Matias was in the middle of transferring cooled wort to one of his small fermentation tanks when his phone buzzed in his pocket. He had to ignore it—if he didn’t pitch the yeast in time, he’d have wasted what smelled like the start of a terrific session ale. If he could follow up his strawberries-and-cream porter with something even better, he’d be well on his way to the start of a tasting flight.
He was stirring the yeast into the vessel when his phone buzzed again. Then again.
And again.
One-handed, he checked the texts.
Violet.
A sea of blue bubbles filled the thread.
At brunch with my parents.
And Iris.
Rachel and Winnie made tiny croquembouches in honor of the wedding.
For the adults, not Iris.
Not that Franci and Archer are going to make it here to witness their names in chalk.
Which is the point, obviously. If they showed up, they’d be doing “kid-free morning” wrong.
But you need to join us. My parents are leaving on the one o’clock ferry.
Matias pressed his lips together. She was no doubt hinting at him talking to the Frosts about the warehouse.
Despite Violet’s hearty support, he was second-guessing whether he should bring up his plan yet. When he and Lawson had created their business plan, it had been a slick package with profit projections and multiple stages of local, regional and national release. Taking over the craft brewing world by storm.
Lawson had proved their plan worked, too. He just hadn’t done it with Matias. When he’d been offered the opportunity to start a craft label for one of the country’s biggest commercial brewers, he’d disappeared, leaving Matias in a lurch filled with equipment and supply orders he’d needed to cancel.
He hadn’t given up on brewing, but the delay ground him down a little more every day.
Damn it. Why wait any longer? But he couldn’t exactly leave until he’d finished aerating the yeast and had the air lock in place.
In the middle of pitching yeast, he dictated.
Patience wasn’t Violet’s strong suit. The delay would go over like a bouquet of lead balloons.
Perfect, came her reply. They can see you in action.
Christ, that wasn’t what he’d meant. His small-batch setup was less than impressive looking.
Matias didn’t want to copy what he and Lawson had envisioned. He knew what he had in the bank, and what his expenses would be, and a modest beginning for a six-beer menu he’d place in select markets around Washington.
Simple.
Too simple?
He shook his head at his self-doubt. He’d been waiting a long time to hit the financial target he’d set. He was close enough he needed to go for it. Besides, it wasn’t like he was applying for a business loan from the Frosts. He was only going to ask them about renting a space, one they hadn’t found a tenant for in years. So long as he paid the rent, he had to figure they’d thank him for using the space and doubling their monthly take.
Give me a half hour. Order me an egg-and-sausage sandwich with one of the wedding specials.
He could go poke a toe in the surf.
He finished his task, cleaned up and then took the boardwalk to Hideaway Bakery, cutting in front of the Six Sisters.
Weathered and cheerful, the pastel-painted houses peered out over the harbor. They lined the wooden walkway like a row of frosted cupcakes, each with a business at ground level and a residence on the second story.
Having lived on Oyster Island for most of the last thirty years, Matias had seen the harbor change over time. A few long, parallel wooden docks butted against a section of smaller, mostly stainless-steel decking resembling the tines of a fork. The newest wide section of cement-topped wharfs floated closest to the ferry dock.
None of it matched, but it all looked like home. Specifically the little twenty-two-foot Catalina at the end of Wharf G. The Albatross wasn’t winning any beauty contests, but Matias had enjoyed every minute on his little sailboat.
Unlike its name would suggest, the sloop was excellent luck. His friends Renata and Grant had fallen in love under her sails, piloting it to a near victory in the island’s annual sailing race, the Amazing Oyster a couple of years ago. And to think, they’d recently announced they were having a baby...
If Violet conceives, the baby will see this as home, too.
Their child would walk the boardwalk thousands of times, just like Matias was now. All the things he could point out to young, eager-to-learn eyes—how the coming and going of boats and the sea stretching toward the Cascades, far off in the distance on the mainland, meant the view never looked the same twice.
His throat tightened as the weight of the potential responsibility settled on his shoulders. The weight of passing on the Kahale family heritage, too.
The only other place that resonated so deeply was his grandparents’ home on Moloka‘i. They’d invited him to live there with them, but the cost of living was more than he could handle, and he couldn’t imagine relocating, not with how he felt like a part of the fabric of Oyster Island.
He entered the bakery through the waterside door. The scent of caramelized sugar drifted on the air. Forks clinked on plates, and the usual hum of conversation competed with the whir of the coffee grinder. A typical Sunday, imbued with a relaxed feeling of all the tables being full, but no one being in a hurry to get anywhere. Both Rachel and Winnie were behind the counter, serving steaming drinks and pastries to the short line of takeout customers by the glass case.
