• six •

“If he loved with all the puny powers of his being, he couldn’t love as much in eighty years as I could in a day.”

—Heathcliff to Nelly Dean, Wuthering Heights

A few days later, Emily received a call from Holly Carver in the Reed College development department.

“Hi, Emily. Just a nudge about that bequest of yours. You said you wanted to set it up as a trust for a scholarship fund, remember?”

Back in June, when she’d made her will shortly after receiving her inheritance, Emily had included a sizable bequest to Reed but had never formalized the terms of the trust. She wanted to be sure the scholarships would go to the kind of students she herself would choose—those with real creativity and a passion for literature, not just those with the highest SAT scores.

“Oh, right. Thanks for reminding me, Holly. I’ll get my lawyer on that right away.”

After briefly catching up with the goings-on at Reed, she hung up with Holly and called her young lawyer in Tillamook, Jamie MacDougal. “It’s time I set up that formal trust fund for Reed College. Can I come see you sometime in the next few days?”

“I’m free late this afternoon. But why don’t I come up to Windy Corner? Your library’s more comfortable than my office anyway.”

Emily smiled to herself. She knew Windy Corner’s true attraction for Jamie, and it had nothing to do with the comfort of the library. “Fine. Why don’t you come for tea? Four o’clock?”

“I’ll be there.”

Jamie arrived five minutes early. Even though she knew Katie was busy preparing tea, Emily stayed in the library and waited for her to let him in. She watched through the crack of the hall door as Katie went to the front entrance with Lizzie on her hip.

She greeted Jamie with simple friendliness, but the tilt of her head suggested a self-consciousness that was probably bringing a blush to her unseen cheeks. Jamie, in contrast to previous encounters with Katie, managed to find his tongue. He pulled a grotesque face to make Lizzie laugh, then offered the usual remarks about how she had grown and how adorable she was—hardly original, but guaranteed to dispose a mother in his favor. Emboldened by Katie’s response, he moved on to a question about the remodeling.

“It’s going great. My new apartment’s all done—I painted it myself. When you’re done with Mrs. Cavanaugh, why don’t you come up and have a look?”

Emily’s surprise at this bold move from Katie was mirrored on Jamie’s face. As he stuttered out a reply, Roman rounded the bend of the stairs, carrying a load of rubbish. Glowering in Jamie’s direction, he pushed between him and Katie and out the front door without so much as an “excuse me.” The two of them watched Roman out, gaping.

Katie recovered first. “Come on back. I’ll have tea ready in a minute.”

Emily hastily shut the door and scurried back to her chair, where she picked up her knitting. She was working on a sweet little ivory alpaca sweater, hat, and mittens for Lizzie—a nice break from the lengthy sweater project she’d recently finished for herself.

When Jamie came in, she set the knitting down and rose to shake his hand. “How are you? I haven’t seen you for a while.” At close range now, she noticed his fiery shock of hair had been trimmed and beaten into submission with some sort of goop that flattened it to his head. He had also acquired a navy pinstripe suit that actually fit him in place of the old one, which had looked like a hand-me-down from a big brother at least two sizes larger than he. Jamie looked more like a professional now, but Emily rather missed the little-boy image he was trying to leave behind.

He grinned, and the little boy was back. “Good. Busy. I really appreciate the clients you’ve sent my way.” Emily had been talking up his services to anyone who would listen. An honest lawyer with moderate fees was a treasure she couldn’t keep to herself.

She nodded at the briefcase he held. “Why don’t you set that on the table. We’ll have tea first and then get down to business.”

They sat in the wing chairs before the fire. Katie brought in the tea on a large silver tray and set it on a low table between them.

“Join us, Katie. Bring Lizzie in, too.”

Katie blushed and went out to return in a moment with Lizzie and a blanket, which she spread on the hearthrug before setting the baby down. She handed Lizzie a biscuit to gnaw on while Emily poured the tea.

“Tell Jamie about our fundraiser, Katie.”

Katie’s usual animation returned as she described the plans for the murder mystery dinner. “You’ll come, won’t you?”

“Oh! Sure! Sounds like fun. And I’ll spread the word to my clients, too.” He said “clients” as a new author might say “my book.” “Do you have a flyer or something?”

“Not yet, but I’ll send some along when I get them.” Katie shot a look at Emily.

Emily knew what that look meant. She herself was the bottleneck on all the publicity. “I know, it’s my job to write the copy. And I could do it in two minutes if I could just think of a name for the darn thing. I mean, really—we’re hosting a fake murder for the benefit of a life-giving clinic. What do you do with that? ‘Murder for Life’?”

Jamie grinned. “Kill for a Cure?”

“Healed by Death?” Katie put in.

They tossed around more impossible options, until finally Jamie said, “You could just ignore the problem and go with a classic, like ‘The Game Is Afoot.’ Everybody knows what that means.”

