Return to Pelican Inn (Love by Design) (4 page)

She waited another minute, hoping the visitor would go away.

Another round of knocking destroyed that hope.

Blowing out a breath, Rosa headed downstairs, more to stop the incessant pounding than out of any real interest in whoever was on the porch. Her thoughts flipped through a mental Rolodex of design topics. Striped ticking slip covers to freshen up the sofa in the front room rather than reupholstering would free up some cash for airy curtains. Her mind stubbornly insisted on picturing these imaginary curtains hugging a certain window in a certain Captain’s Nest, despite Bitsy’s odd reticence about the room.

Knock, knock.

Her slippered feet flew down the stairs. “Stop knocking. I’m coming.”

Baggy leapt up and down as much as his stubby legs would allow.

“Hold on to your kibble, Baggy. I’m on it.”

She pulled open the door, letting in a swirl of air sharp with the tang of the sea. The man on the step stood with his callused hand raised to knock again, a shock of thick white hair hanging over a creased forehead. She blinked hard. Did she actually see the scar on his forearm, or was it a memory from long ago when he’d absentmindedly crashed into a sliding glass door?

A door in the place they’d rented in Tumbledown.

A place she’d finally dared to believe was home.

Home with the father who now stood before her on the porch, watching his daughter watching him.

CHAPTER FOUR

I
T
WAS
B
AGGY
who succeeded in breaking the silent stalemate as Rosa stared open-mouthed at Manny Franco, who smiled steadily back at her. Baggy, having waited patiently for some word of introduction, stood on his hind legs and pawed at Manny’s knee.

Manny appeared confused for a moment as he considered the beast before him. “Ah, a dog. Thought it was some kind of gigantic mole or something.” He patted Baggy’s head. “One minute, dog-o. My princess gets her hug first.”

And Manny proceeded to wrap Rosa in a hug that smelled of mothballs and bacon. Rosa’s heart coursed with too many emotions to be contained properly in the now sporadically pumping organ. Her mind teemed with memories, both sweet and serrated, starting with her father’s famous bacon-and-cheese omelets, which they ate every night for a straight week when Rosa’s mother endured the first of her many hospitalizations for cirrhosis of the liver. Cy ate his sans bacon. The succulent omelets were always accompanied by a side of sage advice their father doled out with the wave of a spatula.

“Bacon is good for you,” Manny proclaimed to a protesting Rosa who was deeply under the influence of a school nutrition class. “Don’t see many pigs with pacemakers, do you?”

He’d smiled through it all, the omelets, the hospitalizations, the biopsies, the burial. Smiled when he’d kissed the kids the night before he left. She loathed that smile with the part of her that did not leap at the sight of it.

Now she stood, ramrod stiff, as he hugged her and pressed a dry kiss to her temple. “You look fantastic, Rosa, like a flower about to blossom.” He stepped away to hoist the oddball dog into his arms. “All right, dog-o. Your turn. Can’t say you look fantastic, but you’re an original and that deserves a scratch at least.”

Was her father really there, standing in the golden morning light, dropping compliments on daughter and dog? Perhaps it was a dream induced by too many hours spent poring over paint palettes when she should have been sleeping. She wanted to scream “Why are you here?” It was the same way she’d felt when he graced them with his presence for her high school graduation. Only she hadn’t been there. Cy, of course, had attended, being deeply in love with fellow senior Eva Lassiter, blonde president of the Cupcakes for a Cause Club. But Rosa had no use for the ceremony, though Bitsy had pleaded with her to attend.

“Where’s Rosa?” her father had apparently said, when he didn’t see her face amid the sea of caps and gowns.

“Where’s Rosa? I’m not the one who’s been missing!” she’d screamed to her bewildered father later, when they’d caught up with her at the beach. Now she wanted to let him have it once again. In the recent past, she’d seen him only a handful of awkward times.
Why are you here, Dad? Why here? Why now?

Instead, she found herself saying, “His name is Baggy.”

“Weird name for a dog. Better suited for a mole. No offense, Baggy.” He took in the front room of the Pelican, breathing so deep his spindly chest widened with the effort. “Still the most beautiful place on the beach.” His expression went suddenly timid. “So, where’s Bitsy?”

