It took minutes to reach the gravel lot just off South Mobile Street, Fairhope’s scenic highway. Kyle spotted the familiar sign for Flora. Adrian, his mother, had built her small business from the ground up to support herself and her young son after a disastrous first marriage. Kyle had spent many days after school behind the counter of the flower shop watching her work. If he was restless or naughty, she’d send him off to one of the neighboring small businesses owned by three women who had become aunts to him in everything but blood.
Attached to Flora on the bay side was Tavern of the Graces, owned by Olivia Leighton and her husband, Gerald, a bestselling author. Olivia had taught Kyle how to play pool and darts and how to woo chicks. Later, she’d taught him how to mix drinks and hold his liquor—not that his mother knew any of that. The now third-generation establishment was operated chiefly by Olivia and Gerald’s first son, William, these days.
Above Flora was the gleaming display windows of Belle Brides, bridal boutique and operating center of buzzy wedding coordinator and couturier, Roxie Strong. Kyle had tried to avoid Belle Brides as a kid. Most everything was off-limits there. However, Roxie always kept sweets behind the counter, which she used to her advantage whenever she needed stand-ins in lieu of mannequins.
Finally, beyond the shops and Flora’s greenhouse, there was the inn. The white antebellum structure was a real gem. Framed by gardens and supported by great columns, Hanna’s Inn was lovingly tended by Briar Savitt and her husband, Cole. They’d lived on the third floor for years and had only just expanded into a new wing.
Construction looked to be complete, Kyle noticed as he parked his motorcycle in front of Flora and took off his helmet. Leaning back on the seat, he removed his gloves one finger at a time. He wasn’t normally a fan of alteration, but the demand from the inn’s guest book had all but screamed expansion as far back as Kyle could remember. And the design was swell. He’d bet Briar was pleased as pie.
He always felt warm when he thought of the innkeeper. She’d often cooked for him, baked for him. Long before she married Cole and gained Gavin as a stepson, she’d let Kyle sleep in the linens she tended as religiously as the landscaping. He’d done homework at her kitchen table. He’d laughed himself silly chasing a giant Irish wolfhound named Rex across the kempt lawn—a lawn he’d regularly mowed as a teen to keep his Jeep full-up on gas.
He’d caught crab for supper from the traps tied off her dock, had learned to fish and swim there, had tied his first skiff there. It was also there he’d kissed a girl for the first time, hunkered down in the butterfly bushes. Amelia Blankenship. They were almost eleven. She wore pomegranate lip balm.
He’d slipped her the tongue, and she’d told his mother. He then spent two weeks sulking without video games as penance. But not two years later Amelia started cornering him behind the lockers at school looking for a French partner, and all was forgotten.
As Kyle shifted from the leather seat of his hog and planted his hard-soled riding boots in the gravel, he wondered if he’d be able to stick around long enough to catch the sunset from Hanna’s. There was nothing like the view from her sunporch at the day’s end.
He should know. He’d seen the sun set most everywhere.
The bells chimed over the door to Flora as he entered the shop, the sound as comforting as it was timeless. He stuffed his gloves in the riding helmet and tucked it against his side. The girl—well, woman—behind the checkout counter and the old-fashioned cash register was built like a willow branch. She had short-cropped raven-colored hair in a punk-ish sweep. There was a teensy diamond stud in the crease of her nose and several others creeping up the shell of her ear. She wore black makeup, black clothes. She always dressed in black, even in the thick of summer.
She was a carbon copy of his mother without the red hair neither of them had managed to inherit. Adrian’s freckles had faded out long ago, but they remained on Kyle’s sister, dark and splattered every which way across pale features. Still, the woman before him was so small even holding her as a child in arms, arms that had felt clumsy and reckless, Kyle had wondered that they could be so closely related.
He was eight when his mother married his biological father, James. And he was just shy of ten when the sibling he’d wished for with every fiber of his being was at last born. Not a brother like he’d wanted. But a sibling just the same.
When the door closed behind him, encasing him in the fresh, sweet-scented showroom, she didn’t look around. Her head bent over a large open book, she recited in a bored monotone, “Welcome to Flora, Fairhope’s finest florist. How may I assist you?”
“Damn,” Kyle muttered, backtracking. “This ain’t the cathouse.”
Mavis’s spine straightened. Her head whipped. Dark eyes pinned him to the spot, the muscles of her face momentarily slack in a rare show of surprise. “Kyle?” It wasn’t so much a question as a demand. “You’re home,” she stated, combing him.
“Just.”
“You didn’t call,” she said, accusing now. A well-worn scowl pulled at her insouciant mouth. “Typical of you to just show up and give everybody the shock of the month.” A fist came to rest against her hip. “Jackass.”
“Pipsqueak,” he threw back.
“Nimrod.”
“Tightwad.”
“Meathead.”
The corners of his lips moved. “Meathead?”
He watched hers waver. “Yeah. That’s what I said. Meathead.”
He couldn’t stop it. He broke into a fond grin. “Get over here.”
Mavis had never been one for public displays of affection. Despite that and the tough love she volleyed routinely back at him in spades, she moved toward him. When he wrapped her tight against his chest, she stood only slightly stiff in his embrace.
“Miss me?” he whispered, his cheek against her hair.
“Eh.”
A quiet laugh rumbled through him before he let her go.
She gave him another study. “At least you’re intact. Wilderness Man.”
Kyle skimmed his knuckles over the unruly beard. “Yeah, I could probably do with a shave, huh?”
“You’re going to need a bush-hog to rid yourself of that mess.” Eyes widening, she asked, aiming to tease, “Didn’t lose any more of the family jewels, I take it.”
He hissed through his teeth. “Can’t afford it. What’s left is here, standing right in front of you,” he added when she continued to eyeball him, waiting for a solid answer on the health front. She blinked, and the relief was gone, but the glimpse of emotion he gleaned made his stomach tighten just the same. “What about you? How’re you doing?”
“No complaints.” When his brows hitched and he scrutinized her much as she’d scrutinized him, she repeated, “I said no complaints.”
“Good,” he said after a second’s longer study. Mavis had been treated for epilepsy since she was a little kid. “And how’s business?”
“Fine,” she admitted.
“Mmm-hmm. Any, uh—” he fanned his fingers in the air “—sightings lately?”
She smirked, banding her arms over her chest. “You know that’s confidential.”
Mavis had an unusual job description and loose hours to go with it. When she wasn’t tied up doing paranormal investigation, she filled the needs of her parents and their various industries—Flora, Carlton Nurseries, Bracken Mechanics and his father’s latest and fondest project, a start-up company called Bracken-Savitt Aerial Application & Training. Or B.S., for short. “You’re being careful out there at least,” he