Dockside (5 page)

The encounter today with Nina had caused his confidence to falter. What the hell was he getting himself into? No. Greg was happy enough with the transaction. He did realize it could be a disaster—long hours, a challenge around every corner. Then again, it could be the second chance he needed for his family—an enterprise that kept him close to home, the kids engaged in family life, not avoiding it. He practically flinched as he remembered the end of his marriage, when he and Sophie had given up pretending for the sake of the children, who saw straight through them, anyway. Their unhappiness was like a disease that infected the whole family. They’d engaged in battles of bitter recriminations that usually ended in slammed doors, the four of them hiding from each other. Ultimately, Greg and Sophie attempted a trial separation. There was a sense of relief, sure, but the separation opened a whole new set of troubles.

Greg blamed himself for not seeing how troubled Daisy was by the divorce. If he had, maybe Daisy never would have gone to that weekend party on Long Island, and she never would’ve gotten pregnant. Well, not so soon, anyway.

He’d spent his entire marriage waiting for disaster and then reacting to it. He was determined to change now. Buying the inn felt right, and he was focused on making it happen.

The soft doorbell sound of an incoming e-mail distracted him. He glanced at the screen and then did a double-take when he saw who it was from—Nina Romano. The subject line read We need to talk.

Well, he thought.
Well.

Nina looked at her best friend, Jenny, and then back at the computer screen. “I just hit Send. I can’t believe I just hit Send.”

“That’s the best way for him to get the message.”

“But I changed my mind.” Nina swiveled back to glare at the screen. She wished there was some way to dive through the digital ether and snatch back her message.

She and Jenny were in Nina’s office. It wasn’t properly an office but a small nook in her bedroom where the computer sat on a card table. Everything about the house was small, including the rent check she gave her Uncle Giulio every month. She’d lived in the modest, cluttered house since Sonnet was little, trying to balance school and work and motherhood. She was blessed with a supportive family, but ultimately wanted to go it alone. She thought again about the offer from Greg Bellamy.
No way.

“All you said was that you wanted to talk further about the inn,” Jenny insisted. “It’s not like you made a lifetime commitment.”

Nina’s chest hurt and she realized she’d been holding her breath. She let it out in a burst of air. “He’ll see it as a sign of weakness. He’ll think I’m wavering.”

“You
are
wavering,” Jenny pointed out. “And that’s a good thing. It shows you have an open mind about the situation.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me this was happening while I was away.”

“I didn’t know. Even if I did, it would have been completely pointless to ruin your trip with Sonnet.”

She was right. It would’ve ruined the trip, her cherished mother-daughter time. “Sorry,” she said. “It wasn’t your job to keep me informed. He’s probably already looking for someone else. I bet he won’t even call.”

The phone on the desk rang, and both women jumped. Nina grabbed the handset and checked the caller ID screen. The name
Bellamy, G
winked back at her.

“Oh, God. It’s him.”

“So pick up,” Jenny suggested.

“No way. I’d rather die.”

“Then I’ll do it.” Jenny grabbed the phone.

Nina made a lunge for it, but missed.

Jenny clicked the talk button. “Romano residence. This is Jenny McKnight speaking. Oh, hey, Greg.”

Nina collapsed on the floor in a heap of helplessness.

“I’m fine, thanks,” Jenny said pleasantly. “Rourke, too,” she added.

Of course she was fine, thought Nina. She was married to the love of her life, and she had just found a publisher for the book she’d written, a memoir about growing up in a Polish-American bakery. Of course she was freaking fine.

She chatted pleasantly with Greg about his kids, who also happened to be her first cousins, though she hadn’t known them very long. Although Jenny was related to the Bellamys, the situation had come to light only in the past year. Jenny had grown up never knowing who her father was. Only last summer did she discover that there had been a tragic love affair between her mother, Mariska, and her father—Philip Bellamy—who happened to be Greg’s older brother. So that made Greg her uncle. They’d met just recently, but now, hearing Jenny chat so easily with him, Nina wondered if that blood tie actually counted for something.

