“I'm game.” Honey gladly put down the pastry bag Lani had trusted her with. She could handle sharp carving tools with ease, could mold a lump of clay into the cutest little garden sprite you'd ever seen . . . but give her a bag filled with rich, creamy Italian mascarpone and hazelnut filling and ask her to shoot it into little carved out cupcake holes and . . . well . . . let's just say she made a better taste tester.
“Oh, look. They are too cute!” Honey watched as Alva carefully lifted out one of the perfect little miniature apple pies and set it on a tiny plate.
“You don't have to go to all the trouble,” Honey assured her. “Just give me a fork.”
“Oh no, dear. This pie is meant to be eaten only one way.”
Lani popped up behind Alva with a carton of vanilla ice cream and a big metal scoop. “A la mode! After this early heat wave we've been having, we're all taste testing this one.”
Franco groaned. “I'm so glad you talked me into staying,” he said around a mouthful of ice cream and pie. “But I'm going to hate you in the morning. Fair warning.”
“It's really wonderful,” Honey agreed. “Like your own individual cupcake.”
“Only it's pie,” Kit said, her eyes closed in bliss as she licked her spoon. “I'm sorry. I know cupcakes are my future, but Alva, this is a genius tribute to my past.”
“Well, you're the one who helped figure out the recipe,” Alva said, but it was clear she was loving the adoration and praise.
Lani and Honey ended up at the industrial kitchen sink at the same time with their empty tins and spoons. “I haven't had the chance to even tell you,” Lani said, “but Morgan put together a folder for you. It has all the documentsâcopies of the lease agreement, the licenses, and inspections we went through during renovations, including the agreement signatures of the management companyâokaying every change.”
“Lani, I didn't think you did anything wrongâ”
“I know, but I still feel like I've put you out on the curb. And as my new landlord, you'll need all of this stuff, anyway.”
“I got copies of most of it this morning from the courthouse and management company, but it'll be good to have both sets in case I've missed anything.”
“So . . . it's true, about the bookstore space?” Lani clasped a hand to her chest. “I have to tell you, I'm so relieved and excited for you. Is itâare you okay with it?”
“I'm a little overwhelmed, to be honest. It's bigger and in need of an undetermined amount of work because it's been empty so long.” Honey couldn't stop the smile from turning up the corners of her mouth. “But I am excited. It's really the perfect space. Better than Bea's would have been, to be honest, if I can get it where I want to. I'll know more in the next few days after I get it looked over.”
“Oh! I can give you a list of everyone who did work for me, renovating this place and Bea'sâwith notes on who to use, and who to run screaming from.”
Honey laughed. “Thank you. That's a big help.”
“I almost hate to ask this because things seem to be turning out decently, but . . . have you figured out where you'll be staying?”
“Staying? Oh, I'll . . .” Honey more or less froze. She'd been so focused on the should sheâshouldn't she question of taking Dylan up on his offer, she hadn't even thought about that part. She couldn't afford to keep paying B&B rates for a room, so . . . huh. “I haven't figured that part out yet,” she admitted. “Maybe I'll camp out at the store space, at least for the time being. It would be convenient, anyway.”
Not to mention cost-effective.
Lani frowned. “I haven't been in any of those buildings, but I know they've been closed up for at least a decade or more. I can't imagine it's livable, at least not before you do some work to it. Plumbing, lighting, air, I mean. You have no ideaâ”
“I know,” Honey said. “Don't remind me.”
“I'm sorry,” Lani said, instantly contrite. “I'm not trying to rain on your parade. When I found this little place empty and made the decision to relocate here permanently to stay close to my dad, and to start something under my own name it was terrifying and thrilling all at the same time. If anyone had told me how hard it was going to be to get it up and running, I'd have hopped the next train back to New York. All I can say is, there will be those days, a lot of them, but hang in there.” A smile creased her face that was nothing short of blissful. “It's all worth it, trust me. And then some.”
“I hope so,” Honey said, intimidated and bolstered. “Don't worry about the rest of it. I'll figure it out. I did want to ask you one thing. No one seems to know where my aunt might have stored her personal things. I found out she took most of her furniture and things like that when she moved to the senior center, but none of her personal effectsâthe things she gathered over a lifetime, her mementos, photo albums, that sort of thingâare at the center. Neither her attorney nor the management company have them, either. I thought she was still living over her shop, so is it possible she left anything there? Or had it stored somewhere on the island when she moved to Savannah?”
