by Hope Ramsay
“Yes.”
“I love you, Lia.”
“I love you back.”
She ended the call and flopped back against the pillows on her bed. How was it possible? All these years she’d been carrying this guilt about Justin, and he didn’t even remember her stupid report card.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Momma, we need to do somethin’,” Jackie said as he chewed the last bite of his hot dog. He was sitting in a lawn chair out in the garden where Ashley had been hosting the annual Fourth of July party that her grandmother had started years ago. Howland House had a prime spot for viewing the bay where the town set up barges for the annual fireworks display. It was almost dark enough for the festivities to begin.
“What do we need to do?” she asked her boy.
He chewed for a long while, a thoughtful expression on his freckled face. “About Miss Lia.”
Well, that wasn’t a surprise. The whole town was gossiping about her houseguest, who had gone upstairs at about four o’clock this afternoon and hadn’t shown her face since. “What can we do?” she asked.
“Cap’n Bill says she’s foundering in a hard blow.”
Ashley wasn’t quite sure what that meant. But Lia was certainly the subject of some very unflattering gossip. According to the trending news on the Heavenly Rest grapevine, she’d attacked Bud Joyner, and depending on who you believed, she either broke his leg, knocked out a few teeth, or stole his shotgun.
Ashley found it hard to believe any of those things. How on earth could a little thing like Lia DiPalma do any damage to a big dude like Bud Joyner? And why would she want to?
Ashley shook her head. “No, I don’t think we should get involved,” she said.
Jackie blinked and gave her one of his wide-open, little-kid looks. “Cap’n Bill says we should.”
Damn Captain Bill. He was a meddling son of a gun. And she was starting to wonder if maybe Patsy Bauman had it right, and her son was conversing with a ghost of ill repute. In which case, maybe she should sell Howland House and move far, far away.
She was a little frightened by the possibility of a real ghost living in her house. A real ghost putting weird ideas into her only son’s head. “We’re not getting involved. Is that clear?”
“Not getting involved in what?” a baritone asked from behind.
She turned. Micah St. Pierre stood on her lawn, dressed for the evening in a golf shirt and a pair of khakis. He looked a little too big and masculine when he took off the Roman collar. She much preferred him wearing his priestly garb. It was easier to think of him as something other than a man when he did that.
“Miss Lia,” Jackie said before Ashley could stop him. “The cap’n says she’s lost her bearings.”
Micah sat down at the table. “I think he’s right,” the minister said to the boy then turned toward Ashley. “I hope you don’t mind. I invited myself over for the fireworks, since your view of the bay is better than mine. But since I’m here, maybe I should have a word with Lia. Is she around?”
“Up in her room,” Ashley said. “She came home around four and hasn’t been seen since.”
“She’s been crying,” Jackie said.
“And how do you know that?” Ashley asked, ready to give her son yet another lecture about eavesdropping on their guests.
“I went to the bathroom and I heard her. She was crying kind of loud.”
“Oh.”
Micah leaned back in his chair, folding his arms. “Hmm. That’s unusual.”
Ashley turned back toward Jackie. “Sweetie, would you please take your plate to the trash can for me?”
The boy’s gaze shifted from her to the Rev and back again. “I know. You guys need to have a grown-up talk. That’s fine. You need to talk about Miss Lia, okay?” He hopped down from the lawn chair and picked up his empty paper plate and headed toward the trash container.
“What the heck is going on, Micah?” Ashley asked. “I mean, to hear what people are saying the woman must have a black belt in Kung Fu.”
He chuckled. “She doesn’t. The navy doesn’t regularly train sailors in hand-to-hand combat but I’ve heard her say that a woman in the military needs to know stuff.”
“So you think she really broke Bud Joyner’s jaw? That’s what they’re saying. Why would she do a thing like that?”
“From what I heard, she disarmed him. He was holding a gun on Kate’s dog.”
“Oh my word. Why would Bud do such a thing?”
“Now that’s the important question, isn’t it?”
“Is it?”
“Well, I thought it was until I heard that she’s been up in her room crying. I don’t see why disarming a man who was threatening his wife and her dog would make her cry. Do you?” Micah got up and looked around at the guests on the lawn. “Speaking of dogs. Where’s Prince?”
Ashley blinked. “I assume he’s upstairs with Lia.”
A slow grin filled Micah’s face. What was it about Micah St. Pierre’s smiles? They were reassuring. She liked to be on the receiving end of them. “Now that’s the best news I’ve heard today,” he said.
“What are you up to? Honestly, Rev, sometimes I wonder if you and Jackie’s ghost are in league with one another.”
“You know, I think we are,” he said. “I’m going upstairs to talk to Lia. I would appreciate it if you didn’t broadcast that to the rest of the Altar Guild.”
She blinked at him. “You won’t be the first man she’s entertained up there, Micah.”
“No?” One of his eyebrows arched.
Ashley shook her head. “I’m pretty sure Lia’s been having a little…fling? With Noah Cuthbert.”
“Really? Well, that explains everything. Thank you. It’s all starting to make sense now.”
“What’s starting to make sense?”
“Everything,” the minister said, turning toward the inn’s back door. He strode away like a man on a mission.
