by Hope Ramsay
She had nothing but the long, lonely winter to look forward to. Maybe she should take those knitting lessons down at A Stitch in Time. It might be fun to design her own knitted apparel.
She glanced toward the window just as a St. Pierre Construction truck pulled into the empty parking spot in front of the store.
Hallelujah and praise the Lord. The day had taken a turn for the better. Colton St. Pierre climbed down from his pickup truck like a vision from out of the pages of her magazines.
The man was as handsome as Derek Jeter. And that was saying something. Kerri was no baseball fan, but Derek had made his way into the celebrity news section of her favorite magazine more than once.
Unlike Derek, Colton needed a wardrobe makeover. She let go of a sappy sigh just thinking about the fun she’d have dressing Colton St. Pierre in something hand tailored.
Too bad the man had a thing for another woman. It didn’t even matter that Jess had given Kerri permission to pursue Colton. How was she going to get Colton interested when he only cared about Jess?
A woman could break a heart chasing a man who loved someone else. Kerri had learned that the hard way.
She waited, wondering if she should go out there and tell Colton that Jess wasn’t in her office. The woman had left shortly after Caleb Tate had gone up there. Kerri had debated whether she should drop in on her tenant with a cup of coffee just in case Tate got ugly. There was something about that man that made Kerri’s skin crawl.
But discretion was the better part of valor. So she’d stayed put and let Jess handle Tate on her own. And she didn’t get up now, either.
She turned back to her magazine, but when the little bell above the door rang a moment later, she was nothing short of surprised.
Colton was big and male and sucked up much of the available space and air in her small boutique. The proverbial lightbulb flashed above her head—maybe he’d come to see her and not the woman who rented the office space upstairs.
He moved carefully, as if he might be afraid to knock over the pretty daffodil-themed knickknacks occupying every shelf.
“Is Jessica upstairs?” he asked without preamble.
Well, that was predictable.
“I don’t know. Why don’t you knock on the door and find out?” she asked.
He turned and took a step toward the door before she took pity on him. “No, she’s not up there. She left around lunchtime and hasn’t been back yet.”
“Oh,” he said, turning and jamming his hands into his pockets. He seemed more awkward than disappointed. What was up with that?
“You can wait here for her, if you like. Can I get you a cup of coffee? A Coke?”
He nodded. “A Coke would be great.”
She hurried to the workroom and snagged a canned Coke from the small fridge. She stopped at the mirror and gave her hair a once-over. She looked okay. And she was a fool and an idiot for checking.
“Caleb Tate came by to see her a little while ago,” Kerri said as she returned to the sales floor.
“What?” Colton seemed agitated by this news.
“He didn’t stay long. Maybe five minutes. And she left right after. Maybe ten minutes ago.”
He pulled out his phone and punched in a number, and then put it to his ear. A moment later he disconnected the call.
“She didn’t answer?” Kerri asked.
He shook his head as he picked up one of the daffodil-print coffee mugs and studied it. What was going on in his head?
And then, out of the blue, he said, “You know, Rose Howland didn’t plant those daffodils by herself.” He was referring to the daffodils that had given Jonquil Island its name. The story was that Rose Howland, mourning for the drowned pirate Captain Teal, had planted the flowers in his memory.
“No?” she asked. She might have batted her eyes at him a little shamelessly.
Colton put down the cup and turned toward Kerri, his Spanish moss–colored eyes sharp. “There’s an old family story about how Henri St. Pierre did most of the work.”
“Really? Who was he?”
He strolled to the counter, where he leaned forward, invading her space. Her heart rate climbed.
“You don’t know your history. I find that amusing since you’ve got a shop that trades on the whole daffodil thing.”
“I bought this shop from Mildred Sawyer when she retired. I wasn’t thinking about history. I was examining her profit-and-loss statements. I have an MBA from Georgia Tech.”
He gave her a wide smile. The man was beautiful. Even his teeth. “You like looking at numbers?”
I like looking at you. But instead of telling him her innermost thoughts, she said, “I do. Numbers never lie.”
He blinked for a moment. “Why do I get the feeling that’s a commentary on the human race?”
She shook her head. “Not on the human race, just some people in particular.” Like her lying SOB of an ex-husband, whom she’d divorced seven years ago. But who was counting?
“I’m terrible at numbers.”
“Really? That surprises me. You’ve got such a successful business.”
“I do. But my books are a mess, and I don’t have a degree in anything. I’m strictly seat-of-the-pants.”
“So,” she said, stifling the urge to lean forward and offer to do his bookkeeping, “tell me about this family history I know nothing about.”
He straightened and shrugged his shoulders. “Henri St. Pierre was the only survivor of Captain Teal’s pirate ship.”
“Oh, you mean the one that sank in the hurricane all those years ago.”
“Yep. He swam ashore, and Rose Howland found him, saved his life, and gave him a place to stay.”
“But only if he did the hard labor of planting all the daffodils?” Kerri asked.
“Yup.”
“What happened to him?”
Colton shrugged. “He lived out his years here. He’s buried up on my family’s land. At least, that’s the legend. There isn’t any headstone or anything. And there’s an alternate story that he ended up being enslaved at one of the plantations upriver.”
