that it would be at least two days before crews could get in to restore power, he’d brought his bigger saw to help him clear the uprooted oak from the road that was their main access to town.
Even for her neighbors who didn’t have access to TV news, word traveled fast by cell phone. Crystal Murphy, her laugh infectious and her carrot-red hair clashing wildly with her purple earmuffs, brought her four-year-old son to play with Tyler while her husband, Tony the roofer, joined the men. Her mom was at their house a quarter of a mile away with their two-year-old. They didn’t have power but that seemed just fine with them. They had a woodstove and kerosene lamps and Crystal confessed to liking the throwback lifestyle. She turned out to be the candle maker Edie had told Rory about.
Jeremy Ott came for the same reason as Tony and Ed. Talia, his wife, who taught riding lessons at the stables a mile farther up, had braved the cold with her five-year-old twins because Edie had mentioned that Rory had a son their age.
Edie herself showed up with her two children, twelve and six, and a half gallon of milk. With all the children, hot cocoa went fast.
Even with all the activity, Rory found her attention straying to the man who stood just a little taller than the rest.
It was nearing four o’clock when the women stepped out onto the porch to see how much longer the men would be. The kids were warming up in front of the TV, under Edie’s preteen’s supervision, and it would be dark soon. There were suppers to prepare.
Rory doubted that Erik had taken a real break since lunch. All she’d noticed him stop for was to stretch his back or absently rub his neck before tossing aside another log or attacking another limb on the downed oak.
She was standing by the railing between Crystal and Edie when he made a V of his arm and hitched his shoulder before putting his back into hefting another chunk of tree. He and Tony were hauling cut sections of limbs to the side of the road while the other two men continued decreasing the size of what had blocked it.
Seeing who had Rory’s attention, Edie flipped her braid over her shoulder and tipped her dark blond head toward her. A navy Seattle Seahawks headband warmed her ears.
“He’s an attractive man, isn’t he?”
“Who?” asked Talia, leaning past Crystal.
“Erik,” the older woman replied.
Rory gave a noncommittal shrug. “I suppose.” If you like the tall, dark, unattainable type, she thought. Suspecting her neighbor was fishing, she glanced to Edie’s nearly empty mug. “More coffee?”
“I’m good. Thanks.” The loquacious woman with the too-keen radar kept her focus on the men methodically dismantling the tree.
“He and his business partner have done quite well for themselves, you know.”
“I’d say they’ve done extremely well,” Crystal emphasized. “Pax—his business partner,” she explained helpfully to Rory, “is from here, too. I’ve heard they’re both millionaires.”
“I’ve met Pax. Nice guy,” Rory admitted. What she didn’t mention was that she already knew that Erik had means—that he even had friends among the very rich and famous.
She had been surrounded by the well-to-do, and those intent on joining their ranks, from the moment she’d married until she’d moved mere weeks ago. The understated way Erik used his wealth and the way he didn’t balk at getting his own hands dirty just made her forget that at times.
Edie gave her a curious glance. “Would you mind a personal question? I didn’t want to ask when I first met you,” she explained. “I mean, I did, but it didn’t seem appropriate at the time.”
Rory smiled, a little surprised by the request for permission. “Ask what?”
“How long you’ve been widowed.”
“A year and two months.”
“That’s too bad.”
“It really is,” Crystal agreed. “I’m sorry, Rory.”
“That has to be so hard.” Talia placed her gloved hand over her heart. “I don’t know what I’d do without Jeremy.”
Edie shook her head. “I meant it’s too bad it hasn’t been longer. I was just thinking how nice it would be if you two hit it off. I’m sorry for your loss, too,” she sincerely assured Rory. “But I imagine you need a little more time before you start thinking in that direction.”
“I don’t know about that,” Talia piped in. “My uncle remarried six months after my aunt passed.”
“I think men do that because they don’t know how to take care of themselves,” claimed Edie.
Crystal frowned. “I thought that the men who married fast like that were the ones who’d had good marriages, so they weren’t afraid to jump back in.”
“If that’s true,” Talia said, leaping ahead, “then the opposite could explain why Erik hasn’t remarried. I’ve never heard what happened with him and...what was her name?”
“Shauna,” the other two women simultaneously supplied.
“Right. She wasn’t from here,” she explained to Rory. “They met one summer and she moved here after they married, but they left for Seattle after a year or so. My point, though,” she claimed, getting to it, “is that maybe his experience has put him off women.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say he’s off women,” Rory admitted. “We’ve had a couple of meetings where he had to leave because he had a date.”
Talia shrugged. “Well, there goes that theory.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s not gun-shy,” Crystal supplied supportively.
“True. But Rory’s not looking right now,” Edie reminded them. “Anyway, I was just thinking it would be nice if Erik would come back. I can’t imagine that he ever would,” she insisted, certainty in her conclusion. “Not with his business so well established over in Seattle. But he still seems to fit in so perfectly here.”
The woman who’d brought up the subject of her potential availability had just as abruptly concluded it. Relieved to have escaped matchmaking efforts, for a while at least, and not sure how she felt having reminded herself of her mentor’s social life, Rory found herself silently agreeing with her well-intentioned neighbor.
Erik did seem to fit in. But then, he’d been raised there. Without letting herself wonder why, she’d also wondered if there was ever anything about this place that he missed. Or if his emotional barriers kept him from even noticing.
It hadn’t sounded to Rory as if the women knew the other, more personal reasons why he wouldn’t be coming back. The dreams he’d buried there. Still, Edie was right. Everything Erik cared about was in Seattle.
And everything she now cared about was here, she thought, and went back to looking a little concerned about him again.
“Why didn’t you stop?”
