Wind Chime Summer: A Wind Chime Novel Read online

  Ryan drained the rest of his beer in one long swallow.

  When he finally looked at his friend again, Colin lifted a brow. “Anything going on there that I should know about?”

  Ryan said nothing as he set the empty bottle down on the table beside him, as his friend continued to study him.

  “Look,” Colin said. “I know I don’t have to say this, but Izzy’s off-limits—at least until the end of this program. We’re all happy she’s starting to come out of her shell, but she still has a long way to go. The last thing she needs right now is a complication.”

  A complication? Is that what Becca had been for him? What Annie had been for Will?

  Izzy wasn’t the first person who’d come to this island to heal. And Ryan had absolutely no intention of messing with that process. But he sure as hell wasn’t going to take a warning from someone who wouldn’t even be here right now if he hadn’t fallen in love with his complication.

  Reaching into the bucket of ice at his feet, Ryan snagged another beer. Maybe it was the sheer hypocrisy of his friend’s warning, maybe it was the overwhelming success of this first event, or maybe it was the fact that—from the very first moment he’d laid eyes on Izzy—he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her, but whatever it was, it all led in the same direction.

  Ryan raised his bottle to Colin before taking a sip. “Roger that,” he said. Then he clapped his friend on the shoulder and headed down to the dock to talk to Izzy.

  Sixteen

  By the time the last car pulled out of the driveway, the sun was only two fingers away from the horizon. It was that shimmering golden hour right before sunset where everything seemed to glow. Alone, Izzy propped her trusty beach cruiser against the shed, and walked out to the pier to check on the upwellers one last time before leaving.

  Their newest crop of baby oysters had gotten plenty of attention tonight, and after all the hands that had been on them, she wanted to make sure the systems were still functioning properly. Carefully inspecting each of the tanks, she adjusted the tilt of a few buckets, checked the water pressure in each of the pipes, and spread a few of the babies around that had gotten clumped up.

  Satisfied they were safe for the night, she wiped her wet hands on her shorts and looked out at the water. She could still feel the endorphins pumping through her—that same natural high she always felt after a successful event. But the buzz seemed stronger this time, fueled by a deeper emotion she hadn’t experienced in several months.

  Pride.

  She’d forgotten how good it felt, how badly she’d needed it. Wanting to hold onto it—to let the emotion wrap itself all the way around her—she lingered on the pier, listening to the water lapping against the pilings and watching the colors in the sky shift from blue to gold.

  When she’d replayed the entire evening in her mind, soaking up all the memories, she thought back to all the places she’d lived in her life—the farms of her childhood, the military bases during her years of service, the brief stint in Baltimore after she’d left the Army—and tried to remember if any of them had been this beautiful.

  Or this peaceful.

  For the first time since crossing the drawbridge five weeks ago, she wondered what it would be like to stay here. She’d been on the move her whole life. Every location had been chosen for her. Even the house in Baltimore that she’d bought for her grandmother had been tied to a job; the only reason they’d moved there was because her grandmother had secured a position as a domestic worker with a family in that city.

  Now that her grandmother was gone, did she even want to live in Baltimore anymore?

  She guessed, when it came down to it, she didn’t have much choice. From what she’d heard from Colin, employers weren’t exactly lining up to call her in for an interview. She’d go wherever she could find work. The same way she’d done in the military. The same way she’d done with her mother and grandmother as a child.

  A faint jingling of dog tags drew her gaze over her shoulder. Surprised to find Zoey lumbering toward her, she reached down to pet the chocolate lab as soon as she was close enough. “What are you still doing here? I thought your dad…” She trailed off as Ryan walked out of the shed. “Hi,” she said, straightening. “I didn’t see your truck. I thought you’d left.”

  “I parked behind the office,” he said. “I was unloading some boxes on the second floor and saw you out here.”

  “I wanted to check on the nursery,” she said, a little embarrassed at having been caught out here so long after the party had ended, “make sure all the pipes were still running after so many people had touched them.”

  “I always check everything before I leave,” Ryan said, but he didn’t seem to mind that she was still here. If anything, he seemed glad to have the company. Stopping a few feet away from her, he leaned his arms on the edge of the tank and looked out at the water.

  The last rays of sunlight warmed his profile. There were more blond streaks in his hair now than when she’d first met him. His skin was several shades darker, and the muscles in his arms were more defined than they’d been at the beginning of the summer. A vision of him shirtless—when he’d changed into his Pearl Cove Oysters T-shirt earlier—swam into her mind.

  Her body responded instantly, the same way it had then. She felt the sharp tug of attraction, the tightening deep in her belly, and braced herself for the memories of the last time a man had touched her.

  But they never came.

  Instead, Zoey leaned against her, nuzzling her hand for a chin-scratch.

  Izzy let out a breath, marveling at the fact that she was alone with a man she was attracted to and she wasn’t freaking out. Determined to face her fears a little longer, she followed Ryan’s gaze out to the water. “What kind of boat is that?” she asked, eyeing the graceful sailing vessel that had caught his attention.

