by Hope Ramsay
“Stop!” She grabbed him by the arm and turned him around to face her. Overhead a seabird cried.
“What?”
“I know what you’re thinking. I’m a white girl from a white-bread world with a ton of money, and here I am swooping in to provide advice. Yeah, I get it. But if we could just leave the stereotypes aside for one minute, that would be helpful.”
“Okay.”
“What I was about to say was that I have often found that it’s faster, easier, cheaper, and more effective to find private solutions to problems like this, instead of waiting around fighting the government.”
His lips twitched. “You sound Republican too.”
“I am a card-carrying independent. But that doesn’t matter. What you need here is a nonprofit corporation. You know, like the Nature Conservancy, only for culture.”
“What?”
“The Nature Conservancy. It’s a private group that buys up environmentally significant land to ensure it never gets developed. Have you ever tried that route?”
He shook his head.
“Well, you should. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll bet you could put together a nonprofit of your own, composed of family members, and raise money to pay the taxes and keep the land out of the developers’ hands.”
“Okay. I admit I never thought of that. But hell, we all own shares anyway. Why not turn it into a corporation?” He stared down at this remarkable woman. “You are very smart, aren’t you?”
“Don’t sell yourself short. I’ve never owned my own business. I’ve always worked for someone else. So I envy you, Jude St. Pierre. I envy your passion. And your cause. And your experience. You may have brought me out here to scare me, but you’ve failed.”
“I don’t really own my own business. It belongs to Daddy.”
“BS. Maybe his name is on the papers, but you’re the guy paying the bills.”
“It’s hardly successful.”
“Doesn’t matter. We don’t learn by our successes, Jude. To get far in life you have to fail. Numerous times.”
He laughed at that. “Is that another wise saying from Buddha?”
“No. It’s something I got from my professors. You have to fall down before you can learn to walk.”
“Yeah, well, I think I’m good at falling down.”
“Which means you’ve got loads of experience that I don’t have.” She rose up on tiptoes and kissed his chin. “You don’t scare me, Jude.”
“That’s funny because you scare the hell out of me.”
She cocked her head, and her big brown eyes grew wide. “Why?”
“Because of your optimism. And because you have the ability to hurt me. You’re not what I’ve been looking for. And yet, when you talk, it’s like I can see a future I never thought could possibly exist. Believing in that future is frightening as crap.”
“‘All that we are is the result of what we have thought,’” she said. “Now, that’s Buddha.” She poked him in the middle of his chest. “So stop thinking about yourself in the negative.”
He couldn’t contain a smile. “Why is it that all your woo-woo stuff is starting to make sense to me?”
“Because Buddha was a wise man. And you are a smart, capable, passionate, and stubborn man. I find all those traits enormously appealing.”
He should have known it would be impossible to scare Jenna away. So they stayed for supper. Laughed around the table. Taught Jenna a few words of Gullah. And even managed to get Aunt Daisy to finally admit that she could speak English as well as—or maybe better than—anyone. Daisy had been a schoolteacher for years before she retired at the age of seventy.
By the time they finally waved good-bye to his aunts, it had started to rain again, but Jude still broke a couple of speed limits driving back to the cottage by way of the convenience store on Harbor Drive, where he purchased a box of condoms.
And then they dodged the raindrops from the cottage’s parking lot to the porch while simultaneously kissing. Once the door closed, they lost their clothes in a big hurry. Limbs became entangled with T-shirts, toes got stubbed on furniture, and Jude’s nose got bumped inadvertently when Jenna straightened up after shucking her jeans.
Luckily, no blood was shed by the time they made it to the bed.
Where her kisses ignited something inside him that unfolded into more than five senses. She smelled like heaven. Her skin was like silk under his hands. The glow from the gas fireplace haloed her hair. She tasted like heaven. And when he touched her most sensitive places, she sighed and gasped in delight. But for all that, he felt something more. Something without a name and yet just as palpable.
And when they came back down, they lay together, wrapped in each other’s arms as the afternoon slipped away, the rain beating at the metal roof. Jenna drifted off into sleep, but Jude remained awake, her deep breathing whispering against his ear, the firelight flickering across the ceiling.
The hand of fate had brought her into his life. He could see that now. They were tangled up together in some odd way. He twisted a lock of her hair around his finger. It shimmered a hundred different colors in the firelight. Maybe he’d resisted her so hard because he’d known all along that he’d end up here, falling in love.
She moved a little, snuggling deeper against his body. He studied her skin, so tan in the sun-exposed places and so milky white in all the spots where the sun couldn’t go.
She wasn’t his ideal woman. And yet…
Would this connection last? Their bodies might fit together perfectly, but it was more than sex. He’d taken her out there to Aunt Charlotte’s place expecting her to have second thoughts, and she’d simply enjoyed herself and asked questions and tried to understand Aunt Daisy’s Gullah, which was just Daisy’s way of testing her.
Maybe she wasn’t like his mother. Maybe she could see herself staying.
He swallowed back the hurt. He was repeating Daddy’s mistakes. And no matter how he tried to convince himself otherwise, the truth was right there in the color of her hair.