“She did!” Lani put her hand to her forehead. “I'm so sorry. I completely forgot about that. We turned the upstairs into Kit's office and storage, but yes, yes, there is a big old steamer trunk and some other boxes. I was going to ask the management company what to do with them, but never got around to it. They're tucked in a back corner and, honestly . . . I sort of forgot about them. I'm so sorry!”
“No, no, that's okay.” Honey's heart squeezed and emotion choked her throat, so it took a moment before she could continue. She'd have something of her aunt's after all, and she hadn't realized how much that really meant to her. “I'll . . . I'll arrange to have it all moved over to the shop space. I'm justâ”
She paused, dipped her chin, and pushed at the corners of her eyes. “Thank you,” she said, smiling through the glimmer of tears. “Truly. It's all been such a shock, but that makes it more bearable, more . . . tangible. Iâthank you.”
“You let us know whenever you're ready and I'll have it taken over. No hurry. If you want to go up and look through it all before moving stuff, that's fine, too. Whatever is good for you. I feel so bad. If Kit wasn't still living in the apartment upstairs over this place, I'd invite you there, but with Morgan having Lilly and all, they're being a bit more careful about her staying at his place andâ”
“Stop. It's fine,” Honey said, realizing it really was. “Nothing may be going as I'd thought it would, but it's all going. I've got something to work toward and that's all I really wanted. Meeting you all tonight, having everyone so open, and so . . . understanding has been great. You can't know how much that means to me. You really can't.”
“I can't claim to know what it's like to be that isolated, no,” Lani said. “My life in pastry kitchens was the exact opposite. I might have wished I had your life then.” She laughed. “And I'll have you know it's still killing me not to hug you right now. But I do know something about wanting to start over, wanting something for yourself . . . to be respected for your work, and to build something worth growing. I got so much more than I ever bargained for, coming here. If you talk to Kit or Charlotte or Riley or Franco, they'll all tell you the same thing. You came to the right place, Honey. None of us are ânormal,' you know?” She grinned as she made quotes.
“It's like the island of misfit toys, only we're bakers and stylists and . . . well . . . and carvers. I can't wait to see your work. I can't even imagine looking at a chunk of wood or a lump of clay and seeing something in it.
“I can't imagine looking at butter, eggs, flour, and sugar and whipping up the things you do. I'm lucky to scramble an egg and make a decent piece of toast.”
“Well, you come to our bitchy bake nights and we'll make a baker out of you yet. Or just give you a place to bitch. Trust me . . . you're going to need it.”
Honey laughed. “Gee, thanks. I mean that. And I might take you up on it. The bitching and the baking. I know I will master the first, but you have your work cut out for you with the second.”
There was a knock on the back door, right next to where they were standing. Honey looked over to spy Dylan on the other side of the screen door. It was pitch black outside. She glanced at the clock on the opposite wall, shocked to discover it was after ten o'clock. She looked back and caught Dylan's gaze.
He touched two fingers to his forehead in a little salute. “Taxi service, ma'am.”
Lani looked at Dylan, smiled, then looked back at Honey, then back at Dylan . . . and her smile grew wider. She leaned closer to Honey and, out of the corner of her mouth, whispered, “I know I'm totally stepping over all boundaries here and risking the start of a very good friendship, but if a guy who looked like him looked at me the way he's looking at you . . .”
From the corner of her mouth, Honey said, “You forget, I know what your husband looks like.”
Lani's grin was broad and devilishly wicked. “Exactly. And I married him.” She looked at Lani and winked. “Just sayin'.”
“Not before he had to all but drag her by the hair into his proverbial man cave,” Charlotte put in. She had come up to stand behind them. “Whereas I, on the other hand, jumped Carlo at the very earliest opportunity. And every chance I got after that. Still do, in fact.
“Yes, but you're a slut,” Lani said in the way only best friends could.
“Unrepentant-until-I'm-too-tired-to-see-straight slut,” Charlotte responded with that elegant accent of hers that made it much more amusing. She glanced at Honey. “And trust me, we have way more fun. Lani knows this to be true as well. Once you join the unrepentant slut club, you never go back. It's all about finding the suitable member of the opposite sex for initiation.”
