Authors: Mariah Stewart
Spray. Wait. Scrape.
By three in the afternoon, Ellie could barely raise her hands over her head.
“This looks so easy when they do it on TV,” she told Dune, fighting an urge to wail. “All those DIY decorating and remodeling shows make it look like a snap.”
Dune wagged her tail and hopped over the clouds of pasty paper on the floor to get to the back door, where she barked.
“Thank you for giving me an excuse to stop.” Leaving the scraper on the top ladder step, Ellie climbed down and pulled on the jacket she’d left in the back hall closet.
Walking around the backyard with Dune was both pleasure and pain. Pleasure because she was no longer reaching over her head and scraping away those little strips of paper that dispersed dust into the air and stuck to her arms. Pain because she had been reaching over her head for hours and she was pretty sure she would be useless for very possibly the rest of her life.
Cameron did try to warn me, she reminded herself. But who knew it would be so hard?
A cold rain began to fall in fat drops from a dark gray sky, so she headed back toward the porch, Dune at her heels. The dog apparently disliked the cold and wet as much as Ellie did. Once back inside, she made herself something hot to drink and decided a break was in order. She wrapped herself in a throw, curled up on the sofa, and fell asleep.
The next thing she knew, her cell phone was ringing.
“How’d it go?” Cameron asked.
“Pretty good.” She stifled a yawn and tried to figure out what time it was, day or night. How long had she slept?
“How do you feel?”
“Tired,” she admitted. “Actually, my arms are killing me. I doubt I’ll ever be able to wash my hair again. Volleyball and tennis are definitely out, probably forever. But I did a damned good job.”
“Did you finish?”
“Almost.”
“Well, open the door and let me check it out.”
She got up and looked through the blinds. Cam’s truck was parked in front of the house and he was standing on the front porch, a hand raised in a wave.
Ellie had already unlocked the door and opened it when she caught a glimpse of herself in the hall mirror. She cringed at her reflection. Bits of gooey paper stuck to her hair and her clothing. There were streaks of dirt on her face from the wet dusty paper.
“Looks like you really were busy today.” Cam pulled a clump of paper from the back of her head and handed it to her.
“Thanks.” She took the wad of paper but avoided his eyes. Could she look any worse than she did right at that moment? She wanted to kick herself for answering the door.
“So let’s see the progress.” Cam headed for the kitchen, Ellie trailing behind, picking sticky little flakes from the sleeves of her sweatshirt.
“Hey, you’re doing a great job.” He walked closer to the wall, silently inspecting, smoothing away tiny bits of wallpaper that clung tenaciously to the plaster. “No gouges in the wall, very little glue left behind.
Very nice.” He turned to her. “Best novice work I’ve ever seen. Some of my guys have left more residue than you have. Want a job?”
“A job?”
Cam nodded. “We’re in the midst of a big renovation and we’ve got an entire house with a lot of walls that need to be stripped. I could use you.”
Ellie couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not, but it didn’t matter. She would be totally useless. She shook her head. “Everything hurts. My hands hurt. My neck is all crinked up. It’s probably going to be days before I can raise my arms above my shoulders.” She lifted her arms chest-high and winced. “Noodles. My arms are noodles and my neck is so stiff I can barely turn my head.”
“That’ll all pass in a day or so. Here. Maybe this will help.” He turned her around and put those big hands to work gently massaging her neck. “Put your head down.”
“I can’t.”
“Little by little.”
She inched her chin toward her chest. His thumbs worked at the knot of muscles in the back of her neck.
“Ow.”
“Sorry.” He switched to her shoulders and she groaned. “Wasn’t this bothering you while you were working?”
“A little.”
“Why didn’t you stop?”
“Because it didn’t bother me that much at the time.” An
ohhh
escaped her lips when he hit a particularly sore spot.
“Sit.” Cameron led her to a chair and she sat. He
massaged the neck and her shoulders. “Better?” he asked after a few moments.
“A little. Thanks.”
“Do you have anything you can take for pain?”
“I don’t think so. I haven’t had headaches or anything since I got here.” She stood slowly.
“I have some Advil in my truck. Let me get it.”
He walked from the room before she could respond. She went into the hall and took the opportunity to pull more gunk from her hair. She balled it up in her hand and stuck it in her pocket when she heard Cam on the front steps.
