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Too late. “My cousin Kim had a great body. My sister Julia had beautiful red hair. Kim gained weight. Julia went gray. But I still have my peepers.” Eunice had violet eyes like Elizabeth Taylor. And Eunice was still alive. “My eyes are my best feature. Everyone says so.” She’d made a good living modeling with those peepers. She wasn’t about to cover them up.
“And yet you can’t see.” There was sarcasm in her friend’s words. And impatience. And exasperation. “I’m not asking you to wear glasses all the time. Just when you’re sewing. I’d rather have one of your quilts to sell than an arts-and-crafts picture frame.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, oh.” Agnes carefully folded the baby quilt and set it in Eunice’s lap. “I’ll make an appointment for you with my eye doctor in Cloverdale. In the meantime, you can borrow my reading glasses and see if that helps.” She dug in her tote and handed Eunice a pair of black rectangular frames.
Eunice accepted them with a two-finger hold, as if they were slimy creatures who might sting. “They’re—”
“Hideous. Yes, I know. But they work. Put them on and see for yourself.”
Reluctantly, Eunice did as Agnes asked, but not before looking up to see if Thelma across the street was sitting at her front window. Thankfully, she wasn’t. Glasses on, Eunice glanced down at the pink baby quilt. The stitches were monstrous. “Blast.”
“Exactly.”
* * *
DUFFY PREPARED HIS coffee by the small light over the stove. He hadn’t slept well. Thoughts of Greg’s baby and Jessica had him counting alarm-clock clicks.
He was thickheaded tired. But it was a workday. He’d rely on his morning ritual to get him going. Drag himself out of bed, check; grind fresh coffee beans, check; make a pot of coffee, check; and stand there waiting for it to brew. The standing and waiting was a waste of time, but he liked not doing anything. He liked the quiet. He liked—
Snap.
Duffy startled. The two-bedroom Craftsman house was ninety years old and prone to the creaks and groans of an older property in California. But this wasn’t a creak or a groan, and it had come from outside.
His entire body tensed as he strained to identify the sound over the hiss of the coffeemaker.
Thunk.
Duffy’s gaze cut to the kitchen window. There was movement. A blur of movement. And eyes. Bloodshot, beady eyes.
Later, Duffy couldn’t recall if he’d released a primal yell or an unintelligible curse, but the kitchen reverberated with sound.
A face pressed to the bottom of the glass. Pale, wrinkled, with grayish-purple-tinged hair in pink curlers. It was his neighbor Eunice. No doubt on her tiptoes considering the house sat on a raised foundation.
Duffy charged toward the front door, grabbing a sweatshirt he’d left on the living room couch.
It was still dark outside. The sky above Parish Hill was tinged orange. Streetlights flickered off as an older woman in a white flowered housecoat and fuzzy pink slippers ran across his driveway.
“Eunice!”
She froze at the hedges marking the property boundary. Shoulders hunched, rollers trembling.
Duffy reminded himself that he was new to a town full of curious old folk. He reminded himself that Eunice was more than a bit of an odd duck. She’d brought him a brussels sprouts, chocolate and bacon casserole as a housewarming gift, and practically done inventory on his belongings. He reminded himself to be patient as he tried to modulate his tone, tried to ignore a voice in his head pointing out he slept in the buff in the hot summer months. “Can I help you with something, Eunice?”
“I was...” She turned around slowly. Her gaze dropped to the Hawaiian boxers his mother had given him last year and then flew back up to his face. “I was just looking for my cat.”
“You don’t have a cat.” There was a man in town who rescued cats. He’d been by a couple of times already to see if Duffy was interested in adopting one, and he’d been vocal in his disappointment that Eunice wasn’t a cat lover.
“I...uh...heard a cat.”
“Eunice.” Over the past few days, he’d been badgered about his past (met with dead silence), his love life (met with deadlier silence) and had his small sack of groceries inspected (met with near-dead patience). And now this.
His toes were frozen. The cold nipped at his restraint. It must be barely forty degrees. It wasn’t good for either one of them to be out here half-dressed. “I’m not an interesting man. I make coffee in the morning. I go to work. I come home at night and make dinner. You know all that.” He’d caught her looking out her window at him a few times.
She tried to laugh. It sounded as fake as he suspected it to be. “You think that I...” Ha-ha-ha. “It was the cat.” That was her story and she was sticking to it.
