Sandpiper Island (The Bachelors

by Donna Kauffman

  Delia hugged her back, and thought how good it was being on the receiving end of a hug when the need for it arose. “You couldn’t have foreseen this, no one could have.”

  Grace let go, looked at her brother, and then at Delia. She stepped forward and pushed the two of them closer together, as if she was arranging furniture.

  Delia and Ford both stared at Grace with a questioning look, sliding their arms around each other’s waists as if out of long habit.

  Grace clapped her hands and all but jumped up and down in glee. “My family is now perfect.” Her grin turned a shade wry. “Who’d of thunk it, right?”

  “I’m glad you’re happy about it,” Delia said, sincerely, though not surprised as Grace had only done everything but strand her and Ford together somewhere in hopes maybe something would rekindle. Yet another thing Grace had been right about, Delia noted with a private smile. She really was going to keep an eye out being under the watch and care of two Maddoxes now. “Ford said you wanted to talk to me?”

  “I do,” she said, the excitement on her face growing, if that was even possible. She looked around. “Maybe not here, but—what the hell, I can’t wait.”

  Delia’s eyes widened as realization dawned. She looked immediately at Grace’s ring finger, but there was no engagement rock there, which meant—she grinned. Ford might have to adjust to that whole uncle thing a bit sooner than either of them had anticipated.

  Grace had followed Delia’s gaze, then laughed. “No, no, silly. The news isn’t about me. It’s about you.”

  Confused, Delia said, “Me?” She glanced up at Ford. “Do you know what this is about?”

  “I’m just the tether,” he told her, meaning yes, he did, but he was clearly staying noncommittal.

  Grace took Delia’s free hand in both of her own. “Promise me you’ll hear me out first.”

  “Okay,” Delia said, wary now. “What did you do?”

  “I called Langston.” She immediately put up her hand.

  “You promised. Listen.”

  “Grace, please tell me you didn’t get him to step in and—”

  “No, and yes. But not like you’re assuming. Trust me a little, okay? I know you weren’t sure what you wanted to do. And I know that having Langston step in and throw money at the problem was not what you wanted, and frankly, that wasn’t going to solve the problem since Winstock would just throw more money and, well, you get my drift.”

  “So why call him?”

  “I was worried about you. And he’s my friend; he helps me sort things out. He’s also your friend, which made him the perfect one to call about this.”

  “About what?”

  “Brodie and I talked, and as part of the inn, I have always planned to serve at least a limited menu. More than a bed-and-breakfast, but not a full-scale restaurant.”

  Delia’s heart stopped for a moment as she realized where Grace might be heading with this. “Oh, Grace, that’s incredibly sweet, but I don’t think I’m cut out for—”

  “Still not done,” she said, her tone more forceful now, a bit of the lawyer in her peeking out.

  Delia nodded, but was caught between a smile and a pang that she’d have to be the one to rob Grace of the excitement high she was on.

  “The kitchen we’ve framed out is just that, a kitchen. We planned to put in a little seating around the main pit area on the ground floor, but that was the extent of it, really. Then this happened to you, and I turned to Langston, and well, he had an idea. An idea I immediately fell in love with, and Brodie is completely on board. So you really have no choice but to say yes.”

  “To what?” Delia all but begged, completely thrown now.

  “Brodie has more space, other boathouses, smaller ones that he has no immediate plans for. One of the smallest ones is right next to the inn. On his property—our property—complete with dockage on our piers.” She couldn’t stand it another minute, and she squeezed Delia’s hand. “Langston wants to design a new place for you, something unique, that’s all you, who you are now, to us, to the Cove. It would be separate from the inn, but would be there to provide a full-service menu not to only my guests, but all the locals as well. I mean, you know I want to keep the inn grounded in what I think of as the real Cove, and embrace the heart of harbor life. What better way to do that than to put the real heart of the harbor right into the mix?”

  Delia’s mouth had dropped open somewhere in the middle of Grace’s rushed spiel, but actual words still weren’t forming.