“Here you go. Two now, two before you go to bed.” He handed her the container.
“And call you in the morning?”
Cam smiled. “If you like.”
Ellie tried to get the childproof lid off the container. Her fingers were stiff and sore and uncooperative.
“Where’s a four-year-old when you need one?” she grumbled.
He took the container from her hands, struggled with it for a moment before it opened, then handed it back.
“Thanks.” She dumped half a dozen tablets into her hand. “This should do it. If my muscles are still this sore tomorrow, I can run to the store in the morning and—”
She’d been focused on getting the lid back onto the container and hadn’t realized how close he’d moved, how near his face was to hers. When she looked up, she was looking into his eyes.
Ellie tilted her head to one side, her eyes locked on Cam’s. When he leaned down, she stretched up. His
lips brushed against hers so softly that at first, she barely felt them. She wanted to put her arms around his neck, but her leaden limbs wouldn’t move above chest level, so she sank one hand into the front of his flannel shirt, the tablets clutched in the other, and pulled him closer. The kiss that started out as little more than a feather’s touch deepened in the blink of an eye.
One thing she learned in that split second was that Cameron O’Connor kissed as if he meant it.
His lips were soft and warm and lingered just long enough for Ellie to want more of him, but his mouth moved to the corner of hers, teased her with his tongue before he rested back against the wall. His hands moved from her shoulders to the tops of her arms.
“So we’re good for Thanksgiving, right?” His words were soft against the side of her face, and somehow felt as intimate as the kiss.
“We’re good.” Ellie forced herself to breathe normally again. “What time?”
“I’ll check with Miss Grace but they usually serve their ‘family-and-friends’ dinner around two in the afternoon. They open the dining room to the public at five.” His hands began to caress her aching biceps.
“What’s the dress code?” She tried to ignore the warmth that was spreading through her, as if there was a direct line from the soft skin on her arms to the rest of her body.
“Just, nice. You know.”
“Nice casual or nice dressy casual?”
Cam looked at her blankly. “What’s the difference? Nice is nice.”
“I think I’ll ask someone else.”
“Maybe Brooke, or Steffie down at Scoop.”
“I’ll stop down there tomorrow,” she told him. “It’ll give me an excuse to get ice cream.”
“Maybe you should take tomorrow off.” His hands continued to gently knead her arms. “Give your muscles a chance to recover.”
“I was hoping to finish that last little bit of kitchen wall.”
“Leave it and we’ll work on it after dinner on Thursday, work off some of that big meal we’re going to have at the inn.” Unexpectedly, he kissed her mouth, a short sweet dip to her lips, then released her arms. “In the meantime, rest up. Take a hot bath, then some of the Advil. Pretend you’re a nine-to-fiver again and that tomorrow is a day off. Pretend it’s Saturday.”
“I didn’t used to take days off,” she confessed. “I almost always went into the office on Saturday.”
“You know what they say about all work, right?” His fingers hooked with hers.
Ellie shrugged. “It was sort of a habit.”
“I read somewhere that it takes three weeks to break old habits and form new ones.” With his free hand, he pulled a few more pieces of paper from her hair. “Downtime is important. Which is why weekends matter. They should be observed in the spirit in which God and the five-day workweek intended.”
He started for the door, his hand holding hers.
“Most people who work a regular workweek don’t rest up on Saturday anyway,” she noted. “That’s the day most people use to run errands and shop. Sunday’s the day for relaxing.”
“Then tomorrow will be your Saturday and Thursday will be Sunday. By Friday, you should be ready to work again. And I’m sure you can find something to do that won’t require you to torture yourself until your muscles stop screaming.”
“Well, there are all those journals of Lilly’s.…” Hadn’t she been itching to find and read the next one?
“Bring in some firewood and make yourself a cozy fire. I’ll bet those journals are real interesting.” He leaned down, kissed the side of her face, and added, “No telling what you might learn from them.”
She stood aside in the doorway while Cam passed her on his way out, Dune at her feet, then watched him follow the path to the drive. When he reached the truck, he turned and waved before getting into the cab. He’d barely disappeared down the street when she raised her fingers to her lips and traced the path his mouth had made across the side of her face.
