Chapter 16
Joe
George Bartok leaned companionably against the ferry railing. “How’s business, Joe?”
Joe watched Anne’s bright head as she made her way along the waterfront against the flow of disembarking tourists. “Can’t complain.”
She was dragging a suitcase with one hand and balancing a cardboard cup carrier in the other—striding ahead regardless of risk, a disaster waiting to happen. Typical Anne. A smile tugged the corner of his mouth.
George settled in beside him, ignoring the passengers straggling aboard. “Got a load for us today?”
“When I get back,” Joe said absently. “Sunday. Picking up some lumber in Chicago.”
He’d arranged the job at the last minute, after he’d heard Anne might need a ride. Which George didn’t need to know. Or Anne, either.
She bumped up the gangplank, her red hair and wide smile attracting all the sunshine. “Hi, Mr. Bartok. Joe.” She handed him a coffee from her tray.
George’s eyebrows climbed as Joe took the cup. That was the thing about living on an island with a year-round population under six hundred. Everybody knew your business. And what they didn’t know, they made up.
The back of his neck heated. “Thanks.”
George looked from Anne’s sunny face to Joe’s red one and grinned. “Pickup, huh?” He shifted his bulk from the railing. “Enjoy your trip, you two.”
He moved away to pluck a kid off a locker full of life vests.
“What was that about?” Anne asked.
“Nothing.” Joe cleared his throat. “Hailey show up this morning?”
“Aw, are you worried about her? That’s so sweet.”
“Maybe I didn’t want to leave your mom shorthanded.” He took a sip of coffee. Black, one sugar. The possibility that she remembered how he took his morning coffee warmed him from the inside. Which was fucking pathetic. Zoe had probably poured it, anyway.
He glanced at Anne’s drink, which was topped with whipped cream and a drizzle of something brown. “I see you brought breakfast.”
“Muffins. For both of us.” She raised a paper bag stamped with Maddie’s logo. “Peanut butter chocolate fudge or blueberry?”
He’d cooked up some eggs before leaving the house. But she was so obviously trying to please, he said, “Blueberry sounds great.” He nodded toward the ship’s cabin. “You want to eat inside?”
She huffed in dismissal. “Inside is for wusses. It’s a beautiful day.”
They sat outside like a couple of tourists as the ferry chugged away from the dock, moving into the wind.
The breeze fluttered the napkins and snatched at the bag, blowing Anne’s hair around.
A strand caught by the corner of her mouth, stuck on that drizzle of sweetness.
She pulled it free. He wanted to kiss her, right there, on her soft, pink lips.
He looked away. Too late. She was already burned into his retinas, her face blazing against the water and sky like a hundred tiny suns.
Knock it off, he ordered himself. He was not starting something with Anne Gallagher. She was a distraction, an interruption in his solid, uneventful life. She wasn’t going to stay. Hell, she was headed to Chicago right this fucking minute to work things out with her doctor boyfriend.
He was simply helping her out, the way Rob would have wanted. A short-term fix, a favor to a friend.
He held firmly to that thought for the rest of the crossing, grateful the rush of the wind and the noise of the engine drowned out the possibility of conversation. Anne looked around eagerly, her face shining, as they passed the bridge and churned into the dock.
Joe kept his mind on the job. Grab the bags, walk to the lot, check the tires, oil, gas. No problem.
Until they got into his truck. Until she slipped off her shoes, the leopard-print ones, and rolled down her window with a sigh.
He headed east on State Street, the lake on the left, bungalows on the right, trying not to notice her bare feet, her long legs in tight jeans.
“So, tell me about this job in Chicago,” she invited after they merged onto I-75.
It should have been a relief talking about work, the next task to be done. But then she propped her pale feet on the dashboard.
He tore his attention from her purple toenails and focused on the broken white line in the road. “It’s a six-unit three-flat built around 1920. Original floors, windows, and trim. They’re ripping it all out, converting the building into condos.”
“And you get the wood?”
“Some of it. An old building like that, it’s got layers. In demolition, they tear it all out, crush it up, throw it away. With deconstruction, you take it apart to reuse.”
“That’s what your friend does.”
He felt himself relaxing, expanding in the face of her interest. “Has a whole big warehouse full of heritage wood, like a museum, almost. They still do builds. But a lot of their business is selling lumber to guys like me.”
“You mean, other carpenters.”
“Carpenters, contractors, guys with no space.”
She wiggled her toes. “Do you want more space?”
“I don’t know.” Yes. “Maybe. Wouldn’t be worth it, paying for that much freight back and forth to the island. Makes more sense to focus on the business I’ve got, work on a piece or two at a time.”
