Wind Chime Café (A Wind Chime Novel) (12 page)

Taylor squealed as the yellow lab licked her face.

“Riley, down,” Will ordered, his deep voice echoing over the water.

Both dogs sat, panting and batting their tails against the grass, cocking their heads at Taylor’s broom.

“They’re harmless,” he said, his long strides eating up the overgrown dandelions and crabgrass as he crossed the yard to them. “But they think your broom is a stick. They want to play with it.” He smiled at Taylor as he got closer, an easy, friendly smile—the kind of smile a woman could get lost in. “You must be Taylor.”

Taylor nodded, giggling when the chocolate lab nipped at her construction paper butterfly.

“Here,” he said, digging out a handful of treats from his pocket. “Feed them these and they’ll do anything you ask.”

Taylor handed her paper butterfly to Annie, taking the treats from Will and feeding them to the dogs. She laughed as they slobbered all over her fingers.

Annie folded the butterfly and tucked it carefully into Taylor’s backpack. As soon as she’d zipped it back up, Taylor took off running down to the beach with the dogs chasing after her.

“She looks just like you,” Will said, watching her grab a stick off the ground and toss it into the water for the dogs.

Annie nodded, her gaze slowly drifting back to the inn. She could picture the porches and steps covered in flowers, the gardens in full bloom. She wondered what it looked like inside, what the views were like from the upstairs bedrooms. Her eyes followed the curve of the driveway to the three private cottages nestled between two tall magnolia trees. Water lapped at the rocks behind them, a quiet coaxing lullaby. “I can’t believe you grew up here.”

“It was a great place to grow up.”

Annie glanced up at him. In the afternoon sunlight she could see the tiny flecks of amber around his irises. Sweat gleamed off the muscles of his neck and shoulders. She resisted the urge to reach up and brush a bit of sawdust off his neck, just to feel the warmth of his skin on her fingertips. “What are you going to do with it?”

“Fix it up. Find a buyer who’ll run it as is.”

She looked back at the beach when Taylor squealed. The dogs had dropped the stick at her feet and were shaking their wet coats, spraying her with water. “You can’t control what a buyer does.”

“I can try.”

So would she, if this was her home. She knew now why Will didn’t want to sell it. This was the kind of house you wanted to raise a family in, the kind of house you held onto for generations. The kind of house you never wanted to let go.

But she needed him to sell it. She needed the resort and the tourists to come to this island so she could open her real restaurant. The café would hold her over for a little while, but it wasn’t a long-term solution. She needed the stability of a resort, the income that a steady stream of tourists would generate so she and Taylor could stay here, so they could put down roots and build a life here.

She reached down, snapping off the top of a Queen Anne’s lace. “It’s just a house.”

Will dipped his hands in his pockets. “How would you feel if someone tore down the home you grew up in?”

Annie turned away, picking more Queen Anne’s lace and winding them into a wreath for Taylor. “I wouldn’t know. We’ve never owned a home before.”

Will turned his attention back to her, watching her weave the stems. “Where did you grow up?”

“We moved around a lot.”

“Military?”

She looked back up at him. “What?”

“Was one of your parents in the military?”

“No.”

Will held her gaze. “I thought maybe that’s why you moved around a lot.”

She shook her head. “My mother was an artist. We moved every couple of years so she could find new people and places to paint.”

“Every couple of years?”

“Pretty much.”

Will’s gaze dropped to where her fingers were twisting the stems into a tight, even braid. “How’d you feel about that?”

“I got used to it,” she lied. She didn’t need to tell him how hard it had been, how unsettling it had been to never know if her mother’s muse would show up in the new city. To never know if they would be staying for two weeks, six months, or three years.

All she’d ever wanted was to stay in one place. To make friends she didn’t have to say goodbye to. To live in a real home in a real town with neighbors who knew her name.

She looked back up at him. “Where do
you
live now?”

“San Diego.”

“That’s far away.”

“It’s almost as far as you can get from Heron Island and still be in the States.”

“Why’d you move there?”

“I’m in the Navy.”

“Oh…” She trailed off. She hadn’t realized he was here on leave. “That’s why you asked if one of my parents was in the military.”

He nodded.

“So you know what it’s like to move around a lot.”

“I do.”

She looked back at the house. “How long are you here for?”

“Six weeks.”

Her gaze lingered on the empty rocking chairs lined up on the porch, wondering what it would be like to sit there at the end of the day in the summer and watch the fireflies twinkle over the marshes. “What if you can’t find another buyer in six weeks?”

He smiled. “I’ll find one.”

Taylor’s carefree laughter rolled over the Bay and Annie looked back at her daughter. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her this happy.

“Do you want to come in?” Will asked, nodding toward the house. “I don’t have much in the way of food, but I can offer you a beer. We could sit on the porch and see how long it takes until the dogs steal Taylor’s broom.”

Annie shook her head. She had to leave. It wasn’t Taylor she was worried about getting attached this time. It was herself. This was the kind of home she’d always dreamed of. It was the kind of place she’d learned not to wish for, because wishes were dangerous. Wishes led to hope. Hope didn’t pay the bills, and it didn’t put food on the table.

