The Chesapeake Diaries Series (172 page)

“I just don’t believe in anything like that. Sorry.” Lucy brushed her off casually, but Clay thought a look of uncertainty had flickered across her face. “Gone, done … is gone and done, and it’s best to leave it that way.”

“Whatever.” Brooke smiled. “You ought to talk to your mom, though. She’s been known to—”

“I don’t believe any of that either. I’m sure she’s just been playing along with everyone,” Lucy insisted.

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Brooke rolled up the discarded stems and lifted the bundle. “Ready to move on? We still have the study, the dining room, the sitting room, the conservatory. Oh, if you like orchids, wait till you see the orchids! They were big favorites of Rose’s, too …”

“Yes, please. I love orchids and I want to see every inch of this place.” Lucy’s smile returned, but Clay wasn’t sure if a little bit of unrest remained behind that smile.

It seemed to Clay that they had, in fact, seen every inch of the Enright mansion before they left. From the first floor to the third, from the fancy parlor and Curtis Enright’s library to the former maids’ rooms in the attic, they’d gone up and down the two stairways and poked into the bedrooms, all of which had been turned out for the holiday.

“I’ve never seen such decorations,” Lucy told Brooke after they’d made their way back down to the first floor. “I don’t know anyone who has your touch. What you’ve done here with greens and berries alone is breathtaking. Then add in all those antique tree ornaments and the effect is just one big wow. If you ever think about moving to the West Coast, you could come to work for me that very day. I could use someone with your sense of style.”

“Thanks, Lucy. I’ve seen your work, so coming from you, that’s quite a compliment.” Brooke beamed. “But I won’t be leaving St. Dennis again. I know where I belong.”

Brooke looped her arm through Jesse’s and smiled up at him.

“But if you ever need a helping hand when you’re here, give me a call,” she added. “I’m pretty busy most of the time, but maybe I could fill in for a few hours.”

“I will definitely keep that in mind. I might need extra hands for the Magellan wedding,” Lucy told her.

“I’d love to work with you. The inn has the most amazing possibilities, and when you think of what you could create, well, the mind boggles.”

“Magellan’s wedding will be outside, tented, and all I can say right now is that it will involve truckloads of flowers. I was hoping to meet with Olivia while I was here, but we haven’t signed the contract yet and I don’t want to get her hopes up. It will be a massive job. I just hope her wholesaler can get everything we’ll need.” Lucy placed her bag on a side table while she put on her coat. “And I’ll have to find a really good landscape designer. We’ll need to move the gazebo and have some roses planted around it.”

“I can recommend my former brother-in-law, Jason Bowers. He sold his previous business and is thinking about starting up again here. You might want to give him a call when you’re ready.”

“He’s in St. Dennis now?”

Brooke nodded. “He’s renting one of Hal Garrity’s cottages down near the river while he’s deciding what to do. Of course, we’re hoping he sticks around for a while, if for no other reason than for my son Logan’s sake.” Brooke explained, “Jason is my late husband’s only living immediate family, and he and Logan have gotten pretty tight. I never knew Eric as a boy, so
there’s so much that Jason can tell my son about his dad that no one else can.”

“If we lock up the Magellan wedding, maybe I’ll give him a call, see what he can do with the property,” Lucy said. “Maybe give him a reason to stick around for a while longer.” She glanced at Jesse. “It looks as if you’re okay with that.”

“I don’t have a problem with Jason. He’s a good guy.” Jesse shrugged. “Besides, if it’s good for Logan, it’s good.”

“Thanks again for letting us invade your family home,” Clay said. “We both really appreciate it.”

“I live to serve my brother’s whims,” Brooke told them as they walked to the front door.

“Does that include chocolate ganache cupcakes today?” Clay asked.

“Ah, no.” Brooke smiled and opened the front door. “But nice try.”

“So much for my whims.” Clay took Lucy’s hand. “Guess I’ll see you at home later.”

“Only if you want to help me pack.” Brooke waved good-bye to Lucy. “Don’t forget to call me if you need any help with the wedding.”

“I’ve already made a mental note,” Lucy assured her.

“That was so fun,” Lucy told him when they were both in the car and headed toward Charles Street. “That house is just amazing. I still feel starry-eyed. It’s so hard to believe that one person lives there alone.”

