Brambleberry House

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “Here we go. That should give us a clear path.”

  They pulled the chipper out of the chaotic garage and into the sunshine while Conan watched them curiously.

  “Any idea how to work this thing?” Max asked.

  She smiled. “A year ago, my answer to that question would have been a resounding no, but I’ve had to learn a few things since I’ve been at Brambleberry House. This home ownership thing is not for the weak or timid, I’ll tell you that much. I’ve become an expert at removing wallpaper, puttying walls, even wielding a toilet snake. This chipper business is easy compared to that.”

  For the next two hours, they worked together cleaning up the yard while Conan lazed in whatever dappled bit of sunbeam he could find. It was a gorgeous, sunny early spring day, the kind she always considered a gift from above here in Oregon.

  When the fallen branches were cleared and the beautiful wood chips from them stored at the side of the garage for a few more weeks until she had time to prepare the flower beds, Max helped her gather up the loose shingles and replace the gutter that had blown down.

  “Anything else we can do?” he asked when they finished and were sitting together on the porch steps taking a breather.

  “I don’t think so. Not right now, anyway. It’s an endless job, this home maintenance thing.”

  “But not a bad way to spend a beautiful morning.”

  She smiled, enjoying his company immensely. Even with only one good hand, he worked far harder than most men she knew. He carried heavy limbs under one arm and though he quickly figured out he couldn’t push the wheelbarrow with one hand without toppling it over, he ended up dragging out Abigail’s old garden wagon and pulling the limbs and wood chips in that.

  “I used to hate gardening when I was a kid,” she told him. “My parents always had a huge vegetable garden. We would grow peppers and green beans and sweet corn and of course we kids always had to do the weeding. I vowed I was going to live in a condominium the rest of my life where I wouldn’t have to get out at the crack of dawn to pick beans.”

  “But here you are.” He gestured to the house.

  “Here I am. And you know something weird? Taking care of the garden and yard has become my favorite part of living here. I can’t wait until the flowers start coming out in a few weeks. You will be astonished at Abigail’s garden. It’s a magic place.”

  He made a noncommittal sound, as if he wasn’t quite convinced, and she smiled. “I guess you don’t have much opportunity for gardening, living in base housing as you said you’ve done.”

  “Not in the army, no,” he said in what she had come to think of as his cautious voice. “Various places I’ve stayed, I’ve had the chance to do a little but not much.”

  “You can do all you want at Brambleberry House while you’re here. All hands are welcome in Abigail’s garden, experienced or not.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Conan brought over a sturdy twig they must have missed and dropped it at his feet. Max obliged him by picking it up and tossing left-handed for the dog to scamper after.

  It was a lovely moment and Anna found she didn’t want it to end. “Do you feel like a drive?” she asked suddenly.

  “With a specific destination involved or just for the ride?”

  “A little of both. I need to head down to Lincoln City to drop off some items that were delivered by mistake to the store up here. I’d love some company. I’ll even take you to lunch at my favorite restaurant at Neskowin Beach on the way down. My way of paying you back for your help today.”

  “You don’t owe me anything for that. I didn’t do much.”

  She could have argued with him but she decided she wasn’t in the mood to debate. “The offer’s still open.”

  He shifted on the step and looked up at the blue sky for a long moment and then turned back at her with a rather wary smile. “It is a gorgeous day for a drive.”

  She returned his smile, then laughed when Conan gave two sharp barks, whether from anticipation or just plain excitement, she couldn’t guess. “Wonderful. Can you give me about half an hour to clean up?”

  “Only half an hour?”

  She grinned at him as she climbed to her feet. “Lieutenant, I grew up with three brothers in a little house with only one bathroom. A girl learns to work her magic fast under those circumstances.”

  She was rewarded with a genuine smile, one that warmed her clear to her toes. She hurried through her shower and dressed quickly. And though she would have liked to spend some time blow-drying her hair and fixing it into something long and luxurious and irresistible, she had to be satisfied with pulling it into a simple style, held away from her face with a yellow bandeau that matched her light sweater.

  She did take time to apply a light coat of makeup, though even that was more than she usually bothered with.

  “It’s not a date,” she assured Conan, who sat watching her with curious eyes as she applied eyeliner and mascara.

  This is not a date and I am not breathless, she told herself when the doorbell rang a few moments later.

  She answered the door and knew that last one was a blatant lie. She felt as if she were standing on the bluffs above Heceta Head with the wind hitting her from every side.

  He wore Levi’s and a brushed-cotton shirt in a color that matched the dark spruce outside. Hunger and anticipation curled through her insides.

  “Do you need more time?” he asked.

  “Not at all. I only have to grab my purse. Oh, and Conan’s leash. Are you okay with him coming along? He pouts if I leave him alone too long.”

  “I expected it.”

  That was one of the things she appreciated most about him—his wholehearted acceptance of her dog.

