The Chesapeake Diaries Series (161 page)

“You sound tired, Mom.”

“It was a long day,” Grace admitted. “But it wasn’t too bad. I had a lot of help from the Historical Society and, of course, some friends stopped by to lend a hand. Oh, and Clay came by and he—”

“Clay?” Lucy made it to the conference room table with the box, which she tried not to drop. “Clay helped you with the Christmas decorations?”

“Yes, he stopped by to see if I needed a hand, and it was perfect timing on his part. I have to admit, I was starting to fade, but he took over in the library so that I could grab a quick cup of tea and put my feet up for a few minutes.”

“Huh.” Lucy opened the box and started to unwrap a few of the ornaments.

“He brought in the tree for the library and put it up,” Grace continued, “hung the lights and the ornaments on it. Hung the wreath over the fireplace, cut some greens for the centerpiece on that old library table. Wasn’t that nice of him?”

“Huh,” Lucy said, then realized it was her second “huh” in less than thirty seconds. She knew she could do better. “Well, yes, that was very nice.”

“Very nice indeed. He’s such a nice boy.”

“Clay’s not a boy anymore, Mom.”

“He’ll always be a boy to me, dear. Just like you’ll always be a girl in my eyes.”

“Mom …” Lucy sighed and hoped her mother wasn’t working herself up into trying to sell her on Clay again. Lucy got it. Her mother wanted her to
give up her business, move back to St. Dennis, marry someone local—Clay would do nicely—and have babies.

“Oh, I’m going to have to run,” Grace said. “We have guests who want to check in and Andrea is not at the desk. Good luck with tomorrow’s wedding, dear. I’m sure it will be a smash.”

“Thanks, Mom. You, too. I know the inn will be …” Lucy heard her phone disconnect but finished her thought aloud anyway. “… the star of the show tomorrow.”

She slid her phone back into her pocket, trying to process the fact that Clay had spent the afternoon helping her mother decorate the inn. The concept raised a number of reactions. On the one hand, it really
was
nice of him to pitch in and help her mother. Grace might not want to admit it, but she wasn’t as young as she used to be, and between the newspaper that she ran almost single-handedly, and whatever she got involved in at the inn—not to mention all of her community projects—she could very easily run herself into the ground. So for Clay to just stop in and offer to help, well, Lucy had to admire him for that. On the other hand, the fact that anyone else in town had to give of their time to help get the inn ready for the holidays only reinforced the feeling Lucy got every once in a while—like now—that she—not Clay, not family friends or members of the Historical Society—should be the one taking on those tasks for her aging mother.

And how, Lucy wondered, would Grace react if she knew her daughter thought of her as “aging”?

Putting aside her guilt and all thoughts of being an
unworthy daughter, Lucy focused on counting the old ornaments in the box only to find there weren’t enough. As nice a touch as the antiques would have been, she’d have to be content with the ones she’d purchased for the occasion. Unless, of course, she could find others. Making a mental note to check a few online sites, she started to rewrap them, then paused.

She really should thank Clay for helping her mother.

Call, or email? She pondered the choices. A phone call is more personal, would require a different level of engagement than email. If she called him, she’d have to say something other than thank you. What else did she really want to say to him? Knowing Clay, he’d want to talk. He’d ask her how things were going, and then she’d have to be polite and ask him how things were going for him, and before she knew it, they’d be engaged in conversation.

Better to just reply to his email. No chitchat necessary. No polite inquiries. Just a short and sweet “thank you.”

She went into her office, opened her laptop, and began to type. But once she’d typed “thank you,” she realized it wasn’t enough. It was too cool, too impersonal. The words looked too lonely on the screen. She deleted what she’d written and tried again.

Clay—I don’t know how to thank you for helping Mom get the inn ready for the house tour. So nice of you.

Lucy

There, she thought. That should be just fine. She reread it, reconsidered, and added, Hope you have a wonderful holiday.

She reread it again, then grumbled, “For crying out loud, you’re thirty-five years old. Just send the damn thing and be done with it.”

