Sweet Haven

by Shirlee McCoy

  “Not now I can’t, but with a little work . . .”

  “A little!?” So much for calm. So much for cool. She sounded like a banshee screaming through the darkness.

  “Okay,” Byron conceded, not at all upset by her outburst. “More than a little, but it’s not like I don’t have the money to do it. Your grandma had a life insurance policy, you know.”

  “Yes.” Janelle had mentioned it on more than one occasion. She thought Byron should use it to retire. Adeline could have told her that no Lamont ever retired from Chocolate Haven. They worked until they died or until someone else could take over. Even then, they had a hand in the business.

  “Then you know I have the funds. It’s not like I’d be taking out a loan.”

  It didn’t matter if he was taking out a loan or paying cash or getting the place for free, the Bradford house was a money pit. It would take several life insurance policies to bring it into habitable condition, and she wasn’t even sure it could be done.

  “I couldn’t stomach spending the money after Alice died,” Byron continued. “It didn’t make sense that I would enjoy what was gained from her death, so I invested it, and it just kept getting bigger.”

  “That’s nice, Granddad, but do you really think Grandma would want you to put all of it into a house when you could live with me or Mom?”

  “Your mother wouldn’t have me if I paid her rent.”

  “That’s not true!”

  “It is. She likes that house tidy and organized, and that’s just not my style. As for you . . .” He shrugged. “You have your own life to live, and you don’t need me hanging around cramping your style.”

  “You wouldn’t be, Granddad. I’d love to have you.” It was true. She would. She and Byron had always gotten along well. She had the spare room and could expand into the attic if she wanted to. A nice master suite upstairs would allow them both to have privacy and space. She could hire someone, have the job done in a couple of weeks.

  It seemed like a good plan. A great one, even. Or, at least, a heck of a lot better than him buying a crumbling house and rat-infested property.

  But Byron shook his head. “Here’s the deal, kid. I’m old enough to make my own decisions, and this is what I’ve decided. If Sinclair says he can save the place, I’m going to buy it, and I’m going to save it.”

  “I—”

  “Alice was born there. Never told you that, did I?”

  “No,” she responded, all her fight suddenly gone.

  “She was. Spent the first eighteen years of her life there. Then we got married, and she moved into the Lamont place with me. Her parents stayed around for a while, but when they moved to Florida, they sold the house to Sammy Bradford. It was a pretty little place then. Alice and I watched it deteriorate. She used to talk about buying it and fixing it up again. Maybe giving it to one of you girls.” He shrugged as if it didn’t matter, but she knew it did. “Once she died, I thought about doing it myself, but time got away from me. I’ve been lying here in this bed for a long time, doll, and I’ve been thinking that if I want to do something, there’s no better time than now.”

  “But . . . the Bradford place,” she muttered, and he grinned.

  “It’s a project. That’s for sure.”

  “So . . . you’re going to buy it?” She tried to wrap her head around that—her grandfather living in a house again. Her grandparents had given up the Lamont house when Willow was born, moved into a nice-sized Victorian on Monroe.

  When Alice died, Byron had put that house on the market and moved into the apartment above the shop. He’d said he didn’t need anything more. She’d thought he hadn’t wanted to live in a place he’d once shared with the woman he’d loved for more than five decades.

  “If Sinclair thinks it can be saved, I am.”

  “I’ll go by the place tomorrow, Byron,” Sinclair said, folding the paper and putting it in his wallet. “Who is it listed with?”

  “Janelle. Of course,” Byron said. “My daughter-in-law has a real estate monopoly in this town.”

  “Not surprising,” Sinclair said easily, kneading the muscle above his right knee. “It’s too small a town to have more than one Realtor’s office.”

  “She has two people working with her, Granddad,” Adeline said. “Sinclair should probably call one of them to show the property.”

  “Why?” Byron snapped. “You think I have to hide this from your mother? That’s not the way I work, kid. I’m buying this property, and Janelle may as well know it up front.”

  “That’s not—”

  “Knock-knock,” a nurse called from the open doorway. “Time for your meds, Byron.”

  “It can wait, Lydia,” he responded. “I’ve got visitors.”

  “It can’t wait.” She rolled a cart in, her gray hair pulled back into a neat bun, her eyes bright and clear in a lined and pretty face. She had to be in her sixties, but moved like a woman a decade younger.

  “Sorry to have to do this, folks,” she said. “But I’m going to have to boot you out. I need to check his incision.”

  “She’s lying. She’s not sorry.”

  Lydia chuckled. “You’re right, Byron. Making people leave their loved ones gives me a secret thrill.”

  Byron grinned. “I like you, Lydia. You’ve got spunk.”

  “I also have a dozen other patients who need their medicine.” She took a cup off a tray, handed it to Byron.

  Adeline knew that was her cue to go.

  She had a lot more to say, though. About the Bradford property and Byron buying it, about the shop, the fudge, the disastrous encounter with Millicent that morning.

  “I guess we’d better head out,” Sinclair prodded, and she nodded, moving close to the bed as Lydia wrapped a blood-pressure cuff around Byron’s arm.

