Be My Love (A Walker Island Romance Book 1) (2 page)

“Hanna, hello. I’ve been meaning to get back to you about your visit to the archives. I’m afraid that there has been a bit of a…” He cleared his throat before continuing. “Well, it’s a bit of a hitch regarding your project.”

“A hitch?” Hanna didn’t like the sound of that. Ava, her grandmother, was going to be the heart of the documentary, but the interviews with her needed to be backed up by proper research. Names and dates. Documents. Important elements that would give the piece the depth it would need to win her a place in the graduate filmmaking program. “What sort of hitch?”

Again, Mr. Neale cleared his throat in obvious discomfort. “I’m afraid one of our committee members has blocked your application to use the archives.”

“Why would someone do that?” Hanna had assumed that the whole process of applying for archival access was just a formality.

“I’m afraid I can’t speak for the committee member, Ms. Walker.”

“Do you know how long this glitch will take to iron out?” she asked in what she hoped was a patient voice. “Because I really only have the summer to finish this documentary. And I absolutely
have
to finish this documentary.”

“I’m sorry,” he replied, and to be fair he did
sound sorry. “But Joel Peterson was quite clear that he doesn’t want you to have access to the archives for a documentary. In any case, I have to get back to work now. It looks like there’s a party of kids coming in. Take care, Hanna.”

As she slipped her phone back into her pocket, she tried to make sense of what the historical society’s chairman had just told her. Why would Joel want to keep her out of the archives?

Joel had been her sister Rachel’s age at school, which made him seven years older than Hanna. She could remember sitting on the sidelines of a school football game, watching him play. He’d been the quarterback, and it always seemed that when he had the ball, no one could touch him. On top of that, he’d been the best looking boy she’d ever seen.

She’d seen him from time to time around the island over the years since high school, but she suspected he still only knew her as Rachel’s kid sister. They’d certainly never spoken as adults.

Clearly, it was time to correct that. She could go home and get settled in, but it would be better to find Joel and get this mess straightened out first. Once they actually talked, she was sure that his refusal to let her into the archives would turn out to be no more than a mistake.

Besides, she had to admit, she was interested in seeing how the handsome boy from the football field had turned out.

CHAPTER TWO

“Good morning, Margaret,” Joel said as he walked into his office at Peterson Shipping Company. Margaret had been his father’s secretary before him, and Joel had known her for nearly thirty years, back when he was just starting to learn the basics of the business that he’d always known he would inherit. “What do we have on tap for today?”

“There are a few messages for you to look through on your desk before your meeting with Frank Williams from the Mussel Farmers’ Union at eleven. And if you don’t mind me saying,” she said with a fond smile, “your tie looks great with that shirt.”

Margaret had given it to him for his birthday a few weeks back, and though wearing a tie always made him feel like he had a noose around his neck, Joel smiled back. “Thanks, Margaret. And please let me know when Frank arrives.”

He stepped into his office, which had been his father’s office and his grandfather’s before that. Joel had kept the framed newspaper pictures of the two of them collecting industry awards, along with the big solid cedar wood desk by the window that had a clear view out over the water. Joel swung the door shut behind him, and only then did he reach up to loosen the tie so that he could breathe again.

“If we don’t set a standard,”
his father had often said,
“
how can we expect people to respect us?”

Peterson Shipping wasn’t the biggest shipping company in the world, but the company still needed constant attention. As a child, Joel hadn’t been able to understand why his father had to work so many Saturdays. Now he knew.

The ocean didn’t care what day of the week it was, and a skipper running into trouble around the island didn’t either.

Joel began to read through his emails and messages. The ones from the boat skippers came first, of course, because if you didn’t look after the boats and their crews, then you didn’t deserve to run a shipping business. Simple as that.

Well, perhaps not exactly
simple.
Nothing around the island was simple. There were usually at least three or four complaints waiting for him. The most pressing complaint today was about a rogue operator, which he’d have to see the harbor master about. Of course, the upside was that he might actually get out of the office and down to the harbor at some point.

