Authors: Mariah Stewart
“How can you be casual and elegant at the same time?” Clay asked.
Lucy looked around the room for a moment, then nodded toward the window. “See that sailboat in the first slip?”
“Doc Benson’s
Tonight Tonight
. She’s a beauty.”
“She is,” Lucy agreed. “All that lovely wood, and that graceful mainsail. Would you consider her elegant?”
He thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, very elegant. She has beautiful lines, and if
you saw her skimming the water, you wouldn’t even have to ask.”
“So she’s elegant, but you wouldn’t take her out for a spin around the Bay wearing a tux, would you?”
“Well, there have been some fancy parties on some of the boats out there in the marina, but no, I would not want to crew her in a tux.” He nodded. “I get it. Elegant and casual.”
“The inn is that way. She dresses up very nicely, but she does casual just beautifully, just like that boat out there,” she noted. “This wedding is going to be outside, overlooking the Bay. There will be flowers everywhere and a string quartet and champagne and waitstaff in black tails—just as elegant as you please—but the vibe will be low-key.”
“The MacGregor wedding was sort of like that.” He took a sip of wine. “Well, Wade and Steffie’s was. Dallas and Grant’s was more formal.”
“The best weddings reflect the personalities of the bride and the groom. In Dallas’s case, we had an A-list Hollywood star, a very sophisticated guest list, and then there was the fact that she and Grant were older and were both married before. You expect some glamour there. For Wade and Steffie, you had a younger bride and groom, first-time wedding for each—well, if you don’t count Wade’s marriage in Texas to his business partner—and a younger guest list. Different personalities. Different vibes.”
“Are you allowed to talk about what your new clients are going to have or is that a breach of wedding planner etiquette?”
“So far, there’s not much to talk about. We only talked in generalites for the most part. We’ll talk
more about the specifics the next time we get together.”
“When will that be?” he asked casually, as if it didn’t really matter when she’d be back in St. Dennis again.
“I’m hoping to put it off until the week after next. Susanna would be happy if I met with her every week, but I do have other clients who are getting married or having some special life event that they’ve paid me to organize, so I can’t put everyone aside for Magellan. But Susanna wants to meet often, so somehow I will have to accommodate her, whether or not it’s a hardship for me to keep coming back here.”
“Is it a hardship? Coming back here?” He leaned back in his chair to watch her face. If it attracted him in sunlight, by candlelight it mesmerized. He couldn’t look away if he tried.
“Not in the sense that I don’t like St. Dennis. It’s my hometown. My family is here, my roots. But I lose a day of work traveling each way, there’s no way of getting around that. Plus, there’s a lot on the to-do list for this wedding, and it would be easier for me if the wedding was in L.A. instead of St. Dennis. But I’m lucky to have landed this one. It’s huge.” She paused. “At least, I’m hoping I have it. We can’t sign a contract until we have a date and Danny’s still working that out. There’s a lot I could be doing right now, and I feel pretty secure that it’s going to work out, but until we’ve all signed, I hate to invest the time.”
“Makes sense.” He took another sip of beer just as the waitress appeared at the table.
“Are you ready to order now, Clay?” she asked, pad in hand.
“Rockfish and oysters for both of us,” Clay told her. Turning to Lucy, he said, “Unless you changed your mind.”
“No, no. That’s what I’m here for.” Lucy handed her menu to the waitress.
“Fried or raw?” the waitress asked. Smiling at Clay, she added, “I know you like yours fried.”
Clay nodded. “Nothing like a fat, lightly fried Chesapeake oyster the way they do them here.”
“How can I resist? I’ll have the same,” Lucy said.
“Two fried oyster and rockfish dinners.” Clay gave his unopened menu to the waitress.
After the waitress disappeared with their orders, Lucy said, “And speaking of beer, why don’t you tell me more about this new venture of yours?”
“Not much to tell at this point. We’ll be putting in our first crop of barley and hops as soon as the ground is right. We’re going to turn one of our old barns into a brewery so we’ll have the entire operation right here in St. Dennis.”
“It sounds very ambitious. Converting the barn, growing everything yourself. You’re going to be a very busy man,” she observed.
