With This Kiss (38 page)

“I’ll take good care of your grandson.”

Celeste smiled. “I never had any doubt of that,” she said in her serene way, as if she had expected them to fall
in love all along. “At every shore, throw a handful of pebbles and think of me.”

“It’s already on my list,” Rebecca told his grandmother. “Thank you for sharing so much with me, Celeste.”

Her new grandmother-in-law took both of her hands and squeezed them. “Just like you, I never regretted loving with all my heart.”

Rebecca was blinking back a rush of tears as Stu moved into their small circle and pointedly looked at his watch.

“Time to go, lovebirds.”

He was their chauffeur for the night, having offered to drop them at the airport on his way to visit John for a couple of days. Rebecca had been training April and Jean to share innkeeper duties while she was gone and this was their first trial run by themselves.

After hugging everyone good-bye—with Rebecca solemnly promising Andi and Nate she was going to come back home with plenty of time to spare before they had their baby—the three of them headed off down the winding forested roads to the Albany International Airport.

During the drive, Sean and Stu kept Rebecca laughing with their stories of growing up on the lake. There was nothing Sean loved more than seeing her smile, knowing he could make her laugh; everywhere, including the bed they shared.

Stu was just pulling up to the curb to let them out at departures when he said, “I forgot to tell you guys. That contractor who came out to look at that problem you’ve been having with noises and cold in your bedroom finally got back to us.”

Sean and Rebecca looked at each other before she said, “It’s been silent and warm for the past two weeks.”

She smiled and Sean knew what she was thinking: the problems with the bedroom had all gone away when they’d declared their love to each other, a love with no secrets in the way the second time around.

“What did he tell you was wrong?” Sean asked his brother, sure that there was a logical explanation for it all.

“Nothing.”

Rebecca laughed. “Did he say anything about a ghost?”

Stu clearly didn’t know how to respond to that. “Uh, no. Should he have?”

Rebecca hugged him. “Thanks for everything.”

Sean could hear Stu say, “I’m happy for you,” before he moved from Rebecca to Sean, the two brothers hugging each other out on the airport curb.

When his brother had driven away and it was just the two of them, Rebecca’s eyes were sparkling.

“I’d rather have you than a ghost, you know.” Her smile had always made him want to smile right back, just like he was doing right now. “But it’s much more fun knowing I have both.”

With that, she turned, flipping her silky hair over her shoulder as she headed into the check-in area. And as Sean followed her inside, grinning widely, he gave his own silent thanks that he’d been given the precious gift of unexpected, extraordinary love.

H
ome.

Andi Powell couldn’t believe she was back home.

During the five-hour drive to Emerald Lake from New York City, Andi had felt her stomach tighten down more and more with each mile she covered, each county line she crossed. She’d pulled up in front of Lake Yarns on Main Street five minutes ago, but she hadn’t yet been able to get out of the car. Instead, she sat with her hands still tightly clenched on the steering wheel as she watched people on Main Street. Mothers pushed strollers, shoppers moved in and out of stores, and happy tourists walked hand in hand.

Through her car window, Andi could see that the warm days of summer had already given way to a crisp, cool fall. She would have had to be blind not to notice that the thick green trees around the waterline were transformed into a dazzling display of reds and oranges and yellows.

No wonder why everyone on Main Street looked so happy. Utterly content. Emerald Lake was picture-perfect: the sky was blue, the lake sparkled in the sunlight,
and the white paint on the gazebo in the waterfront park looked new.

But Andi wasn’t here to become a part of
picture-perfect.
She had a job to do. Which meant it was time to unclench her chest, to untangle the knots in her stomach, and to get down to business.

The sooner she dealt with Emerald Lake, the sooner she could head back to the city.

Pushing open her car door, she grabbed her briefcase and headed toward her family’s store. The Lake Yarns awning was bright and welcoming, and the Adirondack chairs out front welcomed knitters to sit for as long as they had time to spare.

She smiled her first real smile of the day, thinking of how much love and care her grandmother and mother had put into this store over the years.

The shiny gold knob on the front door was cool beneath her palm, and she paused to take a deep breath and pull herself together. Entering a building that had practically been her second home as a little girl shouldn’t have her heart racing.

But it did.

Opening the door, the smell of yarn was what hit her first. Wool and alpaca, bamboo and silk, cotton and acrylic all had a specific scent. Although Andi hadn’t touched yarn in almost two decades, somehow the essence of the skeins lining the walls, in baskets on the floor, knitted up into samples throughout Lake Yarns had remained imprinted in her brain.

She hadn’t come back to Emerald Lake to play with yarn, but as Andi instinctively ran her hands over a soft silk-wool blend, thoughts of business momentarily
receded. The beautiful blue-green, with hints of reds and oranges wound deep into the fibers, reminded her of the lake and mountains on a fall day like today.

From out of nowhere, Andi was struck by a vision of a lacy shawl draped across a woman’s shoulders. Strangely, the woman looked like her.

“Andi, honey, what a lovely surprise!”

Andi jumped at her grandmother’s sudden greeting, dropping the yarn like she was a thief who’d been about to stuff it into her bag and dash out the door.

What on earth had she been doing thinking about shawls? This creative world where women sat around and chatted and made things with their hands had never been hers.

She let herself be enveloped by her grandmother’s arms. At barely five feet, Evelyn was eight inches smaller than Andi. And yet it never ceased to surprise her how strong her grandmother’s arms were. Warm, too. They were always warm.

