Summer Beach Reads 5-Book Bundle: Beachcombers, Heat Wave, Moon Shell Beach, Summer House, Summer Breeze (96 page)

ELEVEN

“So what’s the scoop?” Jesse demanded.

“Hang on.” Clare untied her apron, settled in her chair, and looked around, savoring this moment. Jesse stared at her like a sleek tawny-pelted mountain lion, captured and tamed at her table.

Clare waited an extra beat, enjoying the power of possessing good gossip. Outside, the spring wind whirled, but it was cozy in the kitchen, and her father was in a good mood, really enjoying his steak.

“Come on,” Jesse said. “The suspense is killing me.”

Clare announced, “Lexi’s back in town.”

Jesse looked puzzled. “In April?”

“She’s not here to visit. She’s moving back.”

Jesse snorted. “What? She and Daddy Warbucks building a McMansion so she can lord it over the rest of us?”

“Not at all.” Clare was surprised to find a hot spurt of protectiveness warm her blood.
Where did that come from after all these years?
“They’re divorced. She’s moving back here by herself. She’s going to open a business here. In fact, she’s rented the shop space next to mine.”

Jesse put his fork down. He looked at Clare. “Babe, don’t get your hopes up.”

Clare arched an eyebrow. “What hopes would that be?”

“That you and Lexi are going to be best buddies again. That she won’t be the snob she was when she met that crook and left the island.”

“Oh, come off it, Jesse.” Clare sipped her wine and gave her fiancé a knowing look. “You didn’t like Lexi even before she met Ed Hardin. You never liked Lexi.”

Jesse grumbled, “Lexi’s arrogant.”

Clare argued, “Jesse, Lexi was
shy,
not arrogant. Remember, Jesse, those friends of yours who went drooling after her trying to get in her pants when she turned sixteen were the same guys who made fun of her when she hit five foot ten at age twelve and wore braces and had no boobs.” The memory made her mad all over again. “When she turned sixteen, suddenly all those guys wanted to”—she glanced at her father and toned down her language—“get her in bed. They didn’t know her. They didn’t care for her.”

“They didn’t get the chance to
know
her,” Jesse shot back. “Since she never spoke to anyone. And I don’t buy that shy stuff. If she was so
shy,
why wasn’t she shy around Ed Hardin?”

“I don’t know,” Clare admitted. Those last few weeks with Lexi had been so messed up. “Anyway, the rest of us sure made plenty of mistakes when we were young.”

Jesse responded by stuffing salad in his face like a rabbit machine, and Jesse hated salad. Clare knew he was trying to think of a way to change the direction the conversation was taking, away from the topic of all the mistakes
he’d
made, all the times he’d been unfaithful to Clare. She didn’t want to go there, either. And she remembered how jealous Jesse had been of her closeness to Lexi. The bad thing about Jesse disliking Lexi had been that she was always torn between the two people she loved most. The good thing was that Lexi was the one island female who’d never slept with Jesse.

She cut a bite of steak and chewed. “Good steak, huh, Dad?”

“Your mother always liked Lexi,” her father said. “Even when Lexi went off with that Hardin bastard, she stuck up for her.” His face softened with memory.

“That’s right, Dad.” Clare was pleased that her father had joined the conversation.

“Your mother was as nice as they come.” Deftly, Jesse changed the subject. “Clare, there’s a storm story on the Weather Channel I’ve been wanting to see. Would you mind if your father and I had our dessert in the den?”

Clare flashed a grateful smile at Jesse. “That’s fine. I’ll bring it in.”

Jesse pushed back his chair and stood up, lean and lanky in his jeans and flannel shirt. “Come on, George. Time for the men to put their feet up.” He waited by Clare’s father’s chair as the older man mentally regrouped. It was an almost physical act for George to retreat from his thoughts about his deceased wife and pay attention to the here and now, but he finally dropped his napkin next to his plate, rose, and allowed Jesse to usher him out of the room.

