“I think I should sample both before coming to any conclusions, or any definitive policies thereon.”
“Okay, fair. I don’t want any more pillows on the bed than what you sleep on.”
She shook her head, took a slow sip, wondering if it would calm her speeding heart. “No. Absolutely no on that. You just take them off the bed at night, put them back in the morning. It takes a couple of minutes and it adds style and warmth to the bedroom. On this issue, I’m immovable.”
He sat on the bench, stretched out his legs. After some thought, he figured you picked your battles, and pillows weren’t that high on the list. “I don’t go shopping, tagging along to haul bags or getting asked if some dress makes your ass look fat.”
“Take my word as gospel on this point. You’re the last person I’d want as a shopping buddy. And my ass isn’t going to look fat in any dress. Write that down, etch it in your memory.”
“I got it.”
She let out a quiet breath. No, the champagne hadn’t slowed her speeding heart, but that was fine. She liked the rush. “What are we doing, Ryder?”
“You know what we’re doing.”
“I’d like it spelled out if you don’t mind.”
“Should’ve figured.” He had to stand again, take a moment to walk to the rail again. “Right from the first minute. You come walking in, upstairs, and it was like being hit with a lightning bolt. I didn’t like it.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really. I stayed away from you.”
“At least,” she murmured.
“I kept my distance. Then you wanted sex.”
“Oh, Ryder.” She laughed, shook her head. “Well, that’s true.”
“So I gave you a break. It was just supposed to be sex, right?”
“Right.”
“It was okay to like each other. It’s better if you do. And maybe to figure each other out some, all good. But the more I figured you out, the more it wasn’t just sex. I didn’t much like that either.”
“This has been very hard on you.”
“See, that snooty tone? Why does that grab me like it does? You grab me, Hope, by the throat, by the gut, by the balls, by the heart.”
Her breath caught. How foolish. How wonderful. “You said heart.”
“I kept thinking it’s just the way you look, because the way you look, it drops a man to his knees. But that’s just a nice add-on. Really nice, but it’s not the way you look. It’s the way you are. Everything kept sliding around, like it was trying to find its place. Then it clicked in, fit. Done. You. Naked in the grass at sunrise. That was it.”
“It was sooner for me,” she managed, “but not very much.”
“So, I’m going to tell you.” He took another drink. “I’ve said it to my mother, and to Carolee. My grandma, and if I’m drunk enough I’ve said it to my brothers. But I’ve never said it to another woman. It’s not right to say what you’re not sure of, or to use it to smooth the way.”
“Wait.” She set her glass aside, rose to go to him. To stand with him over Main Street and look in his eyes. “Tell me now.”
“I love you. And I’m okay with it.”
She laughed. Her heart sang, but she laughed and took his face in her hands. “I love you. And I’m okay with it, too.”
“I don’t do poetry.”
“No, Ryder, you don’t do poetry. But you stand up for me. You tell me the truth. You make me laugh, and you make me want. You let me be and feel who I am. And you fell in love with me even when you didn’t want to.”
He closed his hands over her wrists. “I’m not going to stop.”
“No, don’t stop.”
She leaned to him, leaned on him, let that wonderful surge come, and let her speeding heart ride on it. “I’m so happy to love you. So happy to have you, just exactly the way you are. I’m so happy you told me tonight, when it was about friends and family, when it was about home.”
“It used to bother me that you were perfect.”
“Oh, Ryder.”
“I had that wrong.” He drew her back a little, to see her. “What you are is perfect for me. So.” He dug into his pocket, pulled out a box, flipped it open.
She stared at the diamond, then at him. “You—” She didn’t know how to get the words out through the stunned surprise and joy. “You bought me a ring?”
“Of course I bought you a ring.” Annoyance shimmered. “What do you take me for?”
“What do I take you for?” She tried to catch her breath, couldn’t. And stared down at the ring that flashed like a star in the porch lights. “Exactly what you are. Just exactly.”