* * *
Lia had just finished dressing and was trying to work up her courage to go downstairs and watch the fireworks. She’d taken a shower, put another cold washcloth on her tear-swollen eyes, and she was just beginning to wrap her brain around the fact that she’d been living her life on the basis of a lie.
She’d been blaming herself for a lot of stuff that just wasn’t her fault.
She was staring at her still-swollen eyes in the mirror when a knock came at the door. For an instant, her heart soared. Maybe Noah had changed his mind. Maybe he’d come—
“Lia?” Micah’s baritone sounded through the door.
Of course. He’d be the first one to find her. She opened the door.
He was dressed in his civvies. “You okay?”
“I think I am,” she said.
He chuckled and remained firmly in the hallway. “You don’t know?” His gaze zeroed in on her bloodshot eyes but he didn’t say anything.
She shook her head. “I’m really not sure because I just had a mind-altering conversation with my brother.”
“Mind-altering, huh?”
“Yeah. He told me something I didn’t realize. Something about my mother. Something I was blaming myself for but—”
“You need to stop doing that, you know. I’ve been telling you that for a while now.”
She nodded. “Yeah, I know. But I guess now I’m going to have to deal with the crap everyone else is blaming me for. It hasn’t been a great day.”
“No?”
She shook her head. “I threw the softball game, rescued an abused wife, disarmed the fire chief, spent hours in jail, and then walked away from a guy who might be Mr. Right. And I don’t think I’m going to escape responsibility for any of that stuff. But I just discovered that I wasn’t the reason Justin stopped speaking for a solid year.” She felt shaky, thinking about what she’d done today. She also hadn’t eaten anything in a long while.
“Mr. Right, huh?” Micah asked.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I just met Noah, and I guess he always wante
d to leave this place, but now he wants to go early because of me. I keep telling myself that he was always going to go back to Charleston sooner or later.”
“You could follow him.”
She shook her head. “No. I have to stay here now.”
“Why?”
“Because I have to see things through. I can’t leave when everyone’s opinion of me has turned negative. You see that, don’t you? I need to tough it out until everyone understands that—”
“Lia?” A feminine voice called from down the hall. Micah and Lia turned as footsteps came up the stairs. “We just heard about what happened. We were out on Grant’s boat all afternoon. We sailed to the cove, and then the wind died, and we were… Well, anyway, we got back late and just heard about you being thrown in jail, and Grant has something to say.” The words tumbled out of Abby’s mouth. She looked a little windblown, and she was still wearing her softball T-shirt. So was Grant Ackerman, who had followed her up the stairs with a worried frown on his face.
“Hi,” he said and nothing more.
“Grant, you have to tell her. You probably have to tell my daddy but that’s a whole different thing.”
“What do you have to tell us?” Micah asked.
“Well to be honest, I don’t think I can tell you anything. I’m bound by nondisclosure rules. It’s kind of like the seal on the confessional, you know.”
“Grant!” Abby drew out the word. “Just tell them what you said when we heard the news from Ethan.” Abby turned toward Lia. “We ran into him down at the pier where he was helping with crowd control.”
“I can’t, Abby. Disclosing information about people’s tax returns is not allowed in my profession. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I shouldn’t have said what I said. I was surprised, and it just slipped out.”
“All right. I’ll say it. He said—”
“No!”
“Was it something about Bud Joyner’s bass boat?” Lia asked.
Abby and Grant turned in unison. “You know about that?” Abby asked.
“I know that he paid cash for it. And I know Kate thinks he got the money from local landlords who are paying him to look the other way on building code violations.”
Grant’s mouth dropped. “How do you know this?”
Lia shrugged. “I talked to people. I listened. And Kate—”
“Lia has radar,” Micah said. “Don’t ask how it works. But suffice it to say that she knows stuff way before anyone else does. I take it you have some information that law enforcement might be interested in?”
“I’m not at liberty to say,” Grant said with a gleam in his eye. “But I will do everything I can to support you, Lia. If you went after that man, you must have had a good reason. I saw you in action with Sarah Whitman the other day. You don’t strike me as a person who attacks someone unless there’s a good reason.”
“He aimed a shotgun at Napoleon, Kate’s poodle.”
“He did not!” Abby said. “Wow. And you took the gun away?”
“She was trained by the military,” Micah said. “In fact, one of her jobs was to protect me when we were deployed in forward areas.”
Micah smiled down at her. “So, are you ready to come downstairs for the fireworks?”
She cast her gaze from Micah to Abby to Grant. “Yes, I guess I am.”
Micah turned down the hallway, and Grant followed him, leaving Abby and Lia in the rear. Lia grabbed Abby’s arm and let the men get ahead. “So, how’s it going with Grant?” she asked. Abby might have fallen off her pink Post-it list, but Lia still wanted to make sure she’d been right about that.
Abby turned with a sappy smile. “I think I’m falling in love with him.”
Yikes, maybe she should put her name back on that Post-it. “What about college?”
“What about it?”
“You’re not going to give it up, are you?”
Abby stopped on the first landing and gave Lia a stare. “Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know, so you could be with the man you love?”