Bitsy arrived as if on cue, clutching an armful of pillows, eyes rounding in surprise over the cushioned stack. “I thought I heard...” She stopped. “Manny?”

He put Baggy down and held him steady until the dog synchronized his paws. Then he went to Bitsy and waited while she put the pillows on a chair. A long moment stretched between them, and Rosa tried to read the messages unrolling in that silence. Bitsy’s cheeks pinked, and her hand went to her throat. Manny hooked his thumbs in his pockets. Rosa wondered if Bitsy’s heart pulsed with similar feelings of outrage. As far as Rosa knew, Manny had not bothered to visit Bitsy on more than a handful of occasions since the disastrous high school graduation, not even for Leopold’s funeral. And he’d never, to Rosa’s knowledge, thanked the woman for raising the two children he was incapable of parenting.

“Hello,” she said quietly.

“Hey, Bits,” he said. “You’re looking well.”

“Thank you, and you are also, Manny.” She hugged herself, as if she’d felt a sudden chill. “We weren’t expecting you.”

Rosa found her voice again. “No, we weren’t. Why are you here, Dad?”

He scrunched up his face. “Just found myself in town.”

“Last I heard, you were fossil hunting somewhere.”

The phrase seemed to click something to life inside his head. “That was a blast, but after a while you get tired of digging up stuff more ancient than yourself. Cy wrote me that you had a project here, so I popped in. Where’s my boy, these days?”

“He’s here, too,” Rosa snapped. “But we’re busy. Working on a decorating job.”

“Swell.” Manny heaved in a breath. “Cy?” he bellowed. “Come say hello to your Pops.”

“He’s out for a run,” Rosa said. “We’ll find him on the way to the car.”

“Car?” Manny blinked.

“You drove here, didn’t you?”

“No. Took a cab,” Manny started. “Don’t have a car just at the moment.”

“No matter.” She forged ahead. “I’ll give you a ride back to your trailer.”

Cy had helped their father secure a trailer on one of his in-town jaunts, and somehow Manny managed to pay for the rental space in the Seascape Trailer Park some fifteen miles out of town. Or so she’d heard. Rosa had not visited the place her father called home.

“Don’t think that will work,” he mumbled.

“Of course it will.” Rosa grabbed her purse. Above all things, she wanted to remove her father from the inn before a certain arrogant lawyer arrived. She didn’t need any more distractions to delay the design work. It was bad enough having Pike around as both an obstacle and a painful reminder of her past.

Bitsy shook her head. “You’re still in your pajamas, Rosa. Go put some clothes on, at least.”

“No need,” Rosa chirped. “I won’t even be getting out of the car. Just a quick drive and drop.”

“At least let the man stay for breakfast.” Bitsy began to gather up the pillows in such a hurry they slid from her hands and scattered across the floor. Manny helped her gather them up again.

“He doesn’t need breakfast, and we’re really busy. Only three weeks until this place has to be shipshape, remember? It’s nice that you wanted to visit, but it’s really not a great time. We’ll reschedule for next month.” Rosa touched his shoulder. “Come on, Dad. Let’s go.”

The door slammed open and Rosa’s heart shot to her throat, but it was Cy who barreled in, glistening with sweat from his run, curls tousled wildly by the wind.

“Pops,” he said, a wide grin obliterating the fatigue from his face. “Did you come to root for us in the contest?”

Rosa would have kicked him if he’d been in closer proximity. She didn’t want her father involved with their design endeavors in any way, shape or form. “He was just leaving, Cy.”

“What’s this about a contest?” Manny asked. “I thought it was a regular decorating job.”

“You can tell him all about it over breakfast.” Bitsy moved toward the kitchen. “Cy, I know you can’t handle bacon without upchucking, but would you mind collecting some eggs? Rocky had to go into town to run an errand for me.”

“Sure thing, but last time Esmerelda, the chicken queen, took a dislike to me,” Cy said. “She pecked my, er, nether regions. I tried to explain that I don’t even eat her kind, but she wasn’t in a receptive mood. You can’t reason with fowl.”

