“Did you ever consider that you were a lot younger the last time you outed yourself, so to speak? So maybe your perspective was a little young then, too.”
“Immature, you mean? Yes. Maybe it was because I got grief from people of all ages that I felt age wasn't the issue.”
“I'm not sayin' that folks here will just shrug it off. It's some pretty unusual stuff you got going on.” He grinned when her mouth dropped open. “I'm just sayin' that you might not be so quick to assume how we'll react, until we do. Stand up a bit for yourself.”
She closed her mouth, then laughed at herself. “Own it, you mean? Like Bea did?”
“Might not be the worst thing. Could be a good thing.”
Honey looked back out the window, a furrow between her brows as she realized they were heading toward the town square. “Where, exactly, are we going?”
He glanced briefly her way, then back to the road. “Have a little faith, sugar. You're killing me with the schoolmarm thing, again. So serious.”
She felt the heat bloom, only it wasn't embarrassment so much as it was a kick of heightened awareness. Like she needed to be any more aware of him. “You realize you're fixing things, again.”
“Well, I may not be able to fix your second sight, or whatever you call it, but I might be able to help with the other parts of your Honey Gets a Life program.”
She laughed at that, not at all offended by the label, mostly because that was exactly what she'd come here to try to do. “You're not even denying it.”
He shot her a fast grin that made her heart skip all over the place. “Sugar, fixing things is what I do. It's the one thing I've always known how to do. Humor me.”
She lifted her hands, palm out, in a motion of surrender. “Lead on.”
She glanced at Dylan again as they turned off the square, then went past the alley that led behind his garage and the cupcakery, and turned on the old channel road, stopping the truck in front of the empty building next to the garage. Actually, except for his garage, all the commercial space on this road appeared to be empty and looked like it had been that way for a very long time. She hadn't paid much attention when she'd first brought her car in, more worried about her problems and thankful she'd seen the sign advertising the repair shop.
“Do you need something from the garage?” she asked.
He didn't answer as he turned off the engine and dug a set of keys out of the console wedged on the floorboard between the seat and the dashboard. Then he looked at her. “You took a big chance, coming all this way, sight unseen, hauling your life with you.”
She still had no idea where he was going with this. “Well, technically, most of my life is still packed up in crates and boxes back in Oregon, waiting to be shipped here. I only hauled the part of my life that could be crammed into a Volkswagen Beetle.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “My point is, you took a big risk, which proves you can. They might not get easier to take, but at least you know you can take them. So . . . keep an open mind.”
Oh, he's opened my mind all right.
She had to force herself not to let her gaze drift down to his mouth. Much less think about, even for a second, kissing that mouthâwhich she'd done repeatedly. And that that mouth had kissed her back.
“Sugar, you keep looking at me like that and we're going to end up finding out about what happens when I put my hands on you right out here on the street in broad daylight.” His voice was a deep, drawling promise.
And oh, for just a moment, she was tempted to collect on it. She cleared her own throat to dispel the sudden dryness there. “Right. So . . . risks. Open mind. I get it. But that doesn't explain what we're doing here.”
He clicked off his seatbelt, then hers, shot her a wink, and climbed out of the truck. Before he could play Southern gentleman and come around to offer assistance in helping her down, she scrambled out her side and closed the door behind her.
Dylan let Lolly out of the truck bed so she could trot across the road to use the grass on the far side. The grassy strip ran down a short incline and stopped in front of the fence between the road and the wide stretch of the Timucua River and the Wassaw Channel that separated island from mainland. As there were no other active businesses along this short stretch of road, there was no traffic, but Honey walked over after Lolly anyway, watching out for her and taking a much needed moment or two to gather her thoughts.
“You comin'?”
Honey looked up and saw Dylan standing in front of the door to the empty space next to the garage. Her heart sank. Not that she'd held any realistic hope that Dylan actually had a workable solution for her, but he clearly didn't understand that when she said she didn't have the money to lease a space, she really meant it. Not even some rundown place.
Honey and Lolly crossed the road together to the narrow sidewalk that ran along the street in front of the closed up shops. “I know you're trying to help, and I appreciate it more than you know, but unless they're giving away leases, this isn't going to fix anything.”
“It's not as bad as it looks.”
“Oh, I'm not being picky about location. My previous work space was a barn, remember? I'm saying that I imagine the owners want actual money for the space, which would be a problem for me.”
Dylan gave her a hint of a smile, then used the keys he'd snagged in the truck to unlock the door to the place. “Take a look anyway.”
He pulled the door open and gestured for her to go inside first. She wondered why he had keys to the place, but the question was forgotten as she stepped inside. The air was thick and still from the heat, and dank from being closed up for so long. The front windows had been covered by white paper, long since yellowed and torn around the edges, but still allowing in enough light to see the space fairly clearly. It was narrow, but deep, and bigger than it had appeared from the outside. The center area opened up all the way to the peaked roof, with a second level balcony that ran around all four sides of the building, narrow on the sides and front, then deeper across the back.
“Oh, how beautiful is that?” She walked over to the wrought iron circular stairs set into one corner, which led up to the balcony. She put her foot on the bottom stair, grabbed the hand rail, and gave it a sturdy shake. Not so much as a groan or squeak.
“I still don't know if I'd trust that,” Dylan said. “Or the flooring up there.”
She paused, then stepped back a few feet to look up at the second level, trying to see into the shadows up there. “Are those shelves?” She turned around, standing in the same spot, gazing upward. “Oh, they go around all three sides. Wow.”
“Used to be a bookstore,” Dylan said, his voice coming from right behind her.
She started slightly, still not used to having people suddenly in her space when caught unawares.
