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

  Colin looked down, at where her fingers still rested on his arm, then back at her face. A new emotion swam into his eyes, a darker emotion, and his gaze flickered briefly down to her mouth.

  Becca dropped her hand away from his arm, taking a step back. “I-I think I’ll make some tea. Or…coffee. Would you prefer coffee? Or something else? I don’t have any beer in the house, but I might have some sodas in the fridge…”

  “Coffee’s fine.”

  Coffee, Becca thought, walking quickly into the kitchen. Coffee would be good. She pulled the beans out of the freezer and padded across the floor in her bare feet to the coffee maker. She needed something to do with her hands, something to keep herself from touching him again.

  Colin followed her into the kitchen. She was aware of him watching her as she ground the beans, filled the carafe with water, and fiddled with the buttons on the machine to adjust the settings. She tried not to notice the way her skin heated as his eyes tracked her across the kitchen.

  Pressing the start button on the coffee maker, she turned to face him. “Is your father rethinking his offer to help us?”

  Colin nodded. “He’s concerned that it will distract from the other issues in the campaign.”

  Becca thought back to what Shelley had said earlier that day: ‘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.’

  “If your father isn’t going to make those calls to the board members, then there’s no reason Shelley should postpone her announcement until Friday.”

  “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.

  He 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.

  A familiar female voice answered after a few rings. “Wind Chime Café, this is Della.”

  “Hi, Della. It’s Colin.”

  “Hi, Colin,” Della said over the noise in the background—muffled voices, the clatter of coffee cups, the hiss of an espresso machine. “Do you want to talk to Annie?”

  Colin paused at a crosswalk with several other pedestrians, waiting for the traffic light to change. He had briefly considered asking Annie about Becca. The two women had become good friends since Annie had moved to the island last fall. But Annie didn’t have history there. She might not know much about Becca and Tom’s past.

  Della, on the other hand, was from Heron Island. She had been around the whole time Becca and Tom were growing up. “Actually, I want to talk to you.”

  “Well,” Della said, adding a teasing note of importance into her voice. The kitchen door opened and closed with a distinctive squeak and the background noise from the dining room dimmed. “To what do I owe this honor?”

  “I called to see if you have plans for dinner on Wednesday night.”

  “I don’t think so. Why?”

  “I’d like to take you out.”

  “I’m flattered, Colin, but I’ve been happily married for over thirty-five years.”

  Colin smiled, and some of the tension he’d been holding onto since his conversation with his mother the day before eased. “I know you’ve been wanting to try that new Italian restaurant that opened in St. Michaels a few weeks ago—the one across the street from the jewelry store. Name a time and I’ll meet you there.”

  She let out a whistle. “That’s a fancy restaurant.”

  “With an excellent chef, from what I hear. Maybe we can steal a few ideas for the café.”

  “Why do I get the feeling you’re trying to butter me up for something?”

  “I can’t imagine what you mean,” Colin said innocently.

  Della laughed. “If you need a favor, hon, you can just ask. You don’t need to take me out to dinner first. Why don’t you drop by the caf�
� around closing time on Wednesday and we’ll talk then?”

  “I’d rather take you out somewhere in St. Michaels.” The traffic light changed and he started across the street. “Somewhere…not on the island.”

  There was a brief pause on the other end of the line. “Because you don’t want anybody listening in?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I see,” Della said slowly and Colin heard the squeak of the oven door opening in the background, then the clatter of metal on wood as she set a tray of something that would probably make his mouth water on the counter. “I don’t suppose this has anything to do with why your truck was parked outside Becca’s house for over an hour last night?”

  Colin faltered, almost missing the step up to the curb on the other side of the street. Della had noticed his truck outside Becca’s house last night?

  He hadn’t thought twice about dropping by, but he’d forgotten that neighbors tended to be curious in small towns. And Heron Island was about as small as it got.

  Becca had grown up on the island. She had friends there, family there—people who were watching out for her.

  There were probably others who’d noticed his truck outside her house last night and wondered what he’d been doing there.

  “Let’s just say I have a few questions,” he said.

  “I’ll do my best to answer them,” Della said. “How about six o’clock?”

  “I’ll see you then,” Colin said, and hung up.

  The last thing he wanted was for Becca’s friends and neighbors to start asking questions, to scare her off before he’d had a chance to figure out his next step. If he was even going to think about moving in on another man’s territory this late in the game, he needed a plan, a solid one, one that wouldn’t backfire.

  Because if it did backfire, and somehow Becca got hurt in the process, every single person on that island would turn against him.