“Not a female fowl.” Bitsy laughed. “It was a love peck. That’s the way chickens show affection.”

Cy raised an eyebrow. “I don’t need that kind of affection.”

Manny sighed. “We all need a little love, Cy. Even us old-timers.” His gaze wandered over the knotted pine table and came to rest, ever so lightly, on Bitsy.

Rosa watched helplessly as Cy ambled out to the chicken house and Bitsy, always the graceful hostess, put Manny to work setting the table. Rosa tossed like a ship in the storm. Manny could not—must not—be allowed to stay, her roiling nerves shouted, yet she was helpless in the face of Bitsy’s overwhelming graciousness.

Breakfast only. Then he’s gone.

Maybe, if she was lucky, Pike wouldn’t arrive until later in the day.

Cy returned from the chicken house fifteen minutes later with a clean-shaven Pike in tow. “Look who I found in the henhouse. He’s got a way with Esmerelda. Either that or he threatened her with a lawsuit.”

If it weren’t for bad luck,
Rosa thought, biting back a groan,
I’d have no luck at all.

Pike did a double take when he caught sight of Manny. He shot an irate look at Cy. “You didn’t disclose that your father was here.”

Cy shrugged. “I was busy guarding my nether regions, and my dad is free to come and go as he likes.” He carried the eggs off to the kitchen where Bitsy and Manny were installed at the stove, frying pancakes. Rosa fired off a preemptive round.

“I didn’t know Dad was coming. He just sort of appeared.”

Pike turned to her, brown eyes like liquid chocolate. “He doesn’t belong here.”

“I’m taking him home right after breakfast,” she returned through gritted teeth. “But why don’t you finish your thought? He doesn’t belong here and neither do his children. The contest is a bad idea, and you wish we would all just go away.”

He clenched his fists and placed them on his hips, which fit very well in his expensive jeans. “You know how I feel about the contest. I made no secret of it.”

“That’s not the part that hurts, Pike. It’s....” She broke off in horror. What had she said? Did she just give voice to the deeper issue that rankled inside? Her father’s presence had upset her, loosed her self-control from its moorings, caused a crack in her good sense.

He cocked his head. “Rosa, I never said you weren’t welcome.”

She raised her chin. “Hmm. I wonder how I could have confused the welcome mat with the ‘don’t let the door hit you as you leave’ sign.”

His mouth quirked, and then a smile drifted across his lips like a wave breaking across the shore. He laughed.

“What do you find amusing, exactly?” she said, her heart thumping at his grin.

“You. I always liked that quick wit.”

Rosa’s cheeks warmed. He liked something about her? She took a step back, covering up uncertainty with bravado. “You don’t like anything about me. Let’s not pretend.”

His smile dimmed. “Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”

Bitsy called to them. “Breakfast is served.”

“I’m not staying, Aunt Bitsy,” Pike said, eyeing Manny. “I’ve got some work to do in the office.”

She frowned. “You need breakfast. Come sit.”

He raised a placating hand. “No, really, I have to go.”

“Pike,” Bitsy snapped, her voice sharp. “We’re all going to settle down here around the table and eat like normal people and leave the past behind us for a moment. You can do that—we all can, with a little effort.” She swallowed. “Please.” Her pale skin was stretched taut across her cheekbones. Suddenly, Bitsy closed her eyes and gripped the chair, fingers trembling.

Pike was at her side in a moment. “Are you all right?”

She nodded, waving him away.

“Sit down,” Pike insisted, hovering at her elbow. “Let me get you something. Some water.” Rosa was halfway to the kitchen when Bitsy waved her off, too.

“I’m just fine,” she said, her soft tone back in place. She pressed a kiss on her nephew’s cheek. “Everyone sit, please.”

Rosa watched as Pike pulled out a chair for Bitsy. Manny sat next to her and Cy carried out platters of scrambled eggs and pancakes. What had she just witnessed? Was Bitsy ill? Rosa was still lost in thought when she felt someone touch her. She started, surprised to find Pike’s fingers curled around her forearm. He pulled out the chair for her and gently guided her into it. She breathed in the subtle scent of his cologne.