“Are you giving me crap for selling daffodil-themed items because Rose Howland was a white woman?” Kerri may not have known about Henri St. Pierre, but she’d always known that the daffodil story was a staple of the white folks’ history of the island. But she wasn’t selling history; she was using the island’s name for her merchandise assortment.
He cocked his head, and his eyes got a little softer. “I’m sorry. That was kind of rude, wasn’t it? Giving you crap for selling stuff with daffodils.”
“No. It was a fair criticism. But we’re living on Jonquil Island.”
He nodded. “I know. But it bothers me that Henri St. Pierre’s role in our history has been forgotten. Maybe you could give him a little shelf space in your store.”
“I’m not sure I want to sell pirate knickknacks.”
“OK, but you could add some sweet grass baskets or maybe some other Gullah crafts that help folks remember that black people were brought here to grow rice. Our ancestors farmed this island way before the white folks built their summer homes out here.”
“You know, I’ve been thinking about selling those baskets.”
He smiled. “I’ve got kin who still make sweet grass baskets.”
“You do? I’d like to meet them.”
He nodded. “I’m sure they wouldn’t mind selling you a few for your store.” He paused a moment. “Um, look, I’m kind of at loose ends this afternoon. You busy for lunch? We could, you know, share some ideas.” His gray eyes sparked with something more than a shared interest in business.
But she chose to ignore that little light in his eyes. She could chalk this lunch up to market research.
Or something.
Hell, Jess had given her the green light, so she didn’t need to feel guilty. “I’d love to have lunch with you,” she said, her whole body turning to mush when he smiled.
* * *
L
ast night, when Karen and Sandra descended upon Topher with their worries and their pity and insisted that he stop swimming, he totally lost his temper.
After all the years these two old ladies had looked after him, he had never used language like that in their presence. But he’d shown them, all right. He’d chased them away.
And then he’d picked up a few of the knickknacks that Ashley had used to decorate the cottage and sent them hurtling toward the fireplace surround. And when Ashley had had the temerity to call him on the phone, he’d sent that flying across the room too.
It had exploded into shards of plastic and glass, one of which had left a small nick in his forehead.
He’d howled at that misfortune too, then stumped into the bathroom futilely searching for a Band-Aid. He’d had to sit on the commode pressing a washcloth to his forehead for a solid ten minutes.
By then he’d recovered a little of his sanity. He took a pain pill and went to bed.
In the morning, he’d cleaned up the mess, picking up the pieces of his broken phone.
Now he’d have to go out in public and endure people’s stares. But he couldn’t live without a phone. And maybe he needed to get some Band-Aids, since he seemed to have developed a knack for wounding himself.
So he took a shower, changed into some almost-clean clothes, and drove to the mainland, where he grabbed lunch at Burger King, stopped at a sports store to buy a football for Jackie, and picked up a phone.
It was late in the afternoon before he got Jessica’s message. She wanted to meet. And suddenly the sun came out from behind his personal rain cloud.
He was ready to get to work. Now. So he didn’t call her back. He decided he’d drop by her office and get the project back on track. But when he parked in the town lot, near the marina, and looked up her office address on her web page, he was surprised to see that she didn’t have an office downtown.
The address was way the hell over on the east side of the island. He groaned in frustration, plugged the address in his GPS, and headed out of town.
Twenty minutes later, he pulled into a gravel drive that led to a house from out of Granddad’s dream. It was old, maybe built in the early twentieth century, which would have made it one of the first beach houses on Jonquil Island. It sat up on stilts right behind the primary dune in a grove of palmettos and scrub pine.
As he got out of his car, the scent of the ocean, overlaid with pine needles, greeted him. In the distance, the surf pounded like a bass drum.
The house was a little run-down, paint peeling from the clapboard siding. But it didn’t matter. If he had to come up with a vision of something, this would be it.
Except for the stairs. The front door was up a flight of stairs with a slightly loose banister. And the reality, born of pain, slapped him across the face.
He couldn’t have a house like this. He’d need one with a ramp or something. It was like having his hopes dashed on the rocks.
He gritted his teeth and hauled his sorry ass all the way up those stupid stairs to the front door and rang the bell.
He waited for a long time—long enough to make him second-guess his decision to come here instead of returning her call. He hated the idea of having to walk back down all those stairs without accomplishing anything.
But just as he was about to turn away, the door opened, and there she stood, looking nothing like a professional architect. In fact, she looked like a really adorable rendition of Rosie the Riveter, in a pair of flip-flops, baggy overalls, a paint-smeared work shirt, and a bright-red bandanna tied around her head.
“Hi,” she said, snatching the bandanna from her head, which only exposed a mop of hair that had gone a little curly in the day’s humidity.
He liked this version of Jessica better than the one who dressed for success. But it struck him that maybe he’d made a mistake. “Is this your office?” he asked.
“My—oh no.” Her big gray eyes widened. “Crap.” An embarrassed smile touched her lips. “I mean, I used to have my office here. In the old guest house.” She waved vaguely to the left. “But I moved downtown a month ago.”
