by Hope Ramsay
Epilogue
The Howland House garden was awash in chrysanthemums of every fall color imaginable on October first. There were purples and rusts and golds all blooming in wild abandon as Lia walked down the garden path wearing a ridiculous burnt-orange dress with a skirt down to her ankles. She carried a bouquet of peach-colored roses and some kind of wild fall berries.
She’d spent the morning at Just Curls getting her hair cut and then styled with a bunch of curly tendrils that looked semi-ridiculous.
But she’d do anything for Jenny. She’d met Justin’s fiancée back in July and fallen madly in love with her. She was the kind of homebody that Justin needed. She was the anchor in his life, and he was talking about leaving the army behind and finding a place—maybe even close to Magnolia Harbor—for them to settle down in.
When Jenny came to visit, she’d fallen in love with Howland House, which just happened to have openings in October. So here she was on Justin’s big day, walking down the path where her little brother waited for the love of his life. Beside him stood Rev. St. Pierre, dressed for some wedding-day action in his cassock and surplice.
Meanwhile the love of her life was sitting on a folding chair on the groom’s side of the footpath, looking positively gorgeous in his gray suit. His mother and grandmother sat on either side of him.
Abby was conspicuously missing because she was up in Columbia attending the USC–Clemson football game. Grant Ackerman was missing too, because he’d gone up to Columbia for the festivities. Abby may not have liked it, but Grant had formally spoken with both Molly and Greg Cuthbert to let them know that he cared a great deal for their daughter, but he was willing to wait until she finished school. And so far their long-distance relationship seemed to be working out.
In the meantime, Grant had played an important role in the grand jury investigation that had just issued an indictment against Bud Joyner for malfeasance and Joshua Moore for bribery.
Jenna St. Pierre, also sitting on the groom’s side, had just recently purchased all of the cottages on Redbud Street. She intended to create some affordable housing for the many service industry workers who lived on the island, especially in the summer months.
And Noah had purchased a plot of land on the east side of town, just beyond the town limits, where Colton St. Pierre was building a new house for Molly.
So all was right with the world. Except for the fact that she hadn’t gotten the job at Heavenly Rest. At the end of the day, the church had decided it couldn’t afford a secretary, so Lia ended up working full-time at the animal clinic. And she’d found an apartment above one of the stores on Harbor Drive, which she now shared with Mohini, the vet tech they’d hired last summer.
Of course she and Noah regularly shared a smooch whenever Mohini or the other vet tech was looking the other way. There was a lot of fooling around going on in the supply closet.
She reached the end of the walk and watched her brother take Jenny to have and to hold. She cried so hard that she actually needed a tissue, which Micah supplied right in the middle of the ceremony. And good thing, too, because she was on the point of blubbering. She was so happy to see her little brother happy and content and settled.
Later, she found herself standing on the lawn with a glass of wine in her hand, feeling as light as a feather. As if she’d finally come home. She knew the names of everyone at this party—a feat Micah might not find remarkable—but to her it was miraculous because most of them were her friends and neighbors.
All her life she’d wanted this. And a dog too. Prince was still a puppy but he was a whole lot bigger now. He was out on the lawn playing fetch with Jackie, who borrowed him whenever he felt the need for a dog.
And just as her heart swelled with happiness Noah joined her. They stood together at almost the same spot they’d been last July when he’d promised not to leave Magnolia Harbor until she was ready to go with him.
And, dear man, he turned to the assembled crowd and said, “Listen up, y’all, I have something to say.”
The chatter died down and all those friends and neighbors turned in Lia’s direction, except for Prince, who was way too interested in playing fetch.
“Lia,” Noah said, turning in her direction. “I know we haven’t known each other all that long, just a few months. But it’s enough.” He got down on one knee and pulled a robin’s egg blue box out of his pocket. “Will you marry me?”
Damn. She was crying again. “Yes,” she said through the tears.
