tidy, professional chignon that had always given her a headache.
She’d lived life on a wildly spinning hamster wheel for so many years since leaving home, it took her a while to recognize the heady feeling that rushed through her as she drank in the sight of the shaggy Douglas firs spearing into the sky, the rugged white peaks of the Olympic mountains in the distance and seagulls noisily diving for fish in the water churned up by the gleaming white boat.
As she sipped from a cardboard cup of coffee, the drink that famously kept the Pacific Northwest humming, a brown pelican flew by, the ungainly, awkward-looking bird surprisingly graceful in flight. More pelicans perched on wooden pilings.
Freedom. For the first time since she’d left her family Christmas tree farm to go off to college, she had no demands from any calendars, clocks, hotel guests, and no one to answer to but herself.
The idea was both thrilling and a little daunting at the same time. After all, ever since graduating from college, she’d always moved on from town to city, hotel to hotel, place to place, never looking back. Her life had been like that old country video where the heroine had ripped the rearview mirror off the side of her car and headed, hell-bent for leather, out of Dodge.
And now here she was, on a ferry getting closer and closer to land, drinking in the familiar sounds, the smells and pretty sights, and hoping that Thomas Wolfe had been wrong about never being able to go home again. This was a new chapter in her life. A new beginning, and despite the butterflies that had begun fluttering their wings in her stomach, she would make it work.
Reminding herself that she’d always been a self-starter with strong organizational and people skills, instead of worrying about any possible pitfalls in her plan, she concentrated on the vision of what she’d always thought of as her house turned into a warm and inviting bed-and-breakfast. The type of place she herself would want to stay in.
Over the years, as she’d worked her way up the hospitality chain to the Midas, her surroundings had become more and more luxurious. And while each hotel offered additional amenities and increased pampering, they’d never been the type of place she would have preferred to stay herself. She wouldn’t have chosen glitz and glamor, or bustling staff in crisp uniforms with shiny brass buttons and fringed epaulets that would make a banana republic general proud.
Rather than a crowded dining room abuzz with conversation drowning out the pianist playing Gershwin on a shiny black baby grand, she’d rather spend an evening enveloped in an overstuffed chair in a room with well-read books lining the walls, and a fire crackling away in an old stone fireplace.
Instead of shopping at designer boutiques with a platinum credit card, she’d rather stroll down tree-lined streets, dropping into small, quaint, locally owned shops that carried homemade fudge and desserts and whimsical, one-of-a-kind handmade pieces created by local artisans. And rather than being suffocated by ridiculously overpriced designer scents, she’d rather breathe in the tang of fir trees and salt air.
The sky turned a tarnished silver hue, hinting at rain as Honeymoon Harbor came into view, the stone Victorian buildings climbing up the steep hill, the now-automated white lighthouse at Pelican Point, and there, overlooking the harbor, was Herons Landing, unfortunately painted a Pepto-Bismol pink with purple trim and chartreuse shutters. Fishing and whale-watching boats bobbing in the water beside the sailboats and beautiful wooden boats the town was known for and what appeared to be a father and son stood on the pier, fishing lines dangling over the railing into the water, reminding her of childhood days when she’d done the same thing. Not that she’d been all that wild about fishing or crabbing, but if Seth was going to be out there with her brothers, she wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to show him what a perfect girlfriend she’d be. The fact that he’d never experienced that hoped-for epiphany hadn’t been for her lack of trying.
The announcement to return to her car came over the speaker and five minutes later, as she drove off the ferry onto the cobblestone street created from the same stones as many of the town’s buildings, she felt an internal click that told her she’d made the absolutely right decision.
Pages from Captain George Vancouver’s ship logs, housed under glass in the town historical museum, revealed his awe at the towering, snowcapped mountains, deep green rain forests that come nearly to the water’s edge, crystal rivers, tumbling waterfalls, beaches and sapphire water studded with emerald islands.
By the late 1800s the town had become a bustling seaport, banking on a rich future. A building boom gifted it with an abundance of ornate Victorian homes perched atop the green bluff overlooking the bay. A town built and populated by dreamers, its port frequented by vessels from faraway places, the early economy had been built and supported by timber and shipping.
Unfortunately, too much of what was now Honeymoon Harbor had been constructed on the shifting sands of speculation that it was primed to become the capital of Washington State. Dreams were dashed when the boom collapsed and the population had declined drastically.
Although it never became the major shipping harbor people had hoped for, the royal trip that had resulted in the town’s name change, along with the magnificent monument Franklin Roosevelt later designated as a national park, had created a renaissance that resulted in an influx of visitors who continued to arrive at the harbor’s dock on gleaming white ferries like the one that had brought Brianna home.
The town had been divided between residential and business. Most of the buildings along the water were commercial, designed to serve arriving and departing ships. Originally built of wood from the bustling timber trade, they’d been reduced to ashes during a devastating fire that had swept through the waterfront. Meanwhile, the homes, including the Victorians the town had become known for, had been built on the bluff overlooking the harbor, which had allowed them to escape the firestorm.
Tempted as she was to drive out to the house, she reluctantly decided it made sense to go home, see her family and get a good night’s sleep before contacting the Realtor in the morning. As much as Honeymoon Harbor looked much the same as it had when she’d been growing up here, there had been changes. An old warehouse had been turned into condos, the real estate sign out in front offering spacious, remodeled lofts. She dropped into a coffee shop by the ferry terminal that hadn’t existed when she’d returned for Zoe’s funeral two years ago, and stood in line to buy a salted skinny caramel mocha latte from one of the owners, whom, she learned from their brief conversation while he prepared her drink, was a former undercover Seattle vice detective. Which, she supposed, explained the earring and the dreadlocks.
There were other new businesses, as well, including her uncle Mike’s art gallery, which would prove handy when it came to decorating her inn. Honeymoon Harborites preferred to buy local whenever possible, and in her case, it was even better when one of the businesses was owned by family.
She came up to the wide, grassy green square that had always been the centerpiece of the town. A lacy white Victorian gazebo—built by a Harper for the royal visit, where the Mannion mayor had handed the Montacroix king and queen the key to the city—had immediately proven popular with the honeymoon trade. Even today Brianna’s attention was drawn to a tall, familiar redhead snapping wedding photos of a smiling bride and groom.
Growing up, Kylee Campbell and Zoe Robinson had been Brianna’s best friends. They’d been inseparable, the self-named Three Musketeers, except for those times, as they’d segued into their junior and senior years of high school, when Zoe had begun spending more and more time with Seth Harper.
Pulling into a parking spot, Brianna sat in the car, watching as Kylee posed the couple in various ways while another woman set up reflector boards. They were apparently coming to the end of the shoot. After taking a few more photos next to the fountain bubbling away at one end of the green,