Clare finished her dinner in silence. It was sweet of Jesse to be so protective of her. What she hadn’t told him, because she was a grown woman now and no one needed to know, was that the thought of seeing Lexi again thrilled her—and made her just a little nervous.

TWELVE

Clare was in the kitchen above her shop, banging around pots and stainless-steel mixing bowls and whisks and ladles and spoons. In the spring, she always cleaned out the shop’s kitchen, repainted the walls, and scrubbed the very back inches of every cupboard, shelf, and drawer, but she never did it this early in the spring. Since she woke up this morning, she’d wrestled with herself like a cartoon split personality, half of her desperate to get out the door, the other half trying to force her to stay. Now she was here, so she might as well use all this crazy energy to accomplish something. She tossed a mix of CDs into her player—Faith Hill, U2, Alanis Morissette—so the music could rev up her blood and lighten her mood, and she worked fast and efficiently, but deep inside she remained seriously cranky.

She felt so damned childish! She felt like Lexi would think Clare was in her shop because she’d heard that Lexi had rented the space next door and that Clare was so pathetically
eager
to see Lexi again that she’d come down to the shop and was making all this noise so Lexi would know she was here!

And that was true.

How embarrassing!

Ever since she’d heard of Lexi’s return to the island, Clare’s emotions had frothed like cream in a double boiler. Bubbles circled to the surface—excitement—Lexi! Her Lexi! Here again! Then
Pop!
Lexi, snotty Lexi, bad Lexi, gorgeous Lexi, shooting Clare a look that would make a giraffe feel short. Clare screamed along to Alanis Morissette’s “You Ought to Know” as she pushed and pulled one of the work stations away from the kitchen wall.

A moment of silence fell when the song ended and in that silence, someone said, “Hello.”

“Aah!” Startled, Clare stumbled backward, knocking her elbow on the wall.

Right there in the doorway between the kitchen and the packaging room stood Lexi, all grown up and looking like three hundred million dollars. Her shoulder-length white-blond hair was sliced in a sharp blunt cut that gave her a trendy, urban air, not that she needed it, wearing those hip-hugging black stovepipe pants with the ornate beaded belt and a cashmere cardigan sweater. It looked like her boots had seven-inch heels, but that was only because Lexi was so tall and thin. Just a slice of her sleek belly peeked between sweater and pants, a fad that Clare considered one of the fashion world’s most significant errors of judgment, but on Lexi even this looked good.

Clare thought how
she
must look to Lexi in her old baggy athletic pants and one of Jesse’s faded blue work shirts, unironed, her normal cleaning garb. Her brown hair was rumpled and she hadn’t bothered to put on lipstick.

Oh, very nice,
she told herself.
You came here expecting to see Lexi, so you made yourself look as sloppy as possible. How perfectly self-defeating.

Alanis started yelling about something being perfect. Clare stabbed the Off button and the room went quiet.

“How did you get in here?”

Lexi produced a shy smile. “Through the connecting door.” She waved her hand vaguely toward the wall.

Clare bent to drop the sponge in the bucket, to grab a moment to hide her confusion. “You might have phoned first.”

“Um, but your sign says
Closed.
I didn’t know you were going to be here until I heard the music.” She hesitated, then said in a rush. “I rented the place next door. I’m going to live upstairs, and have a shop downstairs. I … I didn’t know this was your shop.”

Clare squinted her eyes at Lexi. “It’s called Sweet
Hart
’s and you didn’t guess?”

Lexi blushed. “Well, I suppose I assumed … but that’s not why I rented this particular space. It’s just so perfect for what I need.” She shifted her weight, flapping her hands around awkwardly like she’d done when she was younger. She looked like a stork on roller skates. Like she always had. “You look great, Clare.”

Clare bridled. “Right. I’m a fashion classic.”

Lexi waved her hand again. “I mean, not your clothes, I mean, we all look like that when we clean, I mean, you just look great. Happy. Healthy.”

“Well.” Clare rubbed an imaginary spot on the counter. “You look good yourself. Sensational, actually.”

