so,” come my reply. “But I’ll find some way to o’ercome.”
Thank the Lord, when she growed into her own style, brought with it a degree o’ modesty that put an old man’s heart to ease after a lotta years o’ standin’ at the back door, finger ready to point the way back around.
Then come that husband o’ hers, and he did the finger waggin’ fer me. Didn’t have much use for that stuffed shirt, but I sure didn’t mind him takin’ the reins of watchdog at the door.
“Jack likes everything just so,” Jessie told me when they come to visit.
Next thing, I figured I’d see her with a little pill box hat ’n some o’ them white gloves, like Jackie Kennedy. Yeah, he liked everything just so, all right.
Too bad my Jessie weren’t a just-so kinda girl at the heart of her.
Chapter 4
4
This is your little vacation home?”
She thought Danny snickered, and she peeled her eyes off the front of the enormous wood and stone house before them.
“Danny,” Jessie told him with a sigh. “You really should have told me.”
He threw the gear into neutral and turned off the ignition. “Told you what?”
She waved her arm through the open roof with a flourish. “Told me . . . this. You let me think we were going camping or something.”
“It’s kind of like that. But the tent is really nice.”
Jessie let him climb out of the Jeep alone. She needed an extra few seconds to process what she saw in front of her.
“C’mon, Jessie,” Allie exclaimed as she trotted toward her. “I’ll show you where we’ll be.”
When Danny had said he and Riggs would sleep in the loft, leaving the master bedroom to her and Allie, she’d imagined a small staircase between them. Maybe a miniscule hallway or something. From the look of things, they were entering the equivalent to a couple of separate residences. A quaint little A-frame and a sprawling ranch pushed together to make one immaculate, inviting mountain retreat. For a dozen or more of the Callahan family’s closest friends.
Before she could tug on the door handle, Danny opened it from the other side. Jessie unbuckled the seat belt and swung her legs out, her feet landing on a sand-colored stamped concrete driveway bordered on both sides by slightly darker stones. The curved path led to massive double doors boasting large beveled glass windows that caught the afternoon light and reflected it back in colorful bursts.
Danny led the way, lugging his overstuffed duffle bag behind one shoulder while dragging Jessie’s wheeled Louis Vuitton close to his heels. She grabbed her handbag and the white leather hat box case from the backseat and flipped the handle over her wrist as she hurried to follow them.
“You’re going to love this place,” Allie told her. “Wait until you see the view from the loft.”
“The loft is off-limits,” Riggs exclaimed as he passed them.
“Oh, come on . . .”
“You girls have the whole rest of the house. The loft is The Man Zone.”
“The Man Zone,” Allie muttered to Jessie with a dramatic roll of her eyes. “Please.”
Jessie couldn’t help chuckling at the teen’s dramatic flair.
She came to a wobbly stop just inside the front door, clutching her bags, mouth gaping. From the large planks of distressed maple on the floors to the rough beams across the twenty feet of ceiling—and everything in between—the home broadcast an unmistakably advanced design aesthetic she never would have associated with Danny. His laid-back Santa Monica surfer persona hardly fit with the picture before her.
“Yeah, I know,” he said, and she snapped to attention, surprised to find him standing next to her. “It’s pretty great, right?”
Jessie turned her head and gazed at him for a moment. “Great?” she repeated with the shake of her head. “Yeah. It’s pretty great.”
“Hey, Danny,” Allie called out.
Jessie spotted her on the other side of an oversized rustic table centered beneath a rubbed bronze oval chandelier.
“I’m gonna make a sandwich, okay?”
“Sometimes I forget,” he muttered as if he hadn’t heard Allie.
Jessie watched after him as he wandered away, leaving her standing there alone.
“Hey, Callahan.” Riggs thundered down the circular staircase in the corner of the great room. “Our bags are stowed upstairs. What did Brunswick bring us to eat?”
Jessie inched past two light-green leather sofas, which faced each other over a low, square coffee table like a couple of amiable visitors. The high hearth of the stacked stone fireplace balanced one pristine pile of chopped wood with a display of heavy iron utensils beneath a mantle that matched the overhead beams. She left her handbag and cosmetics case on the table before rounding the corner and stopping, breathless, beneath the wide arched entrance to the kitchen.
Oversized squares of Mediterranean travertine led the way into the most magnificent and inviting kitchen Jessie thought she had ever seen. Stainless steel appliances and brushed nickel accents and fixtures set off two walls of cabinetry, light beige and green granite counters, and an enormous farmhouse sink. By the time Jessie found her breath again, her three companions had kicked into full gear handing off packages of cold cuts, cheese, sandwich rolls, condiments, bottled drinks . . .
“What can I do to help?” she asked.
“You can grab plates and stuff,” Riggs said. He headed through the open glass French doors that led to a massive redwood deck overlooking a large blue lake and surrounded on three sides by a bench broken up at each corner with planters of colorful flowers.
“Over there,” Allie said on her way out the door behind him.
Jessie headed toward where Danny stood at the counter slicing tomatoes. “Here?” she asked him.
He tugged open the cabinet door to his left. “Plates up here. Glasses to the right. Silverware is in the drawer on the other side of me.”
As she navigated about collecting four of everything, she nudged him with her elbow. “Danny, did you grow up spending time here?”
“Yeah, my folks bought the place when I was about ten.”
She smiled, trying to imagine her grandfather standing in the middle of the cavernous kitchen, “stirrin’ up slop,” as he used to call dinner preparation.
Jessie gazed at the stretch of blue beyond the trees. “Is that Big Bear Lake out there?”
“Our little piece of it, yes.” He picked up the plate he’d prepared and nodded toward the door. “Let’s eat outside.”
She