“And I've heard he has a very suitable . . . member,” Lani murmured, then snickered, while Charlotte kept a perfect ladylike smile on her face.
Honey's mouth dropped open.
“You comin', sugar?” Dylan asked quite innocently.
All three women choked on gales of laughter. The deeper his scowl, the harder they laughed.
Alva came over and pressed a paper bag into Honey's hands. “Give him some pie and he won't be so surly. I put a few in there.” She leaned closer. “Bribe as needed.”
Honey took the bag, hung up her apron, and thanked everyone. “I'll come back by tomorrow to get the folder and talk about . . . everything.”
“Everything?” Lani asked, and Charlotte wiggled her eyebrows.
Honey almost lost it all over again, but managed to leave through the screen door Dylan held open before he abandoned her there for the night, leaving her to walk back to the B&B. It suddenly occurred to her she probably wouldn't have had to walk back. She could have asked any number of people for a ride. Her people.
“Good night, I take it?” Dylan asked as they crossed the alley.
She looked at him and beamed. “The best. Dylan, I have friends!”
Chapter 13
F
or the next week and a half, it was the memory of that smile on her face that kept Dylan from wishing he'd never offered to let her move in next door. Not because she was pestering him with questions or asking for his help, quite the opposite. Her bike would be parked in the alley behind the bookstore when he arrived at his garage in the morning and would still be there when he closed up shop at night. The only way to see her or talk to her was to poke his head in and see how she was doing.
She'd always stop whatever she was doing and make time to talk with him, bring him up to date on how things were going, but he could see her mind was racing on to the million and one things she had to doâall of which were detailed on the clipboard never far from her hand. He'd managed to go thirty-one years without having her around, so why it was bugging him that she was so unavailable to him he had no idea.
“Dude, you're pouting. Not cool. You need to man up.”
Dylan lifted his head from working on Honey's old Beetle to give Dell a withering glare. Of course, Dell being Dell, it didn't so much as faze him.
“Chicks don't dig it when guys get clingy.”
Dylan bent back over the engine. “For your information, I don't pout and I don't cling. Never have, don't plan on starting now.” He caught his knuckle on the carburetor piston valve spring and swore a blue streak, thankful for the opportunity. He sucked at the blood, spit out the grease, then pressed the gash against his T-shirt until it stopped bleeding. “Least she could do is ask about how things turned out with Frank,” he muttered. “Ask someone a favor, you should follow up. That's all I'm sayin'.”
“You should ask her out on a date. Get her out of the shop and away from work.” Dell looked up from shelving air filters and lining up quarts of synthetic oil and grinned. “Then she can focus all her attention and make it all about you.”
“I hired you, you know. I can fire you.”
“Then who will be nice to your customers? Who will talk to Mrs. Bingle three times a day when she brings her car in every other week, convinced that her late husband jinxed it before he died? And who will listen to Ned Stultz tell us how he worked on Jeeps in the Army, and if anyone knows how to take apart and put together an engine, it's him? Of course, that does his Cadillac no good whatsoever. And whoâ”
“Okay, okay. Anyone ever tell you you're annoying as hell?”
Dell grinned. “Daily. And they're all grateful to you for offering me a job and keeping me out of their hair and off the mean streets of Sugarberry.”
“Don't be a smartass.”
“Too late for that.”
Dylan shook his head as a smile creased the corners of his mouth, thankful the hood of the car prevented Dell from it. For all the kid talked like a seasoned veteran of dating and life, he was all of fourteen and had never been anywhere farther than Savannah. Still, he was fourteen going on forty. Too smart for his own good and twice as observant. He was some kind of kid genius who'd been doing college level schoolwork by the time he hit middle school age.
Patsy Miller, his poor mother whom Dylan had known since their own high school days, was a single mom who had tried her best to keep Dell grounded and involved with other kids his age. She'd finally given in and let him graduate early and start taking courses at the community college just over the causeway. Problem was, she worked full-time on the other side of Savannah, and had been at her wits' end, since the kid wasn't even old enough to drive yet.
