Along Came You (Oyster Bay Book 2)

by Olivia Miles

  “Well, it’s fun just the same. Maybe if you’d like, I can paint your nails tonight,” Abby suggested.

  “Maybe,” Mimi said, looking down at her hands as she fought off a smile.

  “I should go find Ryan,” Bridget sighed, looking down at Emma. She said a silent prayer, hoping that Ryan was where he’d said he would be at this time.

  “Want some company?” Jack asked, and Bridget felt momentarily conflicted. These interactions with Ryan were always tense, even if they were both trying to work on getting along for Emma’s sake.

  “It’s probably easier if I go alone.” She tipped her head, deciding to go for it. “But I wouldn’t mind some company after.”

  There was one, heart-stopping moment before Jack grinned. “I’ll be right here.”

  ***

  Jack was sitting on a bench under a maple tree when Bridget returned a few minutes later, relieved that Ryan had shown up this time, and that the plan for Emma to spend the day at the festival and then spend the night in the tent he’d set up in his living room was still in place.

  For now.

  But for now, she thought, as a flutter of nerves took over, she would enjoy the day. And that seemed to include plans with Jack. She’d idly wondered if he’d head back to the inn now that his kind gesture to ease Emma’s disappointment was fulfilled.

  “I’m supposed to tell you that Margo and Eddie went to check out the flower arrangement contest, and Abby went home to…experiment with recipes?”

  Bridget blushed, realizing she had been so happy to see Jack she had barely given the rest of their group a thought. “Right. Good. And my grandmother?”

  Mimi might still have most of her wits, but she was in a wheelchair, and in no position to be moving around the festival on her own.

  “One of the workers from Serenity Hills brought her and that man in the bowtie over to the gazebo to see the folk concert. Margo said a bus would take them all back in time for dinner.”

  That meant that everyone was accounted for. And busy. And that she and Jack were on their own.

  “Do you have to get back to write soon?” She held her breath, unsure of what he might say, and tried to think of an excuse for how she would keep busy, especially now that Emma was gone.

  She did have laundry to do. And a house full of guests that she couldn’t ignore. And she did want to spend a bit more time with Trish and Jeffrey before heading back…

  But she also wouldn’t mind extending her conversation with Jack a little longer.

  “The writing can wait.” He stood, grinned, and said, “Hungry?”

  “Famished,” she admitted. She hadn’t had anything to eat all day but half a croissant, and that had been hours ago. Not sure what he had in mind, she tilted her head toward the food stands. “We could see what they have?”

  They joined the crowds and perused their options, settling on lobster rolls and iced teas, and found a shady spot under a tree.

  “So what do you think of the Flower Fest?” she asked.

  Jack took his time before answering, savoring a bite of the lobster roll. “They make a mean lobster,” he said, and she laughed.

  “Hey, we are in Maine,” she pointed out.

  “Everything better with you and Emma’s father?” he asked, looking her in the eye, his expression sobered, maybe a little concerned.

  She pulled in a breath. “Yes. Well, as good as it can be. I was young when I married him, and…well, blind, I suppose. We didn’t want the same things, and I refused to see that.” She didn’t want to bore him with all the details, and she didn’t want to spend her day thinking about them either. “He cared more about his work than me,” she said, summarizing it.

  A shadow seemed to fall over Jack’s face. There was a moment of silence before he said, “That couldn’t have been easy.”

  She shook her head, her heart heavy when she thought of that time in her life. She never wanted to go back to it again, a feeling of loss and hopelessness and struggle. “It wasn’t. And I waited it out, thinking he would change, but…people don’t really change, do they?”

  Jack looked down, pondering this. “Once I might have said no. But, maybe?”

  Bridget felt her jaw slack. “That’s so optimistic of you!” she said, laughing.

  He laughed too. “What can I say? You’re turning me into one.” He grinned, and she felt her stomach flip over. “So tell me, how is it that you still believe in love and romance and all this stuff after that?”

