Return to Eagle Cove

by M. L. Buchman

  “I’d rather face a dragon,” he mumbled as he bit down on his reheated breakfast.

  “I’ll find one for you. Now come back to bed.”

  He eyed the closed door over his shoulder, then shook his head.

  Jessica released the sheet from under her arms and let it slide back down into her lap.

  Greg’s eyes widened, without even tracking down. Then he smiled, tossed her sock over his shoulder and, taking one last bite of his burrito, began undressing all over again.

  There sure were times she loved men.

  Chapter 6

  (Sunday night)

  Greg sat in the Baxter’s kitchen, as modern as the Lamont B&B’s was classic. It was also one of the most efficient layouts he’d ever seen in a home kitchen, clearly Ralph Baxter’s doing. However, Ralph wasn’t here at the moment and Mrs. Baxter was making his head spin almost as badly as her daughter did.

  For the last day and a half, he and Jessica had rarely been more than an arm’s length apart. And now, when he could really use her help, she and Natalya had gone off to do “girl things.” They’d actually said it that way, “Girl things.” What were those? Well, the itch between his shoulder blades told him the topic of their conversation even if he didn’t know where they were or what they were doing.

  Instead he was sitting with Monica Baxter, her sister Gina Lamont, and a moderately battered yellow pad on which he’d been scribbling down menu ideas for next weekend’s wedding.

  Page one through four had been the seafood draft. The three of them had worked out the details of the courses and the flavor progression, shifting dishes to match the bride’s tastes and her sister’s practical bent from running the Lamont B&B.

  Then Ralph Baxter had wandered through with a set of socket wrenches in his hands. Just in passing he’d remarked, “Be nice if it wasn’t fish. Spend all the day out on the boat with fish.” And he’d been gone again.

  Greg had sighed and folded the pages under, starting again with a French menu.

  They were most of the way through when Ralph Baxter came back in carrying about a third of an outboard engine.

  “Not on my kitchen table, Ralph Baxter,” Mrs. Baxter declared moments before greasy machinery met bright oak.

  “Not your table until you marry me again, honey, but I take your point. Wasn’t thinking. I’ll get some newspaper and do it in the living room.” Then he glanced over Greg’s shoulder.

  Greg gave him long enough to absorb the first page, then flipped to the second one. He didn’t have a chance to turn any of the next four pages before Ralph spoke again.

  “Thought you wanted something light, honey. That’s some serious cuisine Greg’s got going there.” And he lugged the engine through the arch into the living room. His fiancé scrambled to her feet and after grabbing a garbage bag and a couple of issues of the Newport newspaper—at a few dozen pages it was the thickest one on the coast—raced after her husband.

  “That man,” she sighed as she returned to the kitchen.

  Taking his cue, Greg folded the pages of the French menu under. Well, at least he had some good ideas for the next couple Irregular Fridays at The Puffin.

  “Mediterranean?” he suggested.

  Gina Lamont’s eyes shifted from him, to her sister, to the bright tick-tick-tick sound of the socket wrench coming from the living room. “Yes, but Greg…if Ralph comes back in, don’t let him see the menu.”

  Greg considered for a second, then scrawled a one-page menu in large letters before turning it for the sisters to see.

  Burgers and beer!

  They all shared a laugh, then he flipped the page over and started working on an Italian four-course meal. It pieced together quickly.

  Jessica would like this meal. A Tuscan white bean soup, which was a little heavy for the season, but he could offset that with seasonal greens and a tomato base. A crab-artichoke ravioli would follow served with a side of arugula and a basil-infused vinaigrette.

  He knew he was on a roll by how few additions Gina was making this time.

  And then…

  He pictured Jessica eating this meal. It would be delicate, light…it was a lover’s meal. A meal he might spend a day making just for the two of them. Or perhaps a Couple’s-only Night at The Puffin. It wasn’t a meal of celebration, it was a meal of wooing and love.

