Tea and Destiny (24 page)

“Plentiful. Who’s blowing them up?”

“Liz. Last time I checked her lips were turning blue. You might want to relieve her.”

“I don’t do balloons,” he said emphatically.

“What exactly do you do?” she teased. “I haven’t seen you since breakfast. Have you been hiding?”

“I’ve been having a long talk with Tracy’s new boyfriend.”

Ann groaned. “Hank, you have not cross-examined that boy, have you? Tracy will kill you.”

“No, she won’t,” he said smugly. “She gave me the list of questions.”

“In that case, did he pass?”

“For a nineteen-year-old with pimples and hair longer than Tracy’s, he displays remarkable maturity. If they
date no more than once a month, I might consider giving them permission to marry in another five or ten years.”

Ann rolled her eyes. “I’m sure she’ll appreciate that. Has Jason gotten home yet?”

“He and Paul are inside putting together Melissa’s new dollhouse. He’s already made several modifications to the original design. Todd’s so impressed, he’s in there now trying to convince him to study architecture.”

“Where’s Melissa?”

“With Tommy. They’re playing house.”

Ann’s eyebrows shot up. “Isn’t she a little young for that?”

“Apparently not. She thinks Liz and Todd brought Amy especially to play the baby. Amy can’t crawl quite fast enough to get away from them.” He grinned at her. “Does that account for all of them, mother hen?”

She grinned ruefully. “I suppose so.”

He reached out and took her hand. “Then come with me. I have a surprise for you.”

“For me? It’s Melissa’s birthday.”

“Just come,” he said, leading her in through the front door so they wouldn’t be disturbed. When he had her alone, he handed her a thick, official-looking envelope. He’d already examined the contents.

Hope and fear warred in her eyes as she took it. She fingered it nervously, but made no move to take the papers from inside. “Hank?”

“It’s official. Melissa’s ours.”

A smile trembled on her lips and tears streamed down her cheeks. “She’s really ours?”

“Really. It says so in black-and-white.”

She clutched the envelope tightly, then threw her arms around him. That familiar sense of wonder filled
Hank’s heart. They had it all, more than he’d ever imagined himself having.

“Hank, isn’t this the most wonderful day?” Ann said with a heartfelt sigh. As she rested her head against his shoulder she placed his hand over the swell of her stomach. As if aware of his presence, their baby gave a sure, emphatic kick.

“Definitely a football player,” he said with pride.

“A ballet dancer,” she countered.

“Why are you fighting?” a little voice asked from the doorway.

“We’re not fighting,” Ann told Melissa. “We’re discussing.”

“Mommy tends to discuss rather forcefully,” Hank explained as Ann poked him in the ribs.

“Isn’t it time for my party yet?”

“It’s time, short stuff,” Hank concurred. “How about a ride to the backyard?”

Melissa’s eyes lit up as Hank swooped her onto his shoulders, then held out his hand to help Ann to her feet.

“Let’s go celebrate,” he said, his gaze catching Ann’s and holding. “Melissa, don’t forget to make a wish before you blow out the candles on your cake.”

“I already made one last year,” she confided, leaning down to peer into his eyes from an upside-down angle.

“And what did you wish for?”

“I wished for a mommy and daddy, and you know what?” She tapped a tiny finger against his lips.

“What?” Hank said, exchanging a look with Ann.

“It worked,” she said happily. “I got a mommy and daddy now.”

Ann slid her arm around his waist as Hank said, “You
sure do, half-pint. And nobody in the whole wide world could love you any more.”

Melissa tugged impatiently on his beard. “Now can I open my presents, please?”

He lowered her to the ground. “Go to it, kid.”

As Melissa raced across the yard, the whole family gathered around. Ann looked up into Hank’s face, her eyes shining. “No matter what’s in all those packages,” she said, “I don’t think there’s anything to compare with the gift we got.”

“That’s right,” he agreed, lowering his lips to capture hers. “Ours is going to last a lifetime.”

Keep reading for an except for Sherryl Woods’s
Sand Castle Bay,
available from Harlequin MIRA
.