  “Say you’ll do it, please. Brodie said we can work out a sale, or a long-term lease, whatever. But you’ll be protected from Winstock and the town and, even better, among the three of us, we’ll be starting and growing a cluster of businesses—my inn, your café or place or whatever you want it to be, and Brodie’s boat design business—smack-dab right in the center of the harbor, right in the face of Brooks’s fancy-schmancy club. Meaning we’ll have a fair share of control, as will Blue, over keeping the better part of the harbor faithful to its heritage. So if we grow, we’ll grow in the direction that’s right for all of us.”

  To say Delia’s mind was spinning with the possibilities, with the logic of it all, the basic, well . . . perfection of it all would be the understatement of all time.

  “Let Winstock open a yacht club, you know?” Grace rushed on. “With us there, and Blue on the other side, members who opt to join Winstock’s place will have to also be the kind of folks who’d want to moor their yacht alongside your customers’ smaller sailboats and my guests’ boats. And Blue’s fishing boats and the tugs—” She broke off, finally out of breath. “It’s not the perfect solution, and I know you’ll still lose your diner, but—”

  Delia cut off the rest by wrapping Grace up in the tightest hug she’d ever given anyone. She didn’t stop, she didn’t analyze, she didn’t deliberate. She did what Ford had been trained to do. She observed, she understood, she solved. She went with her gut. “That’s maybe the best plan I’ve ever heard in my entire life,” she said. Tears—which were apparently going to also be part of the new, improved her—spurted from the corners of her eyes. “Thank you. And Brodie.”

  Grace held her at arm’s length. “Really? Truly? I thought I was going to have to wheedle and beg. And I would have.”

  “Yes,” Ford said. “You did the smart thing,” he told Delia. “Saved yourself a whole world of—hey!” He rubbed the spot on his bicep where his sister, who had a pretty good right hook, had socked him. But he was smiling as he did.

  Delia nodded. “I’ve been dreading . . . pretty much everything about starting over. Just the idea of having to find the right spot was soul crushing, because I know every inch of this town and I already knew there wasn’t a spot, not one that called to me. And I couldn’t get my brain past that. The idea of giving up the place I loved to settle for some spot that wouldn’t be right for me or my customers killed the whole endeavor for me. I even thought about going back and looking at the spot where O’Reilly’s was, but that’s on the far side of the Cove and the town has really developed away from there now. I just—” She wrapped her arms around Ford’s waist when he pulled her under his arm, and pressed her cheek to his chest. “This is perfect,” she whispered. And she wasn’t simply talking about the next incarnation of her diner. Or café. She’d rather liked the sound of that. She could feel the wheels already beginning to spin and the relief almost made her feel light-headed. “And Peg, and Pete, and Charlie—”

  “It’s your place,” Grace said. “Your staff. Langston is still in Tokyo, but he’s already sketching up some plans for you to look at and we can just move some of the guys working on my place over to start as they wrap up work on the inn. It won’t take near the work that was necessary for mine. Langston and Brodie think you could have the place up and running by the time the inn is ready or close to it. I know that means you’ll lose the winter months, but—”

  “I was going to lose them no matter what,” Delia said. “And I know I might
lose Peg and Pete with the delay.”

  “They’d come back, don’t you think?” Ford asked.

  “If they knew for sure they’d have a place, and they would, then maybe they can find something temporary until then.”

  “It’s going to take a lot of work,” Grace said, shifting her gaze apprehensively between the two of them. “And you’ll want to be hands-on—”

  “I’ll be moving my winter workload to the foundation offices,” Ford said, matter-of-factly, causing Delia to jerk her gaze up to his.

  “Ford, don’t—”

  “I’m thinking I can find somewhere to bunk in town for the winter,” he went on, then glanced down at Delia. “Got any ideas?”

  “Well,” she said, her heart beating even harder. “I do have a claw-foot tub that needs a history adjustment.”

  He grinned, and Grace just looked a little stunned watching them. Delia could relate. She felt more than a little stunned, about all of it.

