keep secrets from her, but it seemed like she’d accidentally stumbled across just that. The email that had come in was from a job recruiting site. It said, “Your application has been accepted—please select an interview time below.”

  Oliver was looking for a job?

  That was news to Eliza.

  It had been an ongoing topic over the last year. An understandably confusing one. After everything that had happened during their short stint on the Fever Dreams tour the previous summer, Oliver’s music career had taken a strange and unexpected twist. He’d done well while he was performing. Better than he’d ever expected, actually. That didn’t surprise her. Everyone who had ever heard him sing and play the piano, even back in those days when he was just playing for tips at Nantucket bars, knew he was talented. But there’s a difference between “talented” and “making it big.” And it was awfully hard to say which side of that line Oliver fell on. Not because he wasn’t good enough, but because the difference came down to luck. The guys who made it weren’t always better than the guys who didn’t. They just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

  The question wasn’t whether or not Oliver could make it. It was whether he could keep waiting until he did. Sooner or later, his lucky break would come. He knew that; she knew that. But what if it didn’t come until a lot later? How long could he wait, playing at bars and private parties for the rich folks in ‘Sconset, until the right person heard his song and decided to put him in the recording studio or on the radio or whatever? He had a family now—a fiancée and a little girl. They wanted to build a life together. He couldn’t be in two places at once.

  He had to choose.

  And last year, it seemed like he had chosen them. He’d wavered, sure. He and Eliza had rehashed that plenty in the days and weeks since then. But every time they talked about it, he answered with firm resolve: he chose them. He chose his family. He chose his girls. He might not get
fame, but he’d always be able to have them. Night after night, day after day, he reiterated that decision with every kiss, every wink, every game of Rocket Ship.

  That, Eliza was learning, was real love. Waking up each morning and choosing your partner again. That was the hard part, the work of it all. Not a single day could pass without making that choice.

  It wasn’t easy. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Eliza knew that the cost of his choice still weighed on him, no matter how strong his conviction. He loved Eliza and Winter, yes, but he’d loved music first. He’d loved music since he was a little boy looking for somewhere to belong, and he’d wandered into the music room after school. Eliza adored that story. Every time Oliver told it, she closed her eyes and pictured a miniature Oliver—hair flopping over his face, shrunk down to four foot nothing, but with those green eyes shining exactly the same as they did now—stepping up warily to a piano, pressing a single key and hearing it ring out into the silence. In her mind’s eye, she saw his face light up. This is what I want, he’d say. This is the thing for me.

  She never, ever wanted to change him. But the fact remained that opening one door meant closing another. He wrestled with that nightly. And every time another email or call came in from a record label A&R scout, asking what he was working on these days and if he wanted to maybe do a show or two, she saw that it pained her fiancé to say no. To say, “I’m a family man now.”

  “Whoa!” came a sudden cry from the kitchen. “‘Liza, get in here!”

  The shock interruption of her thoughts sent her heart leaping into her throat. Her brain immediately went to dark places. Winter fell and got hurt. Oliver sliced his finger off chopping potatoes. There’s a gas leak in the house; it’s about to explode. She raced into the kitchen, ready for the sight of blood and gore.

  But it was just Oliver bent over the kitchen counter with the newspaper spread out in front of him. Winter was playing contentedly at his feet, babbling to herself. He glanced up at her as she came skidding in. His eyes were wide in surprise. He waved her over urgently.

  “You scared me!” she snapped. “Don’t do that!”

  He chuckled and whistled low in surprise. “Trust me, babe. You’re gonna want to see this.”

  Frowning, she walked around and looked over his shoulder to see the article in the business section he was pointing at.

  Prominent Goldman Sachs VP Arrested, read the headline.

  She gasped. “No way.”

  Clay Reeves, the Executive Vice President for Customer Relations of the Goldman Sachs Leveraged Finance Capital Markets group, was arrested today in a joint FBI-SEC sting on charges of embezzlement, wire fraud, and possession of Schedule I narcotics, the article began. Sources say Reeves acted alone in appropriating several million dollars’ worth of firm revenue into private offshore accounts. These illicit gains funded a lavish lifestyle, including the purchase and distribution of cocaine and methamphetamine, according to court documents obtained by investigators.

  Eliza couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The article went into further detail describing Clay’s crimes. But the gist of it was that her ex-fiancé was almost certainly going to jail for a very, very long time.

  She looked up to Oliver, eyes wide. He whistled again. “That puts an end to that mess,” he said quietly.

  She knew exactly what he meant. “That mess” referred to the ugly underbelly of the last year—Clay’s intermittent attempts to seize custody of her daughter. He’d had a lawyer send a nasty, threatening letter demanding visitation and a co-parenting arrangement in which Winter would spend time with both Eliza and her biological father. Eliza, with the help of her brother-in-law Pete, who was a lawyer, had fought off the advances as best as she could. Fortunately, Clay didn’t seem to be too consistent with his threats, because he’d follow up one aggressive demand with months of radio silence before resurfacing.

  Now, though, that disturbing saga was over. Clay was in jail. That meant no more threatening letters. No more custody battle.

  It was over.

  She put her arms around Oliver and her head against his chest. She fingered her engagement ring behind her back as she just breathed and relaxed in his embrace.

  Things were going to be good from here on out. She just knew it. Her wedding was in seven days. Her soon-to-be-husband loved her and wanted to provide for her and their daughter. Her ex was no longer in the picture.

  It was going to be a very good week indeed.

  Who cared if wedding planning was hard? Who cared if motherhood was hard? This—this hug, this smell, this warm and beautiful moment—this would always be easy.

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  Also by Grace Palmer

  Sweet Island Inn Series

  No Home Like Nantucket (Book 1)

  No Beach Like Nantucket (Book 2)

  No Wedding Like Nantucket (Book 3)

  No Love Like Nantucket (Book 4) (coming soon!)

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