“You told Joey your boss is magnetic and inviting?”
“Sure. It keeps my guy on his toes. Makes him want to come home in one piece to win the magnetic contest. Hey, Mr. Edmunds!” she called out.
“Hey, ladies.” He sat down on Jenna’s other side and quickly averted his gaze to the field below. “Great game, huh?”
She exchanged a look with Amber and they snickered.
Jenna said, “If you want an enlightened view on that subject, you’ve come to the wrong bleacher.”
“You two don’t have a clue.” He half stood, punched the air, and shouted a cheer along with everyone else on the bleachers. “Yes! Way to go, guys!”
Jenna smiled at Amber’s exaggerated yawn.
Still applauding, Cade sat back down. “You gotta tell Kevin about this. His guys are out there doing what he tried to get them to do all last year. It has come together.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe her. “Tell him the offensive line really jelled.”
“Huh?”
Eyes still on the game, Cade said, “The offensive line jelled. Think of it as the most exquisite dénouement in some Shakespeare play. That’s what you’re seeing down there, all the pieces coming together to execute a work of art.” He threw a brief smile her way. “Maybe when it’s over, you can remember who wins and tell him that too.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “I might even manage to memorize the score.”
He chuckled. Bracing one foot on the empty bleacher below them, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his lightweight jacket. An elbow touched her arm. “I hear they’re doing military salutes everywhere these days. At concerts, Padres games, the zoo, Sea World.” He paused. “Sundance High football game.”
Jenna tensed.
“It was the team’s idea. We’ve got three players with brothers overseas, plus a few dozen other students with some relative in uniform. Then there’s the faculty.”
Amber sighed. “Are these boys sweet or what?”
Jenna slid to the edge of the bleacher, put her weight on her feet, ready to flee. “When?”
“Right about . . .” Cade looked at the scoreboard and counted down the seconds. “Three, two, one. Now.” The horn blared. “Before the team heads off the field.”
The announcer’s voice boomed through the loudspeaker, asking people to remain in their seats for a moment. As he explained what was going on, Jenna met Cade’s stare.
“Jenna, they’re his guys. They need to do this.” He shifted. His shoulder pressed gently against hers.
On her other side, Amber hooked an arm through Jenna’s, not saying a word.
Jenna turned to her. The dim light caught the glisten of a teardrop on Amber’s eyelashes.
If not for being tightly hemmed in by Amber and Cade, Jenna would have bolted down the bleachers and gotten lost in the crowd rather than hear it again. Like at the faculty meeting, names of military personnel were read along with their family members, first students, then faculty. Amber stood. Just as it seemed they might have forgotten Kevin Mason, the announcer began to talk about him.
About his accomplishments at the high school the previous year.
About his impact on the boys whose older brothers had gone overseas.
About his prior service in the Marines.
About his wife.
At last his name was pronounced.
Then Jenna’s.
As one, the football team looked up at her and cheered. Spectators joined in and began to stand until it all became an earsplitting ovation.
Amber motioned for her to stand.
She couldn’t. She didn’t deserve recognition just because she was married to Kevin. All she did was cry, curse the USMC, complain about his absence, and count the days until he would come home. Last fall, when he reenlisted, she had even separated from him for a while and could not imagine how she’d ever remain married to such a man. He looked heroic to some. To her, though, his actions felt like abandonment.
Cade still sat beside her. He slanted toward her. “You can do this.”
His face blurred before her. She shook her head.
“The kids need you to.” In the shadows he took her hand and helped her to her feet.
The crowd went wild. Jenna bawled.
And Cade Edmunds squeezed her hand.
D
aniel Beaumont, what is wrong with you?” Claire practically hissed in frustration at her son.
She was keeping her voice lower than low because—as she was quickly learning—guests at the hacienda meant absolutely no privacy for the hosts. None. Not one square inch of it in over three hundred acres.
One woman had chatted with Skylar the whole time the girl baked cookies for tonight’s bedtime snack. One couple followed Lexi around as she watered new plants, advising her on the best way to care for the landscape. Another woman had even wandered into Claire and Max’s bedroom and caught Max mid-shirt change.
And the weekend was only six hours old!
