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“I’ll meet you at the diner in fifteen and we’ll go over the early RSVPs and start thinking about the actual planning,” she said and hung up before Maureen could really get going on the cancellation conversation. If Luther and his crew were going to milk this job until the last minute, she would be prepared to use each of those final seconds to make sure the reunion went off without a hitch.
Her ribs twinged again.
It was ten years ago, for Pete’s sake. She was over it. Six more weeks and she could completely put it out of her mind and in the meantime she had the school to renovate, the reunion party to plan and her job at the winery. Plenty of work to keep her mind occupied and fully in the present, where she preferred to be. There was no reason to keep living in the past. Wasn’t that what her therapist told her? She was still cured.
Two years before she’d been a borderline agoraphobic afraid to leave the island. Sometimes afraid to leave her cute little cottage on the west side of town. The first two sessions with Dr. Laurer were held via video chat. For the following four months Dr. Laurer brought the ferry to Gulliver twice a week to meet with her at the cottage or at the diner. The day she took the ferry to his office for a session he’d declared her cured. She’d celebrated with her parents at a nice restaurant on the waterfront.
The fact that she hadn’t been off the island since that day was beside the point. She was over the past. Over the attack. No need to keep bringing it up.
Maybe if she’d gone to the mainland with Maureen for a girl’s day, or even to go to the movies with her mom once or twice she would not have thought twice about driving to Cleveland to meet with Luther before hiring him. There were always reasons to skip an impromptu shopping or movie trip, though. After a while people stopped asking her to do things off the island and until the excitement about the upcoming reunion started she didn’t think twice about all the ways she had become complacent about her life.
That stopped now.
Canceling the reunion, letting the school project founder, would bring the past up in a big way. Would stress out her parents, who deserved so much more than constantly worrying their daughter would freak out and never leave her house again. The whispered conversations would start. The pitying looks. She loved the island and she loved the people on it, but they had to stop treating her like she was broken.
She wasn’t.
She was healed. Maybe if she kept telling herself that it would actually be true.
Fifteen minutes later Jaime sat in her favorite corner booth at the Gulliver Diner watching out the big plate-glass window and stealing glances at a booth in the back to a stranger with broad shoulders and a tight T. His black hair that was short enough to look tidy but long enough to look just a little bit dangerous. He looked...interesting. At least from the back.
But Jaime didn’t leave her bench seat to covertly check him out on her way to the bathroom. It was enough to watch the economical movements he used to cut into his eggs Benedict.
She shifted in her seat and the cracked purple vinyl sighed with the movement. The Formica-topped tables were chipped, and the black-and-white-tiled floor was scuffed and scarred beyond repair, but the Gulliver Diner was a mainstay on the island. Funny, though, Anna, the diner’s only waitress for as long as she could remember, usually paid a lot more attention to tourists, and she’d barely flirted with the hot guy in the corner. Maybe the view from the front negated the pulse-pounding view from behind, she thought.
Finally, Maureen pulled up in her little blue golf cart and hurried inside. She wore skinny jeans and Converse sneakers with a striped sailor top in navy and white. Her hair in a ponytail, quilted backpack slung across her torso, she looked pulled together. Jaime shrank back against the seat as her outfit would never be mistaken for fashionable.
Anna brought over a tall, frosted glass and a pitcher of iced tea. She topped off Jaime’s glass, filled Maureen’s and set the pitcher on the table for them. “You girls want a sandwich?” She waved her hand toward the kitchen. “Hank’s making triple-decker clubs for lunch today. I just served the last of the Benedicts to him,” she said, pointing to the corner booth. Jaime’s gaze came to rest on the back of the stranger with broad shoulders and dark, dark hair. She couldn’t see his face but her tummy did a little flip-flop.
Which was silly. She didn’t do the flip-flop thing any longer. Especially not in grubby work clothes. She should have taken the time to change before meeting Maureen for lunch.
They each ordered sandwiches and Anna disappeared behind the counter.
“Listen to this one.” Jaime tucked the strand of blond hair behind her ear, determined to ignore the discomfort weighing on her narrow shoulders. Before she could begin reading from the questionnaire in her hand Maureen interrupted.
“I think we need to seriously consider not having an island-wide reunion this summer.” She held up her hand and Jaime bit back the protest that immediately sprang to her lips. “The school reno is a huge project, and it’s more important than the reunion. The reno will bring tourists back here year after year. Having all our old classmates come in and seeing the old-timers who moved off-island years ago is great. What the island needs, though, is a steady stream of tourists. Newcomers. Old residents.”
“And they’ll come, but the reno doesn’t trump the reunion.”
