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She finished her toast and coffee and cleaned up the kitchen, wondering what her neighbor was doing for breakfast. She watered her rapidly growing herbs and decided that Dylan McCaffrey was perfectly capable of looking after himself. The roads were clear. He could get out now, and Knights Bridge had a restaurant, run by family friends, that served a great breakfast.
If he wanted her help, he’d ask.
She walked Buster and left him in the mudroom with his bed and bowls of food and water. She didn’t put up the gate. He seemed calmer, more at home. “Back soon, my friend,” she said, and headed outside. The air was sharply colder than yesterday, but it’d warm up to the fifties by midafternoon—another difference between winter and spring.
She started her car, a Subaru in serious need of body work, and turned onto the road.
When she came to the Webster house, Olivia noticed Dylan’s Audi—undoubtedly a rental—was still there. A rivulet of rainwater was running down a split in the dirt driveway. A massive, overgrown forsythia, however, was about to burst into yellow blossoms, a telltale sign of spring in New England.
Which also meant her opening day mother-daughter tea was getting closer, and she had much to do before it arrived.
She was surprised to see Dylan down by Grace’s old mailbox at the bottom of the driveway. He had a long-handled shovel and stood it up, leaning into it as Olivia braked and rolled down her passenger window.
“Morning,” he said. “Quite an ice storm last night.”
“We’re lucky the temperature rose as fast as it did. Everything all right here?”
“Just fine. The driveway didn’t wash out into the road. The leak in the kitchen stopped. Life is good.” There was only the slightest trace of sarcasm in his tone as he picked up a take-out coffee he had set atop the crooked mailbox. “I’ve already been out for breakfast. Nice little restaurant in town. I suppose you know the owner.”
“The Smiths. Sure. I’ll tell them you liked your breakfast.”
Olivia watched him sip the coffee. Even in sunlight, without the adrenaline of yesterday’s storm, her missing dog and the surprise of discovering Dylan McCaffrey wasn’t in his seventies, she still found him incredibly sexy. She probably should have just waved on her way past him.
“I see you found a shovel,” she said.
He set his coffee back atop the mailbox. “It was in the kitchen, interestingly. I’m not even going to try to guess why. The drainage culvert down here got filled up with leaves and ice, and the water was diverting onto the road. I figured I’d dig it out.” He picked up the shovel again, his eyes on her as he smiled. “Then I’ll get the junk removed.”
“I have to run out for a little while, but I can help when I get back. Feel free to check my garage for any tools or materials you might need. It’s unlocked. There might be work gloves in there that would fit you.”
“Good to know.”
His tone suggested he hadn’t considered work gloves. Although he was from Southern California, the chilly morning temperature and stiff breeze didn’t seem to bother him.
Olivia suppressed a shiver when the cold air coming in the open window overtook the warm air blowing out of her car heater. “You aren’t planning to do all this work yourself, are you?”
He stabbed the tip of the shovel into the gravel and squinted at her in the bright sunlight. “Not if I can help it.”
Maybe, she thought, she should mind her own business. “I’ll leave you to it.”
“Where’s Buster?”
“Who knows. I threw caution to the wind and let him have the run of the house instead of locking him in the mudroom.”
Dylan’s deep blue gaze settled on her. “Is that fair warning?”
Olivia laughed. “If you want to look at it that way.”
She rolled up her window and continued into the village and on to Frost Millworks, located on a wide, rock-strewn brook. The building was just ten years old and occupied a section of flat land above the brook, its exterior designed to fit with the rustic surroundings, its interior modern. Jess lived in an apartment in the original nineteenth-century sawmill overlooking the rock dam and millpond. It was one of the few surviving sawmills that had once dotted the streams and rivers of the region. As kids, Olivia and her sister used to swim in the millpond. The water was clear, clean and ice-cold, even on a hot August afternoon. They’d grown up a half mile down the road in the same house where their parents still lived.
By the time Olivia parked in the small lot, she had decided she didn’t have the whole story about Dylan McCaffrey and his intentions in Knights Bridge. Whatever they were, her reaction to him was perfectly normal. He was sexy, and there was no point in denying otherwise, at least to herself. His presence up the road from her was her doing, and if he complicated her life, it was her own fault.
She found her mother at her cluttered rolltop desk in the office just inside the mill entrance. Louise Frost smiled brightly at her elder daughter. “How’s your road?”