“Like normal people,” he whispered, a secret smile pulling up the corners of his mouth. His fingertips brushed her wrist and she wondered if he felt the odd uptick in her pulse, which she was at a loss to understand.

Doing her best to impersonate a normal person, Rosa sat.

CHAPTER FIVE

A
WKWARD
DID
NOT
come close to describing the painful, stuttering conversation that unfolded at the breakfast table. Cy could not shovel in the food fast enough, and Bitsy conducted a gracious symphony of small talk on every possible subject from tile to typhoons. That was fine with Rosa, as it filled the conversational void while keeping her father from getting a word in edgewise. Cy forked up the last pancake and Manny scanned the table, in search of a refill for his coffee.

“Okay,” Rosa said, springing from the chair and stacking all the plates within arm’s reach. “I’ll put these in the kitchen and we’ll get going. Thanks for breakfast, Bitsy. It was delicious.”

Cy mumbled his agreement around a mouthful of pancake.

Rosa did not give Bitsy any time to consider issuing a lunch invitation. She changed clothes in an eye blink, collected Manny and walked briskly from the inn out to her Nissan, Cy trailing behind into the fog-misted morning.

“I could have used another cup of joe,” Manny said.

“I’m on a tight schedule, Dad, and you didn’t exactly call ahead.”

“Yeah, well, we’re not gonna get too far in that,” Manny said, pointing to the Nissan’s left rear tire, which was flat to the rim.

Rosa groaned. “Why me?”

Manny looked closer. “Got a nail in the tire. Roofing nail, I think.”

Rosa huffed.

“No worries, sis,” Cy said, removing the keys from her hand and popping the trunk. “I’ll have her up and running in half a second.”

Perhaps it was to make up for the fact that he did not drive that Cy strove to be a master at all things automobile. She’d caught him reading over the Nissan’s owner’s manual to kill time between appointments, studying the diagrams of braking systems and trunk release mechanisms with fervor. In truth, he was the world’s worst auto mechanic, though Rosa didn’t have the heart to tell him so.

“Um, maybe we should call for roadside assistance,” she proposed. “Since we’re in a hurry. I think we’ve got one of those membership cards.”

“Nah, this is easy. You just get that lug wrench thing and whip the bolts off. Or is it nuts?” Cy began rummaging through the trunk.

Rosa heard a soft sigh from behind her. She turned to find Pike watching Cy as if he was a rare animal at the zoo. “Can I help?” he said with a slight grimace.

“No,” Cy called, voice echoing in the trunk space. “I’ve got this. Piece of cake.”

“He never lets me help, either,” Rosa said, though she could change a tire in half the time it took her twin. She considered commandeering the lug wrench, but there were some things one did not do, especially to a brother as incredible as Cy. If he needed to change that tire, she would let him.

“This is going to take a while,” Manny said, and Rosa agreed.

“I’ve got a roofing nail in my tire,” she said, skewering Pike with a look. “I wonder who spilled those everywhere.”

Pike chewed his lip, a flush stealing across his cheeks. “I suppose I could drive you.”

She wanted to say no. Actually, she wanted to say,
absolutely not while I still have one measly living breath in my body.
Cy emerged, saluting them with the lug wrench and an enormous smile. “All right. I’m goin’ in,” he sang out, as he dove under the car.

“He knows the lug nuts are on the outside of the vehicle, right?” Pike asked.

“Sure I do,” Cy hollered good-naturedly. “But it’s important during an automotive crisis to check over the entire undercarriage for any signs of collateral damage.”

Manny whistled. “He’s still got that weird love-hate relationship with cars, doesn’t he?”

Rosa breathed deep to steady her nerves. “Yes, yes he does.”

“Would have thought he’d get over it and start driving again.”

“Some things,” she snapped, “you just don’t get over.” As if her father could ever understand the wake of destruction he’d left behind. She looked at Pike. “It’s just up Highway One about fifteen miles. That’s where his trailer is. I’m really sorry to ask.”
Especially you.

“You didn’t ask. I offered. Let’s get this over with.” Pike strode to his gleaming Mercedes and opened the door for Rosa.

