It Takes Two

by Judith Arnold

  Even though that one kiss had set his soul on fire.

  The town manager’s office was near the rear of the building on the first floor. He strode down the bland, boring corridor he’d walked down last night and wondered how different it would look if Brianna got to reconfigure it. The place needed some color, that was for sure. Maybe some artwork on the walls, artwork created by local residents. The high school had had a decent art program when he’d been a student there, and his mother had mentioned that art classes were now being offered at the Community Center, which was cool. Will didn’t have a nanometer of artistic talent in his body, but he could appreciate the talent of more creative people. If the Town Hall was all about the residents of Brogan’s Point, their art should be decorating the place.

  Entering the anteroom of the town manager’s office, he saw a pretty young woman with dark hair exiting from the inner office. Clad in neat trousers and a jacket, she looked awfully familiar. It took him just a few seconds to remember she’d gone to high school with him. “Monica Reinhart?”

  She glanced up from the stack of papers she was holding and broke into a smile. “Will Naukonen! I didn’t know you were back in town.”

  “Just temporarily,” he said, then winced inwardly as that truth sank in. Maybe there was some part of him that didn’t want to leave Brogan’s Point. He assured himself it was a very, very small part—and it had nothing to do with the architect waiting for him on a bench outside. “You’re still living here?”

  “I’m managing the inn,” she told him.

  Her family owned the Ocean Bluff Inn just a few blocks north of the Faulk Street Tavern. The Ocean Bluff Inn was a landmark in town, a sprawling waterfront complex, the main building at least as old as this Town Hall. It was a beautiful hotel. He hoped no one ever tore it down and replaced it with a modern structure of steel and glass.

  “You’re managing it?” He was impressed. “Did your parents retire?”

  “No, they’re still involved. But they’re grooming me to take it over eventually. I’d better start having some kids, so I can dump the business on them when I reach my parents’ age.” She laughed to indicate she was joking.

  He grinned. “Nah. Your kids will probably grow up and decide they want to be rock stars or circus acrobats.” Or software engineers on the West Coast.

  “True.” She nodded. “Lucky for my parents I grew up and decided I wanted to run a hotel. How about you? I heard you were living in Boston.”

  “I was. Some friends and I put together a start-up, and we recently sold it to a company out in Seattle. They’re bringing us all on board. So I guess I’ll be heading out there soon.”

  “That’s exciting!”

  He shrugged. “I’m a computer geek. It’s what I do.” Running a hotel sounded more exciting to him, for some reason. Not that he thought he’d be any good at it. Designing efficient data storage systems was more his speed. “I’m here to see the town manager. She’s new, isn’t she? I sort of remember the town manager being a man.”

  “Jerry Felton,” Monica confirmed. “It turned out he was embezzling funds from the town. A big mess. Diane Cassini was hired to replace him.”

  “What’s she like?” he asked.

  “No-nonsense,” Monica told him, lowering her voice in case anyone was eavesdropping, even though they were the only two people in the anteroom. “Kind of brusque. But she listens. The inn is disputing its recent tax assessment. We’ve made some improvements, but nothing major. Our assessment shot way up. We’re trying to get it adjusted downward. She listened to me, which is more than I can say for the town assessor.”

  “What improvements?” She’d better not have replaced that charming old building with the sort of structure Davenport might design.

  “We’re updating the cottages. We’ve got a new grounds manager on board now…” Her cheeks colored and her eyes glowed as she spoke. Will wasn’t the most perceptive person in the world—he was a guy, after all—but he had a feeling the grounds manager was someone special to Monica.

  Good for her. As Will recalled, she’d dated Jimmy Creighton in high school. As Will also recalled, Jimmy had been a jerk—good-looking but obnoxious. She deserved better.

  “So, if you’re heading out to Seattle, what do you need with the town manager?”

  “I just wanted to ask her something about the new Town Hall.”

  “Oh, God, I hope the town doesn’t vote for that modern abomination. I love this building. It needs some updating, sure. But it’s so…so Brogan’s Point.”