  It was an absolute certainty that’s what was happening to him. Yes, his fantasies about her had been so wrong; Jessica Baxter was no longer eighteen and leaving for college. But the grown woman was a revelation of her own in attitude and style.

  He’d enjoyed their quiet walks and talks on the beach as much as he had when they tumbled together and lost all of their words. He couldn’t imagine ever getting tired of either side of Jessica.

  “Greg?”

  “Hmm? Oh,” his attention slowly returned to the women planning a wedding celebration.

  “ ‘Oh’?” Gina winked at her sister. “I know that look.”

  “Counting the days, Sister,” Monica agreed.

  Jessica had told him of her mother’s peculiar no-sex-outside-of-marriage rule. She had scoffed, but Greg had rather liked it. While he wouldn’t trade back a single second of the time he’d spent in Jessica’s arms these last few days, a part of him wished that they had waited. Wouldn’t that have been a glorious wedding night?

  A true celebration.

  A celebration.

  He slowly flipped back a few pages to the note he’d scrawled pending Ralph Baxter’s return to the room.

  Burgers and Brew!

  “The exclamation point says it all.”

  “What does it say?” Monica leaned in.

  “A celebration,” he looked up at her. “Which do you want, Mrs. Baxter? A lover’s meal or a celebration?”

  “Duh!” Gina chimed in. “Fourth time’s the charm!”

  Monica looked down at the three words in front of him for a long moment. And then she smiled a long, slow smile that her daughter had inherited straight down the matrilineal line and only used when she was particularly pleased with something.

  He flipped to a fresh page and began writing and talking at the same time.

  “Sage and rosemary Dungeness crab-stuffed mushrooms. Sliders of Marv’s grass-fed beef with Eric’s brie-and-bleu cheese melted in the center served between thin slices of baguette garlic toast—light on the garlic because it’s a wedding. Maybe topped with a paper-thin slice of prosciutto. Tiny-potato, skin-on French fries with a balsamic-ketchup drizzle.”

  Greg could feel the excitement growing at the table.

  This was how Jessica made him feel. He’d spent far too much of his life struggling to make fine food. Last Friday’s halibut service had been the pinnacle of that progression. It had been true fine dining in a coastal diner.

  But that’s not who he was, or at least not all of it.

  He was the man who could make Dawn laugh even in the moment when she was ready to execute Vincent. He loved teasing the twins until they were lost in fits of merry giggles. Entertaining the Judge’s sleepy breakfast customers was always a bright start to his day.

  “I love making her laugh.” Then Greg froze. He hadn’t meant to say that aloud. Especially not to Jessica’s mother and aunt.

  They were both looking at him with sympathy, but it was a male voice that spoke first.

  “She needs that,” Ralph Baxter, his hands smeared with grease, including a couple of stripes on his face, stood in the doorway to the living room. “Lord alone knows she had little enough training in doing that. Most serious girl there ever was. I was good in school, but I was never driven the way she is.”

  Greg pictured an orange-juice soaked woman laughing with delight in the Lamont kitchen and wondered. It seemed such a natural part of her in that moment, but it was true that he hadn’t seen much of that particular aspect of the woman before or since.

  “I’ll do what I can, Ralph.”

  “Easy enough to see that you love her as much as I love my
gal,” he stepped the rest of the way into the kitchen and leaned down to kiss Monica on top of the head. Then he checked the back of his knuckles before smoothing them down over her hair.

  “You get grease in my hair, Ralph Baxter…” she left the threat hanging.

  Ralph just grinned at him over Monica’s head, still brushing her with the clean back of his hand.

  Greg couldn’t help but return his smile.

  “I don’t think he heard what you said,” Gina told her sometimes brother-in-law. Her radiant smile left no doubt about what she was referring to.

  She was wrong. Greg had heard it loud and clear.

  Easy enough to see that you love her as much as I love my gal.

  Greg just didn’t see any point in arguing with the truth.

  Girl things.

  Today’s girl things included going out to visit Becky Billings BlueBird Brewery and sample the beer; which had turned into sampling a lot of beer.

