Persuasion (19 page)

The rain was still coming down, drops plummeting through the trees and smelling inexplicably of licorice. In the beam from the flashlight, they looked like liquid moonlight clinging to Eight’s eyelashes and collecting in his hair. The red umbrella seemed to hold the only color, making the night black and white and red.

“I’ve thought of something else that ought to be done at midnight when it rains.” Eight slipped his arm around Barrie’s waist and drew her closer. “You should put it on your list.”

“I think you’ve seen one too many old movies. You’re not going to sing, are you?”

“
We
are going to
dance
. It’s an imperative. You have to waltz
in the rain once in your life, and neither of us has done it yet.”

His chin fit neatly on the top of Barrie’s head. She knew the steps; Mark had loved to dance, and Eight swept her into the movements with all the authority of a hundred cotillion lessons.

It occurred to her that all the bad parts of life, the sad parts, the frightening ones, were meant to be offset by moments and memories like this. She had to be present in it, right here, right now. Too often, people didn’t have the opportunity for even a single one.

Mark hadn’t.

“
We
will, Bear,” Eight whispered. “We’ll have a lifetime of them.”

Barrie wanted to believe him. In that moment, the urge to tell him about Obadiah was overwhelming, but the dry mouth and painful stickiness in her throat at the thought of Obadiah’s name reminded her that she had made a promise. Whatever it took, she decided, even if it meant doing what Obadiah asked of her, she was going to find a way to make him break the Beaufort gift while leaving hers intact.

Eight drew back and studied her, as if he’d caught what she was wanting. She concentrated very hard on only wanting
him
, wanting his lips on hers, wanting his breath and his skin and his heat and his touch.

His hands slid back around her waist, burrowed beneath her shirt until the bare brush of his thumbs raised goose bumps
across her stomach. Just looking at her like that, he produced so much want, it threatened to short-circuit her brain.

Fisting her hands in his shirt, she pulled him closer and stood on her toes to reach him. “Why are you standing there instead of kissing me?”

“Well, when you put it that way.” His smile was lazy against her lips, and his kiss began painfully, excruciatingly slow. Barrie’s heart thundered so loud, she suspected he had to hear it. She pulled him even closer.

He lifted her, anchored her while she wrapped herself around him as if she could eliminate the last millimeters of distance, because even those were too much. His heart beat fast, loud, and deep, and his breathing was as ragged as her own. He burned a trail of kisses across her jaw and down her throat and every cell in her body came alive beneath these kisses, woke in ways she had never even suspected a person could feel.

And she knew.

She
knew
.

No matter what else transpired, she and Eight deserved to have a chance together.

Whatever it took, she had to make that happen.

Keeping a grip on that decision was harder once Eight had gone back across the river. Barrie tiptoed back into her room, wondering if he was smiling, too, wearing the same kind of boomerang grin that kept coming back to her as she thought about dancing with him in the rain.

But what was he going to do when he found out they had spent most of the night together and she hadn’t told him about her plans or mentioned Obadiah? She hadn’t even told him she and Pru had been to the funeral. She could have—should have—told him at least that much. Obadiah had been clever to tie the incentive of removing Eight’s gift with the threat of taking away her own. If she told Eight, or even Pru, they would be all too happy to have Obadiah do as he had threatened. They hated the magic and the gifts, but finding things
had been a part of Barrie as long as she could remember. The binding, that was new. It had come only once she’d arrived at the plantation after her mother’s death—after Barrie had finally started listening to what Watson’s Landing and the
yunwi
were trying to say. Neither Pru nor Eight had ever felt that connection to the land, to the
yunwi
, and the magic, so how could they understand what losing it would mean?

The main difference between this second encounter with Obadiah and the first was Barrie’s ability to remember. He had to be confident that his threat would work—and that made her even more worried about what would happen if he did take away her gift. And about what he wanted in the first place. She almost wished he had taken away her memory of him again. Maybe then she would have felt less like she was betraying Eight and Pru by keeping what she was doing from them.

Still weighing his motives the next morning, she went downstairs to find Pru and Mary already bickering cheerfully at the kitchen table, their chairs drawn close together. As fast as Pru was writing, Mary was leaning over and scribbling things out.

“No cold soup.” Mary scratched out the latest line Pru had jotted in the menu notebook. “Folks’ll want good Southern food.”

“Not at the prices we’re going to have to charge. They’ll want something more special.”

“Cold raspberry soup isn’t special. It’s stuck up, and raspberries don’t keep.”

“They do if we stick to local vendors.” Pru carefully erased the scratch marks. “Anyway, there’s nothing wrong with a good chilled soup in the summer.”

Barrie stopped just inside the swinging door. “You’re working on the menu without me?”

“Morning, sweetheart.” Pru smiled at her. “You look tired. Did you sleep well?”

Barrie shook herself and crossed to the coffeepot. She poured a cup before turning to brace her hips against the counter. “I thought Eight and I were supposed to be in charge of the menus and the decorations,” she said, keeping her voice steady, “and you two were going to do the business stuff?”

Pru and Mary exchanged a glance. “We’re just figuring out the framework. That, and all right, we did get excited and carried away with everything. Come sit down with us and help.” Pru patted the chair beside her. “Later, though, once Eight gets here, I need you to do me a favor. Mary’s granddaughter is going to do the website for us, but she’ll need a ride over after she’s got someone to watch the rest of the kids.”

