Logan rubbed his palm over his face, then pushed the topic aside, quite certain that his uncle was about to replace it with something far more irritating. “What brings you by?”
“Alex MacFarland stopped in to see me on her way out of town early this morning.”
Logan had been anticipating this argument, but was caught off guard by that tidbit of information. “She did, did she? I’m guessing she was none too happy to have dragged all of her worldly possessions halfway across the country for a job you weren’t in the position to hire her to do.”
“Actually, she was looking for some breakfast because apparently you couldn’t be bothered.”
“She said that? I wasn’t expecting company, but I did make coffee and—she does realize that asking you for advice on good cooking is like—”
“Asking you for the same? I might have mentioned that.” Fergus’s smile faded, and his expression turned more serious. “She wasn’t complaining. In fact, she said she was grateful for all ye did. She was quite embarrassed by what happened yesterday.”
“She said as much.” Logan looked back to his folders, uncomfortable. “It was understandable, under the circumstances. I don’t hold it against her.”
“Ah, so she told you then. About her business. About her father.”
Logan’s gaze jerked back to his uncle’s. The wrenching pleas for her father during her tumultuous nightmare and the sobs that wracked her afterward echoed clearly through his mind. In fact, the whole night had played through his mind more than once since he’d arrived at work. As had the morning’s events. The nightmare provided such a strong contrast to when she’d given him that blistering kiss. Combined with visions of her smacking that wrench into his palm, all business, despite being wrapped in an old towel, her face and hair still dripping from the broken pipe blast. That had just been in their first twelve hours together. He’d been trying to forget all of it since he’d come downstairs to find the house empty, not liking at all that it felt that way. Empty.
“Ah,” Fergus said, a glint in his eye as he studied Logan’s face. “So, she didn’t tell ye. What circumstances were you talking about then?”
“Just that she’d been traveling a long distance, hadn’t taken care of herself. She was pale, a bit hollow-cheeked. Bonnie thought she might have recently gotten over being sick and was probably anemic. She wanted her to go in for tests, make sure, but Alex didn’t want any part of that.” Logan wanted, badly, not to know anything about the real whys and wherefores that had caused Alex to pass out, literally, in his arms, but he knew from the look in Fergus’s eyes that he wasn’t going to be that lucky. If he were being honest with himself, he’d also admit that it wasn’t going to take Fergus pushing the point to keep Alex MacFarland in his mind.
“You didn’t talk to her at all, then, did you? About her qualifications? Her work history? It’s remarkably impressive, given her age.”
“First, she wasn’t in much shape for that—”
“Yesterday, maybe, but there was no need to give her the bum’s rush out the door this morning. She came all that way, the least you could do was—”
“I offered her the house, Gus. I told her she could stay as long as she needed, while figuring out her next step. She chose to leave instead. And I didn’t need to know her references or her qualifications, because I’m not investing the trust in the lighthouse when it’s taking everything I have to keep the house from falling down around me. The same house that provides the roof over my head.”
“Then maybe it’s time to consider getting some help. With the house, and . . . all the rest.”
Logan didn’t want to admit it to Fergus, but he’d thought about doing exactly that. For the main house, anyway. Blueberry Cove was hardly a hotbed of crime, but Alex had been right that there was still a constant stream of peacekeeping issues that kept him busy far outside normal business hours. Small towns also had small police forces, which meant even as chief he still shouldered a fair share of working directly on any issue that might come up, as well as taking on the larger political role of working with the town council and the mayor. And more of the same on the county and, at times, state levels.
The thing about living in a place where you could name every single person who resided in it was that folks felt a direct kinship of sorts. With that connection came a heightened sense of trust and faith that he’d be there for them, come any crisis. He valued that, was humbled by it, but when that individual bond was multiplied by the number of residents in the Cove . . . well, he was only one man. But he did what he could, putting the needs of the folks who relied on him first.
That meant the house out on the Point had become like the old family member whose needs were constantly moved down the list, neglected because family could be counted on to understand. Like a family put too long on the wait list, the house was getting more and more unforgiving, and if he didn’t find some kind of solution, he might find himself out on the proverbial street.
“The house . . . has been a challenge,” Logan said, not wanting to give Fergus even a toehold in the conversation, because he wasn’t going to relent on the tower. “I haven’t been able to put as much time and effort into it as I’d hoped and the list is, admittedly, getting a bit daunting.” He lifted a hand before Fergus could launch what was sure to be a well-thought-out campaign to get him to reconsider his stance. “But if anything is done, it should be the house first, the tower after. I understand about the tricentennial and the lighthouse’s bicentennial, but as nice as it would be for the tower to be restored, the end result doesn’t help us or the town. The folks that come to look at lighthouses still see it on the harbor boat tours. Even restored, we can’t open it to the public.”
“Why not?”
Logan’s eyes widened. “Because I live there and don’t want to encourage people to be tromping around my property and through my house. I’m the chief of police, as well as a private citizen. Neither one of them think that’s a great idea. We get enough interlopers every year as it is, who think simply because it’s a historic building that it’s open season to go wherever they like.”
