The Abalone Shell Read online

  As she drove away, the tears started falling. Silently. She was past the ugly sobbing, at least, but she still hadn’t figured out how to stop herself from crying every time, and she wondered if she ever would.

  Upon her return to the cottage, she knew at once that she didn’t want to be alone. Even with its happy memories, it was too quiet without Daphne. She’d never be able to get any work done here, so she grabbed her notebook, favorite pens, and laptop and headed back down the hill to the Sea Glass Gallery, hoping Owen wouldn’t mind her sitting in his office for a while until she got hold of herself. If he did, she’d sit out in the parking area in her car and work, but she doubted that would be enough. She craved his soothing presence.

  With the old insecurities coursing through her, she left her work in her car and slipped into his shop. He was talking with customers, detailing how he made the sea glass wind chimes that had first broken the ice between them, and she chewed on her bottom lip while she waited for him to ring up the sale. She admired the ease with which he dealt with his customers and the smiles he lavished on them that would win over even the most miserly client. No wonder he’d been able to make his crafts and his store successful enough to support him and his wife and son. And what was even more amazing to her wasn’t his ability to schmooze; it was how natural it was. This wasn’t a show he was putting on. It was who he was.

  Sensing her watching him, he glanced over, and his smile widened.

  “Hi there, gorgeous.” With no one else in the shop, he strolled to her, his expression slipping into concern as he neared. “Everything all right?”

  “More or less. Dropped Daphne off with Dan, which is never easy. Not because I don’t trust him with her—I do—but because….” She shook her head, unable to give voice to the rest of the thoughts as the guilt clamped down on her again.

  Owen folded her into his arms. “Shh. I don’t need to know.”

  He held her for a long time, and that and his quiet understanding was enough to ease her heartache. How could two men, both with soul-crushing traumas in their pasts, be so different?

  “Do you mind if I write in your office for a while? I didn’t feel like sitting in the cottage alone, and the breeze is a little too chilly now to be working outside.”

  “I don’t mind at all, but won’t the people coming and going be distracting?”

  “Honestly, that busyness sounds quite appealing right now. Too much quiet can be just as bad as too much noise.”

  He let out a soft huff of laughter. “You writers are a strange breed.”

  “We really are,” she agreed.

  “I’ll try not to bug you while you’re working.”

  “Somehow, I don’t think you could bug me.”

  Chuckling, he said, “Go get your things and I’ll grab you a cup of coffee from next door.”

  She almost purred at the offer and hurried out to her car. Owen had another customer when she returned, but a steaming mug of coffee was waiting on his desk in his office. She briefly contemplated closing the door—out of habit—but decided against it, not liking the idea of even that thin barrier between them. She opened her laptop and then her notebook and glanced over her outline and the last few pages she’d written to refresh her memory of where she’d stopped. With a deep breath to flush the rest of the bad emotions from her system, she jotted notes of what she needed to write next.

  Then she started writing, occasionally glancing up to watch Owen with his customers.

  It seemed like only minutes had passed when he knocked on the still open door and asked if she wanted to join him for lunch in the Salty Dog or if he should bring her something to eat. Because the words were flowing like they hadn’t in a long time, she asked him to bring her a bowl of his mother’s mouthwatering clam chowder.

  He brought two and sat with her, quietly observing her as she continued to write, stopping now and again to eat a spoonful of chowder. After about fifteen minutes, she looked up abruptly.

  “I’m distracting you,” he observed.

  “No. Not at all,” she replied.

  “Then why did you stop writing?”

  “I just realized that you aren’t distracting me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Normally the only person I can stand to have in the room with me when I’m writing is Daphne, and that doesn’t usually work so well, either, because she wants attention. I could never write when Dan was in the room with me. He could be absolutely still and silent, but his mere presence unsettled me. Especially toward the end.”

  “So I’m distracting you by not distracting you.”

  She laughed. “Yeah, kinda.”