1

T
he television in Emily Castle’s Aspen, Colorado, hotel room was tuned to the Weather Channel, where there was minute-by-minute coverage of the hurricane aiming directly at North Carolina’s coast, the place that had been like a second home to her. Childhood summers there had been slow and lazy and sweet. The beach town her grandmother called home was where she’d ultimately experienced her first heartache, yet despite those painful memories and despite everything she had on her plate at the moment, it was where she needed to be.

Even before her cell phone rang, she was checking flight schedules on her laptop. She clicked on a connecting flight between Atlanta and Raleigh, North Carolina, just as she answered the incoming call.

“Already on it,” she told her sister Gabriella. “I should be able to get to Raleigh by sometime late tomorrow.”

“Not a chance,” Gabi argued. “Flights are going to be canceled up and down the East Coast for at least a day or two. You’re better off waiting until next week and booking for Monday, maybe even Tuesday. Avoid the craziness.”

“What’s Samantha doing?” Emily asked, referring to their older sister.

“She’s rented a car and is already on her way down from New York. She’ll be here later tonight, hopefully ahead of the storm. They’re predicting landfall overnight. We’re already getting some of the wind and rain bands clear over here.”

Of course Samantha would beat the storm! Emily couldn’t seem to stop herself from frowning. Though she’d never totally understood it, the odd competitiveness she’d always felt with her oldest sister kicked in with a vengeance. She supposed with three sisters, there were bound to be rivalries, but why with Samantha and not Gabi? Gabi was the driven, successful businesswoman, the one most like her in terms of ambition.

“I’m getting on a flight out of here tonight,” Emily said determinedly, motivated by Samantha’s plans. “If I have to drive from Atlanta, then that’s what I’ll do.”

Rather than admonishing her, Gabi chuckled. “Samantha said you were going to say that. From the time you understood the difference between winning and losing, you hated it when she beat you at anything. Okay, fine. Get here when you can. Just do it safely. This storm isn’t looking pretty. If it wobbles even the slightest bit to the west, Sand Castle Bay will take a direct hit. You can bet the road down to Hatteras will wash out again unless they were a lot smarter when they did the repairs after the last storm.”

“How’s Grandmother?” Cora Jane Castle was in her mid-seventies but still going strong and determined to continue operating the beachfront restaurant opened by her late husband even though no one in the family had demonstrated any interest in running it. In Emily’s view, she ought to sell it and enjoy her golden years, but the mere mention of such an idea was considered blasphemy.

“Stoic about the storm, but mad as a wet hen that Dad drove over and picked her up to bring her to Raleigh to ride out the hurricane,” Gabi assessed. “She’s in my kitchen cooking and muttering a few very bad words I had no idea she knew. I think that’s why Dad dropped her here, then took off. He didn’t want to be around when she got her hands on my knives.”

“Or it could be he had no idea what to say to her. That’s his way, isn’t it?” Emily said with a hint of bitterness. Under the best of conditions, her father, Sam, wasn’t communicative. Under the worst, he simply wasn’t around. Most of the time she’d made her peace with that, but on occasion simmering resentments rose to the surface.

“He has work to do,” Gabi said, immediately defensive, as always. “Important work. Do you know the kind of impact these biomedical studies at his company could have on people’s lives?”

“I wonder how many times he said exactly that to Mother when he went off and left her to cope with raising us.”

For once Gabi didn’t overreact. “It was a constant refrain, wasn’t it? Well, we’re all grown-up. We should be over all those missed school plays and recitals and soccer games by now.”

“Says the not-so-well-adjusted woman who’s doing her best to follow in his footsteps,” Emily taunted with good humor. “You know you’re no better than he is, Gabriella. You may not be a scientist, but you are a workaholic. That’s why you get so uptight when I criticize him.”

The silence that greeted her comment was deafening. “Gabi, I was only teasing,” Emily apologized, aware that she’d crossed a line. “Seriously. You know how proud we all are of your accomplishments. You’re a top executive at one of the hottest biomed companies in North Carolina, if not the entire country.”

“I know. You just struck a nerve, that’s all,” Gabi said, then added briskly, “Let me know when you’re getting in and I’ll pick you up at the airport, okay?”

Before Emily could offer another apology for what she had recognized as an insensitive, ill-timed remark, Gabriella had hung up. Not with the sort of clatter that would mirror Emily’s own quick flares of temper, but quietly. Somehow that was much, much worse.