“Yes, she’s here,” Jenny said.

The traitor. Nina nearly came out of her skin. With nonverbal Italian-American eloquence, she asked Jenny,
Do you want to die today?

“But she can’t come to the phone right now. I’ll make sure she returns your call. That’s a promise.”

Jenny hung up the phone, seemingly unperturbed by Nina’s fury. “Good news,” she said. “He hasn’t found anyone else yet.”

“How do you know? Did he say anything?”

“Of course he didn’t say anything. It’s none of my business.”

“Then how do you know he hasn’t moved on to his next victim?”

“If you don’t believe me, call him yourself.” Jenny held out the phone.

Nina shrank from it. “I need a drink.”

“I can help with that.” Jenny led the way to the kitchen with the familiarity of a best friend. She went straight to the cupboard and found a bottle of sweet red wine. “This will be perfect with the biscotti I brought from the bakery,” she said. Although the Sky River Bakery had decidedly Polish roots, there were a number of Italian selections on the menu as well, including cantuccini biscotti that were admittedly better than anything a Romano woman had ever baked. Dunked in the sweet dark wine, they made Nina forget her troubles for approximately twenty-nine seconds.

“So what did he sound like?” she asked Jenny.

“You already spoke to him today, right?”

“No, I mean did he sound conciliatory? Pissed?”

“He sounded like a Bellamy—you know, Manhattan prep school, Ivy League college and all that.” Jenny emulated the accent perfectly, then laughed at herself. “Sometimes I still can’t believe I’m related to those people.” The lighthearted reference belied the ordeal Jenny had gone through as she discovered her ties to the Bellamy family.

“They haven’t changed who you are,” Nina reminded her, “and that’s a good thing. Remember how the two of us used to make fun of the summer people when we were growing up?” As girls, she and Jenny would observe the summer vacationers who escaped the city for the cool relief of Willow Lake. They used to discuss the ridiculousness of the girls’ tennis whites and straight, silky hair, and that the kids were looked after by servants. The one thing neither Nina nor Jenny ever acknowledged, however, was the fact that their ridicule was rooted in envy.

“Don’t turn this thing with Greg into a feud,” Jenny warned her.

“I was mayor of this town for four years,” Nina said. “I’m good at feuds.”

“It would put me in an awkward position,” Jenny pointed out. “I’d have to take your side, and then everything would be all awkward with Philip.”

Even though he was Jenny’s father, she called him Philip, keeping a slightly formal distance between them. Nina felt a flash of pity for her friend, knowing from having watched Sonnet how hard it was to grow up without a father. Nina herself came from a large, loud family. She’d grown up way too fast, as it turned out, but that wasn’t her family’s fault.

She tried to imagine what it had been like for Jenny to wake up one day and discover this whole new side of herself. It would be like Nina finding out she had royal blood.

She’d made certain her own daughter knew who her father was as soon as Sonnet was old enough to understand. There was no veil of secrecy, no confusion. Nina had tried to raise Sonnet to be secure in the knowledge that she was loved and wanted; even though her parents weren’t together, she had a mother and father who adored her.

He damned well better adore her, Nina thought. He had plenty of lost time to make up for. Sharply focused on his career in the military, Laurence Jeffries had not played a large part in Sonnet’s life. Although he paid child support and came once a year to see Sonnet, that was the extent of their relationship. Now, on the brink of adulthood, Sonnet wanted to know more about her father. She’d seized the opportunity of the summer internship.

“Anyway,” Nina said, “I don’t want things to be awkward between you and Philip because of me.”

“They’re already awkward enough, but we’re dealing with it. We have no choice, what with Olivia’s wedding coming up. Which brings me to the actual reason for my visit.” Jenny unzipped the garment bag she’d brought along and, with exaggerated drama, ducked into the bedroom with it.

“The bridesmaid gowns just came in today,” she called through the door. “I wanted you to be the first to see my dress.” She stepped out on tiptoe to simulate high heels, and held her hair up off her neck. Nina gasped aloud. The dress was exquisite—a long fall of lilac silk charmeuse. Looking at her friend in the wispy dream of a dress, Nina felt an unexpected jolt of emotion.

