Sixteen
To Grace Webster’s delight, her grandson surprised everyone at the tea—including Felicity—when he showed up in a partial Regency outfit, arranged by his wife and Maggie Sloan. Felicity thanked Dylan, who seemed to get a kick out of the entire experience. “I used to wear a hockey uniform,” he whispered. “This isn’t all that different.”
It fit him well, too. It wouldn’t have fit Gabe—not that he’d have acquiesced even if it had fit. But he had a grandfather in Rivendell, not a grandmother, and perhaps more to the point, he wasn’t a part of the fabric of the town any longer. His life in Boston, or wherever, had beckoned.
Most of the residents—men and women alike—assembled in the sunroom for a mini fashion show. Grace Webster provided commentary on Jane Austen’s life and works, with details on each of the dresses modeled by Felicity and a half-dozen various elderly women thoroughly enjoying themselves. Grace had done meticulous research, and she had good teacher’s instincts and experience to know when her audience had had enough.
As Felicity cleaned up after the tea, she found herself wishing Gabe had stayed, but she hadn’t asked him to. He might not have realized he could have stayed. Whenever she was at Rivendell, she appreciated the rich lives the residents had. She wasn’t naive. Many of the men and women who’d enjoyed today’s tea had chronic health issues, and they would be the first to say they had fewer days ahead of them than behind them. Felicity had known most of them her entire life. She liked being around them. Her own grandparents were gone. Her maternal grandmother, the last, had died a few months after she’d quit finance and started work as an event planner.
Several of the residents had pulled her aside, reminiscing about how her grandfather had helped them get mortgages when they were starting out in life. He knew them, and he knew they were good for it, they’d tell her. That had been a different world from the one she’d entered as a financial analyst, but she’d never wanted to follow her grandfather and father into local banking. That world, too, had changed since her grandfather’s day.
By the time she returned home, she was dead on her feet. The house seemed so quiet. She peeled off her Regency dress—imagining Gabe was there—and forced herself to pull the sheets off the bed he’d used and throw them in the wash.
That was enough for now.
Tomorrow she’d turn her attention to Kylie’s book launch and other events further out in her calendar. The work she did now, upstream, would make everything smoother later on.
She placed a slice of leftover tea cake on a plate and poured a glass of champagne, walked out to the deck and sat on the most comfortable chair. It didn’t have a footstool, but she put her feet up on the low coffee table and set her goodies on the side table. A cool breeze floated through the trees. She could smell the river, and she could hear ducks not too far in the distance. She thought she could smell ashes from Gabe’s fires the past two nights, but she decided that was her imagination.
She picked up her champagne and held it up to the trees. “To me,” she said with a smile.
She’d managed her biggest party in Knights Bridge to date, with its very own movers and shakers, and she’d segued right into a Jane Austen tea. She’d survived her odd encounters with Nadia Ainsworth. She’d developed a rough plan for Kylie’s badgers.
Most of all, she’d gotten through having Gabe Flanagan as a houseguest.
They were friends again, weren’t they?
Maybe. She thought so. He could also go back to Boston and she wouldn’t hear from him for another three years. For sure any friendship wouldn’t be the same as the one they’d had before she’d marched out of his apartment that cold February morning. It couldn’t be. They weren’t the same people they’d been then.
Felicity raised her glass a bit higher. “Cheers, Gabriel Flanagan, wherever you are, whatever is next for you—for us.”
* * *
By noon the next day, Felicity was deep into the world of the clever, fictional Badgers of Middle Branch. She packed a rough version of two of the badgers in her tote bag and walked to the Mill at Moss Hill and met Kylie and Russ on their balcony.
“These are fantastic,” Kylie said, grabbing one of the tiny stuffed badgers and holding it up. “Sherlock Badger is going to have friends. I hope he doesn’t get jealous because they’re cuter than he is.”
Russ turned to Felicity. “Kylie thinks Sherlock is real,” he half whispered. “Indulge her.”
Kylie grinned. “I considered asking Sherlock to walk me down the aisle.”
Her artistic imagination and sense of fun were somehow compatible with her ex-navy security consultant husband. Russ clearly appreciated his bride’s talents as an illustrator and storyteller. The mysteries of love, Felicity thought as she picked up the second half-done badger. “I see this one as the mom badger and the one you’re holding as the dad badger. We can dress them in outfits from the first book in the series. Does that work for you?”