  “I didn’t, at first,” she admitted. “But then, well, I dared to think that there was a chance that someday things might still work out the way I had hoped.”

  “Why the change?” he asked, his alert eyes genuinely interested.

  She felt her shoulders deflate, wondering how he would react to her response. “Honestly? There’s this author I like. The book I had on the beach.”

  He didn’t say anything, just stared at her. “Really.” It was a statement, not a question, but he wasn’t laughing, and that was something.

  “I know it’s just fiction, but those books made me feel like good things can happen. That people can connect. That they can even fall in love. And that, well, they can live together, happily. Forever.”

  Now Jack’s face was all ruddy, but she couldn’t make out his expression—a strange cross between horror and disappointment.

  “Anyway, it probably sounds silly,” she said.

  “It doesn’t sound silly,” he said softly. “It sounds…nice.”

  “Maybe you’ll find the same sense of hope one day,” she said. She hesitated, then decided to continue the conversation, since he was the one who had turned it personal. “How long were you married?”

  “Ten years,” he replied matter of factly. “Divorced for three. She…she remarried. About a year after we split.”

  Ah. “That couldn’t have been easy.” She had secretly worried about Ryan remarrying, at first, when they’d split. Then she realized that Ryan wasn’t the marrying kind—then or now. There would be women in his life, but they wouldn’t mean much. Just like she probably hadn’t meant much, either. At least, not enough…

  “Yeah, that was hard, I won’t lie. Almost worse than the divorce,” he said, giving her a secret smile.

  “You loved her,” she observed, not finding any jealousy in this statement, but rather, again, hope. It was in there, somewhere. A soft spot. A romantic. A believer.

  “I did,” he said. He blew out a breath and crushed his paper bowl into a ball. “But, it’s over now. And now I know.”

  “What do you know?” she asked, standing to help him clear their things. She waited for him to say something cynical and biting.

  Instead, he said, “Now I know that’s over. And once, not too long ago, I might have left it at that.”

  “And now?” She stared at him, wondering what he would say.

  “Now, I see that you can’t plan for everything. You have to take the good surprises with the bad.”

  “I should take that advice, too,” she admitted. “I guess I take myself a little too seriously at times.”

  He was staring at her, so intensely that she had no choice but to look up. His eyes were blue as the sea in the afternoon sun, and she tried to look away but found that no matter how much she wanted to, and how much she probably should, she couldn’t.

  “I had a really nice time today,” Jack said.

  Her pulse skipped. “I did too.”

  “I’ve had a really nice stay in general.” He gave a boyish grin, just like he had that first morning when he appeared in her dining room. “I didn’t plan on that.”

  The old Bridget would have felt nervous and stiff and gotten all red in the face and flustered, but Jack was right: today had been nice. And so had this week. And just for the moment, this was all she was going to focus on. “Well, as you said, sometimes life throws us a nice surprise.”

  And it had, she thought, smiling to herself.

  ***

  Jack
could have spent the entire day with Bridget, walking around the festival, talking, just enjoying her companionship. But they both had work to do, and it couldn’t be put off all day.

  “Well,” Bridget sighed, as they pulled to a stop on the gravel driveway that led right up to the big old Victorian house, “I hope you found some inspiration for your work today.”

  “I’m sure I did,” Jack said, as he reached for the door handle.

  “What’s the name of the book you’re working on?” she asked, as she fell into stride beside him.

  “No title yet,” he said. Really, it was the least of his worries. His editor could turn to the marketing team for a title. But it was Jack who had to come up with the words, the story. No one else could do that job for him, much as he wished he could pull in some help. “I’m still working out the plot for now.”

  “Stuck?” Bridget asked.

  He was about to say yes, that he hadn’t written in months, that he spent his days either staring at a blank screen or dodging the task altogether by roaming the city and avoiding his apartment, until he realized that this wasn’t completely true anymore. Lately, since coming to Oyster Bay, the words had been flowing from him, and the ideas were popping so quickly, the first page of the notebook he kept by his side was filled with scribbles and lines and thoughts he didn’t want to lose. It wasn’t a chore to sit in front of his computer. The hours ticked away, his mind faraway; deep in fiction, his mind was alive.

