Justin Kane slammed the back door hard enough to rattle the old toys in the farmhouse’s attic. He followed that with stomping feet that sounded like they belonged to a fuming teenager rather than the man responsible for keeping the longest-running family-owned dairy in the county in the black.
“A cow step on your foot?”
His mother’s voice carried from the kitchen to where he stared at the ceiling in the mudroom. It was a little too light. A little too nonchalant. She knew what was going on.
He crossed his arms, fisted his hands, and held himself just on the brink of slamming his head against the wall. Of course, that would only amplify the thunder beating against his temples. “No.” He hadn’t been stepped on. It just felt like that.
“I suppose you heard about Natalie then.”
“How long have you known?” He nearly bit his tongue off. The traitor. He didn’t want to know how long his mom had been keeping secrets from him. Especially not where Natalie O’Ryan was concerned.
But mostly he didn’t want her name said in this house.
“Aretha told me she ran into Natalie at Grady’s.”
He cringed before easing his fingernails out of his palms. But he didn’t make a move toward the kitchen door, the white frame with four triangular windows open only far enough to allow a breeze and the sounds of home cooking through.
And the smell of something sweet like cinnamon and sugar.
“Did you see her there?”
The question poked to life the image of Natalie’s freckled face and the halo of red curls that swished around her shoulders. A flash of bitterness washed over him, overriding anything sweet coming from his mother’s kitchen. So he answered her question with one of his own. “How’d you know I was at Grady’s?”
“It’s Wednesday, dear.”
Of course. Because his life was completely predictable.
“Did you know she was coming back?”
Something slapped against the side of a plastic bowl, and her pause spoke volumes. Maybe she was a traitor.
“I’d heard a . . . murmur.”
“You mean a rumor.”
“I wouldn’t call it that.” She might not, but the rest of the town would. Natalie most certainly would. At least the Natalie he’d known so many years before.
Crossing an ankle over his knee to untie his boot, he yanked on the lace until the bow morphed into an angry knot. His blunt, callused fingertips fumbled against it, only managing to bumble it more. Hopping on one foot, he thudded a shoulder against the whitewashed board wall and bounced against the cement basin. Pain shot through his hip and up his side, and he groaned as he leaned against the work sink.
“You okay in there?” His mom appeared at the open door, her face only just making the turn around the corner.
Lowering his still-booted foot to the floor, he looked up at her. He must have looked more rotten than he felt because her features immediately wilted like a dried-up tulip. Lips puckered and cheeks sunken, she shook her head and walked into the mudroom. “Oh, hon.”
He held her off with a single raised hand. “I’m fine, Mom.” The words didn’t even waver, and he took more than a little pleasure in salvaging his dignity—whatever was left of it anyway.
“She looked so pretty. Her hair as red as Anne’s ever was.”
His eyes snapped back to his mom’s face, and the chagrined smile that played across her lips told him everything she hadn’t said aloud. But it did little to heal the hole in his back where she had certainly stabbed him.
“When did you see her?”
She crossed her arms over her midsection, poking out one hip and cocking her head to the side. “Not that it matters.” Which roughly translated to, This matters most. “I passed her on the road. I was driving over to Aretha’s, and she was walking toward Grady’s.”
Sweat peppered his forehead, and he swiped at it with the back of his wrist, cursing any physical reaction he still had to Natalie. “And you couldn’t take a minute to warn me?”
“Well, I didn’t know exactly when you’d be there.”
“You didn’t guess that it would be at the same time I always go to Grady’s on Wednesdays? Or the same time I always break for lunch?” He bit off the last word, trying to stem the bitterness that sprang up with each syllable.
“It’s not like Harrison sends me your schedule.”
He snorted. “I wouldn’t put it past him.” Undoubtedly the man had a knack for making his mom happy. “He’d rat me out faster than you could smile in his general direction.”
A pink blush crept along her cheeks, but she rolled her eyes and pressed her hands to her hips. “This isn’t about Harrison Grady.”
“Right.”
No. Wait. He wanted to snatch the word back as soon as it popped out because he knew exactly where his mom was headed, and he wanted to be as far from that path as possible.
Too late.
“This is about Natalie. And you.” Her eyes were as blue as the ones he saw in the mirror every morning.
“No it’s not. There is no Natalie and me. There’s only Natalie.” He waved his left hand at the edge of his wingspan. “Way over here. And this is me.” Reaching as far as he could with his right hand, he wiggled his fingers to draw his mom’s attention. “See? No and about it. Our lives are so separate I haven’t thought about her in a dozen years.”