Fortunately for Dylan, the kid's freakish knowledge extended to car engines. Unlike Ned Stultz, Dylan was pretty sure Dell could actually take apart and put a Jeep engine, or any engine, back together . . . probably blindfolded. The kid could look at a diagram or schematic one time and know it by heart. Same with shop manuals.
He'd hired the boy part-time right after opening up the new location. It helped Dylan out, and gave Dell a place to be when he wasn't in class. Dylan had helped find the old motorbike Dell had bought with money he'd saved up from birthdays and Christmas since he'd been ten or eleven. They'd found salvage parts and an old manual, and Dell had fixed the thing up so now he had a way to get over the bridge to class and to work.
While his constant stream of chatter might annoy Dylan no end, truth was, the customers loved it and him. Dell's winning smile and his tow-headed, brown-eyed good looks that made him seem like the poster boy for the Got Milk campaign and the Boy Scouts all rolled into one didn't hurt matters, either. The older women fawned over him like a beloved grandson and the men all thought he was a fine, upstanding young man, a role model for American youth. God help Dylan when the kid was old enough that the women started flirting with him and the guys started leaning on him to go out for a beer and shoot some pool.
Had he asked for that headache? No, he had not. He didn't want to worry about the kid, much less what kind of young man he was going to become. All he'd wanted was some part-time help. If it allowed Patsy not to worry so much about her kid, so much the better.
“So, have you asked her out? I mean, like on a real date? Because women really digâ”
“Just what is it you think you know about women, anyway? You're like, twelve.”
“I'll be fifteen in five months, three weeks, four days and”âhe glanced at the wall clockâ“about five hours. Mom went into labor with me at three in the morning on a Tuesday, but it took her seventeen hoursâ”
“Spare me. Please.”
Dell switched gears without even taking a breath. “Even if you just take her to Laura Jo's for lunch or something, I bet she'd really like that. She hasn't met all that many folks yet. Everyone is talking about her.”
Dylan straightened and looked around the hood of the car. “Talking about her how?”
“Oh, you know, new person on the island kind of thing. I guess there's some chatter about her being Bea's niece and all. Folks are wondering if she's got Miss Bea's . . . you know . . . mad skills. Not mad as in, you know,
crazy
. It's just an expression. It means, like amazing orâ”
“I know what it means.”
“I was the first one to meet her, you know. When she got here, I mean. I thought she was cool. Funky glasses, sick artwork, like stitched right to her jeans. She didn't seem much like Miss Bea at all. I mean, Miss Bea was all grandmotherly and awesome, but Miss Honey, she's young and so cool.”
“Too old for me, I know,” he quickly added when Dylan's eyebrows rose. “I heard she, you know, knows things even more than Miss Bea did, way more. Mrs. Hughes was saying how she kept Mr. Hughes from getting himself killed, keeping him off John John Hughes's trawler last Monday before that storm came up.”
“I kept Frank Hughes off John John's trawler last Monday.”
“Right, yeah, but after it all worked out, Miss Honey told Mrs. Hughes she was thankful he hadn't been hurt and I guess it all came out about how she had some kind of spooky-like vision of him getting gaffed in the thigh. How awesome is that? It's like she's got a superpower.”
Dylan scowled and ducked back under the hood. Drag his ass into meddling with folks and then come right on out and tell them she had a premonition. Why even bother getting him to do the dirty work for her, that's what he wanted to know. Probably just as well they weren't spending time together. Probably a sign he should get his focus back on his work and leave her to getting the shop ready for the inspectors to come check it out, see what kind of code issues she was dealing with.
That reminded him. He needed to tell her he had a guy who'd handle any electrical problems she might have for little more than cost. The guy owed him a favor for digging up a part for his '76 Mustang Cobra.
Dylan swore under his breath. It was like she'd taken up permanent residence inside his brain. He really did need to stop thinking about her, get her damn car fixed, and get back to life as usual. She was staying and she'd be working right next door. That didn't mean they had to push things between them, personally.
So he'd gotten a little caught up in it, in her. It had been a while and that was probably part of it . . . and the heat made folks do things they might not otherwise do. The storm had come, blown the heat out with it, and spring weather had returned . . . along with his sanity.
At least that's what he kept telling himself.
