Wind Chime Wedding (A Wind Chime Novel Book 2) (12 page)

“I agree.”

Becca looked down at her feet. The date of the first public hearing could be announced as early as next week. The teachers deserved to know before that. Annie and Will deserved to know before that. If they were going to take this on as a community, they needed to start talking about it now.

“When do you think Shelley will tell the teachers?” Colin asked.

“She’ll probably want to try to talk to Lydia first. I doubt it’ll do anything, but she’ll want to try. I would imagine by the end of the day on Tuesday, at the latest.”

“When do you think she’ll tell Annie?”

“We’ll tell her together, when she comes to pick up Taylor from school on Tuesday.”

“I’ll call Will so he won’t be blindsided, so they’ll both know at the same time.”

“Thanks,” Becca said, wishing it hadn’t come to this. She hated to think how Annie was going to react, how Taylor was going to react when they found out. She had wanted so badly to shield them from this.

The aroma of fresh brewed coffee floated into the air, but it did little to comfort her. She felt exhausted all of a sudden. She needed time to think, to process this new development. She didn’t want him to see her like this, when she hadn’t had a chance to collect her thoughts yet. But when she glanced back up and noticed the dark circles under his eyes and the faint lines of exhaustion around his mouth, she didn’t have the heart to ask him to leave. She could tell there was something still bothering him, that there was a lot more on his mind than just the school. “If you ever want to talk, Colin. About anything. I’m here.”

He held her gaze across the room, his big masculine frame leaning against her counter, making the kitchen seem small and impossibly cramped. A dark shadow of stubble covered his jaw and his wide shoulders blocked her view out the window of the marshes. “The offer goes both ways.”

Becca opened her mouth, closed it. She didn’t need to talk about anything. There was nothing bothering her. At least, nothing she would share with him.

She thought back to the notebook, the vows—how hard it had been to write them.

Unconsciously, she reached up, fingering the charm dangling from the end of her necklace. “The mugs are in the cupboard behind you.”

He turned, pulling two out.

She crossed the room, taking them from him, and he reached up, catching the charm at the end of her necklace in his hand.

“What is this?” he murmured.

She paused, her heart skipping a beat. “It’s…nothing.”

He gazed down at the worn gold pendant. “It’s not nothing. You touch it whenever you’re nervous.”

“It’s just a necklace.”

“It’s the only piece of jewelry you ever wear.”

Becca tried to step back, but he kept his grip firm on the delicate chain. She could smell him, the dark heady scent of him mingling with the salt marshes. She could feel the warmth of his body, only inches from hers. The corners of his mouth were tilted down, those full kissable lips so close she could simply push up on her toes and reach them with her own.

What would he taste like? What would his mouth feel like moving over hers? What would it feel like to have his arms come around her, to feel her body pressed against that solid wall of muscle? It took all of her willpower not to reach up, run her hands over those broad shoulders and let her fingers tangle into that thick black hair.

“Becca,” he said softly, his voice like ripples of water, right before a storm. “What is this?”

She swallowed as his gaze stayed focused on the charm that was so worn down even she could barely make out the shape anymore. “It’s a dove.”

“A peace dove?”

“A mourning dove.”

His eyes lifted, meeting hers. “Who are you mourning?”

“No one,” she said quickly, prying his fingers off the charm and stepping back. Her legs shook as she crossed the tiled floor back to the coffee maker. She set the mugs on the counter, pouring coffee into each of them, sloshing some over the side of hers.

He needed to leave now. It wasn’t safe for her to be here with him, just the two of them. She didn’t trust herself around him.

It wasn’t just attraction anymore. He was starting to see through her, to ask too many questions, in ways no one else ever had for a very long time.

She set the carafe back on the heating pad with a clatter, picking up one of the mugs and holding it out to him.

He took it slowly from her hand. A rush of warmth shot up her arm when their fingers brushed.

He drank slowly from the cup, turning to face her refrigerator, taking in the collage of pictures and postcards held up with magnets. He slipped one free, showed it to her. “Is this your father?”

She nodded.

It was a picture of her father, Ryan, and Joe standing outside a duck blind a few years ago. The three men were dressed in camouflage hunting gear, their rifles leaning against a wooden shed covered in cornhusks. Two black Labrador retrievers sat at their feet.

“Does your fiancé like to hunt?” Colin asked.

“No.” She noticed he still wouldn’t use Tom’s name.

He put the picture back, chose another. This one was of her, Grace, and Ryan out on Ryan’s boat last fall. Becca was holding a giant rockfish, laughing at something Grace had said. “Did your fiancé take this?”

“No.” She lifted her mug to her mouth, swallowing a sip of scalding coffee. Will had taken that one when he’d come home to visit last fall.

“Does he like to fish?”

“No.”

He put the picture back on the fridge. “I hear you’re pretty good at it.”

“I am,” she said. She was very good at fishing. She had grown up on the Bay. She had spent her weekends on her father’s boat with a rod in her hands from the time she was five years old. She was the daughter of a waterman. It ran in her blood.

“Is this him?” Colin pointed to a picture of Tom sitting on her porch with a glass of wine in his hand.