  It figured that she would prefer the old building, given that she was helping to run an inn in an old building, a building that was also “so Brogan’s Point.” “Well, I guess we’ll get to vote on whether to keep it or go with the modern proposal,” he said, refusing to call it an abomination.

  As soon as he spoke, he heard Brianna’s voice inside his head saying, “You said we.” He had said “we” when he’d talked about starting a Faulk Street Tavern basketball team. And now he’d said “we” when talking about voting for the new Town Hall. But he wouldn’t be in Brogan’s Point to vote, let alone to join the Community Center’s basketball league.

  Why did that realization leave him feeling a little empty inside?

  A woman with curly silver hair and intimidating horn-rimmed eyeglasses entered the anteroom and stared at Will. “Can I help you?”

  “I’ve got to run,” Monica said, heading toward the exit. “Stop by the inn before you leave,” she said. “Our dining room is still the best restaurant in town.”

  He nodded and smiled, wondering if the dining room at the Ocean Bluff Inn offered lobster rolls as tasty as the ones he and Brianna had eaten at the Lobster Shack. Once Monica was gone, he turned to the bespectacled woman. “I’d like to talk to the town manager, if she has a free minute.”

  “You don’t have an appointment,” the woman said, a statement rather than a question.

  “Like I said, it’ll just take a minute. I need to make her aware of an issue with one of the new Town Hall proposals.”

  The woman pursed her lips, lifted a phone handset and pressed a button. “A gentleman is here who says he needs a minute of your time. It has to do with the new Town Hall design,” she said into the phone. She listened for a few seconds and returned the phone to its cradle. “One minute,” she warned him, raising her index finger to emphasize the number of minutes he’d been granted and directing him toward a door with a jerk of her head.

  He hurried through the door, not wanting to waste a precious second of his minute.

  The woman he’d seen at the meeting last night sat behind a large gray desk. If you were going to work in this building, he thought, at least you should have an antique-looking wooden desk, maybe one of those desks with a roll top and little cubby holes for sorting paperwork. This desk was mostly metal, with a synthetic surface. It reminded him of the desks his teachers used to have in public school.

  The manager herself looked much as she had last night—a lot more modern than the building that housed her office. More modern, even, than her desk. Her hair fell in interesting angles around her square face, and she eyed him with a blend of curiosity and impatience.

  He extended his hand. “Ms. Cassini? I’m Will Naukonen. Thanks for squeezing me in.”

  “Naukonen,” she echoed. “You must be related to Gus Naukonen.”

  Everyone knew his mother—or at least, they knew the Faulk Street Tavern. “She’s my mom.”

  “It’s an unusual last name. Not many Naukonens in Brogan’s Point.”

  “It’s Finnish,” he told her. “But we were all born here.”

  “Well, then, Mr. Naukonen, what’s your problem?”

  He suppressed a smile at her assumption that he had a problem. He supposed most people didn’t beg to see her if they didn’t have an issue they wanted her to address. “I was checking the proposals for the new Town Hall down at the library earlier today,” he
said, “and the cost for the modern replacement building—Davenport’s proposal—is way lower than what he mentioned at the meeting last night.”

  “How much lower?”

  Will scrambled to remember the number Brianna had told him. “Millions,” he fudged. “More than six million. It doesn’t seem right. Which number is real? How much is his project going to cost? You know we taxpayers are going to take the cost into account when we vote on the proposals, so if he’s giving us different numbers… We need the correct cost estimates, right?”

  Her eyes narrowed slightly, her impeccably shaped eyebrows dipping into a frown. She lifted her phone, pressed a few buttons, and listened for a moment. “Regina,” she finally spoke into the phone. “Diane here. Can you check the cost estimate on the Davenport proposal? I’ll hold.” She clapped her hand over the mouthpiece and whispered to Will, “The librarian.”

  He nodded.

