Cupcake Club 04 - Honey Pie (7 page)

“To make yourself a home,” Lani finished, and it was only because she was smiling so sincerely, without an ounce of pity in her voice or on her face, that Honey took it as the kind gesture it was intended to be. “I know something about that, too. A lot of something, actually. As does my husband, and a few of my closest friends. Trust me, you couldn't be surrounded by more understanding people. We know what you're going through.” She grinned again. “Well, the starting over part, anyway. As for the rest . . . you just tell us what you're comfortable with and what makes you uncomfortable, and we'll work around it.”

She said it so simply. As if that was all there was to it. But . . . it wasn't that simple. Couldn't be. Honey knew otherwise. Didn't she?

“Okay, so maybe Franco won't.” Lani laughed and rolled her eyes. “Oh my god, he'll love you. But he's a bit like a big, untamed French poodle, so we'll have to work on him.”

“Franco?”

“One of the cupcake crew. You'll love him, trust me. A better friend and a more staunch ally, you couldn't hope to have. Plus he's very tall and can reach the high things. Win-win, really. So, I'm sorry, I don't remember. What kind of art? It's sculpting or something, right?”

Honey felt . . . dazed. She sat there, trying to keep up and regroup at the same time, wanting to step away from her own spinning head and thundering heart long enough to take stock of this moment, of what was happening, so she could understand how things could simultaneously be so horribly wrong, and yet feel almost magically right.

“Oh,” she said, when she saw Lani's expectant face and realized she'd lost the thread of the conversation. “Yes, I work with clay; I'm also a wood carver. Not a serious one. I mean, I'm serious about my work, but my eye lends itself more to the whimsical than the thought-provoking. As a kid, I learned to whittle from my dad and started making little fantasy creatures and woodland critters.”
My own circle of friends,
she thought. “My mom would tuck them here and there in her gardens and around the property. Then I discovered clay and . . . well, it kind of mushroomed, as my dad loved to say, into a business.”

“I'm sorry to say I've never checked out your catalog, but I will now. Do you have somewhere to stay? Oh, right, you were here yesterday if you saw us at bake club—and your car's in the shop. Wow, welcome to Sugarberry, huh?”

“It's been . . . memorable.” Despite all the incredible things that had happened in the past hour, the first thing that came to mind when Honey thought of memorable welcomes was Dylan Ross. And his hands on her arms. And his grin when he told her a little crazy was a good thing. And that he didn't plan on touching her again.

And how much she really wished he would. And that she could let him.

“So, where are you staying now?”

Honey snapped out of thoughts she had no business thinking about. “At the Hughes's place. My car is going to take a while. Barbara—Mrs. Hughes, lent me her bicycle to use. Is it always this hot in the spring?”

“No, this is unusual, even for the South. Listen, why don't we do this? Let me get someone to cover the shop tomorrow morning, and I can take you over the causeway to get the papers and whatever copies you need from the county, and then we can come back over here and see Morgan—our lawyer and Kit's significant other as it happens. Kit is the manager next door. At least we can get that part settled. I don't know what to tell you about your plans and about the shop itself. I'm pretty sure my lease is valid and—”

“You're right. I need to get up to speed on, well, on a lot of things, it seems. I appreciate your willingness to drive me, but please don't go to the trouble. I can get a cab and—to be honest,” she added, when Lani started to reassure her, “I'd like to handle it on my own.”

“I completely understand. I am really sorry. I wish it wasn't happening like this, but, trust me, between me and Char, and Kit, and Morgan, Baxter, everyone . . . we'll find a solution that works.”

“Honestly, I don't know if I'll stay, but—” Honey was surprised by how stricken Lani looked at the news. They'd just met, after all.

“Bea wanted you here. And you wanted to be here, or you wouldn't have uprooted your whole life to come all this way to start over. Don't let this—well, it's not a small thing. It's a huge, giant pain in the ass thing, I know, but don't give up on us, okay? I wanted to run back to New York a hundred times, a thousand, when I was getting ready to open my bakery, but thank God I didn't. You'll be happy you stayed.”

Honey didn't mention that getting the shop situation figured out was only part of her problems with relocating. In fact, it might end up being the least of her worries. Alva's and Lani's easy breezy acceptance of her little “eccentricity” notwithstanding, if what Alva said was true and the islanders actually thought she would put out some kind of fortune teller shingle, they were going to be sadly disappointed.