“Sure.” Sipping her coffee, Barrie wondered what parallel universe she’d wandered into where Pru knew about websites, but then she realized the idea had to have been Mary’s. She peered over Pru’s shoulder at all the lines Mary had scribbled
out and did her best to swallow down the feeling that she’d been left out and pushed aside. Of course, she wanted Mary and Pru to be excited. She wanted them to feel the restaurant was theirs. She just didn’t want to feel like it wasn’t hers or Eight’s anymore.

“Eight and I had talked about doing elevated Southern food,” she began.

“What kind of a word is that? ‘Elevated’?” Mary sniffed as if the word itself were rancid. “Tourists want somethin’ that’ll make them think of what might’ve been served here. That’s what’s always worked in the tearoom.”

“But we don’t just want tourists,” Pru said, then she and Mary both glanced at Barrie and then instantly looked away, guilty as hell of something.

“What have I missed?” Barrie set down her coffee cup. “Is there a problem you don’t want to tell me about?”

Pru fidgeted with the pencil. “When I was thinking all this through last night and then talking it over with Mary this morning, it struck me that we don’t want to have to rely on tourists. Especially not at first, with all that’s going on. But if we do it right, people will come from Watson’s Point and Charleston for the romance of dining out here. For special occasions. If it works, we could keep it going all year round.”

Pru’s expression was both eager and wary, and Barrie tried
to grasp the many decidedly
un
enthusiastic thoughts that were chasing one another through her head. One of them was that it would be hard for something to keep feeling magical when you had to do it day in and day out . . . forever.

But that was selfish, and she wouldn’t allow herself to be that petty. “I’ll try, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to help out as much once school starts.”

“We wouldn’t expect you to!” Pru swiveled in her chair. “I know Mary and I have taken your idea and run away with it. Of course, you can help as much or as little as you want, and we can hire a chef for most nights of the week.”

Barrie felt small and petty for not being able to summon up the enthusiasm her aunt so obviously wanted. She thought of Pru and Mary when she had first opened the door a few minutes ago, their cheeks flushed and the words flying between them.

“No,” she said, cheerfully. “It sounds like a great idea.” She reached for one of the apple turnovers Pru had set out on a platter.

How had she managed to, once again, lose control? There were too many things going on that threatened to overwhelm her. The restaurant was supposed to be the fun thing. Maybe that was the risk. When going after life with a pitchfork, occasionally you were bound to catch something bigger than you expected.

Dropping into the chair beside Pru’s, she made herself concentrate on the list of menu options that were already written down:

chilled raspberry soup

crab soup

tomato, roasted corn, and boiled peanut salad

mesclun salad with goat cheese and candied pecans

fried green tomatoes

pickled shrimp plate

shrimp and grits

bacon and cheddar hush puppies

Those were just the appetizers.

“At the restaurant Mark and I went to, they had only one or two dishes and everyone ate family style. That was part of the fun,” she said.

“We’ll have Seven and Eight to help us read people to see what they really want to eat. Then we can narrow it down and create a smaller, more permanent menu.”

“Seven?” Barrie’s head came up. “What does he have to do with it? Having a restaurant was Eight’s fallback plan for after he retired from baseball. That was what first got me thinking about having a restaurant at all.”

“We’re not trying to take that away from Eight.” Pru and
Mary shared another look. “Seven just pointed out that Eight won’t be here once college starts, and with the delay, we’ll barely be getting established by then. We don’t want you two bogged down with all this. You need time to enjoy yourselves, and you’ve said yourself that Eight hates using the gift on people.”

Teeth clamped firmly to her tongue, Barrie pushed back her chair. She needed a minute to get her equilibrium back, or she was going to say something she might end up regretting. “I think I’ll go get my sketchpad and try to work up the logo for the flyers and the website.”

“You’re not upset, are you?” Rising along with her, Pru put her hand on Barrie’s shoulder. “I thought you liked Seven. I know he can be a little . . . overwhelming sometimes.”

“Sometimes?” Barrie asked.

Pru’s cheeks went pink. “Most of the time. But he means well, and he wants to help. We both agreed that we don’t want to put too much of a burden on Eight.”

“He doesn’t want to give Eight any incentive to stick around here, you mean.”

“He wants Eight to have some experiences before he’s stuck here for good.”

“Experiences that don’t include me!” Barrie strode toward the door before she said something that opened up a whole big conversation she couldn’t have with Pru. Then Pru’s words sank in, and she turned back around. “Seven told you about
the binding, didn’t he? He told you Eight doesn’t know, and instead of being mad that Seven’s basically doing the same thing to Eight that Emmett did to you and Lula, you’re on
his
side.”

“There’s a world of difference between Seven and Emmett: Seven wants what’s best for Eight.”

“Too bad he doesn’t seem to have a clue what that is.” Leaving Pru standing behind her with the door propped open, Barrie stalked down the corridor and up the stairs, feeling more pushed into a corner with every step, and at the same time even more determined.

She would find the lodestone for Obadiah, and when the threat to the Watson gift was gone, when he had proven he could safely remove the curse without hurting anyone, she would do whatever it took to get him to help Eight. She wasn’t going to feel bad about Cassie’s gold, even if that was what Obadiah was really after. The gold wasn’t even there.

What would he do when he realized Barrie couldn’t find it?

Pondering that along with all the other questions, Barrie found it hard to feel creative or even patient once she got back to the kitchen. Twenty minutes later, crumpled sketchbook pages spilled over the table and onto the floor, and she’d had enough of Pru and Mary bickering over table placement and the choice of hush puppies or shrimp and grits.

She balled up her latest attempt at drawing a logo and tossed it aside. “You’re turning this into something that sounds
exactly like every other restaurant. We don’t need a menu with fourteen appetizers, or the same entrees that anyone can order up in Charleston. It should feel special. Like a celebration.”