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  She’d have to meet with Olivia from Petals and Posies and go over all the florals they’d need. Would the peony season stretch into June this year so that Susanna could have all the flowers she wanted? Lucy doubted that they would, but she’d ask. She’d also ask Olivia to sketch out a design for the inside of the tent based on the comments Susanna had made, then they’d go over it with her and see if it met with her approval. If not, it would be back to the drawing board, literally. If it was approved, they’d have to figure out how many dozens of each flower they were going to need and get them on order to ensure they’d be in reserve.

  She made a list of other vendors they’d need so that she could discuss the possibilities with the bride, and the groom, if he decided to participate. Based on his involvement the previous week, Lucy suspected he would not, but he could change his mind. There were a lot of decisions that would have to be made fairly quickly, so the sooner Lucy and Susanna addressed those issues, the better.

  She wrote up all her ideas in an email and sent it off to Susanna, asking for her thoughts and confirming their earlier conversation. She’d also attached photos of some very cool and original invitations, and again asked about the guest list, to which Susanna replied that she was still working on it. They’d agreed to meet at the inn in three weeks—Susanna had wanted to meet in two, but Lucy had a wedding that she’d been working on for over a year and there was no way she could pass off the handling of the Big Day to someone else, not even Bonnie. Her bride had counted on her for every decision that had been made for the past thirteen months, and she’d be counting on Lucy to make sure that each carefully chosen detail was just so. Lucy had made a commitment and she would keep it.

  She pulled up her online calendar for the year and, after studying it for a few moments, wished she hadn’t looked when she felt a tickle of anxiety creeping up her spine. The next few months would be murder, there was no way around that. She’d be chained to her iPhone and her laptop straight through the summer. Well, she and Bonnie had set out to be the best, hadn’t they? When they first opened their doors, they’d dreamed of a day when they’d be in such demand, they’d be turning away clients. They hadn’t quite reached that point yet, but Lucy could see the day approaching, especially after the news of the Magellan wedding broke.

  “It’s the whole reality-TV thing,” Bonnie had said once. “Everyone watches what the celebrities do, then they want to do the same thing, because basically, everyone wants to be a celebrity.”

  Lucy was starting to believe Bonnie had been right. They’d had more than a few calls from brides who wanted the same flowers/decor/favors/cake that Dallas MacGregor had had.

  It was all good, though. Last night, at dinner with her family, Daniel had mentioned how the income from the Magellan wedding alone would make it possible for him to have the inn’s roof replaced, and maybe even replace the rotted dock they’d had to remove two summers ago. It had given her the strangest sensation to realize that her West Coast party business could have such a positive effect on her family’s East Coast inn. The inn was part of her heritage, part of her family’s history, and knowing that she was contributing to its preservation had made her secretly proud.

  “If we booked a few more events like that,” Daniel had said, “I could redo the bathrooms, make them more like the spa types you see in the really high-end hotels. Wouldn’t Dad be proud?”

  “I think Dad would be very proud of the way you’ve run this business, whether or not you get those new bathrooms,” she’d replied.

  “I’m sure he’s proud of both of you,” Grace had assured them. “And I’m sure it’s making him just as pleased as punch to see the two of you working together. I think it was always his dream that his children would run the inn as a team.”

  “Well, I’m afraid that’s one dream that isn’t likely to come true,” Lucy’d told her, “not beyond this summer, anyway. And even at that, Ford’s not here. Who knows where he’ll end up, once he decides he’s had enough?”

  After dinner, Daniel’s kids, D.J. and Diana, had pulled out the board games and insisted on several games of Clue. Grace had begged off the last game and gone to her room, and Lucy lost the hope she’d had of asking her mother about the Ouija board and the other insinuations that had been made about her relationship with Alice Ridgeway. Next trip back, Lucy had promised herself. Next time, she’d make time to get to the bottom of all that.

  For now, she had a mountain of work in front of her and all of last week to make up for. She closed the Magellan file and opened the one for Saturday evening’s Considine wedding. She pulled up her “week before to-do list” and went to the page she’d headed STATE OF THE WEDDING PHONE CALLS. She reached for her phone and dialed the first number on the list, that of the floral designer. After Lucy checked in with him, she’d call the band, the photographer, the videographer, minister, the string quartet for the church, the limo service, the caterer, and her “day of” staff. After all those calls had been made and she was assured all the ducks were in a row, she’d call the bride and give her a little reassurance that everything was on target.

  It took all afternoon.

  Bonnie called to her when she passed her office on the way out at seven thirty.

  “See you in the morning.” Bonnie’s voice trailed down the hall.

  “Right. See you.” Lucy glanced at the clock. How had it gotten so late? “Wait! Bonnie!”

  She got up from her desk and shot into the hall.

  “Want to grab some dinner?”

  “You mean, right now?”

  Lucy nodded. “I skipped lunch and I’m just realizing how hungry I am.”

  “Is there a problem?” Bonnie paused.

  “No. I just thought it would be nice if we had dinner together,” Lucy told her.