  “I’ll have to head out to the island from time to time,” he said. “Monitor some of the winter migration when the weather lets me commute. I’ll talk to Blue. They work all year long, so we’ll figure out a deal.”

  “Really?” Delia asked him.

  “Really,” he said, without so much as a hint of hesitation.

  She knew that they still had the whole summer thing to figure out, but heck, she thought, military spouses were apart for longer than that and managed. And she could plan things differently this time, set it up so that she wasn’t the one carrying most of the load. Between the inn, and Brodie’s business, and yes, even the damn yacht club, she’d do well enough, soon enough. So she could probably afford to hire more local help, at least in the summer, and split time between the Cove and the island. Heck, maybe the interns would enjoy a better menu while she was there.

  Unable to believe it might all be coming together in a way that not only made sense, but that she was actually excited about felt . . . well, surreal. And she knew the one person she wanted to share that surreal excitement with, the one person, the only person who would understand exactly what it was like. And he was all hers. Why on earth did I think do-it-yourself was better? It’s so much better doing it together.

  In that spirit, she hopped up on her toes and kissed Ford hard on the mouth. “You know that falling thing we talked about earlier?” she said quietly, just for his ears.

  He nodded.

  “Splat,” she said, and then laughing at the stunned look on his face, kissed him again. “Head over heels, all the way to the ground. You?”

  In response, Ford caught her up against him and took his time with a proper kiss, garnering hoots and hollers and a few “It’s about time!”s from the crowd she’d completely forgotten was there. “All the way to the ground,” he murmured against her ear.

  When he finally put her back on her feet, a cheer went up. Pink cheeked, Delia turned and did a quick curtsy for the masses, earning another cheer, and then Grace stepped in and hugged both Delia and her own brother. “Group hug!” she cried, sniffling herself.

  “Family hug,” Delia said, and realized that’s exactly what it was she’d been missing all along.

  Epilogue

  “Wait up,” Delia called out to Ford, clambering over yet another rock. “How do you make it look so easy?” she huffed.

  “Longer legs,” he said, coming back and reaching a hand out to help her gain her balance once she’d landed on the other side.

  “I wish that was all it was.”

  He waited until she got her equilibrium before he let go.

  “I can’t believe we’re doing this in the dark,” she said, trying to pick the same rocks to step on that he did.

  “It’s barely dusk.”

  “Like I said.” She adjusted her hard hat and the light that was strapped to the front.

  “We’ve worked this hard. I want her to have the best chance,” Ford said.

  “Won’t it be enough that she comes back to Sandpiper in general?”

  “She should fledge from the burrow she was born in. We can make that happen for her.”

  Delia might not love the rock scramble, but her heart only swelled further for the man at her side. Protector and defender. How could she not love him for that? “Then we will,” she said, determination in her voice. “Lead on, Dolittle.”

  She heard Ford chuckle, but was too busy focusing on not killing herself to watch him as he nimbly transported his little bundle farther out on the rocks.

  The moon was rising by the time they made it to the large boulder that sat just in front of the crevasse leading down to the burrow.

  Ford helped her up to stand next to him.

  “We made it,” she said, working to steady her breath. He wasn’t even winded. “What do we do next?”

  “We go to the front edge of the rock where it juts out over the water, unwrap her, and then we toss her up so she flies out and is on her way.”

  Delia looked up at him, horrified. “She’s never flown before and you’re just going to toss her up in the air? What if she doesn’t know how? What if she—”

  “How do you think it works?”

  “Well . . . I don’t know, exactly. Can’t we just sit her in the water and give her butt a little push?”

  “The waves would just toss her back. She needs to get out past the surf. Then she can land on the water and float a bit before flying again.”

  Delia wasn’t any less dubious than before, but she nodded. “Is it dark enough? Is it too dark?”

  “The sky is clear, which is good. She’ll have moonlight. In fact, that’s what guides her to the water, the reflection of the light on the surface. We’ll have to turn our headlamps off, so she doesn’t get confused and fly back toward us.”