He squeezed his eyes closed. Damn. Damn. Damn. Moments ago he’d let himself get lost in Jenna’s wide, strange, wonderfully optimistic but ultimately privileged world. He didn’t want to lose her. He didn’t want to come down from the high. He didn’t want to think about the inevitable bad stuff.
But the bad stuff always found him, no matter what.
He took a deep breath and listened to the rain and tried to empty his mind. He dozed on and off, waking once from a dream where he’d been sailing a beautiful schooner across a vast ocean. The rain gradually tapered off, and the night grew quiet.
He awoke hours later to the sound of his cell phone. Damn. This early in the morning it could only be Daddy.
“Where are you?” Daddy asked when Jude connected.
“None of your business.”
“Yeah, well, it is my business when you don’t show up for a charter.”
“What?”
“Have you got your head up your butt? It’s Friday morning. We have a charter to take the Weiss family out for some deep-sea fishing. They’ll be arriving here in about twenty minutes.”
“Damn. I forgot.”
“Yeah, well, that happens when you start messing around with blond tourists who have money to spare. But trust me, it ain’t gonna work out. Get your ass over here, you hear?”
“I heard that,” Jenna mumbled as she rolled over in bed, giving him a delicious view of the pale skin of her breasts. “Guess you have to go.”
“Yeah. And I’m going to be busy the next few days.”
“Of course you are.”
He hated the tone in her voice. “I’m sorry. I work weekends mostly.”
“Yeah, I know. Day and night. And I’m sure you wouldn’t want to be seen letting me buy you dinner at Rafferty’s.”
“I gotta go.” He rolled out of bed and started looking for his clothes.
She followed him out into the sitting room, beautifully naked and utterly distracting.
“Look, I get it. This is just going to be one of those island flings or whatever. But I have a favor to ask.”
“Okay.” He wasn’t sure he wanted to do her any favors. He wanted to grab her by the shoulders and tell her to be careful with his heart, because he’d fallen for her. And he knew she would leave him one day.
“One day next week, can you sail me out to the inlet?”
“What? Are you out of your mind?”
She shook her head. “I want to go out there to where my father died.”
“If you want to pay your respects, you can visit his grave at Heavenly Rest.”
“He’s buried here?”
Jude nodded.
“I didn’t know that.” She looked away for a moment. “Okay, but it doesn’t change my mind. I want to go out to that place. I need to go there, and I’ll pay you whatever rate you name.”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to be paid.” He blew out an angry sigh before speaking again. “Look, taking a small boat out to the inlet is crazy. You don’t want to do it. I can take you out there on Reel Therapy. Having an engine can be a lifesaver if things get hinky.”
“No. I want to go in a small boat. Like Bonney Rose. Was my father sailing a Bucc?”
He shook his head. “No. He had an old Albacore that he’d rescued from someone’s backyard as a teenager. They found that old boat after the accident and towed it back. Harry put it up on blocks in his yard. It’s been there for decades. The dry rot has ruined it, but Harry refuses to let it go.”
She nodded. “Yeah, I saw it there. When I first came to the island. I stood on the sidewalk and decided not to knock on their door.”
“You should tell them the truth, Jenna.”
“I know. And I will. When I’m ready. But—”
He pulled on his T-shirt. “Sorry. I understand what you want. But I’m not taking you out there.” He blew out a breath. “I had a good time last night. I did. But I gotta go now.”
Chapter Sixteen
Having mind-bending sex with a guy who didn’t want to fall in love was not really a problem, was it?
She didn’t want to fall in love either. Love was messy. Especially since she was falling for Jude St. Pierre, who was a friend of her long-lost uncle, whom she’d been lying to and who probably hated her anyway.
Oh yeah, and he was skittish about the whole race thing. And who wouldn’t be?
So it didn’t surprise her when he didn’t call or text on Friday night and didn’t offer to take her out for dinner on Saturday. The sex had been beautiful and mind-altering and scary for two people who were dealing with abandonment issues.
She embraced her solitude. Being alone had never much bothered her. And she finally acknowledged that her year-long vacation from her life was almost at its end. Sooner or later, she’d have to return to Boston or New York and figure out what to do about the rest of her life.
She already knew that she wasn’t cut out for the idle life. She may not have worked at a job this last year, but she’d worked on herself. And during the time she’d spent at the ashram, she’d been busy with more than meditation.
So she started to polish up her résumé, but the more she worked at it, the more dissatisfied she became with the idea of returning to some Fortune 500 corporation, working for someone other than herself. What was she afraid of anyway? Failing?
Yes. Back when she’d gone for her MBA, she was always the one person in the group who wasn’t hell-bent to become an entrepreneur. She’d been happy working for someone else because she craved the security of it.
Ha. The laugh was on her. There was no security in life. It was ever changing, and bad stuff happened all the time. You had to learn how to go with the flow. If she’d learned anything this past year, it was that happiness was found when you stopped resisting it.
Maybe she could learn something from Jude. He’d never worked for anyone but his father, which was a way of saying that he’d been working for himself, even though he might not see it that way. There was a one hell of a difference between working for some faceless corporation and working in a family business.