And he was up on his feet, putting a gigantic sparkly diamond on her left hand that would anchor her to him the way she felt anchored to this town and this place and all the people who lived here.
She looked into his twinkly eyes. “I love you,” she said.
“Thank God.”
And the wedding guests clapped the way they’d clapped last summer.
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Did you miss the first
Moonlight Bay novel?
Jenna Fossey’s life is about to change. An unexpected inheritance and the chance to meet relatives she never knew existed has her heading to the charming little town of Magnolia Harbor. But as soon as she arrives, long-buried family secrets lead to even more questions, and the only person who can help her find the answers is her sexy-as-sin sailing instructor.
Please turn the page to read an excerpt from
The Cottage on Rose Lane.
Chapter One
Was this her father’s boat? The one he’d been sailing the day he died?
Jenna Fossey stood on the sidewalk, shading her eyes against the early-September sun, studying the boat. It was small, maybe fifteen feet from end to end. It sat on cinder blocks, hull up in the South Carolina sunshine, its paint blistered and cracked. Much of the color had faded or peeled away, leaving long gray planks of wood. Even the boat’s name had bleached away; only the shadow of a capital I on the boat’s stern remained. Some kind of vine—was that kudzu?—had twisted up the cinder blocks and crawled across the boat’s hull, setting suckers into the wood and giving the impression that only the overgrown vegetation held the pieces together.
A thick, hard knot formed in Jenna’s chest. She held her breath and closed her eyes, imagining the father she’d never known. In her thirty years on this planet, she’d imagined him so many times. In her fantasies, he’d been a fireman, a detective, a handsome prince, a superhero, a scoundrel, a bastard, and an asshole. That last role had stuck for most of her life because, before she died of breast cancer three years ago, Mom had refused to talk about him. In fact, by her omission, Mom had made it plain that Jenna’s father had been a mistake, or a one-night stand, or someone Mom had met in college but hardly knew.
And then, one day out of the blue, Milo Stracham, the executor of her grandfather’s will, arrived at her front door and told Jenna the truth. Her father had been the son of a wealthy man, a passionate sailor, and he’d died before she was born.
She took another breath, redolent with the tropical scents of the South Carolina Low Country. Musty and mossy and salty. This was an alien place to a girl who’d grown up in Boston. It was too lush here. Too hot for September.
She shifted her gaze to the house where Uncle Harry lived. It was a white clapboard building bristling with dormer windows and a square cupola on top. Its wraparound veranda, shaded by a grove of palmettos at the corner, epitomized the architecture of the South. She stood there listening to the buzz of cicadas as she studied the house, as if it would tell her something about the man who owned it.
At least Uncle Harry didn’t live in a big, pretentious monstrosity like her grandfather’s house on the Hudson. She would never live in her grandfather’s house. She’d told Milo, who had become the sole trustee of her trust fund, to sell the place. But, of course, her grandfather’s will restricted such a sale, just as it had restricted her ability
to sell her grandfather’s stock in iWear, Inc., the company he had founded and which now was the largest manufacturer and retailer of optics in the world, including sunglasses that regularly retailed for two hundred dollars or more a pair.
The Wall Street Journal may have dubbed Jenna the Sunglass Heiress once the details of Robert Bauman’s will had become public, but that was so not who she was.
She’d been raised in Dorchester, a neighborhood in Boston, the daughter of a single mother who’d worked two jobs to keep her in shoes and school uniforms. She’d been a good student, but even with scholarships, Jenna had taken out huge loans for college and graduate school. But she’d earned her MBA from Harvard, and landed a job in business development with Aviation Engineering, a Fortune 500 company.
But her inheritance had cost her the job she loved, because iWear was a direct competitor in the advanced heads-up optics market that was so important to Aviation Engineering’s bottom line.
The company she’d devoted eight years of her life to had made her sign a nondisclosure agreement and had booted her out within a day of learning of her good fortune. It was as if the universe were sending her a message that just ignoring the money or refusing to accept it was not sufficient.