“Well, the barn conversion isn’t going to happen overnight, and the crops have to be planted and harvested, and that takes time, too. These first couple of years, we’ll be buying from other growers. The hops are going in this year, but they take a few years to mature.”
“So you buy seeds or plants from someone else …”
“From several someone elses, actually. There are hundreds of different varieties of hops, and we’re going to want to experiment with several.”
“What makes them different, and how will you decide which ones to grow?”
“The best varieties are disease-resistant, they have the right aroma, they have a high yield, they store well.” He studied her face as he spoke, watched for the telltale sign of her eyes glazing over. When they did not, he continued: “I’ve learned more about beer in the past six months than I have in my lifetime before Wade and I started talking about the possibility of going into business together. He knows so damned much about every stage of the process. I’ll be the one doing the planting, but he’ll be the one who decides which varieties of hops we grow.”
“You had the land, he has the knowledge,” she observed. “Sounds like a good partnership.”
“I think it’s going to be. I’ve had some dozens of acres lie fallow for a couple of years now, so I’m not losing anything in that regard. Wade’s got several years’ experience brewing, says he has a really good nose for it. Judging by the success of his last company, I’d have to say he knows his business.”
“I heard about how that business went down, about his partner falling for some con man who ripped off her and the business, left her pregnant, and disappeared.”
“Left her pregnant and pretty much penniless at that point. Wade said even with the money gone, they were willing to borrow and start over again—he really believed in his products—but then they discovered that Robin had terminal cancer. That took all the wind out of his sails. He spent the next couple of months taking care of her—she’d declined treatment
that could have prolonged her life for a short time because it would have caused the death of the baby.”
“Steffie told me Wade married her before she died so that he could raise her baby.” Lucy met his eyes. “That takes a big man with a big heart.”
Clay nodded. “If you didn’t know the story, you’d never suspect that Austin wasn’t Wade’s biological son. And to see Steffie with the kid, you wouldn’t know that she wasn’t his birth mother.”
“I like a story that has a happy ending, don’t you?”
“I do.” He raised his glass and tilted it toward hers. “Let’s drink to happy endings, LuLu.”
“Don’t call me …” She paused, then laughed and lifted her wineglass. “I give up. All right, to happy endings.” She took a sip of wine. “Though why I didn’t come up with a silly nickname for you when we were little—”
“You did,” he reminded her. “You called me Clay Pot Head.”
Lucy laughed. “Only until someone told me what that meant. Back in first grade, it just meant, you know, a clay pot. In fifth grade, it meant something entirely different, as Kevin McMillan explained to me one day on the playground. And that,” she said, her eyes twinkling, “was the end of Clay Pot Head.”
“Kevin McMillan.” Clay grumbled. “Sneaky little weasel was always trying to get your attention.”
“He succeeded. I went on my first date with him. Seventh-grade dance. He brought me flowers. Yellow and white daisies.”
“Don’t remind me.”
She laughed again. “Kevin was nice.”
“No, he wasn’t. He was nice to you because you
were the prettiest girl in the class and all the guys had a crush on you.”
“Jessie Linton was the prettiest girl in the class,” she corrected him. After a few seconds, she added, “And if memory serves, it was every guy but you.”
“Not true.” Clay shook his head. “At least, it wasn’t true after eighth grade.”
“Then what happened?” She rested her forearms on the table and leaned forward, her lips curved in a soft smile.
“Then hormones kicked in and you turned into a girl.”
“I was always a girl.” Her smile widened. “I never tried to pretend otherwise.”
“Yeah, but once we hit puberty, it got harder and harder to remember that we were buddies.” He put his glass down and caught her gaze. “Especially when the other guys would be fighting over who was going to ask you to go to so-and-so’s party, or to the movies.”
“Why didn’t you ever ask me?”
“Because we were supposed to be friends. Best friends.”
“We
were
best friends, Clay. You were the best friend I ever had.”
“So what happened, LuLu?” he asked softly. “Why did we stop being friends?”
For a moment, she looked stricken. Then she broke eye contact and stared at her wineglass for a long moment. When it looked as if she was about to speak, Candace appeared to serve their dinners.