“Love it,” Kylie said. “I do okay with a needle and thread but best to farm out any real sewing. Do you have anyone in mind? Can I help find someone?”
“Still working on that. I can sew, but it’ll be faster to get someone else to do it.”
“I can help, but you’ll know more people in town than Russ and I do. You grew up here. You’ll never be a newcomer.”
For whatever that was worth. Felicity wondered what it must be like for her new friends to look at her hometown through fresh eyes. They wouldn’t see the pre-renovation boarded up windows at Moss Hill, or remember Mark and Gabe as teenagers plotting their exit from Knights Bridge. It wasn’t a positive or a negative, just a different relationship with their new home.
They reviewed the guest list, the schedule for the evening and everything that needed to happen between now and Friday. As events went, the book-launch party wasn’t complicated, but Kylie, Felicity had discovered, was afraid no one would come. Even with RSVPs, she was convinced everyone who’d promised to be there would bail at the last minute and she’d be there at the library, alone with Russ, Felicity and her badger friends. Despite her success as Morwenna Mills, Kylie Shaw had some stubborn insecurities.
Kylie set the dad badger next to his wife on the table. “I spoke with my sister, Lila, this morning, and she says she’ll be there. I asked what she’d do if a veterinarian emergency came up, and she assured me she’ll have backup. Our parents are on a trip, so it won’t be them. They’d have gone at a different time, but they planned the trip before I set a date for the party. I don’t want them flying in from Tuscany early.” She brushed at her fair hair, the heat and humidity already frizzing it up. “Even if it’s just Lila and us, we’ll have a great time.”
“I look forward to meeting your sister,” Felicity said.
“She’s amazing.” Kylie smiled at her husband. “You don’t have to be there if work comes up, especially in California—”
“It won’t,” Russ said. “I tied up all those loose ends when I was out there last week. Work won’t interfere. I’ll be at the party. I wouldn’t miss it.”
“I’m an introvert. I have to angst about these things.” She spoke without any undertone of self-criticism. She turned again to Felicity. “Russ has a few things he wants to discuss with you. I’ll go inside and look over the work-back schedule. I can access it on my phone. You emailed it to me, right?”
Felicity nodded, and Kylie thanked her, jumped to her feet and dashed inside.
“It’s not as cloak-and-dagger as it sounds,” Russ said with a smile. “Kylie’s working on a new badger who does security at tall buildings in the city and visits Middle Branch to unwind. Her head’s in that world right now. He’s younger than Sherlock. Apparently they don’t get along at first.”
“Do you get approval on this new character?”
“Input, not approval.” Clearly that was fine with him. He sat forward, folding his hands on the table. “I wanted to talk to you about Nadia Ainsworth. She’s back in California. I checked. I don’t think she’s an immediate concern, and she might not be one at all.”
“But?”
“I did some digging on her.”
Felicity tried to ignore the twist of tension in her stomach. “Anything I need to know?”
“Maybe. Her history isn’t that different from what she told you and Gabe. She worked with him on an early start-up that didn’t go well and then continued with him on this latest one, which did go well. She put her heart and soul into the company, but she wasn’t in senior management or even an employee. Gabe then sold it to her husband, David Ainsworth, just as he—David—bailed on Nadia.”
“I know that much,” Felicity said. “Most of it, anyway.”
Russ nodded. “Bear with me. David’s new team brought in their own customer development specialist, so Nadia was out of a major client as well as a husband. Meanwhile her grandmother back East died. She told me she’s taking some time off to settle her grandmother’s affairs, regroup and figure out what’s next.”
Felicity welcomed a slight, cool breeze off the water. “What about event planning?”
“She oversaw several corporate events Gabe held to get everyone together. He did them at least twice a year given that his people all worked remotely, whether they were employees or freelancers. The last retreat was at a resort in Aspen.”
“Nadia probably coordinated with the resort’s staff planner who did most of the work.” Felicity frowned, considering Russ’s words. “She stretched the truth a bit on that one, didn’t she?”
“That’s correct,” Russ said, nothing light about his tone. “She has no business relationship or any other kind of relationship with Gabe at the moment. There was no logical reason for her to have contacted you the way she did.”
“I see.”