  How long had it been since he could say that?

  Too long. Way, way too long.

  “After my divorce, it was hard for me to write,” he admitted. “I got a little lost, I guess you could say.”

  “I can understand that,” she said, giving him a faint smile. “It shakes up your entire world. It’s like moving backward at the same time you have no choice but to move forward.”

  “Exactly,” he said, blinking. He’d never thought of it that way, but yes. It was a lot of pressure. “I tried to sit and work, but…nothing.” Blank. His mind had been blank, where once it had been filled.

  Bridget nodded. “When Ryan and I split up, I kept misplacing things. My car keys, my hairbrush…I would go to the grocery store and come home without the one item I went there to buy.”

  He couldn’t help but laugh. She understood. She genuinely understood.

  “How’d you get over it?” he asked, curious to know. Was there a magic cure? If so, why hadn’t he found it?

  “I had Emma. I have no choice,” she said, looking up at him.

  He felt a bit of shame. Here was a woman who had no choice but to push through and keep going, where as he…he hadn’t moved forward at all, had he?

  Until now.

  “But I guess I was lucky, right?” Bridget said. “I had Emma, and it forced me to have to think of someone else, other than myself, which was hard…really, really hard…but…I also had someone to love. And someone who loved me. I wasn’t alone, not really. So really, I was lucky. Am lucky,” she stressed, with a grin.

  In the late afternoon light, her blue eyes were as bright as the sea, and her smile was radiant, broad and heartfelt, causing her eyes to crinkle at the corners. Jack felt something in him pull. A need. A desire.

  He looked away.

  They were at the steps now, and soon they would be inside, and he would have to go back to his room and open his computer and immerse himself in a fictional world. Once, he liked nothing better than that. But lately, since coming here, he preferred real life for a change.

  “The stories didn’t help you escape from your troubles?” Bridget looked hesitant. “But then, I suppose writing a story is much different than reading it.”

  “Much,” Jack attested. He shook his head as he took the porch steps, slowly. “I blamed my work for my divorce. At least…that’s what Erin had done. And maybe she was right. I was so caught up in the stories that I was creating that I’d lost my own along the way.”

  He hadn’t paid her enough attention. Hadn’t put her first. That’s what she’d said, at least. And maybe it was true. He wasn’t living in the present. He was living in his fiction, his own, internal world that she hadn’t been a part of, even if she was. She’d been a part of him. But he hadn’t been able to show her that. He’d failed her. Failed them both.

  Bridget was frowning, and for a moment, he couldn’t help but feel like he’d somehow let her down, just as he had Erin. He’d put work ahead of his wife. And he hadn’t even realized it.

  “At least you recognized that,” Bridget said, giving him a small smile. “Some people never do.”

  “I only realized once it was too late.” He shook his head. “Then…I guess I came to resent writing. I fell out of love with it, you might say. Nothing about it mattered, and the stories I was supposed to be telling didn’t seem real, or from the heart. I would sit at the table with every intention of working, and just nothing would come out.”

  “What did you do?” she asked.

  What he had to do, in the end. He was under contract, not delivering the manuscript wasn’t an option, not when he’d already been given an advance he couldn’t afford to pay back.“The last book I published was an old manuscript. One I dusted off and polished. But now…now I have no choice but to produce something.” And soon, he thought, feeling that familiar knot resurface. He was on his way, but he still had a long way to go. And he didn’t fully trust himself, not yet. He was shaky, out of sorts, and treading slowly. He needed to stay sharp, not let himself slide back into that dark place.

  “I’d still love to read your work,” Bridget said with a grin, and Jack felt immediately uneasy. He’d said too much, piqued her curiosity, and he didn’t want that.

