Chapter Nineteen #2
Emma could feel the tension seething beneath her skin.
If she needed any kind of reminder about her own mistakes, this was it. She and her dad had always talked about working together
some day. Even after his death, she could have been helping her mom run the company if she had not made the choices she had.
What was done was done. She could not change the past or the decisions she had made. That didn’t stop her from resenting a
woman she held responsible for so much of her pain.
“I better take off,” Pam said after looking at her watch. “I’m already late. I told my friend I would stop by to see her a
half hour ago.”
“I’ll see you later,” Bryce said.
“I love what you’ve already done to the place,” Pam said. “I can’t wait to see the rest. I’m sure it will all be fabulous
when you’re finished. Everything you touch ends up so much better.”
“Thanks,” Bryce said, clearly pleased.
Emma again fought the urge to punch Pam in the face. And Bryce, too, while she was at it. He was doing a great job here but Emma had certainly helped. She had come up with most of the ideas and she was spending plenty
of her free time after hours helping where she could.
After Pam finally left, Emma went to the front door and turned the sign to Closed, then locked it. If she used a little more force than usual,
who could blame her?
When she was certain Pam couldn’t somehow sneak back in, she finally turned to Bryce. “I wasn’t sure if I would see you here
today.”
“I did say I would be here when I was done at the other project, I just wasn’t sure what time.”
“I know, but I also know how much work you’re doing to wrap things up over there.”
She had enjoyed discussing the other jobs on his schedule while they were working together on the renovation here. Bryce was
obviously passionate about his work and she loved hearing his enthusiasm when he described it.
Okay, she loved any moment she could spend with him.
She was developing a serious crush on Bryce Kendall and she didn’t know what she was going to do about it.
“I do have other projects with unavoidable deadlines but The Rainy Day Bookshop is still my priority. I want to help you get
this done so we can open the café before the summer’s over.”
“So we can open the café?” she asked shortly.
“So you can,” he amended. He gave her a careful look. “Is everything okay? You seem upset at something.”
She was tempted to tell him everything. She even opened her mouth, then closed it again. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t betray
the secrets she had kept for all these years.
“It’s the rain,” she said instead. It wasn’t a lie, just not the entire truth. “I don’t like rainy days. I haven’t, since . . .
well. Since I was a teenager.”
His features softened with compassion, and she knew he was also thinking of her father. He must know, after working with her
mother for so long, that rain had played a factor in the accident that had taken Gary’s life.
He could not know the rest of it. No one did. Not even her mother.
Emma was the only one who knew that she and her father had been fighting, that she had been furious with Gary, so angry that
she hadn’t paid attention when he warned her the roadway could be slick.
She hadn’t been speeding, but she also hadn’t been as careful as she should have been, too busy telling her father off. As
the vehicle lost purchase, she had forgotten all the things she’d learned about steering into a skid.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s one of the reasons I moved to Vegas. Desert. Heat. Not much rain.”
“You couldn’t pick two more different climates.”
She had come to love the area around Las Vegas while she lived there. She had grown to appreciate the vastness of the desert,
punctuated by spindly Joshua trees, and the fascinating red rock formations of the state parks outside of town.
Still, the coastal rainforests and remote beaches around Wood Briar would always be home.
Bryce eased out of his jacket. “I, for one, love the rain. I guess I have to, if I live on the Oregon coast.”
“Why?” she asked.
He paused, brow furrowed as he gave her single-word question serious thought. She admired that about him, how he never answered
quickly or glibly.
“So many reasons. What’s better than watching the storm clouds come in over the water, that dramatic sense of anticipation
as you wait for them to unleash?”
She had always loved that as well. She could remember when she was a girl sitting in her bedroom and watching the water turn
dark and clouds gather. It was the perfect weather for curling up in the window seat of her bedroom and watching the storms
while she immersed herself in her latest read.
She wanted to reclaim that cozy mood here in the bookstore. That was her goal, making the shop a warm, welcome haven against
an outside world that could sometimes feel dark and lonely.
“What’s your plan for tonight?” she asked
“I need to keep working on pulling off the old lath and plaster to return the wall to its original brick. Another few days
and I should be done.”
“I can help. Let me know what you need me to do.”
He looked surprised at her offer. “I’m fine by myself, if you need to get back to Olive.”
She shook her head. “It’s fine. She and I spent all day together, since I didn’t come in until a few hours ago. I had planned
to work on organizing a few things but I can do that another day.”
“Is Olive with your mom tonight?”
“Mom and Sylvia. They can’t seem to get enough of her and Olive has them both wrapped around her finger.”
“Not at all surprised. She’s quite a charmer.”
“Too much. She already thinks she runs the world, living with three women who all adore her.”
“If Olive truly did run the world, we would all be much better off.”
“Don’t tell her that. You’ll give her more ideas. Now, how can I help you?”
While the rain pattered outside, they worked together in sections, with him pulling away the drywall and her coming in after
him to clean off any residue with a wire brush.
The bricks beneath were a weathered rose, like the faded petals of a long-forgotten Valentine’s bouquet. They would look fantastic
under the track lighting Bryce planned to install, especially behind the open-backed shelving they had already agreed on for
this wall.
“This is looking so good. You were exactly right when you insisted we should use the original bricks in the design.”
“It takes more work than if we simply repainted the drywall but the results will be worth it.”
“I wish we could close the whole bookstore for a month, clear everything out and then remodel from the ground up. It would
be so much easier.”
“Doing the work mostly after hours is definitely more complicated, but at least you can continue to stay open during the remodel.”
“For all the good that’s doing us.”
“Business has been slow?”
She grimaced. “Painfully. You would think a rainy day would bring more traffic in, since tourists usually don’t want to spend
time on the beach in this weather. But I think they’ve either left town altogether, are staying in their hotel rooms, or have
driven up to Newport or Lincoln City.”
“It does seem quiet everywhere in town right now. Don’t worry. They’ll be back.”
“I hope so.”
She continued the work, wishing she could brush away her own unsettled mood as easily as she brushed away the residue of years
from the walls.