Summer Beach Reads 5-Book Bundle: Beachcombers, Heat Wave, Moon Shell Beach, Summer House, Summer Breeze (180 page)

“How do you find something for your shop, then?” Bella asked.

“Just this way. Searching. Driving far out on no-name roads. Buying, like we’re going to buy from a few dealers. We won’t make as much profit as we will from Mr. Wheeler’s pieces. But still. The thing is, Bella, lots of people want what they want
now
. They don’t want to drive all the way from Boston or New York or the Vineyard to find their Chippendale side table. Basically, they’ll pay a whole
lot more for something if they can just walk into our store in Boston and point.”

“What about my store?” Bella bit her lip, thinking. “You’ve got a much bigger population in Boston than we do out in the middle of the state.”

“True. Also, more of your population is earthy-crunchy, hippy-dippy, less-is-more, and mobile. Students won’t buy. Lots of professors won’t buy, because they aren’t making any money and they’re planning to move to another college sooner or later. But you’ve got some established, distinguished scholars with historic homes and lots of rich parents coming up from Connecticut to visit their brilliant offspring. You’re close enough to New York and Boston that you’ll get some of that traffic.”

“Gosh,” Bella said. “You really do know a lot.”

Slade smiled. “You’d be surprised.”

Bella dropped her eyes.

Near Troy, New York, they stopped in a shop carved out of a garage attached to a white colonial house. The owner was an elegant woman with a snooty nose, savvy eyes, and a piercing voice. Bella saw at once that Slade’s charm bounced off Mrs. Eachern like bullets from Wonder Woman’s bracelets. Still, Bella found a table on which Slade promised her she could double her price, and Slade bought a cabinet. They drove west, stopping twice on different roads with the word
Hollow
in the name. At one shop, set up in the front rooms of a Victorian farmhouse, they found nothing, but at the other, located in a barn, they each made a purchase. They grabbed a late lunch to go from a drive-through fast-food place and headed on Route 2 back over the mountain into Massachusetts.

Near Williamstown, they stopped at a shop straight out of Marie Antoinette, or some ancient French monarch with a taste for chandeliers and nude marble statuary. At first Bella thought the owner, clad in a dapper white summer suit, was Rob Lowe.
Couldn’t be
, she told herself, and as he came closer, she saw that of course it wasn’t.

Gary Errick’s eyebrows arched with delight when he saw Slade.
They fell when Slade introduced Bella. Slade talked with Gary about business while Bella strolled around the shop, nearly tripping on antique Far Eastern carpets piled on top of one another. She picked up a marble statue of some old Greek god overwhelming some poor female, saw the price tag, and set it back down with extreme caution. Nothing here was anywhere near her price range, and she was glad when Slade said they had to leave.

She thought he’d put on music again for the hour they had left to drive back to Dragonfly Lake. Instead, Slade was in an expansive mood.

“So you’ve seen a variety of antiques shops. What do you think?” he asked.

She took a moment to deliberate on his question. “Each shop is unique,” she decided. “What is your shop like, Slade?”

“I suppose Ralston’s is most like Errick’s. Very posh. Quite pricey. But excellent value, never any doubt about provenance or authenticity. We know our clients and what they’re looking for, so they don’t have to search far for what they want.”

“I can’t do that,” Bella mused. “I don’t want to do that. I want a range of prices, and lots of different people coming in. I want a young couple to fall in love with one of Natalie’s abstracts and be able to afford it. But I want to price her charcoals high. They look like museum pieces. I don’t want Early American furniture. Half the shops in New England carry Early American. I love the more ornate, but I want the shop to have an airy feeling, so people can walk around and not be afraid they’ll knock something off a pedestal like at Errick’s.”

Slade laughed. “He does crowd pieces in.” He glanced over at Bella. “You’ve done a lot of thinking.”

“I guess I have. This trip has been enormously helpful, Slade. I can’t thank you enough.”

“What’s your next step?”

She counted off on her fingers. “I’ve got to close Barnaby’s Barn. Which means advertising a huge sale, so I can get rid of as much as
possible. I’ve got to completely redo the look of the place, inside and out. I can envision the exterior.… I want to paint it sort of umber, instead of white, with huge topiary plants on either side of the door.”

“You need to replace the door.”

“You think? Aren’t Dutch doors kind of … European?”

“What about hanging big wooden shutters on each side of the door, and leaving the door open? You could have a glass inner door for cold or hot weather, but an open door is inviting.”

“Oh, what a good idea!” They were on a small, curvy road now, winding through forests, but Bella saw the shop, not the trees. “What color do you think I should paint the interior?”

“What color do
you
think you should paint the interior?”

“The floors are dark-stained pine. They’ve been polyurethaned against use and they’ve held up pretty well. I’m thinking something between beige and pale coral.
Not
pink. But pale brown with a touch of pink. Do I mean a pale umber? I need to look at paint chips.”

“We can have a painting party,” Slade suggested.

Bella cocked her head. “A what?”

“Some weekend, after you’ve had your sale and are ready to redo the place, we can all get together and paint the interior and exterior. Natalie and I, you and Ben, Morgan and Josh. Maybe your parents. Maybe Brady.”

“What a good idea. That sounds like fun. Although I’m not sure Brady will want to help.”

“Pay him. I’ll bet he’ll be useful to you as time goes by. He’s a big kid; he can help move furniture around and hang pictures. You’re going to need a strong man around to help you, you know.”

“Aaron.” Bella suddenly and guilty remembered. “He’ll help paint. Help move furniture.”

“Will he?” Slade’s voice was dismissive as he turned onto the narrow lane around Dragonfly Lake.

“Of course!” How insulting Slade was, implying that Aaron wouldn’t help her!

