“You’re pawning that part off on Steph?”
“Bad news comes a lot easier from her sweet voice than my lumberjack grumble.”
“Wise choice,” Ben agreed with a laugh.
“Indeed. I’ll get files to you tonight, and we can talk again tomorrow once you know how you want to proceed.”
“Deal.”
Paul paused, took a deep breath, then said, “How cold is it up there again?”
Ben just laughed. “Ask Santa for long johns,” he said. “Really good long johns.” He ended the call on Paul’s laughter.
Okay, then. Ben took his own deep breath. “And so it begins,” he murmured, then headed out, letting the porch door slap shut behind him as he started toward the fields. He pulled his elf hat out of his pocket, pulled it on, and grinned. “Let’s help some folks find the perfect Christmas tree.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Fiona wedged herself further into the cabinet under the sink so she could get better leverage on the wrench, and gave it one last tug. “There,” she grunted, as the—thingamajig thingie, whatever it was called, finally turned a squeak. She held her breath, listened intently, then grinned in triumph and slumped back against the interior cabinet wall. “No more drip,” she said, feeling pretty satisfied with herself.
She liked to sit in the little kitchen and work. She liked to get the wood-burning stove chugging, make a pot of coffee, then spread out on the small round table whatever the business of the moment happened to be. This evening it was the newly revised chart for where everyone would stand inside Pelican Point for Hannah’s wedding. The obvious entrance would be for the bride to come down the stairs to the ceremony being held below, but that wouldn’t be good for Fergus, so she’d had to do some creative thinking. “Good thing that’s why I get paid the big bucks,” she muttered. Bridesmaid Rule No. 97: When your sister offers to pay you to plan her wedding, take the money.
She carefully lowered the wrench and held it against her chest, as she tried to turn a bit so she could wriggle back out. Only, the turning point proved to be problematic as some part of the back of her clothing was caught on some part of the pipes that ran behind her head. She tried to wriggle and tug, but that just made it worse. And the space was too tight to reach back and free herself. She debated for two seconds how much she’d miss the blouse or sweater she had on, then figured she could probably have it mended, so she started to wriggle again, then just tugged. Hard.
Which proved to be a mistake. A very wet mistake. Something behind her made an ominous creaking noise, and a second later, water began spraying into the small cabinet, plastering the back of her head and shoulders. What it didn’t do was free her. “No!” she cried out. “No, no, no.”
Like that did any good.
She heard banging on the back entrance and sent up a silent prayer of thanks. “Beanie!” she called out. “It’s unlocked! Come in! Help!”
Only, for once, it wasn’t Beanie.
“Hey there,” came an amused male voice.
She managed to turn her head just enough to see Ben crouching down next to where her legs were sticking out from under the sink cabinet
“Lucky thing you’re a good designer,” he said. “Because you’d go broke as a plumber.”
She was soaked and spluttering at this point and possibly said a few words that she normally didn’t use in mixed company.
He just chuckled, slid the wrench from her grasp, nudged her shoulders forward a bit, and two seconds later, the water stopped.
“Oh thank God,” she said, panting. “I was having Poseidon Adventure flashbacks. Only I was going down under my own kitchen sink.”
“I’ve told you since we were kids that those old movies would give you nightmares. Come here,” he said, reaching in a hand.
“I’m caught on something behind me,” she said. “I got the drippy part to stop, but then jerked something else loose with whatever part of me is hung up on whatever part of it.”
He carefully nudged her head forward. “Ah,” he said. “The sweater that ate—”
“Very funny, just—” A second later she was free and he was sliding her out. “Thank you,” she said, as she sat sprawled and soaked in the puddle that was now the kitchen floor. “We need towels.” She looked around at the mess. “Lots of towels.”
“You said there’s a bedroom and bath upstairs?”
“Yes, yes! Go grab the bathroom towels. All I have in here are dishtowels. Thanks.”
