Be My Love (A Walker Island Romance Book 1) (3 page)

Together, they headed through the entry and into the kitchen. The big old house that had held so many generations of Walkers wasn’t a mansion, but could easily accommodate five energetic kids running around. The kitchen was the largest room in the house, with a big dining table around which the whole family could fit to eat.

Hanna wasn’t surprised to see a man in a plaid shirt and jeans working beneath the sink. Michael Bennet had moved in with the Walkers for a few years as a teenager when he’d lost his parents. Hanna had always looked at him as a big brother. All of her sisters did. Well, all except Emily, who could never quite hide her emotions whenever she looked at the dark-eyed, dark-haired man who was always underfoot....

When he spotted her, Michael quickly moved to his feet to pull her into a warm hug. “I thought we’d gotten rid of you to Seattle for good. I’m glad to see I was wrong about that.”

“Does Emily know you’re fiddling with her sink?” Hanna countered with a big grin as she hugged him back just as hard.

“No, but she does now,” Hanna’s oldest sister said from the kitchen door.

Hanna had often thought that Emily was the prettiest of them all, even if some days it seemed like she was too busy to make much of an effort. Today, she had her hair tied back, and she hadn’t bothered putting on any makeup, which would have horrified Morgan’s makeup-artist soul. Emily had always been so much more than a big sister, having stepped up to take care of all of them after their mother passed away.

“Welcome home, Hanna,” Emily said as she also gave her a hug, before turning to Michael. “You didn’t leave your crew down at Mrs. Hellman’s house to come fix our sink, did you?”

“Ava asked me to have a look at it. And now,” he said as he flipped the faucet up and water poured out into the sink, “you don’t have to do it.”

Hanna watched the play of emotions roll across her big sister’s face: pleasure at being near Michael, which turned into longing for more, before Emily tamped down on all of it.

“Thank you,” Emily finally said, “for fixing it just in time for me to get dinner started for everyone. Are you going to stay to eat with us?”

Michael’s eyes were full of the same longing Hanna had just seen in her sister’s eyes as he watched Emily efficiently move to the fridge and pull out three bell peppers. “Only if you think you’ll have enough.”

Seriously, how many years were the two of them going to do this dance with each other?
Frustrated by both of them, Hanna sat down with her grandmother at the kitchen table and said, “She always makes enough.” When both Michael and Emily looked surprised by her tone, she immediately apologized. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound snarky.”

Her grandmother reached for her hand. “What is it, Hanna? What’s wrong?”

She knew she’d feel better if she got everything off her chest, but at the same time, she hated spoiling things in her first few moments back home by complaining about her film...and Joel.

When she didn’t immediately spill her guts, her grandmother squeezed her hand. “Whatever problems you might be having, if you’ll talk to us about them, I’m sure we can put our minds together to find a way to work things out.”

“Not if Joel Peterson has anything to say about it, it won’t,” Hanna replied with more force than she intended. “I just went to see him in his office, actually.”

“You went to see the Peterson boy?” Ava said, her eyebrows raised in surprise.

“He’s not a boy anymore, Grams,” Emily said, putting down a plate of crackers, cheese and fruit for them to munch on before dinner. “He’s the head of Peterson shipping now and is only a couple of years younger than me.”

“What did Joel do to upset you so much?” Michael asked as he loaded up a cracker with two slices of sharp cheddar.

“I’m only provisionally accepted into grad school and I have to do a piece that’s good enough to truly earn my spot. Something with
heart.
” Hanna resisted the urge to slam her hand onto the table top in frustration. She knew from her teenage tantrums that the Walker family table was
much
harder than her hand. “But now that Joel has blocked my access to the archives, the project I was working on is dead in the water.”

“Why did you want access to the archives?” Ava asked.

Hanna thought about Joel’s parting words. He’d seemed to be under the impression that her grandmother wouldn’t like it when she told her what she was doing. Yet that couldn’t be right, could it? The Peterson-Walker feud was all in the past now. And yet, at the same time, Hanna sensed that it was a story that needed to be told.

