Buck's Landing (A New England Seacoast Romance) (17 page)

“Sofia had a knack for running the Landing.” Silas winced at the tight knot of hurt in his chest at the mention of her name. “Too bad she decided not to keep it.”

His neighbor shrugged. “Change is the only thing you can count on. Nice to meet you.”

Silas watched the other man go. He was about to head inside when another truck pulled up onto the sidewalk in front of the Market.

The window eased down with an electric whir. “Silas Wilde?”

“Yeah,” Silas said warily.

The driver killed the engine and hopped out. “Delivery.”

Silas took note of the lettering on the door of the truck’s cab. It was a stationery and gift store he recalled from visits to Portsmouth. The driver pulled a paper wrapped flat package from the truck bed.

He handed Silas an envelope with the company’s letterhead on the flap. “This goes with it.”

While Silas leaned the package against the front door of the store, the driver reached back into the truck for an invoice, which he held out to Silas. “Just need a signature.”

The truck was gone again as quickly as it had come. Silas sliced the envelope open with a fingertip. Sofia’s handwriting leaped up off the page.

Dear Silas,

I’m no good at goodbyes, and I hate that we fought at the end. I saw this and couldn’t help but think of you—of you and I. You love this beach enough for both of us. I hope it’s better to you than I was.

Sofia

He tore into the brown paper wrapping, peeling it back to reveal the ink and watercolor rendering of a long-ago Hampton Beach. He crouched down, sitting on his heels to admire the work. He figured from the way the tiny figures populating the picture were dressed, it had to be sometime in the '20s or '30s. The Ballroom and the outdoor bandstand dominated the Boardwalk. The soft colors suggested the haze of heat and high sun. The memory of Sofia and their first evening together on the strip hit him like a fist.

When the tears came, he knelt there on the concrete with the sand scraping his knees and let them fall.

~~~

Sofia once read that it took three weeks to form a habit. As she dressed for the evening’s event, a black-tie fundraising dinner for a Senatorial campaign, she figured it had to be true. Three weeks of waking, walking to the gym, sweating through a class, showering and dressing for work, taking the Metro to the DeVarona’s Embassy Row location, and coming home to pack up the entire contents of her life certainly constituted a habit, albeit a boring one. She had a week left before her flight to Athens, where she’d be training for another week before moving on to her new position.

At least she was in bikini-ready shape from the fitness classes, she thought, smoothing her hands over the bodice of her rented cerulean satin gown.

With a last check of her hair, she slipped her feet into the fold-away ballet flats she wore to walk in, and tucked the champagne satin sandals she would wear for the party into her tote, along with a clutch she’d picked up at an upscale consignment shop near her condo.

She hiked three blocks and hailed a cab near the Metro station.

Her cabbie had a voice like warm honey, full of musical Caribbean vowels. “Where to, pretty lady?”

“Dupont Circle. The DeVarona.”

“You meeting your boyfriend there?” He smiled guilelessly into the rearview mirror.

“No boyfriend. Just work,” she snapped, busying herself checking her phone to quash the guilty voice in her head. The taxi driver was only being friendly.

“Somebody out there loves you. I just know it.” With that comment, the cabbie turned up the radio and left her to her thoughts. For a moment, back in Hampton, she’d started to believe that. The idea scared her to death. Her throat tightened; she stared out the window as the cab rolled through Adams Morgan. It hadn’t been fair to hope Silas would call. She’d made her position clear when she’d left without a proper goodbye, but still, every time she checked her messages she looked for his name.

Fresh tears threatened her carefully applied smoky eyeshadow and mascara. She willed them back, tipped the cabbie well, and entered the building through the staff entrance of the hotel.

Final checks were underway in the ballroom when a low, male voice whispered in her ear. “I missed you.”

Her heart leaped into her throat before her brain had a chance to slow her down, she spun on her two hundred dollar heels.

Elliot stood there in his tux and earpiece.

“Elliot.”

He pressed a kiss to her temple and whispered in her ear. “Hermit is attending tonight. I assumed you’d have seen the guest list and realized.”

His earpiece crackled; he touched her cheek, mouthed “later,” and slipped away across the dance floor toward the service entrance. She watched him go, mentally running down the guest list. Elliot’s detail was on the manifest, she just hadn’t been paying attention. He hadn’t specifically mentioned the event to her, but in fairness, the politician’s schedule had been known to be somewhat fluid.

She cruised through the evening, putting out fires and running interference such that the movers and shakers attending the event had no idea when things went less than smoothly. Her feet were killing her, but the five thousand dollar a plate fundraising dinner had demanded that the management staff look the part.

Elliot drifted in her peripheral awareness. The slightly salted hair at his temples, his eyes crinkled from perpetual watchfulness, his posture alert and aloof, all of it was as familiar to her as the glittering ballroom and the clammy air outside. All of it forced a comparison with the baking heat and sea breezes in Hampton, with Silas’s sun-streaked hair and easy smile. She pushed him out of her thoughts and slipped out of the ballroom, ducking outside to the alley where the staff smoked on their breaks.

A young man she didn’t know wearing chef’s whites and the cap of a line cook was finishing up a cigarette and a Coke. “Five grand a pop wasn’t fancy enough for you, sweetheart?”

Sofia flashed her DeVarona staff card. “Would you speak to your boss like that?”

The cook scowled, the back of his neck reddened as he dropped his cigarette butt and stamped it out.

A pair of tuxedoed men came around the shadowed corner of the building. Sofia knew from their posture and demeanor that they were part of Hermit’s detail. As they came into the light, she realized one was Elliot.

Elliot wasn’t what he was without reason. He sensed the tension as he approached. “Everything okay here, Ms. Buck?”

She quashed the giggle that bubbled up. Of course he would retain his professional facade in front of a perceived threat. “I’m fine, Agent Winter. Thank you.”

Elliot’s companion glanced at the still smoldering filter on the asphalt. “You’ll want to pick that up, son.”

She watched the two agents vanish into the shadows and walked back inside without a word to the young man, who was bent over to retrieve his cigarette.

Elliot found her one last time that evening.

She was changing back into her ballet flats, considering an offer to go out for an impromptu goodbye drink with some of her waitstaff, when Elliot entered the room.

There had been a time when his commanding presence and classic good looks had charmed her. Now, despite herself, she yearned for Silas’s less demanding self-possession, the way he slipped into a room. The way he had slipped into her heart, into the fabric of her life.

“Can I come by later?” Elliot asked.

Sofia shot a look at the group of servers waiting on her near the staff entrance. “I can’t, Elliot. I’ve got plans with the event staff tonight. Another time?”

In a rare show of public affection, Elliot circled her waist and drew her in. His lips cruised knowingly over hers before he whispered low in her ear. “Or maybe in Greece?”

He was gone without another word.

Her colleagues clapped and whistled the second the door closed.

“Well done, hot stuff,” one of the bartenders laughed.

She forced a laugh, but her lips were cool, her heart unmoved.

