by Jill Sanders
“I’m being sued.”
“By whom?” he asked as if the life-altering shock wasn’t a big deal. To a lawyer, she supposed, it probably wasn’t.
“Morgan Stein Marketing Firm. My old employer.” She glanced over the legal document.
“What does the complaint say?” he asked.
“That I breached my contract.” She thought quickly. “I didn’t sign a contract with the firm.”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
She rested her head on the desk. “No, but I didn’t actually quit either.”
“You gave them notice right?” Jon asked.
“No.” She sighed. “It’s complicated.”
“Maybe you should bring the documents in and we can meet to discuss your options.”
“I’m in Seattle until tomorrow,” she replied.
“Monday afternoon?” he suggested.
“Sure.” She sighed.
“Eve don’t worry. We’ll get this all handled.”
“Right.” She tossed the papers down near her purse and felt like banging her head against the table. Instead, she picked herself up and got to work.
It was a lot easier than she’d believed it would be. She had just returned from her first drop at the local shelter when her phone rang. Seeing Kathrine’s number, she instantly worried something was wrong in the kitchen.
“Hi, what’s wrong?” she answered, tucking the phone between her ear and her shoulder while she tossed more of her old shoes into a bag for donation.
“Tell me you knew about it,” Kathrine whispered.
“What?” Eve frowned.
“The service that’s currently being held upstairs for your grandfather,” Kathrine whispered.
“The what?” Eve almost dropped her phone.
She heard Katherine sigh. “I didn’t think so.”
Eve’s ears started buzzing. “Who? What?” She shook her head to clear the sounds.
“Everyone, as far as I can tell. The entire town is upstairs. I was told about the menu three hours ago. I thought it was just a party… then I had to step upstairs for something and… well, I saw the large picture of Reggie, the flowers, and…”
“What?” Eve almost groaned it out.
“They cremated him.” She heard Kathrine sniffle.
“When?” She almost squawked it out.
“I’m not sure when, but there was an urn,” Kathrine answered.
Eve’s head started spinning.
“Eve, I’m sorry, I would have called earlier, but…”
“No, it’s okay. Thank you.” She hung up suddenly. She had told her family her plans to come to Seattle less than three days earlier. She’d made it known she was going to be gone to all the staff, in case she was needed. Her family must have seen it as their chance to get back at her.
She closed her eyes on the pain. Well, screw them. She was not going to let them get away with this. She punched in her mother’s number and almost tossed her phone down when it went to voicemail on the second ring. Trying her father’s number, she closed her eyes when it went to voicemail instantly.
Could her parents be in on the plot to keep Reggie’s services from her? She didn’t think they would do something like this, but then again, they were in the group of people fighting Reggie’s will.
It appeared no one in her family was going to answer their phones. Dialing the main number for the hotel, she asked Genie to find her mother and tell her there was an important call from their lawyer.
Genie agreed to lie to her mother and put her on hold. When her mother answered the call, she got her answer.
“What is it, LeeRoy?”
Eve had known that Jon hadn’t taken part in the contesting of Reggie’s will. After all, Jon had been the one to draw up every version of her grandfather’s last wish. LeeRoy Cummings was a lawyer her grandfather had used on the mainland sometimes.
“Are you really having Reggie’s services behind my back?” she growled out.
Her mother was shocked into silence for a moment, but Eve had to admit, she recovered quickly.
“I’m sure we told you about it. You had your plans to go to Seattle,” her mother said dismissively.
“Mother,” she said, knowing the single word would ring out and sting. The phone was quiet.
“It wasn’t my idea,” she came back. “But you’ve made everything so… muddled since returning. Why couldn’t you just leave things the way they were.”
“Because”—she rubbed her forehead— “if I didn’t step in, you’d be out of a home in less than a year anyway when the inn is forced to file for bankruptcy.”
“Oh…” Her mother chuckled. “Things aren’t that bad.”
“Aren’t they? Have you looked at the books?” she asked sarcastically. “Have you ever lifted a finger to earn money around the inn? Ever?” Eve added.
“Reggie…”
“Is dead. He gave you all the ultimatum because you were dragging the place into ruin. He had no other choice but to get you out so he could try to bring the business back from destruction.” She walked to the window and looked out over the city. Well, if she craned her neck, she could see the lights of the city, but mainly, her view was of the brick wall of the building across from hers. “Trust me when I say that the inn will sink in less than a year if drastic measures aren’t taken. The first of which is to get all the freeloaders out of the place.”
“Well!” Her mother sounded shocked. “I have never been a freeloader.”
“Really?” Eve chuckled. “Okay, then tell me one thing you have contributed to the inn?” Her mother was silent again. “Just one. It shouldn’t be that hard, Mother.”
“I’m not going to do this with you over the phone,” she said before hanging up.
“Oh no you don’t.” Eve dialed the number again and when Genie answered, she told her to put her mother back on the phone.
“She’s gone back into the other room,” Genie said.
“Fine, then get my father.” She waited. When Genie came back, she knew she’d lost this battle.
