The Sweetheart Secret (19 page)

As if reading Earl's mind, Greta and the others came over to the table. Daisy bit back a smile. Luke was right. The folks at Golden Years were as busy as a soap opera. Daisy could only hope she was as spry and engaged when she was in her eighties.

“Good afternoon, ladies,” Daisy said. “Out for lunch?”

“Why yes, we are,” Greta said. “What a coincidence, running into you here.”

“Coincidence? I saw you in Pauline's giant Caddy five minutes ago. You smacked her in the head and told her to park so you could go to the Shoebox.” Earl shook his head and muttered, “Bunch of stalkers.”

Greta introduced Pauline, Esther, and Harold to Daisy, then invited herself to sit at the table with Earl and Daisy. Earl scowled and crossed his arms over his chest. Pauline and Esther sat at the next table, picked up menus, and began discussing the lunch options.

“Hey, Earl,” Harold said, filling the awkward silence. “Been missing you at cards lately.”

“I've been busy.” Earl looked away when he said it.

“I understand that. Retirement can keep you hopping more than employment,” Harold said, sliding into the seat opposite Earl and making himself at home. “Walt's been asking about you, too, you know.”

Earl scowled. “Walt can ask all he wants. I'm not asking back.”

Harold pshawed at that. “You know, Earl, it's a free country, last I checked. Which means if you don't go after what you want, someone else is free to go after it.”

“Unless someone doesn't want you going after it,” Greta said to Harold. “The first clue should be the no trespassing signs.”

“She's in love with me,” Harold whispered. “She just doesn't like to admit it out loud.”

At the next table, Pauline covered a laugh with her menu. Esther took out her knitting and started clack-clacking away.

Greta ignored Harold. Instead, she grabbed Daisy and pulled her to the side. “A little birdie has told me that you booked Olivia's wedding at the Hideaway Inn.”

“Yep. We're all set for three weeks from Saturday.”

“Wonderful.” Greta beamed. “I assume that means that you'll be staying in town, settling down? Maybe setting up house with the mister?”

Daisy glanced around, but no one seemed to have overheard Greta. Letting the town know she was married to Colt didn't scare Daisy as much as the little thrill that had run through her for a second when Greta asked the question. What was wrong with Daisy? “I'm here to get the inn reopened. We'll see after that.”

Greta patted Daisy's hand. “My dear, if you believe in happily ever after, you're much more likely to find it. I always told my grandson that only those who believe will receive.”

“Sort of like with Santa Claus?” Daisy laughed.

“Well, hopefully, your happily ever after is a little leaner and younger than the
ho-ho
guy, but yes.” Greta winked.

“Right now, my focus is on the inn. But I appreciate the warm words, Greta.” One of Daisy's favorite parts about being in Rescue Bay was the way the residents had welcomed her with open arms. It was like the family she'd always wanted. No matter what happened in the future, Daisy knew she would always treasure her days here.

“Speaking of the inn,” Pauline said, setting her menu on the corner of the table, “did you consider advertising at the town festival on Saturday? Most everyone who's got a business in Rescue Bay will be there, and it's a great way to get the word out.”

“Why we're even thinking of having a booth for our crafts,” Esther said. “Imagine a table filled with nothing but quilts and pillows. It would be—”

“Suffocating,” Greta muttered. “We are not sponsoring a craft table, Esther. If we do, someone is going to get seriously injured with a glue gun.”

Esther pursed her lips. “I think it's a good idea. For those of us who aren't secret craft haters.”

Daisy bit back a laugh. Earl had told her about Greta's ongoing attempts to sabotage Esther's craft binges. “I'll look into the festival, Pauline, thank you.” It would be a prime opportunity to test the local market for the Hideaway. A festival would require brochures, which would be a reason for Emma to take some pictures, maybe stay a few extra days to help put the brochure together.

Everything was coming together. Earl was doing better, the inn was getting business, and Emma was finally smiling and laughing again.

But as Daisy ran down that mental list, she realized everything was getting better and falling into place—except for her. That internal battle still waged inside her. When all this was over, would she leave and move on, as if she hadn't been affected by this town, these people, and those late-night conversations? Or stay, and risk heartbreak a third time?

Ever since Daisy had moved into Colt's house, her sleeping pattern had gone to hell. She couldn't fault the super comfortable double bed, or the soothing sounds of the surf outside her window. Her body refused to relax, not until she knew he was home.

Colt had taken to coming home later each day, often not walking through the door until everyone else was in bed. He'd turned down her offers for family dinners and outings, saying he was too busy working.

She lay in bed that night, tense, wide awake. Major had opted to sleep in her room tonight, and had curled up a few feet from the window, where the incoming breeze would keep him cool. Above the dog's gentle sleepy snarfles, Daisy listened for the sound of the door opening.

Around midnight, she heard the click of the latch. She told herself she was going to stay in bed, and not go out to the kitchen like a worried wife, to make sure Colt had made it home okay. Because she wasn't really his wife—not in the true sense of the word—and she wasn't worried.

Yeah, right.

