Home for the Summer

by Mariah Stewart

  Clay returned the sketch of the hop barn to the folder and was just about to drop it into his briefcase when the door opened and Grace and Lucy came in. They were both a bit windblown by the wind coming off the Bay, and they both paused to chat with Wade. Lucy having served as planner on Wade’s recent wedding, Clay figured there would be a round of thankyous all over again.

  Well, that was all right. He liked looking at Lucy.

  Right now she stood with her hands in the pockets of her coat—apparently, she’d heeded her mother’s directive—her head tilted at an angle as she looked up at Wade and smiled. Clay guessed Wade was telling her once again how much he and Steffie had loved everything Lucy had done to pull off their wedding in a very brief period of time. Grace was beaming like the proud mama Clay knew her to be, so he figured it was safe to say the praise was still being heaped on.

  Again, okay by Clay. He could look at Lucy all day. She had always had the best smile, still did. It lit her face and deepened her dimples and, well, it was just a pretty sight to see.

  Lucy had always been petite—some of the kids in their class had nicknamed her “Runt”—but after Clay grew to his full height at sixteen, she seemed even tinier. Her hair was darker now, he noticed. When they were kids, it had been equal parts of gold and red. Now it was more a light auburn. The red and gold still there, but the mix was different. Today, it looked more …

  She stood across the table, one hand waving in front of his face. “Clay, you in there?”

  “Yeah. Hey, Lucy.” He tried to cover up the fact that he’d not only been tuned out, but tuned out thinking about her. “How was your flight?”

  “Okay. I got here.” She smiled, and for a moment, he could have sworn he’d heard his heart thump onto the floor. If she’d heard it, too, she gave no sign.

  “Glad you did. So when’s your meeting?”

  “Tomorrow at ten at the inn. Wish me luck.”

  “Of course, but I’m sure you’ll knock ’em dead.”

  “I hope so.” She leaned on the back of the closest chair. “I don’t know either of these people, so it’s going to be very tentative. All I do know is that Trula wants them to have the wedding here. I don’t really know what they want. For all I know, they’re only humoring Trula by meeting with me.”

  “Nonsense.” Grace came up behind her daughter and handed Lucy a takeout cup of coffee. “Robert would tell her if he wasn’t interested.”

  “I don’t know.” Lucy turned to her. “Trula’s awfully tough sometimes.”

  “Robert and Susanna have been to the inn and they loved it,” Grace reminded her. “I’m sure when they see what sort of ideas you have for their wedding, they’ll be very pleased.”

  “That’s just it, Mom, I have no ideas. I don’t know them, don’t know what they like and what they don’t like.” She turned back to Clay. “Anyway, keep your fingers crossed for me.”

  “Will do.”

  “Well, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow night. Seven, right?”

  “Right. Lola’s or Captain Walt’s?”

  “Captain Walt’s. You promised me rockfish and oysters, and I intend to make you deliver.”

  “Walt’s it is. See you then.”

  “So nice that you two are going on a date after all these years.” Grace smiled.

  Lucy frowned. “It’s not a date.”

  “Sure it is.” Clay grinned.

  She turned back to him, the frown still in place. “No, it isn’t. It’s just dinner.”

  “If you say so.” He was still grinning, and had the overwhelming feeling that she wished he’d stop.

  She took her mother’s arm and steered her toward the door. He watched from his seat until her red coat disappeared from sight, then got up, took his mug over to the counter, and handed it to the waitress to be washed and replaced on the shelf, then waved good-bye to Carlo, who was on the phone. When he stepped out onto the sidewalk, Lucy and Grace were nowhere to be seen.

  Funny her insisting they weren’t going on a date, he mused as he walked back to his car, his keys jingling in his pocket, wondering if he should read something into it. He’d just unlocked the door with the remote when the thought occurred to him: Maybe to her, this wasn’t a date. Maybe it really was just a thank-you-for-helping-my-mother.

  And maybe—he had to face this possibility even though he didn’t like it one bit—maybe she’s involved with someone in California. Maybe that’s why she spends so little time here, why whenever she’s here, she acts like she can’t wait to leave.

