Wind Chime Wedding (A Wind Chime Novel Book 2) Read online

  Natalie was the one who had driven him to his physical therapy appointments those first few months, bringing him ice packs and heating pads when she’d picked him up, never saying a word as he sat in miserable silence beside her, wallowing in his own self-pity. There were very few people who had seen him like that.

  He didn’t care to remember the person he’d been back then.

  But she had never once treated him like a victim. She had never made him feel like there was anything wrong with him that he couldn’t overcome. She had waited patiently for him to heal and then she’d sat him down and told him, in no uncertain terms, that it was time for him to find a nice woman to marry and settle down.

  Natalie had never had any children of her own. All she wanted now was a few grandchildren to spoil and a daughter-in-law to pamper.

  He knew it wasn’t that much to ask.

  But the thought of making that kind of commitment again, only to have it thrown back in his face…

  He didn’t know if he could take that kind of rejection a second time.

  He leaned down, giving Natalie a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

  “That’s okay,” Natalie said, her tone wistful as she waved him toward the bar. “Go do what you need to do. I’ll introduce Becca around to some of our friends.”

  He started to turn, and it was only then that he realized he was still holding her hand.

  Becca must have realized it at the same time, because he heard her sharp intake of breath as she jerked her hand free.

  What the hell?

  Her fingers darted up to the charm on her necklace, moving it back and forth on the chain.

  The need to reach for her again, to feel her soft hand tucked back in his, whipped through him fast and hard. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he turned. A dozen questions fired off in his mind all at once, but he didn’t have time to answer any of them because, three steps later, he came face-to-face with his father’s campaign manager.

  Glenn Davis, a short, wiry man in his mid-fifties, gestured toward a quiet corner of the room. “We need to talk.”

  “Now?”

  Glenn nodded.

  Reigning in his irritation because his father’s campaign manager often thought the world was coming to an end when it wasn’t, Colin followed him through the groups of laughing, chattering people to the edge of the room. “What is it?”

  “There’s been a complication.”

  Tell me about it, Colin thought as another waiter carrying a tray of drinks appeared by his side. He snagged a pint of stout off the tray and took a long swallow as his gaze strayed back to where Becca was talking with a group of his stepmother’s friends.

  “Is that her?” Glenn followed his eyes across the room. “The teacher who wants to talk to Nick about her school tonight?”

  Colin nodded, noticing for the first time the way the stretchy material of Becca’s pale yellow dress crossed over her small breasts. A simple knot off to one side of her slender waist held the thin fabric together. All it would take was one gentle tug to release it and reveal what was hidden underneath.

  He took another long sip of the beer.

  Shit. This just went way past complicated.

  Beside him, Glenn scanned the faces of the few people still within earshot and lowered his voice. “I spoke with the principal at your friend’s school about an hour ago. I told her that the governor was aware of the situation and might be willing to make a few calls on their behalf if she could provide us with the names and numbers of the board members.”

  Colin nodded, his gaze dropping to Becca’s smooth, toned legs. How had he never noticed her legs before?

  Was this the first time he’d ever seen them bare?

  Pulling out his smartphone, Glenn thumbed through a few screens. “She just sent the list of names, including the consultant the board recently hired to help them with the analysis.” He clicked on the message and turned the phone around, showing the screen to Colin. “This is who they hired.”

  Colin read the name and all thoughts of Becca’s legs vanished. “Tell me this is a joke.”

  “I wish it was,” Glenn said grimly.

  There was only one person in this state who wouldn’t be swayed, even the slightest bit, by a phone call from him or the governor—Lydia Vanzant.

  His father’s ex-wife.

  His mother.

  “When was the last time you talked to her?” Glenn asked.

  “It’s been years.”

  “That’s what I thought.” Glenn shook his head, slipping his smartphone back into his pocket. “Look, Colin, I know you’re not going to like this, but we need to steer clear of the issue with the school. We can’t afford the bad press it’ll stir up. Not now, not with Lydia’s name attached to it.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I’m dead serious,” Glenn said. “We wanted to help your friend, but our hands are tied now.”

  “What about Taylor?” Colin asked.

  “We’ll lose a few points in the polls when the news breaks, but if we get out in front of it, make a formal statement before the press gets hold of it, we can control the message. We need to stay detached from it. We can’t afford to get involved in another public fight with Lydia. The divorce scandal almost cost us the election last time. We can’t afford to dredge it back up again.”

  “This is bullshit,” Colin said.

  “Your father pays me a lot of money to deal with his bullshit,” Glenn said. “I know what I’m doing. Leave it alone.”

  No way, Colin thought, shaking his head. There was no way he was going to leave it alone. He searched the room for Becca again. She was still standing beside his stepmother, laughing now at something someone had said.

  He swore he could hear it, a soft, bell-like sound drifting over the rest of the noise in the crowded room. There was something so sweet, so innocent, in her smile. He felt that same sudden, overwhelming need to protect her again, just like he had when they’d first walked into the room. He lifted the pint, taking another long swallow.

  “Leave it alone, Colin,” Glenn warned.