“Whatever.” He wasn’t winning this battle. “Be careful looking for whatever it is you’re looking for. If you fall in my yard while I’m in the shower...”
Her cheeks reddened, then she mumbled something he didn’t catch and hurried into her dark house.
He’d checked out several homes before deciding on this one. Duffy was only renting with the option to buy the place. It’d suck to move again so soon, but he didn’t relish living next door to Peeping Eunice.
* * *
LATER IN THE DAY, Duffy was managing a crew who were caning the vineyards across the road from the Mionetti sheep ranch. The Mionettis, an elderly couple born and raised in the valley, had sold the property they hadn’t been using to the winery. Now it seemed as if they were selling tickets to watch Duffy and the other workers.
Cars crowded the Mionettis’ long driveway. Several older residents clustered about. They squinted. They pointed. Eunice waved. Mr. Mionetti dragged out folding lawn chairs. Mrs. Mionetti brought out coffee and what looked like baked goods.
“Get used to it,” Ryan, the assistant winemaker, who was recently out of graduate school, came up to explain. He held a pair of long loppers which he used to clip thicker vines. “We’re entertainment.”
“All we’re doing is cutting the vines back and tying the remaining canes to the trellis system,” Duffy grumbled. There had to be close to twenty people loitering on the Mionettis’ lawn. It was another cold day. The sky was a crisp blue and the air bit at exposed skin. Surely at their ages, they shouldn’t be outdoors.
Ryan shrugged his gangly shoulders. “Nothing much goes on in this town, so anything that does happen is watch-worthy. I’m told I’ll understand it when I’m seventy. But for now, the combination of you and activity in the vineyards? It’s like the Superbowl.”
“More like Mardi Gras.” Duffy turned his back on the spectators and snipped off a vine with his battery-powered pruning sheers. There were eleven men in the vineyard—some cutting, some tying, some throwing cuttings into bins. Usually that meant lots of talking or music being played, but today the audience seemed to have thrown the workers off.
A vehicle backfired.
Rutgar pulled into the vineyard’s dirt driveway in his beat-up green truck, blocking Duffy’s car in. Rutgar lumbered out, a pair of binoculars in hand. He propped his elbows on the hood, and surveyed Duffy and his crew. He was close enough, he could have whispered a question as to how it was going and Duffy would have heard him.
The old man’s arrogance. The town’s fandom. Eunice’s peeping.
Duffy felt his anger rising. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” He took a step toward Rutgar, only to be held back by Ryan.
“It’s not worth it,” the younger man said. “You want less attention, you hope someone more interesting comes to town. Or you make close friends with someone who lives here.”
From what Duffy had heard, until the winery began selling wine, the chance of anyone new coming to town was slim. “What do you mean, ‘make close friends’?”
“Pick someone in town. Tell them a few things about yourself. They’ll become the conduit for town gossip and you get left alone.”
Eunice in her pink curlers came to mind. Duffy suppressed a shudder. He’d rather recruit someone to move to town. “Hey, you don’t live in Harmony Valley, do you?”
“I live in Cloverdale.” The younger man’s gaze slid away. “With my parents. Student loans, dude. They’re killer.” And then his trademark smile returned. “My moving here wouldn’t make any difference. I have three fairy godmothers—Agnes, Mildred and Rose.”
With effort, Duffy turned away from Rutgar and his binoculars. “Don’t they feed you lunch?”
“Yep.” Ryan gave a peace sign to the crowd. Appreciative shouts and laughter drifted back on a breeze. “And they do my laundry—which my mother refuses to do anymore.”
Hello, mama’s boy.
Duffy clipped a vine. “You’re quite the chick magnet.”
“I’ll get there. I’d like to be debt-free first.”
Having only recently had his financial burdens lifted, Duffy admired Ryan for that.
“Did you have fun in Vegas last weekend?” Ryan asked.
“Yep.” It had been great to decide Friday afternoon to go somewhere on the spur of the moment. Another few weeks and he’d make another trip somewhere. Anywhere. “I can’t wait to get away again.” Duffy loved the lack of pressing family and financial obligations, embraced the idea of leaving just because he could.
What about Jessica’s baby?
Duffy swept the thought aside. Jessica’s baby wasn’t his responsibility or any of his business.
He, on the other hand, was still at the center of these Harmony Valley residents’ business. Increasingly so, much to his annoyance.
