Almost Home

by Mariah Stewart

  Before Wade could respond, Clay went on: “And the more I think about it, the more I think St. Dennis needs its own beer.”

  “That’s what Berry said. She suggested it be called ‘Berry Beer.’ ”

  Clay nodded. “I like it.”

  Wade frowned. “Guys are not likely to drink a beer named ‘Berry.’ ”

  “The ladies would, though,” Clay noted. “Nothing wrong with focusing on the ladies.” He followed Wade’s gaze across the room. “Which you don’t seem to have a problem doing.”

  “She’s just in my line of vision, that’s all,” Wade told him, then wished he hadn’t. Clay wasn’t stupid, and it was obviously a lie.

  “I say go for it, Wade.” Brooke patted him on the back. “Haven’t you and Steffie always had a thing of sorts going on?”

  “Of sorts,” he acknowledged.

  “Just something else you’re going to leave behind when you go,” Clay pointed out. “Don’t be thinking you’ll lure her up north with you. Steffie’s got Bay blood in her veins and a damned fine business that she built for herself, by herself. No way that girl’s going anywhere. If you’re thinking about making a move in that direction, you’d best be thinking about sticking around, because right now she’s fair game, and you’re not the only guy in town who’s interested.”

  “Obviously,” Brooke said. “And who could blame them? Stef’s a doll, and a very successful one, at that. And hey”—she poked Wade—“the two of you are almost family now.”

  “Almost.” Wade tried to smile.

  “Well, if you want my advice—” Brooke began.

  “If he did, he’d ask for it,” Clay interjected.

  Wade smiled and nodded to Brooke to go on. He’d take any advice he could get right now.

  “Like I said, go for it.” Brooke’s expression changed, her eyes somber. “Life is short, Wade, it’s unpredictable. Don’t think there’s always tomorrow, because sometimes, there isn’t.”

  Clay put down his beer and rubbed his sister’s back, and Wade knew that Brooke was thinking about her husband, who’d been killed in Iraq a few years back.

  “I’m all right,” Brooke told Clay, “but thank you for the comfort.” She turned back to Wade. “I just want you to understand that it can all turn on a dime. You always think there’s time, but you—”

  “Hey, guys.” They’d not seen Steffie’s approach.

  “Oh, hey, Stef.” Brooke reached out a hand to her and Wade hoped Brooke wouldn’t tell her that she’d been the topic of their conversation for the past five minutes. He needn’t have worried, though. “You look terrific, girl. All that ice cream is doing you a world of good.”

  “I walk it off.” Stef smiled, then turned to introduce Jesse to Brooke and Clay.

  “I was just saying to my mother the other day that I needed to get a will made,” Brooke told Jesse.

  “Stop in at the office anytime,” he told her. “I’d be happy to draw one up for you.”

  Brooke launched into an explanation of how she wasn’t sure of the best way to protect her son’s interest in a business that had been owned by her late husband and one of his brothers.

  “So,” Wade said, tugging on Steffie’s hand to get her attention, “did you have a good dinner?”

  “We did. Walt’s chef does the best seafood in town.” She eyed the plate that was next to his elbow on the bar. “Who orders buffalo chicken in a seafood restaurant?”

  “I guess I lost my head.” Looking at you, he could have added, but he was afraid the corn factor might be too great for even Steffie to handle. Instead, he said, “So, what’s with you and Enright?”

  He hadn’t meant to be quite so blunt, but there it was.

  “My mom asked him to join us,” she explained. “He is her lawyer, you know.”

  “And yours.”

  “Yes, and mine.” She leaned forward just enough so that her leg was touching his, and whispered, “If I didn’t know you better, I’d think you were just a teeny tiny bit jealous.”

  “Maybe,” he whispered back, “you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”

  “Apparently not.” She stood back, looking pleased.

  “Stef,” Clay was saying, “can I get you a drink?”

