Chapter Nine #2
“That’d be great,” Simon said. “I haven’t had a chance to see what sort of tools are in the shed so this is a huge help.”
Luke and I watched the three men trudge up the stairs. I could tell Luke was curious, so I said, “Go ahead and have a look. I know I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Thanks.” He set the carafe on the counter and hurried up the stairs behind the others.
I was pulling plates out of the cupboard when Bebe reappeared.
“Do you have a dog?” She sat down on one of the stools at the kitchen counter. “I thought I heard one barking. I love dogs.”
I pointed out the sliding glass door to the yard where my big boy was lying in the grass with his belly in the air. “That would be Dude.”
Bebe gasped and clapped her hands together. “A harlequin Great Dane? He’s beautiful. I’ll have to bring my Frank over. He loves other dogs.”
“Thank you,” I said. “He’s mine but my…er…housemate Simon put him outside so he didn’t knock you down with his usual exuberant greeting.”
“Housemate?” Bebe rested her hand on her chin in a tell me more pose. “Is that why there’s tape on the floor? Setting boundaries?”
“Just measuring rooms.” I was too mortified to admit I’d taped off everything in a snit. How could I possibly explain this extremely unusual situation?
I unwrapped the pastries and fruit and set the tray on the counter for easy access.
I put out the plates with a stack of paper napkins I’d found in the pantry, then the coffee mugs, most of which had pithy fishing expressions on them like “Gone Fishing” or “Sorry I missed your call, I’m on the other line.
” My mouth turned up in the corners as I could not picture Pops, a man who loved his Churchill Blue Willow, drinking out of one of these but given the contents of the cupboard, he must have.
“Your pastries look amazing.”
“Thank you.” Bebe smiled, clearly pleased. “I bake when I’m emotional.” She patted her belly. “Which has been most of the time lately.”
“And it’s the reason I’m rocking a baked goods belly to rival her baby belly.” Luke walked into the kitchen, patting his belly through his T-shirt. “You have to help a guy out, Hannah.”
“Well, when you put it like that…” I grabbed a cinnamon swirl Danish off the tray and took a bite.
Crunchy on the outside, chewy in the middle, with thick ribbons of cinnamon and raisins spiraling into the center.
It was Nirvana in the form of pastry. “Oh, wow, this is really good. Come over anytime.”
Bebe laughed and then grew serious. “Luke and I were so sorry to hear about Billy’s passing especially so soon after Bobby’s death.”
It was jarring to hear her call Pops “Billy.” I simply couldn’t wrap my brain around it. Then her words made me pause. “I’m sorry, did you say he passed shortly after Bobby?”
She tipped her head and a crease formed between her brows. “You didn’t know?”
Simon entered the kitchen. I glanced at him, wondering how much he’d heard. He met my gaze and I knew as surely as my middle name was Belinda, after my Nana, that he’d heard us.
“Neither Hannah nor I knew that our grandfathers were co-owners of this cottage until the day before yesterday, and between chasing down a rogue bat and the damage from last night’s storm, we haven’t had much time to figure things out.” Simon turned to me. “Gramps passed away four months ago.”
“Pops was a month ago.” I turned to Bebe and Luke. “The estate attorney told us that we each inherited our grandfather’s half of the house and the property. We’re supposed to live here for two months before we make any decisions regarding the place.”
“That must have been a surprise,” Luke said. He picked up a cheese Danish and took a healthy bite.
“A bit,” Simon agreed. “Our grandfathers apparently shared this cottage as their fishing getaway and never told either of our families about the arrangement. It makes sense, though. Outer Banks property is pricey. They likely were trying to offset the expense by being co-owners.”
Luke and Bebe exchanged a considering glance. Simon snagged a cinnamon-raisin pastry and bit into it. A smile of delight passed over his face, making him even more annoyingly handsome.
“I don’t know about Hannah, but you can unload your baked goods on me anytime,” he said. It was exactly what I’d just said. Our mind meld was beginning to concern me.
“I’ll fight you for them.” I turned and met his gaze. I was just teasing but his eyebrow ticked up and I remembered we were at odds about what to do with the cottage. Maybe joking about fighting wasn’t my best play.
Despite the fact that our grandfathers had been friends, I had to remember that Simon was a relative stranger to me and I didn’t want to get myself into a situation where I was the woman remembered as “one who lit up every room she entered” in a news story about a house share gone wrong.
Bebe turned to Luke. “I like the new neighbors already.”
Neither Simon nor I corrected her assumption that we were moving in permanently.
Although I fully intended to live in the cottage, I had no idea if Simon would.
And even though we had managed the bat and the chaos of the storm last night, I wasn’t sure how I felt about sharing a house with a man I’d met less than forty-eight hours ago.
I poured out mugs of coffee while the low hum of the chainsaw sounded from upstairs.
“Zach and Roland are going to get the tree out of the house,” Simon said. “I offered to help but they turned me down.”
“That’s just as well,” Luke said. “Roland can be very particular about the way things get done.”
Simon and Luke started talking about fishing, football, and the weather while Bebe and I discussed the cottage. She was polite enough not to remark on the ancient ’90s interior so I did it for her.
“I think that carpeting was designed during the Cold War to survive a nuclear winter,” I said.
Bebe snorted and pressed her hand to her nose as if to keep the coffee she just drank from leaking out. Then she laughed. “I didn’t want to say anything to you, but I used to tease Billy and Bobby about their twentieth-century vibe.”
“It’s totally fresh,” I said, and we both snickered.
“Fresh?” Luke looked doubtful.
“It was the only ’90s reference I could think of to describe the decor.” I held my arms wide to encompass the living room.
“It does look frozen in time,” Simon said. “But I thought Gramps bought the cottage about twenty years ago.”
“Do you think they bought it furnished?” I couldn’t remember what the interior had looked like when I’d been here as a kid.
“They must have,” Simon said. “It’s not like there’s a big demand for vintage ’90s furniture.”
“Weird.” I glanced around the open floor plan and then at Bebe and Luke. “I still don’t understand why they didn’t tell us about each other or that they shared the cottage.”
Bebe drummed her fingers on the counter. She frowned and said, “I don’t want to overstep and speak out of turn, but…”
“But what?” Simon prompted.
“Billy and Bobby were…a…” She spread her arms wide as if this conclusion was obvious.
Simon and I stared at her.
“A couple.” Roland finished her sentence as he appeared in the doorway.