“My guess is Gabe was taken off guard by her sudden appearance here,” Russ added. “He strikes me as a decent guy, and it didn’t occur to him she’d try to get information from you, maybe get under your skin.”
“What does she want from him? Can you say?”
Russ sighed. “A bad divorce, the loss of a major client, not having Gabe in her life day-to-day—whatever her feelings toward him—and her grandmother’s death all at once is a lot. Then she finds out Gabe is presenting at Dylan McCaffrey’s first boot camp, and his childhood friend Felicity is organizing the day. I’m not sounding the alarm, but my guess is this woman is a bit jealous of you because you have what she wants.”
“Which is what? I’m not planning Gabe’s company retreats, I’m not a customer development specialist, I’m not married and my grandmothers are gone, too.”
“But you have Gabe’s attention and interest,” Russ said without skipping a beat.
Felicity grabbed the two badgers and tossed them into her tote. “Gabe and I grew up together. That’s it. There’s nothing else there. I organized the boot camp party for him because Mark asked me to—which made perfect sense since I was the planner for the rest of the day.” She sat up straight. “End of story.”
Russ’s eyebrows went up.
Felicity crossed her arms on her chest. “What? Go ahead, Russ. Say it.”
“All right,” he said, clearly reluctant. “You two might not realize it, but everyone else can see the connection you and Gabe have with each other. You two have known each other since nursery school. That’s something Nadia doesn’t have and never will have with him.”
“We weren’t speaking for a few years.”
Russ nodded. “Reconnecting could fuel her bitterness. Gabe’s happy. Nadia’s miserable. She doesn’t have to have a romantic interest in him herself to be obsessed with you.”
“Gabe and I were never romantically involved.” Felicity all but squirmed at her near-lie, but she would argue their one night together hadn’t been about romance. She wasn’t sure if Russ noticed her discomfort. Probably, she thought. “We were never a couple or anything like that. You know.”
“Yeah. I think I do.”
Felicity suspected he did know, but she shuddered, thinking about what might be running through Nadia Ainsworth’s head. “Jealousy and envy are bitter emotions to have take hold of you,” she said. “They can make a person irrational. I haven’t experienced that myself, but I’ve seen others who have—on both sides. Maybe Nadia’s looking for a distraction from her grief over her job, her marriage and her grandmother, or she’s creating drama because she’s bored. If she’s in California, we don’t need to worry about her, though, do we?”
“Just let me know if she contacts you,” Russ said. “If she does, ignore her. Don’t answer the phone, don’t respond to texts, emails or voice mails. Tell me. Let me handle her.”
“If she shows up on my doorstep again or leaves me a bottle of wine?”
“Call me. I’m right here down the road. Or call the police. Don’t take chances.”
“I often leave my doors unlocked—”
“Don’t.” He smiled then, as if deliberately toning down some of his intensity. “You shouldn’t be doing that, anyway. I know it’s a small town, but still.”
“An ounce of prevention and all that.”
“Exactly.”
That off Russ’s chest, Kylie rejoined them, and they shared lunch with Felicity on the balcony. She’d brought a few leftovers from the Jane Austen tea that were a huge hit. “We’ll take a walk along the river after lunch,” Kylie said as she finished the last of the Victorian sponge cake. “We can burn off the extra calories.”
Felicity laughed. “No calories in Maggie Sloan’s cooking.”
Russ and Kylie refused to let her help with cleanup. She had badgers to deal with, after all. Felicity thanked them and headed home along the river, content with her life—but wishing she’d find Gabe sitting on her deck or down at their swimming hole. Even without Russ’s take on Nadia, Felicity felt she and Gabe had unfinished business. Plus, she thought, she just wanted to see him, talk to him, laugh with him.
She groaned, blaming the hot, hazy early summer afternoon for her emotions.
There was no Gabe, of course, when she arrived back at her house, just tiny black ants that had discovered a gooey crumb on her kitchen floor.
She threw her hands on her hips. “How’d you guys get here so fast?”
She dealt with the ant mess, welcoming the sense of normalcy that came with it. Ants weren’t unusual this time of year.
Dealing with a potential stalker was unusual.
Felicity took her laptop out to a shaded spot on the deck and checked her messages. No texts, emails or voice mails from anyone, never mind Nadia Ainsworth.