He didn't move closer, but nor did he move away. She glanced at him, but his gaze was on the second level. “Came here a few times as a kid. There's not much room up there. On the two sides it's pretty narrow, just the walkway and shelves built right into the walls. Across the front, there are windows up there, bench seating built in. Used to be more chairs in the alcove.”
“Like a recessed reading area,” Honey said, charmed, easily picturing how it must have looked. “What's in the back section?”
“More shelves. On the left side, in the corner, is a small office space.”
Honey looked back at him. “Really? A little office up there?”
“If I recall. Mr. Beaumont owned the shop back then, and he used to keep the door open so he could keep an eye on the kids. The kids' section was down here and he didn't approve of us coming to the upper level.” A smile touched the corners of his mouth. “Come to think of it, he didn't really approve of us at all.”
“A bookseller who doesn't like kids? Where does he think his customer base originates from?”
“Children who look and don't touch and mind their parents. Not heathens with no supervision runnin' wild through the place.” Smiling, Dylan looked at her. “I'd imagine you'd feel the same if the business was yours. I didn't take it personally.” He glanced back up again, and the smile might have curved more fully. “I took it as a challenge.”
Honey smiled then, too. “Yes, perhaps you have a point. Good thing you're a responsible adult now.”
He slid a gaze to hers that curled her toes. “Oh, I wouldn't say that, sugar.”
Just as her breath caught and held in her throat, and she braced herself for him to make a move . . . he did, but it was only to walk off toward the back of the building.
She didn't realize until she let the breath go that her sigh was in disappointment, not relief.
“There's a storage space back through here, another office, I think, or more storage. Bathroom. Small kitchen, it looks like,” he said, opening doors and poking his head in. “Gutted, but that's what it once was, anyway, going by the wiring and cabinets. Maybe it was a break room or lounge.” He turned around and looked back at her. “What do you think? Would it work?”
It's perfect,
she thought. Charming, different, if a good bit bigger than she'd imagined when thinking about her own shop. Of course, she'd always thought small because Bea's shop wasn't very big, but this . . . this was more like her work spaceâopen, open, with the soaring ceiling in the middle. It felt right to her, creatively. Her mind was already buzzing with ideas of how to turn this into her own magical little forest workshop. Well, her forest-meets-island workshop. She smiled, just picturing the possibilities.
She could envision making use of those built in shelves on the balcony level, renovating them to display her garden and forest creatures, creating little scenic tableaus inside the deeper, recessed shelving areas. If the storage room in the back of the building was big enough, she could make that her private studio. The other space a small classroom, maybe. Office upstairs for business purposes. She could even have a big work table right out here in the retail space, so customers could watch as she did finishing work on pieces, or started a new one. It was . . . truly . . . perfect.
“Maybe” was what she said out loud, though, already trying to temper her soaring heart. No point in letting herself dream, even for a moment. “It would take a lot of work to clean it out, get it up to code, I imagine. Among a laundry list of other things. It looks like it's been empty a long time.”
“Twelve years. Give or take.”
Her mouth dropped open. “Twelve
years
?”
“Island economy, especially one that doesn't have a tourist draw, is shaky at best. Beaumont Senior opened the place back in the fifties, then Junior took it over before I was born and ran it another twenty or so years, but the island dynamic changed over the years. Skewed older and older, not so many children as before, though that's changing again. The recession in the eighties put most businesses here in serious hardship. This place made it through, but never fully recovered. Beaumont shuttered the place just after the turn of the century. It was the last business on the block to close up shop. The town square had taken a pretty big hit as well, so when things finally turned around, it was those spaces that folks snapped up first. Had to if they had any hope of getting the kind of traffic they needed to stay afloat. The docks brought in the fishing trade, so the warehouses down there did okay, which is where our garage was, but the shops back here along the channel road fell further and further into neglect until no one really even came around here, anymore. Too much work to turn it around, I guess.”
“Until you took over the building next door.”
He nodded. “Back in the fifties and sixties, that place was run by two guys who'd gone to school together and built a business restoring old cars and fixing up old wrecks. They did some pretty amazing paint and body work. It was the only other auto shop on the island.”
“Competition for your family garage?”
Dylan shook his head. “No, different services. In fact, having both shops here helped. Folks could get their repairs at Ross & Sons and body work done over here at Shellings & Rack. Worked out pretty wellâtill Bart Shelling got himself killed in Vietnam. Jimmy Rack held on another fifteen, eighteen years or so, till the early nineties, anyway. Heard he moved west somewhere. Not entirely sure. He turned it over to some cousin or other who ran it right into the ground, didn't have half the talent of either Bart or Jimmy, much less the business sense. Then the recession hit and he took off, and it's stood empty since then.”
“Wow,” Honey breathed. “Well, at least you had a garage type space to move to, which had to be easier in terms of getting up and running again, but the location can't have helped any.”
“Hasn't been bad at all, as it's turned out. It was more industrial down by the docks, which allowed us to have a much bigger space than this, almost twice the size. But being right off the town square has been a boost, actually. Folks just pull in the alley and park out back, so it's convenient. Besides, it's a small island and Ross & Sons has been part of it for longer than most here remember.”
“And I'm sure they're loyal. I guess it didn't really matter where you relocated then.”
He shrugged. “Unless I wanted to move over the causeway for a bigger space, this was pretty much it. But yes, I do have a steady local customer base.”
“Has that worked out okay? Since the space is so much smaller?” Suddenly she remembered some of the things Barbara Hughes had been saying about Dylan's family, and turned her back to him, pretending to look at the interior again. She was afraid he'd see something in her expression and didn't want to shift the mood. Not that she could name the mood, exactly, but it was . . . comfortable. And conversational. The most he'd ever been, in fact. She liked the sound of his voice, deep and with that rich, sexy twang. She liked listening to him talk, and could picture how things might have been back in the day as he'd described them.