Matias waved at the owner of the hardware store and his wife, then spotted Violet with her parents by the table nearest the front door. He joined them.
Both her parents stood and gave him a big hug, first Cath with her usual cloud of lavender essential oils, then Bruce with a clap to the back. The guy was a good deal shorter than Matias, but he had the strength of a tussling bear.
“Can’t thank you enough for standing up for our son yesterday,” Bruce said gruffly.
And are you going to thank me if I knocked up your daughter the day before?
Better not lead with that.
He took the empty seat next to Violet, where a glistening croissant sandwich sat next to a mini-tower of cream puffs encased in golden-brown strands of hardened sugar. A half-finished scone and decimated pile of berries filled Violet’s plate, and her parents were both nearly done what looked like the daily quiche.
“Thanks for putting my order in,” he said. “Smells awesome.”
“You should really open for breakfast on weekends,” Violet said. “I know you make a killer breakfast poutine.”
He shook his head. “Nah. Something to be said for sharing the wealth. I don’t want to compete with Rachel and Winnie, or Corner Bistro.”
“I’m just saying, I wouldn’t say no to soft-poached eggs with fries and gravy on a Sunday morning,” she said.
“I don’t need to run a brunch service in order to make you breakfast, Violet. You could come over to my place,” he said.
Her cheeks turned pink.
Great. He’d sounded like he was propositioning her.
Cath’s brown eyebrows rose.
“Speaking of expanding, though,” he said, twisting off the profiterole from the top of the tiny tower. “I do have a related idea. And it would take doing some more business with you.” He focused on Bruce and Cath, who both looked at him like they hadn’t expected to delve into money talks on the Sunday morning after their son’s wedding.
Violet was beaming at him. Her face, scrubbed clean of all the makeup she’d been wearing for the big occasion, was brighter than the neon My Favorite Flavor of Cake is “More” sign hanging from the wall near the cash register.
Her parents, not so much. Their slight frowns tempered his determination.
He made a “never mind” gesture with a hand and went back to cutting his food. “Another day. I’ll give you a call once you’re back home and settled.”
Bruce swallowed his mouthful of food and took a sip of his black coffee. “Better to talk in person. What’s on your mind?”
“The warehouse,” Matias said.
Cath cocked her head. “You’re interested in it still?”
“I am.”
“You’re not working with Lawson again, are you?” Bruce asked.
The question sucked the air out of the table.
“No.” Matias barely resisted tacking on a curse to the denial.
Everyone breathed again.
“Good. Had me wondering if that’s why he was back on the island.”
“You saw him?” Matias asked.
Bruce nodded sharply.
“He came in for coffee this morning,” Violet said. “About a half hour ago.”
“Walked right past us without more than a sideways glance and a nod,” Cath said primly.
“Which was good,” Violet muttered. “And of course, Matias wouldn’t work with him again.”
He nodded at her insistence. “I’ve put together a plan and built some savings without him. It’s why it took me so long to get organized. The tanks are no small investment.”
“And you have the money for them?” Bruce was fidgeting with the handle of his coffee mug.
“I will by the end of the summer.”
“Oh.”
Matias didn’t like that tone. “Not interested in renting to a brewery anymore?”
Bruce winced. “We’ve been talking to a hospitality group recently. They’ve been putting out feelers on building a boutique hotel, and we were contemplating tearing down the warehouse.”
Violet paled. “Oh, Dad, no.”
“It’s sitting there empty, honey. It’s looking more run-down after every winter, and we don’t have the money to fix it up. If we subdivided the property and sold it off, The Cannery and your building wouldn’t be affected.”
She crossed her arms over her hoodie. “Except by construction noise.”
“Which isn’t forever,” Cath put in.
“We’re needing to divest. Economy’s been tough on our retirement nest egg,” Bruce explained. “This company’s willing to have shovels in the ground as soon as they can get the permitting in place, and I’m not inclined to turn them down.”
“You would sell to some big hotel company instead of renting to someone local?” Violet said testily. “Someone who’s been paying his rent on time for years?”
“Not necessarily,” Bruce replied carefully. “But I want Matias—and you—to know all the variables.”
Appetite gone, Matias lay his cutlery in the parallel “I’m done” position. “You’d need me to start renting earlier than the fall, then.”
He hadn’t expected to need to jump on it this quick. He’d been lulled into complacency, with the warehouse sitting empty since long before he and Lawson had originally arranged to use it as their future base of operations. But if Bruce and Cath were looking to sell the property, he needed a new plan.
“What if I started renting it now?” he asked.
