Keepsake for Eagle Cove

Chapter 1-2

Devin Robison had rarely felt so out of place in his life. He’d slept in the back of his pickup last night in the Boise National Forest. Up with the sun, he’d landed in Eagle Cove nine hours later in the middle of a wedding. It was terribly disorienting, and not just the road-weariness-meets-wedding scenario.

He’d thought that growing up in Chicago had prepared him for great expanses of water. Lake Michigan was Chicago’s front yard—three hundred miles long and a hundred wide. He’d even boated on the Caribbean a few times. But as he’d crossed the country, the towering peaks of the Rockies had been as disorienting as if he’d traveled to the moon. The real shock had been when he’d broken out of the Coast Range forest before the final descent into town and seen the entire Pacific Ocean before him; he’d nearly crashed his Toyota in surprise. Unless you happened to stumble on an island, Tokyo was five thousand miles away. The expanse was impossible to comprehend.

Neither Chicago nor the towns he’d driven through in the last four days had prepared him for the tiny size of Eagle Cove. One mile from forest to ocean and two miles along the beach…and it wasn’t densely populated. The next town of any size was thirty miles up the coast. He’d been on the verge of turning around from an attack of agoraphobia, the fear of open spaces—or maybe just plain nerves. It was news to him that such obscure places even existed. Eagle Cove was so remote, so wild. He hadn’t seen a single fast food place in the town. Maybe they weren’t allowed; every business, actually every road except the main drag of Beach Way, had been named for a bird: Blackbird Bakery, Warbler Market, Rusty Pelican Tavern. Strange place.

Devin had come west looking for a fresh start, or at least a break. He needed the latter desperately, but he’d left “middle America” somewhere staggeringly far behind.

Finding the massive Victorian home had been easy. “Find LBB Lane at the far end of downtown,” which was their grandiose term for a business district four blocks long. “Go to the end of the road Little Brown Bird Lane. You’ll know when you find the right place.”

And he absolutely had. The house was gorgeous. It was exactly the sort of structure that had led him into architecture school. Three stories of classic, early-1880s American Queen Anne Victorian. He’d fallen in love the moment he’d seen it. The house was one of the best examples he’d ever seen of that style. Unlike so many of the ones in Chicago, the whimsy had not been allowed to overwhelm the beautiful lines and overall cohesiveness of the design. Yet it was still playful, with circular turrets, balconies, and a wrap-around porch.

A verandah clogged with people.

Devin floated through a kitchen packed solid, anchored in this reality only by the hand of the woman leading him.

The woman leading him.

Few greeted her, though they readily moved aside, allowing her a straight line passage. His first sight of the kitchen had made him wonder if it was even possible to cross. Yet for whoever-she-was, the crowd made way. He was half tempted to guess that it was magic, as people almost didn’t notice that they had moved aside for her. They certainly didn’t break their conversations for her passage.

He usually at least knew the name of someone he was holding hands with. Had there been introductions? He didn’t think so.

He’d headed for the woman on the verandah the moment he’d spotted her. Her nearly waist-long fall of thick tawny hair had acted like a guiding beacon. Only a model had hair like that, not normal people, yet she looked to be perfectly in her element. Then, as he climbed the steps, he’d become aware of her eyes watching him from beneath the wide brim of her felted hat—twin glints of blue-gray carefully hidden by shadow.

Her blouse and skirt were…rustic, for lack of a better word. Perhaps bohemian, as the maroon belt made by a wrapping of fabric defined a trim waist and made her billowy sun-yellow blouse and light spring-green skirt look very nice. Maybe someone’s mild-mannered and carefully cloistered cousin. Except for her hands. The one holding his was firm and, even if she didn’t hold on hard, the strength of her fine fingers was obvious. And hard calluses. She worked with her hands a lot.

“What’s your name?” She didn’t look up at him. They’d come to a small nook in the back corner of the kitchen. It felt oddly quiet here though he could hear a dozen different conversations. She let go of his hand to pull out a register. The woman spoke softly, but he could hear her despite the other noise.

“Devin. Devin Robison.”

She didn’t offer her own, but began flipping through the pages. Then she stopped as if shocked. She looked up at him sidelong.

Yes, more gray than blue, at least the one eye inspecting him.

“Who are you?”

