by JoAnn Ross
“Which brings me back to the reason for going to Port Townsend.” His deep voice returned her mind to their conversation. “One of my clients is a struggling divorced mother of three who hasn’t received a penny of child support in five years. Her ex took off to Montana, but I’ve got a line on him.
“At least I hope I do. If his pissed-off girlfriend, whose credit cards he maxed out, can be believed, he’s moved back to Washington and is currently working as a printer. The shop opens at ten. Meanwhile, I have some time to kill.”
“And you couldn’t think of anything better to do than scrape paint?”
“Nope. I also couldn’t think of anyone I’d rather spend my time with.”
His smile was friendly and unthreatening. It also created that now familiar stir. Not knowing how to safely respond to his statement, Savannah returned to her sanding.
6
S avannah watched Henry Hyatt study the bedroom, which, although small, was as tidy as a nun’s cell. Framed prints of old sailing ships hung on the wall, and lace curtains dappled the afternoon sunshine, creating dancing dots of light on the antique quilt.
“The girl didn’t say anything about me havin’ to share the facilities,” he grumbled.
“I happen to have a name, Mr. Hyatt,” Savannah responded mildly. She’d learned early on in her discussions with Henry that if you gave the man an inch, he’d take it and run for a mile. “It’s Savannah.”
“Damn fool name if you ask me.”
“Nobody asked you,” Ida, who’d readied the room for him, snapped. “Not that it’s any of your beeswax, but Lilith named Savannah for the town where she was born.”
“Good thing Lilith wasn’t livin’ in Poughkeepsie.”
“You get up on the wrong side of the barn door this morning, Henry?” Ida lifted her eyes to the high ceiling. “I knew this was going to be a mistake.”
“I didn’t ask to come here.”
“That’s just as well, since I would’ve probably turned you away. I’m only doing this for Savannah,” she told him what Savannah herself already had figured out. “You’re damn fortunate my younger granddaughter’s such a fool optimist she actually thinks she can turn that wreck of a place you foisted off onto her into something livable.”
“The Far Harbor lighthouse has been standing in that same place since before you were born,” he reminded her gruffly.
“Which is undoubtedly why it’s falling down. Old’s old. Whether you’re talking people or buildings.”
“It’s sound enough to have withstood plenty of gales. Including the storm of ought six,” he countered gruffly. “Besides, I didn’t twist the girl’s—”
“Savannah’s,” she reminded him sharply.
“Hell’s bells.” He raked arthritic fingers through what was left of his hair. “I’d forgotten what a hardheaded woman you can be.”
“Nothing hardheaded about wanting my granddaughter referred to by name—the very same granddaughter who’s invited you into her home,” she reminded him pointedly.
“Where I have to share the head.”
Ida crossed her arms over a scarlet T-shirt that announced So It’s Not Home Sweet Home…Adjust.
“You want a private bathroom? Fine. Since you’re so set on pissin’ your life away, I’ll drive you back to Evergreen.” Her sneakers squeaked on the waxed floor as she turned and strode to the door, pausing to shoot him a dare over her shoulder. “Well? You coming or not?”
They could have been on the main street of nineteenth-century Dodge City at high noon. Both individuals were incredibly strong-willed. Savannah suspected that until he’d broken his hip and landed in Evergreen, Henry had been every bit as accustomed to getting his way as her grandmother. Ida’s edge, Savannah decided, was that she held the keys to the closest thing he’d known to a home in a very long while.
“Guess it won’t be so bad.” He shrugged, as if he didn’t give a damn one way or the other. “So long as that girl—Savannah,” he amended when Ida hit him with another sharp warning glare, “doesn’t spend all day soaking in the tub or leave makeup all over the counter.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Hyatt,” Savannah assured him. “I’m going to be far too busy for long luxurious bubble baths.” Every muscle in her aching body practically wept with yearning at that idea.
