Debbie Macomber's Cedar Cove Series

by Debbie Macomber

  “The door was unlocked and you never—” Olivia said, meeting Charlotte in the hallway. She stopped abruptly when Cliff walked out of the bedroom.

  Olivia stared at her mother and then Cliff.

  “Hello,” he said, enjoying the perplexed look. Olivia had matured into a strikingly attractive woman. Now probably wasn’t the time to ask if she was still agile enough to lift her foot to her mouth. He couldn’t keep from grinning, though. The resemblance between mother and daughter was most apparent in the eyes, although hers were more blue than gray. If he hadn’t known Olivia was a judge, he would have guessed she held some responsible position from the dignified way she carried herself. She was medium height, close to his own age, and her hair was still a lustrous brown.

  “I’m Cliff Harding,” he said, stepping forward and offering his hand.

  “Tom’s grandson,” Charlotte explained. “He was just hanging up a poster of the Yodeling Cowboy for me.”

  Olivia frowned as they shook hands. “Oh, my goodness, you’re Cliff Harding!”

  “That’s what I just said,” Charlotte murmured.

  “He has Grace’s credit card.”

  Actually Cliff saw Grace as the one who had his VISA card. “You know Grace Sherman?”

  Olivia nodded. “We’ve been friends for years. She was planning to return your call this evening.”

  Charlotte glanced helplessly from one to the other, as if she’d somehow missed hearing the punch line to a good joke.

  As best he could, Cliff explained the situation.

  “You’d better take care of that right away,” Charlotte advised. “Personally, I don’t use credit cards. It’s like carrying Monopoly money.”

  “I’d hoped to get my own card back,” Cliff said. “Do you think I could drop in on Grace?”

  “She works at the library,” Charlotte told him. “You could leave your truck parked here and walk over there. It’s only a few blocks away and I don’t expect we’re going to have many more of these sunshiny afternoons.”

  “I think you should meet Grace,” Olivia encouraged. She shifted her gaze from him and Cliff wondered if he was missing something.

  “Oh, yes,” Charlotte agreed. “Olivia’s right, you should meet Grace. She could use a male friend after what Dan did to her.”

  “Dan,” Olivia added quickly, “is her husband, correction…was her husband. He disappeared earlier in the year.”

  The two women became engaged in a discussion about Dan’s whereabouts and their own suspicion—that he’d left Grace and run away with another woman.

  “Grace filed for divorce last Monday,” Olivia told him.

  The same day as the credit card mishap. No wonder she’d seemed distracted and preoccupied. No wonder she’d been alone. Although Cliff would’ve noticed her if she’d been in the middle of a crowd.

  Grace Sherman was like…like a mountain wildflower. He wasn’t normally poetic and couldn’t really say why he thought of her in those terms, but that was the image that came to his mind. A flower that bloomed despite cold, wind and hardship. He’d tried not to be obvious, but she’d attracted him and he’d wondered about her. It’d been a very long time since he’d looked at a woman, any woman, the way he had Grace.

  “I think I will take a walk over to the library,” he muttered.

  “Good idea,” Olivia said brightly.

  Charlotte’s daughter seemed eager to send him off. Perhaps she was trying to encourage him to meet her friend. If that was the case, Cliff didn’t need any prompting. After saying goodbye to Charlotte and Olivia, he left and strolled down the steep incline toward the waterfront. This was his first visit to the library and he stopped to admire the mural painted on the outside. The town sported several other murals, as well, which he’d often admired.

  Grace Sherman stood at the front desk when Cliff entered the library.

  She glanced up when he approached the counter. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m Cliff Harding,” he said and waited.

  It obviously took a moment for his name to register. “Oh, hi—you’re the one who has my credit card and I have yours. I’m sorry. I should have recognized you. If you’ll wait a moment, I’ll get my purse.” Grace took a deep breath, then said, “I was going to call you back this evening.”

  “That’s what Olivia said.”

  “You know Olivia?”

  “We met this afternoon at Charlotte’s.”