“Oh. Well, we talked about that today after…” Her voice faded out just as her cheeks got pink. “Um, well, anyway, we talked about it. And he made it clear that, even though he was okay with things like holding my hand in public, he was not about to tie me down to a relationship until I get my BA.”
“Does that mean he’s free to date someone else?” Lia asked.
“Of course not. We’re going steady. But that’s it for the next four years. And if we change our minds then…we change our minds. He’s really a great guy.”
“I know that. Last Saturday, he insisted on having a man-to-man conversation with Noah. I thought that was pretty straight up.”
“He what?”
“After he brought Sarah and her cat to the clinic, he stayed to have a talk with Noah.”
“What for?”
“I don’t know. I assume he was letting your brother know his intentions.”
“You mean he was asking permission?” Abby’s face got red again, but this time it was an angry blush. “I can make my own decisions.”
“Of course you can. And Grant knows this. But he also wants to keep the peace in your family. I’d say that’s a good thing, right?”
Abby frowned. “I guess I’m not as mad at him as I am at Noah. What made Noah think he was in charge of me anyway?”
“Well, you can join the club because I’m mad at Noah too. But I don’t think it was an issue of who’s in charge of whom. I just think your brother loves you and he wants to keep you safe. You’re lucky to have him. Brothers are special.”
“Hey, y’all coming? The fireworks are starting.” Micah’s voice carried up the stairwell.
“We’re coming,” Abby said, giving Lia a glance. “How did you get to be so wise?” she asked.
Lia shrugged. “I’m not very wise. But on the issue of brothers, I just had a lesson in love myself.”
* * *
The fireworks popped like artillery, battering at the fortress around Noah’s heart. That fortress had already taken a hammering out at Daddy’s place, and it seemed to be crumbling in great big chunks as he fought the traffic across town from Daddy’s place to Howland House.
He needed to get to Lia as fast as possible. He needed to undo the damage he’d done earlier in the day. He needed to tell her that he would stand by her even if the whole town had something bad to say about her.
He was not going to run away from her. He’d been running from the past for too long. It was time to stand and face it. It was time to give Magnolia Harbor another chance.
He wasn’t sure he could forgive his father entirely. But he still had Momma, and she wanted to stay here. And he had the clinic, which he’d grown to love in the last few days. And if the stars aligned, he might have Lia too.
Lia had changed everything.
He pulled his car into the Howland House parking lot while fireworks continued to explode overhead. There was a crowd out in the garden, so he bypassed the door and headed straight to the B&B’s back lawn. The lights had been turned off to make the aerial displays all the more impressive. But the darkness made it hard to find Lia.
So it took him five minutes of stumbling around, running into church ladies who wanted to say “hey.” Thank God none of them was Granny. He wondered if Granny believed the lies people were telling about Lia, or whether she would give Lia the benefit of the doubt. He had a feeling Granny would.
“Noah?” He turned around at the sound of Abby’s voice. She was standing there with Ackerman’s arm across her shoulder.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“Giving Lia our support,” she said, just as the first ear-spitting salvo of the grand finale went off.
“What?” He could hardly hear her as the fireworks reached a crescendo.
“We came to let her know that Grant has dirt on Bud Joyner, but it turns out she already knows all about Bud’s criminal activities.” Abby cocked her he
ad as she yelled above the din. “Why are you here?”
“To apologize for being a jerk,” he yelled. “Where is she?”
Abby pointed across the lawn. “She’s over there with Reverend St. Pierre.”
He followed Abby’s finger and finally saw Lia, with the lights from the incendiaries illuminating her dark eyes. He stopped for a long moment and just watched her.
She was beautiful. She was stubborn. She was amazingly organized. She was compassionate. And she saw things no one else did. She’d told him once that he was one of a kind. He still didn’t believe it.
She was one of a kind. And if he lived to be a very old man he’d probably never be worthy of her. But he was going to try.
The last ember of the fireworks faded as he reached her. He took her by the shoulders, and in a voice that carried a little farther than he intended, he said, “Lia DiPalma, if you want to stay in Magnolia Harbor, then I guess I’m staying too.”
And then he kissed her. Hard. And she melted in his arms and kissed him back until someone turned on the patio lights and everyone there started to clap for them.
Damn. Nothing like declaring one’s intentions publicly.
“You’re going to stay?” she asked, her big brown eyes full of hope.
“I can’t let you stay here and face the gossip on your own. I’ve fallen in love with you.”
“And I’ve fallen in love with you,” she said, her eyes so dark in the darker night.
“I intend to stick around until you kick me out. And we’re not running away from this gossip. I see now how bad running away can be. I think it’s better to stand and face whatever the future has to offer.”
“What made you change your mind?” she asked.
He smiled. “I had a long talk with my father.”
“You did? I’m so glad.”
He nodded. “I’m not sure I ever will forgive him. But he asked for forgiveness, and I guess that changes everything.”
“Yep, it usually does,” the Rev said on a long, amused chuckle, just as Noah pulled Lia closer and gave her an X-rated kiss right there in front of Ashley’s guests, who included most of the members of the Heavenly Rest Altar Guild.