He couldn’t wait for someone new to move to town.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_c4446c28-7a5a-5fb7-b307-30b7e4b10688)
“WHAT’S A LITTLE RAIN?” Jessica asked herself sarcastically as she parked on Harmony Valley’s Main Street on Saturday night. The rain had been coming down steadily for the entire drive. Now it was pouring.
She’d located the restaurant the other day before she left town. There’d been almost no one parked on the street then. Tonight, the diagonal spaces along Main were full. She’d had to find a spot a block away from El Rosal.
“Perfect.” It wasn’t. She hadn’t brought an umbrella. With her baby bump, it was enough that she had to juggle her purse and walk. Adding an umbrella to the mix was a bit much for her equilibrium on a windy night. “So much for doing my hair.” For the first time in months, she’d put her long hair in rollers. It tumbled about her shoulders in soft waves that made her feel more like her nonpregnant self.
She gathered her purse and raised the hood on her jacket. Her girth brushed against the steering wheel. Baby shimmied in a way that made her feel nauseous.
Jess counted to twenty, hoping the nausea would pass and the rain would let up. Her stomach settled. The rain intensified. It was nearly six. She couldn’t sit here any longer.
She pushed open the door. Before her feet so much as swung out of the car, she was wet. Rain plastered her face and lap. She walked with lumbering steps toward El Rosal, feet splashing in barely seen puddles.
The wind practically blew her into the restaurant decorated in an overload of primary colors. Red, yellow, green, blue. Walls, tables, chairs. It looked as loud as it sounded. The place was full. The music was blaring. And so had the conversation been, until everyone turned her way and stopped talking.
Duffy stood at a table by the window, looking glad to see her.
People began whispering, and Duffy frowned, maybe not so glad to see her.
She’d never been good at making a graceful entrance, and tonight was no different. Her hair drooped and as usual she’d been unable to close her jacket. The red maternity sweater over her baby bump was wet and clinging. She met Duffy’s gaze, and gestured toward the ladies’ room.
The bathroom mirror revealed a drowned, pregnant raccoon. She wiped at the mascara beneath her eyes, used the hand dryer to blow most of her hair and the sweater over her belly dry and shook the rest of the water from her coat.
An elderly woman with teased, purplish hair and a kind smile entered the ladies’ room as Jess was finishing. “Hello, sweets. Are you all right?”
“Just a little wet.” Jessica stepped aside so the woman could wash her hands.
“I’m Eunice. Duffy’s next-door neighbor.”
Jessica introduced herself.
Eunice took inventory of Jessica’s clothes and belly, but not in a negative way. “Are you Duffy’s girlfriend?”
“No!” The word burst forth with enough energy to heat Jessica’s cheeks.
Someone knocked on the door. “Everything okay in there?” It was Duffy.
Eunice was still waiting for more of an answer.
“I’m, uh...not his, uh...”
“Jess?” Duffy again. Mr. Persistent.
Jess tried to smile. “I’m sorry... I...uh... I have pregnant brain.”
Eunice’s gray brows puckered together.
“Baby steals my brain cells.”
When Eunice still looked confused, Jessica excused herself and hurried out.
Duffy led her across the dining room, looking small-town hip in work boots, jeans and a forest green Henley. “I saw Eunice follow you in.” He pulled out a chair for Jess. “She can be a bit...overzealous.”
She sat. “Eunice was fine.” It was Jess who’d shouted like an angry cockatoo.
He’d ordered a bottle of beer, and had a glass of water for her. Chips and salsa served as the table’s centerpiece.
“You missed a spot of mascara.” He took a paper napkin and gently wiped at her cheek.
Greg ran the back of his hand across her cheekbone. “So beautiful.”
That was love. That was definitely love.
Jess blinked, as Greg’s face morphed into Duffy’s. “Thank you.”
While he sat, Jess took a moment to look around. The clientele was mostly in their seventies and eighties. They studied her with unabashed curiosity. “Is this seniors’ night?”
“No. This is Harmony Valley, average age seventy-five.” He raised his beer bottle in salute.
“That must make for a swinging singles scene for you.”
He almost smiled. She noted his lips twitching upward before he hid behind his beer.
“Why are they staring at me?” It was beginning to creep Jess out.
“They don’t know you.” He seemed half amused and half annoyed as he leaned closer to the woman at the table next to him, and practically shouted, “This is Jessica. She used to date my brother.”
The woman nodded, smiled at Jess and then addressed the next table over and relayed the news.
