Mariah Stewart - On Sunset Beach

“I thought you had an assistant.”

“I did. He went back to college in the spring, decided he’d rather be an engineer. Heard there was more money in it. Not too many people get rich putting out a weekly newspaper.”

“Maybe you should run an ad, see if you can find someone to give you a hand.” Ford tried to calculate how old Ray must be by now, surely well past retirement age. He had to be almost as old as Grace.

The thought gave him a start. It was still hard to acknowledge that she was aging.

“I’ll run it past your mother when I get a chance, see if she’s all right with bringing in someone.”

Ford made a mental note to mention it when he got back to the inn.

“In the meantime, I have some ads to get ready.” Ray stood.

“Right. Well, I guess I’ll see you later in the week. I’ll have another article for you.”

“Good, good. You’re doing a fine job with those. I know how proud Gracie is. I have to say, I’m looking forward to St. Dennis having a real art center. Yessir, it’s going to be good for the town to have a fine art gallery. There was some talk a few years ago about someone opening one up the street here, but then Clay Madison’s mother bought the storefront and opened that shop that sold sweaters for dogs …” Ray’s voice trailed down the hall.

Ford was almost to the bottom of the steps when he remembered what Ray said about the walls of the old conference room displaying the history of the town. He went back up the steps and walked straight to the front room and opened the door. The air was musty and the layer of dust on the top of the table was clear evidence that it had been a long time since any sort of conference had been held there.

There on the four walls, in dusty frames, hung the front pages of editions long past. There were pages that spoke of national history—from the Hindenburg disaster to Pearl Harbor to the assassination of John Kennedy and the horror of the World Trade Center on 9/11, and natural disasters like Katrina and Sandy—as well as stories that were big local news. There were photos of winners of the Fourth of July sailboat races and of local pageants, and of returning servicemen from World War II. He smiled at the pictures of Brooke in her beauty queen days (LOCAL BEAUTY CROWNED MISS EASTERN SHORE!) and Dallas MacGregor winning her first Academy Award. Ah, and there were the three amigos in their cowboy clothes, he and Dan grinning like fools while a scowling Lucy sat on the ground in front of them, her hat pulled down over her eyes.

He’d gone halfway around the room when he came to a photo of a once-familiar face. He leaned closer to read the caption: Future editor in chief? William T. Ellison, the current editor in chief and owner of the St. Dennis Gazette, shows off his newest grandson, Ford Winston Sinclair, the third child of Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Sinclair. “You mark my words, he’s going to follow in my footsteps someday,” Mr. Ellison predicted.

Ford felt as if the wind had been knocked out of him. He remembered his grandfather with great affection, recalled sitting on his lap in this very room while grown-up talk about the newspaper swirled about him like the smoke from his grandfather’s cigar.

“I get it, Gramps,” he said aloud.

He did get it. He understood what the paper had meant to his grandfather, and what it meant to Grace. She hadn’t been the one her father had expected to pass the paper on to, but she took on the job and kept the family legacy alive when neither of her brothers would. He understood what the Gazette represented to the community, but more, what it meant to his family. It was as much a part of them as the Inn at Sinclair Point. He felt its pull as much as he’d fought against it.

He closed the door softly and went down the steps and out onto the street.

Don’t know what we’d have done if you hadn’t stepped in to take ’er over …

No pressure there, he thought, and with a sinking heart, he jogged back to the inn, wondering if he was capable of carrying on that legacy—if he could live up to the standard set by old William T—even if he wanted to.

There was, he supposed, only one way to find out. Whether or not he was ready to take that step remained to be seen.

CARLY awoke on the living room sofa, a light throw over her legs and a crick in her neck. She sat and stretched, yawned, stood, then stretched again. She found her phone and checked the time: 7:39. A trip into the bathroom was followed by a trip into the kitchen, where she made coffee on her newly purchased one-cup-at-a-time machine. She stepped outside onto the patio and found the morning cooler and less humid than she’d expected. The neighborhood was quiet at this hour, the only sound she heard was the pounding of feet as a jogger passed by out front.

She went back inside and fixed her coffee, then into the dining room, where she’d left her work from the night before spread out around the table. After Ford left, she’d tried to focus on the catalog, but finally gave up. He was too much in her head. More troubling, he was inching his way into her heart, and that, she told herself, was a no-no. She’d learned a long time ago to stay away from men who didn’t know who they were. And if ever a man needed to have a stern talk with himself to figure it out, it was Ford Sinclair. As far as she could see, he was suffering from a major case of denial.

He could protest all he wanted, but it was pretty clear to Carly that he was adapting to his reporter gig much better than he admitted. He seemed more comfortable with each of their meetings, not only with her, but with his role. Maybe he’d never accept that the St. Dennis Gazette was a good fit for him, which would be a shame, because he sure didn’t seem comfortable with the role he’d been playing these past few years, but it wasn’t her place to point that out to him since their relationship was so vague and undefined.

