Chapter 3 Rhiannon, Nosy Neighbors & Belonging （or lack thereof）
RHIANNON, NOSY NEIGHBORS & BELONGING (OR LACK THEREOF)
THE PRODIGAL DAUGHTER RETURNS!
We’ve last seen Rhiannon Crowhart twenty years ago, departing the Nest and Dragons, promising never to come back.
With construction in full swing at the Old Atelier, the town awaits with bated breath the fate of its most coveted property that has been languishing for decades and wonders about the reason behind the return of the banished Crowhart.
—Crow’s Caw
Rhiannon Crowhart did not roll her eyes at the screaming headline and ink wasted on lines of innuendo in the yellowish publication, but she wanted to.
Still, she knew bait when it walked in and introduced itself.
She had never been banished, unless one counted one’s own conscience, and nobody needed to know that. Certainly not her next-door neighbor.
Rhiannon made a point of never making lists, especially for things that were beneath her notice.
She decidedly didn’t make lists of observations about people she did not care to observe in the first place.
And the young, willowy creature stealing gazes at her from her small bookstore was not someone Rhiannon bothered with as a rule.
Still, if she were to concoct such a list, it would be very short.
Number 1. The shopkeeper had prying eyes and, by the look of it, straw-like silky hair that kept escaping the messy bun the woman tried to fix every so often.
Number 2. The shopkeeper was nosy.
Rhiannon caught her watching all the comings and goings approximately ten days after she moved in.
She’d have certainly noticed sooner, but then again, Rhiannon Crowhart was the one being noticed, not the other way around.
As a former auctioneer with over a decade of experience running one of the biggest auction houses—some might even say one of the best out there—Rhiannon knew that oftentimes she was the one observed, catalogued, and admired.
The pièce de résistance. The crown jewel and the most desired object in every collection on display.
As such, it was none of her business who looked at her.
She shined, so being stared at was par for the course.
Those curious eyes had probably watched her from the very first day, if for nothing else than the fact that she was Rhiannon Crowhart of the island Crowharts, returned to her ancestral nest. Pun intended. And here, in this accursed place, attention came with the last name.
Number 3. The shopkeeper’s prying eyes were of a remarkable gray. They sat on a pretty face, touched by a guileless sort of naiveté Rhiannon would normally cringe at, due to how utterly defenseless it seemed.
If Rhiannon was perfectly honest with herself, and she tended to not be quite so often—life was hard as it was, there was no need for more sharp edges—she would confess to seeing those remarkable gray eyes in her dreams, night after night, since stepping foot in the town’s limits.
The dreams always faded and left her with more questions, a sense of fear and claustrophobia that she had never known herself to be afflicted with, and yet she remembered calling out, reaching for the woman who looked at her as if she had come to save her…
Rhiannon blinked and then simply closed her eyes. No, just dreams, just this godforsaken place, this island, this town, this damned house.
She needed to keep moving, doing, building, fixing. These were the only things that kept her sanity. As for the neighbor? Rhiannon’s list of observations about her ended. Pretty eyes or not, this wasn’t someone Rhiannon sought out. She preferred her women older, experienced—
Rhiannon took a deep breath and forced herself to abandon that train of thought. There were no women. Once upon a time she might’ve had a preference, but for the past two decades there had only been one. Rhiannon had nobody to blame but herself.
Another deep breath and she put the fresh-faced ingénue out of her mind, crumpling the newspaper and three-pointing it into the trash can.
Then she looked down at her manicure and saw that the petty gesture smudged her just applied coat of burgundy nail polish.
Dammit. Fighting back in this town always cost her.
She thought how she really should’ve learned her lesson by now. Don’t react. Go through the motions. Let time pass. After all, in her predicament, the only way out was through.
A year. Twelve months. Margaux’s last act of revenge, even from the grave, was her will and testament.
Nothing lets a surviving spouse know about the depth of their wife’s hatred of them as the sheer pettiness included in the remains of the crumbling estate.
All the little hurtful stipulations, all the slaps at her, all the words the lawyer had to read in front of a crowd—because of course Margaux had to have a crowd at the reading of her will—nothing had bothered Rhiannon.