Claire vowed to order several Employees Only signs. The ones she had vowed not to order. The ones she had vowed not to post would be going up ASAP.
“Mom, I’ll carry that.” Danny took the empty lasagna pan from her.
They were in the sala, at the buffet near the dining table, cleaning up after dinner. For the moment, no guest was in sight.
She put a hand on his arm. “Don’t change the subject.”
“Nothing’s wrong with—”
“You’re bugging Skylar and you’re bugging me. Why are you here tonight anyway?”
“I told you,” he whispered back, his brows nearly touching above his nose.
That was true. His roommate Hawk had driven up to see Tuyen. It had become evident the two were enamored with each other. Danny said he simply thought he’d tag along and help out.
Claire said, “I’m not buying it. You came to meddle.”
“And how exactly do you figure that?”
She pressed her lips together and willed herself to slow down. Danny had challenged her since day one, yelling at the top of his newborn lungs, demanding attention a full five minutes before any of them realized his twin sister waited in the wings.
Unlike with her other three children, solid parent-child lines of demarcation did not exist with Danny. Through the years their relationship had often resembled either argumentative siblings or one of total role reversal. Even as a teenager Danny could play the wise father and chasten Claire. Despite his sometimes legalistic opinions that had grown more exasperating in recent years, his connection with God began long before she understood for herself what it was to relate to the Lord.
And she thought she was growing into the matriarchal role of the Beaumont family, sliding on into Indio’s shoes! Mm-hmm, right. In her dreams.
She fixed a stare on Danny now. He was still a cute kid with curly hair and eyes less the color of Max’s and more that of her brother’s. Her favorite brother, the one who had moved to Alaska to get his head on straight. That was over thirty years ago. He was still there. Oh, how she prayed Danny wouldn’t turn out like her brother.
Danny didn’t flinch, but stared right back. “Hmm? How?”
“By quizzing my cook. She is part of this household, and you dogging her all evening while she’s trying to work is not acceptable. If and when she’s ready, she can tell us all about her life, but not this weekend and not to you between courses. Got that?”
He relaxed his hunched shoulders, and his eyebrows separated. “Remember Gunther and Faith?”
“Of course I do.” Claire leaned sideways against the buffet. Danny’s childhood friends, their families, and the Beaumonts often got together for holidays and birthdays. “I remember it was almost spooky how they changed so drastically. Their whole personalities transformed practically overnight.”
“Mm-hmm. Skylar’s spooky, too, Mom.”
“Skylar?”
“She dresses and acts like them. Behind that whole New Age, bohemian, save-the-whales persona lies a blatant disdain for all things establishment. My old friends wouldn’t be caught dead working here with four traditional types and their likeminded guests. Why would Skylar?”
Claire burst into laughter. “You think we’re establishment? Good grief!” Her voice lost its whispery level. “Your father sold his life’s work and I dropped thirty years’ worth of social and volunteer commitments overnight. We moved to the sticks to chase a crazy pipe dream! It is so crazy I may start smoking your grandpa’s pipe, even before this first weekend is over!”
“Trust me, your new cook knows where to buy the opium to put in it.”
“Danny, that’s nonsense. This is all about you. I know you stopped hanging out with Faith and Gunther because they got in too deep, but I also suspect they left you in the dust and didn’t bother to look back.”
He shook his head vehemently. “It was my decision.”
“Oh, honey, they betrayed you simply by embracing things you wouldn’t buy into. You can’t deny that didn’t hurt.”
“Okay, okay. So they hurt my feelings. That was eons ago. I’m over it, but I know better now. Their type can’t be trusted, and Skylar Pierson could easily pass for their clone.”
Claire saw the chink in his armor—a gaping, unhealed wound she couldn’t fix or even address yet. “Methinks thou doth protest too much.”
“Mom.”
In his resistant tone, she heard immaturity and thought again of her brother. Despite his spiritual maturity, Danny had a ways to go yet to find his true self.
Smiling softly, she patted his cheek. “Whatever. Just please don’t move to Alaska.”
S
kylar set a cup of chamomile tea on the island counter and decided against telling Claire she looked like a zombie. “Sit and sip.”
