Snowflake Bay

by Donna Kauffman

  “Ha ha,” Hannah retorted dryly, then sighed and added, “Although . . .”

  Fiona laughed and Hannah smiled ruefully.

  “I’ll be right down,” Hannah said. “Alex said she’d be here a little before dinnertime. Her world-famous spaghetti is in the fridge for us to heat up. She’s at Eula’s today, working on some hush-hush project.” She grinned conspiratorially. “I’m thinking awesome antique wedding present, but who knows.”

  “I wouldn’t get too excited about that,” Fiona warned. “And you have no one to blame but yourself if you don’t get any cool wedding gifts. When you pull a last-minute wedding date stunt and have it coincide with the busiest holiday of the year, well, you get what you get.”

  Hannah waved a hand. “I know, I know. Seriously, I’m just thrilled that you’re here, and Kerry is still here, and that we love Alex like family already. It’s going to be a wonderful day, Fiona. I just know it.”

  Having talked with Logan earlier in the day after he’d met with Jonah Blue and Calder, Fiona maybe still had some serious reservations about that, but she wasn’t going to spoil Hannah’s mood. “Good,” she said. “I’m going to dive back in. I can be here through dinner; then I have to head back to town. I want to work on more of my business plan tonight.” Hopefully without Beanie “dropping by,” which she’d done again yesterday.

  Hannah’s smile shifted to one of concern. “I know I’m pulling you every which direction while you are trying to completely set up your life again—”

  “Don’t. You’re setting up a life in Calais with Calder, and you’re making the trek back and forth. I knew when I came back that I was going to take the winter months to get myself situated, so I’ll still have plenty of time. I just need to switch gears from time to time, keep things moving forward, that’s all.”

  “No, no, I get it. You’re right—I feel like I’m doing the same thing. Getting settled in at the horse ranch with Calder, and figuring out just what kind of law practice I want to have, and where it’s best to set that up for both us and his family. His dad is doing much better, but the future for their company is changing, so—” She stopped, shrugged. “You don’t want to hear all of that, but it’s all going to figure itself out. And so will this. We don’t need to go crazy with this ceremony, Fi. I just want to marry the man I love and he wants to marry me back. And we want to do that surrounded by the people we love.” She grinned. “The rest is just window dressing.”

  “So says the woman who’s never actually had to window dress a wedding,” Fiona replied, but she was smiling, too. “I’ll be in the kitchen.” She turned to step down off the landing, then looked back up. “You need any help getting out of that?”

  Hannah shook her head. “I’ll be down shortly.”

  Fiona nodded, then gathered up her notebook and file folders from the living-room coffee table and headed to the big, family-style kitchen, where the woodstove was chugging out some nice, cozy heat. Throughout the planning for Alex’s wedding, she really hadn’t thought at all about what she’d want for her own wedding. She’d been too busy trying to decide what she wanted to do about her business, about possibly coming back to the Cove. When she’d started in on Hannah’s wedding plans, she’d still been in much the same mindset, only now it was how to set up her new business that was crowding her thoughts.

  Somewhere in the past two days, that had changed. And she wasn’t happy about it. It was enough to be pulling off a Christmas wedding with less than two months’ notice, while simultaneously committing to a new business location and working on how she was going to set up shop. She didn’t need to be distracted by thoughts of her own wedding day. That was something she’d never really been into. Which, she supposed, was surprising, given she’d known pretty early on that she wanted to do something in the field of design, and given her childhood-long crush on Ben. One would think she’d have trunks full of MY WEDDING DAY albums started at the tender age of twelve or thirteen, with everything already picked out and decided.

  Maybe it was that wedding photo of her parents, whose own wedded bliss went on to be tragically cut far too short, or maybe it was because she’d simply never been in a relationship that made her believe there was a wedding in her immediate, or even distant, future. “And now you get one kiss from your childhood crush and suddenly it’s all flowers blooming and bluebirds singing?” She snorted. “You’re such a hopeless dork.”

