Chapter 2 #2
Attempting not to be too obvious, I ushered him toward the exit once we were finished. I needed alone time pronto.
“So, how about that dinner?” Edward persisted as I opened the front door for him.
“Did I miss it?” London’s American-accented voice sent relief rushing through me. I jerked toward the open door as London hurried up the front walk and inside.
Her red hair was tied up in the bun she wore when working, and her cheeks were flushed. She looked like she’d run here.
At the sight of my pretty roommate, an idea occurred.
“London.” I smiled, and something must have been off about it because she frowned and turned warily to Edward. London had a very recent awful history and was wary of most men, but this was different. It was as if she could sense my vibes.
“London, this is Edward White, the antiques dealer who was kind enough to give me estimates. Mr. White, this is London … my girlfriend. With whom I live.”
My roommate didn’t even balk. She instantly slipped her arm around my waist, going with the lie. “Hi.”
Edward pursed his lips as he took us in. “Girlfriend?”
I squeezed London to me. “Yep.”
His displeasure couldn’t have been any clearer. “Well, good day to you, Ms. Macbeth, and good luck with your items.” Without another word, he marched out of the house and to his car. He slammed the driver’s door as he got in.
My body sagged with exhaustion and relief. London released me but turned to me, eyes searching. “What the hell was that?”
I explained to her what had happened, and London’s features tightened with displeasure.
When I was done, she bit out a curse. “I should have been here. I tried to get away from the B and B as quickly as I could.”
“Don’t.” I patted her arm as I walked back into the living room and collapsed on the sofa. “Mrs. Gilchrist recommended him. We weren’t to know he was a slime.”
“But we knew he was a strange man.” London sat down in the armchair opposite. “Going forward, neither of us is to be left alone with a guy we don’t know. Okay?”
I nodded, scrubbing a hand over my face. “I think I’ll need a second opinion on a vase. He acted shifty about it being a fake and then asked where I’m selling it. I think it might be worth more than he let on, and he’s intending to bid on it.”
“Oh, well, that’s good. Not the creepy, devious antiques dealer part but that you caught his vibes about the vase.” London frowned. “You look exhausted.”
The truth was I’d never been a particularly sociable person. I’d had to be as operational director at the charity, so I could smile and socialize with the best of them, but afterward I’d come home and feel like I could sleep for a week.
Since losing Mum, I felt like my battery drained twice as fast.
“Hey, are you okay?”
I knew I could tell London how I was feeling and she’d get it.
Since moving to Leth Sholas, she’d become something of an introvert herself.
From Tierney’s story about their time growing up in New York together, I knew London hadn’t always been that way.
She’d been sociable and loved working as a chef in a Manhattan restaurant.
Life had chipped away at that. Changed her.
She’d get it.
But I didn’t want her to take the words the wrong way, so instead I looked around the living room and at the notepad on the dining table with the list of items I needed to sell. I’d written four pages of estimates. It felt like a mountainous task to get through.
“There is a lot to sell.”
Start small, I heard my mum say.
When I was younger and found myself overwhelmed with a big project for school, she’d tell me to take one tiny aspect of it first and work on that before moving onto the next piece.
It always worked to calm me down, and I’d taken that process into my adult life.
“Start small,” London said, making my head jerk toward her in surprise. Her eyes rounded. “What?”
“I was just thinking … that’s what Mum would say.”
My roommate nodded with a sympathetic curl of her lips.
“It always helps to start small. That’s how I got my ass on a plane to Scotland.
I told myself, Buy the ticket first. Then, get to the airport.
Check your bags. Get through security. So on and so forth.
” She stood up and walked over to the dining table, picking up an antique clock Edward White had not long ago handled. “Start with this.”
An hour later, after making me lunch, London had returned to the B and B, and I now stood outside with the clock. I set it on Mum’s outdoor bistro table in the back garden. I snapped a few photos and then returned it inside. From there, I proceeded to take pictures of five more items.
Once I was finished, I uploaded them all to the site to sell.