“To be fair, it’s relatively rare, comparatively speaking, for lighthouses to be privately owned.”
“Which is why we posted a sign. For all the good it does.”
“Is it the funding then?” Fergus asked.
“I just got done telling you that I won’t be selling tickets to my living quarters, so—”
“I don’t mean about the lighthouse, or the keeper’s cottage. You’ve recently taken a bigger role in managing the trust. Are we in worse shape there than you’ve let on? If that’s so, ye need to come clean with me.”
“No, it’s okay. But it doesn’t earn what it used to. Growth is slow, sometimes negligible. We’re damn lucky it didn’t go the other direction. I’m hopeful we can be more aggressive in finding ways to grow it without taking too many risks, but that will take time. What’s in there now— we’d wipe it out just to renovate the tower. And then what? It won’t stay renovated. Over time, the winds, the sea, the weather, will hammer it all over again. True of the cottage as well. If we can get a healthy part of the house up to par, that would be the wiser investment. I guess I kept thinking if I maintained the place by doing as much of it myself as I could, then eventually we could start a modest campaign on the cottage and tower. But I have to admit . . . I’m losing that battle. I should have admitted defeat sooner and I should have been more aggressive with trust management. It’s not my forte, but—” He broke off, pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry.”
Fergus reached over, gripped Logan’s forearm, squeezed, then held tight. “Yer doin’ the best with what ye have. I dinnae blame ye, laddie. You’ve been dealt a tough hand, and not just once. I know ye just wanted to find peace, simplicity, and let things work at their own pace. I understand that, as ye well know. I could have pushed harder, but I guess I wanted to believe it would all resolve itself, too.”
“It’
s the McCrae legacy,” Logan said quietly. “Left to me to oversee. I should have done better with that.”
“Yet another burden for you to take on,” Fergus said. “As I see it, you’ve never shirked a one of them. As ye said, yer but one man.” He leaned farther over the desk and cupped Logan’s cheek with his other hand. “Even a lad as stubborn as yourself knows when it’s time to ask for some help.”
Whatever argument Logan thought he’d been prepared to mount, Fergus had wiped out with that one quietly stated declaration. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t had the discussion before in some form or other. But that was before any actual steps had been taken, and other people had been involved. Alex MacFarland, specifically. He understood now why Fergus had done it.
“I might not have, but you did,” Logan said, feeling the weight of every single one of his forebears as if they were sitting directly on his shoulders. It was ironic that he could single-handedly carry the entire town of Blueberry Cove on those same shoulders, and do a pretty damn good job of it, yet fail the single branch of his own ancestral tree so utterly. “It’s a monumental task and will continue to be one. I’m not even sure, frankly, where to begin. And that’s talking about the main house.”
“That is why I stepped in to help ye out a wee bit. It’s what family is supposed to do. And I’ve been just as lax, so the fault lies equally with me.”
Logan sighed and held Fergus’s gaze squarely. “What is one single woman going to do?”
“Have you bothered to even look at her credentials? Do a search on her background in this business?” Fergus didn’t wait for the reply as they both knew the answer to that. “She’s done this her whole life, and her father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and more before her. They know a thing or two or three about what it takes, and that includes raising the funds to see it done.”
“She might have mentioned that,” Logan allowed.
Fergus’s brows climbed halfway up his ruddy forehead. “Did she now? And you what? Dismissed the golden goose out of hand?”
“That’s just it. There is no golden goose, no golden eggs. I didn’t follow up with Alex because I’ve done that legwork in the past, although it’s been years. I know there are ways to raise the funds, and each and every one of them comes with a price. The main one being that I lose control over the property and how it’s utilized. That’s something I’m not prepared to relinquish. It’s the reason we McCraes bought the damn thing to begin with. It’s our home. It’s been our home for two hundred years.”
“You’ve asked for a place to start and I’ve handed you one.”
Logan wanted to say part of the reason he’d put off hiring out was it would begin a never-ending parade of subcontractors and workers on the property. After putting in a long day making himself personally available to every single person in the Cove, he didn’t want to face another army of people when he went home at night. He wanted time to himself. Needed it. It provided balance, a retreat, separation between his professional life and his personal one—as much as he had one anyway. He knew it was also because of those other burdens Gus had mentioned, but it wasn’t hiding. It was simply . . . finding a way to live. He’d been settled and comfortable with his life for some time.
He didn’t say any of that, suddenly realizing there had been a cost to that approach, after all.
“So maybe we start with the house, invest a bit of what we’ve got while leaving enough behind to earn us more capital over time,” Fergus suggested. “We get some manpower in there . . . and when that burden has been lifted somewhat, maybe dealing with the lighthouse won’t feel as daunting. Maybe we can tackle it in stages, or possibly find some solutions that won’t include giving up control over how it’s used. At the very least, it’s worth a discussion, isn’t it?”