“He won’t come. He says to tell you that they are paying their respects to Reggie and that, if you had cared at all, you would have been here.”
Eve hung up and tossed her cell phone across the room, tears stinging her eyes as she curled up into a ball and cried.
When she surfaced, it was to the sound of thunder crashing outside as rain hit her window.
Finding her phone, she dialed Dylan’s number and held her breath as it rang.
“Hey, did you make it to Seattle okay?” he asked, concern flooding his voice.
“Yes. Did you know?” she asked, closing her eyes. She could understand the betrayal of her family. Hell, she should have expected it. But she didn’t think she could bear it if Dylan had known and hadn’t told her.
“What?” he asked.
“That Reggie’s services were today?” Just saying it out loud made her stomach roll.
“They were?” She heard him almost drop the phone. “No,” he said after a moment, “I had no idea.” He sighed. “Tell me they didn’t…”
“They did.” She sighed and rested her forehead on her knees.
She thought she heard him mutter a few choice curse words, but the phone was muffled.
“Do you have a swear jar?” she asked with a sigh.
“Yeah, I’ll owe it. I’m so sorry they did this to you.”
She nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat. “They had the gall to claim that Reggie hadn’t been important enough to me to attend.”
More muttering. “Don’t pay any attention to them,” he said clearly. “We can hold our own when you get back.”
She perked up at that thought. “Yeah.” She nodded and smiled slightly. “Something better than whatever they had. Something that Reggie would have wanted.”
“Reggie wouldn’t have wanted something fancy.”
“No.” She thought about it. “Something out on the water. He loved to sail.” She added, “S
omething that would drive my family fucking nuts.”
“You owe the swear jar now too,” he said with a chuckle.
“Yeah.” She smiled. “Thanks, I knew you could help pull me out of the mood.”
“You should have called me earlier. I would have rushed down there and crashed the party.” He chuckled. “I could have knocked over cakes, chairs, or gotten into a fistfight with someone.”
She laughed. “If I’d only known you had those talents as well, I would have called.” She sat down on the sofa. “How’s Palmer? How are you feeling?”
“Back to one hundred percent. Thanks to you. Palmer said you left some soup in the fridge. It helped.”
“Full disclosure, I didn’t cook it. Kathrine did,” she admitted.
“I’ll have to thank her when I see her next.”
“She loves white tulips,” Eve said with a smile. “She’s stupid about them.”
“Then I’ll get her a bundle of them,” he said with a chuckle.
She glanced around her apartment. She wanted nothing more than to sit and talk to him for the rest of the night, but the fact was, the short nap had cost her precious time. The way it was looking now, she’d have to work through the night to get done in time.
“I’d better get back to packing.” She sighed.
“Wish I was there to help,” he said, and she heard Palmer say something. “But I’ve got a five-year-old that needs a bath and a bedtime story.”
“Wish we could swap places. I have boxes to load up and haul down six flights of stairs.” She paused. “Dylan,”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for bringing me out of the muck.”
“Any time.”
She worked until early morning, then got a few hours of sleep before hauling the rest of the donations down to her car. She filled up her trunk with the items she was taking with her. Turning her apartment keys in, she tucked the letter from the lawyer into her purse. It was shortly after lunch when she finally pulled out of the parking garage, hours after she’d planned on leaving.
There wasn’t a whole lot to see between northern Seattle and the islands. Once you got out of the city, it was mainly just trees and fields to look at. A thick fog rolled in just outside of Arlington, and she slowed down to ten under the speed limit. The rain caused her to slow down even further, adding an additional hour to her trip.
The storm had grown by the time she parked her car on the ferry that would take her across Rosario Strait to the island.
She climbed the stairs to grab a sandwich and dreamed about sleeping for the next twenty hours straight. The sandwich was stale, the chips too salty, but the soda had enough sugar to give her a new spike of energy.
When the ferry docked, she drove through the small village that surrounded the only main water gateway onto the island. The inn had docks, but nothing as big or as busy as the port where the larger ferries pulled in and out every hour.
There were officially eight small towns on the island, Hope Harbor being one of the larger ones, thanks to the inn. A small hospital and airport sat outside the largest town.
The drive took her around the West Sound waterway, past another small town with the unique name of… West Sound. She’d just pulled past one of the oldest barns on the island at the start of a very sharp turn when her car sputtered and died. The electrics totally locked, causing her steering wheel and brakes to freeze up. She screamed as she imagined her car speeding off the bend and slamming into a tree on the side of the road. Thankfully, there was a small dirt path, like a walkway, where her car came to rest instead.
Her breathing hitched as she pried her white-knuckled fingers from the steering wheel and took a few calming breaths to settle her nerves.
She tried to turn the car over several times, then slapped the wheel and climbed out into the rain to see if she could figure out what was wrong.
The front of her car hovered over the shallow ditch as she opened the hood. Why had she thought she could figure out what was wrong with the thing? She didn’t even know how to change a tire, let alone figure out an electrical problem.