So she did what she’d been thinking about doing for years—she took a year-long trip to the Near and Far East, intent on deepening her understanding of meditation and Buddhism. Her goal had been to learn how to handle the karmic consequence of the inheritance her stranger of a grandfather had given her.
She needed something meaningful to do. But what? She needed a cause. Or a reason. Or something.
After a year spent mostly in India, she’d come to the conclusion that she could never build a new life for herself without confronting the secrets of the old one.
Which was why she’d come to Magnolia Harbor, South Carolina, with a million questions about her father, seeking the one person who might be able to answer them—her uncle Harry, Robert Bauman’s younger brother.
She crossed the street and leaned on the picket fence. It would be so easy to ascend the porch steps, knock on the door, and explain herself to the uncle she had never known. But it wasn’t that simple. The rift between Robert and Harry had been decades wide and deep, and she didn’t understand the pitfalls. She couldn’t afford to screw this up. She’d have to gain Harry’s trust before she told him who she was.
She walked away from the house and continued down Harbor Drive until she reached downtown Magnolia Harbor. The business district comprised a four-block area with upscale gift shops, restaurants, and a half-mile boardwalk lined with floating docks.
On the south side of town, an open-air fish market bustled with customers lining up to buy shrimp right off the trawlers that had gone out that morning. On the north side stood a marina catering to a fleet of deep-sea fishing boats and yachts. In between was a public fishing pier and a boat launch accessed from a dry dock filled with small boat trailers.
Presiding over this central activity stood Rafferty’s Raw Bar, a building with weathered siding and a shed roof clad in galvanized metal. Jenna found a seat on the restaurant’s terrace, where the scent of fried shrimp hung heavy on the air. She ordered a glass of chardonnay and some spinach dip and settled in to watch the sailboats out on the bay.
“The Buccaneers are always fun to watch,” the waitress said as she placed Jenna’s chardonnay in front of her.
“Buccaneers? You mean like pirates?”
“Well, they’re obviously not pirates, but they do pretend sometimes. Some of them love to say arrrgh at appropriate moments. They also regard Talk Like a Pirate Day as a holy day of obligation.”
Jenna must have let her confusion show because the waitress winked and rolled her eyes. “Oh, don’t mind me. I’m a sailing nerd. Those sailboats are all Buccaneer Eighteens, a kind of racing dinghy. The Bucc fleet always goes out on Tuesday afternoons for practice races.”
“So, sailing is a big thing here, huh?”
“It always has been. Jonquil Island used to be a hangout for pirates back in the day. And the yacht club is, like, a hundred and fifty years old.”
Had her father belonged to the yacht club? Probably. It was the sort of thing the son of a rich man would do.
“Oh, look,” the waitress said, pointing. “They’re done for the day, and Bonney Rose is leading them in. Her skipper is a crazy man, but so cute. He’s got a chest to die for.” She giggled. “My friends and I sometimes refer to it as ‘the Treasure Chest.’” The waitress pointed at the lead boat with a navy-blue hull and crisp white sails.
The boat was heading toward the floating dock with the others behind it. The two sailors sat with their legs extended and their bodies leaning hard over the water in an impressive display of core strength. The guy in the back of the boat was shirtless with his life vest open to expose an impressive six-pack. His skin was berry brown, and his curly dark hair riffled in the wind.
Jenna caught her breath as a deep, visceral longing clutched her core. He resembled a marauding pirate. Dark and handsome with a swath of masculine brow, high cheekbones, and a full mouth. Like someone with Spanish blood and a little Native American or Creole mixed in. Or maybe African too.
Had they met before? Perhaps in a past life?
She watched in rapt attention as the boat came toward the dock at a sharp angle. He was going to crash. But at the last moment, the boat turned away, stalling in the water, allowing the second sailor, a man with a salt-and-pepper beard, to step onto the dock in one fluid motion, carrying a mooring line. The big sail flapped noisily in the wind as the shirtless sailor began pulling it down into the boat, his biceps flexing in the late-afternoon sun.