  What he wanted, he realized, was this…This casual way of chatting they’d developed. This easy banter. He wanted her to know him. Not his words. Not his work.

  Not the man he used to be.

  “Well, here we are,” she said as they walked into the front hall. No guests were in the lobby, and Jack assumed that everyone was still at the festival, and might stay in town through dinner. The house would be quiet, giving him a chance to sit and concentrate.

  “Thank you,” he said, stopping at the base of the stairs.

  “For what?” she said, looking up at him with interest, her blue eyes twinkling.

  For everything, he wanted to say. But his mouth felt dry. The house was too quiet. Especially for an inn. And he was overly aware that they were alone, and that all he wanted to do in this moment was the very thing he’d done the first night he’d met her, and that was to kiss her.

  His gaze lingered on her mouth, on the full lips that were slightly parted, and he leaned in, slowly, his eyes starting to droop as he neared her. She didn’t back away, didn’t move, and his pulse was drumming fast, making him feel more alive than he had felt in years.

  And then…sunlight. Pouring in. And voices. The front door was open, an elderly couple was shuffling inside, and with a secret smile in his direction, Bridget backed away to greet them.

  Jack retreated to his room, telling himself that maybe it had been for the best.

  Only he wasn’t so sure about that anymore.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Abby arrived at the inn at seven sharp and gently set the brown paper bags of ingredients on the floor of the back porch as she let herself directly into the kitchen. She’d hoped to have a few minutes by herself to get started on prepping this morning’s recipe—blueberry shortcake with fresh cream and a potato quiche for those looking for a savory option—but Bridget was already dressed and sitting at the kitchen island, sipping a mug of coffee.

  Several white bakery boxes from Angie’s were stacked beside her. Abby pinched her mouth and moved the boxes to the side as she set her bags down.

  “Good morning!” Abby said cheerfully as she began unloading her ingredients. She kept glancing at the bakery boxes, half-wanting to say something again, half-angry that Bridget still insisted on a fall back, but managed to refrain,
even if it did take every ounce of patience out of her.

  She glanced at her sister, who still hadn’t returned her greeting. Bridget seemed suspiciously far away, and it wasn’t until Bridget followed her gaze that she noticed the beautiful lace wedding gown hanging by the back of the door that led to Bridget’s personal quarters. “Oh,” she breathed, taking it in. “Mom’s dress.”

  She had to admit that it was even more beautiful than she’d remembered it. When they were kids, they’d admired it, even begged to try it on, but back then all wedding dresses had seemed beautiful, and all had pretty much looked the same. Now on closer inspection, she saw the quality of the cut, the richness of the material.

  “It’s stunning.”

  “It really is,” Bridget agreed. “I told Margo I’d bring it over after I pick Emma up from Ryan’s.”

  “I hope it fits her,” Abby said, turning to reluctantly pull her items from the bag. It was such a pretty dress, she could have admired it a little longer. But…duty called.

  “Oh, it will.” Bridget smiled, but she seemed distant and not quite herself.

  Stress, Abby decided. Bridget was always sweating the small stuff, like what time Emma went to bed, or doing laundry, or making sure that Mimi took her blood pressure medicine. And who could forget her anxiety over the matching socks! Honestly. If anyone asked her, which no one ever did, she’d say that what Bridget needed was to take a step back and stop trying to control everything.

  “The wedding is in less than two weeks now,” Abby said, wondering if this might prompt Bridget to express her feelings. She almost laughed as she pulled a whisk from the drawer. As if that would happen. Bridget was tight lipped. Always had been. Admitting she had concerns would be admitting she wasn’t in control.

  Oh, she’d express her stress, of course. Time! Time was always an issue to Bridget. But her real, inner feelings?

  They were a mystery.

  “Is it?” Bridget looked momentarily confused and Abby set down the whisk. Okay, something was definitely wrong. The sister she knew would have known not just how many weeks, but how many minutes until the wedding. Especially since she seemed to think she was responsible for it, even though this was still all their home; at least, Abby thought of it that way.