He stood, then reached down a hand and helped her get upright. He smiled into her sodden, soggy, plastered-with-hair face. “I’ll see if I can’t save a few for you. Maybe a shower is a good idea.”
She smiled overly brightly at him. “What do you mean? I just had a shower.”
He chuckled and she laughed. Somehow he made even the frustrating things amusing.
“Don’t even think of taking a picture of me right now,” she said when he pulled his phone out.
“I wasn’t,” he said, then winked at her. “But thanks for the idea.”
“Ben!”
He just put the phone to his ear and lifted a finger. “Jim, hey, it’s Ben. Can you grab some of those old rags and towels out of the trailer and get one of the kids to bring them over here to Fi’s place? We had a little plumbing issue. And have them bring the toolbox, too, will ya? Thanks.” He slid the phone back in his pocket.
“I thought Jim was on the Machiasport tree lot for the duration.”
“I pulled him down here today. Come here.”
She jerked back. “I’m soaking wet.”
“I’m a landscaper and a tree farmer. I’ve been worse things than wet. Come here.” He tugged her against him, pushed the wet hair from her face, even ran a thumb under one eye, than the other. “You’d make a great raccoon for Halloween,” he murmured with a small, rather sweet smile. “Just sayin’.”
“So maybe you knowing me as long as you have isn’t the fabulous thing I thought it was,” she muttered, even though she actually was enjoying his little ministrations. “It breeds way too much familiarity. Normally this early in a relationship, we’d still be struggling to always say the right thing and not risk a fight or, you know, a knee in a tender place, by picking on each other.”
He just tugged her more tightly against his tender places and wrapped his arms around her. “I happen to like being overly familiar with you. In fact, I was planning on being exceedingly familiar and joining you in the shower. Just to make sure you don’t take out the pipes up there, too. Public service, really.”
She tipped up on her toes and nipped his chin. “You’re a real funny guy,” she said, but then found herself nudging his head down so she could taste his mouth.
“I’m here all week,” he murmured, then kissed her back.
The clearing of a throat a few minutes later had them breaking apart to see a young guy standing just inside the back door to the kitchen with a stack of ratty towels clutched in one arm, and an old-fashioned wood toolbox tray in the other. “Sorry, boss,” he said, looking more than a little uncomfortable. “I knocked.”
“That’s okay, Andrew,” Ben said easily, stepping around Fiona to take the toolbox. “You can just set those on the counter there,” he added, nodding toward the towels. “Thank Jim again for taking over today.”
“No worries.” He took a step back. “Sorry, Miss Fiona,” he said to her, trying not to look directly at the loveliness that was presently her sodden, makeup-streaked self. He dumped the towels on the counter and turned to go.
“No problem, Andrew,” she said. “Thanks for the help.” She waited until the back door was closed behind him before daring to look at Ben. “Wasn’t that the same guy who turned your truck into a seesaw?”
Ben nodded and Fiona spluttered a laugh. “That explains the rather terrified look in his eyes. Poor guy can’t catch a break.”
“He did when I didn’t fire him and let him come back from the farm and work at the tree lot.” He took her elbow
and turned her neatly back into his now equally damp and soggy arms. “But he gets a pass on this one. He could have probably sounded a fire alarm and we wouldn’t have heard it.”
Fiona smiled. “Yeah, well, I blame having water in my ears . . . or something.”
“Or something,” he said, already lowering his mouth to hers.
She pushed at his chest. “If you were serious about that shower, why don’t we mop up this water, then go do that? When he opened the door, it let the cold in. I think I’m starting to get frostbite in these wet clothes.” She wrapped her arms around her middle.
When he didn’t move right away, she turned and sloshed over to the towels. “Wow. There’s more water on the floor than I thought. We might need more towels than this.” She got the biggest one and put it down right in front of the cabinet where there was the most water, then stepped on it with her feet to soak the water up. “I guess we could just wring them out and use them like mops until we—” She stopped and looked at him. “Are you just going to stand there and stare at my admittedly drop-dead gorgeous self, or are you—?”