Now it was her turn to snort. It wasn’t delicate or soft, exactly what he’d come to expect from a farmer’s daughter turned farmer’s wife turned farmer’s widow. She didn’t have time to hide her feelings or play a part that wasn’t real.
“I think there’s a lyric book under your bed that would prove that’s a lie,” she said.
He scowled at her. This was why grown men shouldn’t live with their moms.
But he didn’t have a comeback or half an argument to stand on. It was true.
So he turned his attention back to his boots. Leaning his rear end against the wall, he grabbed the heel of his left foot with one hand and the toe with the other. Then he yanked.
“Oof!” His boot didn’t budge, but his ankle popped under the abuse, shooting fire up to his knee.
Elbows still protruding and hands clamped on her waist, his mom stared at him, her gaze swallowing his pitiful position. “What did you say to her?”
He shot her another glare through a lock of hair that had escaped the rubber band that usually kept it out of his face. Her face was expectant, eager. She was serious. His stomach plummeted into the stupid boots still on his feet. Brushing his hair behind his ear, he dropped his gaze and shook his head.
“What’s that mean? You didn’t—you didn’t talk with her?”
Another quick jerk of his head and he pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers.
“Did you not see her? No. Of course you saw her. But you didn’t go up to her? You didn’t get a chance to. You only saw her from a distance.” The tone of her words danced upward, as though she could speak the story into reality. Any other scenario seemed impossible.
“No. I saw her. Face-to-face.”
Like it was on a hinge, her mouth dropped open. It was enough. He knew the question she couldn’t ask. What happened?
He’d been asking himself the same thing for the last four hours. What had happened?
He’d seen her hair from behind, but he’d sworn it was only his eyes playing tricks on him. Clearly the summer sun had left an orange glow around everything he saw. The woman in front of him in line didn’t have a head of waves so lusciously red and topped with a golden halo.
It was his worn-out memories that had made him imagine Natalie. That butted him in the gut like a protective mama cow and forced out his breath.
The minute he’d walked into Grady’s he’d started telling himself it wasn’t her. He’d told himself he was imagining her back in town like he’d done a thousand times over the years.
But every time he tore his gaze away, it fought its way back. He stared at his hands but then suddenly found himself counting the ripples from the crown of her head to her shoulders. When he tried to look around the dining room, he found Stella Burke and followed her gaze straight back to the woman talking with Harrison at the counter.
“Maybe you don’t need to tell Justin that I ruined his lunch,” she said.
He would have known her voice anywhere, and it turned his insides to soggy toast. Still, something in him begged for the torture of confirmation, and he’d asked for it. “Who ruined my lunch?”
Pinching his eyes closed now didn’t stop her face from flashing through his mind. Stricken. Shocked. Furious. Before he could even identify it, every emotion that had torn through him swept in her eyes first, as if he was always a step behind. Like that time they’d had to learn to dance in grade six. No matter how long he watched his feet, he couldn’t find the beat. But he’d had no trouble finding her toes.
“What did she say? Did you invite her over? Is she coming for dinner?”
His mom’s questions jerked him from memories a whole lot older than that afternoon, and he grimaced. “No. I didn’t say anything.”
Eyebrows bunching together, she frowned. “Excuse me?”
He opened his mouth, but snapped it closed when she held up a hand.
“I heard what you said. I just can’t believe it. What did she have to say?”
Again, he shook his head and bit his lips into a thin line.
“Nothing?”
“She—I didn’t know—there was some confusion about lunch orders.”
She raised her eyebrows until they nearly disappeared behind the bangs she’d worn for as long as he could remember. They weren’t as dark anymore—more accurately, they were salted with a liberal dose of white and gray where once her hair had been as black as his.
“It all happened so fast, and it’s not like I had a speech prepared. What would you say if your former best friend, who skipped town without even telling you she was leaving, showed up?”
“Hello.”
Typical. His mom picked the sarcastic option.
But if she’d been there, she’d have been just as tongue-tied. She wouldn’t be quite so glib about this whole situation. Because Natalie hadn’t just run out on him. She’d left behind a lot of people who really cared about her—especially Mama Kane.
A low growl in the back of his throat surprised him, but he shrugged when his mom cocked her head to the side in question.
Natalie had hurt a lot of people, and he wasn’t eager to write it off or welcome her back to town with open arms. She’d have to offer something a whole lot better than those freckles, a pert little nose, and angry eyes to get back into this town’s good graces.
And her eyes had been angry. Filled with bitterness, like he’d ruined her lunch instead of the other way around.
