crazy,” Emily blurted. “The place is a mess. It’s going to take days for me to get some new furniture in here, get everything painted and spruced up with a new look. I sketched out some ideas on the way from Colorado.”
Cora Jane knew her granddaughter only wanted to help. And she was an expert, after all, but the last thing she wanted was to walk in the door a couple of weeks from now and not even recognize the family business started by her late husband. The decor it had—minus the debris and dampness anyway—suited her just fine. And they’d never wanted for customers. Locals and tourists packed the place. Caleb had had a knack for understanding what worked in a coastal community, and she’d merely followed the path he’d established.
“We’ll look over those designs of yours tonight,” Cora Jane promised, to take the sting out of her remark. “And you’re right about a fresh coat of paint. But in the meantime there are going to be locals coming back home and workers galore, and they’re all going to need someplace to grab a bite to eat. We’ll make do with what we have for the time being. Maybe later we can think about making a few changes.”
Emily looked as if she wanted to argue, but instead she just stood up and walked out of the kitchen and back onto the deck at the side of the restaurant.
Cora Jane turned to Boone. “Go after her.”
He regarded her with predictable alarm. “Me? Why me?”
“Sweetheart, you know why as well as I do. The two of you need to talk. You might as well do it now and settle things. Arguing with you might take her mind off whatever she’s stewing over right this minute.”
“And you think we’re going to settle things with a quick chat on the deck?” Boone inquired skeptically. “Assuming we don’t fall through the damaged boards, that is?”
“Probably not,” Cora Jane admitted. “But you have to start sometime. It might as well be now. Gabi, Samantha and I will get started in here. B.J. can help by washing up these dishes. You don’t need to worry about him getting into mischief or in the way.”
Boone gave her a resigned look, but he did head for the deck.
Cora Jane turned to see both of her other granddaughters grinning.
“Nicely done,” Samantha said. “Do you have any other missions for these next couple of weeks we should know about?”
Cora Jane chuckled at the girl’s impudence. Samantha might be thirty-five, but she’d always be a girl in Cora Jane’s eyes.
“Guess you’ll just have to wait and see,” she replied. “And in case you’re wondering, while I might feel I have a halfway decent relationship with Our Lord, not even I can call up a hurricane. That was His plan.”
And in her view it was definitely starting to look as if it had been a blessing in disguise.
* * *
Emily was crying. Boone could tell by the dejected set of her shoulders and the soft sniffs she tried hard to disguise when she heard the door to the deck open and close.
“Go away,” she muttered.
“Sorry. I’m under orders.”
Her head snapped around at that. “You!”
“Who’d you think it was?”
“Samantha, Gabi, maybe even Grandmother.”
He laughed. “Yeah, those would have been my first choices, too.”
Surprise, then resignation registered on her face. “Of course Grandmother sent you.”
Boone leaned on the railing next to her and stared at the ocean across the road. It was hard to believe that just a couple of days earlier it had been washing over the road with giant, angry, destructive waves. Today the sky was a brilliant blue, the waves were lapping gently against sand littered with boards, house siding and roof shingles.
“Cora Jane seems to think we should settle things,” he explained.
“What things?”
“You and me, I’m guessing. We didn’t exactly part on the best of terms. That weighs on her.”
“True, but we both moved on. That’s in the past,” she said, a hopeful note in her voice. “Right?”
“I’d have said so until you walked in the door this morning,” he said candidly. “You came in with complication written all over you.”
She glanced over at him, then sighed. “That was pretty much my reaction, too, if you must know.”
Boone chuckled.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“I didn’t expect you to admit it.”
“I’ve never been a liar, Boone. That was you.”
Boone frowned at the accusation. “Me? When did I lie?”
“You said you loved me. Next thing I knew you’d married Jenny.”
He was startled by the level of pain he thought he heard in her voice. Had she been rewriting history? “You made it pretty clear you weren’t ever coming back. What was I supposed to do? Pine for you?”
“You could have given me some time to work through things,” she accused. “That’s all I really asked of you.”
He regarded her with surprise. “When did you ask for time? If you’d asked for it, maybe I would have. Instead, you said we were over. You made it sound pretty final.” He studied her face. “Or was that the lie you had to tell yourself so you could leave town and not look back?”
She seemed to take the question to heart and actually mull it over. “Something like that,” she conceded eventually. “Okay, we both made mistakes. I wasn’t clear enough. You jumped to conclusions. I can admit to that much. Can you?”
He hesitated, then said, “I suppose.”
“Such a heartfelt concession,” she murmured dryly, then met his gaze. “But it doesn’t change anything, Boone. Not really. My life still isn’t here.”
“Believe me, I’m well aware of that. What Cora Jane hasn’t told me, B.J. has. He’s very impressed with you and Samantha. You’re the first real celebrities he’s ever met.”
Emily had the grace to chuckle at that, the tension easing slightly. “Samantha can lay claim to being a celebrity, but I just work for a few. Most of my clients aren’t that famous.”
“Just rich?” he queried.
“Is there something wrong with being rich? Your family wasn’t exactly poor. Your father was a high-powered lawyer, and your mother married a guy who made millions on widgets or something.”
He smiled at her dismissive assessment of his stepfather, who’d owned a multinational manufacturing company. “That has very little to do with me. I started from scratch and earned