“I love you, so we’re getting married.”
She held out her hand, tapped her ring finger.
“Right.” He took the ring, slid it on her finger.
“It fits,” she said softly. “How did you know?”
“Measured one of your other ones.”
“I’m so lucky to be marrying a handy man.”
“When you do, you’re moving. My wife’s not living at the inn.”
“Oh.” Details, she thought. She was good with details and adjustments. So she wrapped her arms around him. “I bet Carolee will be happy to take over the innkeeper’s apartment, shuffle the schedule. We’ll work it out.”
“Later,” he decided.
“Later,” she agreed, and lost herself in him. “It’s beautiful. It’s all beautiful.”
She leaned her head on his shoulder, started to sigh. And her breath caught. “Ryder. Oh God, Ryder, look. There.” She pointed to the other end of the porch.
They stood together in the shadows, locked in an embrace. He wore the rough clothes of a laborer, not a torn and bloody uniform. Hope saw his hand fist at the back of Lizzy’s dress, as Ryder’s often did with hers.
“He found her. Her Billy, he found her. They found each other. They’re together now.”
“Don’t cry. Come on.”
“I cry when I need to. Get used to it. After all this time, after all the waiting, there they are. You look like him a little. Like her Billy.”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“I do. I think you showed him the way. I don’t know how. It doesn’t matter how.” For a moment her eyes met Lizzy’s. Joy into joy. “Everyone’s exactly where they belong.”
EPILOGUE
ON A BLOOMING EVENING IN SPRING, AVERY TWISTED HER gumball-machine ring while Clare and Hope fastened her wedding gown.
“I’m not nervous.”
“Of course not,” Hope said.
“Okay, a little, but just because I want to look really good.”
“Believe me, you do. Turn around and look,” Clare ordered.
In the bedroom of The Penthouse, Avery turned toward the big mirror. “Oh, I do. I really do look good.”
“Gorgeous is what you look,” Hope corrected. “Avery, you’re gorgeous. The dress is stunning. I shouldn’t have doubted your online acumen.”
“It just right.” Delighted with herself, Avery turned a circle so the sparkling skirt flowed with her. “It’s me.”
“You’re glowing like a candle.” Clare touched Avery’s bright hair. “A flame.”
“Champagne! Quick! Before I tear up and ruin the makeup Hope worked so hard on.”
“For the bride, and the attendants.” Hope poured. “And even for the nursing mother.”
“The twins can handle it. Luke and Logan are tough.”
“Look at us. The wife, the bride, and the bride-to-be.” Avery lifted a glass, toasted them all. “Your turn in September,” she said to Hope.
“It can’t come soon enough. Which is crazy to say since I have so much left to do. But today’s yours, and I can promise you everything is exactly and wonderfully perfect.”
“It couldn’t be otherwise. I’m marrying my boyfriend, with my two best friends beside me, my dad, the woman who’s been my mom since I was a kid, my brothers. And I’m doing it in the most beautiful place I know.”
“I’m going to text the photographer, have him come up. We’re on a schedule,” Hope reminded her.
She checked everything. The flowers, the food, the table displays. Candles, linens. Stopped long enough to help Beckett pass the chubby-cheeked twins and their three brothers to Clare’s mother and Carolee. To adjust Ryder’s tie, as an excuse to nuzzle his neck.
“Why don’t we just do it now?” he asked her. “We’re all dressed up, got a preacher coming.”
“September.” She lingered over a kiss. “It’ll be worth the wait.”
Exactly on time, she rounded up Willy B.
“Thank God.” Justine patted his cheek. “He’s nervous as a bride himself.”
“It’s my girl.”
“I know it, honey. You go on and get her now.”
Hope waited, fetched tissues when Willy B’s eyes welled up, and gave Avery’s makeup a final touch-up.
“What’re you mumbling about?” she asked Clare.
“I’m praying. That I don’t hear the babies cry, because if I do my milk might start up.”