  Conan raced ahead as they headed out to her minivan and waited until she opened the door. His customary spot was in the passenger seat but he seemed content to sprawl out in the cargo area this trip, along with the boxes she had carefully strapped down the day before.

  She backed with caution out of the driveway and waited until they were on the road heading south before she spoke. “I know you’ve been at least as far south as Neah-Kah-Nie Mountain. Have you gone farther down the coast?”

  “Not this trip,” he answered. “It’s been several years.”

  “I’ve been driving to Lincoln City two or three times a week for nine months and I still never get tired of it.”

  “Is that how long you’ve had the store there?”

  She nodded, then fell silent, remembering her starry dreams of last summer, when she had first opened the second store. She had wanted so desperately for the store to succeed and had imagined opening a third and maybe even a fourth store someday, until everywhere on the coast, people would think of By-the-Wind when they thought of books and unique gift items.

  Now her dreams were in tatters and most days when she drove this road, she arrived with tight shoulder muscles and her stomach in knots.

  “Did I say something wrong?” Max asked, and she realized she had been silent for a good mile or more.

  “No. It’s not you. It’s just...”

  She hesitated to tell him, though the trial was certainly common knowledge.

  No doubt he would hear about it sooner or later and it was probably better that she give him the information herself.

  Her hands tightened on the steering wheel. “My professional life is a mess,” she admitted. “Once in a while I’m able to forget about it for an hour or so at a time but then it all comes creeping back.”

  She was almost afraid to look at him to gauge his reaction but she finally dared a quick look and found his expression unreadable. “Want to talk about it?”

  “I don’t want to ruin your enjoyment of the spectacular coastal scenery with such a long, boring, sordid story.�
�

  “Can a story be boring and sordid at the same time?”

  The tongue-in-cheek question surprised a laugh from her when she least expected to find much of anything amusing. “Good point.”

  And a good reminder that she shouldn’t take herself so seriously. She hadn’t lost any team members to enemy fire. She hadn’t been shot down over hostile territory or suffered severe burns or spent months in the hospital.

  This was a tough hurdle and professionally and personally humiliating for her but it wasn’t the end of the world.

  She didn’t know where to start and she didn’t want to look like an idiot to him. But he had been brutally honest with her the night before and she suddenly found she wanted to share this with Max.

  “I trusted the wrong person,” she finally said. “I guess the story all starts with that.”

  * * *

  COULD THE WOMAN make him feel any more guilty, however unwittingly?

  As Max listened to Anna’s story of fraud and betrayal by the former store manager of her Lincoln City store, shame coalesced in his gut.

  She talked about how she had been lied to for months, how she had ignored warning signs and hadn’t trusted her gut.

  How was Max going to tell her he had lied about his identity?

  He had a strong suspicion her past experience with this charlatan wasn’t going to make her the forgiving sort when he came clean.

  “So here we are six months later,” she finally said. “Everything is such a disaster. My business is in shambles, I’ve got suppliers coming out of the woodwork with invoices I thought had been paid months ago and worse, at least two dozen of my customers had their credit and debit cards used fraudulently. It’s been a months-long nightmare and I have no idea when I’ll ever be able to wake up.”

  Max remembered his speculation when he read the sketchy information online about the trial that maybe she had been involved in the fraud, a partner who was letting her manager take the fall while she reaped the benefits.

  The thought of that now was laughable and he was sorry he had even entertained the idea. She sounded sick about the trial, about the fraud, especially about her customers who had suffered.

  “You said this Fletcher jerk has been charged?”

  “Oh, yes. That’s part of the joy of this whole thing, out there in the public eye for everyone to see what an idiot I’ve been.”

  “It’s not your fault the guy was a scumbag thief.”

  “No. But it is my fault I hired the scumbag thief to mind my store and gave him access to the personal information of all my customers and vendors who trusted me to protect that. It’s my fault I didn’t supervise things as closely as I should have, which allowed him more room and freedom to stick his fingers in as many pies as he could find.”

  “That’s a lot of weight for you to bear.”

  “My name is the one on the business license. It’s my responsibility.”

  “When will the trial wrap up?”

  “This week, I think. Closing arguments start tomorrow and I’m hoping for a quick verdict soon after that. I’ll just be so glad when it’s over.”

  “That bad?”

  She shrugged and tried to downplay it but he saw the truth in her eyes. “Every day when I walk in the courtroom, I feel like they ought to hand me a dunce cap and a sign to hang around my neck—World’s Biggest Idiot.”

  “You’ve sat through the entire trial?”

  “Every minute of it. Grayson Fletcher stole from me, he stole from customers, he stole from my vendors. He took my reputation and I want to make sure he pays for it.”

  He had seen seasoned war veterans who didn’t have the kind of grit she possessed in order to walk into that courtroom each day. He was astonished at the soft tenderness seeping through him, at his fierce desire to take her hand and assure her everything would be okay.

  He couldn’t do it. Not with his own deception lying between them.