“Please stop doing that,” she said.

“Doing what?”

“Pulling out chairs and opening doors for me.”

He arched a brow. “Sorry if it offends you, but the Matthews men were trained to be chivalrous.”

“The Matthews men. Now I remember,” Manny said, with a snap of his fingers. He fixed his eyes on Pike. “You’re Ben Matthews’s kid.”

Pike stiffened. “You should remember. You tried to send him to jail.”

Manny pursed his lips. “I investigated. That’s my job.”

“You defamed us. That’s illegal.”

Manny’s eyes narrowed and his slumped shoulders straightened. “Good-looking boat, wasn’t it?”

“Dad...” Rosa warned.

Manny continued. “Sank on a perfectly calm evening. Insurance paid a hundred thousand on it.”

Pike’s face darkened in rage. “Get in,” he snarled. “Or you can walk back to your trailer, if you prefer.”

Rosa shoved Manny into the car before he had a chance to add any more gasoline to the fire. She sank into the plush leather passenger seat, pulling the door closed quickly before Pike could slam it. Pike took the driver’s seat.

“Nice wheels,” she said.

Pike didn’t answer. A vein throbbed in his jaw as he slid on a sleek pair of sunglasses.

“Law business must be treating you well,” she tried again.

“Well enough.”

That concluded the small talk between Rosa and her chivalrous enemy.

Manny was silent as well.
Probably for the best,
Rosa thought, as they drove along the highway, past fields of pumpkins that, in a month, would greet the visitors who came for that pick-it-yourself experience. She’d been too mature to indulge in such fantasies when they’d moved to Tumbledown. Fifteen-year-olds did not scurry about in pumpkin patches hunting for that perfect squash. At least, that’s what she’d told her family, but nothing would dissuade Manny and Cy until they’d rolled away the most enormous specimen—one that required both of them to heft it into the station wagon.

She remembered the expression they’d carved into that orange flesh. Intending eeriness, Cy and her father had somehow captured the mournful, contemplative look she’d seen on her mother’s face in her more sober moments, a hint that she’d let something pass her by while she was otherwise occupied. Or was it grief for something she’d lost? If she closed her eyes, Rosa could picture the pumpkin’s visage, illuminated by the candle flickering inside. If only there had been such a candle to illuminate her mother’s soul. Would it have revealed the dark impulse that drove her to drink herself to death? What could Rosa have done, or Manny, or any of them to drive that darkness away before it consumed her? She swallowed hard.

“Penny.”

She jumped. “What?”

“A penny for your thoughts,” Pike said. “Ten miles of awkward silence is my limit. I’m a trained talker.”

“The conversation lagged, so I guess I drifted.”

“Yeah,” Pike said, eyeing Manny in the rearview mirror. He appeared to have dozed off. “Took him a while to remember who I was.”

“You’ve changed.”

“More handsome, huh?”

He grinned. Darned if he wasn’t right, but she’d never tell him that. And not only more handsome but lithe and lanky, intelligent. Worst of all was that terrible, wonderful, dimpled chin. “I was going to say more stubborn.”

“Stubborn, sayeth the pot to the kettle?”

“Yes, sayeth the pot. Aunt Bitsy wants her inn reborn and I can do that better than anyone. It’s the best thing for her.”

He cut his eyes to her, a flicker before he focused again on the highway. “And you’re sure about that?”

“Yes. It’s what she wants.” Rosa twiddled with the hem of her linen coat, noticing for the first time a spot of paint staining the fabric. Why had she not thought to put on the green blouse, which brought out the spark in her hair?
Get a grip, Rosa. He wouldn’t notice a spark if it leaped out and burned a hole in his retina. And why would you want him to? Remember Foster, the handsome guy from law school? The one who ruined you?

He chewed on his lower lip. “Maybe we shouldn’t always have what we want.”

She twisted on the seat. “Why? What do you know?” She lowered her voice. “Is Bitsy sick?” Bitsy’s pale face and trembling fingers swam into her memory and her stomach contracted.

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“Oh, quit the lawyer jargon.” Rosa would have grabbed his arm if he hadn’t been negotiating a narrow section of highway that pinched them against the dark cliff side. “You have to tell me.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Pike, I love Bitsy. I need to know.”

