On Love's Gentle Shore

by Liz Johnson

  She cringed as she ducked to pick up the bag. If the sloshing bottom of the plastic was any indication, something had spilled. And would be all over her if she wasn’t careful.

  Holding it out by the twin loops, she shot him an apologetic look. “I’m sorry. I’ll pay for the replacement.”

  Harrison took the remains of the lunch and shook his head. “No problem. I’ve got it covered.” With a nod he indicated the sack that had been closest to her elbow. “That’s yours.”

  Flames licked at her neck, and she swiped a hand over them in a vain attempt to settle her nerves. Trying for a low chuckle, she settled for a too-high laugh as she snuck a peek at the diners. Most had returned to their meals, although there was still a tourist family staring a little too hard, a little too long.

  Squaring her shoulders, she turned a tight smile back to Harrison. “I insist.”

  His squint suggested that he remembered a time when she couldn’t afford to buy one meal, let alone two. So she flashed two colorful twenties in his direction, which brought just the wide-eyed glimmer of recognition she’d been hoping for.

  “Maybe you don’t need to tell Justin that I ruined his lunch.”

  “Who ruined my lunch?”

  The voice was deeper than she remembered, thick like honey over almonds. Like the years had taken something from him too. But it couldn’t steal the island lilt and the touch of humor she’d always known.

  Yet no amount of levity in his tone could keep his words from wrapping around her chest and squeezing until there wasn’t enough fresh oxygen in the world to keep her breathing.

  With a shaky hand, she dropped the money on the counter and grabbed her lunch. No matter how long she stared at Harrison, his gaze never wavered from a spot over her shoulder.

  There would be no curling up and rolling out of the restaurant unnoticed. She hunched her shoulders just to make sure.

  The weight of the gaze on her back didn’t shift.

  Nope. She was stuck. And she was going to have to face him.

  It had been a ridiculous dream that she could dodge him all summer in a town the size of a postage stamp.

  Even more so when she considered that anyone who remembered her would remember them. There hadn’t been a Natalie without Justin. Or a Justin without Natalie.

  Not until he’d stayed. Not until he’d let her leave. Alone.

  Irritation burned in her stomach, and she tried to physically push it down. But no amount of smoothing her blouse was going to calm the tumult inside. No amount of anything could save her from this moment.

  Might as well get it over with.

  Squeezing her eyes closed, she turned as Justin let out an audible gasp. When she blinked, he was frozen, his jaw hanging slack, dark and foreboding like the whiskers on his chin.

  “Natalie?” There was a judgment in the single word, a condemnation that sounded like it tasted of not-yet-ripe raspberries. Maybe he was angry.

  Even if he had no reason to be. After all, he was the one who had changed their plans.

  He was the one who hadn’t followed through.

  He was the one who’d left her alone.

  So he had no reason to be mad at her.

  The force of his steamed breathing grated on her, shredding her nerves and binding her up until her own breathing turned hard, furious. The rush of anger gave her the courage to meet his eyes.

  Blue. So blue they still put the sky to shame.

  If time had aged his voice, his face hadn’t been dealt the same hand. His skin was as smooth and tan as ever, the five o’clock shadow darker, coarser now. And his black hair was longer, pulled back into a short ponytail.

  He’d asked his mom to cut it every other week when they were kids.

  The memory must have flickered across her face in the form of a smile because he flinched at the same time, his glower turning fiercer.

  “Natalie?” He seemed to need to confirm her identity before lashing into her.

  And she had no doubt he would lay out all of his grievances.

  Only it wasn’t her fault. He could be as mad as an unmilked dairy cow. It didn’t change the facts of the past.

  But now, face-to-face with that past, she did the same thing she’d done fifteen years ago.

  She ran.

  2

  Justin Kane slammed the back door hard enough to rattle the old toys in the farmhouse’s attic. He followed that with stomping feet that sounded like they belonged to a fuming teenager rather than the man responsible for keeping the longest-running family-owned dairy in the county in the black.

