Letters and Lace (The Ronan's Harbor Series)

by M. Kate Quinn

  When she recognized that it was Benny at the door she jerked upright and nearly dove to the door. She yanked it open.

  “Benny!” shot from her mouth like a sob of relief.

  She surprised him by throwing her arms around his shoulders and pressed herself to him without regard to his current state of Hefty-bag wetness.

  They entered the inn together, their footing off-kilter, and they nearly toppled to the entryway’s floor.

  “What are you wearing?” she asked, standing at arm’s length. A smile broke out across her face. “Is that a garbage bag?”

  “Yes, it is,” he said. “I had to walk here from up the block. There’s a huge tree down blocking the road.”

  He studied her face, sharing a long eye-lock. Neither uttered a word, but communication zoomed between them.

  Finally, her lips parted. “Thank you for coming.”

  “I’m guessing you didn’t call the police, did you?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  He was about to protest her decision, when he heard a slamming sound.

  “There it is again,” she said sotto voce.

  “Sounds like it’s coming from out back.”

  She nodded. “Somebody’s out there. I’m sure of it. And, I just know it’s the note-writer.”

  “Let me call the police,” he said.

  “No. The note did say he’d be here tonight. If he runs from the police, I’m back to square one. I can’t take it anymore. This guy needs to think it’s clear to be here and talk to me. I just hope he didn’t see you arrive, you know, dressed like the ‘Man from Glad’ and everything.”

  “Sarah, listen to yourself. You’re rationalizing a stranger’s presence. You can’t solve this.”

  “I have to.”

  “What would you have done if I didn’t get here?”

  “I’m just glad you did. This is going to stop tonight.”

  He recognized the determination in her voice, stronger than the hint of a sob bubbling in her throat.

  He checked his watch. “It’s eleven-thirty. We wait one-half hour. At midnight it’s no longer Friday night. Agreed?”

  She let out a deep sigh. “Okay. But, we can’t let him know you’re here. He could be looking inside the windows right now.”

  He was at a loss for words. Apparently she had a strategy and for thirty goddammed minutes he’d play along.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Sarah led the way into the kitchen, again crouched like Quasimodo while Benny followed sans black plastic bag.

  She could tell what he was thinking. He thought she was an idiot hiding in the space between the refrigerator and the island. Maybe she was an imbecile to hold herself hostage laying in wait for a stranger to appear and explain himself. She was at her wits’ end.

  Her inn was crumbling around her, much like her life. But the one thing she could do, the only piece of power she had, was to face down the person making matters worse.

  “Have a seat,” she said in a low voice.

  She plopped down onto a large throw rug. Benny followed suit making a soft grunt that sounded more like a scoff.

  She offered him a tortilla chip from an open bag. “Chip? She held up an opened jar. “Salsa?”

  “Are those my groceries?”

  “Yes,” she bit into one. “Sorry. I didn’t have dinner. Have one but don’t crunch too loud. Take small bites.”

  “Where’s my beer?”

  “In the fridge but you can’t open it now. The light will give us away.”

  He reached into the bag and fished out a chip, snapping off an end with gnashed teeth.

  He was quite a sight in the semi-darkness, in socks with his outstretched legs in those signature jeans, darkened by dampness from the knee down.

  She’d be even more nuts to offer to throw them in her dryer for him. Hell, bad enough he was here alone with her in the dark, his thigh just an inch or two away from hers. No way was she suggesting he free himself of that denim.

  “So, now we wait?” He raised his shoulders, let them fall.

  She raised her chin to the amusement in his voice. She sat up straighter as they both leaned against the cabinetry, their shoulders nearly touching. “We do.”

  He released a breath.

  “Did you realize you forgot your groceries after you left?”

  “Yes.” He repositioned himself to face her. “Sarah, I have something to tell you.”

  His intent stare riveted her as she listened to the story of his visit with his brother, awestruck by the fact that he and Clyde Stone were partnered with Nick Pallis. She knew that zoning officer was no good ever since she’d first seen him unabashedly allowing his dog to pee on her tulips.

