The Chesapeake Bride Read online

  He’d wanted to kiss her when he dropped her off. But he knew she was expecting him to, and he wanted to throw her off guard just a little. It remained to be seen if it would have the desired effect—making her wonder why he hadn’t kissed her when he could maybe have at least made the effort.

  He’d rather have her wondering why he hadn’t tried than her feeling smug for having turned him down. Yes, it was a bit of a game, and ordinarily he wasn’t a gamer. For all he played the field, he was always up-front with any woman he dated. But this was different. Cass was different. He wanted her to think about him, so he did the one thing he figured she didn’t expect him to do.

  He’d never had to work for someone, and he admitted that could be just a bit of Cass’s allure. Well, that and her pretty face and her sweet little compact body. He’d always been a sucker for short women.

  Of course, if he had any sense, he’d forget about Cass and go to the new roadhouse out on the highway on Monday night, maybe meet someone who’d be happy to spend some quality time with him.

  He’d have to give that some thought.

  In the meantime, while he waited to hear from Jared, he’d see what chores he could do for Ruby. Thinking about her had made him feel sad over something that hadn’t even happened. Maybe he should plan to stick around for a while, help her while he still had her, let her know how much he appreciated having her in his life.

  OWEN CAME IN through the side door of the store carrying an armful of dahlias he’d cut from Ruby’s garden. He’d eyed the cornflowers but decided those were Harold’s alone to give. He placed the flowers along with her favorite snips on the counter and paused on his way to the kitchen for a vase.

  “What else can I do for you this morning, Gigi?”

  “Tom be along sometime this morning with a delivery. Maybe you could unpack the boxes and restock the shelves.” Ruby sat at the old round wooden table next to the window on the far right side of the store, her favorite place to read the newspaper or a magazine, or, if things were really slow that day, one of the crime novels she so loved. Today she was reading the latest issue of the St. Dennis Gazette.

  Owen grabbed a cold bottle of water from the cooler and walked over to see what this week’s hot topic was in the local newspaper. He peered over her shoulder and read the headline: “What Lies beneath the Dark Waters of the Waring River?”

  “Wonder who Grace was talking to before she wrote that article?”

  “Wonder all you want.” Ruby’s eyes never left the page. “You gonna put those pretties in water, or are you planning on letting them die right there on my counter?”

  “Oh, right. I was going to get a vase and got distracted.”

  “What be distracting you?” Ruby finally looked up.

  “I don’t remember.” The sad truth was he didn’t remember why he hadn’t followed through with the vase, filled it with water, and dunked in the dahlias. It was as if something was there, at the far edge of his mind, begging him to look. But try as he might, he couldn’t bring it into focus.

  He hated when that happened.

  He made his way into the kitchen and opened the cabinet where Ruby kept her favorite vases. He picked a turquoise pottery pitcher he knew she especially liked, filled it at the sink, and took it into the front of the store. He knew Ruby always snipped the stems off a little before putting flowers in a vase, but didn’t know how far to cut, so he left that part for her and plunked the dahlias into the water.

  “Gigi, you want me to leave the vase here?” he called.

  “Right over here on my table with me be fine, thank you, son.”

  Owen carried the vase along with the snips over to the table. Ruby looked over the arrangement and started to pull the stems out one by one and cut off the tips.

  “What be on your mind?” she asked without looking at him.

  “Just a little rammy, I guess.” He leaned over the back of one of the chairs and watched her prepare the flowers for the vase.

  “I don’t know rammy.”

  “Just . . . I don’t know, at loose ends, I guess. I’m getting bored waiting for this project to start. I don’t seem to have any other purpose here.”

  “Tom be bringing stock later, seems you be having plenty of purpose then. And if you be all that bored, I can find plenty for you to do.”

  Owen smiled. No one could put him in his place like Ruby. As he started to ask what she had in mind, he heard footsteps on the porch. Seconds later, Cass was walking across the wooden floor with great purpose. Just his luck. If rammy and antsy were steering his mood, he had this woman to thank for it.