She wanted a normal life. Or as normal a life as she could have. She'd deal with her stuff, figure out how she was going to handle it as things happened. She'd been a much younger person the last time she'd allowed her curse free reign. She hoped a bit of life wisdom and maturity would help her to deal with it better this time around. She sort of had to, if she was ever going to get the life she really wanted.

She was beyond gratified—amazed and stunned was more like it—that the locals she'd met so far seemed so unfazed by her curse. Or the idea of it, anyway. They hadn't had to deal with it yet. Bea had been open to her gift, had nurtured it, strengthened it, utilized it. Honey's “abilities,” however, were significantly stronger than Bea's. When Honey let go and opened up the portals again, allowing people in . . . well, the good, kind folks of Sugarberry really might not want to know what she'd find out about them.

D
ylan signed the deliveryman's invoice, grunted his thanks, then used a utility knife to slice through the tape on the box he'd just been handed. He lifted out the vintage teak dorade box with a bronze cowl vent and carefully removed the packing material. “Damn, but you're pretty.” He turned it so the sunlight glinted off the sleek, shiny finish, then smiled as he walked back up the crushed shell driveway.

His sailboat sat on its trailer at the far end, closest to the house. “Look what I bought for you,” he said as he skirted the work bench, stepped over an assortment of tools, an overturned bucket, and Lolly, who lifted her head, sniffed once, realized whatever he had wasn't edible, and plopped back down in the shade to snooze.

“Not for you,” he told the dog, then climbed up the ladder and stepped onto the back of the boat. “For you.” He lifted the antique ventilator in a toast to the carved mermaid mounted above the cabin door.

Two years he'd been looking for just the right piece, combing online auctions and sale listings on several boating sites he frequented. So, naturally he hadn't found it on any of those. He'd found it on an ad for an old junker of a sailboat. In its original form, the junker had sported gorgeous hand-carved woodwork, the kind of craftsmanship rarely seen in the modern times of sleeker, faster, shinier. The owner had wanted to sell the boat “as is,” all or nothing. It had taken Dylan the better part of the past six months to wear him down. Well, that and the fact that no one else had put any kind of offer on the old thing.

Of course, he'd also advised the old man that the boat was beyond salvaging. He'd advised the owner to consider putting it up for parts as he'd likely make more money (any money) on it that way, and had been gratified to see that very ad posted just last week.

Ross & Sons had still been down near the docks when he'd first discovered the little teak beauty. His boat had been parked right out back, in easy reach to work on when there weren't any cars in for servicing. And simply to look at when the frustrations of the job got the better of him. Someday he'd get her out on the water, but he was perfectly content to keep tinkering on the boat until he had her restored to the vision he'd pictured in his mind the day he'd laid eyes on her.

He could still recall his brother Mickey sneering at his decision to blow all the money he'd saved up for an old Mustang on a boat instead. Too drunk to hold his tongue, his old man had stood up for him, and had paid the price for it. Mickey had stopped accepting parental feedback the day he'd figured out he was bigger, stronger, and faster with his fists than the old man. Since their dad was usually on his way to passing out drunk, or already passed out, even Dylan, who was six years Mickey's junior, could hold his own against the old man by the time he hit puberty.

Of course, Donny Ross hadn't always been a drunk. There'd been a time when he'd been a pretty damn good mechanic and a decent man to boot. Better than his own old man or his uncle. Dylan's grandfather, Tommy, had been proud of his son . . . but of his own brother, Uncle Dick, not so much. Then again, Dick usually had a beer in one hand and a nasty observation at the ready, so it wasn't a surprise that he'd felt threatened by the father-son duo. Dick was a mean son of a bitch who'd never married, much less procreated—a fact that Dylan, in the short time he'd known the man, had thought was perhaps the only fortunate thing that had ever happened to the guy. In fact, the story went that Dylan's father had been proud of the fact that he hadn't followed the Ross family tradition, in which at least one member of every generation lost the battle with the bottle.

Unfortunately, that had changed after the sudden death of Donny's father, followed by his wife—Dylan's and Mickey's mother—abandoning them, and Dick landing himself in jail for shooting a jealous husband who'd come after him when he'd found out Dick was the guy who'd banged and banged up his wife. Fortunately Dick hadn't killed the guy.

