Chapter 11
eleven
“IS YOUR AUNT HERE?”
Whitney looked up from where she and the kids were cutting out snowflakes at the front table in the dining room. At the next table, Daniel glanced up too, his forehead still wrinkled in thought. It slowly eased as he focused his gaze on Ruby, who swung into the room.
Ruby’s smile was wider than the Northumberland Strait and brighter than a galaxy of stars. With an expectant flip of her hand, she said, “Well?”
Daniel looked around the room. “No. I don’t think so.”
“Where is she?” Ruby shifted from foot to foot, her anticipation visible. “You have to get her here.”
Pushing himself up, Daniel leaned forward, his hands flat against the table. “What happened?”
Ruby pressed a finger to her red lips. “Where’s Aretha?”
He sighed but picked up his phone and quickly called his aunt. “Can you come over? ... Yeah, Ruby has some news ... All right. See you in a few.” When he hung up, he looked up expectantly, as though by making the phone call he’d done enough to earn at least some of the news.
Ruby didn’t agree. She shook her head and waltzed toward the kids. “What are you working on?”
“Snowflakes,” Jack said, using his safety scissors to cut haphazard shapes from the artfully folded pieces of colorful paper.
“Can I make some too?”
Whitney nearly dropped her scissors but scrambled to find another pair beneath the loose papers strewn across the tabletop. When she handed them over, Ruby gracefully lowered herself into the chair beside Jack. Her lips were pursed in a secretive half smile.
“You’re really not going to tell us?” Whitney whispered.
Ruby’s smile faltered.
Whitney immediately recognized her misstep. She wasn’t supposed to know about the situation—hypothetically or otherwise. And she had no stake in the store’s acquisition.
“I—um—it just seems like you have good news. Don’t you want to share it?”
Ruby relaxed as she folded a piece of paper in half and then in half again. “I’ll wait.”
Daniel had sat down again in front of his computer, but he couldn’t seem to focus on whatever was on the screen. He picked up his finger as though he was going to type. Then paused. Suddenly his chair scraped across the floor as he swung it toward the end of the craft table. With a spin on one chair leg, he sat down backward, resting his arms across the back of the seat.
“Seriously?” His voice was low but prodding. “You’re going to make us wait?”
Ruby batted her perfectly curved lashes and offered a flirty titter but didn’t raise her head from the smooth motion of her scissors.
After several seconds of silence, Daniel grumbled, “Better give me some of those too.”
Julia Mae immediately handed over her scissors, which were the perfect size for a four-year-old. In Daniel’s hands, they looked like they belonged in a dollhouse.
Whitney shot him a sideways smile, and the corners of his eyes crinkled as he gave a couple practice snips with the blades that were about as likely as not to cut through the paper.
“Here, you can use this paper.” Julia Mae passed him a crumpled red piece. “I folded it myself,” she added, sitting up straighter on her knees.
“Thank you,” he said and set to work sawing through the construction paper.
They were still enamored with paper snowflakes when Aretha arrived fifteen minutes later. The front door rattled when she slammed it closed, but she had to call to get their attention. “What’s the news?”
Ruby jumped up from a pile of colorful confetti at her seat, Daniel right behind her.
“They agreed to new terms!” Ruby rushed forward and grabbed Aretha’s hands.
“Without the quilts?” Aretha asked.
“No, they want the quilts, but they’re committed to making the deal advantageous for all parties—including the quilters. I need to meet with the consignors to negotiate, but they’ll build that into the price.”
Aretha let out a swift breath before a smile broke across her face, and she scooped Ruby into a fierce hug. “Thank the good Lord.” With a quick release, Aretha steered Ruby toward Daniel, who also received a warm hug.
Whitney tried to smile but found her face stiff in spite of the joyous news. This was what they wanted. This was the news Aretha had needed.
But the churning in her middle hadn’t gotten that message, which insisted on turning over and over, agitating the acid in her stomach until it bubbled like a sourdough starter.
“Is this good news, Meemee Retha?” Julia Mae asked, running toward her surrogate grandma and hugging her about the knees.
Aretha bent over and squeezed the girl. “Yes. This is very good news!”
