Chapter 10
Zoe
Firelight plays across Landon’s features where he’s stretched out next to me. His shirt has started to dry, but wet, white fabric still sticks in places I’d rather it didn’t.
I could sketch a picture of his abs if you give me a pencil and half an hour. Give me an hour, and I’ll recreate Michaelangelo’s David based on Landon’s physique, just add a fig leaf so my imagination doesn’t extend to that part of his body.
Snuggled against his chest when he rescued me from the car, his sandalwood, soapy scent fogged my brain. If he hadn’t tucked me into the passenger seat, I would have kept my nose pressed to his delicious smelling neck for the rest of the day.
Something is seriously wrong with me.
We’re supposed to be enemies. We aren’t supposed to be cozy and comfortable in front of a fire during a thunderstorm. His rapt attention shouldn’t snuggle me in unexpected comfort.
Do I trust this calm truce? Or is it Kelsey’s hopeless romantic voice making me delusional?
Landon nudges my knee. “Come on. What else are we going to do tonight?”
I don’t want to let my mind race through the possibilities because spending the evening wrapped up in blankets with Landon is a dangerous proposition. I’m wearing his clothes. He’s not being an asshole.
The squirming low in my belly when he smiles with that twinkle in his eye reminds me that he can be infinitely charming when he stops being a jerk, and I don’t have enough experience with men as suave as he is to shore up my defenses.
College was a brief education. Men don’t ask Baby Girl out for dinner, at least not ones that call Rainwater Bay home. They definitely don’t spend the night with her when they have to look her dad in the eye when they get their next cup of coffee or pay a utility bill.
I tuck my knees to my chest and wrap my arms around them. “What do you know about this house?”
He wiggles his finger back and forth. “Start at the beginning.”
I roll my eyes. “Fine. Thomas Reeves built this house in 1919 when he moved his family out of San Francisco. Valerie says they wanted room for their kids to run and play, but the rumor was Thomas got in over his head with some ne’er-do-wells, and he moved to keep them safe.”
“Ne’er-do-wells?” Landon’s smile spreads across his face like a sunrise. It’s a dangerous smile that adds to the flurries swirling in my stomach.
Enemies. Enemies. Enemies. Stay focused, Zoe. You’re here to convince him to honor the house’s tradition, not to make him smile at you so you giggle like a teenager on her first date. Woman up.
“Do you want me to tell this story or not?” But my reprimand doesn’t hold any bite.
“Continue. Please.” He bows over his outstretched hand. “I need more words like ne’er-do-wells in my vocabulary.”
I stick my tongue out because it seems like the appropriate response.
“Anyway, this house became the social center of Rainwater Bay. Harriette hosted parties and picnics year-round. Their philanthropy saw a lot of families through hard winters and transformed Rainwater Bay from a quiet fishing village to a thriving community.”
“Sounds like they were an amazing couple.”
I wiggle my finger back and forth. “But all was not as it seemed. Thomas was rumored to be the mastermind behind a smuggling operation that moved prohibition alcohol up and down the seaboard, corrupting innocent souls and condemning them to a life of debauchery and gluttony.”
Landon’s eyebrows wiggle. “Ne’er-do-wells, indeed.”
“Correct. Siren’s Bluff Road was named after the schooner he supposedly used in the operation, Siren’s Call. Rumors insist Thomas brought his criminal ways with him and used Rainwater Bay as the hub to monitor shipments and make sure his enemies didn’t know too much about his business.”
“That’s genius. In today’s interconnected world, we would never get away with using that strategy, but back then…” He whistles low. “If you own a town filled with loyal people, you control the information and the product.”
“And get rich off other people’s vices.”
“That’s still pretty par for the course.”
The flurries from his attention stop swirling. “Speaking from experience?”
“I’m not going to lie and tell you that I haven’t participated in my fair share of business ventures that other people question, but I have never done anything illegal or immoral.”
“But your actions hurt people?”
“Unintentionally, but that’s how business is done.”
“Does it have to be?”
He tucks his chin but doesn’t defend himself.
Does he know who he’s hurt? Are there faces to go with the damage? Or are they numbers on a spreadsheet? His money comes from so many sectors of the economy, he may not even fathom his influence.
“Tell me more about Thomas. Bootlegging?” His gentle entreaty breaks through my reverie.