“We should be going,” Annie said.

“It’s just a beer, Annie.”

And as soon as you sell this house, you’re leaving.
“I’ve still got a lot to do tonight.” She turned, raising her voice over the wind. “Taylor, it’s time to go.”

Taylor dragged her feet, reluctantly climbing back up from the beach with the dogs.

Will smiled down at Annie. “You’ll say yes, eventually.”

Annie looked up at him. It would be too easy to say yes, to slip into a routine of saying yes to Will. But she refused to get involved with a man who was leaving, especially one who had no intention of ever coming back.

Grace had told her on Friday that the last time Will had left this island he hadn’t looked back. He’d completely cut off his friends and the few family members he had left. If that was how he’d treated his family and friends, what would stop him from doing the same thing to a woman he’d only known for a few weeks?

Taylor walked up to them and Annie lifted the flower wreath, setting it on her daughter’s head. “There. Now you’re the Queen of the Butterflies.”

Taylor smiled shyly and looked up at Will. “Can I come back and see your dogs again?”

“They actually belong to a friend who had to go to Annapolis for the day.” He reached down, scratching the yellow lab behind the ears. “But I’m thinking of asking if I can borrow this one for a few weeks. If he says yes, you can come back and see her anytime you want.”

Annie noticed that Taylor’s broom dangled from her fingertips now, almost as an afterthought. All her attention was focused on the dogs, and patting them both on the head to say goodbye. She thought about what Will had said last Friday,
‘Sometimes the only way to get over your fears is to focus on something else.’

Annie put her arm around her daughter’s shoulders. “It’s time to go.”

Taylor gave each dog one last pat on the head and they turned to leave. Will walked over to the blackberry bushes, holding the brambles up so they could get through without their clothes getting snagged.

“How’s the restaurant coming along,” he asked.

She ducked under his arm. “I hired a chef this morning.”

“Anybody I know?”

“Actually, yes,” she said. “Your aunt.”

Will smiled—that slow, easy smile that had her heart fluttering like butterfly wings. He was close, much too close. She could smell the salt on his skin and see the little spot of his pulse beating in his throat.

She forced her gaze up from the dark vee of sweat staining the front of his shirt.

“Let me know if you need a taste tester,” he offered.

Her eyes flickered briefly down to his mouth. A rush of heat swam through her as she tore her gaze away, combing the fields for Taylor. She spotted her a hundred feet from them, catching butterflies with her broom. “I think we can manage.”

Will laughed as she walked away. “If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

S
he wasn’t going to change her mind. Not now. Not after she’d seen that inn.

Annie lay in her daughter’s bed, running a soothing hand over her hair. Taylor had woken up from another nightmare, the same one she had almost every night now.

Hadn’t she suffered enough? Did she have to relive that tragic day over and over again in her dreams?

It was still dark outside, but Annie could hear the voices of the fishermen rising up from the water, the low hum of the workboats motoring through the narrow channel that cut through the marshes to the Bay.

She wished there was something more she could do to make her daughter feel better, to make her heal faster. The grief counselor had said it would take time. It could be months before the nightmares went away. And the memories would most likely haunt her for the rest of her life.

All Annie could do was be comforting and supportive and take things day by day. She gazed up at the paper butterfly Taylor had made in class two weeks ago. They’d strung it up from the ceiling as soon as they’d returned from their walk and they’d made a dozen more since then. Paper butterflies in every color hung from tiny hooks now, their wings fluttering in the breezes that snuck in when they cracked the windows at night.

Taylor had insisted on going back to see the butterflies every afternoon, and Annie had taken her. But she’d been careful to keep her a safe distance away from the inn. Just like the monarchs that would leave in a few weeks, the inn wasn’t going to be there for long. She didn’t want Taylor getting attached to it…or to Will.

She’d done everything in her power to avoid him since that day.

There was a time, once, when she’d been young and naive enough to believe that a handsome man with a big home and a big family and everything she’d ever wanted could be hers.

The last time, he’d been tall and blond with blue eyes and a southern accent. She’d been seventeen when Blake Hadley had walked into the restaurant where she’d been working on Bourbon Street. She’d waited on him and a table of his fraternity brothers from Tulane. He’d been charming and flirtatious and when he’d invited her to come out with them after her shift, she’d said yes.

A week later, they were dating.

By the end of the summer, she’d fallen in love.

When he finally took her back to his family home, to the majestic mansion with the sprawling yard leading down to the Mississippi River with the Spanish moss dripping from the trees like jewels through the setting sun, she had slept with him.

His parents had been out of town at the time, but she’d seen their pictures on the mantel. She’d imagined herself in one of those pictures, wrapped in Blake’s arms. Safe, protected, sheltered, loved.

Three weeks later, she’d found out the truth—she had been nothing more than a summer fling. His real girlfriend, the one that his family knew and approved of, would be returning to take her place as soon as the new semester began in the fall.

When she’d told him she loved him, he’d laughed.

In the end, the only thing he’d left her with was Taylor.