With his dad dead, Dick in jail, and his wife gone without looking back, unable to deal with Mickey's temperamental outbursts and having another small one underfoot, Donny had cracked.

By the time Dick had gotten out of jail, Donny had claimed a permanent place on the Ross Family Drunk roster. He wasn't a mean drunk, just a sad, sorry, pitiable one.

And Dick was back to drinking again before his first parole meeting.

Mickey was fourteen when Uncle Dick wrapped his car around a tree . . . and he rose up to become the man of the house. Young Dylan had quickly learned that life could, in fact, get worse. He used to dream of the day he could run away from home.

When that day came, he'd stayed. Someone had to protect their dad from Mickey's rages. With or without alcohol, Mickey made Dick look like a choir boy when it came to getting himself into trouble.

For years, the islanders thought it was Donny abusing Dylan, and that Mickey was just a chip off the Ross family block, brawling with his old man. There had been no point in explaining that Donny was as much a victim as Dylan was, and Mickey was the current tyrant in residence. When Dylan wasn't feeling guilty for wishing his brother would do something bad enough to end up in jail like Uncle Dick had, he was feeling guilty for being so damn angry with his father. He couldn't forgive his dad for not being strong enough to handle life, to handle Mickey. To love and take care of Dylan.

“And why in the hell I'm thinking about any of that mess, I have no idea,” Dylan said, scrubbing a hand over his face. What he did know was that fifteen years ago, this boat had been his salvation. If he couldn't leave home and leave his dad behind, he could, at least, run away to work on the boat. Many a night he'd slept on board, behind the repair shop, lying on his back on the deck, looking at the stars, listening to the gulls, the sound of the water, and imagining what kind of life he'd have if he could do anything he wanted.

Turned out what he wanted to do was fix cars. He was good at it. Even better than his father and his grandfather. Plus, cars didn't drink, they didn't punch, kick, scream, or shout. They didn't make his life a living hell. Instead they'd been the one thing that made his life tolerable. They made sense. If they were broken, it was just a matter of figuring out what was wrong and fixing it. And it felt damn good to know he could fix something. Because he sure as hell couldn't fix his family.

Dylan had been running the shop pretty much by himself by the time he was sixteen. Mickey was never around, and only came by when he needed to take money from the office safe or steal parts he could sell for booze or drug money. He'd never had any real interest or inclination to work on cars . . . or to work at all.

Their father had passed away from a heart attack right after Dylan's twenty-first birthday, and Mickey had finally landed himself in prison eleven months later. Only then had Dylan felt like his life was his own, to do with as he pleased. Unlike Dick, Mickey wasn't ever getting out. Dylan had tried to see him, see if maybe hitting bottom, losing their dad, and being the only family they each had left had finally shaken some sense into his brother. Mickey had refused to see him. And, family or not . . . Dylan hadn't tried again. What was done was done. Mickey had lasted twenty-two months inside before getting himself killed.

So, for a peaceful ten years now, it had been Dylan, the shop, and the sailboat. Well, and Lolly. Dylan hadn't wanted the damn dog, but she'd been hanging around the docks all last summer, and as the fall had turned into winter, she ended up crawling under his bay door to sleep in the garage at night. And if, after a while, Dylan left some scraps from his lunch or dinner behind, who was to say if she helped herself to them, too?

Then the fire had happened. An electrical fire in a neighboring building got out of hand. It had been a chilly, windy night, and sparks had flown, burning bits of the engulfed building had landed on the old roof of the garage, and it had gone up, like so much tinder.

That same night Dylan had learned a thing or two about himself. The only thing he'd about killed himself to save before the building went completely to ash, was the damn dog. Even the boat, fortunately under tarp for the winter, hadn't been the first thing on his mind when the call from the fire chief had woken him up. Just the damn dog.

Part black and white border collie, part who the hell knew what, she wasn't the standard of canine beauty by any stretch, but that didn't matter to Dylan. Almost five months later, her fur was coming back in where it had been singed off on her side and left hind quarter where the burning beam had fallen on her. She still limped a little and even though the vet said she likely wasn't more than a few years old, she slept more than she used to. The vet bills had been staggering, but old Doc Jensen had asked Dylan only one time if he wanted to put the homeless mongrel down. Apparently something in Dylan's expression had the old doctor nodding . . . and seeing to the dog's needs.