“My mom said a lot of people thought Curtis would have sold the place by now and moved to something smaller, but it’s unlikely he’ll ever do that now.”

“Especially if he believes his wife is still there,”
Lucy noted. “I wonder what will happen to the place when he’s gone.”

“That’s apparently been the topic of much speculation. Jesse said Curtis is considering leaving it to the town to serve as a museum, but I don’t know if that’s gone beyond the talking stage as yet.”

“It would make the most glorious event site.” Lucy sighed. “I can see weddings in the garden, or in tents outside on that beautiful expanse of lawn, or in that magnificent hall and parlor. And that dining room—gorgeous. A lot of towns have historic homes that they rent out for events. It’s a great moneymaker, pays the taxes on the place, draws people to the area—”

“Um, isn’t that what your brother is doing at the inn?” Clay grinned. “I doubt he’d appreciate you encouraging anyone to go into direct competition with him.”

“It would be competition, but only in the sense that it would be another event location. I think couples who want the inn want the relaxed ambience, that classic Chesapeake Bay experience. Couples who want something much fancier and more lavish would be more attracted to the Enright place.”

“Of course, if that were to happen, St. Dennis would need a world-class event planner right here in town full-time.”

Lucy leaned back in her seat and smiled. “And if that day ever came, I’m sure I could help find someone.”

He made a left onto Charles Street, then a right onto Kelly’s Point Road.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“There’s no way you can leave St. Dennis without a visit to Scoop and some of Steffie’s amazing ice cream,” he said solemnly. “It would be wrong.”

“It would be wrong,” she readily agreed, “except that I did have some at Vanessa’s the other night. But we can stop if you’re in the mood for ice cream.”

Clay drove past the municipal building and headed to the far end of the lot across the road. He parked in the section nearest the ice-cream shop and turned off the engine.

“I wonder if she has any of that peppermint divinity fudge ice cream that she brought to Vanessa’s.” Lucy got out of the car and slammed the door. “That was amazing.”

Clay slammed the driver’s-side door and offered his arm to Lucy. “You don’t sound like someone who’s only stopping in to keep me company.”

“Well, as long as we’re here, I wouldn’t want Stef to think I didn’t like her ice cream.”

The sign out front—
ONE SCOOP OR TWO
—blew slightly in the wind that was kicking up from the Bay.

“It feels like snow again,” Lucy observed, “but we’ve only had that one little bit since I’ve been home.”

“Were you hoping for more?” he asked as he opened the shop’s door.

“Not particularly. I don’t really like the cold.” Lucy waved a greeting to Steffie, who was behind the counter filling one of the containers in her freezer case.

“Hey, Lucy,” Steffie called to her. “How was your tour?”

“It was fabulous. I’ve been in a lot of really spectacular places since going into business, but that place is unlike any other I’ve ever seen.” Lucy took off her
coat and placed it on the back of a chair. “There’s something so special about it. It’s gloriously elegant, and there’s all that history, and at the same time, the atmosphere is so warm and inviting. I loved it.”

“That’s exactly what everyone said after the house tour. That the place is gorgeous, like right out of a magazine, but that you feel at home there.” Stef came around the side of the counter.

“That’s it exactly,” Lucy agreed. “I was telling Clay that it would make the most wonderful event site.”

“Oh, my God, could you imagine the weddings they could have there?”

“Exactly.”

“So what flavors do we have today?” Clay wandered to the display case.

“We have the standards—vanilla, seven variations of chocolate, pineapple-coconut macadamia nut … what are you in the mood for, Clay?”

“I know what I want,” Lucy told her. “If you have any of that—”

“Peppermint divinity fudge?” Steffie shook her head. “Alas, I ran out of white chocolate. But I do have a chocolate chili that I just made this morning.”

“Chocolate chili?” Clay repeated, one eyebrow raised.

“Just enough of a chili pepper kick to be a manly flavor,” Stef deadpanned. “At least, that’s how my husband described it.”

“Manly or not, I’d like to try it,” Lucy said.

Steffie dipped a small plastic spoon into the container and handed it to Lucy.

“Wow. It leaves just a hint of heat in the back of
your throat.” Lucy nodded. “I’ll have one scoop in a dish.”