As she worked, Felicity noticed dark clouds gathering to the west, adding a gray cast to the river. The air was still, oppressively hot and humid. She welcomed the cold front that the dark clouds signaled was moving in, but she’d happily skinny-dip in an isolated spot in the river right now. Probably not a good idea to be swimming when lightning struck.
She went inside and sat in front of a fan in the living room. It was one of those rare days when she wished Mark had installed air-conditioning.
A text came through. She glanced at her screen. “Gabe,” she whispered as she read it.
Made it to Boston. Thanks again for everything. What are you up to?
She typed her answer: Resisting our swimming hole.
Not good to swim alone.
Who says I’m alone?
But you are.
She smiled, surprised she wasn’t annoyed. I am. Storm’s coming. No swimming for me. Working. You?
Always working. TTYL
Should she bring up Nadia? Felicity shook her head, but she’d known she wouldn’t before she’d posed the question to herself. She typed a quick response: Talk soon.
Two minutes later, Gabe sent her a short video of bulldog puppies, a throwback to their pre-fight friendship. She watched the video twice, smiling even as she warned herself not to get sucked in by Gabriel Flanagan. He liked to have things his way, and she wasn’t going to twist herself into knots to please him. That didn’t mean she knew what they were to each other after the past few days, but if she wanted a man in her life, Gabe was a distraction if not an outright impediment—not because she couldn’t have male friends but because of their history, because they’d kissed at the swimming hole.
Because they weren’t just friends and maybe never had been.
If he were here, what would they be doing now, with a storm moving in on a hot, sweaty day?
Not a question that needed an answer, Felicity decided as she got back to work on Kylie’s badgers. It wasn’t long before she heard thunder rumbling in the distance. The storm hit soon after, bringing high winds, heavy rain, thunder and lightning and flickering power but no damage on Felicity’s stretch of the river. She took advantage of the weather to put away her laptop and add a few finishing touches to her badger couple. She’d never been particularly crafty, but she wanted a decent prototype for whomever she found to sew them.
A needle prick that drew blood convinced her to start making calls.
She grabbed a bandage out of her first-aid kit in the kitchen, managing not to drip blood on her badgers. She flashed back to her life before returning to Knights Bridge and moving into her house on the river. She loved Boston. She’d never tired of it—it was close enough she could slip into the city for the day. She had friends she could stay with overnight now that she was no longer living and working there. Like Mark Flanagan, Olivia McCaffrey and Maggie and Brandon Sloan, Felicity had done her bit in the city. She didn’t know about the others, but she’d moved back to Knights Bridge because she’d wanted to.
Gabe, she knew, would never want to move back to his hometown.
She dug out a name for a local seamstress, but she held off on making the call. Instead she called Olivia and Jess, and by dinnertime, Felicity, with Kylie’s permission, had a plan. Audrey Frost, Olivia and Jess’s grandmother, would get together a group of her friends at Rivendell who loved to sew and they would take on the badgers. Audrey, one of the younger residents, loved the idea. Felicity drove out to the assisted-living facility and spoke with her, and in minutes, they had enough volunteers to do the job.
A former school bookkeeper in town, Audrey was matter-of-fact. “What can go wrong? If a few of them end up looking more like pigs than badgers, there’s no harm. But they won’t. We have some brilliant crafty types here.”
Felicity was both pleased and relieved to leave the project in Audrey’s capable hands.
The badgers settled, she returned home, enjoying the cooler, dryer air as she grabbed a bottle of wine and went out to the deck, taking one last look at Gabe’s puppy video.
* * *
In the morning, Felicity drove into Amherst for supplies for her badger seamstresses. Although not that far from Knights Bridge, the busy, upscale college town and her smaller, quieter hometown were in many ways a world apart. She dropped the supplies off at Audrey Frost’s apartment at Rivendell. “Don’t you worry about a thing,” Audrey said. “We have hundreds of years of sewing experience in this place. Go on, now. Leave the Badgers of Middle Branch to us.”
Felicity headed out, relieved that Audrey was in charge of the badgers. She made a detour to Carriage Hill on her way home. Jessica and Olivia were sitting in chairs outside on the terrace and were comparing their experiences with morning sickness. They reiterated their confidence in their grandmother and her abilities to sew and organize the making of the badgers. “Grace has arthritis in her hands and can’t hand-sew,” Olivia added, referring to Dylan’s grandmother. “But she’s game to do whatever she can. They’ll have a blast.”