“Good idea. All right, Katie, I’ll get that copy done tonight.”

They finished tea, and Katie rose to clear the dishes away. Jamie followed her with his eyes, sheer adoration shining there now that she wasn’t looking at him. When she closed the door behind her after returning to retrieve Lizzie, he gave a sigh that summed up the hopelessness of generations of would-be lovers.

“I’m pretty sure she likes you,” Emily said. “I wouldn’t rush her, but I think you can allow yourself to hope.”

Jamie jumped and blushed purple. “Oh, gosh, is it that obvious?”

“I’m afraid it is. But I don’t think that’s a problem. She seems to like it.”

“And you—don’t mind?”

“I don’t know anyone I’d rather lose her to. She needs a good man in her life, if only to keep the wolves away.”

“You mean like that dude who went by when I came in? I thought he was going to stab me with that broken board he was carrying.”

“He’s one of them, yes. Though probably not the most dangerous.”

Jamie whistled. “I’d better get back to karate class.”

Emily laughed. “Let’s hope it won’t come to an actual fight.”

*   *   *

Okay, so maybe I don’t have to give up on the entire male sex. ’Cause there is at least one guy in the world like Jamie.

It’s funny—Jamie looks at me like he can’t get enough of me, too, but it’s totally different from Roman. And TOTALLY different from him. With Jamie I feel like any little thing I do makes him so happy, so grateful, so surprised I’d pay him any attention at all—which makes me want to pay him more. With Roman it’s more like he’s demanding something, though I don’t know exactly what, and he’s mad that he’s not getting it. Which, of course, makes me want to have nothing to do with him.

And the way he looked at Jamie today—if looks could kill! Ugh. I hope Mrs. C warned Jamie to stay out of Roman’s way.

*   *   *

The next morning, Emily was showering in the second-floor bathroom when the water suddenly went cold. She rinsed off hurriedly, threw on her robe, and went to check the water heater. It was set as usual, and she wasn’t aware of any extraordinary hot water use so early in the day. She’d have to get Billy Beech, her part-time gardener and handyman, to look at it when he came in.

But Billy called in sick, even though it was the first day in weeks that was dry enough for him to have done some gardening. Billy was zealous enough in the summertime, but Emily suspected he preferred to regard the rainy season as one long vacation. No matter, she had a whole crew of skilled workers on the spot—though the plumbing work wouldn’t begin for a while.

She caught Jeremiah Edwards when he came in. “Jeremiah, do you have a competent plumber here at this point? I think there’s something wrong with the hot water in the upstairs bathroom.”

He nodded solemnly. “Roman said he’d done some plumbing. I’ll send him down when he gets here.”

Explaining the problem to Roman might give Emily a chance to find out more about him. “All right. The sooner the better, please.”

She’d barely dipped into Wuthering Heights when Roman knocked on the library door. “Boss said you had a plumbing problem.”

“Yes. I lost hot water halfway through my shower this morning, and I can’t figure out why.”

She led him up the stairs, treading slowly despite his obvious impatience. “So, Roman, Katie tells me you and she have met before.”

He made an affirmative-sounding grunt. “Seventh grade.”

“You were only in the school for that one year?”

He nodded. “Moved around a lot.”

“Was your father in the military?”

This time the grunt was negative.

“Transferred for his work?”

Derisive snort. “Could say that.”

Emily didn’t want Roman to feel she was interrogating him—even though she was. “My own father could never keep a job for more than a year. He had—shall we say, issues. With alcohol, mainly. Maybe your situation was similar?”

Roman stopped on the stair, and she turned to face him. “My father was a migrant worker. Along with all the rest of my family. My parents worked themselves to death. I got a lucky break and learned building work. Now I’m back here to stay. Satisfied?” He clamped his mouth shut as if angry with himself for letting so many words escape at one time. He pushed past her and continued up the flight.

Emily followed, somewhat taken aback. “Why choose Stony Beach of all the places you’ve been? It isn’t exactly a builder’s paradise.”

He stopped and faced her again. “Because of Katie. I’ve loved her since seventh grade. She’s the reason for everything I do.”

He stared at her fiercely from under his shaggy bangs as if daring her to object. “You think I’m not good enough for her. But I will be. I’ll have my own company by the time I’m twenty-five. I’ll be a solid citizen. She’ll have no reason to say no to me then.”

Emily felt as if someone had filled her inner ear with water, throwing her sense of balance into a tailspin. Surely he hadn’t said all this to Katie herself. “And it doesn’t matter to you that she has a baby? Some other man’s child?”

“That baby belongs to Katie, period. And anything that belongs to Katie belongs to me.”