“Maybe it should.” Maureen reached across the table to pat Jaime’s hand. As she and so many others had so many times over the past decade. She was sick to death of their patronizing. “The reno was a last-minute fix to the location problem when the winery said no to hosting the main reunion events. That is on our class. The pranks we pulled still make people see us as a bunch of bored kids—”
“All the more reason to prove to them that we’ve all moved on from the idiots we were in high school. We can do both and put all the gossiping to rest.”
“I just think we should seriously consider pulling back. Finish the reno in style and do a big opening for the reunion next summer.”
Jaime blinked. Waited another moment. “Is that all?”
Maureen nodded.
“Good. Motion denied.”
“You didn’t bring it before the committee.” Maureen beetled her brows.
“The reunion ‘committee’ consists of you, me and Clara. Clara dropped all of her responsibilities in my lap a month ago, so her vote goes to me. That makes it two to one for the reunion.”
Maureen made a face. “You always have an angle.”
“Only when it really matters. So, on with the RSVPs. Who wrote this?” Jaime rattled the paper in her hands and read, “‘Since leaving Gulliver I’ve completed my law degree and now work for one of the leading defense firms in Cleveland...’” she pitched her voice higher, trying to mimic the Minnie Mouse tone Pam Andrews had used through three speech classes and in her valedictory address on graduation day. She rolled her eyes and made up the next part. “‘But if I don’t make partner by the time I’m thirty, I’ll just move to the Magic Kingdom to reunite with Mickey.’”
Maureen laughed. “You’ve got Pam down pat, Jai.”
The tension between them dissipated as they read the latest batch of reunion mail to hit Jaime’s mailbox.
Jaime breathed a sigh of relief. Usually their close-knit community made her feel safe but lately... Lately all she felt was annoyed. Annoyed that, because the attack had happened ten years before and she was now planning her class’s ten-year reunion, everyone seemed to think she needed extra care. Her mom kept calling at odd hours... Maureen had come up with every reason possible to cancel the reunion... Anna had sent home leftovers from the diner at least twice each week... Even Tom, her boss at Gulliver Wines, had suggested she bring in a couple of interns to help with summertime events.
Her father and a few of his cronies came in for lunch, laughing with Anna as they ordered club sandwiches and thick-cut fries. The men started talking, about township business or maybe last night’s baseball game, Jaime couldn’t be certain. Anna kept the tables bused and the coffee cups filled. Jaime knew every single person inside the restaurant. This was just the way she liked it. Quiet. Normal.
Tourists were a necessary part of island life, even though the crush of them made her skin itch. A solo stranger sitting across the room? No big deal. She glanced at the stranger who had pushed his empty plate to the edge of the table. A welcome distraction, really. But a mass of humanity exiting one of the ferries? She shivered. Of course without the tourists the three main islands—Kelly’s, South Bass and Gulliver’s—wouldn’t survive.
From her vantage point, she could see the Marblehead Lighthouse across the bay and, if she craned her neck, just make out the top of Perry’s Monument. In late May, the trees were budding and colorful flowers splashed along the Lake Erie shore. In another week or so Cedar Point, a huge amusement park, would be open and the ferries would increase their trips to the islands.
“Mine is worse.” Maureen cleared her throat, dragging Jaime’s attention back to the table, and then speaking in a deep baritone. “‘I left Gulliver to play football, and I did.’” She shook her head and then spoke in her normal voice. “Jason never did learn how to string more than a few words together, did he?”
Jaime focused on her friend. “He lost a little too much oxygen to those half nelson’s in wrestling meets. He’s done well for himself, though. I hear next fall he’ll be the main anchor for one of those college football shows on cable.”
Maureen’s jaw dropped. “Jason the Jerk you defend when he was a bully all through school but Pam the Perfect you throw to the wolves?”
“Jason wasn’t so much a bully as a kid who didn’t know his own strength. He didn’t, and probably still doesn’t, have a mean-hearted bone is his whole body.”
Jaime checked off the last two names on the list for the reunion. Nearly all the invitations had been accepted. Not bad considering she and Maureen had only taken over Project Reunion and had sent out the invitations two weeks before. One name without a checkmark stood out. Emmett Deal. Who’d disappeared on prom night, never to be heard from again.
Except in her dreams. Well, usually only when she stayed up too late watching cable and saw him on one of those home renovations shows. On those nights his muscular, tanned form seemed to sink straight into her brain like a weighted hook sank to the bottom of Lake Erie. Her stomach would do that flip-flopping thing it kept doing when she looked at the broad shoulders of the stranger in the corner. So she was a sucker for a pair of broad shoulders, was that so bad?