When Felicity headed home after a quick stop at the country store in the village, she found herself restless and out of sorts. She couldn’t explain why—or maybe she didn’t want to delve into why.
She peeked into the room where Gabe had stayed and sighed. “Yeah,” she whispered. “He’s why you can’t sit still.”
She headed out to the deck, the cool, dry breeze seeming to bring with it an urge to tell Gabe about her day. This restlessness, nostalgia, loneliness—whatever it was—had to pass.
She was relieved when her phone rang, and she saw Kylie’s number on her screen. A distraction. Good. She assumed it was about the upcoming party, but Kylie started by assuring her it wasn’t about work. “Russ and I are heading to Smith’s for a quick bite,” she said. “Join us?”
Felicity seized the chance to get out with friends. “I’d love to. I’ll be ready.”
Fifteen minutes later, they picked her up. As they drove along the river into the village, Felicity sensed herself beginning to relax, feeling more at ease in Knights Bridge now than she had growing up here. She’d made the right decision in returning. It was home.
* * *
Felicity invited Russ and Kylie in when they dropped her off at her house after a friendly, largely work-free dinner. She and Kylie had wine, but Russ stuck to water. He wanted to take a look at her “security setup.”
“I just want to do due diligence,” he said.
Felicity pointed to the doors to her deck. “I did lock them. My ‘security setup’ consists of regular locks, no alarm system, no weapons outside of the knife drawer and things like my old softball bat. I did have my badgers couple, but I gave them to Audrey Frost as prototypes.”
Russ didn’t laugh at her remark about badgers, but Kylie smiled.
“Good cell service?” Russ asked.
“Most of the time. I don’t have a panic room or anything like that, either.”
“Any windowless room where you could lock yourself against an intruder while you waited for police?”
“No, except for a closet.”
“Does it lock?”
“I never noticed. Probably not.” Felicity shook her head. “Russ, this is Knights Bridge.”
“I’d ask the same questions anywhere. It’s just an assessment. I’m not saying you need a panic room. You just need a plan. Your closest neighbor isn’t exactly within shouting distance.”
“A mile,” Felicity said. “I’m in good shape. I can run if necessary.”
“Stay close to the road if you ever do need to run. Don’t head down to the river. It’s too isolated, and if you’re caught down there—” He stopped midsentence. “Never mind. The place has decent passive security. You might consider an active alarm system.”
“Are you and Kylie installing one at your house?”
“No,” Kylie said. “No Kevlar vests in the front closet, either.”
Russ went out through the sliders to check the deck and the approach to the house from the river. Felicity stood by the slider and watched him. “He’s thorough,” she said to Kylie.
“It’s not you or this Nadia woman,” Kylie said. “It’s just the way he operates.”
“I hope he doesn’t feel as if he needs to be my protector or bodyguard or anything. I’m fine, but if I do run into trouble, I know what to do. Please don’t worry about me.”
Kylie nodded. “Of course. It’s good practice for Russ, too. Things are usually so quiet around here, he can keep his skills sharp.”
Felicity doubted Russ’s skills had dulled, but she appreciated Kylie’s gesture. He rejoined them, and they went outside to the driveway together. “I’m more likely to run into trouble with an exposed tree root or an irritated red squirrel than a crazed stalker,” Felicity said. “But thanks for taking a look.”
Russ smiled as he pulled open the passenger door. “Suspicious tree root on the path down to the river.”
Felicity laughed. “Have to mind those tree roots.”
She waited for him and Kylie to pull out of the driveway and start down the country road toward Moss Hill before she went back inside.
She checked her voice mail, texts, email and social media sites, but all was well. Nothing from Nadia, or from Gabe for that matter. Felicity debated texting him but resisted. Instead she walked down to the river and watched the ducks swimming on the opposite bank. When a handful of mosquitoes found her, she went back up to the house. She’d left the place unlocked. This paranoia thing was going to take some getting used to. She dug out her softball bat, checked the house for any sign of an intruder and then leaned the bat against the wall next to her bed.
Take a picture of her bat and send it to Gabe?
Not one of her better ideas.
She did a bit more work before finally retiring with a book, feeling both unnerved and comforted at the presence of the softball bat and the concern of friends.