He took the two steps needed to close the distance between them, cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her like . . . well, images of that train ride flashed through her mind. She was breathless and no longer shivering when he lifted his head. “As a way to warm me up, you’re better than a wood stove,” she said, a little breathlessly. “What was that for?”
“I just want you to know up front, I had a completely different plan all figured out,” he said, one hand still cupping her face.
“What plan? For what? I thought you were covering the lot next door for the evening shift, then we were going to have a late dinner at the Puffin, maybe see Fergus if he’s not sleeping.”
“I got Jim to cover the lot because I thought maybe we’d take a drive around the Cove, see the Christmas lights, then head out along Pelican Bay, do more of the same.”
She beamed. “That sounds really lovely, actually. I like that plan.”
“I was going to lure you to the farmhouse with a pot of my mother’s beef stew. She stocked the freezer with containers of stew and chili before she left. Apparently she thinks I can’t cook for myself.”
“Can you make her stew?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Then I vote with your mom. And that sounds really, really good, too.” She gestured to herself. “Especially at the moment. And your kitchen has the added benefit of not being under an inch or two of water.”
“That is true.”
Fiona slid her arms around his waist. “Was I going to be invited to a sleepover? It’s been a long time since I had a sleepover at the Campbell house.”
“That might have been in the back of my mind. Once I got you buzzed on beef stew, maybe some fresh-baked biscuits.”
She went limp in his arms. “Take me, I’m yours.” She added a dramatic hand to her brow as she splayed herself over his arm.
He leaned down and took full advantage of her exposed neck, until her laughter turned to little moans.
He pulled her upright into his arms, and pushed her hair from her face, looking into her eyes, with a quite serious look in his own, though he was smiling. “Are you mine, Fiona?”
She started to make some kind of responding quip, as they were wont to do, but she stopped when she realized he was being serious. “I—”
“I am yours, you know,” he told her. “Head to toe, head to heart,” he added, pulling her in close again. “Yours.”
Her breath caught. So did her heart. “Yes,” she said. “Me, too.” She tipped up on her toes and kissed him, feeling tears prick the corners of her eyes. “Me, too,” she whispered against his lips.
Their kiss this time was more like a promise than a seduction.
He lifted his head and looked down into her eyes. “I love you, Fiona Mary Margaret McCrae.”
She smiled, then laughed, glad for her soggy hair and face, so maybe the tears in her eyes didn’t stand out so much. “I love you right back, Benjamin Thomas Campbell.”
And then he was fishing in his pocket and looking all . . . well, not like the confident and cocky Ben Campbell that she’d always known, and always loved, and always would. “What—?”
“I was going to wait,” he said. “I had it all planned.”
And when she realized what he was about to do, her heart just stopped. No more beating. No more breathing either. “Ben,” she gasped, then looked wildly around the room. The flooded room, and her, a soaking, sodden mess. This wasn’t at all how she’d have pictured this moment happening, if she’d ever let herself picture it. Which she most definitely hadn’t. “It’s—the floor’s wet. And I’m a disaster. You—you shouldn’t, you’re not really going to—” And then her heart kicked back in, double time, and she was pretty sure there were little twinkly lights in her peripheral vision and her knees weren’t all that steady. Because he was kneeling. Kneeling. Right there in front of her. In two inches of busted kitchen sink water. “You should wait,” she said, almost begging. “Until it’s perfect. This isn’t—”
“This is perfect,” he said. “I don’t want to tell our kids I proposed to you next to some perfectly set table for two, in front of a neatly stoked little wood stove. I want to tell our kids that I proposed to their mom while standing in the middle of chaos.” He grinned. “Because, somehow, I think our kids will get that that’s a lot more typical of the life we’ll be having.”
