Sand Castle Bay. Sherryl Woods
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adults, not kids,” Gabi said. “We should be more sensitive.”
“Boone said something very much like that earlier,” Emily admitted.
Gabi grinned. “You’re quoting Boone now. That’s quite a turnabout.”
“Don’t make too much of it,” Emily said. “He just mentioned that, even though Cora Jane let us all go, it doesn’t mean she doesn’t want or need us around from time to time.”
“He’s right about that,” Gabi admitted. “Not even I get over here half as much as I should, and I live closest. Forget about Dad. Until the other day when he drove over to pick her up, I can’t recall the last time he set foot in Sand Castle Bay. He doesn’t even drive crosstown in Raleigh to see me unless I force the issue.”
“Did you honestly expect otherwise?” Emily asked her.
Gabi looked momentarily disconcerted by the question, then laughed self-consciously. “I suppose I did. Crazy, huh? Mom couldn’t even get him to come home for dinner most nights. I guess a part of me was thinking that with Mom gone, he might need company from time to time, maybe even a home-cooked meal.”
Emily regarded her with sympathy. “I’m sorry, Gabi.”
“Don’t be sorry for me. He’s disappointed all of us, Mom included.”
“But I think it affected you the most,” Emily said. “Mom accepted the way things were. Samantha went her own way. So did I. We gave up expecting anything, but you’re the one who’s settled right there in Raleigh, followed in his footsteps, tried to become a part of his world. Now don’t go and take offense at this, but we all know you did that hoping to finally get his attention.”
Gabi didn’t even bother trying to deny it. “I may be in the same field, but I don’t sit over a microscope the way he did,” she said candidly. “I write press releases about other people’s discoveries.”
Emily chuckled. “Worse, you do it for a competitor, who’s wildly successful, in part thanks to your PR work,” she said. “That must give Dad heartburn.”
Gabi grinned. “It isn’t nice to gloat,” she chided.
“Well, it makes me smile. It’s what Dad deserves for not hiring you himself. I know that’s what you really wanted.”
Gabi sighed. “It would have been a disaster. I can see that now. He was right to say no.”
“I’ll give you that,” Emily said. “I’m glad you can finally see it, too. You’d have been miserable having a boss who withholds praise or is too distracted to even notice you’re alive until you make a mistake.”
Gabi frowned. For a minute Emily thought she might jump in and try to defend their father, but instead she let it go. That alone hinted at her disillusioned acceptance of their father’s flaws.
“How’d you and Samantha get along on the ride over?” Gabi asked, deliberately changing the subject.
“Fine,” Emily insisted, a defensive note immediately creeping into her voice. “Why?”
“Because she always seems to get on your last nerve without even trying.”
“Not this time,” Emily swore, “though she does seem to have some crazy idea about me and Boone.”
Gabi laughed. “Sweetie, we all have crazy ideas about you and Boone, even you if you’re being honest with yourself. Tell me you did not just about swoon when you laid eyes on him for the first time today?”
Though she’d have denied it had Samantha asked, with Gabi she admitted the truth. “Maybe just a little swoon,” she said. “I told him there couldn’t be any craziness between us, though.”
“Did you now?” Gabi said, clearly amused. “And why did you find it necessary to say such a thing?”
“Because there was a moment out there on the deck, just a moment, when there seemed to be something sizzling between us the way it used to.”
“And you’re totally opposed to any sizzle?”
“Totally,” she declared very firmly, as much for her own sake as to prove anything to her sister.
Gabi looked disbelieving just as Samantha had earlier. “Oh, honey, you are in a heap of trouble if you believe that.”
“I can’t want anything to happen between me and Boone,” Emily insisted.
“Saying it won’t make it so. Feelings as strong as what you two once shared don’t vanish just because time has passed or because they’re inconvenient.”
“But we moved on,” Emily protested. “Both of us.”
“And now you have another chance. Seems to me what would be really crazy is not taking advantage of that.”
Emily started to utter another more vehement protest, but Gabi cut her off.
“I’m just saying it’s something you should consider before you get all stubborn and dig in your heels. Boone’s an incredible man.”
Not even Emily was fool enough to try to deny that. “But he’s an incredible man who lives in North Carolina.”
“Gee, last time I checked we had phone lines, airports and even Wi-Fi,” Gabi said. “And from everything I hear, you have an established reputation in your field that might even follow you all the way to this mid-Atlantic wilderness outpost.”
Emily laughed. “Okay, point taken.”
But that didn’t mean she was going to open her heart...or risk breaking Boone’s for a second time.
* * *
Boone left the Castle women working inside the restaurant, while he got started cleaning up the parking lot. After his exchange with Emily earlier, he needed to work off some steam without her in his face. The physical labor of picking up boards and cutting up tree limbs, loading them into the bed of his truck, was exactly what he needed. And when Jerry’s teenage neighbor showed up, he put Andrew to work at the task, too.
They’d been at it for a couple of hours and had made two trips to the dump when Cora Jane came into the parking lot with bottled water and a thick tuna salad sandwich on toasted rye, just the way he liked it.
“The others are taking a break out on the deck,” she told him. “I’ve coaxed Andrew up there, too, but something told me you might not be interested in joining us.”
“No, this is good,” he said, grateful for her perceptiveness.
“You and Emily settle anything this morning?”
“We talked,” he said, taking a long sip of the cold water.
“And?”
“Cora Jane, it might be best if you stayed out of the middle of this,” he suggested gently.
“Your opinion,” she retorted. “It’s not in my genes to sit on the sidelines and watch two people I love being miserable.”
He laughed at that. “Emily doesn’t look all that miserable to me. She’s a confident, successful businesswoman.”
“With no personal life to speak of,” Cora Jane assured him. “I could say exactly the same about you.”
“Have we not had this conversation more times than I can count?” he asked with good-natured exasperation. “I have exactly the amount of social life I’m interested in having.”
“Your focus is on B.J., yada-yada-yada,” she confirmed sarcastically.
“Well, it’s true. B.J. is my top priority. And I don’t think getting involved with your granddaughter, only to have her take off again, is in my son’s best interests, or mine, for that matter. I can only imagine what Jenny’s parents