Like he’d left town when he promised to stay.
Nope. That was her too.
Every memory from a lifetime of friendship enjoyed and then destroyed wrapped around his lungs, cutting off his air and making his head spin. He doubled over at the waist and redoubled his efforts to get his blasted boot off. Wedging the toes of his right foot behind his left heel, he pressed as hard as he could, clenching his jaw against a choice word or two as his ankle wrenched inside the protective leather.
All at once something popped, and the shoe flew across the mudroom, thudding into the far wall before bouncing to the floor right back at his feet. He stooped to pick it up and set it in the row of shoes neatly placed between the floorboards and a multicolored rug before taking off his other one with a lot less drama.
Without looking in his mom’s direction, he plodded into the kitchen and forced himself to ignore the rich cinnamon scents wafting from the oven. Habit prodded him to open the stainless steel door and indulge in a real sniff of the dessert. But not today.
He kept walking, moving through the kitchen’s warmth and into the dim coolness of the hallway that led to the back stairs. His first stocking foot was on the lowest step when he heard his name.
“Justin Anthony.”
Anything other than an endearment meant business. Two names meant trouble.
Backpedaling, he slipped into the kitchen, his gaze searching for anything to land on. But the simple white cabinets, gray Formica countertops, and matching tiled backsplash weren’t enough to garner more than a passing glance. Finally he took a real look at his mom.
Sweat had formed curls at her temples, and she ran a not quite steady hand through her hair. The lines around her mouth, which were so often shaped by a wide smile showcasing all of her slightly crooked teeth, were tight, the corners of her lips tugged into something that hinted at a frown.
It formed a lump in his throat, and no matter how hard he swallowed, it wouldn’t dissolve. So he pushed the words around it. “Mom? You okay?” He reached out his hand, and she grabbed it with a quick squeeze just as an egg timer dinged.
Dropping his fingers, she slipped on oven mitts, opened the oven, and pulled out a bubbling blueberry cobbler, its purple juice dripping over the edge of the white dish.
“Marie Sloane called today.” Her tone was taut, at odds with the innocuous announcement. It sent the lump in his throat straight to the pit of his stomach.
“Uh-huh.”
“She was wondering about the barn. The old one.”
Naturally. Because the owner of the town’s only bed-and-breakfast wasn’t interested in the seventy-five dairy cows inhabiting his new barn.
But the old barn was just that—old. It was missing a section of wall where a hurricane had swept away the boards a few years ago. Several of the crossbeams could stand to be replaced. And the outside desperately needed a coat of paint. The roof was sound enough, though. Sound enough to house a plethora of uninvited critters anyway. But ugly enough to make him grateful it wasn’t in the dairy’s roadside pasture.
“What’s she want with the barn?”
Mama Kane replied to his question with one of her own. “Did you talk to her about using it for an event of some sort?”
He scrunched up his face, searching for that memory and why his mom had brought it up after an almost-argument about Natalie O’Ryan. “I guess so.”
Marie had sought him out at church weeks ago. Her eyes wide and flashing with excitement, she had barreled across the lawn, waving toward him. Caden Holt tried to stop her but then let her go with a quick nod. He had a sudden urge to run. Anywhere would be better than on the end of Marie Sloane’s razor focus. But when he looked around there was no escape. Bethany Burke’s blonde hair whipped over her shoulder as she shot him a predatory smile from his right. To his left, the ladies’ auxiliary contingent circled. He wasn’t looking for Marie, but she was still the best option.
When Marie made it to him, she heaved a loud breath and doubled over, one hand on his arm, the other on her stomach. Then she stretched away from him so far he couldn’t believe her back didn’t pop. “Oy. I’ve got to quit eating so many of Caden’s cinnamon rolls. But I’m just hungry all the time. You know what I mean?”
He didn’t have a clue what she meant, but arguing with her wasn’t going to hurry this conversation along, so he nodded. “Can I help you with something?”
Her eyebrows danced twice. “Caden told me you have a building at the dairy that you’re not using.”
He froze, terrified to confirm it and even more so to deny it, because there was a determination in her eyes that was not going to be denied. His gaze flicked past her ear and landed on Seth Sloane, who Justin could swear gave him a shrug that seemed to suggest it wasn’t worth putting up a fight.
If Seth and his uncle Jack were to be believed, Marie had nearly single-handedly wrestled the old house along the harbor into the shining, thriving inn that it had become in just three seasons. According to the rumor mill, she was also battling some kind of court case back in the States. He didn’t listen long enough to pick up any particulars, but he’d gathered enough to know she was more force of nature than neighbor.