“I want to make a documentary on the Peterson-Walker split.”

“Are you crazy?” Emily asked.

Hanna stared at her older sister in shock.
Are you crazy
was precisely the sort of thing school guidance counselors weren’t supposed to say. Besides, her sister had always been so supportive. Anything Hanna needed, Emily—and the rest of her sisters—had helped her with in the past. If anything, the problem was that they sometimes tried to help too much.

“The island feud is the perfect subject for a documentary. There’s history and tension, and I’ve got great archival sources, plus Grams is the one living person who really remembers what happened.”

“Only, now Joel doesn’t want you to have access to the archives,” Ava gently pointed out.

“It’s all for the best,” Emily said as she pushed her knife into the bell pepper. “There are plenty of other things on the island that you could make a documentary about.”

“Like what?” Hanna asked her sister, barely managing to keep the snark from seeping out again. “The whale migration?”

“Sure, why not?”

“I’m not interested in making a wildlife documentary,” Hanna insisted. “And even if I was, I couldn’t get access to the expensive cameras I’d need for that.”

“Okay, then don’t make it about the whales. How about the disappearance of the Snohomish from our island two hundred years ago? No one has ever done a good job of explaining what happened. You could look into the theories behind it.”

“You’re right,” Hanna said. “Someone should definitely do a documentary about the disappearance of the Snohomish. But I’m not the right person to tell that story. Not when what I really want to do—and what I
need
to do if I’m going to have any chance of securing my spot in the graduate program—is make a film about something close to me. Something that’s close to the heart of what I truly care about.”

“If you really cared,” Emily said, “you wouldn’t go dragging Grams into this. You’re kicking a hornet’s nest here. And all for what? Some documentary? Do you really think people want to watch a show about some stupid family fight that belongs in the past? Are you trying to hurt people, Hanna?”

Hanna didn’t think she’d seen her sister genuinely angry with her before. Occasionally exasperated, yes, but never angry. “No, of course I’m not trying to hurt anyone!” she shot back, “but—”

“Enough, both of you.”

Ava didn’t say it loudly, but Hanna and Emily both immediately fell silent. It was just like when they were children and Rachel and Morgan would be fighting to be the center of attention. Grams was the only one with the knack for getting them to stop. “Now, Emily, Hanna, do you two girls really want to argue?”

Hanna shook her head. Emily did the same.

“I just don’t want Hanna doing something that’s going to hurt you,” Emily said.

“I’m not going to do that,” Hanna insisted. “I just want to interview you, Grams, to find out what really happened back then and how you felt about it.”

“And I want my granddaughters to be able to follow their dreams, even if it’s painful.” She gave each of them a small smile. “When Morgan left to pursue her career in TV off the island, I know it was very bittersweet for all of us. It hurt, not seeing her, but at least we all know that she is doing what she loves. All of you should do the things that you love.”

When Emily opened her mouth to say something else, Michael gently put a hand on her arm. Whatever it was that silently passed between them had her turning her focus back to the vegetables she was cutting.

“If this documentary is a step along the path to following your dreams,” Ava told her, “then I support you. Just as I know your sisters will.”

“Thank you, Grams. You’re the best,” Hanna said as she threw her arms around her grandmother. Without the archives, she’d be missing a lot of the information, but interviewing Ava would hopefully cut through most of the problems. And she wouldn’t have to worry about Joel anymore. “By the time you get back from the studio, Grams, I’ll have my camera set up, and then—”

Ava held up a hand. “I want you to follow your dreams, but at the same time, I won’t be able to give you the interview that you want, darling.”

“Why not?”

“I made a promise a long time ago. One I can’t break.”

“But if I can’t interview you, and I can’t go into the archives, how will I make this work?”

“You’ll find a way,” Ava said with utter confidence. “And maybe…well, maybe once you do make your documentary, it will finally be time that this story was told. But no matter what bumps you may hit along the road, I want you to make a promise to me to keep following your dreams, Hanna.”