  “It’s a skipjack,” he said, “one of the Bay’s earliest oystering boats. They’ve been used to dredge oysters for over a hundred years, but they’re unique to this area. You won’t find them anywhere else.”

  “Do people still use them to…dredge for oysters,” she asked, testing out the new verb.

  “Very few,” Ryan answered. “Their heyday was in the late 1800’s, when our oyster harvests were at their peak. The decline of the oyster population hit them hard. There are only about twenty skipjacks left in the Bay now, and only about five or six of those are still dredging commercially.” He nodded toward the one in front of them. “That’s Billy Sadler’s boat. He takes tourists out on sunset cruises to bring in some extra cash in the summer. It’s what a lot of skipjack captains are doing now.”

  Izzy wondered how they felt about that—being the first generation to witness their livelihood fall into history. It couldn’t be easy. But, then again, what was the alternative? If they didn’t want to do what Ryan was doing, at least they still got to go out on their boats, talk about the good old days, share their favorite stories with people who were interested enough to pay money to hear them.

  “Speaking of random oyster facts,” Ryan said, turning to face her, “how did you know all that stuff about Wellfleet?”

  Izzy smiled, remembering the conversation she’d had with the man in the pink shirt earlier and how much she’d enjoyed chipping away at his pretentions. “Paul asked me to help him come up with a plan for how to launch your two brands at the end of the summer. I figured I should start by looking at what some of the most successful farms are doing to market their oysters first—see if there was anything we could learn from them. Once I started digging into their websites, I guess I got a little excited.”

  “Clearly,” he said, with a note of laughter in his voice.

  “You went to graduate school up there, right?” Izzy asked. “In Massachusetts?”

  Ryan nodded. “I lived in Woods Hole for six years.”

  “Did you ever consider staying up there?” she asked, wanting to satisfy a curiosity that had been nagging her ever since learning about thos
e other farms. “If you’d opened a farm in New England—where the waters are saltier and the oysters already have a great reputation—you wouldn’t have had so many battles to fight.”

  “I prefer to make things difficult for myself,” Ryan joked.

  He was making light of it, Izzy thought, shifting slightly so she could get a better view of his face. But there was nothing lightweight about any of the decisions he’d made. She knew, now, why he’d come back here. He’d come back because this was his home, because these waters were suffering, and because this was where he could make the most difference.

  In opening a farm on the Chesapeake Bay, Ryan had known exactly what he was getting into. He’d known he would face resistance, not only from future consumers, but from some of the islanders—people he’d grown up with. And, somehow, despite the risk, he’d managed to convince his father to join him as well.

  Remembering how strangely he’d reacted to the photographs of the two of them earlier, she asked, “Do you think your father had a good time tonight?”

  “I’m amazed he stayed as long as he did. Cocktail parties aren’t really his thing.”

  Izzy smiled. “Yeah, I picked up on that.”

  Ryan’s gaze drifted out to the water again. A pair of kayakers had paused at the edge of the marshes to watch the sun sink into the horizon. All around them, the surface of the water shimmered, reflecting the shifting colors of the sky. “That table you set up—the one with the pictures of my father and me. It almost made it seem like we were close.”

  “Aren’t you?” Izzy asked, surprised.

  Ryan shook his head. “He wishes I were teaching on a research ship or working in a lab somewhere.”

  Izzy’s brows drew together. “What do you mean?”

  “He thinks I made a mistake in moving back here—that I’m wasting my degree and wrecking my chances of ever having a career in academia again.”

  “Do you want to have a career in academia again?”

  “No.”

  “Then…I’m not sure what the problem is.”

  Ryan looked at her. “He doesn’t want me here.”

  “Of course he does,” Izzy said, rolling her eyes. Coop Callahan might be a man of few words, but there was no doubt in her mind that he loved his son. “He believes in you.”

  Ryan laughed. “Yeah, sure.”

  Izzy paused in the middle of petting Zoey. “You’re kidding, right?”

  He shook his head slowly.

  Izzy stared at him. She couldn’t believe this was how he saw his relationship with his father. How could he be so intelligent about so many things, and so dense about this? “Your father gave up his livelihood for you, Ryan. He turned his back on the only world he’d ever known to work on this farm—because you asked him to. And when you decided to team up with Will and Colin, and hire a bunch of veterans you’d never even met, he went along with it. He might not know how to say it to your face, but he believes in you.”

  Ryan continued to regard her skeptically, but at least he wasn’t laughing anymore. Izzy wondered how long it would take him to recognize the truth. Shaking her head, she looked back at the sunset, at the shots of pink streaking through the sky.

  “What about you?” Ryan asked. “Are you close with your parents?”

  “My parents are gone.”

  “Both of them?”

  Izzy nodded, tracking the path of a blackbird over the marshes. “I never knew my father. He died before I was born in the village where my family lived in Mexico. I was raised by my mother and grandmother.”

  “Did you grow up in Mexico?”

  “No.” Izzy shook her head. “I was born here. My mother was pregnant when she and my grandmother…made the crossing.”