“Oh my God. I should’ve thought of earplugs.” But laughing, she grabbed Clare’s hand to hurry to the door.
Avery wanted an entrance, so they’d descend the stairs to The Courtyard where the guests sat, and Owen waited with his brothers.
All so handsome, she thought. All so right. In a few months she’d walk down these same steps to Ryder.
She glanced across the lot, over the white tent where Fit In Boons-Boro stood prettily in its soft blue coat, its silver trim.
She was happy to have it there, and a little sorry not to have Ryder right in back of the inn every day.
She wondered what Justine would think of next, and was grateful she’d be able to watch it evolve.
Then she squeezed Clare’s hand. “Look.”
On the porch facing the flower-decked arbor, Lizzy stood with her Billy.
“They’re still here,” Clare said quietly. “It always surprises me.”
“They’re happy here. For now anyway. It’s their home.”
And hers, she thought. Her town, her place, her home. In it she’d build a life with the man she loved.
She glanced back, blew a kiss to the bride, then walked down the steps toward the promise.
KEEP READING FOR AN EXCERPT FROM
THE FIRST BOOK IN THE INN BOONSBORO TRILOGY
BY NORA ROBERTS
The Next Always
NOW AVAILABLE FROM PIATKUS
THE STONE WALLS STOOD AS THEY HAD FOR MORE THAN two centuries, simple, sturdy, and strong. Mined from the hills and the valleys, they rose in testament to man’s inherent desire to leave his mark, to build and create.
Over those two centuries man married the stone with brick, with wood and glass, enlarging, transforming, enhancing to suit the needs, the times, the whims. Throughout, the building on the crossroads watched as the settlement became a town, as more buildings sprang up.
The dirt road became asphalt; horse and carriage gave way to cars. Fashions flickered by in the blink of an eye. Still it stood, rising on its corner of the Square, an enduring landmark in the cycle of change.
It knew war, heard the echo of gunfire, the cries of the wounded, the prayers of the fearful. It knew blood and tears, joy and fury. Birth and death.
It thrived in good times, endured the hard times. It changed hands and purpose, yet the stone walls stood.
In time, the wood of its graceful double porches began to sag. Glass broke; mortar cracked and crumbled. Some who stopped at the light on the town square might glance over to see pigeons flutter in and out of broken windows and wonder what the old building had been in its day. Then the light turned green, and they drove on.
Beckett knew.
He stood on the opposite corner of the Square, thumbs tucked into the pockets of his jeans. Thick with summer, the air held still. With the road empty, he could have crossed Main Street against the light, but he continued to wait. Opaque blue tarps draped the building from roof to street level, curtaining the front of the building. Over the winter it had served to hold the heat in for the crew. Now it helped block the beat of the sun—and the view.
But he knew—how it looked at that moment, and how it would look when the rehab was complete. After all, he’d designed it—he, his two brothers, his mother. But the blueprints bore his name as architect, his primary function as a partner in Montgomery Family Contractors.
He crossed over, his tennis shoes nearly silent on the road in the breathless hush of three a.m. He walked under the scaffolding, along the side of the building, down St. Paul, pleased to see in the glow of the streetlight how well the stone and brick had cleaned up.
It looked old—it was old, he thought, and that was part of its beauty and appeal. But now, for the first time in his memory, it looked tended.
He rounded the back, walked over the sunbaked dirt, through the construction rubble scattered over what would be a courtyard. Here the porches that spanned both the second and third stories ran straight and true. Custom-made pickets—designed to replicate those from old photographs of the building, and the remnants found during excavation—hung freshly primed and drying on a length of wire.
He knew his eldest brother, Ryder, in his role as head contractor, had the rails and pickets scheduled for install.
He knew because Owen, the middle of the three Montgomery brothers, plagued them all over schedules, calendars, projections, and ledgers—and kept Beckett informed of every nail hammered.
Whether he wanted to be or not.
In this case, he supposed as he dug out his key, he wanted to be—usually. The old hotel had become a family obsession.