“Okay, we have two rockfish and fried oyster combos,”
the waitress said as she placed a platter in front of both Lucy and Clay.
She put her hands on her hips. “What else can I get you? Another beer, Clay? Another glass of wine for you?” she asked Lucy.
“Oh, yes. That would be fine. Thank you.” Lucy nodded.
“I’ll take another beer, thanks, Candace,” Clay said.
“I’ll be right back with those.” Their waitress refreshed their water glasses before disappearing into the crowded dining room.
Clay and Lucy ate in silence for several moments.
“The fish is delicious,” she said at last. “Just the way I remember it. And the oysters are perfect. They just don’t taste the same from anywhere else.”
“True enough.” He’d thought about pressing her on his unanswered question—he’d thought for a moment she was going to finally shed some light on that subject—but decided to let it go. For now.
“Mom told me that you’ve been growing produce for some restaurants these past few years,” Lucy said, apparently happy enough to have been let off the hook. “Are you abandoning farming in favor of brewing beer?”
“No, growing barley and hops will be in addition to my produce business.” He put down his fork. “I was thinking the other day about how the farm has evolved since my ancestors arrived and claimed that land. You know, for almost three hundred years, the farm sustained my family. Today, it’s a hybrid operation of mostly organic produce that I sell to farmers’ markets and restaurants—including the inn. Tomorrow,
with luck, it will be as successful providing the raw product for MadMac Brews.”
“You don’t sell anything directly?” she asked.
“I sell directly to the restaurants. Almost all of the ones here in town buy from me, some in D.C., others in New York.”
“I meant, don’t you have a little veggie market on the farm?”
“No one to operate it,” he replied. “I work the fields, my mother’s moved out, and my sister is going to be moving in another few weeks.”
“Where’s Brooke going?”
“She’s moving into the old tenant house. Cam O’Connor’s doing the renovations, and he’s just about finished.”
“I remember that old place. There used to be an old guy who lived out there …”
“Mr. Littleton.” Clay nodded. “He worked for my dad back when we were kids. Sort of helped run the place.”
“I guess he’s moved on by now.”
“He died when we were in high school, don’t you remember? He was killed in a hit-and-run accident out on Charles Street. They never did find the car who hit him. My dad always suspected one of the politicians from D.C. who has a vacation home across the Bay. He figured any one of them would know how to hide the evidence.”
“I’d forgotten that.” Lucy frowned. “It’s not the type of thing I usually forget.”
“Well, you’ve been gone for a long time, Luce. It’s not surprising that some things have slipped your mind.”
“I guess.”
There was another silence that was only minutes away from becoming awkward when Lucy said, “Oh, by the way. I loved the tree you decorated in the inn’s library. It was perfect.”
“Is it still up?” He speared an oyster and raised the fork halfway to his mouth. “I’d have thought all the decorations would have been taken down and stored away by now.”
“Everything’s coming down tomorrow, but Mom left it all up for me to see. We had our Christmas last night. Ford called and we all got to talk to him for a few minutes, so I got to thank him for these.” She flicked a finger at one of her earrings and made the dangling part dance. “He sent these to Mom to hold for me.”
“I noticed them,” Clay told her. He
had
noticed. They caught the light of the candle much the way her eyes did, and brought his gaze back to her face again and again. “They’re very pretty.”
“I love them.” She touched them once more before picking up her fork. She seemed to aim at a piece of broccoli, but put the fork back down again. “Mom worries about me being in California alone—even after all this time—but it’s hell on her worrying about Ford. She can go weeks without hearing from him. It just breaks my heart sometimes when I think about how all she really wants is to have both Ford and me back here in St. Dennis, and neither of us seems to be able to make the move.”
“You both have your reasons,” Clay said. “You’ve invested a lot of time and hard work in your business. I’m sure that Ford believes in what he’s doing, and
you have to admire him for giving up what could be a much easier life to do something he thinks is right and important. Being a UN Peacekeeper isn’t the path most of us would choose to follow, but he has. He had all that special training while he was in the service, so he has skills that most of us don’t have.”