  “Anna, I need to tell you something,” he said.

  “What?” For just an instant, she shifted her gaze from the road, her eyes wary and watchful.

  “I haven’t been...” Honest, he started to say, but before the words were out, Conan suddenly interrupted him with a terrible retching sound like he had a tennis ball lodged in his throat.

  Until this moment, the dog had been lying peacefully in the cargo area of the minivan but now he poked his head between the driver and passenger seats, retching and gagging dramatically.

  “Conan!” she exclaimed. “What’s going on, bud? You okay?”

  The dog continued making those horrible noises and Anna swerved off the road to the wide shoulder, turned off the van and hurried to the side to open the sliding door.

  Conan clambered out and walked back and forth a few times on his leash. He gagged once or twice more, then seemed to take care of whatever had been bothering him.

  A moment later, with what seemed like remarkable nonchalance, he headed to a clump of grass and lifted his leg, then wandered back to the two of them, planted his haunches in the grass and looked at them expectantly.

  Anna watched him, a frown on her lovely features. “Weird. What was that all about?”

  “Carsick, maybe?” Max suggested.

  “Conan’s never carsick,” she answered. “I swear, he has the constitution of a horse.”

  “Maybe he just needed a little fresh air and a convenient fern.”

  “So why the theatrics? Maybe he just needed attention. Behave yourself,” she ordered the dog as she let him back into the back of the vehicle.

  Conan grinned at both of them and Max could have sworn the dog winked at him, though of course he knew that was crazy.

  “We’re almost to Neskowin and my favorite place,” Anna said as she returned to the driver’s seat. “Are you ready for lunch?”

  He still needed to tell her he was Abigail’s nephew. But somehow the time didn’t seem right now.

  “Sure,” he answered. “I’m starving.”

  “Trust me, you’re going to love this place. Wait until you try the chili shrimp.”

  * * *

  HE COULDN’T REMEMBER the last time he had permitted himself to genuinely relax and have fun.

  In the military, he had been completely focused on his career, on becoming the best Black Hawk pilot in his entire division. And then the last six months had been devoted to healing—first the burns and the fractures, then the infection, then the nerve damage.

  All that seemed a world away from this gorgeous stretch of coastline and Anna.

  While they savored fresh clam chowder and crab legs at a charming restaurant with a spectacular view, they watched the waves roll in and gulls wheel overhead as they laughed and talked.

  She told him about growing up with three older brothers in Utah and the trouble they would get in. She told him about her father dying in an industrial accident and her mother’s death a few years later from cancer.

  She talked about her brother the biologist who lived in Costa Rica with his wife and their twin toddler girls, who knew more Spanish than they did English and could swim like little guppies. About her brother Daniel, a sheriff back home in Utah and his wife, Lauren, who was the only physician for miles around their small town and about her brother Marc, whose wife had just left him to raise their two little boys on his own.

  He would have been content just to listen to her talk about her family with her hands gesturing wildly and her face more animated than he had seen it. But she seemed to expect some conversation in return.

  Since he didn’t think she’d be interested in the stepsiblings he had barely known even when his mother had been married to their respective fathers, he told her instead about his real family. About his army unit and learning to fly his bird, about night sorties when it was
pitch-black beneath him as they flew over villages with no electricity and he felt like he was flying over some lunar landscape, about the strength and courage of the people he had met there.

  After lunch, they took a short walk with Conan along the quiet, cold beach before continuing the short trip to Lincoln City.

  Though he had been careful not to touch her all day, he was aware of the heat simmering between them. He would have to be dead to miss it—the kick of his heartbeat when she smiled, the tightening of his insides when she laughed and ran after Conan on the beach, the burning ache he fought down all day to kiss her once again.

  She was the most beautiful woman he had ever known but he couldn’t find any words to tell her so that didn’t sound corny and artificial. As they reached the busy outskirts of Lincoln City, he watched, fascinated, as his lighthearted companion seemed to become more focused and reserved with each passing mile.

  By the time they drove into a small district of charming storefronts and upscale restaurants and pulled up in front of the cedar-and-brick facade that said By-the-Wind Two, she seemed a different person.

  “You can wait here if you’d like,” she said after she had turned off the engine.

  “I’d like to see your store, if that’s okay with you,” he said. There was a much smaller likelihood of anyone recognizing him as Abigail’s nephew in Lincoln City than if he’d gone into the original By-the-Wind, he figured. Beyond that, he really did want to see where she worked.

  “Can I carry something for you?” he asked.

  “I’ve got six boxes here. They’re extremely fragile so we would probably be better off making a few trips rather than trying to haul everything in at once,” she said.

  He picked up a box with his good arm and followed her to a side entrance to the store, which she unlocked and propped open for them. They carried the boxes into what looked like a back storage room then they made two more trips each, the last one accompanied by Conan.

  After they set down the last boxes, Anna led the way into the main section of the store.