His stomach shifted. Shelling out over the spring and summer would stretch his budget. It could also mean he’d be pissing money away. He was counting on his summer profits, but if anything went wrong there, he’d need to delay and would have invested in a building way too early.
Unless I start in on building the brewery right away.
He blew out a breath and waited for the Frosts to finish sharing one of those silent married-forever-couple looks.
Violet poked at her food with her fork. “You’d want the extra expense, Mati?”
“What happened to ‘I will do whatever it takes to get my parents to lease it to you’?”
She lifted a shoulder. “I don’t want you to commit to something you aren’t ready for.”
He held in a laugh. She was obviously not only talking about business expenses.
“You’ll have to trust me on it,” he said.
She bit her lip.
Cath studied her daughter.
“If you need some time to crunch your own numbers,” he said, “no hurry. But if you need the warehouse to start bringing in income ASAP, I’m good for it.”
“You’re an excellent tenant, Matias. We do want to honor that history.”
“You are under no obligation,” he replied, “but I would love the opportunity to build on our existing business relationship.”
He sneaked a glance at Violet. If she found out she was pregnant, his relationship to her parents would be about a hell of a lot more than paying rent on time.
Something cold startled Violet awake. Cold, and wet, and—
She groaned. “Honu.”
A nose-first reminder she was on dog-sitting detail. Archer, Franci and Iris were on their familymoon, making Violet the proud owner of a black Lab for three weeks. Honu had climbed onto her bed at some point in the night and was snarfing near Violet’s ear.
“You and your love of breakfast,” Violet complained. She slung an arm around the dog’s neck. He snuggled in, happy to be the little spoon. “Oh, I know. You’re such a good boy. The very best boy. Otter wishes he were as good a boy as you.”
Matias had a black Lab, too, nearly identical to Honu, with a square head and stocky frame, though the dogs weren’t related.
Honu let out a thin whine.
“Yes, yes. Waiting is torture.”
Another whine.
“Torture for me,” she clarified. “It’s Saturday. I don’t have clients for hours. Do you know how long this week has been? How much I wanted to sleep?”
His doggy huff suggested he did not, indeed, understand. He’d had her up early for a pee every day of the week she’d been watching him.
“Take a long vacation, I told them,” she grumbled. “Honu’s no work at all.”
He nuzzled under her chin.
She hugged his thick neck. “I know, baby. I would never complain about you.”
Fifteen minutes later, she’d tossed a long cardigan over her flannel pajama pants and was standing at the north end of the boardwalk, where it met a little grassy area in front of the commercial section farthest from the ferry terminal and the grocery store. It was the quieter end of Hideaway Wharf. She loved how her apartment and office were close to everything, but also set away from the busier Six Sisters area on the south side of the warehouse.
Honu sprawled upside down on the lawn, wiggling his ass in the world’s most blissed-out back scratch. He chomped on his orange ball. Any time now, he’d be ready for his eight requisite morning throws. No more, no less.
Dog sitting got her out of bed hours earlier than she’d normally be up on a weekend earmarked for sleeping in, but it was at least amusing.
She was clutching her cardigan shut with one hand and throwing the ball—toss number three—when footfalls approached from behind.
Honu was up like a shot, darting past her.
“Gentle, Honu,” she said, spinning around.
Violet barely kept her groan from escaping as Honu greeted the newcomer. It wasn’t someone the dog was familiar with.
Lawson, wearing high-end running clothes and a wary smile, leaned down to scratch the Labrador’s ears. “You ended up getting a dog.”
The regretful tone nearly had her feeling something approaching empathy, which...no, thank you, please. They’d talked about getting a dog the year before the wedding-that-wasn’t but had been too focused on a child to make room for a pet.
She still didn’t have time. She loved dogs, but her schedule was too erratic to have one without relying too much on family members during the emergencies and deliveries on the other islands or the mainland.
“I don’t,” she said. “He’s Archer’s.”
His hands stilled mid pet. “He’s really doing better now?”
He asked as if he hadn’t forfeited the right to care about her family when he walked away from her. But she never wanted to downplay Archer’s efforts to heal after his accident, so she nodded. “He’s on his honeymoon with his wife and kid.”
“Haven’t seen you around since Sunday.”
“Were you looking?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Casually. Figured I might run into you out on one of the trails.”
A fair assumption. Running together had been one of their major couple activities, and it was something she still did four or five times a week by herself.
“I’ve been island-hopping this week. Catching up on client appointments. I took a lot of last week off, had to make up for it,” she said. “But I heard you hadn’t left yet.”
From everyone.
Every time she’d talked to anyone in the community this week, they’d checked to see if she knew Lawson was on the island. If not with words, then with you-poor-thing expressions.