  Again she hesitated, as if needing time to connect all the dots. “You’re Tom Harding’s grandson. Charlotte’s often mentioned you. I apologize, I didn’t immediately realize who you were. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just be a moment.”

  “Of course.”

  She disappeared into a small office directly behind the counter and returned with her purse. His credit card was tucked inside a small white envelope. They exchanged credit cards, laughed about what had happened, then stood gazing at each other for an awkward few seconds.

  It was now or never, Tom decided. “I was thinking maybe we could laugh over this at dinner one night.” It’d been years since Cliff had asked a woman out on a date, and he felt a little uneasy. When she didn’t respond, he was sure he’d bungled the invitation.

  “Dinner?” Grace finally echoed. “The two of us?”

  Cliff spoke rapidly. “I’ve been divorced for the last five years. I haven’t dated since my wife left and…well, I think maybe it’s time I did.”

  “I see,” she said, staring at him again. “I mean…” She paused and took another deep, audible breath. “Thank you.” She raised her hand to her throat. “You don’t know how flattered I am that you’d ask. Unfortunately, I’m not ready just yet.”

  That was a fair reply. “When do you think you might be ready?”

  “I…can’t say. I recently filed for divorce. I don’t feel it would be right for me to see anyone else until I’m legally free to do so.” She looked away. “I take it you heard about my husband?”

  Cliff nodded slowly. “I’ll be waiting, Grace, and I’m a patient man.”

  Her eyes met his and he saw the beginnings of a smile. That was something he hoped to see again. Soon.

  “You’d better tell me what’s wrong.” Jack said, his stocking feet propped up against the ottoman in front of Olivia’s large-screen television. Tuesday night was their date night. Olivia had invited him over for dinner and The New Detectives on the Discovery Channel. Lately they’d taken turns supplying the meal. This week it had been Olivia’s turn and she’d baked a chicken casserole that was worthy of a cooking award. He generally brought takeout.

  “What do you mean what’s wrong?” she countered.

  “You’ve barely said a word all night.”

  Olivia sighed and rested her head on his shoulder. It’d been his lucky day, that morning nine months earlier when Jack had strolled into her courtroom. New to Cedar Cove and the newspaper, he’d visited the divorce court, jaded by his own experience and expecting to hear what he always did.

  But Olivia was different. A young couple, Ian and Cecilia Randall, had stood before her, accompanied by their attorneys. Another divorce, two people with broken hearts pretending they were above the pain. Only it radiated from both of them. Jack saw it and wondered if anyone else did. He assumed all those involved in the legal process had become blind to the human wreckage that appeared before these judges. Couples walked in battered and broken, emotionally crippled by the pain husbands and wives so often inflicted on each other.

  The Randalls had lost an infant daughter, Jack recalled, and were asking Olivia to rescind their prenuptial agreement so they could file for divorce. Olivia denied the petition and, in essence, had denied their divorce. Jack’s column that weekend had praised her courage.

  Olivia hadn’t appreciated the unwanted attention, but she’d forgiven him. In the months since, he’d gotten to know Olivia Lockhart. They’d grown close, and he was beginning to hope this relationship had a future.

  “Are you going
to tell me?” he asked, wondering if he was reading more into her silence than he should. He’d had his own bit of troubling news this afternoon, but he wasn’t ready to disclose it.

  “I’m worried about Justine,” Olivia said after a moment.

  “How so?” As far as Jack knew, Olivia’s daughter was deeply in love with her fisherman husband.

  “She was seen having lunch with Warren Saget last Friday.”

  “Warren?” Jack had never understood what Olivia’s daughter saw in the land developer. Now that Justine had married Seth, he’d hoped Warren would move on to greener pastures—which in his case probably meant an even younger woman.

  “You heard it or Justine mentioned it?”

  “I heard it,” Olivia said and gnawed on her lower lip. “Justine doesn’t share much with me.” She gazed at him with wide anxious eyes. “I think…she regrets marrying Seth.”