  “No, but thanks, Clay,” she declined. “I had a glass of wine with dinner and I think that was my limit tonight. I am flat-out exhausted.”

  Her parents were leaving and they stopped at the bar to chat with everyone for a few minutes. After they left, Stef said, “I think I’m going to call it a day as well.”

  “I’ll walk you out,” Wade said. “Unless you came with …” He pointed to Jesse, who was engrossed in conversation with Brooke.

  “I drove.”

  They said good night to the others, then walked out into the parking lot.

  “It’s a beautiful night,” Wade said as they walked to her car.

  “Chilly, though.”

  He put an arm around her and pulled her close. “Better?”

  She nodded. They were almost to the car, and she searched her bag for her remote. She unlocked the doors, and the lights blinked. Wade walked her to the driver’s side and leaned against the door, thinking that it would be a shame to waste all this moonlight.

  He pulled her to him and covered her mouth with his. Her lips were soft and full, and she tasted faintly of wine and smelled like lavender. He felt that jolt he always felt when he was close to her, a shot straight to the gut, and he drew her closer and kissed her again, his tongue exploring the inside of her bottom lip. Her fingers dug into his shoulders and she leaned back against the car, and he eased into her body. There was no question as to where this could lead if she were willing.

  Wade was pretty sure she was willing.

  Clay’s words—Steffie’s got Bay blood in her veins … no way that girl’s going anywhere—stuck in Wade’s head, because he knew they were true.

  He kissed the side of her face and very slowly stepped back.

  “We should call it a night,” he said as he opened her car door. “Be careful driving home, Stef.”

  The look of surprise on her face was followed by one of confusion, but she covered up well.

  “You, too. See you around.” She angled behind the wheel and he closed the door.

  He stepped back from the car and watched her drive from the parking lot and up around the bend until her lights disappeared, and still he stood there.

  He drove back to River Road and found Austin and Cody asleep across Cody’s bed and Dallas and Grant in the kitchen going over the RSVPs for Dallas’s birthday party and making last-minute changes on the menu the caterer would serve their guests. Berry’s friend Archer’s car was in the driveway, but neither was to be seen. Wade chatted with Dallas and Grant for a few minutes before wandering out onto the dock, where he stood at the end looking out toward the Bay.

  It was so quiet and peaceful on the river, especially now that the summer people were gone. The night air had a definite chill, an augury of the frosty nights just ahead. He lowered himself to the wooden deck and leaned back against one of the pilings and looked up into the night sky, much as he had done when he was a child and newly come to St. Dennis, a child who wasn’t sure where he belonged.

  Some things never change, he told himself wryly. Even as an adult, he still wasn’t really sure.

  When he was younger, he’d moved back and forth between St. Dennis and Dunellen, New Jersey, the town his mother called home. She’d fallen apart after his father died suddenly, and Berry had insisted that the children, Dallas and Wade, come to stay with her for that first summer. And Berry being Berry, she’d wanted them to return the next summer, and the one after that, until spending the summers in St. Dennis became the routine. Then Roberta met a handsome polo player and eloped with him to South America. Dallas was already out of high school and Wade just about to begin. Berry insisted Wade should go to school in St. Dennis, not in a foreign country, and Berry, as always, got her way.


  Up until then, Wade had gone back and forth between Dunellen and St. Dennis. In Dunellen, his father’s loss was felt most keenly: the empty chair at the dinner table, the newspapers that were delivered to their door every day but went unread, the chores that Wade took on because his father was no longer there to do them. The heart had gone out of their family, and the house where they’d lived together was never the same. It never again felt like home to Wade.

