Now and Then Friends (35 page)

As for Alex Kincaid, now that she remembered that irritated voice on the phone, she decided he'd be balding and have bushy eyebrows. He'd blink too much as he spoke and have a nasal drip.

All right, perhaps that was a little unfair. But he'd definitely sounded as if he'd had his sense of humor surgically removed.

“I'm sure you're completely knackered now,” Juliet continued, “but tomorrow I'll give you a proper tour of the village, introduce you.” She nodded, that clearly decided, and Lucy, not knowing what else to do, nodded back.

It was so
strange
being here with her sister, sitting across from her in this cozy little kitchen, knowing she was actually going to live here and maybe get to know this sibling of hers, who had semiterrified her for most of her life. Intimidated, anyway, but perhaps that was her fault and not Juliet's.

In any case, when Lucy had needed someone to talk to, someone who understood the maelstrom that was their mother but wasn't caught
up in her currents, she'd turned to Juliet. And Juliet hadn't let her down. She had to remember that, keep hold of it in moments like these, when Juliet seemed like another disapproving person in her life, mentally rolling her eyes at how Lucy could never seem to get it together.

And she
was
going to get it together. Here, in rainy, picturesque Hartley-by-the-Sea. She was going to reconnect with her sister, and make loads of friends, and go on picnics and pub crawls and find
happiness.

PHOTO BY SARA BLACKBURN

KATE HEWITT is the bestselling author of more than forty novels of romance and women's fiction, including the Emigrants Trilogy, set in Scotland and North America; the Hartley-by-the-Sea series, set in the Lake District; and Tales from Goswell, written as Katharine Swartz. Raised in the United States, she lives in the English Cotswolds with her American-born husband and their five children.

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