  Bluebird had been Becky’s nickname ever since Jessica had tagged her with it in kindergarten during a chorus practice. Bluebird could sing circles around the rest of them even at five. Jessica was quite proud that the nickname had stuck and been transferred into the company name. Becky had grown up to be one of those women who made short and curvy look like a serious amount of fun. Her thick brown hair fell straight down past her shoulders and the top of her head barely matched Jessica’s chin. She was also strong from physical labor and it showed in all the best ways.

  “I’m selling from Tillamook to Coos Bay and I just opened into Eugene. Time to hire some help I guess.”

  “Make sure he’s a cute one,” Natalya chimed in.

  Jessica nodded her agreement and then wished she’d been a little less emphatic in doing so. Becky’s brewery swirled and wobbled for a moment after she stopped moving her head. The big steel tanks and pipes visible through the large window behind the tasting bar were momentarily unstable.

  The tasting room itself was rustically elegant. When Becky’s dad retired, she’d sold the cattle to a farmer up near the Tillamook Cheese Factory, rented out most of the fields for hay, and converted the barn to her one true love, the brewing of beer. She’d started with root beer in junior high and never looked back. The tasting room itself had been the old calf barn—a friendly, cozy space. Remnants of stalls along the back wall divided stacked cases of bottled beer into different sections, probably so they didn’t fight with each other.

  At the moment Jessica was too comfortable to watch beer bottles heaving caps at one another in pitched battle. She turned her attention back to the counter once more. It was lined with small glasses. They had been drinking four-ounce tasters; the problem was that Becky’s beers were so…tasty.

  Jessica started giggling.

  “What?”

  “We’re testing Becky’s tasty tiny tasters.”

  “You’re drunk,” Becky announced.

  Jessica started to nod but thought better of it.

  “She’s also getting happy sex,” Natalya told Becky. “As if she wasn’t obnoxious enough to begin with.”

  “Excellent. Anyone we know?”

  “Greg,” Jessica battled with an incipient hiccup and won, “Slater.”

  “Oooo,” Becky made it a long, salacious noise.

  “It’s not like that,” Jessica protested and picked up a tiny glass of Hummingbird Ale—a bright, cheerfully fizzy beer.

  “It’s totally like that!” Natalya leaned against the bar a little harder. It was a classic long bar: heavy wood, a line of stools on her and Natya’s side, a row of taps on Becky’s side, with the windows to the darkened brewery behind. The room was dim and quiet on a Sunday evening, but it was easy to picture a party here—a crowd of happy tourists plucking cases of their favorite brew from the stacks scattered in their stalls. She resisted giggling at the on-going alliteration.

  “Should have the wedding here,” then maybe she’d spend it drunk and not have to face being second bridesmaid to her own mother. Aunt Gina had been the first bridesmaid every time. Ha! And she’d been there every time as well, even if the first time she’d been in her mother’s womb instead of in a dress.

  “Your wedding?”

  Jessica scowled at Natalya, “No! Mom’s. Duh! That’s never going to happen with me.”

  “Not even to the handsome Greg Slater?”

  “Not even.”

  “She’s just using him for sex,” Natalya confided somewhere in Becky’s direction. Her words were slurring as well and she looked distinctly blurry.

  “It shows,” Becky agreed.

  “What shows?”

  Neither of them answered her. Instead they both gave her “significant” looks. She wasn’t that drunk.

  “Nuh-uh! Nothing different about this girl, nothing changed by Greg or his hot body.”

  “I knew it!” Natalya crowed.

  “Don’t care what you know,” Jessica tried to make little air quotes with her fingers but ended up with something closer to air Cheerios. Or perhaps air Fruit Loops. “Marriage is not something you’ll ever catch this girl doing.”

  Again the two “significant” looks.

  “It’s not like marriage means anything.” Nothing but layers of paper stuck to the breezeway door. Divorce, marriage, what was the difference? “Not a thing,” she insisted.

  She rested her chin on her crossed arms and stared at the mug that Becky set inches from her nose.