  “I’ll stop by after the wedding,” she promised, leaning over to kiss his cheek.

  “It’ll be late, doll. I don’t want you driving all the way out here by yourself. Just wait until Monday and come. I’ll be leaving this joint then, and we can go have a burger and a beer.”

  “No beer while you’re on this medicine,” Lydia chided.

  “Killjoy,” he muttered, but he was smiling.

  That was good, and Adeline should have been happy to leave him there, but the talk about Alice and the house she’d grown up in, that had done something to her heart, and she hovered by his bed, watching as Lydia took Byron’s blood pressure.

  “Doll,” Byron finally said, “you need to go. You look exhausted, and you’ve got a long ride ahead of you.”

  “I’m okay,” she said, but she wasn’t sure that she was.

  The long days and nights were catching up to her. She could admit that to herself, but she’d never admit it to Byron. He’d worry and that was the last thing he should be doing. “And I am coming after the wedding. I’ll fill you in on all the details.”

  “It isn’t safe for a beautiful young woman to be driving around at midnight.”

  “It’s perfectly safe.”

  He scowled. “Now you listen here—”

  “I’ll bring her,” Sinclair cut in. “I plan to take some photos of the house, and I’ll want you to look at them before you make your decision.”

  “I don’t need you to take me,” Adeline argued, because spending more time alone with Sinclair? She wanted that more than she wanted to eat a cheeseburger and bucketful of onion rings. “It will be late, and—”

  “Late for both of us. Janelle gave me an invitation to the wedding. She said May asked her to deliver it.”

  “That’s . . . nice.”

  “I think so. I’ve also been thinking,” he said, ushering her into the hallway, “that since neither of us have dates, we may as well go together.”

  “To the wedding?” she squeaked.

  He smiled. “That is what we’ve been discussing.”

  “I know, but . . .” She could think of a dozen reasons why it wasn’t a good idea.

  She could almos
t feel her heart breaking.

  Sure, they hadn’t gotten to that point yet.

  One kiss did not a committed relationship make, but God! If she fell for him, if she let herself even imagine that they might have more than a kiss and a few dates, she also had to imagine that soul-aching, breath-catching moment when it all ended and she was left alone again.

  “But what?” He jabbed the elevator button, his jaw tight. “We’re two dateless people heading to an eighty-year-old’s—”

  “Seventy-six.”

  “Does it matter, Adeline?” He ran a hand down his jaw. He needed to shave. Or maybe not. He looked good with stubble on his chin. “My point is that both of us are going alone, so why shouldn’t we go together?”

  “People will get the wrong idea.”

  “What idea would that be?” he asked as the elevator doors opened.

  “That we’re a couple,” she replied, stepping into the empty elevator and wishing that it was filled with people. She didn’t want to have this conversation with Sinclair. Not now. Not ever.

  “And?”

  “We’re not.”

  “We could change that,” he said, moving into her space, his hands suddenly on her waist and then her back.

  She was in his arms again, all the arguments against going with him flittering away. “I—”

  “You know what the best part of us going together would be, Adeline?” he whispered, his lips brushing her ear, his hands smoothing up her spine.

  She wanted to burrow in, inhale the heady masculine scent of him, drink in all his warmth.

  “What?” she managed to say as his lips trailed along her neck, found the spot right at the hollow of her throat.

  “I get to avoid all the single-and-available women who are going to be at the wedding, and you get to cross something off your list.”

  That surprised a laugh out of her, and he smiled. “That’s better.”

  “What?”

  “You.” The doors opened, and he urged her out into the hospital lobby.

  “What about me?”

  “You worry too much.”

  “I never worry. As a matter of fact, I have a reputation in my family for being very relaxed.”

  “In comparison to who?” They reached his truck, and he opened the door. “Janelle? Because, much as I like your mother, she’s a little high strung.”

  “Only since my father died.”

  “And that was how long ago? Twenty years?”

  “Eighteen,” she replied, climbing into the truck, the dress riding up her thighs.

  She tried to tug it back into place, but the fabric had a mind of its own.

  “Don’t bother on my account,” Sinclair murmured, his palm skimming her thigh.

  And her mind?

  It went completely blank, every thought swiped away with that one light touch.

  He closed the door, rounded the car, and she still couldn’t think of anything but his palm on her thigh.

  * * *

  Sinclair started the truck engine, hiked up the heat, and did not reach out and touch Adeline’s thigh again. Tempting as it was—and it was very tempting—she seemed like she needed something different.

  Maybe just a willing ear, someone to say all the things that she hadn’t said in the hospital. She’d been upset by Byron’s plan. She’d argued a little, thrown out a few other suggestions, and then she’d bit her lip and kept silent.

  That said a lot about Adeline. It said a lot about how much she loved her grandfather. Sinclair wouldn’t mind having that kind of love focused on him. He wouldn’t mind feeling like the person he loved, loved him the same way. With Kendra, the relationship had been about mutual benefit. They’d both been about offering an equal amount, contributing the same. Fifty-fifty. That’s what Kendra had said, and what Sinclair had been happy to agree to. He had a feeling real love required more. He had a feeling it was about giving 150 percent. And then giving more.