  “I’m going to town hall first thing in the morning to blow the whistle on this. And, I’ll do everything I can to get you the permits you need.”

  She felt a tear sting her eyes. A solution. Under normal circumstances she’d be elated on all levels. But, right now, that news just made her sadder. The Cornelia was crumbling at its foundation, as was she.

  Tears fell from her eyes and she didn’t even bother to brush them away. They were real and it was time for them.

  Before she knew it, Benny’s arms were around her and she let him hold her. The feel of his big embrace, the solidity of his chest, the scent that no amount of rain could ever wash away, all worked together like an elixir.

  She closed her eyes and breathed him in. She could almost hear the melody of Pete Bailey’s music from that first night at the Pier House.

  A loud bang sounded and they broke apart.

  “I’m going out there,” he said. He struggled to stand up from their cramped hideout.

  “No, Benny, don’t,” she implored, grabbing at one of his arms. “You’re going to scare him away.”

  “Enough is enough,” he said. He took the flashlight she had beside her on the rug and darted from the kitchen down the hallway toward the front door.

  She followed him. “Benny, it’s only been a few minutes. We agreed to wait until midnight.”

  “Sorry.” He shoved his feet into his sneakers, bent down, and tied his laces like he was assaulting them.

  “Then I’m coming with you,” she said.

  “Sarah, for God’s sake, wait here.”

  “I will not.” She ran to the coat closet to retrieve her gardening boots. She tugged them on and turned to go with him. He was already gone and the black garbage bag was missing, too.

  She carefully navigated the slick stairs in her boots while rain pelted her skin like needle pricks. She immediately saw the footprints in the sodden ground. She traced them across the front of the house and around the side. Benny had the flashlight and she struggled to see where she was going in the darkness.

  Her heart pounded. Where is he? When she reached the back corner of the house, she paused and peered around the building, straining her eyes.

  Benny was standing with his flashlight’s beam pointed at the front of the shed where she stored summer supplies. The door to the shed had broken off from its hinges and lay nearby on the wet grass.

  The light shone into the interior of the enclosure and as Sarah approached she caught glimpses of the old familiar items. The shiny metal handlebars of one of the bicycles she kept for guests’ usage, two stacked Adirondack chairs that would grace the front porch in a couple of weeks.

  “What do you think? Was he in here?” she shouted over the thrum of rain.

  “Still is,” Benny said without moving.

  Breath lodged in her lungs, she stared deeper inside the shed following the beam of light to the back wall. Behind the dainty wrought iron table that belonged in her garden stood a solitary figure of a man. Her heart stalled in her chest as she let her eyes rest on his face. Dear God!

  Chapter Twenty

  Jeremy Hudson stood frozen with his back pressed against the rough wooden wall, his hands raised in the air as if caught in a police raid. He was bug-eyed with fear as though Ben
ny aimed a revolver at him rather than a flashlight beam. In his hand, held aloft, was a familiar-looking envelope.

  Confusion and anger danced through her senses as she registered the identity of the intruder. “Jeremy?”

  “You know this clown?” Benny asked, keeping the beam right on Jeremy’s face.

  “Yes, I do,” she said. “For God’s sake, Jeremy, what the hell are you doing?”

  “I screwed this all up,” he said. With one eye squinted against the light glaring at him he reminded Sarah of Popeye.

  “I was hoping to come here tonight to straighten it all out.” His comment was directed at Sarah but then he turned his gaze to Benny. “Dude, are you wearing a garbage bag?”

  “What’s it to you? What the hell are you doing hiding in this shed?”

  “I came here to explain everything to Mrs. Grayson. When I first arrived I saw two cop cars coming down the block. I panicked. I kept seeing flashing lights.”

  “Apparently there’s a fallen tree,” Sarah said. “They’re on the street taking care of that.”

  “I…I didn’t know. I thought you called the cops on me.”

  “So you decided to break the door off her shed?” Benny fired his words like bullets.