So she abandoned her résumé almost as soon as she started working on it. And she allowed the familiar restlessness in. She needed a passion. She needed a purpose. She needed one good business idea that she could develop for herself instead of handing it off to someone else. But good business ideas were hard to come by. They could be elusive if you pursued them directly. Sometimes it was best to just be aware and not to force the issue.
So she was glad when Sunday finally rolled around, providing a distraction from one problem and an opportunity to work on another. She dressed in her new sundress and headed off to Heavenly Rest. Jenna had a feeling Patsy and Harry would be there this time since it was Micah St. Pierre’s first Sunday on the job.
And what a difference a week made. It was a glorious September day filled with bright sky and sunlight, and it looked as if the entire congregation had turned out. Almost every seat was filled. She slipped into one of the back pews and settled in for the worship service she didn’t quite comprehend. But when Micah St. Pierre stepped up onto the historic wooden pulpit, wearing a black cassock, a white robe, and a green stole, her boredom disappeared. His presence was commanding, and when he began to speak in a resonant baritone, it was hard not to listen.
He read a passage from the Bible that told a story about a man entrusting large sums of money into his servants’ care. In the story, two of the servants invest the money and make big profits, while the third hides the money because he’s afraid of losing it.
Jenna found herself suddenly consumed with the simple parable and then riveted when Micah St. Pierre started to draw a lesson from this story. On the face of it, the story seemed to be about investment strategy, but somehow Micah St. Pierre drew a line from riches to love, creating a grand metaphor.
“God wants us to invest our love, not hide it away,” he said. “He gave us a choice. We can love or not. But the thing is, to truly love, we must risk it all. Our hearts might get broken. In fact, it’s quite likely that every one of us will suffer a broken heart at one time or another because we chose to love.
“And yet if we risk nothing, what can we possibly gain? In this story about the rich man and his servants, God is telling us that he wants us to risk everything and not to hide our most precious treasure in fear.”
A strange shock worked its way through Jenna as she listened. It almost seemed as if Jude’s brother were speaking directly to her, using her own thoughts as a conduit to open up a vista she’d never seen before.
And suddenly the plan she’d been looking for emerged. A way to move forward in the world. She hadn’t expected to find it here, in a Christian church. But the universe had a sense of humor sometimes. It could send a person searching in circles when the answer was right at hand. Sometimes it wasn’t the answer but the search that was important.
The Sunday school building, clearly built in the twentieth century, sat behind the church and had none of the main sanctuary’s charm or history. But it had plenty of space for the fellowship hour.
Jenna had blown off this social gathering last week because of Patsy’s absence. But today she strolled into the room, ready to be treated as a tourist or an outsider. But that didn’t happen.
Karen, one of the volunteers on Monday and also a member of the Piece Makers, intercepted her at the door with a welcoming smile and directed her to the coffee and doughnuts.
As she headed in that direction, Jenna was greeted again and again by people who had been at the vicarage on Monday as well as a few others who stopped to introduce themselves and thank her for her help.
Wow. She’d earned some good karma helping to paint the vicarage, in addition to possibly losing her heart to Jude St. Pierre. It didn’t take long before she found herself face-to-face with the woman she’d come to see this morning.
“You’re a foul-weather painter,” Patsy said as she approached, a surprisingly welcome s
mile on her face. “Once the sun came out, you disappeared.”
“I guess I am,” Jenna said, her face heating. “I’m sorry. I should have—”
Patsy waved her hand in dismissal. “Honey, you’re here to enjoy the sun and the beach, not to help paint the vicarage.” Her gaze narrowed. “You are here as a tourist, aren’t you?”
“I told you. I’m not working for any developer.”
“Yes, you did. But you are a mystery, Jenna Fairchild. You helped paint the vicarage, and everyone wants to know why. And you’ve been seen twice now at town hall meetings.”
“I helped because I was bored,” she said, “and the paperback I was reading didn’t hold my interest. And I told you before, I’m interested in history.”
“Well, I guess those are reasons. Kind of flimsy though.”
Jenna sipped her coffee before speaking again. “The thing is, I’ve been so busy this last year, it’s hard to stay still.”
“I heard from Louella Pender that you went on a tour around the world or something.”
Jenna realized her aunt was deeply connected to everything that happened in Magnolia Harbor. What Jenna said to one person would get repeated over and over again until it reached Patsy. Jude would keep her secret, but she needed to be careful.
Jenna gave Patsy her best smile. “I suppose I did go around the world, technically speaking. But mostly I went off in search of myself.”
Patsy’s blue eyes widened. “Really?”
Jenna nodded. “Yes. I started in China, spent time in India, and came back by way of Australia and South America. But I spent most of my time in China and India. I spent months learning more about the Eightfold Way. I also walked all the way up Mount Emei.”
“What’s that?”
She took a moment to describe the temple at the top of one of China’s four sacred Buddhist mountains. And then she hurried on to talk about the months she’d spent in Mumbai at the ashram. “I’ve been busy,” she said. “Even when I was spending up to five hours a day in meditation. That takes a lot of work. And, of course, at the ashram we were required to do chores like cooking and cleaning. So…”
