Dreaming August

Welcome to Bitterly Connecticut, hometown of one wistful widow with a very big secret….

She should have been off-limits. After all, Benedetta “Benny” Grady is his best friend’s widow. But in the space of a whirlwind week, Daniel Greene went from strong shoulder to lean on to Benny’s ardent lover. Now Dan is determined to make Benny his bride. He hasn’t waited this long for love to let it get away so easily. But first, Benny has a few ghosts to contend with…

When Benny finds herself pregnant with Dan’s child, telling him should be easy. After all, she’s fallen hard for the wise-cracking bachelor. But how can she love another while remaining true to her late husband’s memory? Could the past hold the key to their future happiness?

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Bitterly Suite

Seeking Carolina

Dreaming August

Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

A Bitterly Suite Romance

Terri-Lynne DeFino

LYRICAL PRESS

Kensington Publishing Corp.

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Copyright © 2015 by Terri-Lynne DeFino

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First Electronic Edition: April 2016

eISBN-13: 978-1-60183-520-8

eISBN-10: 1-60183-520-5

First Print Edition: April 2016

ISBN-13: 978-1-60183-521-5

ISBN-10: 1-60183-521-3

Printed in the United States of America

For Michael, Karen and Mark, my partners in crime; and for Dotty and Ace, who taught me love.

Huge thanks to CoLoNY, my fabulous writing group. Without them, this book would not have happened. An extra thanks to Sharon Struth, who was not only a first reader, but the reason I queried Lyrical Press to begin with.

Thanks also goes out to my Dollbabies, women who not only mean the world to me, but who have supported every effort I have made over the years with enthusiasm and love. A special thanks to Mary who came up with Bitterly Suite.

A humble thank you to my editor, Penny Barber. Her genuine concern for not just the work, but the author, is the stuff of dreams. All writers should be so lucky. Thanks, also, to Renee Rocco, whose efforts to make the road to publication go smoothly are epic. She’s pretty funny, too.

As always, the last thanks goes to the one and only Frankie D. I realized long ago that most of the noble heroes in my stories are incarnations of him, these men who see their women struggling to find themselves, and stand back while they do. Waiting. Watching. Completely accepting and loving whoever emerges from the fight, but never interfering with any expectations of his own. It’s a rare man who can resist “taming” a woman like me, and instead just hanging on for the ride. That’s my Frankie D, and why there is a list of women waiting for me to croak so they can have him.

When Evening Falls

“You sure you want to do this?”

“Very sure, Harriet. I must.”

“That’s not exactly true. You could just stay here.”

“That’s your choice, not mine.”

“I never stepped foot outside of this town. Don’t ’spect I ever will.”

“Then you can?”

“’Course I can. And so can you. You don’t have to bedevil that young woman. Just go.”

“Bedevil? Harriet, I would never.”

“August, you miscreant, you bedevil me constantly.”

“Then you should be glad I seek her assistance. You’ll be rid of me for all eternity.”

“Lot’a’nonsense, far as I’m concerned.”

“Only because you are more stuck than you want to believe.”

“Stuck? Bah! I’m just waiting.”

* * * *

Dirt helped.

Cold earth. Fragrant, moist earth. Under-her-nails, in-the-cracks-of-her-chapped-hands earth. It smelled of snowmelt and leaf mold and worms. Black and rich and crumbly, it was the perfect medium for the colorful pansies planted among the forget-me-nots just starting to pop. Sitting back on her heels, Benny inspected her work.

“What do you think, Henny?” she asked. “Better than impatiens, right? This spot is way too sunny. Maybe we’ll do some morning glories this year. I still have that little wooden trellis in the shed. I love morning glories. The blue ones with yellow centers. Yeah, let’s do it. I’ll stop for seeds on the way ho—”

The nausea banished by dirt swished through her again. She shoved her hands back into the churned-up earth, let the cool fragrance soothe her belly. Swallowing, swallowing, swallowing until it passed. Benny turned to the neighbor. “What do you think, Mrs. Farcus? You like the pansies?”

Again the swell of nausea. Four months. This was supposed to be over. But it hadn’t just come in the morning, so why should it stick to the first three months? She’d ask Mrs. Farcus, but she didn’t know Benny was pregnant. No one did. And no one would. Yet.

Benny dusted her hands off on the front of her jeans and pushed to her feet. She picked up her trowel and the empty bag from the soil, bent again to grab the plastic potting containers and nearly vomited right there in the garden she’d just spent the last hour planting. Leaning heavily upon the tombstone, she screwed her eyes tight until it passed.

“Hey, Benny? You okay?”