  “Well, since you’re well and truly distracted now, finish your lunch so I can take your bowl to the kitchen and let you get back to work.”

  Because she was anxious to dive back into her story, she scarfed the rest of her clam chowder and handed him the bowl, barely remembering to thank him before she returned her attention to her laptop. She picked up right where she’d left off with no trouble getting back into the rhythm. Her fingers raced across her keyboard, and an energy that had been absent from her writing sessions for months on end crackled through her. She was uninhibited by the fear of being a fraud for writing romance when her marriage had failed, and there were no thoughts of sales or what her readers would think of this story, either.

  There was only her and the characters and the pure joy of writing.

  When she reached the end of the chapter, instead of stopping like she’d gotten into the habit of doing, she wrote the first few paragraphs of the next chapter to make it easier to pick the story up the next time she sat down to work on it. Then she had to take a break. Her eyes were starting to feel funny, and she had the delirious sensation of being stuck halfway between her fictional world and the real one.

  And when she looked up, she was shocked to see the sky overcast and a drizzle pattering the windows of Owen’s gallery. She was even more surprised when he thanked his customers, walked them to the door, and flipped his open sign to closed.

  “Closing up early?” she asked.

  “Uh, no, it’s after five.”

  She glanced at the clock on her laptop and jerked back. It was indeed almost twenty minutes past five. “Wow.”

  Quickly, she tallied up her word count for the day and was stunned to see she’d written over ten thousand words. She hadn’t had a day like that since…. She couldn’t actually remember. College, most likely.

  “Productive day?” Owen asked as he counted out his till.

  “Amazingly so.” She stood and stretched. Oh, yeah. She’d definitely been sitting on her backside all day. Every muscle in her body was stiff from hours with little movement, her butt bones hurt, and her knees took some coaxing to straighten. Rolling her head from side to side to work the kinks out of her neck and shoulders, she grinned. “I haven’t had a ten-K day in years, Owen.”

  “A ten-K day? What’s that?”

  “A day in which I write ten thousand words. Even on my more productive days lately I’ve only averaged twenty-five hundred, maybe three thousand words.” She giggled. “I haven’t ever been drunk, but I think this might feel a bit like that. My brain’s mushy and I’m strangely euphoric at the same time.”

  “No offense, but you sound a little drunk. I’m ready whenever you are. We’re supposed to have dinner ready for Gideon and Liam by six-thirty, right?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Well, we’d best get to it because the meal I have in mind takes a little time to prep. Just let me pop next door….”

  She gathered her things and was waiting for him when he returned with a brown paper sack full of… she had no idea what.

  “Is that dinner?”

  “Part of it,” he replied, opening the bag so she could see.

  “Clams! What are we going to do with them?”

  “We’re going to wow your cousin with Mom’s famous and top-secret steamer clam recipe.”

>   “If it’s top secret, are you sure she wants you sharing it with me? Because I fully intend to help you with dinner. This whole cooking together tradition is fun.”

  “She’s the one who suggested it.”

  There was some hidden meaning in his words and in the tenderness of his voice, but her brain was too muddled to decipher it. She’d never been much into cooking until adulthood had necessitated it, but she remembered how fiercely her grandmother had guarded her prized recipes. You don’t share recipes like these with just anyone, Nana had said. You only share them with family.

  Eleven

  “Lord almighty, that was incredible,” Hope purred. “I think it was even more amazing than when your mom makes it at the chowder house.”

  “Well, yeah,” Owen said. He picked through the sauce to make sure no one had missed any clams that had fallen out of their shells. Disappointingly, there wasn’t a single one left. “This is the recipe. To make this in the restaurant, Mom had to make a couple changes, and it’s good but not as good as the original.”

  “Your mom is one amazing cook,” Gideon remarked, knitting his hands behind his head and stretching for a moment before he pushed to his feet. “All right, Liam, you and I are on dish duty since Hope and Owen cooked.”