“I look like a moron,” Lexi corrected. “High-heeled boots on cobblestone streets? What was I thinking?”

Clare grinned in spite of herself at the thought of Lexi stumbling her way over the brick sidewalks and cobblestones in those boots, flapping her hands for balance.

Her smile encouraged Lexi. “Hey, would you like to … maybe some coffee?”

Clare paused. “Well … I could use some coffee right now.” She stripped off her rubber gloves.

“Oh!” Lexi jerked her head, did a kind of full body quiver, and waved both hands. “I don’t have any coffee! I don’t have any cups, either. I mean, I just got here yesterday and the movers are coming today and I haven’t been to the grocery store …”

Clare tried to work up some resentment because wasn’t it clever how Lexi had manipulated things so that Clare had to be the one to serve Lexi, but after all, the Lexi she’d known, the old Lexi, was always going off half-assed like this.

Plus, as she moved around the kitchen, Clare was secretly pleased at this opportunity to show off her shop.
She
might look like the bottom of a bedroom slipper, but her shop and its upstairs quarters looked great. The kitchen, except for the island she’d pulled out from the wall, was tidy and spotless. She glided from cupboard to counter, grinding the beans, organizing the coffeemaker, filling the creamer with fresh cream, setting everything on a vintage Coca-Cola tray.

She carried everything through the door into the larger packaging room. Near the windows overlooking the street she’d made a kind of employees’ lounge, with a small sofa, two overstuffed chairs, and a coffee table piled with the latest magazines—
People
and
US
as well as
Gourmet, Bon Appetit,
and
Chocolatier.

Lexi scanned the work table, piled high with glossy dark green boxes waiting to be folded. “I like your design. Very clever.”

Clare didn’t mind admitting, “I think so, too.”

As a chocolatier with the last name of Hart, she couldn’t
not
name the shop Sweet Hart’s. It had been tempting to make her logo and decorations a chocolate heart, but Clare had chosen to go in another, less obvious and, she hoped, more distinctive direction. So all her boxes were dark woodsy green, with a hart’s head on them, and hanging from an antler by a gold cord was one glossy dark chocolate truffle. The mocha-cream-colored hart was very endearing, his antlers slightly lighter brown, his dark eyes huge, his nose velvety soft. The tip of his tongue touched the corner of his mouth, his expression delighted, as if he’d just tasted something delicious. On Christmas, Clare had the boxes made with a round gold ornament hanging from his antler. On Valentine’s Day, of course, a heart. For special orders, and she was getting more and more of these each year, she’d had the box maker emboss the antler with a small wrapped birthday present, or a gold ring, or a seashell.

Lexi traced the hart’s antlers with the tip of her finger. “This place is really cool, Clare.”

“Thanks.” Clare set the tray on the coffee table and curled up in a chair. She’d put a few handmade chocolates on a plate. “Try one.”

Lexi sank into the other chair, crossing her endless legs and swinging them to the side so she could reach the truffle. She took a bite. “Wow.”

Clare smiled.

“This is amazing.”

“Thanks.”

“You make these yourself?”

“I do. Well, in the summer I have help making them, but I’ve created every recipe. You’re eating the Nantucket Knock-Out Truffle.”

Lexi laughed. “Cool.”

“I’ve had the shop for five years. I love it.”

“Mmm, I can see why.” She licked a bit of chocolate off her lip and when she grinned at Clare, she looked just like she had when they were both sixteen.

“So,” Clare asked bluntly, “why’d you come back?”

THIRTEEN

The wind whined around the building, and for a moment a shaft of light splintered down from the cloudy white sky, streaking the room with a ripple of sunlight and shadows.

“Last year was hard …” she stopped. She took a deep cleansing breath. She started over. “Clare … Clare, I’m so sorry about the way I was when I left. I saw my family last night, and I apologized to them, and geez, I guess I ought to take out a full-page ad in the newspaper apologizing in general to everyone in town.”