“It’s for her to discuss with you, not me.”

“How can you be such a...” Rosa heard herself emit a sort of choking sob. She swallowed it and stared stonily out the window.

Pike shifted. “I’m sorry. I know she’s like a mother to you. All I can tell you is I’m going to make it all turn out for the best.”

So condescending. As if she hadn’t experienced and survived plenty of challenges in her life already. “Yet you still refuse to tell me, even though you know what she means to me?”

He kept his eyes on the road. “Not my place.”

Who was Pike Matthews to withhold information about Bitsy? He was the owner of the luxury vehicle in which she was now being chauffeured, with butter-soft seats and a top-of-the-line sound system burbling a blues song that made her want to cry. He had a career, a living and a future that did not depend on winning some nutty contest. He was, in a word, a success.

She thought about how ashamed she’d felt when she’d realized that Foster had been using her teacher’s assistant password to hack into the law school’s computer system and alter his grades. And again how she’d burned with fury when her professor believed it was her doing, a lovestruck girl risking her future for her boyfriend. Maybe if her father had been a benefactor at the school, as Foster’s had been, the administration might have believed her. As it was, Foster claimed he had no idea that poor, addle-headed Rosa was changing his grades. She was a crazy stalker. Obviously.

She fixed her gaze on the horizon, watching the fog ease away from the ocean. Inside her, fear ebbed and flowed like the waves below. Could Bitsy be seriously ill? She forced her hands to unclench. The very first thing she would do after they dropped Manny at his trailer was to sit down with Aunt Bitsy and ask for the truth. They turned into the Seascape Trailer Park.

“Dad, which one is yours?”

Pike lifted an eyebrow. “You don’t know?”

“I’ve been busy,” she sniped. “I haven’t seen the trailer.”

Manny didn’t answer.

“Dad? Wake up. Which one is your trailer?”

Manny blinked and stared at Rosa. “What?”

She forced out a breath and kept her voice in what she hoped was a pleasant range. “We’re here at your trailer park. Which unit is yours?”

He sat up and peered out the window, scanning the neat rows of trailers, which were separated by low picket fences. Some were permanent residences and others more likely vacation rentals. Pike slowed the car to a crawl. The trailers perched on small plots of grass, with lush patches of hydrangea and bougainvillea adding a blaze of color. The nearest yard was crisscrossed by a clothesline with children’s garments flapping gaily in the breeze. Clearly that one wasn’t Manny’s.

Rosa turned to Manny again with a stir of unease. “You can’t remember which one is yours?”

“Yes, I can,” he grumbled, passing a hand over his eyes. “Just takes me a minute.”

Pike watched in the rearview mirror and Rosa wondered what he was thinking. Probably that the Francos came from substandard mental material. With an alcoholic mom and a deadbeat dad who couldn’t find his way home, she could see where some might make the connection.

At least my dad didn’t sink his own boat,
she thought uncharitably. She pointed to a sign. “Sea Cliff Lane,” she read off. “Is that the one, Dad?”

He smiled, relieved. “Yes, that’s the one. Turn there.”

Pike slowed to let a couple of kids whip across the narrow graveled lane on their bikes and continued on at a snail’s pace, grimacing when a rock pinged against the side of his Mercedes.

Rosa cringed, too. She didn’t want any more damage inflicted on Pike because of her family. The sooner they could deliver Manny back to his trailer, the better for Pike. And for Rosa.

With everything else on her plate, her father’s presence might just push her over the edge of sanity.

The Mercedes crept along at the specified five miles per hour.

“It’s on the end, left side,” Manny said. “Number six ten.”

Rosa rolled down the window and caught an odd scent, like the smell of an extinguished campfire. The grass that was doing its best to spring up along the side of the road was smashed and blackened.

“Dad?” she said.

“Yes, princess?”

She ground her teeth.
I’m not your princess. You don’t run out on princesses.
“Why does it look like there’s been a fire around here?”

“Because, there has,” Pike said, pointing to the charred remains of trailer number six ten, Sea Cliff Lane.