  Ryan was quiet for a few moments, processing what she’d just said. “What happened to your mother?”

  “My mother died in the fields when I was thirteen.”

  “What fields?” Ryan asked, confused.

  Izzy said nothing, waiting for him to put two and two together.

  “Wait…” Ryan said, his eyes widening. “You don’t mean…?”

  Izzy looked down at her hands, which would forever bear the scars of her childhood, no matter how hard she tried to forget that time in her life. “We were working on a farm in Arizona,” she said. “It was apricot season.” She looked up, saw the moment the realization dawned on his face. “To this day, I still haven’t eaten one. I doubt I ever will.”

  “Izzy,” Ryan said, his voice filled with compassion. “Why didn’t you say something before?”

  “What was I supposed to say?” she asked. “That I grew up in a family of migrant workers? That I spent all my free time as a child picking fruits and vegetables? That, when I was thirteen, my mother passed out from heat stroke and by the time my grandmother and I found her body, it was too late?”

  “If we had known—”

  “—you wouldn’t have asked me to work here,” Izzy finished. “I know. I get that. And it’s why I wanted to switch with someone initially. But I guess, in a way, I’m glad that Colin didn’t honor that request, because I know, now, that this farm is nothing like the ones I grew up working on as a child—and you’re nothing like the farmers I knew then either.”

  She offered him a small smile, but he didn’t smile back. His expression was filled with such care and concern that it caught her off guard. She rarely talked about her childhood. She’d learned, years ago, that it wasn’t a topic most people were comfortable with. Most people in this country preferred to pretend that the immigrants in the fields were invisible, that they didn’t even exist.

  She should have known that Ryan wouldn’t feel that way, that he wouldn’t be able to look away from this.

  “Is that why you joined the Army?” he asked.

  Izzy nodded. “I enlisted the day I turned eighteen. The military gave me stability, a steady paycheck, and respect—three things I’d never had before then. Strangers would stop me in the street and thank me for my service.” Shaking her head, she thought about the first time that had happened, how proud she had been. “My grandmother and I spent almost two decades chasing harvests, never knowing where the next job would be or how long it would last. We lived in so many different states and I went to so many different schools, it’s a miracle I even graduated high school.”

  “How did you?” Ryan asked.

  Izzy rested her hands on the edge of the tank, letting the tips of her fingers dip into the cool water. “We used to do my homework assignments together. The three of us—my mother, my grandmother, and I—would gather around the kitchen table after dinner each night and I would teach them everything I’d learned in school that day. Then, we’d make our way through each assignment, no matter how long it took, so that they got an education, too.”

  She lifted her gaze to the sky, to the brushstrokes of lavender bleeding through the blue. “I worked in the fields with them after school, on the weekends, and all summer long, but my education was always their number one priority. It was the reason they came to this country, the reason they sacrificed everything—so that I could have a better life.”

  Taking a deep breath, she turned to face him again. “I think, if your father is anything like my mother or my grandmother, he just wants you to take advantage of all the opportunities that weren’t available to him. It’s not that he doesn’t want you here. It’s just that he wants more for you—more than he had. It might be hard for him to accept that after everything you’ve accomplished, after all the paths you could have chosen, you chose this.”

  Ryan held her gaze for several long moments. There were emotions in his eyes—emotions she couldn’t read and didn’t understand. The wind had quieted to barely more than a whisper and the sun had slipped below the line of trees to the west. In the distance, she could hear the faint clanging of drawbridge bells as the operator prepared to let one of the last boats through for the night.

  “It’s getting late,” she said. “I should head back.”<
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  She started to turn, but he caught her hand. “Stay,” he said quietly.

  Izzy froze at the unexpected contact. She looked down at their joined hands, then back up at his face—all sharp angles and shadowy plains in the fading light. Her pulse jumped, skipping a beat. They were all alone, she realized. His closest neighbor was more than a quarter mile away. No one would be able to hear her if…

  No, she thought. Don’t go there. Don’t let yourself go there.

  Ryan’s grip was gentle, but steady. And somehow she knew, instinctively, that he would let go the moment she showed even the slightest hint of discomfort. Maybe it was the fact that she didn’t want him to let go that rattled her more than anything. “It’ll be dark soon.”

  “I’ll drive you back,” he said, nodding toward the sunset. “The show’s not even over yet.”

  It was such a simple request, one that, from the outside, seemed perfectly innocent, but she knew that his wanting her to stay had nothing to do with the sunset. “I don’t think—”

  “Stay,” he said again. And there was something about the way he said it—the way his voice rippled over the water, pulling her toward him—that had her fingers curling, closing around his.

  Ryan’s eyes never left hers as he took a step toward her. “I know I’m not supposed to say this.” He reached up, brushed the hair back from her face. “But watching you come alive tonight was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.”

  Before she had a chance to react, to even consider what was happening, his mouth was on hers. And all the passion, all the heat, all the frustration he hid so carefully beneath that calm, easygoing cover shattered the last of her resolve. She felt something snap, break open inside her, and then she was kissing him back, like a woman who was starving.