It had him by the throat, he admitted as he opened the unfinished and temporary door to what would be the lobby. And by the heart—and hell, it had him by the balls. No other project they’d ever worked on had ever gotten its hooks in him, in all of them, like this. He suspected none ever would again.
He hit the switch, and the work light dangling from the ceiling flashed on to illuminate bare concrete floors, roughed-in walls, tools, tarps, material.
It smelled of wood and concrete dust and, faintly, of the grilled onions someone must have ordered for lunch.
He’d do a more thorough inspection of the first and second floors in the morning when he had better light. Stupid to have come over at this hour anyway, when he couldn’t really see crap, and was dog-tired. But he couldn’t resist it.
By the balls, he thought again, passing under a wide archway, its edges of stone still rough and exposed. Then, flipping on his flashlight, he headed toward the front and the work steps that led up.
There was something about the place in the middle of the night, when the noise of nail guns, saws, radios, and voices ended, and the shadows took over. Something not altogether quiet, not altogether still. Something that brushed fingers over the back of his neck.
Something else he couldn’t resist.
He swept his light around the second floor, noted the brown-bag backing on the walls. As always, Owen’s report had been accurate. Ry and his crew had the insulation completed on this level.
Though he’d intended to go straight up, he roamed here with a grin spreading over his sharply boned face, the pleasure of it lighting eyes the color of blue shadows.
“Coming along,” he said into the silence in a voice gravelly from lack of sleep.
He moved through the dark, following his beam of light, a tall man with narrow hips, the long Montgomery legs, and the waving mass of brown hair with hints of chestnut that came down from the Riley—his maternal side.
He had to remind himself that if he kept poking around he’d have to get up before he got to bed, so he climbed up to the third floor.
“Now that’s what I’m talking about.” Pure delight scattered thoughts of sleep as he traced a finger down the taped seam of freshly hung drywall.
He played his light over the holes cut out for electric, moved into what would be the innkeeper’s apartment, and noted the same for plumbing in the kitchen and bath. He spent more time wandering through what would be their most elaborate suite, nodding approval at the floating wall dividing the generous space in the bath.
“You’re a frigging genius, Beck. Now, for God’s sake, go home.”
But giddy with fatigue and anticipation, he took one more good look before he made his way down the steps.
He heard it as he reached the second floor. A kind of humming—and distinctly female. As the sound reached him, so did the scent. Honeysuckle, sweet and wild and ripe with summer.
His belly did a little dance, but he held the flashlight steady as he swept it down the hall into unfinished guest rooms. He shook his head as both sound and scent drifted away.
“I know you’re here.” He spoke clearly, and his voice echoed back to him. “And I guess you’ve been here for a while. We’re bringing her back, and then some. She deserves it. I hope to hell you like it when she’s done because, well, that’s the way it’s going to be.”
He waited a minute or two, fanciful enough—or tired enough—to imagine whoever, or whatever, inhabited the place settled on a wait-and-see mode.
“Anyway.” He shrugged. “We’re giving her the best we’ve got, and we’re pretty damn good.”
He walked down, noted the work light no longer shone. Beckett turned it on again, switched it back off with another shrug. It wouldn’t be the first time the current resident had messed with one of them.
“Good night,” he called out, then locked up.
This time he didn’t wait for the light, but crossed diagonally. Vesta Pizzeria and Family Restaurant spread over another corner of the Square, with his apartment and office above. He walked down the sloping sidewalk to the back parking lot, grabbed his bag from the cab of his truck. Deciding he’d murder anyone who called him before eight a.m., Beckett unlocked the stairwell, then climbed past the restaurant level to his door.
He didn’t bother with the light, but moved by memory and the backwash of streetlights through the apartment. He stripped by the bed, letting the clothes drop.
He flopped facedown on the mattress, and fell asleep thinking of honeysuckle.
THE CELL PHONE he’d left in his jeans pocket went off at six fifty-five.