Willa walked over to her closet and started pulling out hangers of clothes. “You should have seen Sam in my break room this morning. He was pointing out every little bruise to my workers and blaming me for each one.”
Shelbysat up when Willa set an armful of clothes on the bed beside her. “My God, he’s handsome.
Wait—why would Sam blame you? And how did he get so beat up?” Then her eyes widened. “Oh, my God! He sailed down fromNew York with you on the RoseWind! That’s what he meant when he told Peg you tried to drown him.” She jumped up and followed Willa back to the closet. “How come you didn’t tell me about Sam last night?”
“I forgot.”
“You forgot?” She grabbed Willa’s arm and swung her around. “You can’t just forget to tell me you spent five days on a boat with a man. I’m your sister! You’re supposed to tell me everything.”Shelby dragged her back to the bed. “Okay, out with it. Did he make a pass at you?” She grinned. “Did you make a pass at him? ”
Willa escaped back to the closet. “That’s none of your business.”
“Emmett doesn’t call you Willy Wild Child for nothing,”Shelby said, following her. “You’re a completely different person when you’re at sea.” She grabbed the clothes out of Willa’s hands and tossed them in the general direction of the bed. “Or should that be wild woman ?” Her voice dropped. “Willa, be honest now. You’re attracted to Sam, aren’t you? I mean, you’d consider having an affair with him if the opportunity presented itself, wouldn’t you?”
“He’s ten times crazier than Abram, Shel. The man jumped out of a helicopter in the middle of Long Island Sound, for crying out loud.”
Shelbypulled her into a huge hug. “Oh, this is wonderful! It’s about damn time you had a fling.”
Willa pulled free and crossed her arms under her breasts. “And you think he’s just the man to end my drought? Well, let me tell you something about Samuel Sinclair. Five days after meeting me, he asked me to marry him, and three days ago, he actually told me he loved me.”
Shelbybacked up and plopped down onto a clothes-covered chair as she gaped up at Willa. Willa nodded. “Do you still think he’s a candidate for a fling?”
“He…he asked you to marry him?”
“The very night of Abram’s funeral.”
“And…oh, my God, Willa, what did you say?”
“I hightailed it out of there the very next morning.” Willa sat on the bed with a sigh. “It’s a long story, Shel, so don’t interrupt, okay? It all started when Spencer read Abram’s will after the funeral.” She paused, then shook her head. “No, actually, it started when the elevator door opened on the thirtieth floor of Tidewater International…”
Sam sat at the kitchen table, nursing a large mug of maple-syrup-laced coffee. Willa’s home was a classic oldNew England farmhouse, surrounded by towering maple and elm trees, and the kitchen looked as if it hadn’t been updated in the last fifty years. The cupboards were white bead-board that ran all the way up to the ceiling, and the counter was faded and chipped first-generation Formica. The appliances were copper-tone. There was even an old cast-iron wood cookstove on one of the outside walls,
looking as if it had just come out of a Montgomery Ward catalog. The floor was made of pine boards stained dark brown, and it tilted toward the inside hallway.
Something suddenly brushed up against his leg under the table, and he leaned over to find a one-eyed, semi-bald, wheezing gray cat that looked as old as the appliances. He extended his hand to it. “Hey there, old chump,” he said, smiling when it pushed its scraggly face against his fingers. “You must be on, what, your ninth life?”
“Poor old thing’s deaf,” Peg said as she walked into the kitchen. She pulled a vacuum cleaner out of the closet. “Took me a while to figure that out,” she continued, grabbing a dust rag, which she stuffed into her apron pocket. “I nearly sucked him up in the vacuum the second day I was here because I didn’t see him sleeping under the coffee table. Cody said Willa found him on the beach, nearly starved to death, about three years ago. There’s no telling how old he is. His name’s Ghost.”
“Cody?” Sam repeated, lifting Ghost onto his lap.
“Shelby’s boy. There’s Jennifer, who’s sixteen, and Cody, who’s ten. They’re wonderful kids. You’ll get to meet them at dinner tonight.”
“I’m invited to dinner? Can I bring a friend?”
Peg narrowed her eyes at him. “Male or female?”
“Male. My housemate, actually. Emmett Sengatti is a close friend of Willa’s. He was kind enough to take me in when she abandoned me on the dock yesterday.”
“Better the dock than the middle of the ocean,” Peg returned with a laugh. She wheeled the vacuum toward the living room. “And there’s always room at my table.”
Sam looked down at the cat on his lap. “So, Ghost, has Willa got you building your own casket, too?”
“We have a line of pet caskets and urns coming out this fall,” Willa said, walking into the kitchen, her arms laden with clothes. “But the bulk of them will likely be shipped out, since most Mainers are too thrifty to spend money on something they’re going to bury in the ground.”
He set the cat on the floor and stood up. “Here, let me have those,” he said, reaching for the clothes.
“Where are you going with them?”
“I’m moving out to the cottage so Shel can have my room,” she told him, not relinquishing her load. Sam perked up at that. “You’re moving to the cottage?”
She spun away and headed for the door. “Do you honestly have the audacity to miss your first day of work?”
“I have an empathetic boss. Levi told me not to come in until I’m ‘back up to snuff.’ Kent Caskets is a rather laid-back company.”
“You expect eighty-year-olds to be workaholics? They tell anyone with a hangnail to take the day off.”
“Is your entire workforce retirees?”
She laughed at that. “Are you kidding? My production would be two caskets a year if I had to rely on my Grand Point Bluff residents. I have ten able-bodied men and women who do most of the real work.”
“Yet you have at least twenty on the payroll.”
“Which the older workers put right back into my business.”
“Sam!”Shelby shouted from the top of the stairs. “Can you come up and carry this box down for me?”
Having figured out some time ago that Willa had a thing for his chest, Sam threw back his shoulders and puffed up, shooting her a grin. “Looks like your sister appreciates my muscles.”
Willa immediately walked out of the house, muttering something about hormones. Sam headed into the hall, ran up the stairs, and stepped into the bedroom of a teenage girl. The furniture was white, the bedspread pink and green and blue-flowered lace. Like the rest of the house, Willa’s bedroom seemed to be frozen in time.
“That’s the box?” he asked in surprise whenShelby handed him a shoe box full of what looked like hair thingies.
“No. Put this in that box,” she said, pointing to the bed. “And carry it over to the cottage.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Please,” she quickly tacked on, her cheeks turning as pink as the curtains behind her. She sighed. “I’m sorry if I sound like a drill sergeant. With children, you either give orders or get ignored. Why did you tell my sister you love her?”
Sam stopped in mid-step. “Is directness another characteristic of motherhood?”
“Do you?” she asked, lifting her chin much as Willa did.
“Yes.”
“Just like that? You know her a week, and you fall madly in love with her?”
He shrugged. “Not on purpose.”
“Is that the price of love these days? A fat bankbook and a few shares of some business?”