When I’d finished, it was time for my shift at Pages & Perks. Ewan and Martha ran the store with my mum, but Martha was only part time and worked mornings. Ewan would need me there for the afternoon.
June was one of the best months on the island, and the skies were clear today, the temperature mild as I walked the five minutes to Main Street.
It was also busy with tourists, and the harbor bustled with life.
Unsurprisingly, when I stepped inside Pages & Perks, there was a queue right up to the door, and all the seats in the coffee shop were taken, as well as the ones on the bookstore side.
Walking into this store was like constantly picking at a healing wound.
Mum was just … everywhere.
Along the back wall was the coffee counter and all the machinery she’d diligently researched before buying.
She’d managed the shop for another owner when it was just a bookstore, and when they decided to sell, she’d pooled everything she had to get a mortgage to buy the building and transform it.
Upstairs was an apartment that Mum rented out to tourists.
Finella had agreed to take over running that, and the proceeds from the rent would go to my brother and wife.
I remembered talking on the phone with Mum for hours about her guests and about her shop.
She nattered on about coffee machines, coffee beans, and secondhand furniture she’d sourced like they were the most exciting things in the world.
Her love for it all had been infectious.
Until last year, I’d never stepped inside my mum’s beloved store.
She’d talked to me about it for hours, and I knew tourism during the summer months kept the shop and the rental ticking over quite nicely.
At first, she’d begged me to come see it.
I didn’t. I couldn’t come back. Like a coward, I’d allowed the past to ruin my present with her, with Laird and the boys.
My nephews barely knew me, and in my grief, I hadn’t done much to change that.
The ache of remorse was too much to deal with, so I threw out the thought as I walked slowly inside.
The adjacent side of the room was lined with bookshelves and the front of the store with bistro tables.
A comfortable couch and coffee table near the bookshelves were always the first seats to be taken.
The two armchairs situated next to an actual fireplace were always popular spots when the couch was spoken for.
Framed literary posters hung on the wall, interspersed between metal signs with sayings about coffee and books like, “That’s what I do: I drink coffee.
I read books. And I know things.” “Death to Decaf.” “Drink coffee. Do stupid things faster with more energy.” “Heaven is a never-ending supply of coffee and books. Welcome to Heaven.”
Those posters were so Mum.
She’d offered coffee to me and Laird as soon as we turned thirteen, always going on about the health benefits of drinking just the right amount of coffee a day. And books. I think it would have killed Mum if we’d turned out not to be readers, but both Laird and I enjoyed books.
Dad had too. It had been the thing Mum said had attracted her to him. When she was twelve, she’d spotted Dad sitting on the harbor reading On the Road by Jack Kerouac. He was fifteen, handsome, and a bookworm.
She said she’d fallen in love with him immediately.
It had taken Dad a couple of years to notice her back, but once he did, that was it for them.
They got married when Mum was eighteen. When Dad died, she said part of her died too.
She’d never loved another man. She’d never even attempted to date one.
He was it for her, and she said she was just lucky that she’d gotten to experience that kind of love.
Mum had reached such a beautiful, optimistic place in her grief.
It had taken her a while, but she’d made it.
When she was dying—before the cancer rapidly spread to her brain and put her in a coma—she told me and Laird that she was at peace with her impending death because she’d finally get to be with Dad again.
What a magnificent soul.
I wanted to make her proud. I wanted her to know that I was attempting to be as strong as she always was.
I strode past the customers, mostly tourists, and was just about to greet a harassed-looking Ewan when I noted the familiar broad shoulders of his current customer.
My heart turned over in my chest as those shoulders tensed. And then the man turned his head, as if he’d sensed me.
I looked into the beautiful blue eyes of Quinn McQuarrie and tried not to let him see that in the almost nineteen years since we’d been apart, I’d never gotten past the anger of losing him.
So much for making Mum proud.
I nodded in acknowledgment and then hurried behind the counter. Then I murmured to Ewan I’d be out in five minutes, and he gave me a knowing look but didn’t say anything as I disappeared into the small staff room to wait for Quinn to leave.