  She turned her attention back to the phone, then said, “Thanks, Regina,” and hung up. “We’ll have to investigate that,” she said. “Thank you for bringing it to my attention.”

  He nodded again. Given that she’d replaced a town manager who had screwed around with the town’s funds, he supposed she would be particularly diligent about money matters. “Thank you for letting me through your door,” he responded.

  “Tell your mother she needs to stock some Chardonnays that aren’t oak aged,” Diane Cassini said. “The Faulk Street Tavern’s Chardonnays are too oaky.”

  Will didn’t hide his grin. “I’ll pass the word along. I’m trying to get her to expand her menu. Have you ever drunk a Dark-and-Stormy?”

  “Oh, God, yes. Delicious. Tell her if she starts serving Dark-and-Stormies, she can forget about changing the Chardonnay.”

  Will decided he liked the new town manager just fine.

  Chapter Nine

  Brianna rose from the bench as soon as she saw Will emerge from the Town Hall building. She couldn’t read his facial expression, but she could admire his tall, lanky build, his wind-tossed hair, the easy grace with which he moved.

  She waited for him at the edge of the lawn carpeting the town square. It was still shaking off its winter pallor, but fresh green blades blended in with the bristly grass that had somehow survived the winter, and the entire lawn had been recently mowed, the paved walkways neatly edged. It was a pretty park—and the Town Hall looked perfect, looming over it.

  What was that corny line from some old poet? In the spring, a young man’s fancy turns to love. Spring was definitely beginning to settle into New England. But Brianna wasn’t a young man, and she certainly didn’t have any fancies. The last time she’d had a fancy, Rollie had been its object, and look at how that had turned out.

  She joined Will on the sidewalk bordering the green. “How did it go?” she asked.

  “Not bad. Let’s get a drink and talk.” He angled his head toward where he’d parked his car. He’d driven them to the Town Hall building; she’d left her car parked near the Faulk Street Tavern. She assumed that was where he’d drive them, but he cruised past Faulk Street, traveling a few blocks north on Atlantic Avenue, the broad street bordering the sea wall and the beach.

  When he steered off the road onto a winding gravel driveway, she experienced a twinge of worry—where was he taking her? A sign at the mouth of the driveway read “Ocean Bluff Inn.” That didn’t sound like a place to go for a drink and a talk.

  But she trusted him. She’d stopped him when he’d kissed her that morning, and he’d let himself be stopped. She’d felt nothing coercive in his kiss, only the foolish desire to kiss him back. That was her fault, not his.

  “What is this?” she asked as he found a parking space in the lot, a rectangle paved with gravel and crushed seashells. The building looming above the lot was a broad white clapboard structure, its windows framed in black shutters and its front porch lined with Adirondack chairs and rockers.

  “In the Town Manager’s office, I ran into an old classmate from high school. She’s managing this inn now. Her family owns it. I thought we could get something to drink here. Maybe something to eat, too, if you’re hungry. I sure am.”

  She glanced at his lean, long-limbed physique. He was probably one of those lucky people who could eat constantly and never gain a pound. If he remained in Brogan’s Point and played basketball, he’d undoubtedly burn off every calorie that entered his mouth. Of course, he could play basketball and burn calories in Seattle as easily as he could here.

  That thought caused her another twinge, this one pensive. She shouldn’t be wishing that he’d stay in Brogan’s Point. He had a job waiting for him out west, a life, a new home and new adventures. If he stayed here, what would he do? Continue to help his mother run her bar?

  She let him usher her up the steps to the porch and then inside the inn. The lobby was a cozy area, featuring a polished wood check-in counter and a grand staircase leading to the second floor. A thick Persian rug covered most of the lobby’s hardwood floor, and the few pieces of furniture were colonial in style.

  Will gazed around for a moment. “It’s been a while since I was here,” he admitted. “I think the lounge and restaurant are down that hall.”

  He sent a questioning glance to the woman posted behind the counter, who confirmed his guess with a nod.