There it was. Right from the source. This was very good news.
Whitney put that on repeat in her mind, praying her stomach would get the message—her face too. She didn’t need a mirror to know that her features didn’t reflect any of the same joy as Aretha’s. Everything inside her had been pulled tight, a string tugging straight to the center of her chest and stealing her breath with it.
Logically, she knew that it had nothing to do with the news and everything to do with the way Ruby had slipped into Daniel’s embrace. She fit there perfectly, his arms wrapped around her waist, holding her securely. Beneath his standard blue button-up, the muscles in his shoulders bunched when he squeezed her, releasing an even broader smile on Ruby’s face.
Whitney couldn’t see his face from this angle, but Ruby’s stole what little breath she had left.
Which was absolutely ridiculous.
This was exactly what Aretha had said would happen. Exactly what Whitney was supposed to want too.
But she couldn’t watch it anymore, so she ducked her head and focused on the paper carnage across the table, brushing the litter into her open hand. Clearly a glutton for punishment, Whitney peeked up just as they stepped apart.
Ruby pressed to her tiptoes and planted a soft kiss on Daniel’s cheek. “Thank you. We would have made a major misstep without you. Everyone at the office agreed.”
Daniel gingerly touched the pads of his fingers to the spot where Ruby had pressed her lips as he looked over his shoulder.
Whitney jerked her chin away before he could catch her eye—inherently knowing he would seek her gaze out—and scooted her seat back as she searched for a reason to escape. “Come on, Jack. Help me clean this up.”
“A little while longer,” he pleaded, holding up a half-finished snowflake.
“All right. Okay. That’s fine. I’ll be right back.”
Whitney flew to the kitchen and yanked the swinging door closed behind her. It flapped a couple times before the springs stopped, shutting out the happy buzz from the other room.
Throwing herself against the counter, she pressed her hands to her overheated cheeks, her eyes burning in an altogether unwelcome way. She was being stupid. Absolutely ridiculous.
She just couldn’t turn off her reaction.
And she certainly wasn’t going to analyze it to figure out why.
She sucked in a few deep breaths through her nose and rubbed her fists against her eyes.
“This is working out even better than I could have hoped!” Aretha announced in a stage whisper as the jingle bell on the door announced her entry. “Now they’re going to—” She froze, her hands mid-dance above her head. “Honey? Are you all right?”
Whitney blinked, trying to focus her fuzzy vision, and managed a jerky nod. “Of course.”
Aretha pressed a hand to her arm. “You look a little peaked. Are you sure?”
“Just a—uh—just a headache.” She managed a wan smile. “But that’s great news about the store.”
Her eyebrows dancing up and down, Aretha giggled. “Even better news about Daniel and Ruby.”
“Oh?” Whitney pressed a hand to her middle as the churning dough starter returned.
“Well, now they’ll have to meet with all of my consignors, and some of them aren’t local. That means more time together. More opportunity for sparks to fly.”
More opportunity for Ruby to kiss him again.
More opportunity for Daniel to realize how much he liked it. How much he liked her.
The headache she’d fudged a moment before suddenly pounded very real behind her eyes. “Right. Good.”
“I knew she’d come through. She really worked to make things right, even though it was my mistake.” She steepled her fingers beneath her chin. “I knew I liked her from the beginning. She’ll be so good for him. Did you see? He almost smiled.”
“You’re very perceptive,” Whitney agreed. She hadn’t seen Daniel smile today, but she had heard his actual laugh after the pocket butter incident.
And that had been because of her. Okay, it had been because of her silly mistake. But still, he’d joined her in laughter. The only hint of it in the weeks he’d been on the island.
But he certainly hadn’t pushed Ruby away today. He’d held her long and close. And that kiss...
“Honey, you don’t look good. Why don’t you go home and lie down?”
She began to argue that someone needed to stay with the kids, but Aretha cut her off. “I’ll watch Julia Mae and Jack until Seth gets home. You go take care of yourself.”
She gave a mute nod. She could go home, but she had no idea how she was supposed to take care of whatever irrationality had settled on her. Because Daniel had found a place in her mind, and he didn’t seem eager to vacate it.