  “A cow step on your foot?”

  His mother’s voice carried from the kitchen to where he stared at the ceiling in the mudroom. It was a little too light. A little too nonchalant. She knew what was going on.

  He crossed his arms, fisted his hands, and held himself just on the brink of slamming his head against the wall. Of course, that would only amplify the thunder beating against his temples. “No.” He hadn’t been stepped on. It just felt like that.

  “I suppose you heard about Natalie then.”

  “How long have you known?” He nearly bit his tongue off. The traitor. He didn’t want to know how long his mom had been keeping secrets from him. Especially not where Natalie O’Ryan was concerned.

  But mostly he didn’t want her name said in this house.

  “Aretha told me she ran into Natalie at Grady’s.”

  He cringed before easing his fingernails out of his palms. But he didn’t make a move toward the kitchen door, the white frame with four triangular windows open only far enough to allow a breeze and the sounds of home cooking through.

  And the smell of something sweet like cinnamon and sugar.

  “Did you see her there?”

  The question poked to life the image of Natalie’s freckled face and the halo of red curls that swished around her shoulders. A flash of bitterness washed over him, overriding anything sweet coming from his mother’s kitchen. So he answered her question with one of his own. “How’d you know I was at Grady’s?”

  “It’s Wednesday, dear.”

  Of course. Because his life was completely predictable.

  “Did you know she was coming back?”

  Something slapped against the side of a plastic bowl, and her pause spoke volumes. Maybe she was a traitor.

  “I’d heard a … murmur.”

  “You mean a rumor.”

  “I wouldn’t call it that.” She might not, but the rest of the town would. Natalie most certainly would. At least the Natalie he’d known so many years before.

  Crossing an ankle over his knee to untie his boot, he yanked on the lace until the bow morphed into an angry knot. His blunt, callused fingertips fumbled against it, only managing to bumble it more. Hopping on one foot, he thudded a shoulder against the whitewashed board wall and bounced against the cement basin. Pain shot through his hip and up his side, and he groaned as he leaned against the work sink.

  “You okay in there?” His mom appeared at the open door, her face only just making the turn around the corner.

  Lowering his still-booted foot to the floor, he looked up at her. He must have looked more rotten than he felt because her features immediately wilted like a dried-up tulip. Lips puckered and cheeks sunken, she shook her head and walked into the mudroom. “Oh, hon.”

  He held her off with a single raised hand. “I’m fine, Mom.” The words didn’t even waver, and he took more than a little pleasure in salvaging his dignity—whatever was left of it anyway.

  “She looked so pretty. Her hair as red as Anne’s ever was.”

  His eyes snapped back to his mom’s face, and the chagrined smile that played across her lips told him everything she hadn’t said aloud. But it did little to heal the hole in his back where she had certainly stabbed him.

  “When did you see her?”

  She crossed her arms over her midsection, poking out one hip and cocking her head to the side. “Not that it matters.” Wh
ich roughly translated to, This matters most. “I passed her on the road. I was driving over to Aretha’s, and she was walking toward Grady’s.”

  Sweat peppered his forehead, and he swiped at it with the back of his wrist, cursing any physical reaction he still had to Natalie. “And you couldn’t take a minute to warn me?”

  “Well, I didn’t know exactly when you’d be there.”

  “You didn’t guess that it would be at the same time I always go to Grady’s on Wednesdays? Or the same time I always break for lunch?” He bit off the last word, trying to stem the bitterness that sprang up with each syllable.

  “It’s not like Harrison sends me your schedule.”

  He snorted. “I wouldn’t put it past him.” Undoubtedly the man had a knack for making his mom happy. “He’d rat me out faster than you could smile in his general direction.”

  A pink blush crept along her cheeks, but she rolled her eyes and pressed her hands to her hips. “This isn’t about Harrison Grady.”

  “Right.”

  No. Wait. He wanted to snatch the word back as soon as it popped out because he knew exactly where his mom was headed, and he wanted to be as far from that path as possible.