“Yes, okay. But your timetable, the tricentennial—”
Fergus lifted a hand. “It was a leverage point, that’s all. I needed something—anything—to get you to pull your head out of your arse and look at the bigger picture, and not just the four walls and the roof falling down over your own head. With enough help, the house could be done inside twelve months, eighteen tops. Perhaps our gift to the town wouldn’t be a fully restored, operational tower, but the promise that the work has begun on it. We can consider it our gift to the Cove. And to our own legacy.”
“I’ll . . . think on it.”
Fergus pushed to a stand. “Why don’t you think on it down at the pub, say, seven o’clock?”
Logan’s gaze narrowed, and he realized he’d just been played by the master. “What’s happening at seven o’clock? I’m not facing some kind of impromptu town meeting, Fergus. I’ll discuss this with you, and I’ll work on it in my own time, but I’m not bringing in the town to pass judgment on what will or won’t be done, or give them so much as a single vote in this. It’s not their legacy, or their burden. It’s ours. And that burden is heavy enough without putting me at their mercy along with it. Your idea to present the restoration to the town as our personal gift is fine. After the fact.”
“Are ye quite done with yer bluster, Mr. Blowhard?”
Scowling, Logan restacked the folders on his desk, then finally pressed his hands against his thighs. How could family feel so . . . restorative, so bolstering one moment, and so incredibly infuriating the next? “I’m done for the next thirty seconds. Or as long as it takes for you to tell me what you’ve done now.”
“Ye need to trust me, lad. We need help organizing this operation, and we happen to have someone in town who can help us with that very thing.”
Logan lifted his gaze, brows narrowing. “I thought you said she stopped by on her way out of town. Alex MacFarland isn’t the solution. She’s gone. But I understand and agree it was the right idea. In general. We’ll have to look elsewhere for—”
“She did stop by, yes. And she was heading out, aye, mostly thanks to your complete lack of insight and imagination.” Fergus slapped broad palms to broader thighs, and there was far too much mischief in those blue eyes to bode at all well. “However, I might have persuaded her to stick around a bit longer. See if I could talk some sense into that hard head of yours, before scrapping the effort she’d already put into getting here. And don’t go saying a single word. It was almost as hard to talk her into staying as it’s been to get you to consider listening to what she has to say. I swear, you’re both too hardheaded and prideful for your own good. I figure you’ll either be the best team ever . . . or kill each other inside the first fortnight.”
Logan leveled a steady gaze at his uncle. “Sounds like the only one in danger of any bodily harm is standing in front of my desk.”
Fergus chuckled at that. “Och, I’ve faced down fiercer than you and lived to tell.” He reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out a business card. “Take a few minutes over lunch and do a little look-see.” He tossed it on Logan’s desk. MACFARLAND & SONS RESTORATION was embossed across the front in black ink, with an engraved red and white striped lighthouse next to it and all the pertinent information printed below. “She’s the real deal. And she needs this as much as we need her.”
Logan looked from the card to Fergus. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“You’re the policeman. Do a little detective work.”
Visions of the previous night, of Alex’s state of mind, flashed through Logan’s mind. “Fergus, the last thing we need is someone with problems of her own—”
“The only thing we need is someone who is as passionate about making this happen and as dedicated to seeing it through as we are. I know it’s not a simple matter of throwing money at the problem. I know it will turn your life upside down for a wee bit. You’ll need someone who won’t walk when the going gets tough.”
“What makes you think she’ll stick?”
“Because she needs this. Her reasons might be different from ours, but the outcome is all the same. We’ll both get what we want.”
By the time Logan walked into the Rusty Puffin that evening,
he honestly didn’t know what he wanted.
His talk with Fergus had definitely sunk in. He agreed it was time for some changes to be made in how he was handling . . . well, everything. But he wanted time to think, consider, and do some research regarding what steps he wanted to take, how best to tackle them, and with whom. He needed to make certain the choices made and the steps taken were the ones best suited to get the desired results with the fewest risks. He understood, at core, it was really just his own foolish, egotistical way of saying he wanted to make the decisions, not have them shoved down his throat.
For that reason, and because he’d been honest in saying he was unsure about taking on someone who had her own issues to grapple with, he’d wanted to toss out the business card Fergus had pushed on him. But as the afternoon had worn on and he hadn’t been mercifully called away to deal with anything immediately pressing, the echoes of her nightmares, her matter-of-fact dealing with him that morning . . . and the tension he’d felt when she’d talked about wanting to see the lighthouse . . . all of that had continued to pop up in his thoughts until he finally caved and did some Internet searching of his own. The hope had been that finding out more about her would give him the perspective he needed to be objective. About her, about Fergus, about all of it.
He was going to take immediate steps to start work on the house on a broader scale. He knew how to go about hiring on subcontractors and didn’t need Alex for that. He also was going to stand steadfast against dealing with the lighthouse. For now. Heading into winter was not the time to be dealing with that. Maybe the following spring, or summer, when the house repairs were well underway, he could hire someone to come in and do a prospectus on what all would be required. It didn’t all have to happen at once. He was going to recommend that Alex find herself another restoration contract as they wouldn’t need her services, not for some time anyway.
Pelican Point (Bachelors of Blueberry Cove) Page 8