  “Who’s a hopeless dork?” Logan asked as he pushed his way through the door from the mudroom to the kitchen.

  “You, you big lug,” Fiona said, dumping her armload on the dining room table so she could give him a hug. “Are you going to join us for dinner?”

  “What’s on the menu?” he asked, as he unstrapped his service revolver and went about removing the ammunition and putting the various elements in two different lockboxes that he kept on top of the fridge.

  “Alex’s spaghetti with a side of wedding reception seating chart planning.”

  “And here I didn’t think there was anything that wouldn’t pair well with Alex’s spaghetti.” He grinned as he stowed the lockboxes back on the fridge and turned to take off his badge and holster. “But, gee, I think I’ll pass.”

  Fiona grinned, but was serious when she asked, “Do you really think we’re going to have trouble at the ceremony? Be honest with me, because I’m still in the planning stage for the reception and the rehearsal dinner. Do we need Kevlar napkins?”

  “Ugh, the rehearsal dinner. I’d forgotten about that. Where are we having it?”

  “Yours was a bigger group since folks from the town were at the Puffin while we celebrated, but this time I’d like to keep it all family, and since half of them don’t know people here, I was kinda sorta hoping we could have it here at the house, just keep it small? Alex is game to cook and Delia said she’d help out, too. Plus, that way it keeps Calder’s family out here and away from town, and since none of the Cove Blues are in the wedding, they wouldn’t be at the rehearsal dinner itself anyway.”

  Logan didn’t look remotely enthusiastic about the idea, but he nodded. “Makes the most sense, I guess.”

  She walked over and hugged him again. “Have I told you how thankful I am you married a woman who has no family whatsoever, so we can just adopt her and keep her as our very own? No Kevlar needed?”

  He hugged her back and bussed her on the top of her head before letting her go. “Just doing my part to keep the family happy.”

  “We are happy,” she said. “And that’s a pretty great thing. I mean, sure, I wish all of Calder’s family were as wonderful as he is, but thankfully with him working more on the farm and less in the family business now that his father is on the mend, it shouldn’t be too bad. Hannah says she gets along great with the sisters-in-law, and the brothers aren’t so bad when you get them away from work, so that’s a bonus. And the nieces and nephews are all adorable, so who knows? If anyone can mediate amongst the ranks, it will be her.”

  “I hope so,” he said, stepping around Fiona so he could poke around in the fridge.

  “I think Alex said there’s some cold fried chicken in there, too, if—” She broke off and laughed as Logan stood up with a fried chicken leg already clamped in his teeth. “Right. And there’s cold beer in—” She nodded as he lifted his free hand to show her the glass bottle there. “Well then, you’re all set for a night of hiding in the man cave.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” he said as he finished his bite and washed it down with a sip of cold beer. “I skipped lunch to shoot a few games of basketball at the high school gym today with Ben, so I might need more than a few pieces of cold fried chicken. See if you can sneak me a plate of spaghetti later, will you?”

  “Sure. So, how’s Ben?” Fiona would like to think she was all casual, chatting about their old friend Ben Campbell, but the look on Logan’s face when she glanced at him proved that to be an epic fail. Still, she soldiered on. “Did they get that guy down from his truck okay? I had to go over to
the Puffin to coordinate times and dates for shopping and such.” And get grilled on how Ben Campbell had kissed her senseless right there in her parking lot. “So I missed how it all turned out.”

  “He’s good. And yes, Andrew Stollen is alive and well and still in one piece, as is Ben’s flatbed.”

  “I’m guessing he’s no longer employed, however.”

  “No, no, Ben kept him on.” At Fiona’s surprised look, he added, “Seems Andrew was trying to cut corners on man power—namely his own—by just dumping the trees out of the truck instead of manually unloading them with the other guy hired to help. So Ben kept him on, but put him back at the farm, digging up the stumps of the trees that folks are cutting.”

  Her eyes widened. “They sell dozens of trees a day between Thanksgiving and Christmas. And the ground is solid as a rock. I thought they dug up all the stumps during mud season in the spring.”