  Colin lowered the glass, looking back at his father’s campaign manager. “No.”

  How was last night?” Shelley asked Becca the next day as they walked down Main Street to the Wind Chime Café where Annie and Della were hosting an Easter brunch for the islanders.

  “It was interesting,” Becca said, stepping off the sidewalk to let a group of children dash by in search of hidden eggs. Their peals of laughter rang out, filling the air.

  She wished she could feel so lighthearted.

  Her conversation with Nick Foley had gone well enough. He had listened patiently to her stories about Taylor and had assured her that he would do everything in his power to keep the school open. But she had seen him exchange several tense looks across the table with Colin during dinner. And Colin had spent most of the hour before dinner huddled in a corner with his father’s campaign manager.

  When she’d confronted Colin about it at the end of the night, he’d admitted that they’d run into a slight complication, but he wouldn’t give her any details—only that they might need a few more days to work on the situation with the school.

  Motioning for Shelley to slow down so their neighbors walking ahead of them wouldn’t overhear, Becca lowered her voice. “Colin wants us to keep the news to ourselves for a few more days.”

  Shelley nodded. “I got a similar email from Glenn Davis last night. He wants me to postpone the announcement to the teachers until Friday.”

  Becca paused under the boughs of a flowering dogwood tree. Sunlight slanted through the branches, dappling the sidewalk. “What did you tell him?”

  “I said I needed some time to think about it,” Shelley replied. “I don’t like the idea of this news getting out without me being able to break it to the rest of the staff first. And, frankly, now that I know who the board hired as their consultant, I’m not sure the governor can hel
p us.”

  “Who did they hire?”

  “Lydia Vanzant.”

  “Nick Foley’s ex-wife?”

  Shelley nodded.

  Becca felt a wave of uneasiness. Lydia Vanzant wasn’t just the former wife of their governor. She was also one of the most respected figures in the field of education. She had served as the chief administrator in the Baltimore County School District for three decades before being elected Chancellor of the Prince George’s County Public Schools. She had successfully transformed two of the worst school districts in their state into two of the best.

  Not everyone agreed with her tactics, but her track record was indisputable. In every school district where she’d served, test scores had gone up, attrition rates had fallen, and graduation rates had reached nearly one hundred percent.

  Unfortunately, her hardline reform strategies included a strong push for consolidation.

  “Can our district even afford to hire her?” Becca asked. “Her consultant rates must be through the roof.”

  “No,” Shelley murmured. “Which is why I think this might be personal.”

  Becca felt a sinking feeling form in her gut. “Are Lydia and the governor even on speaking terms?”

  “I don’t know,” Shelley admitted as they started to walk again. “It was a really nasty divorce. They both said some terrible things about each other, and the papers printed every detail they could get their hands on. It almost cost Nick Foley his first election.”

  No wonder Colin had said they’d needed more time, Becca thought. But why had he kept the news about Lydia from her? If his mother was the complication they’d run into, he must have known she would find out eventually.

  The café came into view, with its pale blue siding and dark purple shutters. Wind chimes hung from the beams of the porch, sparkling in the sunlight and filling the air with their soft tinkling songs. The small front yard was already packed with islanders and an egg dyeing station had been set up under the oak tree for the kids.

  “I feel uncomfortable keeping this from Annie,” Becca said. “From everyone.”

  “Me, too,” Shelley said. “They deserve to know.”

  “What should we do?”

  Shelley took a deep breath. “Glenn assured me that they would have everything under control by the end of the week. I would hate to upset everyone on the island unnecessarily. I haven’t made my final decision yet, but I’m leaning toward keeping quiet.”

  Becca nodded. She understood where Shelley was coming from, but it didn’t make her feel any better. Scanning the yard for her favorite student, she spotted Taylor under the oak tree, dipping a hard boiled egg into a bowl of blue food coloring. Taylor’s best friend, Jess Casper, was beside her, adding stickers to her own yellow egg. They were both wearing flower crowns and their mouths were rimmed in chocolate.

  Taylor glanced up and grinned. “Look, Miss Haddaway!” She held up her egg. “It’s the same color as a robin’s egg.”

  Becca’s heart softened. When Taylor had first moved to the island, it had been hard for her to make friends. She’d spent most of her free time chasing birds and butterflies through the hundreds of acres of undeveloped marshlands west of the village. She had become fascinated with the wildlife, memorizing the different species by name and coming up with clever little ways to identify each of them by their markings or their calls.

  Sometimes it was hard to believe that the carefree child in front of her now was the same frightened little girl who had survived that terrible shooting in D.C. last fall, but Becca knew that appearances could be deceiving. Taylor still suffered setbacks. At least once every couple of weeks something would happen to trigger a memory from that day.

  It would take years for Taylor to work through the lingering effects of that trauma.

  She had come a long way in a very short amount of time, but how much of that progress would be lost if she had to switch schools again so soon? Would she be able to cope in a class triple the size of what she was used to—one with kids who wouldn’t understand why she still jumped whenever an engine backfired or hid in the closet during a thunderstorm?

