Calder wisely kept his opinion to himself. “Just being protective of her family. Nothing wrong in that. Why don’t we get you over to the paramedic or the ER if you’d rather go there, and we’ll let your sister handle calling in for the tow.”
Hannah surprised him by merely nodding. “Thank you. I appreciate that. I’ll need to call Beanie, too.”“Who’s Beanie?” It surprised him that he actually wanted to know.“The owner of the sign I just took out. Her husband built it and hand-painted it.” She looked over at the pile of shattered planks. “I feel awful about ruining it.”“Sounds like the kind of guy who wouldn’t mind making another one. I’m sure it will be fine.” He motioned toward his truck. “Is there anything you need from your car?” He lifted a hand. “I’ll get it, just tell me.”“He can’t make another one,” she said instead. “He passed away last year. That’s why I feel awful.”Calder stopped and looked at her, and saw she was on the verge of tears. And likely not the sweet trickle of a single tear sliding down a pale cheek, either. He didn’t know her, but despite his earlier rush to judge—okay, maybe his ongoing rush to judge—something told him she wasn’t a crier. Something also told him that it probably wasn’t the sign that had her feeling suddenly undone. Maybe it was all of it, the accident, her brother getting married, and now adding to her sister’s list of worries. Maybe the sign was simply the final straw. He didn’t know. And he shouldn’t care.“Come on,” he said, gently taking her elbow, but keeping his hand there when she would have pulled away. “We’ll get it all figured out.”She was taller than he’d initially thought when she’d been in the car. Somewhere around five-nine, maybe five-ten. He didn’t know what kind of heels she had on, but, regardless, she wasn’t much shorter than he was, and he came in at six-one. Lithe and lean, not much in the curves department, either. That much he’d accurately ascertained from his blouse assessment earlier.She paused as she noted the sign on the side of his truck. “Blue Harbor Farm.” She looked back at him. “I thought you said you were a contractor.”“I am. Family business. Fourth generation.”“And the farm?”“First generation,” he said with a smile.“You?”He nodded.“Sounds like a lot to juggle.”“If you ask my father, it’s a waste of time and money. If you ask my brothers, a hobby that got a little out of control.”“And if I asked you?”He kept his smile in place, but his answer was serious and heartfelt. “The thing that kept me sane through a hellacious divorce.” His smile grew slightly. “Continues to keep me sane working with family.”“I’m sorry,” she said. “About the . . . hellacious part.” She waved a hand briefly, but said no more. She held his gaze, then looked at the sign again, more, he thought, for somewhere else to look. Other than at him. He wasn’t sure what she’d seen in his expression, but banged up or not, she seemed a pretty sharp sort. So probably . . . too much.He saw her eyebrows lift. “Calais?” she said. “You’re a long way from home.”“Not that far. Hour and fifteen to the company office, hour-forty-five to the farm.”“Unique town, Calais. Sort of umbilically attached to Saint Stephen across the border in New Brunswick, right? Interesting blend of cultures.”“Mais oui, bien sur.”She smiled a little at that. “I guess you grew up speaking French and English, living so close.”“It’s predominantly English on both sides of the border. I speak French because my mother is French Canadian. I grew up with both languages.” He opened the passenger door to his truck.“You didn’t have to do this,” she said, as he helped her up to the passenger seat.She levered herself into the truck with a natural, graceful ease, making him wonder if she was a dancer, or some other thing that elegant women did with elegant bodies like the one she had. She required only a little assistance from him, which was just as well, he thought. Putting his hands on any more of that elegant body wouldn’t be wise. She was the kind of distraction he never needed in general, and definitely didn’t need right now.She pulled on her own seat belt, wincing a little as she did, then immediately leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “But I’m very grateful you did.”“Not a problem,” he said, palming the door, intending to close it.“Hannah,” she said, quietly now, so he knew she was in more pain than she’d been showing, making him pause. “I’m Hannah. McCrae.”“Calder Blue,” he responded.