Slade turned the van into the Barnabys’ driveway. “It’s late. We’ve had a long day. I’m going to spend the night with Nat. Maybe
tomorrow you can round up another male to help me unload your furniture.”

“This is going so fast!” Bella panicked. “I don’t know where to put the furniture. I mean, I’ll have to move some of Mom’s displays to make room.”

“You’ve spent some money buying these antiques, Bella.” Slade clicked off the engine and turned to look at her. “You know the saying ‘Put your money where your mouth is’? You’ve done that. Now you need to put your body where your heart is.”

She frowned, working to untangle his meaning.

Slade undid his seat belt. Without warning, he leaned over and kissed Bella on her mouth. His lips pressed gently, teasingly. Just when she thought he’d draw away, he put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her to him so that her head fell back and her lips parted. Their breath mingled.

Then he drew away. Her heart raced. She wanted more. She stared at his wonderfully bewitching pirate’s face, such black hair, his eyes so dark blue they were almost ebony, and the look in those eyes so compelling, full of desire. Full of lust.

She didn’t want to sit there like a deer frozen by the presence of a panther. Natalie’s warning rang in her mind:
Slade’s a rogue, a playboy, not to be trusted
.

She said weakly, “I have to go in.”

“Do you?” He kept his gaze fixed on her.

She was not clueless. She certainly wasn’t
easy
. She didn’t want him to know how much he had aroused her, not when she was fully aware that for him she was only a plaything. He probably kissed every woman he could. He probably bedded every woman he could, and a man who looked like Slade could bed lots of women. She wanted to keep her dignity.

“Slade, you bad boy,” she teased. She undid her seat belt and pretended to be insouciant. “Thank you for helping me. This has been an amazing day. Can I phone you tomorrow morning? Maybe take you out for a big breakfast to thank you for today?” She was proud of herself; she sounded so sophisticated!

His eyes grew even darker. In the irises gleamed a momentary
light that reminded Bella, suddenly, of the tough boys she’d taught in third grade, the boys too proud to show hurt. But, of course, Bella had no power to hurt Slade!

Embarrassed by her thoughts, overwhelmed by her emotions, she slid out of the van onto her unstable high heels. “Thanks so much, Slade.
Really
.” She hurried toward the safety of her house.

Now at the beginning of July, the foliage around Dragonfly Lake was so green it almost hummed. The temperature in the Amherst area would reach into the nineties today, and so would the humidity, but near the lake it seemed cooler, especially when a light breeze rippled the water. It was a weekday, so most lakeside residents were at work, but here and there teenagers free from the confines of school raced down the dock, whooping as they jumped into the water or paddled around in inner tubes or on rubber rafts.

Morgan sat in the grass, still damp with morning dew, near their small private beach, watching Petey fill a bucket of water and carry it up to fill the hole he’d dug in the sand. She had one eye on her son and one on her laptop. She’d just gotten an email from Slade.

She clicked on the link to the photo of the settee. She could see what Slade meant. It would work well in their living room in that
funny bare spot. The upholstery was cream with cream embroidery. Yes. She clicked on the photo of the rock. It was amusing to imagine having a great big piece of rock in the living room—clever of Slade to think of it. She gave him lots of points for considering Petey’s safety. If Petey fell—he was still toddling, not that steady on his feet—and hit his head on the rock, though, he could sustain some serious damage. Of course, that was true of many places in the house. She had taped cushioning Bubble Wrap around their coffee table and the edges of the hearth. She’d put safety latches on all the kitchen and bathroom cupboards and stacked any cleaning materials up high above the sinks, out of reach. Safety gates barricaded the top and bottom of the stairs to the second floor and the stairs to the lawn from the back deck. Josh had gone over their yard with a fine-tooth comb, checking for sharp rocks protruding from the ground.

You could drive yourself mad protecting your child, Morgan thought. How did people manage not to melt down? How did they allow their precious children to toddle off into the world, knowing they might stub their toes and fall?

Slade spent more time helping her with the house than Josh did, Morgan mused. But, of course, Josh was working hard to pay for all this stuff. Slade was making money from selling it. She had to remember that. Still …

She was losing her mind. She was sitting on the shore of an idyllic lake and quietly going nuts.

“Okay, sweet Pete!” Morgan slammed her laptop shut, grabbed it up with one hand, and grabbed her sandy boy with the other. “We’re going to the playroom!”

One of the great qualities about kids was that they usually accepted
sharp swerves in the activities of the day—because, really, what choice did they have? She stood him on the deck and brushed his clothes free of sand. She carried him and her laptop into the house and shut and locked the sliding door. She dropped her laptop on the kitchen table, rinsed her hands and Petey’s hands, and slid his sandals over his chubby feet. She grabbed her bag, his diaper bag, the car keys, and strode out the front door as if on a mission.

Well, she
was
on a mission. She was going to help her husband. She was not going to sit in the sand daydreaming about Slade while Josh was working so hard to give them this perfect life. She buckled Petey into his car seat—he arched and wailed, as always—handed him some rubber toys, jumped into her own seat, keyed the sliding doors closed, and drove away from the house toward the gym.

“We’re going to Judy’s Gym!” she reminded her son encouragingly. “Petey
loves
the playroom. It’s got so many toys, and lots of kids will be there, maybe Luke or Camden. Miss Amber will be there or Miss Caroline. You love Miss Caroline.”

It took forty-five minutes to get to the gym, which was in a rural setting on the other side of Amherst, but once Petey heard Miss Caroline’s name, he stopped gibbering and settled down. To his great delight, and Morgan’s, it was Miss Caroline who watched over the playroom today. Short, round, and rather trollish, Miss Caroline greeted Petey with genuine pleasure, hugging him and carrying him off to show him the new backhoe they’d just gotten.