“Unless you left the island,” she pointed out.
“Not an option,” he said. Not for me. He searched around for another subject, something to keep her talking. “What does Maddie think about you moving down to Atlanta?”
“I haven’t said I’m moving.”
They were driving a long way for her to deliver a breakup speech. “Okay.”
“Also…” She looked at her lap, picking at a hole in the leg of her jeans. “I haven’t told her yet.”
“Why’s that?”
“I don’t tell everybody everything.”
“Hard to believe,” he said, straight-faced.
She grinned. “Waak waak waak.”
He arched one eyebrow.
“Squawking. Like a parrot?” she offered.
A smile tugged his mouth. “Sparrow.”
“What?”
He cleared his throat. “That’s what your dad used to call you.” He’d always thought the nickname suited her. Cheeky, noisy, happy little bird, hopping around. But parrot worked, too. Colorful. Expressive.
“You called me the Pest,” she pointed out without heat.
“Because you were hard to ignore.” Another beat. Another glance. “Still are.”
Their gazes caught and held. Her lips parted. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel, trying to get his mind back on the road.
“Anyway…” She gave a slightly breathless laugh. “It’s always been easier to talk to my dad than my mom.”
It was none of his business, he told himself. He was merely getting her where she needed to go. Doing a favor for a friend. But maybe—as a friend—he should say something. “Maddie’s really glad you came home.”
Anne snorted. “How would you know?”
“She told me.”
“She never said anything to me.”
He heard the hurt. He just didn’t know what to do about it. “Not everybody can talk about…you know.”
“Their feelings?”
“Yeah. Give her time.”
Her fingers returned to the fray in her jeans. Joe was congratulating himself on getting through this conversation when she asked, “When did she tell you?”
“I don’t know. I guess when I was at the house.”
Anne twisted in her seat. “It was you.”
“What?”
“The repairs. You fixed the gutters. You’ve been fixing everything.”
“Not everything.”
“The porch step?”
“It was dangerous.”
“The front door?”
“I adjusted the hinges. No big deal.”
“No wonder Mom thinks you’re wonderful.” She met his gaze again, her eyes shining.
He felt a warning prickle on the back of his neck. She couldn’t go looking at him like that, like he was something special. He shouldn’t be looking at her at all. “How about some music?”
She blinked those eyes at him. “I could put on a playlist.”
“Sure. Whatever.”
She leaned over in her seat to dig in her bag. Her shirt rode up, exposing the bumps of her spine. He focused on the road ahead as she connected the aux cable and scrolled on her phone.
“No Billie Eilish,” he warned.
She shot him a glinting look. “How do you feel about Taylor Swift?”
He had a teenage sister. “I think she’s a powerful, talented woman,” he said promptly.
“Wise answer.”
“With great legs.”
“Ha.” She tapped her phone.
But the music crashing out of the speakers wasn’t anything his sister listened to.
It was Rob’s music, eighties’ rock, Journey and Bon Jovi, songs about fast cars and leaving town and cruising down the highway.
Anne danced beside him to “Summer of ’69” as the farms and fields rolled by.
High in the blue, jet contrails streaked the postcard sky.
The wind rushed through the windows as Bruce Springsteen sang Rob’s songs, and for a while, Joe was nineteen again, with the sun on his shoulders and money in his pocket, listening to his friend belt along with the Boss under an open sky.
“I’m hungry,” Anne announced somewhere down the road.
“Eat a muffin.”
“They’re gone.”
He glanced at the paper bag by her feet. “Have some fudge.”
“I can’t. It’s a present for Chris’s parents.”
“Why are you getting them a present? It’s his graduation.”
“I want them to like me.”
Which made no sense.
“Everybody likes you,” Joe said.
Because she liked them. Fifteen years ago, she’d been like the Pied Piper or something, always making up games for the other kids to play.
He’d seen her in the shop, handing out smiles like samples of fudge to tourists.
She oohed and aahed over pictures of Carol Johnson’s children and grandchildren, asked about Mr. Hubbell’s bursitis, loaned that book to Hailey.
“They don’t, actually. But sometimes presents help.”
“What did you get him? The doctor?”
“I didn’t get him anything.” She looked at him, her wide eyes suddenly full of doubt. “Should I have?”
“No.” She was enough. It bothered him she didn’t see that. “How about some lunch?”
“I don’t want to make us late.”
“You won’t. I have to stop for gas, anyway. We can pick up sandwiches or something.”
At the next exit, he filled the gas tank while Anne dashed in to pee. Parking the truck, he followed her into the convenience store.
No Anne.