She hit send, vowed to not second-guess herself again, and was on her way back to the conference room when she heard the
ping
that announced incoming email. She stopped, then went back into her office and turned the laptop around to face her.

My, that was fast.

You can thank me by having dinner with me the next time you’re home.

Clay

Lucy sat on the end of the desk and reread his note. In her mind’s eye, she saw Clay in the library, the room where they had spent so many hours together, the room that had, years later, become her safe place. She thought of the bookshelves that all but reached the ceiling, that held the books in which, as a troubled teenager, she had sought refuge, some books brought there by her great-great-great-grandmother Cordelia when she married the first Daniel Sinclair, the one who’d built the original section of the inn. There were the books Cordelia had brought with her from her native England, volumes of Shakespeare and Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, their leather bindings dry and fragile but always handled with great care. Mark Twain and Jonathan Swift sat beside Longfellow and Hawthorne, and on lower shelves, Hemingway and Faulkner. The Sinclairs had always been lovers of literature, and as a young girl, Lucy had been the beneficiary. She’d loved that room for as long as she could remember, and she recalled that
Clay had loved it, too. Enough, apparently, to have spent a Saturday afternoon helping her mother dress it up for Christmas. Hanging wreaths. Cutting greens. Stringing lights on the tree. She could almost see his tall lanky self dragging in the tree, could almost hear his deep voice humming the Christmas carols she knew would have been playing. Something about the scene brought a lump to her throat.

It’s just nostalgia
, she told herself.
That’s all
.

She sat at her desk, and pulled the laptop closer. Clay’s email was still open on the screen. Lucy hit reply, typed, “It’s a date,” then hit send before she could change her mind.

She closed her laptop and returned to the conference room and the preparations for the wedding that would keep her up for most of the night.

On the second of January, Lucy smacked her alarm clock when it had the audacity to ring at six
A.M
. She’d worked nonstop for the past month, and this morning, damn it, she was sleeping in until at least eight. She rolled over and kept her eyes closed, but the damage had been done. Once awake, she stayed awake, so after twenty minutes of trying unsuccessfully to fall back to sleep, she got up and headed for the shower. Another twenty minutes and she was in the kitchen, towel wrapped around her wet hair, hunting for the coffee beans she knew she’d bought the last time she’d gone food shopping. When that had been, she wasn’t certain, but she did know she’d bought the coffee. When her search proved fruitless, she gave up and put a kettle of water on the stove to
boil for tea. While the water heated, she checked email on her phone.

Most fabulous wedding EVER
, wrote the mother of the New Year’s Eve bride.
Total perfection! Your reputation is well earned!

“Not to mention
hard
earned, after having to deal with you and your nut-bar daughter—not to mention your two sisters and their idiot daughters—for the past eight months,” Lucy muttered.

Gorgeous right down to the last tiny detail
, enthused her Christmas Eve bride.
I’ll cherish the memory of every moment forever!

“Except, perhaps, for the moment your maid of honor found her fiancé on the coat-closet floor with one of the waitstaff.”

The teakettle began to whistle. She poured water into a mug and dropped in a tea bag. When her phone rang, she glanced at the number, then answered the call.

“What are you doing up so early?” she asked.

“Probably the same thing you’re doing,” Bonnie replied. “Old habits die hard.”

“I was thinking of coming in late today,” Lucy told her.

“I was thinking of closing the office completely. What do you think?”

“I think it’s the best idea you’ve had in a very long time. I’m exhausted,” Lucy admitted.

“Me, too, and I didn’t even have to work yesterday. How’d the Palmer wedding go, by the way?”

“Without a hitch, for the most part. But the band the groom insisted on using, the one we weren’t familiar with?” Craving caffeine, Lucy blew on the tea, hoping to cool it. “They lived up to my worst fears.”

“That bad, eh?”

“Just dreadful. I hope we don’t get blamed for them.”

“Of course we will. Live and learn.”

“I learned that lesson a long time ago, but neither the bride nor the groom wanted to hear it. Anyway, it’s done, and we don’t have another gig until Saturday.”