She nodded.

He said nothing, studying the man in the picture.

Becca wrapped both hands around her mug.

He dropped the picture and turned, walking back out to the living room. He took in the student artwork taped to her walls. “Your students must really like you.”

“They do.”

He took another sip of coffee, like he hadn’t noticed the sharp tone in her voice, like he had all the time in the world. “Do you want kids one day?”

“Of course.” Then, before she could stop herself, she asked, “Do you?”

He nodded. “At least three.”

She blinked. “Three?”

“I’ve always wanted a big family.” He wandered over to the stairwell, ran his hand over the banister. “How long have you lived in this house?”

The questions kept coming, one right after the other. He wasn’t even giving her time to come up for air. “I bought it after grad school, when I moved back to the island.”

“How many bedrooms does it have?”

“Three.”

“It would be a nice house for a family.”

Yes, Becca thought, squeezing her mug. That was exactly what she’d thought, too, when she’d bought it. If it had been up to her, she and Tom would have been living here together, married with at least two children by now.

But life didn’t always work out the way you’d hoped.

Colin drained the last of his coffee, setting the mug down on the table. “I should go.”

Becca let out a breath. His moods shifted so fast, it was impossible to keep up. “Are you staying on the island tonight?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I’m driving back to Annapolis.”

Becca walked slowly out of the kitchen, opening the front door for him. He hadn’t driven all the way out to the island just to tell her the news about the school in person, had he? Surely, they could have had that conversation over the phone…

Colin walked out onto the porch, taking in the comfortable furniture, the wicker porch swing with the bright yellow and red cushions, the plastic containers of pansies and violas she’d purchased impulsively from the grocery store last week but hadn’t had time to plant.

“Colin,” she said, when he started down the steps. She couldn’t let him leave like this. She needed to say something—anything—to get back on even footing. “I was going through the final guest list for the wedding earlier, and I realized that I still haven’t gotten your RSVP. You got my invitation, right?”

Colin paused on the second to last step. “I must have forgotten to mail it back.”

“But you’re coming, right?”

“Sure,” he said after a moment’s hesitation. “I’ll be there.”

“Should I put you down for two?”

He glanced back at her. It was dark now and the faint porch light cast shadows over his rugged face. “Two what?”

“Two people. You’re bringing someone, right?”

His gaze shifted away again. “Yeah,” he said, walking down the last step. “I’m bringing someone.”

Becca stood in the doorway, watching him walk down the sidewalk to his truck. When he got in, and the engine revved, she watched him pull away until he turned onto Main Street, and his truck disappeared around the corner. She stood there for a long time, staring out at the darkness, until she felt the strangest sensation, like pieces of metal brushing against her wrist.

She glanced down, and felt the familiar tug of regret when she saw that her wrist was bare. She had lost her mother’s charm bracelet years ago. She’d been helping her father move his boat back into the marina after he’d gotten some work done on it, and it had fallen into the water.

She’d gone in after it, searching for hours to recover the bracelet that her mother had worn every day until she’d died, and that Becca had worn every day since. But she hadn’t been able to find it, and it had never washed up on the shore as she’d hoped it would in the days and weeks that had followed.

Looking back out at the dark street, she reached up, wrapping her fingers around the single mourning dove—the one charm that had fallen off a few weeks before she’d lost the bracelet, the one piece of her mother she still had left.

She turned, but just before she shut the door, she could swear she could hear it, just the faintest sound of the charms clinking together over the wind.

H
e hadn’t forgotten to mail back the RSVP, Colin thought as he walked from his apartment in downtown Annapolis to his father’s office the next morning. Becca’s wedding invitation had been sitting in a drawer in his desk for months now. When he’d first opened it, his initial reaction had been to find a reason to be out of town that weekend. The thought of sitting through a wedding, any wedding, had stirred up too many memories of everything he’d lost.

Now, he didn’t want to go for an entirely different reason.

He was starting to feel something for Becca, something that went way beyond physical attraction, and he was pretty sure those feelings weren’t one sided. He’d seen the look in her eyes when they’d been in her kitchen, when he’d caught her necklace in his hand and she’d been close enough for him to bend down and seal his lips over hers. He had known, without a doubt, that she’d wanted him to kiss her. And he would have, if it hadn’t been for the flash of pain that had cut through those eyes when he’d asked her who she was mourning.

He didn’t know what that was all about. But he would find out.

The woman had layers, a lot more than he’d realized, and every time he peeled one back, he wanted to know more.

Closing in on the Maryland State House from one of the side streets that spiraled out through the historic downtown, he watched the crunch of morning rush hour traffic inch around State Circle. He wanted to spend some time with Becca, to get to know her, to see where this—whatever this was—might go. But her wedding was less than three weeks away. And despite the fact that her fiancé was so obviously wrong for her, something was holding her to him. There was a connection there, a strong one, and he needed to know what it was.

A good operator always had all the facts before he made a move.

Slipping his phone out of his pocket, he punched in the number for the Wind Chime Café on Heron Island. He had a feeling he knew exactly who might be able to help him.