“Those were the rumors, but we don’t know what was true. It’s more likely he ran a successful company his rivals envied, so when Siren’s Call was lost at sea, they lied to ruin his reputation and steal his clients.”
“That’s a kind assumption.”
“There’s no proof Thomas did anything illegal.
Siren’s Call may have been a regular sailboat.
We don’t have records of the ship. No pictures, ship registry, or passenger logs.
Just crotchety men complaining about old Thomas Reeves sitting high and mighty in the cliff-top castle he built with his ill-gotten gains. ”
Landon gestures to the house. “How does the Reeves family go from owning a town to the crumbling facade we see before us?”
“That’s Emmett’s fault. Emmett was barely sixteen when Thomas’s ship sank, so Harriette and a business partner named Bellamy Davis took over until Emmett reached his majority in 1947.
In less than four years, Reeves transportation filed for bankruptcy and liquidated all their assets.
The town never recovered, and the Reeves reputation was irrevocably tarnished. ”
Landon swings his legs below him and leans forward. “Wow. No one stopped him?”
“It was a huge scandal. He’d married his wife Valarie a few years before, and the rumors are that she was insatiably greedy and spent every penny he earned. They moved into a small two-bedroom home on the edge of town and became a shadow of what Emmett’s parents were.”
“Tragic. No wonder Archer was weird about fixing the house. If his grandma hadn’t been a gold digger, this would have been theirs.”
“I don’t buy that story. Mom loved Valerie.
It was Valerie’s stories that first hooked my mom on the legends.
If Valerie was a gold digger who’d destroyed the family, why tell the stories?
Why remind us that Thomas and Harriette were amazing people who helped a lot of families? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Unless she wanted to rewrite history, so she didn’t look like the villain.”
I shift onto my knees, mirroring Landon’s posture, and press my palms into the blanket to steady myself.
“Collin and Archer’s dad believed their mom was the villain.
Mom said he hated that Valerie told her and Maggie, Collin and Archer’s mom, the stories.
According to Mom, he was a bitter, angry man.
In 2002, he abandoned their family while their mom was pregnant with their seventh child—and took the only daughter with him. ”
“What did the rumor mill say about that?”
“Some said he was an alcoholic who went on a bender and killed himself and his daughter. Some say he couldn’t handle the shame of his parents’ actions, so he ran away.”
“But that was decades before. Why build a family and then run?”
I shrug. “Small towns have long memories. I don’t remember Valerie, but people still whisper behind their hands about how she single-handedly brought down one of the largest transportation empires in the world.”
“I don’t know if I could believe my mom destroyed an entire town no matter what gossips said.” Landon picks at a thread on the blanket. “What do Collin and Archer have to say about all of this?”
“That’s not a question I’m going to ask them. Their friendship is too valuable to me to bother with gossip that doesn’t matter. I know who they are. I don’t care who their family is.”
“Aren’t you curious if the rumors are true?”
“Whispers follow them just like they followed their dad and grandmother. People look at them askance and whisper. I don’t need to add to that.
Besides, if it weren’t for their family, who knows what would have happened to Rainwater Bay?
Maybe it would have died like so many other small towns during the Depression.
” I tuck my knees back to my chest. My gaze focuses on the fire dancing in the hearth.
“I love the mystery of the Reeves family story. So many details lost to history and facts twisted by gossip. We will never know what really happened to Thomas and the crew of Siren’s Call, or how Emmett and Valerie lost it all so quickly.
But there’s something romantic about their story as well.
Even with all the negativity aimed at them, Emmett and Valerie were fully devoted to each other until they died. Who wouldn’t want a love like that?”
Landon stares at me, eyes pinched and jaw tense.
“What?” I squirm. “Do I have food in my teeth or something?”
I can’t unless it was left over from lunch and he’s just now noticing. Why else would he stare at me like that?
He clears his throat. “I’ve never met someone so passionate about something they don’t have stakes in.”
“I have skin in the game. This is where I’ll raise my kids.
My grandkids will fly kites on that beach.
Anything that impacts Rainwater Bay impacts me and my future.
” I scoff. “You sweep in with grand plans to create your little getaway, but you have no idea how your actions will affect everyone else. Stakes? I have everything at stake.”