  Bummer, he thought as he started the car. That would be a real bummer. He’d always had a thing for Lucy. It had taken him a long time to accept it. A lot of women had come and gone through his life in the years since they’d been friends, but he’d never felt the same sense of, well, fate that he had when he looked at her. When he thought of her. And, he had to admit, over the years, he’d thought of her often.

  This dinner—date or nondate—had been a long time coming. He damn well better make the best of it.

  Chapter 7

  LUCY cleared her throat for about the fifth time and paced along the window wall in the library. She checked her phone for a possible text, voice mail, or missed call, but nothing.

  Robert Magellan and his fiancée, Susanna Jones, were ten minutes late. Had they decided to skip this morning’s meeting and just hadn’t gotten around to letting her know?

  Nah, Trula would never permit such a thing, and Lucy knew that Trula had tremendous influence over Robert. It never failed to amuse her that her mother’s old friend held such sway over one of the country’s wealthiest self-made men. Trula was a seventy-something-year-old woman who wore her white hair tucked into a bun at the back of her head and favored polyester pant suits and coffee mugs with pithy quotes. Robert was a dot-com millionaire who’d started up several enormously successful companies over a fifteen-year period of time and had profited from each of them, but it had been his search engine, aptly named the Magellan Express, that literally made his fortune. Following the sale of Express and his subsequent retirement, he’d organized the Mercy Street Foundation, a nonprofit investigative firm that searched for missing people at no expense to the loved ones of the victims. Susanna Jones had been his right hand in each of his ventures, and to hear Trula tell it, had been in love with Robert for years. Susanna had stood by him even when he’d married another woman and started a family, and after his wife, Beth, had gone missing with their infant son, Ian, Susanna continued her personal search for them. Months later, Susanna was the one who located the place where Beth’s car had gone off the road and into a deep ravine in the mountains of western Pennsylvania, Beth’s remains still strapped behind the wheel. Ian, however, had been nowhere to be found, and it was partly through Susanna’s diligence that Robert’s child eventually was located and returned to him. According to Trula, it had taken a while, but Robert had finally come to the realization that Susanna was his happily-ever-after.

  “Once he came to his senses,” Trula had told Lucy, “he was hell-bent for the altar, would have had his cousin, Father Kevin, perform the ceremony right then and there. But I told him there was going to be a proper wedding, that Susanna deserved the whole shebang, and that was what she was going to have, and that if he had any sense, he’d be having the wedding right here in St. Dennis.”

  Trula does have a way of getting people to see things her way, Lucy mused.

  She walked to the front window, stepping around the Christmas tree—the one Clay had decorated—and tried to ignore his unseen presence in the room. Well, it was hard to pretend there was no trace of him here. She walked around the table and knelt down, her fingers feeling along the side of the table until they connected with the carved letters. She smiled to herself. Yes, even without the Christmas tree, a little of Clay remained. She remembered the day he’d put them there, and how she’d admonished him for marking up the table. She wondered if he knew that his initials were still there.

  There were f
ootsteps in the hall, and Lucy straightened up, pushed thoughts of Clay aside, and went into the lobby, where the prospective bride and groom were accompanied by Trula and Grace.

  Lucy had done her homework, spent much of the previous day and night reading about Robert online; she’d have recognized him anywhere. Susanna Jones, on the other hand, had made herself somewhat scarce as far as the press was concerned. There’d been few photos of her online; Lucy never did find one that showed the woman’s full face.

  They make such a striking couple, Lucy thought as she walked from the library to the lobby to greet them, Robert classically tall, dark, and handsome, and Susanna willowy, her dark hair framing an oval face into which were set dark blue eyes that took in Lucy and their surroundings with quick scrutiny. Once the introductions were made, Trula and Grace went off to have tea and Lucy invited her potential clients to have a seat at the table.

  After the obligatory congratulations to the engaged couple, Lucy got down to business, opened her notebook, and took a pen from her bag. Three things became obvious very quickly: Susanna knew exactly what she wanted, Robert completely deferred to her, and money was not going to be an issue.