When Joel was a kid sailing small boats around the island on school holidays with his father, running Peterson shipping had seemed like the best job in the world. Yet the truth was that every season, Joel spent less time on boats and more doing paperwork and sending emails.

He was beginning to read through the minutes from the last meeting of the Mussel Farmers’ Union when one final message from Margaret slid out. He saw the name first—Hanna Walker—before seeing that Benjamin Neale had called, again, regarding her request to go through the local historic archives.

“Hanna Walker wants to make a documentary film about what happened between your family and hers,”
was what Benjamin had told him a few weeks ago.
“She wants access to the archives. Now, none of the rest of the society board have any objections—”

“No,”
Joel had said.
“Absolutely not.”

And that had been that, he’d assumed. Yet now there was another message about her. What was the youngest Walker sister trying to do with her documentary? Open up old wounds? Reignite old arguments?

Joel had no intention of doing either. The past needed to stay in the past.

Her grandfather had turned his back on the Peterson-Walker merger and then his great aunt Poppy had taken her life. Why would anyone want to rake up all that?

The only thing that made sense was that Hanna obviously planned to use whatever skills she had with a video camera to reinvent the past. Wasn’t it true that people tended to believe what they saw on a TV screen over the truth? A few truths, a few lies, and suddenly the Walker family would come out of the whole mess looking far better than they had actually been. With access to the archives, Hanna would likely be able to put together enough information to make whatever mangled version of the truth she wanted to sell seem believable.

Joel couldn’t risk that. He
wouldn’t
risk that.

He owed it to his family not to.

He’d known most of her older sisters from school, but his memories of Hanna were as a little shadow trailing behind Emily, Rachel, Paige and Morgan. Not, of course, that Joel had ever had much to do with the Walkers at school. He was a Peterson, after all.

Shaking his head, he had just re-focused on the meeting minutes regarding mussel seeding ratios when he heard Margaret arguing with someone outside the door.

“I’m sorry, but Mr. Peterson can’t be disturbed right now. He has a meeting soon—”

“I understand,” another woman said, “but if he’s not with anyone right now, this will only take a few minutes. We just have a small misunderstanding to straighten out.”

Joel didn’t have time to straighten his tie before a woman pushed open the door to his office. Small and fine-boned, she was incredibly beautiful, albeit in a slightly unconventional way. Her blonde hair was streaked with light pink highlights, and her eyes shone out, blue and fierce from beneath her bangs. Even in cargo pants and a denim jacket it was obvious that she had a gorgeous figure.

As a high school quarterback, the son of the local shipping magnate, and then the director of the family business, Joel had had his share of relationships with good looking women. But there was something uniquely attractive about the way this woman strode over to his desk like nothing in the world was going to stop her from getting what she wanted.

Of course, by that point, two other things had become pretty obvious, both of which should have dampened the attraction Joel had felt in that first glance. The first was that she was probably only in her early twenties, which was far too young for him. But it was the second that was far more important.

She was a Walker.

Hanna Walker
.

She might have been the youngest Walker sister, but she was no longer a little girl. Not even close.

“Oh, wow,” she said, her eyes widening as she stopped moving closer to stare at him. “You would look just
great
on camera.”

“Hanna—”

“You recognized me.” She sounded surprised. “I wasn’t sure you would. I’ve grown up.”

Yes,
he thought,
you certainly have.
This close, he could smell the fresh scent of the sea on her and guessed that she must have only just come over on the ferry. He knew she was here to convince him to let her into the archives, but just looking at her beautiful face scrambled up his brain cells so badly that before he could put them back in order and let her know he wasn’t going to change his mind, she was moving closer...and scrambling his insides up more and more with every step she took.