  Too late.

  “This is about Natalie. And you.” Her eyes were as blue as the ones he saw in the mirror every morning.

  “No it’s not. There is no Natalie and me. There’s only Natalie.” He waved his left hand at the edge of his wingspan. “Way over here. And this is me.” Reaching as far as he could with his right hand, he wiggled his fingers to draw his mom’s attention. “See? No and about it. Our lives are so separate I haven’t thought about her in a dozen years.”

  Now it was her turn to snort. It wasn’t delicate or soft, exactly what he’d come to expect from a farmer’s daughter turned farmer’s wife turned farmer’s widow. She didn’t have time to hide her feelings or play a part that wasn’t real.

  “I think there’s a lyric book under your bed that would prove that’s a lie,” she said.

  He scowled at her. This was why grown men shouldn’t live with their moms.

  But he didn’t have a comeback or half an argument to stand on. It was true.

  So he turned his attention back to his boots. Leaning his rear end against the wall, he grabbed the heel of his left foot with one hand and the toe with the other. Then he yanked.

  “Oof!” His boot didn’t budge, but his ankle popped under the abuse, shooting fire up to his knee.

  Elbows still protruding and hands clamped on her waist, his mom stared at him, her gaze swallowing his pitiful position. “What did you say to her?”

  He shot her another glare through a lock of hair that had escaped the rubber band that usually kept it out of his face. Her face was expectant, eager. She was serious. His stomach plummeted into the stupid boots still on his feet. Brushing his hair behind his ear, he dropped his gaze and shook his head.

  “What’s that mean? You didn’t—you didn’t talk with her?”

  Another quick jerk of his head and he pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers.

  “Did you not see her? No. Of course you saw her. But you didn’t go up to her? You didn’t get a chance to. You only saw her from a distance.” The tone of her words danced upward, as though she could speak the story into reality. Any other scenario seemed impossible.

  “No. I saw her. Face-to-face.”

  Like it was on a hinge, her mouth dropped open. It was enough. He knew the question she couldn’t ask. What happened?

  He’d been asking himself the same thing for the last four hours. What had happened?

  He’d seen her hair from behind, but he’d sworn it was only his eyes playing tricks on him. Clearly the summer sun had left an orange glow around everything he saw. The woman in front of him in line didn’t have a head of waves so lusciously red and topped with a golden halo.

  It was his worn-out memories that had made him imagine Natalie. That butted him in the gut like a protective mama cow and forced out his breath.

  The minute he’d walked into Grady’s he’d started telling himself it wasn’t her. He’d told himself he was imagining her back in town like he’d done a thousand times over the years.

  But every time he tore his gaze away, it fought its way back. He stared at his hands but then suddenly found himself counting the ripples from the crown of her head to her shoulders. When he tried to look around the dining room, he found Stella Burke and followed her gaze straight back to the woman talking with Harrison at the counter.

  “Maybe you don’t need to tell Justin that I ruined his lunch,” she said.

  He would have known her voice anywhere, and it turned his insides to soggy toast. Still, something in him begged for the torture of confirmation, and he’d asked for it. “Who ruined my lunch?”

  Pinching his eyes closed now didn’t stop her face from flashing through his mind. Stricken. Shocked. Furious. Before he could even identify it, every emotion that had torn through him swept in her eyes first, as if he was always a step behind. Like that time they’d had to learn to dance in grade six. No matter how long he watched his feet, he couldn’t find the beat. But he’d had no trouble finding her toes.

  “What did she say? Did you invite her over? Is she coming for dinner?”

  His mom’s questions jerked him from memories a whole lot older than that afternoon, and he grimaced. “No. I didn’t say anything.”

  Eyebrows bunching together, she frowned. “Excuse me?”

  He opened his mouth, but snapped it closed when she held up a hand.

  “I heard what you said. I just can’t believe it. What did she have to say?”