“Clay?” Steffie held up an empty spoon. “Sample?”

“I’ll take Lucy’s word for it. Make mine two scoops, also in a bowl,” he told her.

Clay took off his jacket and put it on the chair over Lucy’s. He’d thought they’d just pick up cones and walk along the Bay, but Lucy apparently had other ideas. Which was perfectly fine with him. If they were outside walking, sooner or later, she’d get cold and they’d leave. Scoop was nice and warm, cozy and inviting, and he’d have that much more time to spend with her.

He walked back to the counter, paid Stef for the ice cream, then carried both bowls to the table Lucy had selected by the window.

“One scoop,” he said as he passed her dish and spoon to her.

“Thanks.” She smiled up at him when he sat next to her.

Her smile always took him back to a time when they were both younger and had shared all their secrets. Those days were obviously gone, he reminded himself. These days, there was almost as much mystery as there was familiarity about her.

“It’s such a pretty view from here,” Lucy was saying. “I’ll bet it’s lovely to sit here on a summer day and watch the sailboats out there.”

Clay nodded. “It’s a pretty view at any time of the year. Even today, when it’s overcast and gray, you have the whitecaps and the geese flying overhead, the gulls swooping down around the docks. Doesn’t matter
the time of the year or the weather, St. Dennis is a good place to be.”

“Tough to argue with that,” she replied. “Though in California, we have such lovely weather all year round.”

“Don’t you miss the change in seasons?”

“We have seasons. The changes just aren’t as dramatic.” She paused. “But yes, I do miss the way the landscape changes around here. I don’t think about it so much, unless I’ve been here for a few days. Then when I go back to L.A., I look out my windows and wonder where the Bay is.”

“You always did love the water,” he recalled.

“I still do.” She ate a few spoons of ice cream. “Remember when we were little and your granddad took us fishing down at the cove and taught us how to put bait on the hooks?”

Clay laughed. “What made you think of that?”

“I don’t know.” She was grinning at the memory. “I remember sitting down on the dock and getting splinters in my butt and not wanting to say anything because I didn’t want him to make me go home and have the splinters removed. I remember it was early in the morning and it was warm and quiet and there were swans on the other side of the cove watching us because they had a nest there.” She dipped her spoon into the ice cream again, and paused with it halfway to her mouth. “Do the swans still come back to the cove, Clay?”

“They’ve never left, LuLu. Next time you’re home, I’ll show you.”

“I’d really like that.”

“When will that be?” He tried to sound casual. “The next time you’re home?”

She shook her head. “I’m waiting for Dan to give me an open date for the Magellan wedding. Hopefully he’ll have that worked out before I leave tomorrow because this wedding is going to take months to arrange. Once we have a date, I’ll be able to schedule my trips back and keep my work out there running smoothly as well. I have the feeling Susanna is going to have me here every chance she has.”

“I hope she gets her wish.”

“She’s the boss,” Lucy told him. “At Shaefer and Sinclair, we aim to please. The client is always king. Or in her case, queen.”

“Please give her my thanks.” Clay put down his spoon. “What time’s your flight tomorrow?”

“Early. I have meetings on Monday that I can’t postpone.”

“Can you have dinner with me tonight?”

“I would love to. I really would.” She looked as if she meant it. “But I think I need to spend tonight at home with my mother. The only night I’ve been home since I got here was the day I arrived. I think she’d like to have some mother-daughter time.”

He nodded. “I understand. We’ll do it next time.”

He did understand. He knew how much Grace missed her only daughter and he knew, too, that he’d spent more time with Lucy this visit than Grace had.

They finished their ice cream and chatted with Steffie while they got into their coats. Stef came around from the back of the counter to give Lucy a hug.

“Come back soon,” Steffie told her. “We’ll do another girls’ night. My place, next time.”

“You’re on.” Lucy hugged her back. “I’ll look forward to it.”

They took the long way back to the parking lot, walking hand in hand along the Bay until it became obvious that neither of them was dressed for the change in the weather. The tiny flakes that had started to fall while they were in Scoop were turning to ice. They headed back to the car and sat for a moment while the engine warmed up.

“Thanks again for a terrific last day in town,” she said when he began to back out of the parking space. “I really enjoyed myself.”