  “They do. But Andrew’s only worked the tree lots.” Logan grinned. “He doesn’t know that.”

  Fiona let out a short laugh. “I’d feel sorry for the guy, but he’s lucky to still be employed, so . . . live and learn, I guess.” She breathed a little sigh of relief, proud of herself for hardly thinking about the kiss at all while talking about Andrew Stollen. Hardly at all.

  “I mentioned you to Ben after the game,” Logan said.

  And there went her peace of mind, and a good part of her ability to breathe. “You—what?” she croaked out. “Why? I told you we’d buried the hatchet. Stop sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong. Focus on keeping the Blue clans from killing each other, and worrying about where Kerry will head off to next. This sister doesn’t need your help at the moment.”

  Logan frowned and paused with the chicken leg an inch from his mouth. “Did Kerry say something about heading out?”

  “No, but you know she can’t last here much longer,” she said, completely unapologetic in her shameless attempt to steer her brother onto a new track. “She’s been here since before your wedding. I think that qualifies as one of her longest stops ever.”

  “She was in Australia for a little over a year.”

  Fiona paused, did the mental math. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  “Do you think she’ll head back? At the time, I wondered if she just came home for the wedding, but I figured if that was the case, she’d have gone back by now.”

  “I don’t know,” Fiona said. “With Hannah getting engaged so quickly, I figured she just put whatever plans she’d made on hold so she could stick around for the second wedding. She doesn’t really talk about her time down there. I guess that’s why I was thinking she wasn’t there that long.” She stopped sorting through her wedding notes folder and looked at Logan. “So, it’s kind of funny then that she doesn’t talk about it, you know? I mean, a year. That’s like a lifetime for Kerry. Wonder what happened Down Under,” she said with a little wiggle of her eyebrows.

  Only Logan wasn’t smiling. “Yeah, I wonder.”

  “Now, now,” Fiona said, starting to feel a little guilty. Not that Kerry would let Logan push her around. She was the only one who seemed capable of shutting him down. Still . . . “Don’t go getting all protective older brother on her. She’s fine. She and Fergus are like peas in a happy little green pod. Maybe she’s tired of roaming. I mean, she’s hit the thirty mark now. She’s bound to want to settle down at some point. Maybe with me and Hannah back in Maine, she’ll stick around.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  Fiona shrugged, but then shook her head. “No, not really. I mean, not Kerry, you know? I can’t see it, anyway. I’m sure she’ll stick here through the holidays because of the wedding, but I’d be honestly shocked if she makes it much past the New Year before she gets itchy feet again.”

  Logan munched, sipped, and nodded.

  “I mean it. Don’t bug her. If she doesn’t want to talk about it, that’s her right. Maybe there’s nothing to say.”

  “Maybe.”

  Fiona saw the contemplative look in his eyes, and knew Kerry was in for a bit of poking and prodding. “She’s a grown woman now, Logan, not some kid running off to join the circus.”

  “I know.”

  She gave him her best yeah, right look, but as usual, he wasn’t fazed. “We’ll know by where she decides to head off to next if Australia is important to her or not.”

  “You’re probably right. Has she mentioned anything at all? About where she wants to go next?”

  Fiona shook her head. “If you want to know what’s going on with her, I’d ask Uncle Gus. She spends most of her time at the Rusty Puffin and he’s likely the only one she’d confide in anyway.”

  Logan snorted. “Yeah, like Gus will just give up any confidences they’ve shared. Those two, I swear. It’s like they fell from the same fairy tree.”

  Fiona smiled. “Right? But, to be honest, I’m glad Gus has her around now, and not just for the company. He’s not getting any younger, you know. And he doesn’t take good care of himself. I’ve been on him to get his annual checkup, and he keeps telling me he’s going. I’d bet my first mortgage payment that he hasn’t been to the doctor in years.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me,” Logan said, clearly not concerned. “He’s a tough old salt, though. I don’t think you need to worry about him. If there was anything of actual concern, Kerry would know it, and she’d badger him into doing something about it.”