  Jack removed his feet from the ottoman and leaned forward. This was serious. He frowned, trying to think of something reassuring he could say. But he was hardly an expert on the parent-child connection. His relationship with his own son was on rocky ground and with good reason. As a child, Eric had suffered from leukemia. Jack had turned to the bottle for solace, and for years he’d emotionally abandoned his wife and son. Following the divorce, Eric hadn’t wanted anything to do with his father. Jack couldn’t blame the boy; nevertheless, it stung. Now after several years of sobriety and with Olivia’s encouragement, he’d made a determined effort to reestablish contact.

  Olivia and her daughter struggled with their relationship, too, but on an entirely different level.

  “Just ask her,” Jack advised. “She’d probably be willing to tell you.”

  A quick shake of her head dismissed that idea. “I can’t…Justine will resent the intrusion. I don’t dare say a word unless she brings it up. Besides, I don’t want her to know I heard about her lunch with Warren. She’ll accuse me of listening to gossip.” Olivia dropped her feet and bent forward. “How is it,” she asked, “that I can make judgments in a courtroom that affect the future of our community and yet I can’t speak openly with my own daughter?”

  It was the same question he’d asked himself with regard to his son. Each week Jack editorialized in The Cedar Cove Chronicle. He was never at a loss when it came to expressing his opinion. But talking to his only child—well, there his confidence disappeared. He was afraid of saying too much or not enough, of sounding either judgmental or indifferent.

  “Eric phoned this afternoon,” Jack said bleakly. “He was upset and I didn’t know what to tell him. I’m his father, he came to me with a problem and I should’ve been able to help him.”

  “What’s the problem?” Like Jack, Olivia knew it was a breakthrough in this difficult relationship for Eric to contact him at all. When he didn’t immediately answer, Olivia ran her hand down the length of his back. “Jack?”

  “The girl Eric’s living with is pregnant.”

  “They weren’t using birth control?”

  “No. He didn’t think it would happen.”

  Olivia laughed softly. “I don’t understand why any couple would take chances with birth control.”

  “You don’t understand.” Jack said, turning to face Olivia. “Since Eric had cancer as a youngster, the drugs and the different procedures left him sterile. The doctors told us that years ago.”

  Olivia frowned. “You mean the baby isn’t his?”

  Jack rubbed his hand over his eyes. “It can’t be, and Eric knows that.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  Jack had wanted to say something helpful to Eric, but he had no words of comfort or advice. He’d hung up feeling that once again he’d failed his son.

  The Harbor Street Gallery was quiet for the moment. Taking advantage of the respite, Maryellen slipped into the back room to get herself a cup of coffee. Weekdays tended to be slow, especially in the fall. During the summer months, the gallery was a drawing point for tourists and constantly crowded. As the manager, Maryellen welcomed the lull that came with autumn, especially since the Christmas rush would soon begin. Already they were gearing up for it.

  At some point today, Jon Bowman would drop by. She’d last seen him in June and remembered their meeting with embarrassment. Jon was a reserved, perhaps shy man, who had little tolerance for small talk. She’d hoped to engage him in conversation; instead she’d babbled on about all manner of irrelevant things. By the time he left, she’d wanted to kick herself for falling victim to her own eagerness.

  No sooner had she poured her coffee than she heard footsteps on the polished showroom floor. After a quick, restorative sip, she set the mug aside, and hurried out front, prepared to greet her customer.

  “Welcome,” she said, then brightened when she saw who it was. “Jon, I was just thinking about you.” His photography had long been her favorite of all the art they sold. The gallery carried work in a variety of artistic media: oil and watercolor paintings, marble and bronze sculpture, porcelain figurines and one-of-a-kind pottery. Jon was the only photographer represented at the Harbor Street Gallery.

  His photographs were both black-and-white and color, and his subjects included landscapes and details of nature, like a close-up of some porous stone on a beach or the pattern of bark on a tree. Sometimes he focused on human elements, such as a weathered rowboat or a fisherman’s shack. He never used people in his compositions. Maryellen was impressed by the way he found simplicity in an apparently complex landscape, making the viewer aware of the underlying shapes and lines—and the way he revealed the complexity in small, simple details. This was an artist with true vision, a vision that made her look at things differently.