  “Maybe some other night. I’m really exhausted, and I still have a bunch of calls to make.” Bonnie turned toward the door. “Don’t work too late. I’m sure you’re tired, too. See you in the morning.”

  Lucy stood next to the receptionist desk, which had been cleaned off for the night. Angie was nowhere to be seen. She had a vague recollection of someone—could have been Angie—appearing in her office to say good night, but Lucy’d been on the phone and had barely paid attention.

  On her way back to her own office, Lucy poked into Ava’s and the conference room, but there was no sign of life. She went back to her desk and made her last three calls for the night and sent her last half-dozen emails. She slid her laptop into her bag, turned off the lights, and stepped into the quiet hall. At the front door, she got out her keys, set the alarm, and relocked the door. She stopped for takeout on the way home, and went back to her empty apartment, where she changed into light sweats and a T-shirt.

  On the drive home, she’d tried to think of someone else she could have called for a spontaneous dinner, but came up dry. It wasn’t that she didn’t like people, or that she wasn’t interested in having friends. It was just that the business had kept her so busy that even when she met people she liked, people she clicked with, she just didn’t have time to follow up. When she’d first moved into her apartment, she’d met several women who, like herself, were busy professionals who seemed like they’d be fun to get to know. But she just never got around to going out after work for that drink they’d talked about, or that Saturday shopping and lunch that had been proposed. Lucy was learning the hard way that even rain checks expired if they weren’t cashed.

  She ate at the dining room table, then set up her laptop and logged on to the Internet. She went to weather.com and typed in the zip code for St. Dennis. According to the site, it was snowing lightly and twenty-nine degrees in her hometown. She could almost see whitecaps on the Bay and the evergreens across the back of the inn swaying against the wind that would be huffing across the water. On such nights, she and her brothers would gather in the living room after homework was completed and they’d sit around the warmth from the fireplace and sip hot chocolate. She guessed that maybe h
er brother’s son and daughter were doing just that right now.

  Soon enough she’d be back there with them. Maybe there’d be another such night while she was home.

  She Google-mapped St. Dennis and used the arrows to locate the Madison farm. The farmhouse was partially hidden by the trees, but the pond and the barns were visible. She wondered if Clay was, at that moment, sitting in what used to be his dad’s study, maybe looking over the renovation plans for the barn, or maybe making a list of the plants he was thinking about growing this year. She remembered how his father would always start to plow up the fields in March, to get the soil ready for the spring planting. She suspected Clay might follow his dad’s lead.

  She moved the arrows on the map to the center of town and moved in closer. There was Kelly’s Point Road, at the end of which stood Scoop. At the opposite end of the boardwalk stood Captain Walt’s, where she and Clay had dinner last week. She leaned an elbow on the table and rested her chin in her palm, remembering. She’d smelled snow in the air when they walked along the dock, and Clay had kissed her. They’d practiced kissing when they were kids, but those practice kisses had been nothing like the real thing. He’d kissed her again on Saturday, but it was the memory of that first real kiss that stayed in her head. It had been both completely unexpected and totally inevitable.

  She returned to the mail page on her screen, but instead of checking her email, she wrote one.

  Free 4 dinner on 1/31?

  L

  Moments later came the response.

  Will pick you up at seven. Lola’s Café this time around?

  Wish you were here.

  Lucy smiled and stared at the screen for a minute before replying.

  Me too.

  Chapter 13

  CLAY sat in the front seat of his Jeep, his cell phone up to his ear.

  “No, I understand,” he was saying. “It’s okay. Do what you have to do.”

  “That’s just it,” Lucy replied. “There are too many things I have to do in too short a period of time. I’m so sorry to cancel, Clay. I just didn’t realize how jammed the schedule was. I mean, I should have, I’ve been doing this long enough, but you just can’t always predict when something is going to go wrong. And it seems that when one thing goes wrong, everything else falls like dominoes.”

  “How did Susanna Jones take it?”

  “She’s disappointed but she’s trying to understand. The good news is that she and Robert did sign the contract, so they’re locked in for their wedding at the end of June, which will take a crazy amount of work to pull off in just a few months. I did explain to her that if similar circumstances arose during the week before her wedding, she’d want me to drop everything and take care of her crisis, which she totally would.” She made an exasperated grrrr sound deep in her throat, and he could tell she was getting worked up all over again. “Honestly, you spend years building up a list of vendors you feel you can trust, and then something like this happens.”

  “You have other caterers you can call on, though, right?” he asked, trying to sound reasonable and coolheaded.

  “Yes, but none of them are available on such short notice.”

  “Maybe you’ll need to try someone new,” he suggested.

  “I did think of that,” she admitted. “I’ve even printed out the emails from caterers who have contacted us in the past trying to get onto our preferred list. I hate to use someone I don’t know, because if they’re terrible, there goes our reputation. Then again, perhaps bad food could be perceived as better than no food.”

  He laughed to lighten the mood. “I’m sure there’s someone in that pile of emails who would be so happy to have the chance to make your A-list that they’ll do a bang-up job.”