“Your father’s commemoration isn’t until next weekend. We didn’t expect you to come home a week early.” Her grandmother scanned her face for clues as to why she was back in Emerald Lake.

Andi forced a smile she didn’t even come close to feeling. Lord knew, she certainly had practice pretending. In the year since her father’s sudden death, she’d been going into the office every day with that same smile on her face, working double-time to make sure her work didn’t suffer in the wake of her grief.

But it had. Which was how she’d found herself about to lose her biggest client ever in a meeting a week ago.

The Klein Group wanted to build beautiful vacation
condominiums in the perfect vacation town. They’d shot down every single one of her proposals—Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, Cape Cod. Her boss, Craig, had been frowning at her the same way for three months, like he didn’t think she could hack it anymore, and as panic shook her, Andi’s mind had actually gone completely blank. That was when her phone had jumped on the table in front of her, a picture of Emerald Lake popping up along with a message from her mother.

It’s beautiful here today. Makes me think of you.

Before she knew it, Andi was saying, “I have the perfect spot.”

Just that quickly, the old energy, the excitement she used to feel during pitches, rushed through her as she pulled up one beautiful picture after another of Emerald Lake on her computer in the middle of the meeting.

No pitch had ever been easier: The condos would have a spectacular view. There was an excellent golf course close by. And best of all, their clients would be only hours away from New York City, close enough to take a break from the stress of their real lives but far enough removed to get away from it all.

Andi would never leave the city, but that didn’t mean she didn’t see how magical Emerald Lake could be for the right kind of people. The Klein Group had agreed.

The previous Wednesday, she’d been ecstatic, but now that she was back in her hometown, all she could think was,
What have I done?

In lieu of going into a detailed explanation about her sudden appearance, Andi asked, “Where’s Mom? I was expecting her to be in the store with you.”

“Carol had some errands to run in Saratoga Springs
and won’t be back until late tonight. Will you be able to spend the night before heading back to the city? I know how much your mother would love to see you.”

What a huge understatement that was. Andi’s mother would be heartbroken if her daughter came and went without seeing her, but Evelyn had never believed in guilt. She had never once pressured Andi into coming home more often or sticking around for longer on the rare occasions when she did visit. When Andi heard her coworkers talk about how their families were forever pressuring them to move back to their hometowns, she was glad her own family was so hands-off with her. They would never try to convince her to come back to the small town she’d grown up in. They respected her goals and plans too much to ever bombard her with hints that they missed her.

Wasn’t she lucky to be so free?

“I’ll probably be here a week. Maybe two.” And then she would leave again, returning back to the city life she’d chosen as soon as she’d graduated from Emerald Lake’s small high school. “It’s a bit of a working vacation actually.”

Fortunately, her grandmother had never been interested in talking business—yet another way they were different.

“Two weeks?” Evelyn looked like she’d won the lottery. “What a treat to have you here, especially when we’re having such a beautiful fall.”

As a sharp pang of guilt at not seeing more of her family settled in beneath Andi’s breastbone, she followed her grandmother’s gaze out the store’s large front windows to the lake beyond the Adirondack chairs on the porch.

“Fall was always my favorite time of year at the lake,” she admitted softly.

Andi’s career as a management consultant in New York City meant she’d barely been back to Emerald Lake for more than a weekend, even over holidays. Growing up watching her father do such great things for so many people as senator had fueled her to want to follow in his footsteps. Not as a politician, but as someone who worked hard, cared deeply, and felt joy at a job well done. After graduating from Cornell University with both an undergraduate degree in economics and then an MBA, she’d chosen Marks & Banks carefully based on their commitment to the environment and the fact that they did more pro bono work than any other consulting company out there.

Her father had always encouraged her to “go for the brass ring,” and even if some nights she fell onto her bed fully clothed and woke up the next morning with mascara smudged around her eyes and her stomach empty and grumbling, that was exactly what she’d done for the past ten years far away from her teeny, tiny hometown. Emerald Lake was barely a speck on the map, a blue stretch of water surrounded by rolling mountains.

Andi pulled her gaze away from the sparkling lake. “The store looks great, Grandma.”

Evelyn frowned as she scanned the shelves. For such a tiny woman with a sweet, pretty face, her grandmother could be one of the most blunt people Andi had ever come across. The polar opposite of Andi’s mother Carol, actually, who simply didn’t believe in confrontation. But they were both small and gently rounded. Andi had always felt like a giant around the tiny women in her family.

“I just don’t know about the changes your mother made.”

Seeing the way her grandmother hated to move even a couple of skeins of yarn from one side of the store to the other had Andi second-guessing her project for the Klein Group again.

Why couldn’t she have blurted out any other Adirondack town than Emerald Lake? Still, she was glad for her grandmother’s unintended warning to tread carefully. The condos were bound to be more change than this town had seen in fifty years at least.

Taking the time to notice the changes in the store, Andi said, “Actually, I think the changes help liven up the place.” And then, more gently, “It’s still your shop, Grandma. Just a bit shinier now for the new generation of knitters.”

“That’s exactly what your mother said. Two against one.”

Andi didn’t want her grandmother to think they were ganging up on her. Just as she would have approached a potentially disgruntled client, she took another tack. “What have your customers said?”

“They love it.”

Andi had to laugh at the grudging words. “Good.”

“Well, since you’re going to be home for so long, I’ll be expecting you to finally pick up the needles again,” her grandmother shot back.