“Hallelujah.” Bonnie sighed. “By the way, have you heard from Mr. Gazillionaire?”

“Robert Magellan?” Lucy took her mug into the living room and eased herself into a chair. “He wants to meet with me next week.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him whatever was most convenient for him was convenient for me,” Lucy replied. “Which turned out to be Thursday.”

“Fabulous. Coming on the heels of Dallas MacGregor’s wedding, this is huge. We’ve enjoyed a great reputation for years, Luce, but these two weddings are the icing. One of the first things I want to do is revise our fees for 2012.”

“One of the first things I want to do is hire a few more people. We just can’t keep trying to do everything ourselves, Bon. Neither of us will make it to forty if we don’t slow down.”

“I’ve been thinking the same thing. We need at least three more assistants just to handle the events we have on the calendar going right on through until the fall.”

“I think Ava is ready to start taking on events by herself, and I heard that Corrine over at Walton’s firm is looking to move on,” Lucy told her.

“Can’t say that I blame her. Yvonne Walton is a
witch. I worked for her when I first came out here. I shudder every time I think back on those days. Who told you about Corrine, anyway?”

“We have the same hairdresser.”

“Always a reliable source.”

“Okay, so let’s talk to Corrine, and let’s talk to Ava and see if we can staff up. And we need a few more day-of hands, while we’re at it. I think it’s likely that Robert Magellan’s wedding will be sometime in June, and I imagine that will keep me busy for a while.”

“That’s prime time,” Bonnie acknowledged. “June is still the most popular month for weddings. So yeah, we’ll see if Corrine really is interested in making a move, and we’ll offer Ava a promotion. How ’bout we meet with her in the morning at nine?”

“Perfect. She’s earned it. We just need to remind her that she needs to enhance her time management skills.” Lucy covered a yawn. “Gosh, maybe next year one of us will get to have a real Christmas. Could that really happen?”

“If we play our cards right, maybe both of us will have Christmas,” Bonnie mused. “How long has it been since you were home during the holidays?”

“Too long.”

“Let’s make an executive decision right now not to take on any event for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, 2012, unless Ava or Corrine—or whoever we end up hiring—is the consultant.”

“Wow. That’s a revolutionary concept.”

“I know. Let’s do it. Agreed?”

“Agreed.” Lucy paused, then said, “I’d like to take a few extra days off next week while I’m home. I feel
guilty about not being there with my mom, especially with my brother Ford being away for so long.”

“Go ’head and take the time.”

“There’s a twenty-fifth anniversary party that weekend, Bon.”

“I booked it, I’ll handle it. Besides, it’s a small affair,” Bonnie assured her. “We owe your mother bigtime for the weddings she’s steered our way. When you come back, maybe I’ll take a few days off myself, fly up the coast to see my ex.”

“Seriously? Are you talking about Bob?”

“He’s the only ex I have. But yeah, we’ve been talking on the phone for a month or so now, and we’re both wondering … well, we’re just wondering if we did the right thing when we split up.”

“Take a week,” Lucy told her. “Take two.”

“A few days, maybe. Anyway, I’ll see you in the morning. Get some sleep. That’s what I’m going to do.”

The first thing Lucy did after she hung up the phone was to call her mother and tell her she’d be staying on for a few days after her meeting with Robert Magellan. The second thing was to send an email to Clay.

Meeting potential client at the inn on Thursday morning, staying through the weekend. Thank-you dinner at your convenience.

Lucy.

Within minutes came his reply.

Thursday night. Will pick you up at seven. Your mother wants you to bring home a coat this time. Baby, it’s cold outside.

Clay

Lucy hit reply.

You told my mother we were going to have dinner?

A quick tap to send, and she stared at the screen awaiting his response.

Don’t shoot the messenger. Saw her at Cuppachino yesterday & she mentioned you were coming home soon & she hoped you’d remember to bring a coat with you.

Lucy breathed a sigh of relief. The last thing she wanted was for her mother to get ideas about her and Clay. More than she already had, that is. She figured she wouldn’t mention it at all until she got home, lest her mother read more into this dinner than was there.