Jenny was quick to notice. “Don’t go getting all mistyeyed on me.”

“I can’t help it. You look like Cinderella.”

“Hey, in the Bellamy family, I
am
Cinderella. So you like the dress?”

“I love the dress.”

“Me, too. Olivia has exquisite taste.” Olivia Bellamy, the bride, was Philip’s daughter, too. As her newly discovered half-sister, Jenny would be the matron of honor. Jenny was just starting to learn what it was like to be a Bellamy. The wedding was a full-blown family affair and already the talk of Avalon.

Nina blinked and cleared her throat. “Remember when we were little, and we had our weddings all planned out?”

Jenny laughed. “Totally. I’d still have the notebooks where we wrote down all our plans, except they were lost in the fire.” She had lost virtually everything she owned in a house fire the previous winter. The way she had rebuilt her life and moved ahead was an inspiration to Nina.

“We were supposed to marry in a double ceremony,” Nina recalled, reliving the memories. She and Jenny used to sit on Jenny’s chenille-covered bed, discussing their weddings.

“Yep, a double ceremony with Rourke and Joey. Best friends marrying best friends. It was all so nice and neat, wasn’t it?” There was a soft note in Jenny’s voice, a wistful affection for the girls they had been, and regret for all that had happened since they’d dreamed those dreams.

“The music was going to be the greatest hits of Bon Jovi and Heart,” Nina recalled. “And the dresses—Good lord, we drew so many versions. Yards of metallic fuchsia with puffy sleeves. And bridal gowns that were not of this world.” She laughed, remembering how they had planned out every last detail, from the vows they would recite—an e. e. cummings poem, what else?—to the menu at the reception—macaroni and cheese, barbecued chicken and Sky River Bakery donuts. After dual honeymoons—Hawaii, of course—they would buy houses next door to each other. Nina would run the Inn at Willow Lake while Jenny wrote the Great American Novel.

“I hadn’t thought about that in years,” Nina said. “We had some imagination, didn’t we?” If she tried very hard, she was able to remember the kid she had been, before everything had happened. She’d been so full of hopes and dreams, and all her goals seemed completely and utterly reachable. “Nothing went according to plan for either of us, did it?” she added.

Jenny smiled and fluffed out the hem of her dress. “I never could have planned for anything this good. And you could say the same. You ended up with Sonnet, after all, which is the equivalent of winning the amazing-daughter lottery.”

Nina couldn’t dispute that. “Does it bug you at all that Olivia’s getting the big formal wedding?” she asked her friend.

“Lord, no.” Jenny waved a hand dismissively. “Philip offered—did I tell you that? He said he’d pay for any wedding I asked for.” She grinned. “Lucky for him, all I wanted was a quick trip down the aisle with a minimum of fuss, and a honeymoon in St. Croix. And I have to tell you, it was perfect for Rourke and me. And I’m sure you remember, I had a great dress.”

“I’ll never forget that dress,” Nina assured her. Jane Bellamy, Jenny’s new grandmother, had insisted on taking Jenny to Henri Bendel’s on Fifth Avenue, where they picked out a cocktail-length couture gown. “No one in the history of Avalon will forget that dress, are you kidding? You and Rourke are a great couple. Olivia is going to have the greatest maid of honor—”

“Matron of honor, please.”

“Sure. You’ll look like a million.” Then Nina, to her dismay, recognized what she was feeling—a tug of envy. She caught herself thinking that Jenny should be Nina’s matron of honor, not Olivia’s. This was ridiculous, though. In order to have a matron of honor, she would need to be a bride, which was the last thing on her mind. There was a lot Nina wanted now that she was single and her nest was empty. Getting married surely wasn’t one of them. Not anytime soon. But falling in love? Who didn’t want that? Unfortunately, you couldn’t make it happen the way you made a wedding happen, by hiring a planner and picking out china patterns.