She was definitely not obsessed with how he looked, shirtless and buff, with a tool belt around his lean hips. Nope, she hardly ever pictured that at all, and she definitely had not done a little comparison shopping between the hunk on cable TV and the hairy guys Luther had brought with him to the island.
“Anna mentioned the diner would host the meet and greet on Friday night, if we wanted.” Jaime closed the folder and slid it into her satchel.
“Love that idea, and we could stagger the times so the place isn’t overrun all at once. Everyone wants to eat here when they come back home, anyway.”
Maureen checked her watch and slid out of the booth. “I’ve got that volunteer thing at the elementary this afternoon. God, I can’t wait for summer break. Want to hash out the party details tomorrow over breakfast? The kiddo will be knee-deep in kindergarten fun by eight-thirty, so I could be here by eight-forty-five.” Maureen emptied the pitcher into a travel cup while they made plans and then hustled out the door. Jaime signaled Anna for a refill and watched out the window as the first ferry pulled into the dock.
She looked around. If the school reno went well, there would be few quiet mornings like this at the diner. Still, it would be good for the locals if more tourists hit their shore instead of the other islands.
“Now that Thomas has canceled the contract, we should cancel the reno, gut it and tear it down.” Mason Brown’s voice was quiet in the restaurant, but she had no trouble overhearing. Not that her father ever minded people overhearing him, especially when he was talking about something controversial. “The roof’s falling in. Someone is going to be seriously hurt.”
What was he talking about? She’d talked to Luther not an hour before. Cold, clammy dread shivered up Jaime’s spine as she twisted around in her seat.
Mason wore his usual uniform of navy pants and light blue, short-sleeved dress shirt with the Gulliver’s Island Police Department logo over the breast. “Department” was a bit of a stretch, she knew. Other than Mason there were two full-time employees and one was the island dispatcher. It was all the small community needed, except during the summer months.
He continued. “That old school has got to go, there’s no ifs, ands, or buts.”
Jaime’s jaw dropped. When the Gulliver family had bought the island two hundred years before, they’d planted their vineyard and built the school, which was what had grown the tiny village of Gulliver Township. The school’s brass bell hadn’t rung in decades, but the place was still important to the island.
It was important to her, and not just as a distraction over the whole ten-year nonsense.
Jaime wiped her mouth and pushed up and out of her booth to step closer to their table. Her father spoke to Tom Gulliver, her boss at the winery, and a few other township trustees.
“Excuse me,” she said. “The construction crew is making good progress. I don’t think we need to call it quits so soon.” The lie tasted bad in her mouth.
“The crew isn’t coming back. Luther made it official when he stopped by the township office a half hour ago.” Mason sighed. His patronizing tone set the hairs on the back of Jaime’s neck on edge.
“What do you mean they aren’t coming back? I was with Luther not more than an hour ago. He left, but only for the weekend.” Jaime couldn’t wrap her head around what her father was saying. This was bad. Really, really bad.
“The renovation wasn’t thought out clearly enough.”
“Answer my question. How do you know the crew is walking out of the job?”
Mason sucked in a slow breath and Jaime fisted her hands at her sides. “I mean he stopped by the township office with the unsigned contract and said he was through being monitored by a party planner and walked out.”
Party planner? Monitored? She’d been doing her job. Mason continued before Jaime could defend herself. “And, Jaime, sweetheart, I’m not sure you have all the facts about Gulliver School.”
“I know it’s a historic landmark. I know it educated several generations of Gulliver residents and mainland kids.” She straightened her shoulders. “I know during World War II the Red Cross used it as a meeting place of sorts for the women left behind.” Just because something didn’t work the way some thought it should didn’t mean that thing should be destroyed. “The building has a lot of issues, but it isn’t as bad as we initially thought—”
“Did you know little Andy Grapple broke one of the windows over the weekend, crawled inside and then fell from the second-floor landing?” Tom Gulliver’s voice was deep and passionate.
Tom and her father had been buddies as long as Jaime could remember. Other than her father Tom was the only person on the island who knew exactly what had happened ten years before. All those years ago her father helped her hide her scars, and thanks to Tom she had a good job, but this was not the same. “No, I—”
“Did you know some of the high school kids have used that place as a parking spot?” her father chimed in. Of course she knew that. Everyone knew that.
“Or that the roof is collapsing?” Rick Meter, another trustee, joined the conversation.
Yes, she knew more about the old school than anyone else on the island at this point. She hadn’t known about Andy’s fall, though, which was odd, but she knew renovation could save the old brick building. Throwing it away like a broken toy was just...wrong. “Roofs can be fixed, windows replaced.”
“We can’t station a guard outside 24/7 to keep kids out of it.”