“Thanks to that mess you left her,” Ida tacked on. “You also won’t have to worry about makeup, since Savannah’s a natural beauty. Never has needed the stuff.”
“Can’t argue with you there,” he said gruffly. Savannah sighed. It figured that the first halfway nice thing he said about her would have to do with her looks. It would be nice, she thought, if just once a man was capable of looking beyond the packaging.
“Sorta reminds me of her mother,” Henry continued, unaware of her faint irritation. “But not nearly as flighty.”
Since she’d had a long, exhausting day and wasn’t up to getting into an argument, Savannah chose not to leap to her mother’s defense this time. Besides, it was the truth. Lilith was flighty. That had always been part of her appeal.
“I got you something,” Ida announced. She marched passed him again, opened the top drawer of a pine dresser and took out a brown paper bag.
“What is it?” Henry’s expression suggested he feared the bag could contain anything from rat poison to a lit stick of dynamite.
“Why don’t you open it and find out?”
Obviously not quite trusting her, he took the bag and pulled out a T-shirt the deep green of a pine forest. “What’s this for?”
Looking nearly as uncomfortable as Henry, Ida shrugged her shoulders, which, while narrow, had carried more than her share of burdens over the years. Savannah would have thought her grandmother was suddenly embarrassed at giving a present to a man who’d done absolutely nothing to deserve it, had it not been for something that looked remarkably like panic in Ida’s eyes.
In contrast to the comfortable silence she’d shared with Dan at the lighthouse this morning, the one settling over the guestroom had the feel of a wet wool blanket.
“I suppose it’s a welcoming gift,” Savannah said as she studied her grandmother intently.
“I don’t need no blamed gift,” Henry said.
“Maybe you don’t need it,” Ida countered. “But I do.” Her eyes cleared. Bright color stained her cheekbones. Proving that age hadn’t made her any more patient, she snatched the shirt from his hand and held it up so he could read the message: Please Be Patient. God Isn’t Finished with Me Yet.
“If I’m going to be forced to live under the same roof as you, Henry Hyatt, I’m going to need all the help I can get to remind myself that as nasty as you are, you’re still a work in progress.”
That stated, this time she did leave. She didn’t exactly slam the bedroom door behind her, but she came close.
“Damn woman sure has a helluva temper,” he grumbled.
“Not that you did anything to provoke her,” Savannah suggested mildly.
He cursed, then pressed a palm down onto the single mattress. “This bed is as hard as a piece of old-growth cedar.”
Her grandmother wasn’t the only one second-guessing the idea to bring Henry into their home. Savannah ground her teeth and tried to remind herself that all this trouble would be worth it once her Far Harbor lighthouse was restored to its gleaming white glory.
“I was informed you preferred a hard mattress for your back.”
“It’s not as good as the one I used to have when I was living in the lighthouse, but I guess a man could do worse.”
“I’m so pleased you approve,” Savannah said dryly.
“At least this place doesn’t smell of piss.”
He was looking out the window at the sweep of emerald lawn, the town, and beyond that, the bay. Savannah watched his scowl soften and saw something that looked like an escaped spark from a fireplace flare hot and high in his faded blue eyes.
Looking as if his bones had given out, he sank down onto the very
mattress he’d just complained about, reminding her of the collapsed scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. What appeared to be a staggering emotion moved across his hollowed face in waves.
Savannah had no trouble recognizing the overpowering feeling, having experienced it herself so many times recently.
It was hope.
He was late. Savannah had been pacing the floor, waiting for the past three hours for the delivery of the window treatments. She’d called the store three times in the past forty-five minutes, and each time she’d been assured that the truck was on its way and should be there at any minute.
“Your curtains will be here soon,” John assured her. In what had become a daily habit, they were eating lunch together in the garden. Since beginning her dream project, she’d discovered that budgets and deadlines shifted like changing sands in this foreign world of reconstruction. John’s unrelenting optimism and amazing patience were proving a balm for frazzled nerves.