Not that she wanted to put a label on it, of course, she reminded herself quickly. And yet last night … last night …

She sighed and took a sip of coffee, which had grown cold while she played back most of the evening in her mind. The glint of approval in his eyes when she opened the door. The sweet way he’d held her hand while they walked to Lola’s. The look on his face when they talked over dinner, as if he listened to every word and cared about what she was saying.

That interest in her—that ability he had to make her feel like what she had to say mattered—was something she’d been missing in her last two relationships. She’d always made a point to care about what other people said and felt and wanted—but she’d rarely found the favor returned when it came time to talk about her goals, her galleries, her wants. Especially with Todd. Todd, who became so enamored of his own success that after a while, he couldn’t talk about anything else. She’d actually been relieved when he told her he’d found someone else. Two years of her life down the tubes with that one, and she’d been glad to wave good-bye.

Well, that’s how it went with relationships sometimes, she thought. You pay your money and you take your chances, as her grandmother used to say. There just weren’t any guarantees. Carly knew that, but why was it so hard to find the right one? And why had the one who seemed like the one turned out to be a dud, and why did you have to invest two years of your life before you realized that he wasn’t the one after all?

She was still pondering these weighty matters when Ellie called.

“What are you doing?” Ellie asked.

“Staring at the mess on my dining room table and wondering why it’s so hard for me to toss out all my notes.”

“How ’bout we get together for pancakes?”

“What, you’re making pancakes? Seriously? You’re going to cook?”

“Well, no. Actually, Gabi and I were hoping you were. Cam’s sailing this morning, so we thought it was a good time for a girls’ breakfast.”

Carly laughed. “Sure. Come on over and we’ll christen my frying pan. Bring eggs. Oh, and maple syrup.”

“You got it. See you in fifteen.”

So, there goes the morning, Carly mused, and headed toward the bedroom to change, then back into the kitchen, where she made a second cup of coffee and began to get out the ingredients she needed for pancakes. Despite the fact that her family had always had a cook, she had learned early on that she had a talent for cooking. Ellie—not so much, although her family also had had the luxury of wealth and a professional cook.

“We’re here, Carly!” Gabi announced from the side door.

“Come on in.” Carly had just finished setting the table for three. “Oh, you brought Dune! Hi, pup!” Carly knelt to pet the little dog, who gleefully danced around her feet.

“We picked up blueberries.” Ellie held up a bag. “And syrup.”

“Thanks. You can put it all right on the counter.” Carly stood.

“Your house is so cute, Carly.” Gabi wandered into the living room. “What’s upstairs?”

“Two rooms and a bath. You can go look, if you’d like,” Carly told her, and the teenager took off up the steps, the dog at her heels.

“I hope you don’t mind that we brought Dune,” Ellie said. “As soon as she heard your name, she went right to the door, wagging her tail. Gabi swears she understood ‘Carly,’ ‘pancakes,’ and ‘girls’ breakfast,’ and she assumed she was included.”

“Of course I don’t mind. If I could, I’d have a dog.”

“Why can’t you have a dog, Carly?” Gabi came back down the steps and into the kitchen.

“Because I don’t have time to take care of one when I’m home. I travel a lot, I’m gone sometimes days at a time.”

“You could leave it with us. We could take care of it when you go away.”

“That would be a pain, driving the dog from Connecticut to St. Dennis every time I had a trip,” Carly told her.

“Oh. I thought this was your house. That you were living here.” Gabi frowned.

“Only till the exhibit is over, honey. Then I’ll go back to my old life.”

“I like this life better,” Gabi said. “I like it when you’re here.”

“I like being here,” Carly admitted.

“I love your little house.” Gabi went to the back door. “Oh, your yard is fenced in. Can Dune and I go out and look around?”

“Of course.”

Gabi opened the door and Dune shot out. “Hey, wait for me …”

“Make sure you clean up after her if she makes a mess,” Ellie called to her sister as the girl ran out after the dog.

“Is there something I can do?” Ellie asked.

“No, I’m good, thanks.” Carly rinsed the berries and set them aside to drain while she made the batter.

“So how’s the book?”

“Done and on its way to being formatted. It actually came together quite nicely.”

“Why do you sound surprised?”

“Because I’ve never written a book before.”

“You’ve been writing about art and artists for years, Car.”

“But not a book. I wanted to do Carolina justice.”

“So do you have a copy of it that I could read?”

“Help yourself. She’s your great-great-grandmother. See what you think. It’s that stack of papers on the left side of the dining room table.”

Ellie left the room and Carly began making pancakes, pouring the batter into the hot pan and watching for just the right moment to flip them over.