“Ah. Blue Harbor Farm,” she added, as if recalling the sign on his door. “Any relation to Jonah Blue?” she asked through barely moving bruised lips, eyes still closed.“Great-nephew.”“I thought I’d met all the Blues.”“Different branch of the family.”She opened her eyes then, and turned all that dark blue on him. Despite whatever pain she was in, and whatever worries she might have, her eyes were still surprisingly sharp, and quickly assessing. “You mean—as in Jedediah Blue’s branch?”“The very same.”“Your branches don’t talk to each other. For like . . . a hundred years.”“A little longer, but that is true, yes.”“How long have you been in Blueberry?”“Just heading in, actually.”She leaned her head back and closed her eyes again, but her lips curved upward just a hair and stayed that way, even when she winced at the pain.“Something amusing about that?”“Not at all. It’s . . . I just realized that your bombshell is going to be a lot bigger than mine.”“Dear Lord, what have you done to yourself and just days before the wedding. Sit down and let me have a look at you.” Barbara Benson pulled around the chair next to her beat-up metal desk and gestured to it.Hannah knew better than to offer even token resistance, and frankly, she found standing upright highly overrated at the moment, so she sank gratefully onto the thinly padded seat. Sergeant Benson was the closest thing Hannah had ever had to a mom. One she remembered anyway. Though she supposed where Barbara was concerned, “mom” was a relative term. Barbara was in her late sixties and had raised her own brood of children while simultaneously performing her duties as sergeant, receptionist, secretary, dispatcher, Mother Superior, and general savior of everyone’s asses in Blueberry Cove. She’d performed those duties for Hannah’s brother, Logan, as well as the previous three police chiefs. Hannah was pretty sure Sergeant Benson applied the same handbook to child-rearing duties as she
“Well, if you’d bother to come back home more often than once every few years, or keep in touch more regularly, you’d know when it happened.”There’s the lecture. Hannah knew better than to think she’d escape without one. Oddly, instead of irritating her, it made her feel . . . well, not comforted, but like she was home. Like she mattered. To someone.Barbara leaned back, but stopped short of folding her arms over her buttoned-up, uniformed bosom. Not that it mattered. Her steely gaze did much the same. “Speaking of which, what is Tim the Titan of Finance’s excuse this time? And don’t bother telling me he’s coming because it’s all over your face that he’s leaving you to pull wedding duty alone. At least he didn’t keep you from coming home this time.”“No,” Hannah said quietly, no longer annoyed by Barbara’s nickname for him. He had plenty of far worse ones now. “Tim isn’t here. He’s not coming to the wedding. It’s just me.” The urge to simply unload and tell Barbara exactly how truthf
“Twenty years.”Hannah’s eyes widened. “Wow. I’m officially old as dirt. I should go see her. I need to anyway. We’re co-maids-of-honor. Maybe Alex will let her carry that ball—or bouquet, as it were—given—” She gestured to her face. “Where is she? Did she get a new place? When did this—?”“Delia’s fine, still has her grandmother’s little cottage. Happier than I’ve ever seen her, in fact. You’ll hear all about that soon enough.” Barbara stood, and tugged Hannah to her feet, hugging her before Hannah straightened fully. Barbara was a fierce force to be reckoned with, and it always surprised Hannah because she barely hit five-foot-five, and that was in her uniform-issue heavy-soled shoes.“I’m going to get Deputy Dan to give you a lift,” Barbara said. “Sal said your car—well, that’s for later. I’m sure he’ll be in touch, and between Logan, Alex, and Fi, there will be a car available when you need it.” She picked up her radio and flipped the call button.Hannah put her hand out. “Don’t t
Calder swallowed a sigh and perhaps a swear word or two as he pulled into the gravel lot and spied Jonah Blue standing at the ready, on the dry-land end of Blue’s Fishing Company’s main pier. The sun was setting over the pine tree–dotted ridge that fringed the hill rising up behind High Street at Calder’s back, casting Jonah’s tightly pinched features in a stark, mauve-shadowed relief that didn’t warm his expression in the least. Calder told himself he should feel lucky the old man wasn’t toting a shotgun. Although he supposed that didn’t rule out something equally lethal. Like a nice, sharp gutting knife.Feeling a little too close a kinship to a lobster swimming into a trap, he slid out the cab of his truck . . . and tried not to grimace when the sharp briny scent hit him. Calder had discovered that the air had a salty tang anywhere you went in Half Moon Harbor—in most of the Cove proper, for that matter. He liked it well enough, thinking it added a more immediate, visceral element