Nothing had touched her. Until the last set of provisions.
The business they had started together, the one Rhiannon managed by herself most of their twenty-year marriage, the one that became successful due to her guile, acumen, and her restorer’s talent—that business would be forever tied in legal quagmires unless Rhiannon returned to Dragons and Crow’s Nest and took possession of the Old Atelier for one year.
She lowered her face to the windowpane, the cool glass soothing heated skin, allaying her anger.
It was a useless emotion anyway, even if Rhiannon allowed herself to indulge in it.
Her lawyers fought for months, and it had still come to this.
Rhiannon Crowhart was back on Dragons, back in Crow’s Nest, and back in the Atelier that, despite all the hours of renovations, paint, cement, and construction glue, still smelled the same.
Twenty years and she could still smell Margaux in these walls.
All the noise of the renovation site and she could still hear old man Jerome’s cough as he leaned over the magnifying glass inspecting some stitch in the leather binding.
So, nothing changed on Dragons. Except twenty years ago the bookstore next door had a different owner, one who didn’t have eyes as pretty.
The widow Fowler. Well, she had been quite feeble back then, the judgmental old biddy.
Rhiannon felt the judgment on her own skin every day, even before the whole Margaux affair blew up in her face.
The Crowhart and Fowler feud or some such ancient nonsense that nobody remembered but the old crone.
And the bookstore itself did not look as inviting.
It didn’t matter, though. Rhiannon had to endure exactly twelve months in this godforsaken place, and so she would.
Otherwise, not only would her auction house be in trouble, but the Old Atelier itself would revert to the state.
And one thing the Caw was right about—the damn heap of brick and oak was valuable.
It was also storied, a fact Rhiannon preferred not to think about.
She tried to tell herself that not all sins were hers to wash.
The Atelier had been storied and extremely valuable even back when Rhiannon was silently pining after the sad and lonely woman of the house.
Its position opposite the town hall on the main square of Crow’s Nest afforded it amazing views and strategic placement.
It had been worth a fortune twenty years ago.
It had quadrupled or quintupled in price since the eighteen-year-old Rhiannon crossed its threshold the very first time.
Still, it hadn’t been the money that forced her hand making her shutter her business and sell the house in Malibu. It wasn’t the prospect of finally owning the most famous building in Crow’s Nest.
No, none of those things mattered. She was a wealthy woman with or without the Old Atelier. She would remain wealthy even if her auction house was ripped away from her.
When it came down to it, Rhiannon knew what had made her drive off the damn Dragons ferry and onto the cobble streets and down to the Market Square and use the ornate antique key on the rusted ancient lock was spite. A simple, petty, and very effective reason for doing things one abhorred.
Margaux had taken so much already. Rhiannon would be damned if she would give her another inch more. Spite worked for her in this case.
It also worked in helping ignore the curious stares of the townies. Even if some of those were coming from a pair of very pretty eyes.
Rhiannon chose not to dwell on the fact that those eyes also made her lose control for one second. It was only one second, after all. Nobody noticed. It was fine. So something sparked between them. So what? It was nothing.
“And they needed the rain anyway.”
Rhiannon chose to ignore the small voice inside her restless brain telling her otherwise. Telling her this “nothing” was as far away from actually being nothing as Dragons was from Los Angeles. Something did happen. Something important. And it dovetailed with the dreams.
Those damn dreams…
Rhiannon again ignored the voice and put the woman next door out of her mind entirely. She wasn’t in control of her dreams anyway, and moreover, dismissing things and forgetting they inhabited the same planet as her was always the right way to deal with any nuisance.
Boleyn meowed her agreement to her mistress’s musings, and Rhiannon scratched the silky ears absentmindedly.
“It’s when you start saying things like ‘they need the rain’ that they cart you off to the big house, Your Majesty,” a cheerful voice boomed from the back room, and Rhiannon blamed the weather for her mood and for her state of distractedness. She hadn’t sensed her assistant’s presence.
He sauntered in and sidled up to her, loud and boisterous as ever, and took a bite out of a rather large carrot. Rhiannon ignored his remark and answered with a question of her own.
“Did the lumber arrive here in time? Or will I have to deal with soggy boards on top of everything else?”