“Finally!” A truck was lumbering up the hill; the yellow lettering on the side announced that it was from Linens & Lace, located in Seattle.
The driver didn’t offer any excuse for his tardiness. Savannah reminded herself that it didn’t really matter. The important thing was that she was finally holding the custom-made curtains she’d pictured so many times in her imagination.
“They’re really pretty,” John offered as she took the first froths of snowy white lace from the box.
“Didn’t they turn out lovely?” She’d had to cut back on her furniture budget to pay for the outrageously expensive lace, but as she draped one of the panels over her hand, admiring what appeared to be bridal veils for windows, Savannah decided the expense had definitely been worth every penny.
Hoping to echo John’s remarkable garden, she’d selected a Scottish floral pattern that dated back to the 1860s and had been woven on antique Nottingham looms. The effect worked even better than she’d imagined. The floral lace had brought the garden indoors. But there was one problem.
“I’m afraid the sidelights for the glass panels on the assistant keeper’s cottage door are going to have to go back.”
The driver’s ruddy face closed up. “You can’t send them back.” He jabbed a thick finger at the bill of lading attached to his metal clipboard. “It says right here, no returns on monogrammed items.”
“But it’s the wrong pattern. The rest of the order has fourteen threads per inch. These panels are eight-point, which isn’t nearly as delicate.”
“They look okay to me.”
“They’re very attractive.” Savannah drew in a calming breath and reminded herself of Ida’s old saying about being able to catch more bees with honey than cider. “But they don’t match the others. And they’re not what I paid for.”
“No returns,” the man repeated with the stubbornness of an ox. “The salesman should have told you that when you placed your order.”
“He did.” Savannah ran her fingertips over the lovely FH embroidered in the center of the panel. She was not going to let this stubborn, ill-tempered man ruin her lovely mood. Or take away the pleasure from the fact that the rest of the curtains had turned out even more beautiful than she’d dreamed. “I understand the policy, since ripping out a monogram would undoubtedly destroy such delicate lace.
“However,” she continued when, appearing to feel he’d won this little skirmish, the driver held out his clipboard again, “the salesman also assured me that all the lace would be fourteen point. The mistake seems to be your company’s, not mine.”
The man scowled. “I’m not supposed to leave here without a signature. Either you accept the whole shipment or it all goes back.”
“I’m not accepting these side panels.” A familiar flame flickered beneath her ribs. Her parents had both been emotional, high-strung, dramatic individuals. Their fights had resembled World War III and had, on more than one occasion caused Savannah to become physically ill. They’d also left her hating confrontation of any kind.
Over the years she’d developed the ability to remain firm when it came to her kitchens in the various hotels she’d worked in. Savannah decided that this situation was no different from insisting on the freshest vegetables or the brightest-eyed fish. Still, it was her nature to seek a compromise solution.
“I’m certain, if I call the store manager and explain the situation, you’ll be off the hook.”
He shrugged his huge shoulders in a way that suggested he didn’t really care what she did, so long as she stopped complicating his day. Less than five minutes later he was headed back down the hill, the sidelight panels in his van.
“You did real good,” John complimented her.
“I did, didn’t I?” Savannah was proud of the way she’d refused to buckle under. “What would you say to going into town and letting me treat you to a hot fudge sundae to celebrate?”
“With double nuts?”
“Absolutely.”
“That’s a great idea.” John helped her pack the lace curtains away in the white tissue paper again. “Can we stop along the way? I have a favor to do for a friend, but it shouldn’t take very long.”
“Sure.” She was already behind schedule. What could a few more minutes hurt? Besides, this was a special day. A day she’d discovered that the world wouldn’t tilt off its axis simply if she stood her ground.
John gave her directions to a small, 1930s bungalow-style house near the center of town, across from Founder’s Park. It was redbrick with a wide, inviting front porch. An American flag was flying from a bracket attached to one of the porch pillars.