  “Would that be such a bad thing?” Delia remarked in a hushed whisper.

  Ford reached down and slid his hand in hers. “We can’t keep her.”

  “I know. I just . . . this is the closest I’ve come to having a pet. The closest I’ve ever wanted to come, but still . . .” She let go of his hand and, before she lost her nerve, she opened the front of Ford’s jacket. “Okay, little one. It’s time for your big adventure.”

  Ford helped her unwrap the chick from the sling until the puffling was safely in his hands. “Do you want to launch her?”

  Delia gaped. “Me?” she squeaked. “What if I do it wrong? What if I hurt her?”

  “You won’t. And . . . I think you’ll be glad you did.”

  Delia eyed the chick, who eyed her right back.

  “Here,” he said, shifting around so he could transfer the chick from between his palms to between hers. Once she had the bird steady, he reached up and switched off both of their head lanterns.

  “What do I do?” Delia asked, her voice as unsteady as her knees.

  “Lift your arms up and reach out as you let her go, so she’s going out over the water. I’ll hold on to you.” He got behind her and braced his hands on her hips, then leaned down. “Here’s to new beginnings,” he said, then pressed his lips to the side of her neck.

  Delia’s heart thumped, as it always did when he said the most amazing things, which he always did. “New beginnings,” she said, and then bent down. “You ready?”

  She felt the little body squirm in her hands, as if it could smell the briny tang in the air, feel the spray, the wind coming off the water, and couldn’t wait to get out there.

  “Good luck,” she said. “Swim fast. And eat all your herrings.”

  “Dee,” Ford said, but there was such pure affection in his voice, she didn’t take the admonishment to heart.

  “Okay,” she said, more to herself than the baby puffin. “Here we go.” She looked over her shoulder at Ford, who nodded at her. She trusted him—he wouldn’t let her go, wouldn’t let her do this if he thought she couldn’t pull it off. So she sent that trust on to the baby bird. “Fly, little puff.” She lifted her arms up and out, and the baby all but burst out of her hands befor
e she could even toss her, her little wings flapping as hard as they could. “Oh, my God, Ford, look at her!” Delia cried.

  Ford pulled Delia back against him, arms around her waist. She gripped his forearm with one hand and followed baby puff ’s flight with her other hand until they lost sight of her in the dark. “She did so good!” She looked over her shoulder at Ford. “Didn’t she? That was amazing!” She took one last look out to sea, and then Ford was turning her around in his arms. “Thank you! Thank you for making me do that. I feel just . . . wow. You knew it was like that, didn’t you?”

  “Disney ending?” he said.

  “Almost,” she replied, feeling as if her entire body was smiling, right down to her soul.

  “Almost?”

  She took off her gloves and shoved them in her pockets, then reached up for his face and pulled him down closer to her. “I love you, Ford Maddox.”

  She was close enough to see the effect her words had on him as his eyes went all dark, teeming with emotion. And if her soul had been smiling before, it was smiling and filled with a radiant glow now.

  He touched her hair, her cheek, lifted her face to his. “Delia O’Reilly, you are the love of my life. Always have been.” He kissed her, and looked deeply into her moonlit eyes. “Always will be.”

  Delia kissed him back and, yes, she sniffled. “Now that is my Disney ending.” He chuckled, and she kissed him again.

  And they most certainly did live happily ever after.

  Author’s Note

  I hope you’ve enjoyed your stay in Blueberry Cove and out on Sandpiper Island. Those places are creations of my imagination, but the work being done off the coast of Maine to help ensure the future of many seabird populations, including the Atlantic puffin, is very real. If this story has sparked your curiosity to learn more about this beautiful and entertaining seabird, or you’d like to go one step further and offer your support, check out www.projectpuffin.org and learn more. You can even adopt a puffin as a way to support the work they are doing out on Seal Island via the Audubon Society to help ensure successful nesting and migration. (I adopted two!)