  He grabbed gloves from the center console and zipped his coat. It was colder than any place had a right to be at this time of year. Twenty degrees if the truck’s thermometer was to be believed.

  “Your blood has gone thin, Sinclair,” Adeline said with a quiet laugh. “You’ve been away too long.”

  “I guess I have.” And he guessed he would have stayed away if Gavin hadn’t begged him to come. If that had been the case, he’d be sitting in his apartment, looking out over Puget Sound, the world muted by glass and steel. That should have been the first thing on his mind—to get back to that quiet place, that clean and organized space. He’d worked his whole life to have a home like that—sterile, clean, organized. Only it had never really seemed like home. It was more a place to stay when he wasn’t traveling for a job. The steel and glass? It didn’t have the character and charm of the properties he worked on.

  “And I guess you can’t wait to get back to a warmer climate,” Adeline commented as he pulled out of the hospital parking lot.

  “I’m not in as much of a hurry as I thought I was.”

  “No?” She tugged her dress down, covering a quarter of an inch more of her beautiful thigh.

  “There’s a lot of work that can be done in this town. A lot more than I thought there would be.”

  “Every town has properties that need work,” she pointed out, and he knew she was right, but in his memories, Benevolence was perfect, every property pristine and beautiful.

  “I guess I just never realized Benevolence was like every town.”

  “What did you think it was?” she asked. “Mayberry?”

  He laughed. “Something like that.”

  “And now?”

  “Like I said, there’s work to do, and I’d like to do it.”

  “Byron’s project?”

  “Among others.”

  “I hate to tell you this, Sinclair,” she said, “but that property is not going to be salvageable.”

  “Your grandfather wants to try, and I’m not going to tell him it’s impossible unless it is,” he said gently, because it was the truth, but he didn’t think she’d want to hear it.

  “My mother—”

  “Adeline. How about we not talk about what your mother wants. It doesn’t play into this.”

  “Right,” she muttered. “Bad habit.”

  “Bad habits can be broken.”

  “Like you and drinking?” she asked. “Sorry. I noticed the juice during the toast, and . . . Bad assumption.”

  “Correct assumption,” he admitted, because he saw no sense in hiding it. “I come from a long line of alcoholics. I realized a few years ago that I was heading down the same road. I didn’t want to go there, so I gave up drinking. I have a sip of wine once in a while, but never a whole glass of anything.”

  “I’m still sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

  “You can bring up anything you want.” He let himself do what he’d been wanting to, let his hand drop to her thigh, his fingers sliding along firm flesh and taut muscle.

  “Sinclair—”

  “How about, just for now, you don’t worry about what could happen and just accept what is?”

  “Is that what you’re doing?”

  “With you?” he asked, because he thought it was. He didn’t want to think about tomorrow or the next day. Not when he had Adeline beside him now.

  “With Benevolence.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A few days ago, you seemed determined to leave town as quickly as possible.”

  “A few days ago, I was.”

  “What changed?”

  “Me? When I was a kid, I felt like a charity case. I was the kid whose father had driven drunk and killed himself and his wife. I was the boy who had to live in a pigsty of a house. I was the one whispered about at church and at the library. I hated it, and that made me hate the town. Now that I’m older, I can see Benevolence for what it is.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A little town with a lot of heart. People care. At
the time, that felt like pity and judgment. Now it just feels like what it was—people worrying about two kids who really didn’t have much to go home to.”

  “You want to know something?” she said quietly, her fingers brushing over his knuckles, there and gone so quickly he barely felt them.

  “I want to know everything,” he responded, and she laughed.

  “Trust me. You don’t, but I’ll tell you this one thing. I used to envy Gavin. He never had any pressure put on him. I remember one time, he got an honors award for getting a C in algebra. I had an A in that class, and I got squat. Except a lecture from my mom on the dangers of being too book smart and not people-smart enough.”

  “You must have gotten plenty of other awards.”

  “No. Not one. Willow won the regional spelling bee. She was the captain of a debate team that never lost. She had more academic awards than I can even remember. And Brenna? She was a cheerleader, Ms. Popular. A model. Most likely to achieve anything and everything. I was just . . . me.”

  He thought about that for a minute, about the way it must have felt to be sandwiched between Willow and Brenna. They’d both been popular in school. He didn’t remember much about Brenna except that she’d been the talk of the freshman crowd during his senior year. A cheerleader with a 4.0 GPA, she’d already been modeling for a couple of years. Willow had been volunteering at the local hospital, tutoring calculus, and working as a secretary for the town’s only attorney.

  And Adeline?

  He had no idea what she’d been doing.

  He vaguely remembered seeing her walking through the hallway at school. She’d usually worn baggy jeans and ugly sweaters and pulled her hair back in braids that hadn’t been able to contain her curls. “You’re the only sister who stayed in town,” he pointed out.

  “Ironic, isn’t it? The sister least likely to make her mark on the town was the one who stayed.”