Devin figured that if he could answer that one, he wouldn’t be twenty-three hundred and seventy-nine miles away from everything and everyone he knew. “Am I in the book?”

She nodded with a mesmerizing slide of long hair. “Yes.”

“Is there a problem?”

This time the hair shimmered side to side.

“And?” What a curious person she was.

“Gina Lamont gave you the best room in the house other than her own. Until today it was her daughter Natalya’s, though she’s been living with her now-husband in town.”

“I take it that’s unusual.”

She tipped her hat back enough that he could at least see a hint of a smile. “More than a little.”

“Maybe we should check with her.”

“Wedding day. I think she has enough distractions. Let me show you the way.” She took a classic skeleton key from the hook and once again led him away, though without taking his hand this time. He kind of missed it.

Devin wanted to inspect the house as they went, but found himself unable to look away from the still nameless woman leading him up the twisting stairs and along a narrow hallway.

She knocked perfunctorily on the door and had the key inserted when someone called out, “It’s open.”

She eased open the door and peeked in.

“Tiffany!”

At least Devin now had a name for her. It fit. Fragile as glass in some ways, but enduring and undeniably beautiful. Also completely different from any woman he’d met before. The women in his Chicago social circle were consistently sharp, perfectly maintained, and elegantly attired.

A short blonde, dressed in a tight-fitting black dress with a dangerously bountiful cleavage, yanked the door wide and grabbed Tiffany by the wrist to haul her into the room, even though she was already retreating. Then the blonde, who seemed part small tornado, leaned around to look at him past Tiffany.

“Ooo. He’s cute. Way to go, Tiff. Natya, check this out. We’ll get out of your way, Tiff,” she made the last lurid and suggestive.

The room was as classically Victorian as the house itself, high-ceilinged and it incorporated one of the circular towers as a small seating area. A white wedding dress lay spread across a dark quilt on the bed. Art covered the walls. Paintings and drawings of women. Powerful women.

Before he had a chance to notice more, a tall, dusky-skinned brunette spun to look at him. She too wore black. At a wedding? Above her left breast was pinned a corsage of tiny bud roses…spray-painted as black as her dress. Maybe some kind of joke? He was glad Tiffany instead wore the colors of spring; they looked very cheery on her compared to the other two women’s, admittedly sexy, black.

The instant she spotted him, the brunette’s expression went from surprise to narrow-eyed suspicion. She looked as if she’d leapt straight out of one of the paintings on the wall and was ten times more daunting in real life than the numerous two-dimensional women who seemed to be glaring at him also.

“No, I—” Tiffany was protesting as the blonde pulled her farther into the room.

It was easy to see what was going on and Devin was hard-pressed not to laugh.

The tall brunette stepped up close in front of him and his desire to laugh dissipated rapidly as he looked up at her. She stood at least five-ten and that was, he risked a glance to check, barefoot.

“If you so much as touch her, I’ll personally—”

“No, Natalya,” Tiffany cut her off. “He’s a guest. I’m just showing him to his room.”

The tall Natalya glanced over her shoulder, then she turned back to glare at him, her protective ire only slightly tempered.

“Hi, I’m Devin,” he held out a hand. “I’m actually not a guest.”

Natalya was halfway to shaking his hand, but stopped.

“A Gina Lamont hired me.”

“Mom hired you?” The handshake never completed.

So the wedding dress had been Natalya’s, Natalya Lamont’s—Tiffany had said it was both Lamonts’ weddings today. At a quick glance he saw that she and the cheery blonde both wore wedding rings. He double-checked, but Tiffany wore no jewelry. Neither rings nor earrings, at least not that showed through her hair.

“Well, isn’t that convenient,” the blonde said suggestively, winking at Tiffany, who blushed fiercely.

She fist-pumped at Tiffany’s reaction.

“Yes! We’ll be wearing black for you next. Another one bites the dust!” She began a small stomping dance, her bright red cowboy boots marking a muffled circle on the rich Oriental carpet.

Devin finally got the joke of wearing black—the “death” of another single woman.

Tiffany shook her head fiercely, creating a cloud of hair, but kept her peace.

Natalya’s continued glare told him that her interrupted threat was still in place.

Devin felt as if he was suddenly swimming in deep waters. He’d come here for a fresh start, a reset on a life that had gone sideways (way the hell sideways), and he was already in it neck deep.

Welcome to Eagle Cove, buddy.