  It had taken him a long time to feel that he belonged in St. Dennis. He’d made friends with some of the local kids, but it was understood that he was a temporary resident, not quite a townie, not quite one of the summer people. He long understood that the fact that he was a really good athlete as well as the grandnephew of the town’s only celebrity gave him a status he otherwise would not have enjoyed. The year Wade started high school in St. Dennis was the year that Dallas moved to Hollywood. By his junior year, she’d made several films, and was on her way to becoming an icon in St. Dennis, much like Berry had been years before. Wade’s identity was now Dallas MacGregor’s little brother, Berry Townsend’s nephew. There didn’t seem to be a place in town for him without them. With high school graduation came freedom, and he headed for the farthest college that accepted him, which was, as fate had it, in Texas.

  He thought about those first few days after he arrived on campus, meeting Robin, becoming such fast friends. Without her friendship, he wouldn’t have felt like he belonged there, either, for all his sports and his involvement in campus life. After college, he built a career for himself in Texas, but deep down, he’d not been at home.

  Now a person like Steffie, he told himself, has always known where she belonged. She had deep roots here and had no intention of pulling them up. Clay was right about that.

  Wade had tried to be objective about Steffie, but it was becoming increasingly more difficult.

  There was no denying that what he’d felt earlier in the evening watching Stef with Jesse was jealousy, pure and simple. Jesse could fit seamlessly into her life in the way that mattered most to her—her business and her family—and knowing that made Wade just a little bit crazy. Jesse was likely to stick around. His law office was in town and he had relatives there. Roots, however shallow, were still roots.

  On the other hand, every time Wade and Steffie almost got together, Wade left town.

  He looked back on all the holiday parties they’d both been at over the years, where one or both of them had dates with someone else. One Christmas a few years ago stuck in his mind. Steffie had arrived late wearing a memorably short, silky red dress that looked more like a slip than evening wear. She’d worn her hair down, much as she’d done tonight, and silver shoes with very high heels. Wade hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her, and neither, apparently, could her date, since they left the party after a mere hour. Wade had felt an unexplainable urge to pick a fight with that guy, which was laughable because Wade had never picked a fight with a stranger in his entire life.

  Jealousy, he admitted.

  He’d vowed right then and there that the following Christmas, he’d skip the date, and hoped she would as well, but that was the year everything had begun to fall apart in Texas and leaving Robin to deal with it alone was out of the question. Last year, it had become clear that the holiday season would be Robin’s last, and Wade was determined that she and Austin have that one great Christmas together.

  Walking away from Steffie tonight had been tough, but it was probably the best thing he could have done for her sake. He was pretty sure that whatever it was he felt for her, she felt the same, but Clay was right about Steffie not going anywhere. St. Dennis was her home, always had been, always would be. What would be the point in complicating things for either of them?

  TOO strong,” Stef muttered, and screwed the lid back onto the jar of honey she’d tasted, then crossed it off the list in front of her. Reminding herself that the darker the honey, the stronger the flavor, she looked through her samples for something lighter. She tried the lightest in color that she had.

  “Still not right. Back to square one.”

  She turned on her laptop and searched the web for a source of honey that might be lighter. She knew she was just about out of time. Dallas’s party was on Saturday. That gave her five days, not counting Saturday, though conceivably she could be making ice cream right up until the party, which was to begin at six.

  “This place looks promising.” She reached for the phone, but a glance at the clock reminded her that it was only four in the morning on the West Coast, so she sent an e-mail instead to the website that was advertising the finest lavender honey money could buy. Okay, Stef thought as she typed, let’s put our money where our mouth is …

  She’d made test batches of formulas that she’d thought were pretty darned good, but after she’d tried them a few days later, she found the honey flavor stronger than she remembered and the texture of the ice cream was too crumbly. Panicking as Saturday drew closer, she’d gone back to her recipe file to start again.

  She’d abandoned her idea to add edible lavender flower buds to the mix. She’d tried that, and while the batch right out of the ice-cream maker tasted pretty good, once the flowers froze solid, they were like tiny flavored balls of ice in her mouth and the flavor of lavender was, well, odd.

  “Pity.” She sighed. “The ice cream looked so pretty with all those purply specks in it.”