Five seconds later, she was putting on her robe and heading down the hall. She found Colt sitting at the kitchen table, his head in his hands. There was something forlorn about his posture, something that said he was battling a war alone. He rarely opened up to her, rarely shared any of the burdens on his heart. She was tempted to leave him be.

Then he sighed.

“You okay?” she said, coming up behind him to lay a hand on his shoulder.

She'd meant the touch to be a quick comfort, nothing more, but when Colt covered her hand with his, her heart melted. He held her hand for a long moment, then turned to look at her. “Yeah, fine. Thanks for asking.”

“It's okay.” She almost added,
That's what wives are supposed to do
, but stopped herself. Because she wasn't playing the role of Colt's wife. Not really.

He glanced at the clock on the stove and let out a curse. “I'm sorry if I woke you when I got home.”

“You didn't wake me, Colt.” She raised a shoulder, let it drop. “I don't sleep that well.”

Concern filled his face. She half expected him to feel her forehead for a fever. “I can prescribe something for that, if you want.”

How could she tell him there was no prescription for what kept her up at night? No magic pill that would keep her from lying in her bed, rehashing the what-ifs? She stepped away, so he wouldn't read the truth in her eyes. “No, it's fine. I just have a lot on my mind.”

“The renovation project?”

“Yeah.” That worked for an excuse. Far better than admitting the truth. That she couldn't sleep, wondering why a guy she had stopped loving fourteen years ago still occupied her thoughts. She poured a glass of water, then slipped into a seat across from Colt. “I'm not just renovating the inn, I'm sort of renovating me, too.”

“Don't tell me you're thinking of cosmetic surgery.”

She laughed. “God, no. Though, taken literally, I guess I can see where you would get that.” She pressed a hand to her chest. “I meant interior renovations. Sort of a restart on my life, my goals, all that crap I should have figured out at eighteen.”

He scoffed. “Does anyone figure any of that stuff out at eighteen?”

“You did. I mean, you did when you came back here and went off to medical school. Me, I just floundered for a while. Got my act together enough to get my GED, but I never really figured out what I wanted. I only figured out what I
didn't
want.”

“And what's that?”

“To be like my mother.” She stared out the back door at the endless ocean of sparkling moon flakes, rising and falling with the waves, as if the moon itself was sailing away. She stared at the sea and the sky, and finally faced a few truths about herself. “As much as I tried to avoid that, in the end I became just like her. Never staying in one place for long, never committing to a job, an address, a person. Exactly what you accused me of the other day.”

“I was out of line, Daisy. You're committed to the inn, to helping your cousin and your aunt. That's something. A huge something.”

“I don't know if I'd call it that. More like . . . self-preservation.” She wrapped her hands around her glass. “When I sat next to my Aunt Clara in the hospital, she was talking about the Hideaway Inn, about how it had been in her family for so many years, and how she had all these memories centered around it. She talked about the inn being part of Rescue Bay's history and charm. It all sounded so . . . grounded. I only spent one summer here, that summer I met you, but it was the best summer of my life. I felt like I belonged, if that makes sense. I was a part of the frame and structure of the Hideaway Inn, helping my aunt with the chores around the place, giving her input on planning the meals and hosting events, and then staying up way too late at night, talking with Emma about you and the guy she was dating. It was the longest time I ever spent in one place, with the same people, and it was . . . awesome.”

All these years, she had never really talked about her life, not in an honest way, at least. When she was younger, she'd made it sound like fun to have a flighty mother who didn't believe in a traditional life. Daisy had always claimed that she loved having no ties, nothing to hold her down. But that was a lie.

The woman who had run off and eloped had been seeking the very thing she'd never had—dependability and stability. Irony at its best.

“I can't even imagine what that was like for you,” Colt said. “My life may not have been perfect, but it was predictable. Annoyingly so.”

Even his clothes echoed his words. He had on another variation of the shirt, tie, and khakis tonight, as if his clothes had cloned themselves. A part of her wanted to rip all the stuffy business casual right out of him, and replace it with the leather jacket, battered jeans, and soft-as-butter T-shirts he'd worn when she met him.

“Which is what had you so anxious to break all the rules.” She thought of what Earl had told her, about all the expectations heaped on Colt's shoulders. Colt hadn't talked much about his father when they'd been dating, but she'd gotten the sense that theirs was a difficult, strained relationship, filled with high expectations, the complete opposite of Daisy's childhood. No wonder he'd craved her world.

“It was also what attracted me to you,” he said. “You didn't live on a timetable. You just . . . lived. Take off in the middle of the day and go to the beach. Eat breakfast for dinner—”

“Still one of my favorite things to do.”

He grinned. “Mine too.”

Their gazes met, held, and smiles curved up both their faces at once. A shared memory, a snippet of the past, filling the space between them, knotting another thread. “If you have eggs and bacon, I have mean frying skills.”

He grinned and got to his feet, hauling her up, too. “You read my mind, Daisy May.”

Hot tears rushed up her throat, behind her eyes, damn it. Had to be the late hour or the reminiscing. Not the way he said her name. “No one's called me that in . . . fourteen years.”