“Not a problem, except for the potholes. They’re brutal this year.”
“Do you keep a bag of sand in your trunk, just in case?”
Olivia shook her head. “I figure I can always call you or Dad if I get stuck.”
“That’s true, but sand makes sense.”
Her mother stood up from the desk. At five-five, she was shorter than either of her daughters. She worked out most days and was in good shape, wearing a fleece vest over a thick turquoise corduroy shirt, jeans and mud boots. She had dyed her hair auburn about five years ago and kept it cut short and, with her green eyes and round face, reminded Olivia of her younger sister. She tended to favor their father.
She peered at a new photograph taped to the top edge of the antique desk, this one of palm trees, sandy beach and ocean. It joined a dozen others her mother had printed off the internet of the famous 123-mile Pacific Coast Highway in central California: Monterey, Carmel-by-the-Sea, San Simeon, Cambria, Morro Rock, sea otters, sunsets, surf crashing on sheer rock cliffs.
“That’s the beach in Santa Barbara,” her mother said.
“It’s beautiful.”
“We’re going to fly into Los Angeles and spend the night in Beverly Hills or Malibu, then head up to Santa Barbara for at least one night. I’m investigating hotels and inns. I haven’t made reservations yet. I’d do a bed-and-breakfast, but I don’t think your father would like it.”
Olivia smiled. “You could try. It’d only be a couple nights, right?”
Her mother nodded, staring at the pictures on her desk. “They say driving south-to-north isn’t as unnerving with the cliffs and water as north-to-south, but people do both. Driving south you hug the coast. You see more, I guess. I think we’ll see plenty.”
“Are you going as far as San Francisco?”
“I think so. It depends on how much time we have.” She shifted from the photographs to a map of California she had tacked to the wall, with pushpins marking various stops she wanted to make. She seemed transfixed, then took a slow, deep breath and turned to Olivia, obviously forcing a smile. “It’ll be fun. I can’t wait.”
“When do you leave?”
“We haven’t set a date yet. Depends on the work here. Your father is overdue for a vacation.”
“You are, too,” Olivia said.
“I suppose. I started dreaming about this trip a few years ago when we did the custom windows for that house in Carmel. Remember, Liv? It was outside our usual area, but the family used to live in Boston and knew about us. They sent pictures…” She sighed, standing back from the desk. “It’s beautiful here. I don’t want to live anywhere else, but I knew I had to go to California, see this part of our country.”
“Good for you, Mom.”
“Yeah.” She seemed a little shaken, as if she’d said too much. “Thanks.”
Olivia heard the main door open. In another moment, Jess appeared in the office doorway, tightening the belt to her tan raincoat. “I’m on my way to Boston and thought I’d stop in. I’m meeting with clients. Want to come, Mom?”
“I should mind things here.”
“It’s quiet today. There’s nothing to mind—”
“There’s always something. I’m never bored.”
“You haven’t been out of town in weeks,” Jess said, impatient. “It’d do you good.”
“I have plans, Jess.”
Olivia could see their mother wasn’t about to budge and would only get her back up and go on the defensive if Jess kept pushing her. “I’m heading over to see Grandma. Care to join me?”
“You go, Liv,” her mother said, dropping back to her chair at her desk. “Tell your grandma I said hi. We’re having her out to the house this weekend. I’m doing a Sunday dinner for a change. You two will both be here?”
“Of course, Mom,” Jess said with a sigh, then left.
Louise Frost stared at the spot her younger daughter had vacated, then finally said, half under her breath, that she needed to get to work and started tapping keys on her computer. Olivia said goodbye and headed back out.
She found her sister standing on the rock wall at the edge of the millpond. “You can’t enable her, Liv.” Jess shoved her hands in her coat pockets and watched the rushing water, high with the spring runoff and yesterday’s rain. “It won’t help.”
“Arguing with her isn’t going to change anything.”
“What will? Medication? Therapy? Some herbal potion?”
“There are a number of herbs that can help alleviate anxiety, but she has to want to do something about it.”
“Planning a trip she’ll never take…”
“Maybe she will take it,” Olivia said.
“Dad doesn’t think so. It’s pathetic, Liv. She didn’t used to be this bad.”
Olivia watched a dead leaf float over the small dam into the rushing stream below. “I think she’s trying, Jess.”
