Chapter One #3
“Hard to make bologna and tomato sandwiches without them.”
“Gross,” she muttered, though not quietly enough to keep him from hearing, before going back to her seat and picking up her coffee.
He tried not to be offended on behalf of his favorite sandwich. “If Helen had known you were coming, maybe we could have stocked up on your favorite foods.”
The look she gave him over the rim of her mug might have set a lesser man on fire. “It’s too early to be passive-aggressive.”
“I just can’t wrap my head around why a person would drive all the way across the country without at least talking to Helen first.”
“We usually talk on Facebook, but I deleted all the apps off my phone and I need the password to put it back. I think I wrote it in a notebook that’s, hopefully, at the bottom of one of the boxes in my car.”
The mass deleting of apps was interesting because, as far as Nick could tell from people more online than him, that usually meant a person was having some kind of crisis the internet was making worse. “But you came anyway.”
“I didn’t really think it through, okay? I just… I went through some stuff and I needed to get away.”
He wasn’t sure what kind of “some stuff” would lead a person to put everything they owned in a car and drive all the way across the country, but it wasn’t Nick’s place to ask her. “Why here?”
“Because it’s where Gran lives?” she asked, as though it was a ridiculous question. But he waited her out, and eventually she sighed. “It’s the only place I remember feeling really happy.”
“How old were you the last time you visited Wayward Harbor?”
She had to think about it, which didn’t surprise him. He and Helen were pretty close, and he couldn’t remember ever meeting Lucy. Since she seemed rather unforgettable, especially the hair, it wasn’t likely they’d crossed paths. Or they had, but they’d been so young, he didn’t remember.
“I think I was maybe thirteen? I’m not sure, but I remember we were going to go swimming, but I’d started my—”
She snapped her mouth closed, her cheeks flushing, as if Nick had reached thirty-five years of age without discovering women had menstrual cycles.
“Okay,” he said. “You know, I was pretty happy when I was thirteen, too, but it had a lot less to do with Wayward Harbor and more to do with having no real responsibilities. Being an adult is hard, no matter where you are.”
“Listen, Nick. The only thing that’s gotten me through the last week is the thought of being here in Maine and getting a hug from Gran. Since Gran’s not here, all I have is Wayward Harbor. Don’t ruin it for me.”
He knew he should mind his own business, but he couldn’t help himself. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”
“No.”
“Okay.” He wasn’t sure what to do next.
The easiest path was to get her keys from her, move her car, and then drive himself into town for breakfast. When it came to responsibilities and things he should be doing, Nick didn’t just have a full plate.
He had an entire formal place setting for twelve, and every single dish was overflowing.
Lucy from Las Vegas wasn’t his responsibility.
Except she kind of was.
This cottage was his responsibility because, in exchange for staying there, Nick was housesitting and doing some construction odd jobs that needed doing. And leaving a woman he didn’t know and who Helen hadn’t known was coming alone in the cottage didn’t feel like a responsible thing to do.
It was too early to call Helen, though. The woman was a night owl by nature and was also on vacation with friends, so Nick felt as if he should wait until at least nine. And that meant he wasn’t getting breakfast until at least ten, which wasn’t an option.
As far as he could tell, he had two choices. He could leave this woman claiming to be Helen’s granddaughter alone in the cottage and drive himself into town.
Or he could take her with him.
“I’m going into town. Come with me and I’ll buy you a hearty breakfast, and then we’ll stop at the market.”
She looked down at the outfit she’d traveled and slept in. “I need to go get my bag and take a shower.”
“I can wait five minutes.” When she glared at him again, he shrugged. “Or ten.”
A few minutes later, when the shower started, Nick tried not to think about the woman standing naked under the spray. He was less than twelve hours into the awareness he might have a thing for blue-eyed redheads, though, and also that dating hadn’t been a priority in his life for a while.
To drag his mind out of places it had no business being, he focused on the problem at hand—still Lucy, but the fully clothed version who’d invaded the cottage and thrown a wrench in his plans.
After breakfast, one way or another, he was going to talk to Helen. And if she didn’t have the heart to turn away her granddaughter, he was going to find himself in a bind.
The only thing he knew for sure was that sharing a cottage with Iris Macauley’s daughter was going to put him smack in the middle of one of the juiciest stories to go around the Wayward Harbor grapevine in three decades.