  Seeing her now made it clear to him that his little plan had backfired. He was the one wondering why he hadn’t kissed her when he might have had the chance.

  Cass looked right past him as if he weren’t there and went straight to Ruby. “Miz Carter, I just came from the—”

  “Well, hello, Cass. How’d you enjoy your dinner last night?” Ruby looked up as she folded her newspaper. “If you ever had fresher oysters or a tastier crab cake, you’re going to have to tell me where. Maybe even take me so I can judge for myself.”

  “No, Miz Carter, I never did. Best seafood ever. But just now—”

  “Glad we agree. Now, was there something you be wanting to say? Take a breath now, girl.”

  Cass took a breath. “Last night you were talking about the graveyard by the chapel down the road from Mrs. Hart’s place.”

  Ruby nodded. “Gave Josie’s girl directions to find her grandmother’s grave. Becky Singer be buried in that family plot.”

  “Which is so overgrown with weeds, she’ll never find what she’s looking for. The weeds are up past my knees.”

  “How’d you come to know that?”

  “I was intrigued when you were talking about all those little private burying places. I remembered hearing something about them before, about how families buried their relatives right outside in their yard. So I thought I’d check out a few of them. I was thinking I’d need to figure out how to deal with them once we started marketing the houses we’re going to build. So I went to the one you talked about last night to take a look for myself and found it a mess. Isn’t anyone responsible for taking care of the graves on the island?”

  “Time was, those little graveyards had white fences around them to set them off to themselves, kept the little ones from playing on ’em, kept the old folks from tripping over the stones. You see that white fence in someone’s front yard, you knew their kin was right there with them, where they belonged. Once families leave the island, there be no one left to tend to them, I suppose. Hadn’t much thought about it myself. Used to be preachers on the island, they’d get folks out to do some tending from time to time, but those were other days.”

  “If the others all look like this one”—Cass pointed down the road—“it’s going to turn a lot of people off, not to mention the fact that it’s disrespectful to the people who are buried there. Someone from the island should be concerned about the state of those little private cemeteries.”

  “And who do you think that might be? You know we don’t have a mayor and such, like other places. Things needed to be done, folks just did. I guess with so many leaving, there be no one left to care about the ones who passed on.” Owen didn’t need to look up to know Ruby’s eyes were on him. She took every possible opportunity to remind him that, as far as she was concerned, his place was on Cannonball Island, tending to its business, and nowhere else.

  “I’ll go take a look at the Singer place,” he said. “I can mow the grass, if nothing else. It’s a small plot, it won’t take any time at all.”

  “You better have a big mower with really sharp blades,” Cass told him. “I wasn’t kidding about the grasses being over my knees.”

  “I’ll take a sickle.” He turned to Ruby. “There’s still that old one out in your shed, right?”

  “My Harold’s tools are all still out there. Sickle be one of them. Don’t forget to clean it when y
ou’re done with it, and put it back right where you found it, hear?”

  “I’ll treat it like it was my own.”

  “You’ll treat it like it belonged to your great-granddaddy, because it did.”

  “All righty, then.” Owen kissed Ruby on top of her head. “Tell Tom to leave whatever he brings out on the porch and I’ll bring everything in when I get back.”

  THE SUN BLAZED down the way it sometimes did in late September around noon. After twenty minutes swinging his great-grandfather’s sickle to cut down the high grass, Owen was covered with sweat. He took off his shirt and hung it over the fence surrounding the old graveyard.

  Meanwhile, Cass made the rounds of the grave markers as he cleared them. “Look here. Isiah Singer. Born . . . I think it says 1814. Died 1881.” Cass looked up at Owen. “Eighteen fourteen would have made him one of the first babies born on the island.”

  Owen nodded. “Maybe even the first.”

  “I wonder if there’s any way to find out, short of checking every gravestone on the island. But even doing that wouldn’t guarantee we’d know for sure. It could be that the first person born here died elsewhere and wasn’t even buried here.”