When asked her name, Dylan had answered on the spur of the moment. He'd always given the dog a hard time, complaining that she was always lollygagging about. And
Lolly
had just popped out. He hadn't even been aware that he'd already been thinking of her by a name until that moment. If anyone asked, he'd referred to her as the thousand dollar mutt—because that's what it had cost him to fix her up. He'd figured she owed him companionship after that, so it was only fair he keep her with him so she could fulfill her end of the deal.

He glanced over at the peacefully sleeping mutt. “You're sleeping on the job,” he called down to the dog, but he smiled as he turned back to the boat and his prized new piece of equipment. He could already envision how it would look, mounted on the—

Movement on the road caught his eye. “Well, holy hell. What's she doing here?”

Lolly didn't seem to have an answer for that, either, but she was a damn sight more interested in finding out than Dylan. She hauled herself up and trotted crookedly down the driveway with her tail wagging to greet their guest.

“Look, but don't touch,” he muttered after the dog, finding himself somewhat curious about how Miss Skittish would respond to the friendly canine overture. Dylan hadn't been a pet owner long, but he already put a lot of stock in how people responded to Lolly. Of course, she had never met an enemy. So it was all on Honey.

Honey Pie, he recalled Alva calling her, a nickname bestowed by her aunt Bea. Sounded like something you'd call a happy, free-spirited little youngster. Turned out he didn't have any part of that right.

He watched as she rolled her bicycle to a stop—controlled this time—and immediately held the back of her hand down for Lolly to sniff. Lolly being Lolly, she simply licked Honey's palm and barked once in happy greeting. Unlike Dylan, the dog loved company. He figured the only reason she hung out with him was to use his garage as a means to get attention from his customers. It worked, too.

Honey laughed and gave the dog's head a good scratch. “Well, aren't you a good girl?” she crooned. “Coming out to meet your guests.”

Lolly barked again, then trot-limped back up the drive, tongue hanging out, looking proudly at Dylan as if to say “look what I found!”

Dylan was only half paying attention to the dog. He was still hung up on the sound of Honey's laugh. The woman he'd first met in his garage hadn't seemed capable of such a sound, and their meeting earlier hadn't changed his mind all that much. It was possible he'd been too busy noticing how that filmy, flowery skirt had clung to her legs when the steady island breeze picked up, making him wonder if perhaps he hadn't been too quick to pass judgment on her body as average. Now she was wearing a green T-shirt and some kind of rolled up jean shorts, proving he hadn't been wrong about those legs being noteworthy. “You changed your clothes.”

Her smile didn't fade, but it did turn wry.

Damn if he didn't like that, too.

“Yes. Seemed to make more sense in this heat. You're working on your boat.”

He tried not to let his lips quirk, but he had to work at it. “If I want to sail it someday, I have to do that.” He set the dorade down, but didn't climb down off the boat. “Now that we've stated the obvious, are you here for a reason, or were you just pedaling by?”

“For a reason,” she said, not bothering to climb off her bike. Since she had to look up to talk to him, she shaded her eyes with a hand to her forehead, which only served to make those eyes of hers even spookier looking.

It annoyed him that he was noticing that . . . or anything else about her. Batshit crazy didn't simply change with the change of an outfit. “And that would be?”

“I went by the garage after talking with Lani, but it took longer than I'd realized, and you'd closed up for the day. Alva told me where you lived and that you wouldn't mind if I stopped by. Said you'd most likely be working on your boat.”

He sighed. Miss Alva was going to have to make a lot more than jelly rolls if she wanted to get back on his good side.

“Since my car is going to take a while, I was hoping to get more of my things out of it. All of them, actually, if I could.”

“I open again at seven in the morning.”

“I'm taking a cab over to the county offices in the morning.”

“Courthouse doesn't open till nine.”

She didn't ask him how he knew that.

Just as well. If she stayed on the island much longer, she'd know all about his family past anyway, and just how often he'd had to deal with the county courthouse. And why.

“Well, okay. Would it be possible to meet you a few minutes before you open, like six forty-five, and maybe get some help driving the stuff over to the B&B? I'll be happy to pay you for your time.” When he didn't respond right away, she added, “Actually, I'd be happy to ask anyone other than you, but you're the only person I know with a truck.”