~~~

When Judy Dunaway called, Silas contemplated not answering his phone. The last thing he needed was another reminder of Sofia.

“Silas, it’s Judy. I need a favor.”

He already knew he would end up saying yes. “What’s up?” he asked.

“Jake’s soccer team needs a second coach. Please tell me you know how to play.”

“I played some,” he said hesitantly. He could remember countless autumn Saturdays spent playing in one youth soccer league or another, feeling frosty morning air in his lungs and the damp green field under his cleats.

“Christopher signed up to coach with another of the dads, but the other guy dropped out two weeks into the season. I told Christopher I’d make a few calls, since he’s at work all day today. I’m only calling you. Dex has three left feet, and I saw how good you were with the boys.”

“How soon do you need someone?” The truth was, he couldn’t think of any reason not to do it.

Judy’s reply was a little sheepish. “Tomorrow morning for a team meeting.”

“I’m only doing it for you,” he teased.

“Liar,” she laughed. “You don’t have anything else going on. Not since…” She stopped cold. “Not since the tourist season ended.”

Silas heard the sentence she didn’t finish. Not since Sofia left. “Where should I be tomorrow, and when?”

“I’m sorry. I swear to god, three pregnancies destroyed my ability to think before I speak. I’ll have Christopher text you about the meeting.”

He felt bad. He liked the Dunaways, and he didn’t want them to feel like they couldn’t speak to him about Sofia. After all, she’d left Judy behind, too. “No worries, Judy. Have you heard from her at all?”

“Nope. Not since Labor Day.” There was a pause; Silas could hear children in the background. “I saw her before she left. She told me you two fought. She didn’t want to talk about it, and it’s probably not my place to say anything, but I think she made a mistake, and I think somewhere under all that armor, she knows it.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Silas replied. He didn’t know what to say. “Anyway, have Chris shoot me the details, and I’ll see him tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Silas.”

He set his phone down on top of the stack of paperwork that had arrived that morning, wondering how the Dunaways would feel about what those documents represented. He hoped that when Judy inevitably told Sofia, she’d understand.

And forgive him.

TWELVE

With the movers due in just a few hours to take what was left of her things to a long-term storage facility, Sophia finally turned her attention to the two boxes she’d been avoiding. One, a cardboard box she’d pulled out of the back of their closet back in Hampton bearing her mother’s name in her father’s expressive handwriting. The other, a hastily packed box of mementos from the summer. She hadn’t yet forced herself to open either. Instead, they’d taunted her from a corner of her living room as the days remaining in her condo dwindled.

Kevin Landry’s referral had taken her to a sleek but comfortable real estate agency in Georgetown. She’d listed the condo the same day; it had shown twice in the first forty-eight hours. She’d taken the first reasonable offer, after less than a week on the market. That closing would happen after her departure.

The sale of Buck’s Landing had gone without a hitch, with the attorney in Portsmouth signing the paperwork for her. By the time she finished her orientation week in Athens and moved on to Santorini, there would be nothing left to tether her to her old life.

Feeling like a coward, she opened the second box—the one she’d packed herself—and parted the crumpled newspaper protecting the contents. Inside, the purple glass mermaid preened on her purple glass rock. Beside her rested the beachy lobster in his preposterous shorts. Her words that day at the snack bar window had come true. The mermaid was off to see the world. Sofia suppressed a pang of envy; the glass statue had a companion for her travels. She gathered up the mermaid and the lobster, and carried them back to her bedroom where her large suitcase waited, along with several boxes of personal effects and clothing she was shipping to herself care of Luxelle.

She added the tchotchkes to a box already holding her favorite of her mother’s vases and the pile of photos from the Hampton apartment. Those she would take with her.

The final box's dusty, dented corners suggested its contents hadn’t seen daylight in some time. Inside was her mother’s wedding dress. It had been a simple affair, made by Nonna from her own dress’s silk and lace. The cloth was yellowed and smelled of long-staled mothballs, but Sofia could still see how beautiful the dress had been. The memory of poring over her parents’ wedding photos swamped her.

She noticed an envelope, standard letter-sized and far newer than the wedding dress, tucked carefully into the bodice of the gown. Hands trembling with emotion, she reached for it. Again, her father’s bold letters spelled out her mother’s name. It was thick; there were too many pages inside to have fit easily. Feeling like an eavesdropper despite her curiosity, she swiped her stinging eyes on her sleeve and tore the envelope open.