  Owen stepped around her with the sickle.

  She went on to another marker. “This one is totally illegible. And this one . . . I can make out Singer as the last name but not the first. Looks like it starts with an E. Born 1821. Died 184-something. I can’t read the last number.” She stood and went to the next. “This is like reading a book. A family saga.” She knelt down to read the next one in line. “This guy . . . Joshua Singer . . . he was a bit of a ladies’ man. He’s buried with three wives.” She looked up at Owen and grinned. “Jealous?”

  He laughed. “Nope. I don’t envy any man who had three wives.”

  “Not all at the same time. The first one, Mary, died when she was . . . oh, my, seventeen. Must have been a child bride. Wife number two . . . Elizabeth, died when she was in her thirties. And the last one . . . ha! Ruth outlived him by eight years. Looks like she was another younger bride. She was twenty-two when she married him. Guess Joshua was a stud.”

  Cass stood next to the broken fence and watched him work. “What can I do to help?”

  “If you really want to do something, you could rake up all this stuff I’m cutting down.”

  “Where do I get a rake?”

  “Ruby has a couple in the shed.” He stopped for a moment, wiped the sweat from his face with his forearm, then wiped his arm on his shirt.

  “I can do that. I’ll be back in a few.”

  “Hey, Cass,” he called before she got too far up the road. “Ask Ruby for a couple of big bottles of water.”

  “Will do.” She raised a hand and kept walking.

  Cass hadn’t been kidding about the height of the grass. How was it that no one had noticed before? Were all the old graveyards around the island as overgrown and neglected? He’d bet most of them were, except for those whose adjacent homes were still occupied.

  And the ones where Ruby’s kin were buried, he reminded himself. All of them. He knew this for a fact because she’d had him tend to them before he’d been back on the island for too long.

  Gravekeeper. Cemetery attendant. Add those to my résumé.

  If you wanted to live on Cannonball Island, you had to be a jack-of-all-trades. Not that he was planning on making the island his home again. This was temporary, only until this diving job for Jared was finished, however long that might be. Owen was certain that by then he’d be ready to be on the move again. Hopefully, by then, whatever had told him it was time to come home—that voice he heard inside his head, sometimes when he least wanted to—would have been satisfied. That voice—wherever it came from, whomever it belonged to—had been inside him for as long as he could remember. The only times in his life he’d really messed up had been the times he’d ignored it. Owen’d spent his life trying to ignore its implications, but he’d never been able to shake free of it. Ruby’d told him to just let it in, to hear what the voice had to say, but he’d never wanted anything to do with it.

  “You be happy to have that voice someday,” Ruby had admonished him.

  “I doubt it,” he’d shot back.

  “Be careful what you wish for. You lose what you don’t use, son.”

  “Good. Then anytime now it should be gone.”

  So far, that hadn’t happened. At times he could stifle it, at times he could tune it out. Then the other night it tuned him out when he thought he’d try to read Cass.

  Turn around.

  Without thinking, he turned in time to see Cass headed toward him, pushing Ruby’s rusty old wheelbarrow. The uneven front wheel caused it to wobble. The light behind her gave her an all-over aura that drew his eyes and held them. He had to force himself to look away.

  “That must be a bear to push.” He dropped the sickle and went to the road to help.

  “I’ve got it.” Cass was all but out of breath, but she pushed on.

  He stopped the barrow’s forward motion with one hand. “Here. You take the rake, and I’ll take this beast.”

  He handed her the rake and grabbed the handles and started to push before she could object. It gave him something to do besides look at her. She was sweaty from pushing the barrow up the road, her short blond hair plastered to her now-shiny face. If she’d had makeup on, it had melted in the sun or it had been washed away by sweat. She was as sexy right then as she’d been in that black dress she’d worn the night he met her at the art show.

  “Damn,” he’d said under his breath.

  “It is a little unwieldy. Thank you. I didn’t want to complain, but—”

  “What?” He tuned back in.