  “We want our wedding to walk that line between formal and informal.” Susanna took a leather folder from her bag. She removed several sheets of paper and placed them in front of her on the table.

  “As long as it’s not stuffy,” Robert added. “I hate stuffy.”

  “Right.” Lucy made a note: Formal/Informal. “Got it.”

  “Here’s a copy of my list.” Susanna passed one of the sheets to Lucy. “I will email a copy to you for your electronic file.”

  “Thank you.” Lucy shouldn’t have been surprised. Given that Susanna was the person who, according to Trula, had been handling Robert Magellan’s affairs for years, nothing less than efficiency would be expected.

  “We’d like the wedding and the reception both outside,” Susanna continued. “We’re thinking white tents partly open to the sky and to the Bay. Long tables—not round ones—and lots and lots and lots of flowers. Everywhere.”

  “So you don’t want anything at all in the inn itself?” Lucy glanced at Susanna’s list. The open tent was right there near the top at number two.

  “Maybe if it rains we’ll have to move the ceremony inside, but we really want as much outside as possible, since we’ll be here all week.”

  “All week?” Lucy looked up from her own notes. “You mean after the wedding?”

  “No, no. Before. We want to have a great week with our friends. Like a big happy vacation that we can share with everyone.”

  “You’re planning on having some of your guests arrive a few days before the wedding?” Lucy made a note to check with Daniel about holding rooms and offering a special rate for guests who’d be attending the wedding. “I’ll talk to Daniel about blocking off some rooms.”

  “We want all of them,” Robert said.

  Lucy’s head snapped up. “All of them?”

  Robert nodded. “We want the entire inn. The grounds, the tennis courts, the children’s playgrounds.”

  “Do you have a date in mind for the wedding?” Lucy hoped there wouldn’t be a conflict with those regular guests who returned for the same week or two weeks and had been doing so for years. How would her brother handle that?

  “June something. Maybe the last Saturday, if it’s available,” Susanna told her. “Grace said she thought it might be.”

  “I’ll have to check with Daniel,” Lucy said, “but I’m sure the inn will do everything possible to accommodate you.”

  “Great.” Susanna smiled, then asked, “Could we take a walk outside? I’d like to go over what I had in mind for the ceremony and the reception with you. I have a list.”

  “Of course.” Lucy stood and gathered her notes, then grabbed her coat from the back of the chair where she’d previously tossed it. When they’d all bundled up, Lucy led the way out through the lobby and the door that faced the Chesapeake.

  “Such a majestic building,” Susanna noted.

  “She is a beauty,” Lucy agreed. “The earliest section—the large main section—was built in the 1800s and added onto over the generations. It’s been in my dad’s family all that time.”

  “Trula told me.” Susanna fell into step between Robert and Lucy. “One of the things that drew me to the inn was the strong sense of history here. I love that one family has lived here all that time. Most people don’t stay in one place for all that long.”

  “It’s pretty unique, that’s for sure.” Lucy glanced over her shoulder and admired the three-story white building that rose behind them.

  “Are there ghosts?” Susanna asked.

  “Ghosts?” Lucy laughed. “I hope not.”

  “Damn. I was hoping for ghosts. I was sure that in a building this old …” Susanna paused. “You wouldn’t tell me even if there were, would you?”

  “Probably not. But rest assured. No ghosts.” None but my own …

  They reached the area where the lawn was flattest and led to the Bay.

  “This is where I’d like the ceremony to be.” Susanna stopped twenty-five feet from the water’s edge and looked around. “I thought I remembered that there was a gazebo here.”

  “There’s one around the corner of the building,” Lucy pointed out. “That’s the only gazebo.”

  “Any chance we could have it moved over here for the ceremony?” Susanna asked. “I sort of pictured it here, with the Bay behind us. I wanted our guests to have a view of the water.”

  “I can discuss that with Daniel,” Lucy told her. “I don’t know exactly what that would entail.”