“Of course I will, but—”

Her grandmother stood before she could finish her sentence. “Now, I’d best be getting down to the dance studio. It’s lovely to have you home.” With a kiss on Hanna’s cheek, Ava left.

CHAPTER FOUR

Joel wasn’t in his office, but fortunately the island was small enough that it took her less than thirty minutes to find him down at the docks talking to a mussel boat captain. It immediately struck her that the docks seemed to fit him a lot better than the office had. In fact, she could easily picture him piloting a boat, the spray washing over him.

Since Hanna had her camera with her, she zoomed in on Joel until it was just his face backed by the ocean, the blue water moving in the background and the sunlight shining down on his dark hair.

“Hanna? What are you doing?”

She lowered the camera. “I was right about you,” she said with a smile.

“Right about what?”

“You do look great on camera.”

But instead of smiling back, Joel said, “You shouldn’t just film someone without their knowledge like that.”

“I never walk away without letting them know and getting their permission to use the clip,” she reassured him. “But it’s usually better to film first and ask later in order to catch the real person rather than the shell most people keep around them.”

“I don’t keep a shell around me.”

Hanna looked at his tie pointedly. The one that had been halfway off in his office. She knew men on whom a tie looked elegant, even stylish.

On Joel it looked more like a restriction.

“If you say so. In any case, I’ve spoken with my grandmother about the documentary and she said that she wants me to follow my dreams.”

“Regardless of who it hurts?”

Joel stepped away from the edge of the dock. Behind him, the mussel boat pulled away, and Hanna thought she saw him glance back towards it almost longingly.

Was he that eager to get away from her?

Regardless, with no access to the historical sources she needed, and having been left with no main interview subject for her documentary due to a promise her grandmother had made to someone many years ago, Hanna desperately needed to change Joel’s mind about the archives.

“Will you at least let me try to talk you into it?” Hanna suggested. “Maybe over coffee?”

Joel shook his head. “I have more skippers to talk to. I can’t just run off to have coffee with you to discuss the archives when I have a business to run.”

He was heading off briskly in the direction of another boat when Hanna darted in front of him. To get around her, he would have to swim.

“What are you so afraid of, Joel?”

“I’ll tell you exactly what I’m afraid of. That you’ll hurt my family with your selfish need to put together some documentary.”

“Selfish?” Hanna couldn’t hold back a spark of anger. “That isn’t fair.”

“What happened back in the fifties wasn’t
fair
,” Joel countered. “So I’ll tell you again, I won’t let you hurt my family.”

“Do you really think I’d do that?” Part of her wanted to smack him for being so hard-headed. A slightly more worrying part of her wanted to kiss him. The trouble was, she suspected that whichever one she did, it wouldn’t make an iota of difference to him.

“I honestly don’t know what you’d do,” Joel replied. “You left the island as a kid and you’ve come back as…as someone else. Because despite all of your assurances to the contrary, for all I know, you plan on twisting history around to make my family look bad. I can’t take that risk. Not when it comes to my family. Now, why don’t you step out of the way if you don’t want to get wet.”

He brushed past her, so close that his hand briefly brushed over hers, which immediately sent thrill bumps racing across her skin.

“Even if you won’t believe that I’m not here to do a hatchet job on your family, why not at least give me
your
take on what happened?” Hanna called after him. “What will that hurt?”

The slight hitch in his step was her only clue that he was at all tempted to speak with her about his family. But it was enough for her to press forward. “I know you still need to talk to your skippers, but I did a whole degree in filmmaking. I can easily shoot a little footage on the move.”

“And if you happen to fall into the water?”

“Oh, don’t worry, I can swim. You won’t have to get your suit wet saving me.”

He frowned. “Do you really think I’d worry about my suit if you fell in?”

Well, that was a surprisingly sweet thing for him to say. “It’s a nice suit,” she replied even as she felt her cheeks begin to flush at the way he was staring down at her.

Before they could get too close and easy with each other, he took a step back. “All right, then. I’ll tell you about what happened.”

Barely holding in a victorious little cheer, she kept the camera carefully focused on him as they made their way along the docks.