  Will gestured for Brianna to precede him down the hall. Her curiosity about his discussion with the town manager grew, but not so much that she couldn’t appreciate the charming colonial-style décor of the hallway—the carpeting, the wall sconces, the restful colors. A glass double door opened into a dining room which was empty except for a couple of staffers setting tables with heavy linens and glittering silver flatware. Broad windows along one wall offered a spectacular view of the ocean.

  It was a lot classier than the Lobster Shack. A lot more expensive, too, she’d wager. “I don’t think they’re open for business yet,” she murmured.

  “We’ll go to the lounge,” he said, stepping into a small cocktail lounge adjacent to the dining room. The walls were paneled in knotty pine, the seating featured heavy leather chairs and sofas, and the bar was a lot smaller than the bar in the Faulk Street Tavern. The room had the aura of a gentleman’s club, although clearly women were permitted entry. She saw a couple of women seated in wingback chairs on the far end of the room.

  “What can I get you?” Will asked, gesturing toward a sofa near the bar.

  “It’s a little early for wine,” she said, although three-thirty—according to her watch—wasn’t that early.

  “How about an iced tea? Coffee?”

  “Hot tea would be nice,” she said. She’d sat outdoors on that bench, buffeted by a brisk breeze, long enough to have grown chilled. “Herbal, if they have it.”

  Will crossed to the bar while she settled onto the sofa. Within a minute, he was back with a beer for himself and an empty cup for her. The bartender followed, carrying a steaming silver pot and a wooden box filled with tea bags for Brianna to choose from. She also carried a plate of butter cookies and a bowl of mini-pretzels. Evidently, she felt cookies would not go well with beer, or pretzels with tea. After filling her cup with water and a teabag, Brianna tasted one of the cookies. Its sweet, buttery flavor spread across her tongue.

  Will took a sip of his beer, then munched on a few pretzels. She waited for him to say something, but he just gazed at her. Only the width of a single sofa cushion separated her from him. She chewed her cookie, feeling…something. Anticipation. Expectation. Attraction. Definitely attraction.

  She couldn’t let herself be attracted to him. Steering her mind to safer territory, she said, “So, what did the town manager say?”

  He took another swig of beer, then answered, “She said she’d investigate.”

  “That’s it?” Brianna tried to hide her disappointment. She had hoped the town manager would have stormed around her office, raging at the injustice and deception, maybe summoning the chief of police and de
manding that he issue a warrant for Rollie’s arrest.

  “Well, she told me to tell my mother to stock some Chardonnays that aren’t so oak-y.” He grinned. “She said she’d like to see the Faulk Street Tavern offer some more elaborate cocktails. What do you think? Should we do that?”

  Once again, he was using the word we. Maybe because his mother owned the place and he felt a family tie to it. “I used to enjoy trying new cocktails in Boston,” she admitted. “Around here, though—I’m too busy working to go out clubbing.” Also, she didn’t have many friends here in the suburbs north of the city to go clubbing with. “So the town manager wasn’t outraged by Rollie’s gaming the price of his building, huh.”

  “She said she’d investigate,” he repeated. “She seemed like a straight shooter to me. I think she’ll follow through.”

  “I hope so.” No point in belaboring the issue. Will had told her everything he had to tell her about his chat with the town manager. It was time to change the subject. “Tell me about your mother,” Brianna said. “Besides expanding the drink selection at her bar, why do you think she should get married?”

  He scooped a few pretzels out of the bowl, studied them in his palm, and popped them one at a time into his mouth as he pondered Brianna’s question. “Ed, her boyfriend, is a good man. They’re a good couple. They’ve been together for years.”

  “Maybe your mother likes things the way they are.”

  “My mother’s practical. There are probably some practical reasons she wants to stay single, but there are practical reasons for them to get married, too. They’re maintaining two houses, which is expensive, since my mother is hardly ever in her house. I’m staying there now, and the only time I see her is when I’m helping out at the tavern. And, as Ed pointed out, he gets really good health insurance through his job. He could put her on his policy, and she could save a lot of money there.”