Surprised, Calder wondered where the man could stuff a wad of chew, his jaw was so damn tight.“Might as well head on back up your river,” Jonah said, at length. “Your like isn’t wanted here at Blue’s.”He said it as if Calder’s being a Blue was somehow . . . less Blue.“Once the town folk find out why you’re here, you won’t be wanted by them, either. Seems you River Blues still haven’t figured out how to tell the difference between where you’re wanted and where you’re not.”It was quite a speech, Calder thought. But rather than put him off, or piss him off, it did quite the opposite. The old man wants me gone, and it’s not because I’m a St. Croix Blue, he thought, surprised yet again. Calder didn’t know Jonah Blue from Adam, but he did know people, how to read them, how to work with them, for them, or get work out of them as the case may be. The success of the family business depended on it. Same could be said for Blue Harbor Farm. Jonah might well hate Calder with the kind of deep-s
“This has nothing to do with you and yours,” Jonah said tersely. “Done quite well without interfering in each other’s business now for well on a hundred years. I expect we can manage a few more without you riding to the rescue.” He all but spat the last words.“With all due respect, it’s not up to you what I do or don’t do, or why I choose to do it. You don’t know me. Never met me. Nor I, you. I was raised to think about Jeremiah’s branch of the family much the same as I imagine you were raised to think about Jedediah’s. And you know, I thought it was a pile of horseshit then, and nothing I’ve heard or learned since has ever changed my mind. Holding the sins of the fathers against their offspring, who haven’t so much as laid eyes on each other in generations? What possible good does that do?”“Stops them from doing any more harm to each other,” Jonah said, his eyes flat, his tone even flatter. “All that matters.”“Seems to me it’s more a bunch of stubborn old men who’d rather sacrific
“Oh . . . wow.” Hannah let the car roll to a stop along the Cove road as she stared down the short stretch of Pelican Bay shoreline, then out to the Point, where the McCraes’ lighthouse stood, a proud old sentry, historic and beloved. The sun was just rising above the horizon line behind it, casting it in a pinkish-golden halo of light.Just shy of two hundred years old, and long since decommissioned, Pelican Point had been in the care of the McCrae family from its inception, both an honor and a burden. Hannah had always felt a little guilty that Logan had been left to somehow find a way to maintain the lighthouse, the keeper’s cottage, and the rambling main house. “But look at you now,” she breathed, astonished by the end result of the renovation that had begun a little more than a year and a half earlier.Even from this distance, she could see that the uniquely shaped exterior, a sort of boxed-out square with angled corners, had gotten a complete face-lift. The salted-over and weath
Hannah smiled, winced as it pulled bruised skin, but didn’t stop smiling. “Yeah, that might fall into the category of TMI, at least as it pertains to older brothers.” She shifted her gaze from Alex to the house, stunned all over again by just how much had been accomplished in such a relatively short time. “I meant thank you for this.” She took in the new shakes, the renovated and freshly painted frames around all the dormers inset into the roof, the siding, the porch . . . all of it. She looked to Alex. “You fixed my heart, my soul,” she said. “The house, but even more, the tower. It’s . . . majestic now. Like it should have always been. I can’t believe you did that.” She laughed a little self-consciously. “How did you do it?”Alex beamed with pride, clearly pleased by Hannah’s reaction, and maybe a little relieved as well. “It’s what MacFarlands do,” she said simply. “We let the lights shine again.”Hannah could only shake her head. “You have no idea how much that—” She paused, let o