“Wow.” She sighed. “Just … wow …”
He’d only been half kidding about the job but dead serious when it came to kissing Ellie.
He forced himself to focus on the former and try to ignore the latter. The work she’d done had been good: he hadn’t been patronizing her when he’d said it was the best amateur work he’d seen. She was neat as a pin and had taken obvious pains—no pun intended—to get every speck of glue off the wall, and she’d missed damned little. He liked that meticulous attention to the small details because he was like that himself.
But the kissing part—he hadn’t planned that. It had just sort of happened. Not that he was sorry. Kissing
Ellie had been the highlight of his recent life. There was something about her that drew him closer every time he saw her.
Oh, who am I trying to kid? I’ve been wanting to kiss her—to touch her—since I saw her walking out of the Crab Claw
.
Well, yeah. Pretty much.
It was a little strange, though, her being Lynley’s daughter. There were things about Ellie that reminded him of Lynley. Like her eyes being the same shade of green, and the way she tilted her head to one side when she was thinking. And the way she avoided looking at you when she didn’t want to talk about something. Things he’d pretty much forgotten about the mother until he realized that he was looking at the daughter.
Cam had looked up Clifford Chapman on Magellan Express, and after studying his face for a few moments, decided that Ellie favored her father in the looks department. Where Lynley was tall and willowy, Ellie was shorter and more compact. He’d never met Chapman, but he’d known Lynley better than he’d let on. Not that he’d known her well, but they were more than passing acquaintances. Once he’d gotten past the initial infatuation, he’d found her to be sensitive and thoughtful and caring. Their common bond was their love for Lilly. Lynley trusted Cam to look out for Lilly when she was away, and Cam had never let her down.
He parked his truck in his driveway, and before he went into the house, walked to the end of the blacktop to where the brown stalks of cattails bent with age and the season. The marsh grew right up to the
back of his property, and sometimes on nights like this, he stood at the edge and listened for the first of the night sounds. The hush of the wings of an owl on the hunt, the screech of its prey. The soft wind through the cordgrass. As much as he was looking forward to buying Lilly’s house when Ellie was ready to sell, he knew he’d miss this place.
Funny she seemed in no great hurry to sell it, but he supposed she had her reasons. Maybe she needed the time to connect with her roots. He wasn’t sure how much she knew about Lilly, or for that matter, Lynley. She seemed surprised to learn that her mother had spent so much time in St. Dennis.
He couldn’t help but wonder what Ellie would learn about her mother from reading the journals—and what she might learn about herself in the process.
“I
’
VE
been so excited about the paintings, I forgot that Thanksgiving is tomorrow,” Carly said when she called Ellie on Wednesday afternoon. “Throw some clothes into a suitcase and toss Dune into the car and drive up to my parents’ and have dinner with us. They just got home this morning and decided to do a big Thanksgiving and want you to come.”
“Thanks, Carly, but, actually, I have plans for tomorrow.”
“Don’t tell me you’re cooking a turkey.”
“Nope. Cameron invited me to dinner. Apparently a lot of St. Dennis folks go to one of the local inns for dinner on Thanksgiving.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“We’ll see. But please thank your parents for me.” Ellie paused. “You know, Car, I’ve been thinking. It’s not going to work for me.”
“What’s not going to work?”
“The book about Carolina and Lilly and Lynley.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve been reading the journals, Lilly’s and Carolina’s,
and they’re fascinating. I’ve learned so much about my family. But I’m not a writer, and I just don’t have the time or the ability to do their stories justice.”
“El, I spent two hours on Monday when I got home scanning the Internet for information about Carolina and found practically nothing. There were a number of articles about her work, but nothing about her personally. I think this book really needs to be written. People should know who Carolina was and her contribution to early-twentieth-century art.”
“And you’re just the person to tell them.”
Carly began to protest, but Ellie cut her off. “Look, I’m not an art historian like you are. I think you should take the journals and read them and write the book yourself. You can do it in such a way that it enhances what you’re going to do with the paintings. And besides, as much as I’d like to help you, as much as I understand the importance of what you’re doing, the bottom line is that I have an awful lot of work to do in five months. I’ve totally underestimated how much there is to do to get the house ready to go on the market by May. I’m going to need every penny I can get out of this house.”