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“You don’t say,” he replied dryly, as he took another box and followed her downstairs.
“If your family is trying to set you up with women of good breeding and all that, I’m guessing it’s going to be a high-class wedding.”
He set the computer boxes in the truck bed and secured them with bungee cords. “It’s an expensive one, if that’s what you mean.”
“Are you in it?” She followed him back upstairs.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“My brother knew I wouldn’t want to be.” He picked up the last boxes and surveyed the room. “Do you want to take the desk apart?”
“No, it came with the apartment. The desk chair is mine, though.”
“I’ll take it last.” He started back downstairs.
“I’ll meet you back at the Mousehole.”
Rory made a quick stop at her sister’s house. Neither Callie nor her husband Jake were at home, so she grabbed three dresses and matching shoes from the closet and put them in her car. Hopefully, Callie wouldn’t notice before she was able to return them.
She drove to the tavern and parked in the back next to Grant’s car and truck. He’d already transferred her meager belongings to the cottage, which was small and spare with weathered hardwood floors.
One room with an attached bath and a kitchenette, there was a queen-sized bed and nightstand, a couple of stools lined up under the counter, and just enough room for a narrow sofa in front of a stone fireplace.
“I thought you said this place wasn’t even habitable.” She ran her hand over the back of the sofa.
“You should’ve seen it two days ago.” He set her suitcase on a chair. “All the cobwebs are gone now.”
Rory blinked. “You mean you fixed it up for me?”
“I paid someone to fix it up for you. I’m many things, but a slumlord isn’t one of them. Keys to the tavern are on a hook by the door. Help yourself to whatever’s in the kitchen since there’s no fridge here.” He pointed his thumb toward the window, where the front porch of his house was in view a short distance away. “If you need anything, I’m right over there.”
He left, shutting the door behind him. Rory watched him cross to his house, his stride long and certain, as if he’d taken that dirt path countless times.
I’m right over there.
In the two years that Rory had been back in Bliss Cove, Grant Taylor had always beenright over there.
She’d first met him less than a month after her father died. The relatives who’d come to stay with them in the immediate aftermath of the accident had all returned to their own lives by then, but shockwaves of grief would ricochet through their family for weeks to come. Eleanor was insistent about wanting to shut down Sugar Joy, but she’d had no response to her daughters’ questions about what she would do instead.
After a painful, emotional afternoon trying to help her mother clear out some of Gordon Prescott’s clothes and belongings, exactly two weeks after the funeral, Rory had taken a long evening walk and ended up at the Mousehole. She’d heard the tavern had been sold, but she’d never met the new owner. The moment she saw Grant behind the bar—something about the way he moved, like he was at home there—she knew who he was.
She’d hitched herself onto a barstool. She was exhausted to the marrow of her bones. Hollowed out. She still couldn’t believe her father had been here one minute and was gone the next. The fifth part of their lifelong quintet had left a jagged hole in their lives.
Grant placed a cocktail napkin in front of her. He pulled his eyebrows together, scrutinizing her intently before turning to the ugly, mounted plastic fish she’d never seen before.
He pushed a button on the plaque. The fish turned its head and opened its gaping mouth. A nasally, high-pitched rendition of Elvis’s “Love Me Tender” rasped out.
Rory swallowed a bubble of laughter. “What the hell is that?”
“Singing fish. It usually makes people smile. Or at least, realize that they still can.”
“It’s pretty awful.”
He clutched his chest. “I can’t believe what I’m herring.”
This time she did laugh. Grant winked at her and walked away.