  “True,” Fiona agreed, relieved and more than willing to push that worry onto her younger sister. She had enough on her plate.

  “I invited Ben for Thanksgiving,” Logan said.

  Fiona froze. So much for breathing normally again. “Ah, you did? That’s nice. Is he—is he coming?”

  Logan fished another chicken leg from the container in the fridge and grabbed a second beer, then closed the door and walked over to lean his hip on the center island, only a foot away from Fiona. So there was no ducking his gaze, though she was not ashamed to admit she tried.

  “Would you be okay with that?”

  She frowned. “Of course I would. I told you, we got past the awkward part. It’s all fine.”

  He nodded, took a bite, chewed thoughtfully, washed it down with another sip of beer. “So, if it’s all fine, why did you shut him down after he kissed you?”

  It was a good thing she wasn’t eating or drinking anything, because she’d have choked on it for sure. When she could finally find words and make her mouth function again, she said, “What in the hell business is that of yours? Did Ben tell you I shut him down?”

  “Ben didn’t tell me anything. Well, I mean, he did tell me that, but only because I asked him. He didn’t bring it up.”

  Fiona was torn between wanting to seriously pummel her brother and beg him to tell her every last detail of what Ben had said. God, she was pathetic. She’d tried to sort out how she felt about what had happened between the two of them more than once—hell, a hundred times over—since he’d walked away and left her with a sprig of holly stuck in her hair and wet snow prints on her boobs. But she couldn’t ever quite figure out if her attraction to him and her inability to stop thinking about that Prince Charming kiss were because she was still stuck in her adolescent fantasy of him . . . or if it was because the grown-up her was interested in the grown-up him.

  Every time, she’d finally reached the same conclusion she had in the parking lot that day. Which was that it didn’t matter because there was no good reason for the two of them to figure it out. They had a lifelong relationship, which would continue no matter what they did or didn’t do, because he was Logan’s best friend. They’d managed to find a way past the whole nickname thing, so why challenge fate again? It just wasn’t smart. She had her whole life to reconfigure. He didn’t even know if he was staying in Snowflake Bay and, in fact, had all but said that his goal was to get himself back to Portsmouth full-time, regardless of what he did with the family farm.

  Logan’s hand on her arm startled her out of her thoughts. “He�
��s not coming, Fi. I asked him, but he declined. Not because of you, or anything like that. He’s just got too much on his plate, and a lot of it starts up the morning after Turkey Day, so he can’t really afford the time off.”

  She nodded, but didn’t trust herself to say anything.

  “Hey,” he said, more quietly now.

  She looked up at him.

  “Don’t be mad at me, okay? I don’t know how to deal with this, either, but I want things to be okay. Between the two of you and between me and him.”

  She frowned again. “Are you saying things aren’t okay with the two of you? Because I didn’t—”

  “They’re fine. I just want to keep them that way. And I want you to be okay.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, enough with that, okay? I’m not some Fragile Franny. Please, can we agree never to bring this subject up again? It’s dead, over, buried. I’m sorry he can’t come for Thanksgiving, but it sounds like you two are otherwise fine. We are, too.”

  Logan held her gaze for another moment, until she huffed out another sigh. “Seriously, stop.”

  “Do you want him, Fi?”

  He’d asked the question in a tone that was almost... well, vulnerable. It wasn’t like Logan to ever sound that way. So she found herself unable to punch him and instead, was provoked to answer him honestly instead. Damn him. “I don’t know,” she said, almost in a whisper.

  “Do I have anything to do with you not finding out?” he asked. “My friendship with him? I mean, Ben’s like family, only, you know . . . not so much with you, anyway.”

  She didn’t answer him at first, then finally relented. “Do you have a problem with him . . . um . . . pursuing me, considering he was crushing over another one of your sisters when you were younger?”

  Logan looked surprised. “I—don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it. That was too many years ago and it never amounted to anything. You’ve all lived a lot of life between then and now where relationships are concerned.”