He took a step closer, and reached up to whisk a lock of hair away from her brow. “No one?”

She shook her head. “No one else calls me by my middle name. Just you.”

“Then I should do it more often.”

Oh, this was dangerous. This was the kind of moment that made her fall for him. There'd been so many of those when she'd first met Colt. The way he looked at her—really looked at her—when they had a conversation. The way he'd sit back and listen to her talk, or meet her eyes and tell her she was beautiful. The way he made her feel like she mattered.

No. She wasn't falling for that again.

“Let's, uh, get those eggs in a pan before midnight breakfast becomes early morning breakfast.” She crossed to the fridge and pulled out the necessary ingredients, then put two frying pans on the stove and turned on the heat.

Colt slid into the space beside her and dropped four slices of bread into the toaster. “O.J.?” he asked.

“Of course.” She set two glasses on the counter, before adding bacon to the first pan and sliding two eggs into the second one. Within seconds, breakfast was sizzling, filling the kitchen with the tempting aroma. Coupled with the dim room, the ebony night outside, the whole scene seemed to whisk her back in time, to that tiny fifth-floor walk-up apartment they'd had. Cheap on rent, bare on furnishings, but for three weeks, filled with life.

“Here's a clear sign that we're older and more risk averse.” She held up the package. “Turkey bacon.”

“And free range eggs.” He grinned. “I like to call it being smarter, not older.”

She put her back to the counter and waved at him with the spatula, while the eggs fried and the bacon crisped. “Don't tell me you're worried about aging.”

“Not at all. If I can age as well as you have.” He caught a tendril of her hair, and let it slip through his fingers. “How is it that you look more beautiful now than you did when you were eighteen?”

“High-dollar cosmetics.”

He chuckled, then sobered. “Seriously, Daisy, you are a thousand times more beautiful now. You have an edge about you that you didn't have at eighteen.”

“It's called graduating from the school of hard knocks.” The self-deprecating words gave her an excuse to break her gaze away from his.

Dozens of men had told her she was beautiful over the years, but there was just something about the way that Colt said it that made her feel shy, as if she was seventeen all over again and sitting on those steps, sharing a package of Oreos with the cute boy who had stopped to talk to her.

From the second she'd climbed into bed tonight, her plan had been to stop thinking and fantasizing about Colt. Stop letting him invade her sleep and her thoughts. To look at her time here as just another job. Except Colt Harper wasn't some sweaty manager in a greasy diner telling her to hurry the hell up, and he wasn't some drunk customer refusing to pay for the meal he'd finished eating. He was Colt, the only man she'd ever fallen in love with, and the one man she'd never been able to forget.

With so many other people, she could throw on the mask of sassy defiance, and turn the tables back on him. She had to be sleep deprived to be so easily undone by a few sweet words.

“You don't believe me?” he asked.

“The . . . eggs are burning.”

“Let them.” He captured her jaw with his hands and waited until her gaze connected with his. Behind them, the bacon sizzled and spat and the eggs crinkled along their edges. The toast popped in the toaster. But all Daisy saw was Colt's hypnotic blue eyes, eyes that seemed to see past her walls and defenses, deep into the pit of her soul, in the places she kept hidden from everyone else. “You are a beautiful, amazing woman, Daisy, and sometimes, I think I forget to appreciate that.”

“Colt, I—”

He put a finger to her lips. “Repeat after me. Thank you.”

Silliness. But it made her smile anyway. “Thank you.”

“Now don't say another word to negate that or disagree, just hold on to that compliment and believe it.” He waited a second. “As I was saying, you are beautiful and amazing and I appreciate everything you have done with my grandfather. You've been here a handful of days and you have changed . . . everything.”

“I didn't—” She saw the warning look in his eyes, which made her laugh. “Okay, thank you. He's a wonderful man, Colt. I don't mind spending time with him at all. You should join us more often. I think it'll really help whatever went wrong between you two.”

A shadow dropped over Colt's face. He turned off the burners and moved the eggs off the heat. “Maybe. It's been years since he sat around and joked with me. Or hell, wanted to do anything with me besides throw a coffee cup at my head.”

“He misses you, Colt. He really does. I know that sounds silly since he lives here, but when we were talking about you—”

“You were talking about me?”

“I asked him what you were like as a little boy.” She danced a finger along his button-down shirt, wrinkled now at the end of the day, but still as buttoned up as ever. “He said pretty much like you are right now, all scheduled and organized.”

Colt slid the eggs and bacon onto their plates, then flanked the protein with buttered toast triangles. He handed Daisy one of the plates, then took a second for himself. Instead of sitting down at the table, they both leaned against the counter and began to eat, just as they had years ago. “Life is easier that way.”

“Is it?” She held a bite of egg in his direction and gave him a teasing, sassy smile. “Or is it better to mix things up once in a while and have breakfast for dinner?”

He leaned over, and ate the bite off her fork. “Maybe a little of both. Best of all worlds.”

“I do believe we're rubbing off on each other, Mr. Harper. You're getting a little loosey-goosey with those rules, and I'm getting a little more organized and traditional.” She stacked her toast until all the points aligned.