Clare quirked an eyebrow at Lexi. “A full page might be excessive.”

Clare was giving her a break! Lexi laughed with relief. “Do you really want to hear some stuff?” She waved her hands, indicating the room with its tables laden with boxes waiting to be folded and bows waiting to be tied. “I mean, I don’t want to keep you if you’re busy.”

“Now’s fine. I’ve got plenty of time for cleaning.”

“Looks pretty clean to me.”

“Yes, but I like it to be spotless. Sterile. The State Board of Health inspects, but never mind—I want to hear about you.” Clare drew her legs up and tucked them sideways beneath her, settling in.

Now that the moment was here, Lexi felt suddenly reluctant. “Could I ask you not to tell anyone?” She cleared her throat, surprised at how little-girl her voice sounded. “I mean, I don’t mind looking pathetic to you, you’re used to it, but I just don’t think I could live on this island with everyone else thinking I’m pathetic, and I really want to be here.”

Clare made a face. “Pathetic? You’re afraid you’re going to look pathetic? Give me a break.” Then she softened. “All right, fine, I won’t tell anyone.”

“Not even Jesse.”

“Oh, come on. I’ve got to tell Jesse something! I can’t say, well I saw Lexi and we talked and I have no idea what the past ten years were like.” Clare folded her arms stubbornly over her chest.

Lexi looked down at her various rings and turned them this way and that. “Well, could you give him a sort of expurgated version?”

“You mean this is going to be an X-rated tale?” Clare waggled her eyebrows.

Lexi hedged, “You know what I mean, Clare.”

“All right,” Clare agreed. “Just spill.”

A truck rumbled past, clanking and banging like the timpani section of an orchestra.

“My gosh!” Lexi strained to stare down at the truck. “I can’t believe old Mr. Wallins is still doing trash removal.”

“That’s not old Mr. Wallins,” Clare informed her.

“But I saw—”

“That’s Dougie Wallins.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“He’s thirty-three now. He married Alyssa Santos. They have three kids. One is ten years old.” Clare waited until the last bang and rattle faded into the distance. “You’ve been gone a long time, Lexi. A lot has happened.”

Lexi shook her head, trying to take it all in.

“You were saying?” Clare prompted.

Lexi capitulated. “Okay. Remember that summer. How it was for me. My parents were overworked at the shop, and totally freaked out about money. They were going to have to take a second mortgage out on the house to pay my tuition at UMass. Adam was off in veterinary school. And you were totally with Jesse.”

“Not totally,” Clare started to object, but shrugged and grinned ruefully.

Lexi continued, “So I didn’t have you. I didn’t have
anyone.
At La Maison I was the outsider who couldn’t do anything right.” She unzipped her boots and kicked them off, then pulled her knees up against her chest. She hugged her knees and nestled her chin in her arms and sat there for a moment, reflecting. “I was so lonely.”

“Have another chocolate,” Clare suggested quietly. “Try this one.”

Lexi accepted it, took a small bite, and closed her eyes while she savored the taste. “Nice.” She ate the rest of it and this time she licked her fingers. “So that’s how it was for me that summer. It was like I was invisible. Then Ed came into the restaurant and
saw
me. Chose me. A wealthy, important,
powerful
man like that.”

Clare made a noise of disgust, then immediately waved a hand. “Sorry. Sorry. So he whisked you away on a cloud to Shangri-La.”

Lexi smiled. “In a way, yes. I mean, Clare, it was amazing. Listen, I have traveled
everywhere.
Stick a pin in a map, and I’ve been there. I’ve met some important people, Clare, curators of museums and conductors of European orchestras. And everything was first class, too.” She hugged herself. “And the clothes. Oh, I wish you could have seen my clothes! It wasn’t just that I
could
buy the newest breathtaking outfit, I was
supposed
to. It was my
job
as his wife to show up looking fabulous.”

“I saw pictures of you a few times. In the Style section of the
Times
or
Boston Magazine.
You looked like an American princess. I remember thinking you must be having so much fun, finally getting to play dress-up with the big kids. It made me happy for you.”