  “No, I wanted to just wait it out. I was desperate to straighten out this whole mess. The rain was coming down so wicked, I broke into the shed and I guess I screwed up the latch. The wind kept blowing the door so hard until it finally snapped off.”

  Sarah and Benny exchanged a look.

  “Who is this idiot?”

  Sarah let out the air that had taken residence in her lungs. “He was Hannah’s first boyfriend.”

  “The one with the opal necklace?” Benny sounded incredulous.

  “You know about that?” Jeremy asked. He, too, was incredulous.

  “Jeremy, please.” Sarah made to silence him before he managed to totally piss Benny off. “Benny. This isn’t a criminal. Let’s go inside and have Jeremy explain what this is all about. Okay?”

  “It’s your call, Sarah.” Benny waved the flashlight like a billy club. “Come out of there and follow Sarah. I’ll be right behind you.”

  ****

  Inside the kitchen, Benny removed his dripping plastic covering and tossed it into the large sink. He was still soaked, as were she and Jeremy.

  Sarah, in bare feet with her pants rolled up to the knee, went into the Henry Clay suite to retrieve bath towels. She doled them out to the men before wrapping one around her chilly wet shoulders. She used a corner of the terry bath sheet to blot her saturated hair. She rubbed it as dry as she could. She was still shivering.

  “I’m putting on a pot of tea,” she said.

  “Screw the tea,” Benny said. “Let me have one of those beers.”

  Sarah closed the cabinet door she’d opened to retrieve mugs, deciding that Benny’s idea was better. She pulled the six-pack from the fridge and placed it on the island.

  Benny handed one to Sarah. She twisted the top and took a long swig. This was definitely what the moment called for.

  “I’m really sorry,” Jeremy said.

  “Jeremy, I don’t understand. Why on earth would you try to threaten us? Have you lost your mind?”

  “Mrs. Grayson, please believe me…I didn’t even realize how the notes must have sounded. I just figured you’d know somehow what I meant.”

  “Well, actually, unless what you meant was to scare me and interfere with my plans, then no, I don’t have a clue as to what you could possibly have wanted.”

  “I’m still in love with Hannah.”

  Her body jerked, causing the towel enveloping her to slip to the floor. “What?”

  Jeremy shook his head. “I thought you’d figure it out. That night at my shop when you bought the stationery I thought that was like your acknowledgement. I’m so sorry. Not about loving Hannah, of course…just the notes.”

  “Now I’ve heard everything.” Benny reached for another beer. He tossed it to Jeremy. Although he flinched when it came at him, and the bottle wobbled in his hands, Jeremy caught it.

  “Thanks, man,” he muttered softly. The beige satin-bordered bath towel draped his head like a shroud.

  Benny ceremoniously folded his towel on one of the bar stools and sat on it. He took a long pull of his beer. “Kid, let me tell you right now, I’m not leaving. So whatever you’ve got to say to Sarah about this bullshit you can start talking now.”

  “Jeremy, is that for me?” Sarah pointed to the misshapen, damp envelope he’d placed on the counter beside him.

  “Yes. It’s my explanation. I was going to leave it in case you weren’t home, before…you know, I had to hide.”

  “Well, why don’t you just tell me now?”

  Jeremy pushed the towel from his head and it rested on his shoulders. He took a sip from the beer bottle.

  “I’m still in love with Hannah. And, I think she still loves me.”

  “Cripes,” Benny said.

  “What? Since when? She’s getting married in less than a month.”

  “She doesn’t love that dude.”

  “How can you even say that?”

  “We, uh, well…I was in New York not long ago.”

  “You were?” Something inside her twisted around and cinched into a knot.

  “We spent some time together. We had dinner, that’s all. But, it was enough.”

  “When was this?” The hinge of Sarah’s slacked jaw ached. What the hell was he saying?

  “In hindsight I see that the words I wrote to you could have been misconstrued.”

  Benny harrumphed.

  “My coworker pointed that out to me when I told her about what I’d said in my notes.”

  “You mean that girl that was in your shop the night Mrs. Allen and I were there?”

