THIS WELCOME HOME was nothing like the earlier one. Instead of joy, her mother’s face was etched with sorrow and concern. And not just for her daughter, but her best friend.
“Are you sure you want to be here?” Sarah asked.
“I need to be here. He practically threw me out of my own house. After he’d told me he loved me.”
“Of course he does. Otherwise he wouldn’t be so afraid of losing you,” her mother said.
Brianna jammed her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “It’s stupid.”
“It’s human.”
“Like I told you, I never thought I’d get over Bonnie,” her grandfather reminded her. “But then I met Harriet, who rescued me. Not only from my grief, but the bottle. I never talk about it, but I drank some back then. A lot, if you want to know the truth. I was in a dark place. But this woman—” he took hold of Harriet’s age-spotted hand and lifted it to his lips as if she were a young woman he was courting “—she brought the sunshine back into my life.”
“Your grandfather was a tough nut to crack,” Harriet said. “But he’s been worth all the tears I shed until we made it to a good place.”
“The best place,” Jerome said. “Or would be if you’d take the same advice everyone wants to give that Harper boy and quit worrying that I’m going to keel over on you at any minute.”
Her grandmother shook her head. “I hate it when he’s right.”
The laughter that statement encouraged lightened the mood.
“I’m making four-cheese mac and cheese. With some slipper lobster Quinn is picking up at Kira’s Sea House for me.”
“The ultimate comfort food,” Brianna said. Her mother usually saved that decadent dish for New Year’s brunch.
“That’s the idea. Why don’t you go settle into your room, then come down. We’ll have wine or tea while your grandmother and I cook and the men go out to get an early start on the planting before the crowd arrives.”
And didn’t that cause a little stab in her heart, given that she and Seth should have been out there together planting with them? But she’d always enjoyed time in the kitchen with her mother and grandmother and it beat locking herself away in her room and feeling sorry for herself.
“That sounds great. But I’d better stick with tea.” The last thing she needed was to get drunk. Which actually didn’t sound like such a bad idea. But then she’d have to pay for it afterward, and although she still loved him, dammit, Brianna refused to give Seth Harper that much power over her life.
She’d just unpacked the duffel bag and moved her things into her old dresser when Quinn knocked on her open door.
“Come on in.” The family was rallying around her. Which felt good and sad at the same time because, having prided herself on her independence, she’d never really needed to lean on them before.
He wrapped his arms around her in a hug, letting her rest her head on his shoulder for a long, soothing time. “FYI,” he said against her hair, “Harper’s been banned from Mannion’s.”
Brianna leaned back and looked up at him. “You’ve already talked to him?” So much for Honeymoon Harbor’s glacial pace.
“Yeah. He thought I ought to hear from him that he’d dumped you. So I told him exactly what he could do with that announcement, punched him in his pretty face and threw him out before I came here.”
“You hit him?” She grabbed his left hand, viewing the red skin on his knuckles that would be an ugly purple-blue bruise in a few days.
“You’re my little sister. He made you cry and broke your heart. What the hell would you expect me to do? He’s just lucky I didn’t turn Jarle loose on him. He’s had a crush on you since you arrived in town.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. But don’t worry about hurting his feelings if he asks you out and you turn him down. Jarle tends to fall in love with every good-looking single woman who comes into the pub. I think it’s the Viking in him. So far he hasn’t carried any off, and doesn’t harass them, just admires from afar, so I figure putting all that emotion into his cooking helps improve business.”
This time her laugh felt lighter. As did her heart.
Just a bit.