  She put Dallas’s birthday ice cream aside and made what she’d need for Scoop that day plus two batches of her homemade cones. She was halfway through the cones when the owner of Lavender Hill Farm in Shelter Bay, Oregon, called and assured her that their lavender honey was indeed light in color and delicately flavored. Once Steffie told her what she needed it for, the owner, Sofia, offered to overnight a sample.

  “That would be perfect, thank you so much. I’ve really gotten myself into a jam here.”

  She hung up the phone after three more “thank-yous” and returned to the task at hand: deciding which flavors to feature that week. The chocolate monster mash was still popular, so she chopped some solid chocolate and put it in the double boiler to melt over a low heat. She checked the fridge and found she had enough eggs for only a few batches, so she sent Tina to the farm where they usually purchased their eggs to pick up the week’s supply plus extra for the weekend.

  All of the ice creams with maple flavor were also a hit this time of the year, so she checked her supplies before adding maple walnut to the menu board. Because of its high water content, pure maple syrup had a tendency to dilute the butterfat, so she needed to make sure she had enough of the cream with the highest butterfat content for more than one batch. She had just enough for three or four batches, so she made a note to call her supplier—an organic dairy farm three miles outside of town—and request an early delivery this week. She felt like an idiot calling him again—she’d already called once this week to triple her order in anticipation of the ice cream she’d be making for Dallas’s party, and that was before Grant had called to let her know the guest list had grown.

  “It’s the damnedest thing,” Grant had told Stef. “Everyone who got an invitation must have told other people about it, because Dallas’s agent has been fielding calls from people asking to be invited.”

  “I guess the fact that she’s starting her own production company and will be making her own films is incentive enough to make the trip east,” Stef said. “Maybe people think they’ll have a better chance at scoring a role in one of her films if they come to her birthday and bring a big present.”

  “Uh-uh. No gifts. Dallas put that on the invitations. She asked for donations to ‘an animal rescue shelter near you’ instead.”

  “That’s nice. I like that. But of course, the no-gifts thing doesn’t apply to you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, she can tell everyone else not to bring her something, but you’re her honey. You have to give her a present.”

  “I arranged for her to have an ice-cream
flavor created just for her,” Grant reminded Stef.

  “Yes, but I’m the one who’s making it. I’m the genius who’s doing the creating, so it could be said that the ice cream really is from me.”

  “It was my idea,” he protested. “And I’m paying for it.”

  Steffie smiled sweetly. “I’ll be sure to mention that when she’s thanking me.”

  “So how’s the ice cream coming along, anyway?”

  “It’s coming. And don’t change the subject.”

  “I just want to make sure it’ll be ready for Saturday night.”

  “It will be. Now, back to her gift …”

  “You really think that no-gift thing doesn’t apply to me?” Grant sounded worried.

  “Yup. You’re going to have to come up with a gift, and it’s going to have to be good.”

  A very long silence followed.

  “What should I do?” He sounded pathetically flummoxed.

  “Two words, sport. Nana’s ring.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “I told you, it’s perfect. Unless, of course, you decided not to ask her to marry you. Which could be a break for her …”

  “Very funny.” Grant sighed. “All right. I’ll call Mom and see what she thinks.”

  “Go for it.” Steffie hung up and stuck her phone back into her pocket.

  She checked the chocolate and found it had melted, so she turned off the stove and set the pot on a trivet to cool, then checked the freezer to make sure she had enough canisters chilling.

  “Hey, we missed you at coffee this morning.” Vanessa came through the back door with a paper bag in her hand. “I brought you lunch since I figured you’d be too busy to stop to get something for yourself, and knowing you, you didn’t bring anything from home.”

  “You’re right, I didn’t. Thank you, Ness.”

  “Aren’t you going to ask what it is? Maybe it’s something you don’t like.” Vanessa held up the bag and swung it in front of Steffie.