  “Mara, yes. After you left I confessed it all to her. I told her how it was my plan to explain everything to you right then and there, but I couldn’t get you alone for a minute. Mrs. Allen likes to talk.”

  A wry smile formed on Sarah’s face. This was just so bizarre. She sipped the beer again, surprised at how much she enjoyed it.

  “Look, kid,” Benny said. “Why didn’t you just say what you meant?”

  Jeremy shrugged. “I thought for sure Mrs. Grayson would know what it was about.” He turned his attention to Sarah. “You remember when Hannah was about to leave for college, and she broke off our relationship? I knew it wasn’t you that convinced her to break up.”

  Sarah turned to Benny. “My ex-husband wanted Hannah to go off to school unencumbered.”

  “Do you remember what you said to me that day?” Jeremy asked.

  “No.” She wracked her brain for the memory. She did recall the day. But, she’d been consumed with her baby girl going off to be an adult, beginning her life and the future that she deserved.

  Jeremy had helped carry Hannah’s boxes to the minivan, his shoulders slumped with resignation. Silent and dazed, like two robots, each of them had gone back and forth into the house to retrieve her belongings.

  When they had been about ready to leave, Hannah and Jeremy stood facing each other. Sarah now remembered the lurch of her own heart when they’d folded into a desperate embrace.

  Gary, barking orders to hurry, had done his best to end the moment with as much finality as the swing of an axe.

  The two kids with tear-filled eyes had whispered softly to each other. Jeremy had unabashedly caressed Hannah’s hair in spite of her father’s obnoxious rants for her to get in the car because traffic would become a nightmare soon.

  Hannah had climbed into the back seat and Jeremy gently closed the door, leaving his hand a moment to linger on the handle. He had turned to Sarah to say goodbye.

  The words came to Sarah now as if written in ink on a sheet of shell-themed stationery. Before she could say them aloud, Jeremy spoke.

  “After you told me that our time apart didn’t have to mean forever, you said something else.”

  “
The same wind that extinguishes a spark can also stoke a fire.” The words escaped from her lips in a whisper.

  Jeremy smiled. His eyes brimmed with tears. “Yes.”

  Her eyes floated to Benny’s. Their gaze locked on old words of reassurance remembered by a man with an unwavering heart. Sarah swallowed hard. Who knew that random wisdom could serve as a boomerang?

  “I love her.” Jeremy said again. It was a simple statement, but powerful to Sarah’s ears.

  “Jeremy,” she said. Her throat ached. “Hannah’s getting married. I really didn’t expect this at all. I mean, honestly that night in your shop I had the feeling you and your coworker were…”

  “Mara?” He laughed. “Um, she’s gay.”

  “She is?”

  “Yeah. As a matter of fact she thought Mrs. Allen was hot. You know, for someone, uh, older.”

  Benny grabbed another beer. “And that calls for number two.”

  “Jeremy this is crazy.”

  “Sometimes the truth is crazy.”

  Silence befell them. Her eyes found Benny’s again. They shared a forceful stare before Benny quickly pulled his eyes away and chugged his beer. Sarah took a second bottle into her hand and gave the last one to Jeremy.

  Jeremy took a long swig before turning his attention to Benny. “I only left you a note because any time I tried to explain to Mrs. Grayson you seemed to be around. I’ve made a big fat mess out of this.”

  Sarah’s head filled with more than Jeremy and Hannah’s parting moments. Her mind flashed with snippets of the two kids’ obvious camaraderie, the ease of their interactions, their connectedness. And, too, she recalled their palpable attraction.

  At the time she’d worried about their physical involvement, hoping they’d behaved responsibly. But, there’d been no denying the magnetism between Jeremy and Hannah.

  She’d known it at a level of her being the same way she’d known she and her husband did not share that, and never had.

  She thought of Hannah and Ian. Did they share that same kind of love? If they did, she didn’t see it.

  Actually, wasn’t it just recently she’d noticed a detachment in her daughter? Stoicism in Ian? Would what they shared have the power to sustain itself over time? Did they have the spark needed to withstand any wind? What stoked them?