  “And I was hoping for roses all around the gazebo,” Susanna continued, staring at the designated space as if she could see it already in place. “Tons of climbing roses growing all around and over, sort of like they do on Nantucket. Do you think we could have roses?”

  “Any particular color?” Lucy wished she’d opted to record the meeting lest she forget something.

  “Pink roses,” Susanna went on. “Lots of pink roses. And if I’m getting to choose—not light pink, not hot pink. That medium shade, you know the ones I mean? Pretty and sophisticated but not overly girlie.”

  Lucy checked Susanna’s list. Yes, right there under the heading CEREMONY and the subheading GAZEBO, Susanna had typed Roses—preferably pink (medium shade).

  Lucy nodded and made a note to herself, Can plant pink (medium) climbing roses around the gazebo to bloom in time for wedding?

  “Susanna, is there a theme?”

  Robert frowned. “It’s a wedding. Isn’t that the theme?”

  Susanna ignored him. “Just something fun. Lots of great music, fabulous food … you do have a great chef here, don’t you?”

  “Of course.” And if we don’t have one now, we will have one by June. “I’m sure Daniel’s chef will be happy to work with you on your menu, then you’ll come back for a tasting.”

  “Actually, we’ll want to work on menus for the entire week,” Susanna pointed out. “We’ll want meals and snacks for the kids, too. I’d like a tea one afternoon and Robert would like to do some fishing with his friends one day.” She paused. “Can you arrange to rent a boat with a crew and some gear?”

  “I’m sure that Daniel would know—”

  “Oh, and we keep hearing about the tasty Maryland blue crabs. Do you think a few of us could go crabbing sometime that week?” Susanna paused, as if a thought had just occurred to her. “Maybe we should have crab served at least once a day. Rob, how do you feel about having—”

  “Great.” Robert strolled off toward the water. “Wow, take a look at that sailboat out there. Carry on, you two. You don’t need me for any of this stuff.” To Lucy, he said, “Whatever Suse wants …”

  “Rob isn’t much of a planner when it comes to things like this. He just wants to show up and have everything perfect.”

  “I’m sure everything will be,” Lucy assured her. It would be a chal
lenge to coordinate everything from the opposite side of the country, but she could probably talk Dan into letting her use the services of Madeline, the inn’s own event planner, to tackle some of the details when Lucy was in L.A. Even so, the Magellan-Jones wedding had all the signs of a massive undertaking.

  “We’ll need lots of things to keep the little ones happy.” Susanna consulted her list. “Oh, and swimming and tennis for the older kids. And maybe sailing lessons. Can we arrange for that? Golf? Is there a course nearby?”

  Before Lucy could respond, Susanna added, “And speaking of the little ones—can we have a story hour in the afternoons? Maybe a puppet show one day. And pony rides.” Lucy opened her mouth to speak but Susanna wasn’t finished. “Would it be possible to hire some babysitters for the afternoons and the evenings?”

  “I’m sure we can arrange that.” Note to self: ask Mom to find out who the most reliable babysitters are these days. “As for golf, there’s a brand-new course that just opened last summer on Cannonball Island, which is at the end of Charles Street. I’m sure they’d be more than happy to accommodate your group.”

  A quick wind blew off the Bay. Susanna pulled up the collar of her jacket and asked, “Lucy, you can see what I’d like out here, right? I mean, as far as the gazebo and the roses and the aisles are concerned?”

  “I get the picture.”

  “Great. Then let’s go back inside. I’m freezing.” Susanna turned toward the water and cupped her hands to call to Robert, who was walking toward the marshy side of the property. “Rob, are you coming in?”

  He waved to her, shook his head, and kept walking.

  “Guess not,” Susanna noted. “Just as well. He starts to twitch when we start getting into the little details, and for me, the details are everything.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.” Lucy started toward the building, wondering how many more little details Susanna had yet to share with her.

  “Look, I know I must sound like one of those awful brides you see on TV. ‘I want this’ and ‘I want that.’ ”

  Lucy began to protest, but Susanna held up her hand.