Of course, the whole town adored her.
He nodded slowly. “The old milking barn.”
“Is that the one by the gorgeous cliff?”
Gorgeous was a generous term for the steep drop into the water. But it did have some nice views of the ocean and enough surrounding red cliffs to satisfy even the most ardent Anne fan. “Sure.”
“What would you think about renting it out?”
“What kind of livestock?”
Her dark lashes blinked in an otherwise immobile face, confusion finally easing as her whole face erupted in a smile. White teeth flashing and laughter lacing her words, she said, “The human kind.”
“Human?” Clearly. He should have known. She wasn’t a farmer. She worked with people. But he still couldn’t wrap his head around why she would want to put people in his old barn. That’s why she’d spent months renovating the inn. If they were running out of space already, there was room on the inn’s property to expand. Why would she want his barn?
“You know. People.”
He nodded mutely, her answer doing nothing to solve his own confusion.
By some miracle she read the shrug of his shoulder accurately, her smile going even wider. “For events.”
He bit his tongue to keep from parroting her last word, and she seemed to understand that he still didn’t have enough information.
“Some of the inn’s guests are coming to the island for special events, and I’d like to be able to offer them a few location suggestions. Of course, you’d be paid for the space and any of your time. But there aren’t a lot of venues large enough for bigger events on the north shore—especially not near the Crick.”
“What about the community center?” It popped out before he really thought about why he was suggesting an alternative. After all, he had no real use for the barn, and he could sure put some extra cash to good use.
Maybe it would be enough to get him into a real recording studio.
As soon as the image of the barn flashed into his mind, he shook off the idea of renting it out—and whatever dreams that might finally afford him. It would cost more to refurbish the barn than it would to tear the place down. Besides, the dairy didn’t exactly run itself. He couldn’t just abandon his responsibilities on the farm to focus on an outdated outbuilding that might bring in a couple hundred bucks.
Marie nodded slowly. “The community center is nice, but you can only fit six round tables and a small dance floor in it. That’s not big enough.”
“For what?”
“Oh, you know. Bigger events.” She waved her hand around between them, her smile turning secretive.
Actually, he didn’t know what bigger events she meant, but he shook his head for another reason. “I don’t think so. It’s an old barn. Mostly gutted, but it’s not in good shape.”
The light in her eyes dimmed for the briefest moment. “Well, Seth and I can help you with that.”
“You don’t even know how much work it needs.”
“We’ll figure it out. Seth was a contractor, you know.”
He’d heard that. And seen the new gables on the old inn. Seth wouldn’t have any trouble with the barn. But why his barn? He squinted at her, trying to read her reasons in the features of her face. Instead he saw the set of her jaw and the line of her mouth.
From across the yard Seth caught his eye again and followed up with a nod that seemed to say, “Give in now. You’re not going to beat her.”
Justin kept his chuckle to himself. Maybe it wasn’t worth it to fight Marie over the barn. She’d probably get a close survey of the sagging walls and tired wood and walk away, so he shrugged. “Sure. If you really want to take a look at it. Just call the house,” he said.
But that conversation had been weeks ago, and she hadn’t said anything more about it. He’d assumed it was a passing interest, no more than a flippant thought. All of her event suggestions had been vague at best.
That didn’t stop a bucket of dread from gnawing its way into his belly and settling in like it was paying rent.
His mom crossed her arms over her chest and tipped her head in his direction. “Marie wants to come by and take a look at the barn on Friday.”
“All right. Can you show it to her?”
“I’ll be at the farmer’s market selling cheese all day.”
Of course. “Then let’s do it later this week.”
“Or you could take care of it, since you agreed to it in the first place.”
He sighed. Just because she was right didn’t mean he wanted to give in, even if he could rearrange his schedule. And his best friend and right-hand man, Dillon Holt, could probably take care of midday chores for one afternoon. But it would mean throwing off his schedule. “Mom, you’d be much better at it than I would.”
She harrumphed. “Probably. But still not my problem.”
Arguing with her was about as effective as arguing with Marie, so he let out a tight breath. “All right.”
“She’s bringing a guest from the inn with her.” She held his gaze, hers intense and filled with trouble. “They’re looking for a place to hold a wedding.”
Like a cow had kicked over the bucket in his stomach, dread splashed out until it reached the ends of his fingers and the tips of his toes.
He didn’t need her to go on. The truth was as plain as the blue-and-white lighthouse on the edge of his property.
And it sucked all the air out of the room.
“It’s Natalie’s wedding.”