She wasn’t a poor thing.
Lawson was an annoyance, not a reason for her to be pitied.
“I’m going to be here for a while, I think,” he said.
Great. She gritted her teeth. “Your brewery doesn’t need you?”
“They’re in the process of buying me out.”
“But it was everything you wanted,” she said, unable to keep the ice from her tone.
He paused for a long while, idly stroking the dog’s ears. “It was never that, Violet.”
Then why did you destroy our freaking lives over it?
Fire blazed in her chest. She breathed slowly, trying to douse the flames.
Honu, butt wiggling like he was an overwound child’s spinning toy, planted his front feet on Lawson’s chest as if he was going in for a hug.
“Honu, off,” Violet commanded.
The dog ignored her. He managed a few good licks before Lawson, laughing, backed up. The dog dropped to a sit, looking disappointed.
“Sorry,” she said. She snapped her fingers and plucked Honu’s ball off the ground and tossed it far across the lawn.
“Better than my sister’s goats,” Lawson said.
She snorted before remembering he no longer had a license to make her laugh.
“I’m here to help her with her spring season,” he explained.
“Ah.”
“I’m also here to make amends,” he said.
She narrowed her eyes at his wording. “Like, twelve-step amends?”
He raked a hand through his tousled brown hair. “No. I’m not dealing with an addiction. Just messing up lives with bad decisions.”
Honu barreled toward her, then veered away from the water, toward another streak of black fur. Dog met dog in a blur of sniffs and wags and rearing up on their hind legs to tussle.
Her brother’s pet growled, playfully baring his teeth.
Otter did the same, just as Matias approached from between Violet’s apartment and the hardware store. He lasered in on Lawson. His smile came off as baring teeth, too.
In no way playful.
He jogged up to them.
“Violetta! Hey!” Wrangling Otter’s leash with one hand, he dropped a quick kiss to her cheek.
Something deep in her belly went soft and sappy.
Uh, what? What was she thinking? What was he thinking?
For God’s sake, why were neither of them thinking?
She tried to keep her smile as neutral as she could. “Hey, Mati.”
“Want to grab a coffee before your office hours?” He put a hand on her shoulder.
Warmth spread from his palm, a ripple of tingles along her nerve endings.
What was his game? Did he actually want to have coffee with her for some reason, or was he trying to stick it to Lawson? Not that she cared. Who was she to ruin what little retribution he could inflict at this point?
She glanced down at her plaid pajama pants. She didn’t care about taking the dog out for a pee in them, but they weren’t Saturday morning coffee attire.
Matias’s eyes glowed. “We can head to your place, first. So you can get changed.” His hand slid down her arm, resting on her hand. It felt...warm.
Proprietary.
She hated how good it felt.
She inhaled sharply.
Good grief. She was way too old to be reacting to innuendo.
Lawson blanched. “I’ll, uh, get going. Thanks for listening, Vi. Maybe we can chat more later. If you’re up for it.” After shooting a meaningful look at Matias, he ran through the park to the wooded trail beyond, more of a sprint than a jog.
Waiting until he disappeared into the trees, she then whirled on Matias. “Would you stop making it look like we’re together?”
The corners of his mouth tightened. “Even if he mentioned it, no one’s going to believe him.”
“No, but someone else might see you getting all mock territorial.” She pointed down the boardwalk. A few buildings past the warehouse, Rachel was out front of the bakery, clearing off one of the tables. Farther down, Sam was loading dive tanks into a wagon.
He looked sheepish. “Whenever he gets within ten feet of you, my back goes up.”
“So you’re what, leaving your scent on me? No better than Honu and Otter, competing for who can piss on the most trees on the trail.”
Redness tinted his bronze cheeks. “You’re right. It wasn’t my best move. Sorry.”
She hmphed.
“Has he tried to talk to you before today?”
“No, actually.”
Matias looked like he was on the verge of giving Lawson a fraction of credit. He stared at the trailhead, then snapped his fingers at the dogs, who were teasing each other, competing for who got to chew on Honu’s ball. Once his dog responded, he clipped a leash to his collar. Violet did the same to Honu, who’d won the battle for ball supremacy.
“Any word from my parents?” she asked.
“They asked for a few more days to talk to their financial planner,” he said. “I keep hoping a delay is a good thing. There isn’t another building on the island to suit my needs.”
“I want you to go for it. Badly,” she said.
“You want me to show up Lawson?”
“That would be super petty of me.”
“I’ve had my moments of petty.”