  “I’m hoping you’re right. I’ll check each of their websites before I start making calls, maybe see who’s got the best résumé, and who’s available to bring me some samples between now and Saturday.” Lucy sighed. “And then I can turn my attention to convincing the bride that having colored calla lilies—which are the only kind the florist tells me she can get this week—will be so much better than the all-white ones she’d had her heart set on.”

  “What happened to the white ones?” he asked.

  “Something about a crop failure, though why it affected only the white ones, who knows?”

  “So what are you going to do about the Magellan wedding?”

  “Susanna is going to fly out next week and we’ll go over everything that we would have gone over if I’d come east. Right now we need to run through the basics, and we can do that from here. Frankly, we could do that by phone and email, but she needs her hand held a little at this point. But I think we can accomplish enough so that I won’t have to come back there until the spring. Then it will be full steam ahead, because, like I said, there will be a lot to be accomplished.”

  “Spring?” He frowned. He’d have to wait until spring to see her again?

  “Probably not until April.”

  “What happened to February and March?”

  “Clay, we’re so overbooked it isn’t funny. We have three weddings, one sweet sixteen party, a fiftieth wedding anniversary, and two major fund-raisers between now and the first week in April. Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t be an issue, but if I take myself out of the picture here for three or four days at a time to fly out there every few weeks, there will be chaos. We have hired a new event planner and we’ve promoted someone who’s been assisting us for the past two years, but they still have to go through a sort of apprenticeship before they can go off on their own to one of these big-ticket affairs. So I’m making all the contacts for the Magellan wedding that I can from here, then by April, I figure both Ava and Corrine should be ready to step in for me, and I can stay in St. Dennis for at least a week to get everything lined up. I’ll be having each of them gradually take over for me on events in the spring so that the brides aren’t traumatized when ‘their’ wedding planner doesn’t show up on the big day.”

  He pondered the possibility of having Lucy in St. Dennis for a week or better when he could see her maybe every day, as opposed to one dinner this week, and had to agree that her plan had merit.

  “I thought you had a partner. Can’t she handle some of the events?”

  “Bonnie has her own events to handle, and frankly, these past few weeks, she’s been a little distracted.” Clay heard her sigh. “She and her ex-husband are sort of working toward getting back together again, and she’s taking time off that she didn’t use to take to fly up to Sacramento to be with him. Not that I begrudge her the chance to work things out with him,” Lucy hastened to add, “but it just seems that everything is hitting the fan at the same time.”

  “That’s when it usually happens,” he noted. “That’s what my dad always used to say. But look, this is just a temporary situation, right? I mean, you’ll get everything under control out there and then you’ll be able to devote more time to what you need to do here.”

  “In an ideal world, yes.”

  “Think positively.”

  “I’m trying to. Then I look at my incoming email and I want to crawl off into a quiet corner where there is no Internet and suck my thumb.”

  “Is there such a place?”

  “Doubtful.”

  Clay laughed softly. “Hey, this is just a little setback. Take care of your business, then come home for a week or two.”

  “That’s what I’m focusing on right now.” She hesitated before adding, “I’m disappointed. I was looking forward to coming back, and to seeing you.”

  “So was I. You can make it up to me when you get home.”

  They chatted for a few more minutes before ending the call. Clay remained in the car, behind the wheel, until the cold seeped through and his hands were beginning to chill inside his gloves. Disappointed barely said it. Ever since Lucy left, he’d been thinking about the things they might do together while she was home, where they’d go to spend some time alone—and now it would
be months instead of weeks before he could see her again.

  Then again, the delay could work in his favor. By April, the snow would be gone, and with luck, there’d be a day to spend out on the Bay, a day to revisit some of the places they used to go, places that could remind her of who she used to be, and what he’d once been to her. And maybe, just maybe, she’d let her guard down enough to talk to him and tell him just what it was that had caused her to turn away from him so many years ago. She’d already told him it hadn’t been because of anything he’d done, which meant he could lay down that burden of guilt he’d carried for so long, thinking he’d inadvertently done or said something that had hurt her so much that she couldn’t stand to be around him. He thought she’d been just about ready to share whatever it was with him, then something made her pull back. Clay’s instincts told him that, whatever it was, it somehow stood between him and Lucy, and that alone made him determined to lay that beast to rest, one way or another.

  He got out of the car and walked to the house through the snow that had fallen that afternoon, reminding himself with every step that he’d already waited more than half his life for her to come back. It wouldn’t kill him to wait a little longer.

  Brooke was dragging a box toward the back door when he stepped inside the kitchen.

  “Need a hand with that?” Clay asked.

  “Yeah, thanks.” She stood up and slid the elastic out of her ponytail, then smoothed her hair before pulling it back into a tail. “I guess I bit off a little more than I could chew. Jesse offered to come over to help me, but I told him I could handle it. Silly me.”

  “You want this over to the tenant house?” He lifted it with ease.

  “You did it again. Called it the tenant house.” Brooke frowned. “I’m thinking about putting a sign out front that says BROOKE’S COTTAGE. Do you think that would help?”

  “Not really.” He started through the back door, then called back over his shoulder. “Is the door open?”