  Habitually, Owen rose to help Hope’s cousin and nephew clear the table, but Gideon shook his head.

  “Oh, no you don’t. Liam needs to learn that everyone in this household pulls their weight.” Gideon eyed his son with one brow lifted as if waiting for the boy to complain.

  Liam clamped his mouth shut and took his plate and Hope’s to the kitchen without a word.

  “Hannah seems to have him convinced that he doesn’t have to help out,” Gideon explained, “but he’s plenty old enough to have a few chores.”

  “If you’re looking for an argument from either of us,” Hope quipped, “you’re going to be disappointed. Daphne has chores, like clearing the table and helping with dishes.”

  “And Sean used to help us clear the table, too.”

  Gideon dropped his head for a moment, then looked sideways at Owen. “I haven’t had a chance to say it, but I am so sorry about Sam and Sean. It isn’t the same around here without them. Heartbreaking, man. Truly heartbreaking.”

  Owen nodded in acknowledgement but didn’t let those thoughts take root. He was getting better at that. Every day he spent with Hope and her beautiful little girl made it easier and easier. He retreated with her to the living room where they’d started a fire in the hearth, waited for Gideon and his son to do the dishes, and tried to ignore the dull ache of missing his son and the sharper pain of missing Daphne. The little girl had fully ingrained herself in his heart.

  As if on cue, Hope’s cell phone rang. Glancing at it, she said, “It’s Dan’s number. Must be Daph calling. Hello?” Immediately, her face brightened. “Hi, baby girl. How was your day?”

  Owen rested his head on the back of the couch and closed his eyes. From the one-sided conversation, he gathered that Dan had taken Daphne to the tide pools on Tidewater Point and out to the Stalwart Island Lighthouse as well. Disappointment dampened his contentment. He’d hoped to take her and Hope out in his kayaks to visit the lighthouse as soon as they had a calm enough day to do it, and while kayaking itself might be an adventure for Daphne—and maybe Hope, too—the small but elegant lighthouse was the best part.

  “Let me ask him,” Hope was saying. “Owen, would you like to talk to Daphne?”

  “Is that a good idea?” he asked quietly.

  “Dan’s in the shower.”

  “In that case, you bet I want to talk to her.” Hope set the phone in his waiting hand, and he grinned as he lifted it to his ear. “Hiya, Daph. Sounds like you’ve had an exciting day.”

  “Yeah. It was fun. But I miss you and Mom.”

  “We miss you, too, sweet pea. Even with your cousins and their dog here—who’s staring at me right now like she thinks I have food—it’s too quiet without you.”

  “She’s a funny dog. I wish we could have a dog.”

  “Why can’t you?” Owen’s brows rose. He couldn’t explain why, but Hope struck him as an animal lover, and until Daphne’s innocent comment, he hadn’t thought to wonder why she and Daphne didn’t have any pets.

  “We moved too much, and Mom and Dad said it was too hard to find a place to live that would let us have pets.”

  “Pets do make it difficult.”

  From the corner of his eye, he saw Hope frown.

  “Do you like dogs?” Daphne asked.

  “I love dogs. Don’t mind cats, either. Birds… not so much. They’re loud and messy.”

  “Then how come you don’t have any pets?”

  “Sam was allergic to cats and dogs.”

  “How come you haven’t gotten a dog or a cat since she died?”

  “I work a lot of hours, and it doesn’t seem fair to leave an animal home alone so long.”

  “Couldn’t you bring her to your store?”

  “Not with it attached to Mom’s chowder house. Health inspectors tend to frown on having pets in restaurants.”

  “Oh.” Daphne was silent for a moment, then she said in a low voice, “I gotta go. Dad’s done with his shower.”

  “He knows you called your mom, right?”

  “Yeah. But I don’t think he likes me talking about you so much.”