Savannah had driven past the house occasionally since her return to Coldwater Cove and had decided that if there was an award for tacky landscaping, this place would win, hands down. What on earth would possess anyone to plant an entire yard in cheap, dime-store flowers?
Last night’s storm had torn the plastic blooms out of ground and scattered many of them into the neighbor’s yard. All that remained were a trio of stone ducks, an overturned white plastic birdbath, and a brightly painted wooden whirligig of a pig dressed in a red, white, and blue Uncle Sam suit riding a bicycle.
“Darn.” John frowned. “I was afraid the wind would blow all the flowers over.”
Savannah parked the car, then waited on the sidewalk while John took out the small box of hand gardening tools he’d placed on the back floor. They were walking side by side toward the bungalow when the front door opened and a man in a wheelchair pushed himself over the threshold.
His age appeared to make him one of Henry Hyatt’s contemporaries, but where Henry was thin and wiry, this man possessed a thick chest, huge upper arms that reminded her of tree trunks, and a lined face weathered by years spent outdoors. He was wearing a black-and-red flannel shirt and denim overalls cut above his ankles. Since loggers tended to keep their pants short to prevent them from getting caught in undergrowth and chain saw blades, Savannah guessed that he’d once earned his living felling the huge trees that grew in the peninsula’s forests.
“Hello, Mr. Hawthorne,” John called out. “I’ve come to fix your wife’s garden.”
“You’re a good boy, John Martin.” A vestige of Maine reverberated in the man’s voice. “The wife was fretting about that just this morning. It was all I could do to keep her from coming outside.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry.” John held up a green-handled trowel. “I’ll have things back the way they belong real quick.” He knelt on the ground and began digging holes in the dark earth still damp from last night’s rain. “This is Savannah Townsend. Savannah, this is Mr. Hawthorne.”
Savannah nodded. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Hawthorne.” The name rang a bell, but she couldn’t place him.
“Same here.”
“Savannah bought the Far Harbor lighthouse,” John revealed as he began gathering up the scattered blooms.
“Seems I recollect hearin’ something about that.” The elderly man took a pouch of tobacco from his shirt pocket and began fill
ing a pipe that nearly disappeared in his huge hands. When he pulled an old fashioned strike-any-where kitchen match from the same pocket and lit it with his thumbnail, Savannah noticed that his index finger ended at the second knuckle.
“Heard you’re turnin’ the place into some sort of fancy hotel.”
“I’m planning a bed-and-breakfast. But it isn’t going to be all that fancy.” She braced herself for a response she’d heard from local old-timers: that the Far Harbor lighthouse was a dump and she’d bitten off more than any sensible person could chew.
“It’s about time somebody did something useful with that place,” he surprised her by saying. He lit the pipe and began puffing away, the smoke rising to circle his head in white, cherry-scented rings. “It went to seed when the Coast Guard pulled out. Turned into a real eyesore in the town.”
Savannah thought that an ironic comment coming from a man who’d turned his front lawn into a better-living-through-plastics display.
“I’m hoping to bring it back to its former glory.”
“Good for you.” He puffed some more. “You’d be Ida’s youngest granddaughter.”
“Yes.”
“Good woman, Ida. Hardworking, salt of the earth, and a dandy doctor to boot.” He held up the hand that wasn’t holding the pipe. “Did a real good job sewing my finger back on when I whacked it off clearing slash over by Forks.” More puffs rose from the briar pipe like smoke signals. “’Course, her meatloaf leaves a bit to be desired, but nobody’s perfect.”
Savannah smiled. Ida Lindstrom’s meatloaf was infamous in Coldwater Cove, but as far as Savannah knew, no one had ever had the heart to tell her that her customary contribution to potluck suppers was as hard as a brick and as dry as sawdust.
“You not plannin’ to serve that meatloaf at your hotel, are you?” he asked.