Her mouth dropped open, then snapped shut again. Then she spluttered, and laughed, until she had to clap her hands over her mouth to keep from crying.
“Fiona McCrae, would you do me the supreme honor of becoming my wife, and making sure my life is full of burst water pipes and man-eating scarves, and fantasy train rides, and more laughter than I could ever have hoped to have?”
And she watched as he opened an old, scarred blue velvet box, to show a ring that wasn’t bright and shiny and new. It was an antique, in need of a little cleaning, and it clearly came with a long history behind it. It was perfect. “It’s beautiful,” she said.
“I was going to have it cleaned. It’s Nana’s ring.”
Fiona’s gaze flew from the ring to Ben. “Oh, I loved your grandmother,” she said. “I—” She looked back at the ring, then back to him. “Are you sure? Does your mom—?”
He stood then, and took her hand. “I am, and she does. She’s thrilled.”
“You told her you were—well, I guess you did since you asked for the—oh my, God, Ben. I—I didn’t see this—I mean, I talked about it—”
“You did?” he asked, looking genuinely surprised, and if she wasn’t mistaken, more than a little happy about that.
“With Kerry.”
“Kerry?” he repeated, clearly stunned now.
“I know, right? But she pushed me to give it—us—a chance and I didn’t see how we were going to, only I couldn’t see how I was ever going to stop loving you, and—”
He leaned down and kissed her, deeply. “I don’t think I’m going to get tired of hearing you say that anytime soon.”
She beamed then, and her heart felt so full, she was sure it might burst just like the pipes. “Good.” She cupped his face with her palm. “Because Kerry was right and I didn’t see it, didn’t believe this was enough. But it is. More than. We can figure this out, we’ll make it work. Because saying that, hearing that . . . it does make the difference. If it means starting up shop in Portsmouth instead of the Cove, well—”
He kissed her again, until she sighed and leaned into him. “You have the rest of your life to stop doing that,” she told him.
“Good,” he said, echoing her. “I am . . . honored,” he said, “to think you’d change everything you’ve come home for, to move to Portsmouth for me. With me.”
“It’s not what I pictured, but, Ben, I love your people. I really had a great time with them, and Stephanie and I have stayed in contact—I adore her—and what you’ve built there, it’s importan
t. Maybe I can find something more suburban, or find something in the old part of town, something more suitable to my vision, but I know I can—”
“I know you could,” he said, his eyes a little bright now, too, and full of the exact same excitement and emotion she was feeling. “But you won’t have to.”
“Well, I do still need and want my own—”
“No, that’s not what I mean. Of course you will. But . . . I had to figure out what to do with the farm, too.”
“Oh, that’s right. Ben, I—what are you going to do?”
“Being back here, back home, and being with you, has brought things around full circle in my life, too. Only, you’re right, what I have in Portsmouth, well, that is my family, too, now. I couldn’t see how I could do both, and Paul and I were talking one night, after we got back from the party, and I remembered what you said, that first day, standing in your kitchen at the Point. You asked me if I was going to somehow combine my business and the tree farm and operate it all from one place.”
“Ben,” she said, in a stunned whisper. “That’s—amazing. But, what about everyone in Rhode Island? You can get clients anywhere, I’m sure, especially now, but what about—?”
“It started off as a kind of joke, but then we—Paul and I—really started talking it out, and, well . . . I made the decision that I didn’t want to give the farm up and—”
“Oh, Ben, you’re not going to sell your business to Paul and start completely over here are you? I mean, he’s wonderful, but it’s your baby, you’re the guy folks—”
“I’m not selling it to Paul. I’m not selling it at all.” He looked down into her eyes. “But I am relocating it.”
“But what about Paul, and Stephanie, and—”
He grinned. “I’m relocating them, too.”
Fiona spluttered a laugh. “Are you kidding me? Ben, that’s—I don’t even have words for that. But, you don’t have to—I mean, it would be a lot easier for me to just—”
Snowflake Bay Page 27