Five more sailboats arrived in the same noisy manner, and for the next few minutes, an orderly chaos ensued as boats arrived and dropped sail and got in line for the launch. Jenna had trouble keeping her eyes off the man with the too-curly hair and the dark skin.
It was probably because she’d spent the day thinking about her father and the way he’d sailed here, and died here. Had her father been like a dashing pirate ready to buckle some swash? She pulled her gaze away and allowed a wistful smile. She was doing it again. Inventing a father for herself instead of seeking the real one.
“Can I get you anything else?” the waitress, whose name tag said Abigail, asked.
“Yes. What’s his name? And why is the name of his boat misspelled?” She pointed to the man and the boat, where BONNEY ROSE was painted in gold letters along the stern.
“That’s Jude St. Pierre. And the boat’s name is a tribute to Anne Bonney, a female pirate from back in the day. It’s also a tribute to Gentleman Bill Teel’s boat, which broke up over near the inlet back in the 1700s. That boat was named the Bonnie Rose, after Rose Howland.”
“And who is that?”
“She’s the lady who planted jonquils all over the island in memory of Gentleman Bill, the pirate.”
“I sense a story.”
“It’s basically the town myth. Explains all the pirate stores in town. You can pick up a free Historical Society pamphlet almost anywhere. I’d give you one, but we’re out of them. It’s the end of the summer, you know. Things are starting to wind down here.”
“Do many boats go down in the inlet?” Jenna asked, a little shiver running up her spine. Is that what had happened to her father?
Abigail nodded. “The currents can be treacherous there if you don’t know what you’re doing or you get caught in a squall. Can I get you anything else?”
Jenna shook her head. “Just the check.”
As Abigail walked away, Jenna turned to study the man named Jude St. Pierre. Her skin puckered up, and her mouth went bone dry. She pushed the attraction aside. That was not what she wanted from him.
She wanted a sailboat ride to the place where her father had died. But since she didn’t know where that might be in the vastness of Moonlight Bay, maybe the best she could do was a sailing lesson so she could find it later herself.
>
“You’ve got an admirer,” Tim Meyer said, nodding in the general direction of Rafferty’s terrace. “Easy on the eyes, dirty blond, with big brown eyes.”
Jude didn’t follow Tim’s glance. Instead, he concentrated on the job of securing the mast to its cradle with a couple of bungee cords. He didn’t have time to flirt with tourists.
“She’s a cutie. Aren’t you even going to look?” Tim, newly divorced and constantly on the make, had spent the entire summer chasing female tourists who were too young for him, so this comment rolled right off Jude’s back.
He’d learned the hard way that tourists always went home. Besides, he had a rule about blondes. His mother had been a white woman with blond hair, and she’d abandoned the family when Jude was fourteen. He could do better than a blonde. He wanted a Clair Huxtable who could also speak Gullah, the Creole language of his ancestors.
“I can’t believe you aren’t even going to check her out,” Tim said. “She’s got a hungry look in her big brown eyes.”
Jude raised his head without meaning to.
Big mistake. The woman’s gaze wasn’t hungry, exactly. It was steady and direct and measuring. It knocked him back, especially when her mouth quirked up on one side to reveal a hint of a dimple, or maybe a laugh line. And she wasn’t blond. Not exactly. It was more cinnamon than brown with streaks of honey that dazzled in the late-afternoon sun. Her hair spilled over her shoulders, slightly messy and windblown, as if she’d spent the day sailing. She was cute and fresh, and he had this eerie feeling that he’d met her before.
Her stare burned a hole in his chest, and he turned away slightly breathless. Damn. He was too busy for a fling. And never with a woman like that.
“See what I mean? She’s maybe a little skinny but…kind of hot,” Tim said.