Her eyes flew open and she was grateful for the dark fringe of hair obscuring her face. It gave her a moment to hide all she did not want anyone else to see. Straightening, she waved to Charlie McCallan standing with one foot in and one foot out of his truck. “I’m fine, Charlie. No worries. Just hungry. I think I forgot to have lunch.”

Instead of waving back and moving on, he closed the door and started up the rise toward her. Benny choked down the panic. Could he see? Did he know? But Charlie was squinting into the sunlight, smiling the same smile she’d known since they were young and she was his best pal’s pesky kid sister. Benny tried to relax.

“It gets more extravagant by the year,” Charlie said. He brushed dirt from the grey stone. “I see you did up Mrs. Farcus’s plot too. As always.”

“She’s an old friend.”

“She died nearly a century before you were born, Benny.” Charlie laughed softly. “She’s my great-whatever grandmother.”

Benny looked up. “Really? How did I not know that?”

“Didn’t know my family went back so far? Why would you?”

“Because I haunted this cemetery as a kid.”

Charlie’s eyebrow quirked, but he said nothing of her horrible pun. “Harriet was one of three daughters,” he said instead, “so the name Gardner died out here in Bitterly, but I have Farcus cousins somewhere.”

“I wonder why she’s buried alone.”

“Her husband, I think his name was Josiah, died out west somewhere about six months before she ever found out. That’s the story, anyway.”

“So sad.”

“It’s nice of you to pretty-up her grave too.”

Benny shrugged. “I always bring too many flowers.”

“You okay?”

Her gaze moved to the tombstone easier to look at than Charlie’s familiar concern.

Henderson Parker Fredericks

June 3, 1976 ~ August 20, 2010

Beloved Husband

Benny-and-Henny, a joint moniker earned in high school that carried through to the day he crashed his motorcycle barely a mile from their home. Now she was Benny-without-Henny, and the hole he left in her gaped just as wide and as deep as it had six years ago.

“I’m okay, Charlie. Really.”

“Why not come to the bakery with me? Johanna’s still got some shepherds-pie-pies left from lunch. You’d be doing us a favor if you take some. They’re not as good the next day. The crust gets soggy.”

“I’m sure you and your ridiculously large family will find use for them.”

“Do you know how often we eat shepherds-pie-pies?”

They laughed together. Benny’s belly churned. “I’ll have to pass. You know my mother. She’s already made dinner enough to feed the whole town. But thank you. And say hi to Johanna for me.”

“Will do.” He started back to his truck. “And say hey to your brother for me. Tell him to come home once in a while. I haven’t seen him since the reunion.”

“He is home,” Benny called. “In North Carolina.”

“Bitterly is home. Always. Whether he likes it or not.”

Benny shook her head, waved him off and finished tucking her tools into the daisy-dotted canvas carrier she bought two years ago and subsequently had inked into the tattoo covering most of her right arm. Her trowel. The forget-me-nots. The always-reliable marigolds and snapdragons. Last year’s impatiens. This year she would add the pansies, thus marking her gardening calendar as only Benedetta Marie Grady would, no matter what her mother thought of tattoos.

She pushed back her sleeve, peeking at the first tat inked, on the first anniversary of Henny’s death—a little blue forget-me-not, there on the underside of her wrist. In the six years since her husband’s death, Benny added steadily to her sleeve. A tribute to Henny, and the garden she kept for him, there on her arm.

“Forever, baby,” she told the tombstone. “I promised you forever, and I meant it.”

Her hand moved to her still-mostly-flat belly that had never actually been flat in her whole life, but she stopped herself, closed her eyes to the impulse until it passed. A promise was a promise, and Benny knew straight down to her superstitious-Italian soul that breaking this one was even less of an option than stepping on a crack in the sidewalk, or refusing to wish on birthday candles.

“Ah, Henny.” She squatted on her haunches again, pinching off a spent flower she hadn’t earlier noticed. “You make it very hard to leave Bitterly, but I have to. If I stay, everyone will know, and…well…anyway. I won’t be gone long, and it’ll be winter, so it won’t matter so much, right? I’ll come back after I figure things out. I just want to do it without everyone hovering. You know how my family is. And then there’s Dan—”

Benny spun to the tap on her shoulder and thumped flat onto her bottom. No Charlie or anyone else who might have snuck up on her while she confided in her dead husband. Benny found only herself among the tombstones. She looked narrowly in Mrs. Farcus’ direction.

“Are you playing games with me, you old trickster?”

No answer. Of course. Mrs. Farcus never answered, not once in all the years Benny had been talking to her grave. Neither did Henny, for that matter.

Benny laughed, a sound as hollow as it felt. She picked herself up, brushed herself off, and hurried to her motor scooter before either of her ghosts decided to finally oblige.