“Hey, at least I live by the Golden Rule, which is more than I can say for you.”
“What did I do now?” He’d tried his best to convey genuine innocence, but he was a carpenter by trade, not an actor, so even he knew she wasn’t going to buy it. Still, playing along was far more entertaining than cleaning the kitchen.
“Lost the only booking you’ve had in years,” she said.
Lucas had to work to hide his amusement. “See, now that’s where you’re wrong.”
“What?” Her voice was a few octaves too high. “I thought you said she left last night.”
“She did.”
“Then how am I wrong? Jeez, Luc, are you trying to be difficult?”
He was almost ashamed to admit how much he was enjoying this. And why shouldn’t he? If his sister was going to insist on riding him for details, the least he could do was have a little fun with her while she did.
“She left last night.” He paused for a beat, then added, “And came back.”
Sophie growled into the phone. It was the reaction he’d been waiting for.
“Ferry was closed. Now she’s stuck with me.” His resolve cracked into a deep chuckle. Fun was fun, but if he didn’t back off, Sophie was going to hit DEFCON 1. “At least until the storm clears.”
“You’re impossible. Do you know that?”
“Oh, okay, Pot. I’m Kettle,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”
“Can you be serious for five minutes?”
“Fine.” Lucas leaned against the counter, crossing his legs at the ankle. As he did, his gaze fell on a cookie that was wedged between the refrigerator and the wall. At least he was fairly sure it was a cookie at one time anyway. At the moment it looked a bit more like a piece of corrugated cardboard. “Fire away.”
“How did it go? What did she think of the place? Did she like her room? Did you clean up the kitchen? Were you rude? Please tell me you weren’t rude.”
“Whoa, when I said fire away, I was expecting a question or two, not an actual firing squad.”
“Well?”
“I was my perfectly pleasant self.” Even he was surprised he managed to say those words without laughing.
“Oh crap, that bad?” The teasing tone had left her voice.
“I was fine.” And he was. He’d made her dinner. The sheets on the bed were clean. And he hadn’t even turned off the hot water when she’d clearly violated the ten-minute rule. Women. How long did it take to wash one head of hair anyway?
“Fine isn’t going to get you a five-star review.”
Now it was his turn to snort into the phone. “No one would read it anyway.” Admittedly, he hadn’t paid much attention to the inn’s website over the last two years. But thanks to the annoying updates the hosting site sent him every week, even he knew the traffic was about the same as it was on the streets of the island. In other words, nonexistent.
“That might be changing soon. Word is out that you’re back in business.”
“What? How?” Dammit. He’d agreed to this farce because, quite frankly, he was out of options. But he’d made it clear that this was a one-time deal, a temporary nuisance to buy some time, not permission to install a flashing neon OPEN sign in the front window. “I only agreed to one guest. One.”
“Don’t blame me,” she said. “My contribution was limited to reactivating the listing.” His sister waited a beat before adding, “Well, that and the porch.”
He was half-afraid to ask. “What did you do to the porch?”
“Didn’t you see?” It was impossible to miss the disappointment in her voice, but did she really think he’d been kicking back in a rocking chair watching the storm?
“Surprisingly, I haven’t had much time to sit on the porch and read a book, Soph.” In fact, it had been years since Lucas had had time to sit and do much of anything. Between caring for his daughter and dealing with repairs around the inn, he hardly had a free moment. He knew it didn’t look like he spent much time on the place, but that was only the surface stuff. The nuts and bolts of the inn were always falling off, so to speak. It was all he could do to keep up, and that didn’t even count the paperwork. So much paperwork.
Before Jenny died, Lucas had no idea how much administrative crap was involved in running a home, let alone a small business. Jenny had always taken care of it in a way that made it look so effortless. A sad smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he pictured her sitting at the small table on the porch, tapping away on her calculator with a mug of green tea next to her laptop and a Carly Simon album playing on the turntable she’d found at a local flea market.
Lucas’s chest tightened. “You didn’t put the turntable out there, did you?” That, along with everything else of Jenny’s, was in their old room, just as it had been on the day she died.
“Of course not,” Sophie said. There was a tinge of sorrow in her voice, but then she cleared her throat and his upbeat sister was back. “I just figured if she needed to escape the clutter, she would appreciate a cozy blanket.”
Lucas rounded the butcher-block island so as to have a clear view of the porch. Sure enough, the rocking chairs had not only been arranged in a perfect row, but each had a neatly folded blanket draped over the back. There were even pillows on the seats, but swear to God, if one of them had a picture of some smiling sea creature, he was pitching it right into the trash. “So first you list my place and then you decorate it?”
“Was that a thank-you?” She didn’t bother waiting for a reply. “Guilty as charged, but I promise I haven’t said a word to anyone about it.”
“Well then, how—”
“After all this time, you still have to ask how news can make its way around the island in twenty-four hours or less?”
She had a point. The residents of Aurelia Island seemed to know everything, from what a person ate for breakfast to what they streamed on Netflix before bed. But still, he’d have thought the storm might have dominated the local chitchat for at least a day or two.
“Mrs. Jones called to see if the bookstore was open,” Sophie began, offering a level of detail he’d neither asked for nor wanted. It was like the woman was incapable of merely answering a question without first explaining the history. “And she said Mr. Adams told her that Mr. Lewis was down at the docks right when the storm started rolling in yesterday and that he gave a woman with some fancy luggage a ride in his sidecar. She said he said he could hardly believe it when she told him she was staying at the…”
She kept going, but Lucas tuned her out. He’d been doing that for a while now—not to be rude, but more as a matter of self-preservation. Ever since Jenny died, he’d been whispered about by the locals. Endlessly. At first, it was concern laced with a healthy side of pity. But as time went on, it started to take on a bit more of a bite. “What will he do?” turned into “Why isn’t he doing anything?” and “Hopefully he will find someone new” turned into “Who would want to take on that mess?”