Glancing up, she cringed as she watched lightning flash above her. Darting back into her car, she pulled out her phone and thought about calling her family. Then she remembered what they’d done to her and called Dylan instead.
“Hey,” he answered easily.
“I hate to bother you…” she started.
“You are not a bother. After you saved our butt, I think we owe you big time.” He chuckled.
“Good, because I’m calling in the favor. My car just died.”
“Where?” he asked, worry flooding his voice.
She glanced around and thought about it. “About a quarter of a mile before Rocky Cove Farm,” she answered. “I could walk…”
“Not in this mess,” Dylan answered. “We’ll be there to pick you up.”
“You don’t—”
“Eve, you called me, we’re coming. See you in about ten minutes.”
“Thanks.” She sighed and rested back after he’d hung up.
11
They deserve to be bitten by bees
Dylan pulled in front of her car, trying to get the hood of his truck as close to hers as possible in case it was her battery that had died and needed a jump.
“Stay in the car, okay, sweetie?” He turned to Palmer, who nodded sleepily as she sucked on her milk cup. He had been lying with her on the sofa, watching cartoons, when Eve had called.
Pulling his rain jacket closer to him, he waved for Eve to open the hood. It took him less than a minute to find the problem. Her battery cables were loose. Okay, not just loose—the positive wire had come completely off the post of the battery.
He might have believed the thing had fallen off on its own, but the negative cable was almost falling off, as well, and the terminals were loose too. He knew someone had loosened them on purpose.
He used the screwdriver on his Leatherman tool to tighten the wires and motioned for Eve to turn the car over. The car jumped instantly to life, and Eve clapped as she rolled down the window.
“You did it.” She smiled up at him as he shut the hood and walked over to her window.
“I’ll follow you up to the inn,” he said.
“You don’t have—”
“I’ll follow you. We could use some burgers,” he lied. He wanted to make sure she was safe. It was apparent someone had messed with her car.
As he followed her to the inn, he wondered what would have happened if the car had died in the city or somewhere an hour away instead of ten minutes.
He hadn’t expected someone in her family to go this far. Then again, he hadn’t thought they were mean hearted enough to hold Reggie’s services without her either.
When he parked next to her car, he looked over to see Palmer had fallen asleep. The rain had somehow grown stronger and was coming down sideways now.
When the truck turned off, Palmer jerked awake.
“Sorry, baby.” He turned and looked at her. “How would you like to have dinner with Eve at the inn?”
His daughter yawned and stretched. “Mkay.” She sighed. “Can I have grilled cheese?”
He smiled. “Yes, baby. We’ll have to run for the door. I forgot my umbrella.”
Just at that moment, Eve stepped up to his door, holding a large rainbow umbrella that would easily fit them all under it.
“Eve!” Palmer came fully awake when she noticed her standing outside the truck window.
“I can’t thank you enough,” Eve started as he tucked Palmer close to him and wrapped her jacket around her little head. He wasn’t taking any chances with her getting chilled. He didn’t want a repeat of that week. “For helping out.”
“It was nothing.” He glanced down at his daughter, not wanting to bring up the topic of someone messing with Eve’s car in front of her.
Eve rolled her eyes. “It was enough to earn dinner.” She smiled and ran a hand over Palmer’s hair as they stepped u
nder the cover of the large front porch. There were two guests sitting at the edge of the deck, watching the rain as they sipped drinks. “Come on inside.” She opened the door for him.
“Wow.” Palmer sighed lightly.
“Is this your first time here?” Eve asked Palmer.
His daughter nodded her head as her eyes grew wide. “It’s big. You live here?”
Eve chuckled. “Not in this room. I have a room about the size of your bedroom on the top floor.”
Palmer tucked herself closer to him as a short blond woman made her way across the lobby towards them.
“You made it back.” The slender woman took Eve’s arm, her eyes moving to his.
“Genie, this is Dylan Steele and his daughter Palmer. Dylan’s going to be working on fixing up the inn,” Eve explained quickly.
“Right.” Genie nodded and then smiled brightly at him. “Would you excuse us for a moment?” The woman tugged Eve’s arm.
“Head on into the dining hall. I’ll join you in a moment,” Eve said as she was being pulled towards her office.
They stepped into the massive dining room, and he let his daughter pick where they sat. There were a handful of guests scattered around the massive place, enjoying dinner or drinks around the bar. Still, the place should have been, could have been, packed. At one point it probably had been, but now, during high season, it was seriously lacking.
Palmer picked a booth by a large bay window that overlooked the lawn, pool, and water beyond. It was close enough to the fireplace that his concerns about taking his daughter out in the chilly night air dissipated.
“May I help you?” A thin man looked down his long nose at him as he came up to their table.
“Yes.” He smiled, trying to look as casual as possible. Palmer was the only child in the place. The inn had never really been geared towards families, but he knew families visited at times. “We’re meeting Eve for dinner.” He figured the less he beat around the bush, the better off they would be.
Instantly, the man softened. “I see.” His dark eyes scanned Palmer. “Would you care for a children’s menu?”
“Yes, thank you,” he answered, thankful the man disappeared.