Boone Dorsett had been through his share of hurricane warnings and actual hits on the coast. He had the boarding-up routine down pat. But when it came right down to it, Mother Nature was always in control of the outcome.

As a kid he’d been awed by the ferocious storms, but he’d had little real understanding of the havoc they could wreak on people’s lives. These days, with a son, a home and a busy restaurant, he had a far better grasp of what could be lost to high winds, devastating storm surges and flood waters. He’d seen roads washed out, houses toppled, lives uprooted.

Thankfully, this latest storm had taken a last-minute turn east and delivered only a glancing blow. There was damage, plenty of it in fact, but so far he hadn’t seen the kind of destruction he’d witnessed in the past. In fact, it had been relatively kind to him. There’d been some flooding at his waterfront restaurant, a few shingles ripped off the roof at his home, but his biggest concern after checking out his own property had been for Cora Jane’s family restaurant.

Castle’s by the Sea had been a constant in his life, as had Cora Jane. Both had inspired him to go into the restaurant business, not to mimic Castle’s success, but to create his own welcoming ambiance. He owed Cora Jane, too, for helping him to believe in himself when no one in his own dysfunctional family had.

The biggest reason for Castle’s success, other than its proximity to the ocean, good food and friendly service, was Cora Jane’s devotion to it. She’d called him half a dozen times since the storm had passed to see if he’d been allowed back into Sand Castle Bay. The minute the evacuation order had been lifted, he’d crossed the bridge from the mainland to check his property and hers.

Now, standing in the middle of the damp, debris-littered dining room at Castle’s by the Sea, he called her with the damage assessment she’d been anxiously awaiting.

“How bad is it?” she asked, foregoing so much as a hello. “Tell me the truth, Boone. Don’t you dare sugarcoat it.”

“Could have been worse,” he told her. “There was some flooding, but no worse than over at my place.”

“Shame on me,” Cora Jane interrupted. “I never even asked how you fared in the storm. Just some flooding?”

“That was the worst of it,” he confirmed. “My crew’s already cleaning up. They know the drill. As for the house, it’s fine. So is yours. A lot of tree limbs in the yard, a few roof shingles ripped off, but otherwise it’s all good.”

“Thank heavens. Now finish telling me about Castle’s.”

Boone complied. “A couple of storm shutters stripped away and the windows blew in. You’ll have to replace a few of these waterlogged tables and chairs, treat everything for mold, and paint, but all in all, it’s not as bad as it could have been.”

“The deck?”

“Still standing. Looks solid enough to me, but I’ll have it checked.”

“And the roof?”

Boone sucked in a breath. He hated delivering bad news and had deliberately put this off till last. “Now, I won’t lie to you, Cora Jane, but the roof’s looking pretty bad. Once the wind gets a hold on a few shingles, you know how it goes.”

“Oh, I know well enough,” she said, sounding stoic. “So, is it bad, as in a goner, or bad as in a few stray shingles came loose?”

He smiled. “I’d want to get Tommy Cahill over here to check it, but I’m thinking you’d be better off just getting the whole thing done. Shall I go ahead and call him? He owes me a favor. I think I can get him here before the day’s out. I can call your insurance company and see about getting a cleaning crew in here, too.”

“I’d be obliged if you could get Tommy over there, but I’ll call the insurance people and there’s no need for a cleaning crew,” Cora Jane insisted. “I’ll be back first thing tomorrow with the girls. With them pitching in, we can clean the place up in no time.”

Boone’s heart seemed to still at her words.
The girls
could only be her granddaughters, including the one who’d dumped him ten years ago and taken off to start a better life than she thought he’d be able to give her.

“Emily, too?” he asked, holding out a faint hope that she wouldn’t be back here, in his face, testing his belief that he’d long ago gotten her out of his system.

“Of course,” Cora Jane said, then added a little too gently, “Is that going to be a problem, Boone?”

“Of course not. Emily and me, that’s in the past. The
distant
past,” he added emphatically.

“Are you so sure about that?” she pressed.

“I moved on, married someone else, didn’t I?” he said defensively.

“And lost Jenny way too soon,” Cora Jane said, as if he needed reminding of his wife’s death just over a year ago.

“But not our son,” Boone said. “I still have B.J. to think about. He’s my life these days.”