“You could install an alarm system,” a new voice joined the conversation. The hairs on Jaime’s neck stood up again. The man in the corner. This time it wasn’t annoyance at being talked down to that caused the reaction. It was the voice itself. A voice she never thought she’d hear, at least not while she was on Gulliver.
The broad shoulders.
The not too long but not too short black hair.
Sure, his face was turned away, but she should have known or at least suspected. Ten years.
She turned slowly and felt the blood drain from her cheeks. The man from the corner booth wasn’t so much stranger as long-lost resident.
Emmett Deal stood there, listening to her argument with the trustees. Sunlight glinted off the pristine windshield of an unfamiliar work truck. Stenciled on the side were the words Deal Construction. Here was Emmett and here was his truck. She blinked and he was still standing at a table near the front door. She wasn’t imagining him.
His eyes were bluer than she remembered. More of a cerulean than the baby blues that invaded her dreams when she was overly tired. He was taller, too. Not by much, maybe an inch. His shoulders more broad and his hips— Jaime gave herself a mental shake and brought her gaze back to Emmett’s beautiful face. Chiseled jaw...hint of stubble.
Before he’d left Emmett had hated that he couldn’t grow a proper mustache. It didn’t look as though that was a problem any longer. Black, black hair flirted with the collar of his tight T.
He seemed to look straight past her, though. Jaime swallowed and tried to ignore her rapidly beating heart.
Okay, so looking at his face wasn’t the right thing to do, either. She turned back to the men at the table.
“An alarm.” She swallowed, hating that her voice slid up an octave. “An alarm system is a good start, and better than razing a building that is important to Gulliver,” she said, this time keeping her voice steady. “We can hire another reno crew.” Somewhere in the state of Ohio there had to be a construction crew available. There had to be. “With so much activity, the kids will stay away.”
“Even during overnights and weekends?” Her father shook his head and folded his beefy arms over his chest. He sat back in his chair. “We don’t have the staff to run over to the school every time a squirrel sets off the system. We should reallocate the budget into teardown and creating a city park on the land.”
Jaime cleared her throat but her mind was blank. “A memorial park isn’t better than a building that has stood watch over this town, this island, for two hundred years.”
Emmett refilled his to-go coffee cup at the counter. “A good system will know the difference between a squirrel and a person. Parks are great things but there is plenty of undeveloped land on the island that could be used for a new park. Not that it’s any of my business.” He paid Anna and faced the table while he sipped his drink.
Jaime wasn’t sure if she should hug Emmett for taking her side or demand that he let her handle this on her own.
“No, it’s not.” Her father’s words were curt. “This is a township decision.”
Demand he leave. Definitely, definitely demand he leave. Mason was about to go ballistic about outsiders versus islanders. “Thank you—”
Emmett cut her off. “I may not live on Gulliver any longer, but my father does. He came close to having the school declared a historic landmark a few years back.” He sipped his coffee, looking at the men at the table and studiously avoiding the section of the diner where Jaime now stood. That annoyed the bejesus out of her.
“As I said, this is a township decision. Before we spend more money on another crew that will leave us high and dry, I think we should seriously consider demolition. And as you said yourself, you’re not part of the township. Haven’t been for ten years.”
“Seems like it wouldn’t take much work to fill in the gaps in that old application. Renovating is never cheap but a lot of times it is cheaper than tearing down.”
“Maybe you should stick to what you know.” Mason’s voice was low in the quiet diner.
“As it happens, I know old buildings. I could take a look at it.”
“And then leave when things get tougher than you imagined?”
Color flooded Jaime’s cheeks. This wasn’t about the school building; not any longer. Her father was being his usual bullheaded self. Blaming Emmett for something that wasn’t his fault.
Before her father could say something he didn’t mean Jaime pushed back into the conversation. “Then the township should decide, not just the board of trustees. During the island’s bicentennial last summer every Gulliver business benefited from the increased tourist traffic. If the school is renovated, we would have that kind of draw all the time. A few artists stop every summer to paint the old building. Renovation will give them more of a reason to come back than a park.”
From the hand in his pocket to the hunched shoulders, Emmett looked anything but comfortable. As if this conversation was not going the way he’d thought.
Well, then, he should have butted out from the beginning.
“Are you willing to take a look? So we know exactly what to talk to demolition or renovation experts about.” Tom Gulliver practically preened as he said the words.
“I’ll be on the island for a few weeks. Whatever you decide, I can offer my opinion.”
The bell over the door tinkled as Emmett pushed through it. He got into his truck without looking back and drove away.
Jaime realized she was staring—again—and looked back at her father.
“I still say we should vote on demolition at the meeting tonight,” he said from his side of the table.