  Again, he shook his head and bit his lips into a thin line.

  “Nothing?”

  “She—I didn’t know—there was some confusion about lunch orders.”

  She raised her eyebrows until they nearly disappeared behind the bangs she’d worn for as long as he could remember. They weren’t as dark anymore—more accurately, they were salted with a liberal dose of white and gray where once her hair had been as black as his.

  “It all happened so fast, and it’s not like I had a speech prepared. What would you say if your former best friend, who skipped town without even telling you she was leaving, showed up?”

  “Hello.”

  Typical. His mom picked the sarcastic option.

  But if she’d been there, she’d have been just as tongue-tied. She wouldn’t be quite so glib about this whole situation. Because Natalie hadn’t just run out on him. She’d left behind a lot of people who really cared about her—especially Mama Kane.

  A low growl in the back of his throat surprised him, but he shrugged when his mom cocked her head to the side in question.

  Natalie had hurt a lot of people, and he wasn’t eager to write it off or welcome her back to town with open arms. She’d have to offer something a whole lot better than those freckles, a pert little nose, and angry eyes to get back into this town’s good graces.

  And her eyes had been angry. Filled with bitterness, like he’d ruined her lunch instead of the other way around.

  Like he’d left town when he promised to stay.

  Nope. That was her too.

  Every memory from a lifetime of friendship enjoyed and then destroyed wrapped around his lungs, cutting off his air and making his head spin. He doubled over at the waist and redoubled his efforts to get his blasted boot off. Wedging the toes of his right foot behind his left heel, he pressed as hard as he could, clenching his jaw against a choice word or two as his ankle wrenched inside the protective leather.

  All at once something popped, and the shoe flew across the mudroom, thudding into the far wall before bouncing to the floor right back at his feet. He stooped to pick it up and set it in the row of shoes neatly placed between the floorboards and a multicolored rug before taking off his other one with a lot less drama.

  Without looking in his mom’s direction, he plodded into the kitchen and forced himself to i
gnore the rich cinnamon scents wafting from the oven. Habit prodded him to open the stainless steel door and indulge in a real sniff of the dessert. But not today.

  He kept walking, moving through the kitchen’s warmth and into the dim coolness of the hallway that led to the back stairs. His first stocking foot was on the lowest step when he heard his name.

  “Justin Anthony.”

  Anything other than an endearment meant business. Two names meant trouble.

  Backpedaling, he slipped into the kitchen, his gaze searching for anything to land on. But the simple white cabinets, gray Formica countertops, and matching tiled backsplash weren’t enough to garner more than a passing glance. Finally he took a real look at his mom.

  Sweat had formed curls at her temples, and she ran a not quite steady hand through her hair. The lines around her mouth, which were so often shaped by a wide smile showcasing all of her slightly crooked teeth, were tight, the corners of her lips tugged into something that hinted at a frown.

  It formed a lump in his throat, and no matter how hard he swallowed, it wouldn’t dissolve. So he pushed the words around it. “Mom? You okay?” He reached out his hand, and she grabbed it with a quick squeeze just as an egg timer dinged.

  Dropping his fingers, she slipped on oven mitts, opened the oven, and pulled out a bubbling blueberry cobbler, its purple juice dripping over the edge of the white dish.

  “Marie Sloane called today.” Her tone was taut, at odds with the innocuous announcement. It sent the lump in his throat straight to the pit of his stomach.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “She was wondering about the barn. The old one.”

  Naturally. Because the owner of the town’s only bed-and-breakfast wasn’t interested in the seventy-five dairy cows inhabiting his new barn.

  But the old barn was just that—old. It was missing a section of wall where a hurricane had swept away the boards a few years ago. Several of the crossbeams could stand to be replaced. And the outside desperately needed a coat of paint. The roof was sound enough, though. Sound enough to house a plethora of uninvited critters anyway. But ugly enough to make him grateful it wasn’t in the dairy’s roadside pasture.

  “What’s she want with the barn?”