  “I don’t imagine he would. It may seem to him like I’m trying to do his job, but I promise I’m not. No matter what happens with your mom and me, your dad will always be your dad. No one can ever take that away from you and him. I’ll give you back to your mom so she can say goodnight. Can’t wait to see you on Wednesday, sweet pea.”

  He handed the phone back to Hope and stood, suddenly in need of some fresh air. He slipped out to the back deck and walked over to the railing, hunched over with his forearms folded on it. For almost a minute, he kept his thoughts at bay and watched the storm-driven waves pound the rocks and islands sheltering the cove in eruptions of foamy salt spray. The distraction didn’t last, and too soon, doubt churned through him like the water frothing and boiling around the cliffs.

  There was one glaring difference between his relationship with Hope and his marriage to Sam. With Sam, love had been simple and uncomplicated. Not so with Hope. Her ex-husband was going to be a shadow on them, and he’d known that from the start, but the reality of it was different than he’d expected. Meeting the man, dealing with him face to face had been his foremost concern, but it wasn’t an issue. Not really. Either they would find a way to get along or they’d learn to avoid each other.

  Owen didn’t want to share Hope and Daphne with the man. Even more than that, he didn’t want to feel like he was stealing them from him.

  He took several deep breaths, trying to ease the anxiety. It was just the weather. He had a love-hate relationship with nights like this. He loved the raw power of the storms but hated the dark memories they brought.

  “Are you okay?” Hope asked, hovering in the open sliding glass door, uncertain.

  “Yeah,” he lied. “Just thinking we should take a walk on the beach. Storms bring in all kinds of fun treasures.”

  “But the tide’s still up. And it’s likely to start raining again any time.”

  Abruptly, he pushed his troubling thoughts aside and turned to her with a grin. “What? Are you afraid you’ll melt?”

  Her laughter dispelled the rest of his doubts. It was a beam of radiant sunlight that sliced through the gloom, and when she sauntered over to him, confident and flirty, the clouds inside his mind cleared, burned away by a flash of desire. She folded her arms around his neck and angled her body against his, claiming his mouth with a demand that made him lightheaded. With a will of their own, his hands slid over her hips, gripping her firm rump and hoisting her off the deck. She gripped his waist with her thighs and braced her forearms against his chest with her hands locked behind his neck.

  “This is about the only good thing about my daughter
spending the night with her father,” she said huskily. “Maybe after our walk, you and I can get a little frisky. Or friskier.”

  “Maybe we will.”

  Unwillingly, he set her gently on the deck, pleased when she didn’t pull away. But then a fine drizzle began to fall, and he pressed his forehead momentarily to hers with a sigh.

  “Looks like we’re going to need rain slickers.”

  Twenty minutes later, Hope was parking her SUV in the vacant northern beach access. Shadow, the black Lab, could barely contain her excitement, and when Gideon walked around to the back of the vehicle to get her, her wiggling escalated into yipping. Owen grabbed his canvas treasure sack and hung it from his shoulder before joining Hope’s cousin at the rear of the car to see if the man needed a hand with his excited canine.

  “Hush up, you dopey dog,” Gideon muttered as he fought to get her to hold still long enough to put her leash on her.

  “You could probably just let her run,” Owen remarked. “There’s no one out here tonight.”

  “I do that and she’ll make a beeline straight for the water. She’s a good swimmer, but it’s a bit rough out, even for her. And I don’t think Hope would appreciate having a salty and stinky wet dog in her car.”

  “I think you’re underestimating your dog’s intelligence,” Hope remarked.

  “Have you met her?”

  She ruffled the Lab’s ears. “Yes, I have. And she’s a smart girl.” She waved a stick Owen hadn’t seen her pick up. “Come on, Shadow.”

  The dog pranced at Hope’s side the entire way from the parking area through the dunes to the beach, and when she hurled the stick, the black Lab launched after it, flinging damp sand behind her. Owen slipped his canvas sack from his shoulder and held it out to Liam.