Daniel looked up from his spot on the couch in the parlor with every creak of the floor. He hadn’t seen Whitney in three days, and he was beginning to think it might be intentional on her part. He’d seen evidence of her in the inn’s kitchen. He’d even tasted evidence of her work—savoring a particularly tasty breakfast hash that very morning. But Marie had delivered it. As Seth had the day before.
They’d made some excuses about Whitney needing to get to another farmers’ market. But there couldn’t be one every day this week.
If he was honest with himself, he’d hoped she would ask him to help her again. They’d made a good team in Summerside.
And where else could he wear his turkey toque?
But the creak from the floorboard in the hallway wasn’t Whitney. Ruby appeared beneath the mistletoe instead, her eyes bright. “There you are. I thought maybe you’d gone to the shop.”
He shook his head. Which was the extent of the response that she allowed.
“So, I was thinking about the quilters that we need to meet with. I have a drafted agreement for them.” She waved a single sheet of paper as she dropped to the couch right beside him. “What do you think of this section? I was thinking that it leaves the door open for future sales to the store but at negotiable rates.”
Daniel tried to scoot closer to the armrest to give her more room as she rattled on. She only leaned in closer, holding the page in front of him and reading the section in question.
“I was thinking that we should give ourselves at least ninety minutes for each appointment. I doubt it’ll take that long, but we’re working with artists, not businesswomen. We might need to explain some of the details.”
He nodded slowly. But instead of agreement, a suggestion popped out of his mouth, evidence of what had been on his mind. “I think we should bring Whitney with us.”
The paper wilted as she swung toward him. “What? Why?”
“It was her idea.”
Ruby leaned back and squinted up at him. “What was?”
“She’s the one who told me that the community would push back if they felt like R&R was taking advantage of the quilters or the store.”
Cocking her head, Ruby frowned. “But we don’t need her. She’ll be bored. And it could just make the appointments take longer. Anyway, doesn’t she have work to do here, watching the kids?”
Daniel sighed. All of those things were true. But he had to come up with some way to spend time with Whitney.
Ruby opened her mouth to say something else, but a little voice replaced her smooth soprano.
“Mr. Daniel! We’re going sledding. You have to come with us!”
They both swung toward the round figure waddling into the room. Julia Mae took in his open laptop and the paperwork on the coffee table trunk and then visibly ignored all evidence that he was working. She also ignored Ruby.
“Juli-a!” Footfalls raced down the hall. First small ones, then grown-up ones. Then the whole gang was there. First Little Jack, then a panting Whitney. They were all decked out in their snow gear, mittens hanging from strings on the ends of their sleeves—even Whitney.
The kids’ faces were bright, and their grown-up was prettier than usual. Her pink cheeks and sweet smile were like pie to a man on a forced diet. And he devoured the sight of her.
She caught his gaze, her smile growing. Then her eyes darted back and forth between him and Ruby, the corners of her mouth beginning to droop.
Daniel jumped up, attempting a smile. If he managed it, Whitney didn’t see it, her head already bent over her charges. “Come on, guys. We’ve been over this. We can’t bother them when they’re working.”
“But Mr. Daniel wants to go with us.” Julia Mae lifted pleading eyes toward him. “Don’t you?”
I’m sorry , Whitney mouthed, her perfect pink lips forming the words so precisely that he thought he’d actually heard them.
“You’re going sledding?”
Jack nodded vigorously. “Miss Whitney says that we can go on the big hill because Jessie’s with Mom today. It’s going to be so fun.”
Daniel had no doubt it would be. And he suddenly wanted in on it. Or at least in on the chance to spend some more time with Whitney. She couldn’t avoid him if he was hanging out with her charges.
He frowned down at his button-up and khaki pants. They would never withstand an afternoon in the snow. He’d borrowed a pair of jeans from Big Jack when they’d gone to see the lights. “You think Papa Jack has a pair of snow pants he’d loan me?”
The kids cheered, but Whitney stared at him with a blank face.
Maybe a couple hours together in the snow would help him figure out why she’d been dodging him.