“Folks are wondering if she'll, you know, help them out, like Miss Bea did. You think she'll be taking appointments for that kind of thing? I read up on it a little andâ”
“No, she won't be taking appointments. She's an artist, not aâshe's an artist, and that's it, okay? The only thing she's going to help anyone do is add a few grins to their gardens and knickknack shelves and maybe teach them to whittle or sculpt something. Don't go bugging her about that other stuff, you hear?”
When Dell didn't respond, Dylan ducked around the hood again. “I mean it, Dell. She didn't come here for that.”
Dell wasn't paying attention to him. He was looking out the open bay door, frowning. Dylan followed his gaze and saw the thin trail of smoke.
“I think it's coming from next door,” Dell said.
“Shit.” Dylan tossed his wrench in the tool box, grabbed the grease rag, and was still wiping his hands as he ran next door. He started to pound on the door, but decided there was no time for that and tried the knob.
Unlocked, thank God.
No smoke in the immediate storage room and the door wasn't hot to the touch, but as soon as he opened it, he could see the gray haze in the front room. “Honey?” he called out. “Honey!”
He tried not to let visions of the last time he'd run into a smoke-filled building fill his brain, but it was pretty damn impossible not to. It made his bark a bit louder than absolutely necessary; the smoke was little more than a thin haze. Maybe he'd caught it just in time.
He heard coughing coming from just past the bathroom and break room, and ran to that door. Also not hot to the touch, it led to the other ground floor back room. “Honey?” he called out as he opened the door . . . only to stop just inside, where he found her crouched on the floor.
She was hunched over a small hibachi, having just squelched what appeared to be a little grease fire. Or breakfast. A huge industrial size fan was propped up on the top of a big steamer trunk, running loudly at full force, trying to suck the smoke out and force it through the small window that had barely been cranked open.
“What in the hell are you doing?”
She let out short squeal of surprise and leaped to her feet, almost upending the hibachi and the fan in the process. Hand clutched to her chest, she turned on him. “Holy crap, I think you just took five years off my life.”
“I've been shouting your name, but I guess you couldn't hear me over the vortex of fans here. What the hell happened?”
She scowled at him as she crouched back down and tried to fork off some charred black ruins that appeared permanently adhered to the grill surface. “Nothing. I just got caught up with some stuff I'm clearing out upstairs and sort of forgot I was making breakfast.”
It was only then that Dylan had the presence of mind to look around the room, spying a futon, an open suitcase, a small cooler, the stack of boxes she'd retrieved from her car when she'd moved into the Hughes's place, and the rest of the stuff she'd hauled out of the car earlier in the week.
“Are you . . . living here?”
“Would that be violating some other kind of code? Never mind, don't answer that. I just got off the phone with the inspector who came by yesterday and I'm pretty sure there is no code left that I'm not already in violation of, so what's one more?”
He couldn't recall ever seeing her so out of sorts. It shouldn't have wanted to make him smile, but given he'd been out of sorts for the past week and a half, it seemed only fair. “I'll take a look at the list. Maybe I can help.”
“I didn't ask for your help. I can figure it out.”
Grinning, he entered the room. Fully cognizant that he was risking sending her into a vision, or possibly getting whacked upside the head with a burnt hibachi, he gently took her arm and hauled her to her feet.
She didn't jerk her arm away, neither did she bean him with anything, or go all weird in the face, so he took that as encouragement and tugged her closer. “Bad day, sugar? Week, maybe?”
She ducked her chin and let out a long breath, swore through another one, which made him chuckle. Before she could punch him, or worse, he pulled her into his arms and tipped her face up to his. “Getting a place up and going sucks. I know. More bad days than good at first. But it gets better.”
“I know, butâ”
“Shh. It gets better faster when you let folks who are willing to help out do just that. Like I said, you'll have ample opportunity to repay the favors down the line.”
“I appreciate that, I do. It's just the inspector wasâpardon my languageâa real . . . jerkface.”
“Jerkface, huh. Wow.”
She lowered one brow and scowled. “Okay, he was a completely asinine, wholly arrogant, condescending dickwad. There, I said it.”
“Feel better?”
“Some.” She said it grudgingly, and tried to shift her gaze to a point past his shoulder.
It struck him that this was the first time he'd really had her in his arms, at least, in the traditional way. He was rather enjoying how well they matched up. He shifted slightly until he caught her gaze again. “I can think of something that might take that
some
and turn it into
more
.”