“I just spoke to Mr. Neale, who told me that you’d said I couldn’t have access to the archives, but I figured that couldn’t be right. I mean, why would you do that? And since he’s very busy with everyone who wants ice cream today, I thought I’d come here and talk to you directly. And you know, you really
would
look great on camera. Maybe we could do a segment in the documentary with you talking about how the Peterson family is doing now, a couple of generations after the big feud? And we could also include a few shots of mussel farming, because though I know it isn’t totally relevant to our families’ stories, it is a really big part of the island culture and industry.” Barely pausing for breath, she added, “So if you could let Mr. Neale know it was just a slight mix up, that would be great. And it would be even better if you could talk to him today, because I need to get to work on my documentary immediately so that I can edit it together and submit it before the end of the summer.”

Joel was, frankly, stunned by Hanna’s passion. He’d hoped that her interest in the Walker-Peterson feud would be fleeting. But as she began to move even closer—close enough that he could smell the lavender scent of her shampoo in addition to the sea spray on her skin—he realized he had to stop this here and now. All of this.

“There is no mix up.” He pushed away from his desk, and made himself move across the room, away from all of her incredible beauty and passion. “I’m not going to give you access to the historical archives.”

“But why?”

How, he wondered, could she be this genuinely surprised by his response? “Hasn’t your grandmother told you why?”

For the first time since entering his office, she looked a little unsure. “I haven’t told Grams about it quite yet,” Hanna admitted. “The interview with her will be one of the main features of the documentary, and if I told her what I was doing too soon, it might spoil her natural reaction. It’s really important with documentaries to get people’s real reactions.”

“Oh, trust me,” Joel told her, “once you bring this up with your grandmother, you’ll get a real reaction. Surely, you know the details of the island scandal, don’t you?” Details of a feud that had been drummed into Joel’s head from as far back as he could remember.

“Some of them,” she replied, “although I won’t know everything until I’ve had a chance to look through the archives properly.”

“No,” he said again. “And once you speak with your grandmother, I’m certain you’ll understand why I can’t support your documentary project.”

Before Hanna could try to argue her case again, Margaret opened the door. “Joel, Frank Williams is here for your meeting. Do you need him to wait a few minutes?”

Hanna spoke first. “No, that’s okay. I need to go let my family know I’m back home.” Scrupulously polite now, and in direct contrast to the way she had barged in earlier, she said, “Thank you for your time, Joel.”

When she turned and walked out with her spine straight and her head held high, Joel couldn’t help but admire her beauty yet again. Working to shake her vibrant image out of his head as he shook hands with the head of the Mussel Farmers’ Union, Joel did his best to focus on the meeting so that he could understand the changes they wanted. But all the while his brain was somewhere else entirely.

Still thinking about Hanna…

CHAPTER THREE

“Hanna?” Ava Walker stepped out of the front door just as Hanna was about to head inside. “When did you get back, darling? We would have come down to the ferry to meet you.”

There were those who said that Ava had been a real beauty in her youth. Hanna always thought they had it wrong. Her grandmother was beautiful
now.
She kept herself in great shape with regular exercise and healthy food and still moved with the poise of a dancer. Her bright blue eyes still had plenty of fire in them, too.

“I came in on the two o’clock, but I didn’t want to interrupt any of you when you were working. Plus, it’s such a beautiful day that I wanted to get some footage of town.”

She’d had a wonderful time in town…that is, until her run-in with Joel at the Peterson Shipping offices. Hanna had always been happy to get back to the island during school breaks, but all she could think about right then was how Joel had flat out
ruined
her plans for the documentary.

“Hanna, what is it?” Ava asked, reaching out to take hold of her hand. “You look so upset.”

“No, it’s…” Hanna shook her head. If her grandmother was on the way out, then she didn’t have enough time to go into it all. “We can talk about it later if you have to go open up the studio for your afternoon classes.”

“Oh, Paige has already done that,” Ava assured her. “And I’m sure she can handle things there a little longer while you tell me what’s going on.” Putting her arm around Hanna’s waist, she said, “Come on inside.”