  “The wheelbarrow. I agree, it’s a tough push. I said thanks for taking it off my hands.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  They stopped at the edge of the fence, and Owen pushed the wheelbarrow across the sandy soil to the gate.

  “I guess we should pick up the loose grass that I cut down and load it into the wheelbarrow. Then I’ll come back later with the mower and cut it down to normal grass level, make it look neat.”

  “I think Diane’s family would appreciate that.” Cass stood with her hands on her hips. “I can rake it into piles and you can pick it up and toss it in here.” She pointed to the wheelbarrow. “Oh, I almost forgot. Here’s your water.” She took the plastic bottle from the bottom of the wheelbarrow and handed it to him.

  “Thanks. I bet I sweated off about eight pounds already today.” He unscrewed the top and drank down half the bottle. When he finished, he looked skyward. “I had no idea it was going to get this hot today. You can get dehydrated pretty quickly working too long out here.”

  “Miz Carter sent up a couple of those. She said we’d probably need them.” Cass opened a bottle and took a drink, then removed the others and set them on the ground in the shade from the fence. “She also sent sunscreen and said for you to use it.” Cass dug the plastic bottle from her back pocket and handed it over. “She made me use it before I left the store.”

  “Thanks. For someone who has never in her life used the stuff, she is almost militant about everyone else slathering it on.” Owen pulled off the cap and poured lotion on his arms and the back of his neck, then spread the remainder over his chest and face. He was tempted to ask Cass to rub it on his back and shoulders but knew instinctively that would be a bad move. Her hands on his hot bare skin? Ah—no. A very bad idea.

  “Well, if you’re done cutting, I’ll rake.”

  “I’m done. Go ’head and do your thing.”

  Owen leaned against the fence and tried not to watch. Cass was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt that, before long, began to stick to her in all those places he’d told himself not to focus on. He was grateful when there were piles of grass for him to pick up. By the time she finished raking, the wheelbarrow was full to almost overflowing. The grass that wouldn’t fit into the wheelbarow was in a pile near the gate, and Cass loo
ked as if she’d had enough raking to last a long time.

  A car drove by, then stopped and backed up.

  “Hey!” Lis had rolled down the driver’s-side window. “What are you guys doing?”

  “Cleaning up the Singer plot.” Owen walked over to his sister’s car.

  “Kind of you to give the old man a hand, Cass,” Lis said.

  “Actually, I’m helping Cass. It was her idea.”

  “Nice.” Lis nodded approvingly. “You’re becoming a real islander, Cass. Before long, you’ll be picking up your mail at the general store and sitting out on the old pier, catching your own crabs, just like the rest of us.”

  Cass laughed.

  “Gotta run. Alec is waiting for me. We’re going to look at some dining tables a woodworker over in Ballard makes from old barn wood.” Lis waved as she took off.

  “Have you ever gone crabbing?” Owen asked as he walked back to the plot.

  “No. I prefer my crabs caught and cooked by someone else.” Cass leaned against the rake and rubbed one hand with the other.

  “Let me see what’s going on there,” Owen said, noticing Cass rubbing her palms. He reached for her left hand and turned it over, then looked at the right. “You’ve got the beginnings of some nasty blisters. Why didn’t you say something when it started to hurt?”

  Cass shrugged. “I didn’t think the raking would take as long as it did. I didn’t realize how much grass there was, so I didn’t think it was a big deal.”

  “It’ll be a big deal if you don’t put something on them. Come back to the store with me. Ruby has some stuff that will fix those right up.” He finished one bottle of water and reached for a second. When it was empty, he turned the wheelbarrow toward the road. “Can you carry the rake and the sickle?”

  “Sure.” She put the empty water bottles in with the grass and walked along the shoulder of the road. “That little graveyard looks a lot better. It made me sad to think that Diane would travel all the way to get here, then not be able to find her grandmother’s grave because the grass covered it. Thanks for helping me.”