She guffawed. “Like kissing me on the cheek and stroking my arm.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But the brewery isn’t about pettiness, or spite, or revenge or whatever. It’s the thing I wanted since I stole apples off my uncle’s trees and started fermenting them in the garage. And don’t get me wrong. I love the pub. I love feeding people and serving them drinks. Listening to their problems and providing them with a place to relax and connect. I just want some of the drinks I serve them to be ones I made.”
She could see him in a bigger brewing facility, wearing one of his sexy denim aprons and an at-peace-with-the-world smile. The thought made her smile, until a yawn broke through.
“Tired, still?”
She nodded.
“Is, uh...” His smile turned sheepish again. “Would that be a symptom?”
“Oh, God no. Way too early.”
She knew how her body responded to early pregnancy, almost down to the day. To the week, definitely. Week four, breast tenderness, and a hard-to-pinpoint feeling of being off somehow. A few days after, nausea and exhaustion. Over a month of it, along with bloating and the kind of weight gain that could be a baby or could be too much salt on her french fries.
And then, sometime between weeks ten and fourteen, spotting. Cramping. And a wave of grief so all-consuming she lost the ability to parse between emotional aches and physical aches.
She’d learned a heart could actually hurt. Loss could chisel away at her heartbeats until they were scattered, rapid flutters, no longer pumping the nutrients necessary to grow life.
Matias’s gaze was a comforting weight, flicking between her face and her hand on her belly.
Oh, crap. Speaking of things that would get people talking.
She crossed her arms.
“When can you take a test? Two weeks?”
“Sometimes as early as twelve days,” she said.
“Want to try on Thursday?” he asked quietly.
Not particularly.
“I’ll let you know if I think I should.”
But the conversation made her way too aware of what might be happening in her body, to the point she was feeling phantom twinges low in her belly through her first few appointments of the afternoon.
She sat in her chair in the breezy, calming room where she met clients, jotting down a few notes between appointments and cursing how easy it was to jump from “random muscle movement” to “implantation cramping.” She knew too much. From being a midwife, from her first two pregnancies... Argh.
Bolting to her feet, she went to the main waiting area, paperwork in hand and ready to be filed away by Wren, an RN who worked part-time at the island’s medical clinic and part-time assisting Violet with some tasks and home births. She happened to be Yolanda’s cousin, and her dark gaze held the same sharp awareness.
“Need a drink of water, sweetie? Herbal tea? I brewed a pot for Renata. She was on edge today.”
Violet nodded. At seventeen weeks pregnant, Violet’s friend Renata was struggling with low blood pressure symptoms. Add in her husband missing her last two appointments, and she’d been uncharacteristically off-kilter, despite bringing her mom with her for support.
“She mentioned being upset Grant wasn’t available,” Violet said. “Working Saturdays? Whatever it was, she was putting a happy face on for her mom.”
“Doubt it convinced Alice.” Wren shook her head and poured tea into Violet’s It’s a Beautiful Day to Catch Babies mug. She passed over the steaming drink. “Even the closest relative won’t do when you have your heart set on your man being at your side.”
“Hopefully Grant makes the next one.” She took a sip, focusing on the lavender and chamomile. With any luck, the soothing herbs would settle her ratcheting nerves.
She hadn’t even considered what Matias would want to do about appointments, if she needed to start having them. She’d have to travel off island to be seen by a midwife. Hopefully her midwife friend on San Juan Island, with whom she’d started her career, would have room.
And then there was the issue of her own clients. She’d had an upcoming graduate from the midwifery program in Seattle contact her recently about taking on a partner for her practice. Might turn out to be more serendipitous than she’d realized...
She took another drink of tea.
This was so silly. She was getting way ahead of herself. She was still a week away from knowing one way or the other. And she’d taken dozens of pregnancy tests when she and Lawson were trying.
Jesus, she’d dreaded that single line. She’d had a lot of them, in between the two plus signs. And by not taking emergency contraception, she was setting herself up to hurt again. One line or two, she’d have to untangle a ball of emotions.
The front door opened, and one of Violet’s new mamas came through, a Lopez Island resident in her late thirties, carrying her perfect six-week-old infant, bundled into the sweetest fleece suit.
“Oh, my word, his eyelashes,” Wren said, standing to get a better angle to admire and coo.
Their client put the carrier down and unbuckled her son, then brought him close to her chest. He started rooting, eyes wide, staring at his mom as he opened his mouth and bobbed for an as-of-yet hidden nipple.
The look. The reason the flickers of hope, deep inside Violet’s belly, refused to be extinguished. The trust, the bond, the everything.
She might not take a test on Thursday. Might even wait an extra couple of weeks, given how erratic her periods had been. But she was going to let herself believe there might be a reason to take one in the first place.