  It was through his work that she knew Jon. As she’d discovered, he wasn’t a man of many words, but his pictures spoke volumes. That was why she wanted to know him better. That, and no other reason. Even if she found his appearance downright compelling…

  Jon Bowman was tall and limber, easily six feet. His hair was long, often pulled away from his face and secured in a ponytail. He wasn’t a conventionally attractive man; his features were sharp, his nose too large for his narrow face, hawklike in its appearance. He dressed casually, usually in jeans and plaid shirts.

  He’d started bringing his work into the gallery three years ago—a few at a time, with long lapses in between. Maryellen had worked at the gallery for ten years and was well acquainted with most of the artists who lived in the area. She often socialized with them, but other than to discuss business, she’d rarely spoken to Jon.

  She found it odd that her favorite artist would resist her efforts at friendship.

  “I brought in some more photographs,” he said.

  “I was hoping you would. I’ve sold everything you brought me last June.

  That news produced a small grin. Jon’s smiles were as infrequent as his conversations.

  “People like your pictures.”

  Praise embarrassed him. Whenever customers had asked to meet him, he’d refused. He didn’t explain why, but she sensed that he felt the public’s focus should be on the art and not the artist.

  “I’ll get the photographs,” he said brusquely, disappearing out the back door.

  When he returned, he held an armful of framed photographs of varying sizes. He carried them to the back room, placing them on Maryellen’s work table.

  “Can I interest you in a cup of coffee?” she asked. She’d offered before and he’d always declined.

  “All right.”

  Maryellen was sure she’d misunderstood him. She told herself it was absurd to feel this elation that he’d finally agreed. She poured him a cup and gestured toward the sugar and cream. He shook his head.

  They sat on stools across from each other, both staring into their coffee. “Your work is gaining recognition,” she finally said.

  He ignored her remark. “You’re divorced?” he asked bluntly.

  The question caught Maryellen off guard. She’d certainly realized he wasn’
t much for small talk, but this verged on rude. She decided to answer him, anyway—and then turn the subject back to him.

  “Thirteen years.” She hardly ever mentioned her marriage. She’d been young and immature, and had paid a high price for her mistake. As soon as the divorce was final, she’d reverted to her maiden name and chosen to put the experience behind her. “What about you?”

  Jon apparently had his own agenda because he answered her question with one of his own. “You don’t date much, though, do you?”

  “No. Do you?”

  “Some.”

  “Are you married?” She didn’t think he was.

  “No.”

  “Divorced?” she asked next.

  “No.”

  He certainly didn’t bother with sharing, nor did he feel obliged to offer much personal information in exchange for hers.

  “Why don’t you date?” he asked next.

  Maryellen shrugged, choosing a nonverbal reply instead of a lengthy explanation.

  Jon sipped his coffee. “Don’t you get asked?”

  “Oh, sure.” She preferred parties and other social events to individual dates. “Why the interest, all of a sudden? Would you like to ask me out?” she asked boldly. If he did, she just might be tempted. Then again, maybe not. Dark, mysterious men were dangerous, and she’d already learned her lesson.

  “What did he do to you?” Jon pressed.

  Maryellen got off the stool, uncomfortable with the way he continually parried her questions with his. Each question dug a little deeper, delving into territory she’d rather leave undisturbed.

  “Tell me something I don’t know about you,” she said, challenging him with a look.

  “I’m a chef.”

  “You mean you enjoy cooking?”

  “No, I’m a chef at André’s.”

  The elite seafood restaurant was on the Tacoma waterfront. “I…I didn’t know.”

  “Most people don’t. It’s how I pay the bills.”

  Kelly’s voice rang from inside the gallery. “Anybody here?”

  Her sister couldn’t have chosen a worse time to visit and Maryellen glanced regretfully toward the showroom. “That’s my sister.”