That was surely an odd way of putting it. And the ferocious light in Roman’s black eyes looked to Emily not like love but like obsession. It made her think of Heathcliff’s obsession with Cathy. Roman could easily be the kind of lover who would kill the object of his passion rather than let her love another man. Or kill the man. Or both.

Dumbfounded, she passed him at the top of the stairs and led him in silence to the cupboard that held the water heater. He tapped and prodded, turned this knob and that, and at last pronounced her water heater dead. She would have to get a new one.

A new water heater, and perhaps a new remodeling crew. This one was making her very nervous indeed.

*   *   *

Luke had an invitation to Windy Corner for dinner the night before he was to leave for Portland. He figured this was a good sign. Lunches at the Crab Pot were all well and good, but they were public and had a definite end point, since he always had to get back to work. Dinner at Windy Corner, on the other hand, could theoretically lead to just about anything.

He arrived a little early. The construction workers were just clearing out. Luke waved to Jeremiah Edwards and saw a young fellow climbing into the passenger side of his truck. Shady-looking type, shaggy-haired and scowling. Must be that other fellow Emily mentioned—what was his name?

Emily opened the door to him wearing his favorite dress—the same one she’d worn that night back in June when he took her to Gifts from the Sea and they figured out what went wrong all those years ago. She wouldn’t have forgotten. That dress had to be a good sign.

She let their hello kiss linger longer than usual, too. He slipped his arm around her as they walked back to the dining room. All he wanted was her by his side like this for the rest of their lives. She seemed to enjoy it, too. The warmth of her body went all through him so that he almost forgot his question.

“By the way, that guy I saw outside, getting into Edwards’s truck—dark, shaggy young guy, looked like he hated the world and everyone in it. That the other guy you mentioned who has a thing for Katie?”

“Yes, that sounds like Roman. Kind of startling-looking, isn’t he?”

“You can say that again. If we could arrest people ’cause they looked likely to commit a crime, I’d have him locked up before you could say ‘suspicious character.’”

Katie served their dinner—a steak so tender, he could have cut it with a butter knife. He savored a few bites before asking Emily, “So what have you been up to lately?”

“Let’s see … Oh, I had Devon and Veronica over the other day to help me plan the redecorating. I won’t be able to start on it until after the fundraiser, but I want to have some plans in place so we can get going once that’s done.”

“Devon … remind me who that is?”

“Devon Penhallow. From Remembrance of Things Past. The new antique shop? Devon’s the small one.”

“Oh, right. Stony Beach is really coming into the twenty-first century now, with a gay couple right downtown.”

Emily frowned, and Luke wondered if she considered his little joke in poor taste. But she said, “Not all the residents of Stony Beach are living in this century, apparently. Jake passed us in the hall and gave Devon the rudest look I’ve ever seen. In fact, Devon suspects Jake of deliberately damaging some of their furniture when they were moving in.”

“Come to think of it, Charlie Cartwright told me about that. Why didn’t Devon report it?”

“He said he didn’t have any proof, and he wasn’t sure you’d be sympathetic. I told him you’d never discriminate—you protect all citizens equally.”

“Course I do. I know what he means, though. I know fellas, right in my own department, can’t put their personal feelings aside and do their duty. Not to mention nasty citizens. Can’t understand what makes people behave that way.”

Emily shook her head. “For that matter, the look Jeremiah Edwards gave Devon could have fried this steak. He doesn’t seem too welcoming, either.”

“You know he’s a preacher, right? Part-time. Real hellfire and brimstone stuff.”

“I’m not surprised. Why does he bother with construction? I’d think he’d be preaching full-time.”

“He might like to, but his congregation’s not big enough to support him. Doesn’t have a real church, just a dozen or so hard-cores that meet in his living room. Not part of any recognized denomination, far as I know. Call themselves the Church of the Elect of the Almighty.”

“Sounds about right.”

When they retired to the library, he made sure they sat on the love seat instead of the wing chairs. She let him put his arm around her, but she wouldn’t relax.

“Something wrong, beautiful?” he asked her. “I’m getting the feeling you’re not all here.”

She looked up at him, then laid her head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Luke. I’m just worried, I guess.” She dropped her voice. “About Katie.”

“You mean about having Jake in the house?”

“Jake for sure, but Roman’s starting to creep me out, too.” She told him about their conversation that afternoon. “What do you think?”

“Sounds like stalker material to me.” He frowned. Two bad eggs after Katie was two too many. “I’m starting to think you ladies might need some protection. Want me to stay over for a while?” It wouldn’t be the first time he’d spent the night at Windy Corner to protect Emily from a possible assailant.

“What good would that do? You’d be here at night. Roman’s only here during the day.”

“For now he is. But if he decided to do something crazy, like as not he’d come back at night.”

Emily shook her head. “Anyway, you’re going to Portland tomorrow. Let’s see how things stand when you get back.”