“Smart words,” she said with an odd look and only then did he realize that it had been one of his aunt’s favorite phrases, whether she was talking about the time it took for cookies to bake or for the berries to pop out on her raspberry canes out back.
He quickly tried to turn the conversation back to her. “What about you? For a woman who claims she’s impatient for results, you’ve picked a major project here, renovating this big house on your own.”
“Brambleberry House belonged to a dear friend of mine. Actually, the one whose French toast recipe you’re eating.” She smiled a little. “When she died last year, she left it to me and to another of her lost sheep, Sage Benedetto. Sage Benedetto-Spencer, actually. She’s married now and lives in San Francisco with her husband and stepdaughter. In fact, you’re living in what used to be her apartment.”
He knew all about Sage. He’d been hearing about her for years from Abigail. When his aunt told him she had taken on a new tenant for the empty third floor several years ago, he had instantly been suspicious and had run a full background check on the woman, though he hadn’t revealed that information to Abigail.
Nothing untoward had showed up. She worked at the nature center in town and had seemed to be exactly as she appeared, a hardworking biologist in need of a clean place to live.
But five years later, she was now one of the owners of that clean abode—and she had recently married into money.
That in itself had raised his suspicions. Maybe she and Anna had a whole racket going on. First they conned Abigail, then Sage set her sights on Eben Spencer and tricked him into marrying her. What other explanation could there be? Why would a hotel magnate like Spencer marry a hippie nature girl like Sage Benedetto?
“So you live down here and rent out the top two floors?”
She sipped her coffee. “For now. It’s a lot of space for one woman and the upkeep on the place isn’t cheap. I had to replace the heating system this year, which took a huge chunk out of the remodeling budget.”
There was one element of this whole thing that didn’t jibe with his mother’s speculation that they were gold-digging scam artists, Max admitted. If they were only in this for the money, wouldn’t they have flipped the house, taken their equity and split Cannon Beach?
It didn’t make sense and made him more inclined to believe she and Sage Benedetto truly had cared for Abigail, though he wasn’t ready to concede anything at this point.
“The real estate agent who arranged the rental agreement with me mentioned you own a couple of shops on the coast but she didn’t go into detail.”
If he hadn’t been watching her so carefully, he might have missed the sudden glumness in her eyes or the subtle tightening of her lovely, exotic features.
He had obviously touched on a sore subject, and from his preliminary Internet search of her and Sage, he was quite certain he knew why.
“Yes,” she finally said, stirring her scrambled eggs around on her plate. “My store here in town is near the post office. It’s called By-the-Wind Books and Gifts.”
“By-the-Wind? Like the jellyfish?” he asked.
“Right. By-the-wind sailors. My friend Abigail loved them. The store was hers and she named it after a crosswind one year sent hundreds of thousands of them washing up on the shore of Cannon Beach. I started out managing the store for her when I first came to town. A few years ago when she hit seventy-eight she decided she was ready to slow down a little, so I made an offer for the store and she sold it to me.”
Abigail had adored her store as much as she loved this house. She wasn’t the most savvy of businesswomen but she loved any excuse to engage a stranger in conversation.
“So you’ve opened a second store now,” he asked.
She shifted in her seat, her hands clenching and un-clenching around the napkin in her lap. “Yes. Last summer I opened one in Lincoln City. By-the-Wind Two.”
She didn’t seem nearly as eager to talk about her second store and he found her reaction interesting and filed it away to add to his growing impressions about Anna Galvez.
He had limited information about the situation but his Internet search had turned up several hits from the Lincoln City newspaper about her store manager being arrested some months ago and charged with embezzlement and credit card fraud.
Max knew from his research that the man was currently on trial. He didn’t, however, have any idea at all if Anna was the innocent victim the newspapers had portrayed or if she perhaps had deeper involvement in the fraud.
Before coming back to Brambleberry House, he had been all too willing to believe she might have been involved, that she had managed to find a convenient way to turn her manager into the scapegoat.
It was a little harder to believe that when he was sitting across the table from her and could smell the delicate scent of her drifting across the table, when he could feel the warmth of her just a few feet away, when he could reach out and touch the softness of her skin…
He jerked his mind from that dangerous road. “You must be doing well if you’ve got two stores. Any plans to expand to a third? Maybe up north in Astoria or farther south in Newport?”
“No. Not anytime in the near future. Or even in the no-tso-near future.” She forced a smile that stopped just short of genuine. “Would you like more French toast?”
He decided to allow her to sidetrack him for now, though he wasn’t at all finished with this line of questioning. Instead, he served up another slice of the French pastry.
Being here in this kitchen like this was oddly surreal and he almost expected Abigail to bustle in from another part of the house with her smile gleaming even above the mounds of jewelry she always wore.
She wouldn’t be bustling in from anywhere, he reminded himself. Grief clawed at him again, the overwhelming sense of loss that seemed so much more acute here in this house.
Oh, he missed her.
He suddenly felt a weird brush of something against his cheek and he had a sudden hideous fear he might be crying. He did a quick finger-sweep but didn’t feel any wetness. But he was quite certain he smelled something flowery and sweet.
Out of nowhere, the dog suddenly wagged his tail and gave one happy bark. Max thought he saw something out of the corner of his gaze but when he turned around he saw only a curtain fluttering in the other room from one of the house’s famous drafts.
He turned back to find Anna Galvez watching him, her eyes wary and concerned at the same time.
“Is everything okay, Lieutenant Maxwell,” she asked.
He shook off the weird sensation, certain he must just be tired and a little overwhelmed about being back here.
Lieutenant Maxwell, she had called him. Discomfort burned under his skin at the fake name. This whole thing just felt wrong somehow, especially sitting here in Abigail’s kitchen. He wanted to just tell her the truth but some instinct held him back. Not yet. He would let the situation play out a little longer, see what she did.
But he couldn’t have her calling him another man’s name, he decided. “You don’t have to call me Lieutenant Maxwell. You can call me Max. That’s what most people do.”
A puzzled frown played around that luscious mouth. “They call you Max and not Harry?”
“Um, yeah. It’s a military thing. Nicknames, you know?”
The explanation sounded lame, even to him, but she appeared to buy it without blinking. In fact, she gifted him with a particular sweet smile. “All right. Max it is. You may, of course, call me Anna.”