“That’s nice to know. That you thought I was having fun, that you were glad I was having fun.” Lexi ran her hands through her long blond hair. “You never answered my letters.”

Clare shrugged. “While you were sunning in Bali or skiing in the Alps, I was in college, working nights and weekends, trying to learn bookkeeping, or I was on the island, working two jobs, sixty hours a week, trying to save money to start my shop. I was still pissed off at you for marrying that douche bag. And I didn’t think you, out there sipping champagne in the stratosphere, would be interested in my boring,
provincial
little life.”

“Clare, I’m so sorry I said those things.”

“I know. And I’m sorry for the stuff I said. But you know, Lexi, it was like you left the room and slammed the door in my face.”

The singing wind shifted the clouds again, flickering shadows and light over Clare’s face. Lexi thought she saw tears in Clare’s eyes. Her own eyes stung in sympathy. How could she make this better? She couldn’t do it by herself, that much she knew. “Clare …”

Clare shook her head. “Never mind. That’s in the past. Done. Fast forward. Tell me why you’re not still married.”

“Oh, well.” Lexi wasn’t sure she could ever tell Clare the truth about her marriage. Just remembering made her burn with shame at her naïveté. So she flipped her hands out in a what-can-you-do kind of gesture. “I left him. To be honest, I don’t think he was a very likable guy.”

“Well,
hello.
”

Lexi jumped up and looked out the window. “There’s the ferry!” She whirled around, clapping her hands. “The moving van will be here any minute. All my stuff—tonight I’ll have a bed! Clare, thanks for the coffee and the chocolate. Maybe we can—”

“That ferry will be at least fifteen more minutes getting to the dock.” Clare stood, clamped her hands on her hips, and glared. “Is this the way you want it? Everything superficial, all air kisses and cotton candy friendship?”

Lexi flinched. “What do you mean?”

“For one thing,” Clare counted on her fingers, “you were married to that man for ten years. Two, you’re suddenly divorced. Three, you’re moving back to the island. But you’re not telling me why. If you’re just going to give me a greeting card version of your life, fine. But don’t expect anything more from me.”

Lexi started to argue, then changed her mind. “I’m kind of out of the habit of exchanging confessions, Clare. I’d like to tell you everything, but it’s all a bit, well, just
sad.
And I want to be happy right now. I want to be
jubilant.
I’m starting my life over, and I want to enjoy it, and you know what, I haven’t even figured out where I want my furniture and stuff to be. I really do need to make some decisions before the movers get here.”

Clare said, “Fine.”

“Look—want to go out to dinner tonight? My treat.”

Clare looked insulted. “You don’t have to treat me. I make a perfectly good living—”

“Oh, stop it. I didn’t mean it the way you’re taking it. I just—You just gave me coffee and chocolates, why can’t I treat you in return?”

But Clare was miffed. “I’m busy tonight. Jesse and I have plans.”

“Another time, then?”

“Okay,” Clare agreed grudgingly.

“Great. I’d better go get organized.” Lexi hurried to the connecting door between their spaces. “Damn, I’d better change out of these boots before I fall and kill myself.” She looked back at Clare, wondering if she could give her a hug. Clare was gathering up the coffee things, an obstinate expression Lexi knew so well on her face. “See you.”

“See you,” Clare echoed.

Lexi turned back from the door. “Clare, do you think Jesse could do some carpentry work for me? I need cubicles built downstairs for my shop, and a couple of counters.”

Clare just looked at Lexi.

“I know Jesse doesn’t like me,” Lexi said, “but right now nobody here likes me, and if Jesse does the work, I’ll know he’ll do a good job and get it done on time, because you’ll kill him if he won’t.”

Lexi’s logic made Clare laugh. “I’ll talk to Jesse.”

“Thanks.” Lexi waved, went through the door, and shut it behind her. Now she was in her own space, her unsullied, unmarked, starting-over-fresh place.