Jess didn’t respond at once. The only sound was the rush of the water over the old dam. “I’m worried I’m catching it,” she said finally.
“Catching what, Jess?”
“Mom’s anxiety. I woke up last night in a sweat and couldn’t go back to sleep. I was ready to jump out of my skin. The power was out....” She pulled her hands out of her pockets and raked her fingers through her hair. “I turned on a flashlight and just sat there, trying to calm myself.”
“The weather was nasty.”
“Freezing rain, clouds, fog, darker than the pits of hell…” Jess shuddered. “I felt closed in. I couldn’t breathe.”
“We’re all feeling closed in after the long winter. Green grass and daffodils will help. What about Mark? Was he—”
“He wasn’t here. He never stays past sunup. We’re old-fashioned that way, with Mom and Dad right up the road, working here.” She squatted down suddenly, picked up a stone and flung it into the millpond as she stood again, the ripples spreading across the clear, coppery water to the opposite bank. “What if I was freaked out at the prospect of going to Boston today?”
“Did that run through your mind?”
“Everything ran through my mind.”
“Who are you seeing in Boston?”
“The manager of a small law office in the North End that wants to redo the interior of their building, the owners of a house on Beacon Hill, a hole-in-the-wall library that specializes in early New England history. It’ll take all day.”
“You’re feeling the stress,” Olivia said.
Her sister almost laughed. “I hope that’s all it is. I hope I’m not…” She didn’t finish. “There’s so much I want to do, Liv. I don’t want to be afraid to leave Knights Bridge. What about you? You won’t fly.”
Olivia averted her eyes. “I’ll fly.”
“Ha. You’re not a good liar.” Jess abandoned the subject and spun away from the dam. “Mom’s driving us all crazy. She’s driving Dad crazy, too, but he’ll never admit it. Mark hasn’t said anything but I know he’s getting impatient.”
“Jess, is anything going on between you two?”
“Nothing, no—” She stopped, turned back to Olivia. “I don’t know. This California trip has taken on a life of its own. I sometimes wonder if Mark’s waiting to see how it turns out, if he looks at Mom and sees me in twenty or thirty years. She’s a mess, Liv. You haven’t been around day to day. You haven’t seen her.”
“I know but I’m here now.”
“We all are so busy. You, me, Mark, Dad, Mom. My hours have been insane since January. It’s a sign business is good, which is terrific, but I have to do almost all the off-site client meetings. Dad does what he can, but he and the crew have their own work here. It doesn’t make sense to hire someone just because Mom’s gotten to the point she’ll hardly go anywhere.”
“Have you talked to them? Told them you’re feeling overburdened?”
“Wouldn’t do any good.”
Her sister, Olivia realized, was in a mood to vent, not to work on solutions. “I can always help.”
“You have your hands full as it is.” Jess sighed, calmer. “It’s going to be a long day.”
“Why don’t you stay in Boston and not kill yourself to get back here tonight? You can stay at my apartment. I have it until the end of the month. I left the couch. It’s not bad to sleep on.”
“That’d be great.” Jess gave a wry smile. “What if I run into your friend Marilyn?”
“You won’t run into her.”
“I know she did something to you—”
“She looked after herself. That’s what Marilyn Bryson does. Maybe we should, too.”
They walked up to the parking lot together, the mill’s handful of employees arriving for the day. Olivia noticed green shoots on the bank of the brook and remembered that her mother had planted a hundred daffodil bulbs there last fall, turning down help from anyone. She’d wanted to do the work herself.
Jess stopped at her truck, one hand on the driver’s door as she squinted back at her older sister. “You love Boston, Liv. Are you sure you’ll be happy living in Knights Bridge full-time?”
“So far, so good, Jess. Really. I’m fine.”
“You have big plans for Carriage Hill. Between it and freelancing you’re already working long hours. Unless you’re very lucky or get some major backing, this first year’s going to be tight financially and grueling in terms of workload. I can help—I want to—”
“You have your hands full with your work here.” There was also whatever was going on with Jess and her almost-fiancé, Olivia thought. The last thing Jess needed right now was to worry about her sister. Olivia gave her a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry about me, okay? I was ready to make a change or I wouldn’t be here.”
“Dad says Dylan McCaffrey’s shown up. Your note about the mess in Grace’s yard must have gotten to him.”
“It’s his yard now,” Olivia amended.
“He reminded you of that, did he?”