  “What’s that?” It was dark. And it was steaming. “Are you trying to serve me hot beer? That’s disgusting, Bluebird Becky B.”

  “Nope, it’s coffee.”

  Jessica burped, keeping it as soft as she could. “Rather it was beer.”

  “She’d rather it was Greg Slater,” Natalya stated like some know-it-all.

  “And who is getting into your knickers, Natya?” It was the best retaliation she had at the moment. It didn’t help that her best friend was right. Greg was acting like a drug on her system, one that there was no way to get enough of and she didn’t like that at all.

  “Knickers. Getting awfully arcane there, Baxter.” Then Natalya sighed sadly. “No one is getting in them at the moment.”

  “I know the feeling,” Becky’s sigh matched Natalya’s.

  The perfect chance for revenge, “Greg is getting into mine every chance he has.” She resisted adding a Nyah, nyah, nyah!

  “We already know that,” Becky growled.

  Aw, whatever. She gave them her best, “Nyah! Nyah! Nyah!”

  “Maybe we should steal him from her. I don’t think she appreciates what she has.”

  “Sure, Natya. Fine. Whatever,” Jessica would have waved a dismissive hand, but her head felt too heavy to raise off her arms. She settled for a finger flick like brushing away dust, but no one saw that because she did it on the wrong side. That was the problem with crossed arms, it made everything confusing—like she didn’t have enough of that already.

  Except she didn’t like the idea of giving up Greg. Not even a little. She…liked Greg. Not just in bed either, where he was proving to possess an endless amount of resourcefulness and creativity with a very nice helping of stamina when it really counted. She really did like Greg out of bed a lot. She actually could picture him more easily with his clothes on and a laugh on his lips than she could naked.

  There were times she could imagine being with him for more than her eight days in Eagle Cove—

  Whoa! Not a chance that was going to happen! She shook it off.

  She needed to make sure that didn’t happen because it just wouldn’t do. Her life was enough of a mess right now. Between her career, her mother’s wedding, her return to Eagle Cove…Greg was definitely one too many things to deal with.

  She squinted to focus her eyes on Becky and Natalya. They were reminiscing about some of their high school sweethearts. There was laughter and lightness. She felt like an orange-juice soaked rag: damp and starting to smell a little…off. They were clean and fresh because they were unencumb
ered. But she was trapped between having a great time with a nice guy versus some chance of dealing with everything else going on in her life. It was a tough choice, but she knew what she had to do. Time to take action.

  Jessica pushed herself upright, shoved aside the coffee, and knocked back a four-ounce tiny taster of Strawberry Stout. Fumbling out her cell phone, she was surprised to find Greg had been added to her contact list. When had that happened? How was he suddenly so far into her life?

  She punched the “call” icon on her third try.

  It was ringing.

  “Hello there, pretty lady,” Greg’s voice was warm, smooth, an intimate caress.

  “Hi, honey,” her mom called from somewhere in the background. Okay, so much for the intimacy of their moment.

  “Hi, Greg.”

  Natalya and Becky, caught in mid-sentence, both turned to look at her.

  “We’re just sitting here and planning the wedding dinner. What can I do for you?” There was something funny in his tone.

  “You aren’t talking about the wedding. You’re talking about me,” Jessica could feel the blood rushing from her brain to heat her face.

  “Guilty.”

  “With my mother!” The horror of it rose up and tried to choke her.

  “And your aunt and father.”

  Jessica couldn’t breathe. Her heart was racing faster and faster. Just her and Greg she could deal with. Adding on Natalya’s and Becky’s teasing only made it feel like old home week; they were her inner circle ever since preschool days.

  Her parents and aunt took the story to a whole other level. She didn’t need to be an interview journalist to know where this was heading and it was scaring her to death. A good journalist never shows their emotion, but instead reflects the emotion that will lead the interviewee to say more.

  “Are you still there?” Greg’s question told her that she was blowing this.

  “Uh-huh,” was the best response she could dredge up despite her vaunted emotional control.