“But your web page said…”
“Oh Lord, I forgot to change the address, didn’t I?”
“So is this where you live?”
“Yeah. It used to belong to my grandparents.”
“Can I come in?”
She hung on to the doorframe and met his stare. Damn. He’d invaded her space again, hadn’t he? He should go.
“I’m sorry, I should have—”
“No, it’s fine. Come on in.”
Chapter Nine
Once Jessica backed away from the door, Topher came barreling into her house like an invading army. She got out of his way as he limped down the center hall and into the big living room at the back.
“This is”—he paused, looking up at the beams in the ceiling—“amazing.”
“Uh, thanks.” Good grief, did he like her mausoleum of a house? Was this what he wanted? Well, she could do Carolina Coastal if that was his thing.
He turned toward her, his one bright eye filled with a blue-hot flame that was nothing short of mesmerizing. “This isn’t the kind of house I expected you to live in,” he said.
“Why not?” she asked.
“I thought you’d live in something ultramodern. Like Yoshi’s house.”
“That was Mr. Akiyama’s vision, not mine. I thought he was crazy at first when he said he wanted a house that looked like a bird taking flight.”
“And you don’t think I’m crazy?”
Did she? Maybe a little. “Look. Mine is not to wonder why.”
He grunted a laugh. “You’re BSing me.”
Was she? Maybe a little, but she kept her mouth shut.
“You know my family is dead set against what I’m trying to do.”
She nodded. “I heard them arguing with you last night. And Ashley tried to talk me out of helping you.”
“And you said no?”
She shrugged.
“That’s not an answer to my question.”
“I did say no. But it’s a risk. Ashley could trash my reputation if something happens to you. So be careful, okay?”
“So you care?” One eyebrow arched.
He was pushing it. She met his stare. “I care about my reputation.”
He barked a laugh and then strode past her, opening the doors to the back porch and walking right through them.
“This is beautiful,” he said when she caught up with him. He turned, gazing out onto the dark-blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean and the white sand of the beachfront. The roar of the surf filled Jessica’s head, making it doubly hard to think.
“So, maybe we could schedule a meeting to talk about where my initial design went wrong. And then—”
“Let’s do it now.”
“Um, well, I’m kind of busy right now.”
“Busy doing what?” he asked, turning toward her, his blue eye like a laser.
She stuffed the bandanna into the pocket of her overalls. “I’m fixing the kitchen sink, if you must know. And really, I think we—”
“You know how to plumb a sink? Really?”
His surprise was so annoying. “Yes,” she said, overstating the truth by a mile.
In fact, when she’d arrived home an hour ago, after stopping at the hardware store for a P-trap replacement kit, she’d quickly discovered the difference between YouTube DIY videos and reality.
She’d spent the last half hour futilely trying to get the nut off the pipe. But the wrench was too big for her hands, and the nut had been tightened by someone with a lot of testosterone.
Why, in the name of creation, were nuts, bolts, plumbing, and tools designed for men? One day, some woman would make a bundle redesigning the world so people with small hands could get a grip.
But she wasn’t explaining all that to Topher, especially since he was grinning at her. Had she seen him smile like that before?
No. And she hated the fact
that the smile made him sort of adorable. Or something.
Well, one thing was certain. He didn’t spark fear the way Caleb did. In fact, Caleb had so frightened her that she’d been unable to sit still, which was why she’d come home to get the plumbing fixed.
He turned his back on the ocean and leaned on the railing, folding his arms across his chest. The sea breeze ruffled his long hair and caught in the fabric of his Hawaiian shirt and baggy shorts. He looked a little like a Jimmy Buffett fan in need of directions to a Parrot Head convention.
“Okay, I’ll go. Maybe we can meet tomorrow to talk about the house. But there’s just one thing, before I leave. That stuff you said on the beach yesterday. You want to explain what that’s about?”
He had to be kidding, right? Had it been so unimportant to him that he didn’t even remember? The thought left her chilled to the bone.
“You don’t remember the day Caleb Tate pushed me to the floor right outside Mr. Bennett’s physics class and called me a slut because I had done it with Colton St. Pierre?”
“Uh, well…”
“Yeah, you don’t, do you? And I guess you don’t remember how you told the world I was doing drugs with Colton, either,” she said, her voice surprisingly low and steady given the sudden swell of anger.
He stood upright, his eyebrow arching. “Weren’t you? Doing drugs? I saw you in his car with smoke coming out of the vents. And besides, you got sent away to have his kid. I know that doesn’t make you bad, just a kid who made a—”
“What?” The ground under her feet shifted a bit, and she had to grab the railing to keep herself steady. “Where did you get the idea that I had Colton’s baby?”
“You mean it’s not true?” He seemed really surprised.
“Oh my Lord. Is that what everyone at Rutledge High thought when I left school senior year?”
“Of course they thought that,” he said.
“Unbelievable.” She whispered the word and shook her head. She was so angry, she might have done or said anything in that moment. But she held all that fury in check.
She’d learned the hard way that getting angry only made things worse for her. It was imperative to keep all that bottled up.
