Slow Dancing on Price's Pier

Table of Contents

 

 

 

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This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Copyright © 2011 by Lisa Dale.

 

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PRINTING HISTORY

Berkley trade paperback edition / April 2011

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 

Dale, Lisa.

Slow dancing on Price's Pier / Lisa Dale.—Berkley trade paperback ed.

p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-47904-9

1. Triangles (Interpersonal relations)—Fiction. 2. Newport (R.I.)—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3604.A3538S57 2011

813'.6—dc22

2010036371

 

 

 

 

What I love about coffee is this: the dramatic change a coffee cherry goes through before it becomes a coffee “bean.”

If you've ever dumped out a bag of fresh-roasted coffee beans, you've probably stolen a sniff of that gorgeous, earthy aroma. You must have marveled at that glossy, dark sheen.

But that smell and those oils simply did not exist in the coffee cherry when it was little more than a hard green fruit growing on a mountainside.

It's fire that forces the transformation from seed to bean. Roasting alters the seed's makeup—an intense molecular restructuring.

In that way, I think coffee cherries aren't much different from people. Heat and pressure change us. When we walk through fire—and we all do at some point—we come out the other side to find ourselves altered. If we're lucky, we become richer, more complex, more alluring people because of our trials. But sometimes, we just get burned.

By the first day of summer, everyone on Price's Pier had caught wind of Thea's impending divorce from her husband—though not everyone had the facts straight. The more conservative among the gossipers speculated that Thea wanted another baby but Jonathan did not. Or that Jonathan wanted to play a bigger part in the coffee shop, and that Thea had shut him out. Some made accusations that took on a tabloid smuttiness within the rumor mill: there was talk of sexual perversion, secret photographs, and dirty money changing hands. One or both parties were often accused of cheating.

Most of the time, Thea could tell what her regular customers believed simply by the way they looked at her when they came in for their morning coffee. Suspiciously slanted glances and cold
I'll have the usuals
meant that the story they'd heard placed the blame on Thea. But shyly raised eyebrows, pitying smiles, and somber nods meant that Thea was the one who held their sympathies in the game of picking sides.

Thea treated all of her customers—regardless of their allegiances—exactly the same. She talked with them about coffee, the weather, or her latest column when it suited them to chat. Or she let them simply lapse into brooding quiet as she poured their drinks. Eventually the rumors would die down. The strange and sudden silence that had descended on her life like dust after an explosion would begin to feel normal. But until then, her plan was to simply yield to the surreal feeling of time suspended. She brewed big carafes of coffee; she picked her daughter up from soccer practice; in the evenings she swept beneath the tables and turned off the lights. It was business as usual. She pressed on.

 

 

“A toast!”

Jonathan watched as his brother pushed out his chair and stood at the pub table, nearly sending tequila sloshing onto his poker chips. Six of them—a group of men that Jonathan had never met until he'd moved in with his brother a week ago—sat together at a private booth in a Providence bar. The lights were dim except for a single green lamp that hung over the center of the sturdy round table. In the corner, a man in a flannel shirt stuck out his chin and closed his eyes, reaching for high notes in a Led Zeppelin singalong. The waitresses were gruff until they got tipped and the beer was skunked—but since the bar was nearly empty, it was a great place for long hands of poker on a Tuesday night.

“No toast,” Jonathan said. “No toast. Let's just knock 'em back.”

“No—I insist.” Garret bowed his head, something princely in the gesture. He smiled his wide, genuine smile that had wrapped so many women and congressmen around his little finger. His California blond hair gleamed gold in the light. “It's not every day a guy gets to throw his brother a divorce party.”

“But . . . a toast?” Jonathan said lamely.

“C'mon! We're celebrating here. You're a free man.” Garret laughed and clasped him on the shoulder. “The single life's the only life. Right, guys?”

Garret's friends—unmarried corporate types with their work shirts opened at the collars and their sleeves rolled—gave a
hear, hear
.

Jonathan shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“Don't look at me like that,” Garret said, laughing in his good-humored way. “I'm not gonna stand up here and bad-mouth . . . anyone. That would be low. Even for me!”

Some of the men chuckled, and Jonathan could feel them looking at him, watching to see what he would do.

He hadn't wanted a divorce party, but once Garret got an idea into his head, there was no sense in arguing. Garret was in the business of persuasion—a lawyer turned lobbyist. Of course, if he had really known how much the divorce party bothered Jonathan, there was no way he would have insisted. After ten years of little more than Christmas and birthday cards, Jonathan hardly knew his brother anymore. If he could reconnect with Garret, at least some good might come of his impending divorce. He lifted his glass a little higher and motioned for the toast to go on.

Garret cleared his throat. “Sometimes a man has to take the long way to find out a woman isn't who he thought she was. You know what they say. It's hard for a man to lose a woman. Sometimes, it's damn near impossible. Believe me, I've tried.”

“Jeez, Garret.” One of his friends cut in. “Whose divorce party is this anyway?”

Garret turned his eyes a bit guiltily toward his brother, and for a split second Jonathan saw what the other men did not. The nervousness. The frustration. The too-wild, too-bright glare in his brother's eye. Garret's bravado was usually unpracticed and carefree, but tonight something in his words rang false.

“I'm really screwing this up here, aren't I? The point is”—Garret lifted his drink to the height of his shoulder, his voice faltering—“the point is, you made the right decision. This isn't the end of a marriage; it's a new beginning. This is the first day of the rest of your life. And nobody deserves happiness more than you.”

For a moment, he and Garret locked eyes. Solid. Loyal. Like they used to be. And it occurred to Jonathan that only the two of them—him and his brother—knew what this toast was really about. Garret wouldn't have told any of these men about his past. His pride was too big, his ego too fragile. Tonight was supposed to mark the end of an era in Jonathan's life with Thea—but it was closure for Garret too.