  Becca watched Taylor place her blue egg into a wire rack on the table so it could dry. “I want to set up my own meeting with Lydia,” she said firmly. “I know you didn’t think it would make any difference for me to speak with the board on my own about Taylor. But I need to do this. I need to try.”

  Shelley laid a comforting hand on Becca’s shoulder. “We’re going to do everything we can, Becca. But I think we should both be prepared for the fact that we might not win this battle. Our chances were never very good. Now, I think they might be even worse.” She squeezed her shoulder. “Let’s just try to enjoy the day, okay?” She scanned the crowd. “Is Tom meeting us here?”

  Becca shook her head. “He couldn’t make it.”

  “Why not?”

  “A big case came in on Thursday. He had to work through the weekend.”

  Shelley was quiet for a few beats. “He’s been working a lot of weekends lately.”

  “I know. It won’t be like this forever.”

  Shelley’s hand dropped away from her shoulder. “If you say so.”

  Becca felt a tightening in her chest as they turned up the path to the café. She spotted a group of her friends chatting in a circle beside the porch. A few feet away, her father was standing with a cluster of watermen. Their deep voices rumbled through the yard, blending with the cheerful jumble of conversations going on all around them.

  She knew every single person here. She knew each of their parents, their children, their spouses. She knew where they worked, what kinds of cars they drove, what they planted in their gardens each year. She knew who was struggling to make ends meet and whose lives hadn’t turned out quite the way they’d hoped.

  But she also knew that every single person here loved this island as much as she did. They loved the sense of peace that came from living in a place surrounded on all sides by water. They loved spending their weekends out on the Bay with a fishing rod in their hands. They loved the slow pace of life in the village and the way the sky lit up with colors each night as the sun sank into the horizon.

  Colin’s question from the night before floated back: ‘Are you marrying a guy who lives in D.C. because there aren’t enough single men to choose from on the island?’

  Stepping over a crack where shoots of flowering thyme were breaking through the cement, she wrapped her arms tighter around the plastic container of deviled eggs she was carrying. She had been up until 3AM last night, unable to sleep, trying desperately to remember if there had ever been a time when Tom had made her feel the way Colin had when he’d touched her.

  It was normal for the spark to wear off at some point in any relationship. She had been with Tom for fifteen years—since her sophomore year in high school. Of course she didn’t still feel fireworks when he touched her now.

  But she must have felt something in the beginning.

  She must have.

  A knot formed in her throat and she forced it back. Or…maybe they had just skipped that step. What mattered was that they had something to hold onto after the spark died, right?

  She and Tom had a history. A past.

  When everything in her life had fallen apart, Tom had been there to pick up the pieces.

  She would never forget that.

  Even if they’d been moving in different directions lately, they still had that past. They still had that memory of the people they had been before—the people they had been to each other.

  Everyone changed. She and Tom were just going through a strange cycle right now…one where they weren’t changing in sync. But they would get back on track again. They would.

  It was only a matter of time.

  Resolved, she climbed the steps to the porch where Della and Annie were laying out dishes of food on a long row of folding tables.

  Della turned. Her curly, gray-blond hair was sticking up in a million directions. An a
pron dusted with flour was tied around her ample waist. She smiled as she took the container from Becca’s hands and opened the top, peering inside.

  “I got a little carried away,” Becca said, feeling the need to explain herself when Della lifted a brow at the number of eggs inside.

  “You didn’t have to bring anything,” Annie said, smoothing a pink cloth over the table by the window. “We have plenty of food.”

  “I know,” Becca said, “but I always make deviled eggs on Easter.”

  “Of course you do, honey,” Della said gently, setting the container down between a roasted vegetable quiche and a coconut cake. “But everyone would have understood if you didn’t have time to make them this year. Don’t you have enough to do with the wedding and the move?”

  Becca felt a prick of annoyance. She always made deviled eggs on Easter, just like her mother had before her, and her grandmother had before her—from their family recipe with Old Bay Seasoning instead of paprika.

  It was tradition.

  She wished everyone would quit pushing her away and telling her that she didn’t have time to do the things she loved anymore.

  “Where’s your fiancé?” a familiar voice slurred in her ear.

  Becca stiffened when Jimmy’s arm came around her and his sour, whiskey-scented breath brushed against her cheek. Disgusted, she pushed him away. “It’s not even noon and you’re already drunk.”

  He smiled, his arm tightening around her waist. “You need to lighten up, sweetheart.”

  “And you need to leave,” she said coldly. “You have no business being here, around all these children, when you’ve been drinking.”

  “Can’t.” He grabbed a sugar cookie off one of the trays on the table. “Courtney got called into work at the hotel. I’m watching Luke.”

  Becca scanned the yard for Luke. She found him sitting on the curb beside Jimmy’s truck, his back resting against one of the wheels. His head was bent over a notebook as he focused on a sketch he was working on. Becca felt another wave of frustration. He should be dyeing hard boiled eggs with Taylor or hunting for plastic ones with the rest of the kids down at the marina, not sitting by himself, drawing. “I’ll watch Luke. You need to go home.”