“I should—”
“Nope. It’s break time. No ‘shoulds’ for the next ten minutes. Everything is under control. Dishwashers are running. Guests are doing their own thing. Tomorrow’s breakfast is all prepped. I will put milk, tea, and cookies on the buffet at nine.”
Claire sighed, slid onto a stool, and wrapped her hands around the cup. “Okay. Thank you.”
“Sure.” Skylar wiped a dish towel across the countertop. “So Danny says you want to take up pipe smoking.”
Claire groaned.
Skylar chuckled. When Danny told her that, his mood had actually been mellow. So mellow, in fact, she thanked him for his help with bringing dirty dishes in from the sala. His mouth twitch had escalated to smile status. Briefly, but for real.
She folded up the towel and looked at a decidedly non–movie star version of Claire Beaumont. “Claire,” she said, “are you having a good time yet?”
“A good time?” Claire squinted in thought. “Well, honestly, I . . . No, I don’t think so.”
“It’s only your first night.”
“Yeah.” There was not a hopeful note in her mumble.
“If you don’t mind my asking, why did you and Max start this business?”
Claire sighed. “In a nutshell, we desperately needed a new life. After thirty-some years of growing apart, we were either going to divorce or grow back together.”
“That’s heavy. No middle ground to shoot for?”
She shook her head. “Middle ground was a dead end. Ages ago, when we fell in love, we imagined a shared life of helping others by helping them find work. That turned into his one-man show while my show became kids and the home.”
“It’s a common scenario.”
“Unfortunately, you’re right. Anyway, Ben and Indio created the Hacienda Hideaway when she retired from nursing. It was low-key. Advertising was word-of-mouth and local. After the fire came through here, they didn’t want to start all over. Max and I saw it as a perfect opportunity for us to start over in all ways.”
A faraway expression came over Claire’s face. She stopped talking for a long moment.
“The thing is, what Max and I learned during our rough time was that we didn’t offer each other an emotionally safe harbor. We should have been a place of retreat for each other, a relationship that offered peace and restoration.” Her eyes focused back on Skylar. “That’s why we started this. We wanted to create a safe respite where people could retreat from whatever and be healed. Or at least strengthened and encouraged.”
A tight feeling crept from Skylar’s chest into her throat. Startled at a rare desire to cry, she ground her teeth together and willed it away.
Claire said, “Does any of that make sense?”
Skylar nodded and swallowed with way too much difficulty. “Yeah.” She took a deep breath. “The thing is, well, it’s not the wallpaper that makes a safe harbor.” Again she had to set her jaw and tamp down the buildup of tears.
“What do you mean?”
“In the twenty-four hours I’ve been here, I’ve watched you fluff pillows, line dresser drawers with scented paper, color coordinate towels and sheets, replan meals, and arrange flowers. You’ve created an unbelievably comfortable, homey ambience.”
“Thanks.” Claire tilted her head. “There’s a ‘but’ in your voice.”
“But all that is not the safe harbor.” Skylar leaned forward, her forearms on the countertop, her tone urgent. “Earlier I saw you with the cleaning women and the construction guys. You treated them like they were family. Then tonight with the guests you went all stiff, like you’ve blended in with the wallpaper, like you’re just part of the décor.”
“I want them to feel like this is home for them for the next couple days.”
“Claire, there is no home without personality. You’re the personality. You’re the safe harbor.”
Surprise registered on the woman’s face. “Really?”
Skylar nodded.
Claire grabbed a napkin from a nearby holder and held it to her eyes. Skylar gazed around the room, biting her tongue.
At last Claire looked at her with red eyes. “Hon, I’m quite sure we’re not paying you what you’re worth.”
The term of endearment struck Skylar like a blow to the solar plexus. Or maybe Claire Beaumont’s very own, thousand-watt grin was to blame.
Either way, life at the hacienda had just gotten way too complicated.
E
ight and a half long days after talking with Kevin, Jenna sat on the low seawall—face toward the ocean, sandaled feet dangling above the sand, Cade Edmunds beside her—and she counted the fibs.
Fib number one: she had come to the beach that Saturday because she was shopping in the neighborhood.