said, dropping a few more breadcrumbs. He had to stick to his plan and surreptitiously guide the conversation toward selling. The kiss keeper bombshell had thrown him off track. But Natalie was done with Jakes, and he knew better than anyone that he couldn’t give her what she deserved. And, he could not forget what was on the line.
Control. Total and complete control of his life.
“I won’t lie to you, Jake. There is a hell of a lot of upkeep, but it’s a labor of love,” Hal said, breaking into his thoughts.
“Well, fifty years in one place is a long time,” he replied, continuing the song and dance he was so well versed in, but that damn bothersome tightness was back in his chest.
Hal cocked his head to the side and observed him closely. “Can I give you a piece of advice, Jake?”
“Sure,” he answered
Hal held his gaze. “It doesn’t feel like a long time if you’re with the right person. And once you find that person, you’ve got to be smart enough and brave enough to surrender control and give up your heart.”
“That seems like a lot to risk,” he replied.
Hal gave him a knowing look. “Ah, but imagine what you would gain.”
He stared out at the water as the breeze picked up, and he heard her name—Natalie Callahan—whispered on the breeze.
“What did you gain?” he asked.
“A lifetime of love and happiness, and that, Mr. Teller, is very difficult to put a price on,” Hal said, clapping him on the shoulder before heading down the weathered dock.
Jake watched the great-grandkids cluster around Hal, holding up their catches for him to admire, then turned his attention back to the water. His phone pinged, but he ignored it and stared at a sailboat in the distance. A boat not so different than the one his parents used to have. It rocked gently in the Natalie green sea, and a lightness took over. A lightness that never accompanied closing a deal or checking his robust bank account balance. A strange sensation he hadn’t known in years until it hit him, and he knew what he had to do.
8
Natalie
“What do you think, Aunt Nat?”
Natalie glanced up to find Josie and Maddie twirling in circles in the center of the lodge as their homemade Hawaiian skirts, made not with grass but strips of fabric sporting tiny lobsters, fluttered around their legs.
She finished cutting a strip of fabric, handed it off to one of her aunts, then grinned at the children. “They’re perfect! You both look ready for the lobster luau.”
“Why do we do a lobster luau?” Annabelle asked, shimmying around the table in her own little makeshift skirt.
“Good question,” Leslie said under her breath, weaving her way to sit in the corner with her sister through the room of Woolwich women working on their Maine inspired Hawaiian costumes.
But not even Leslie could dampen her mood. She’d done it. Natalie Callahan, the screwup Woolwich granddaughter, had turned a scheduling melee into an event to remember. Elks had caught buckets of trout, cars had been washed, the band got in a fun-filled afternoon on the waterfront, and the nuns had sketched. Their guest had left camp smiling, except for Sister Evangeline, who had a thing for Jake. She sported a scowl for the entire lesson and had bucked practicing shading techniques on fruit to sketch Jake’s torso. If there were one thing she could say about the feisty nun, it was that the old gal still had an excellent memory and had produced one heck of a drawing.
But she hadn’t earned this victory alone. A delicious shiver traveled down her spine and settled low in her belly at the thought of Jake, taking her hand, threading his fingers with hers, and standing by her side. And then her mind wandered to her fake boyfriend’s body, shirtless with every ripped muscle exposed, and she couldn’t blame the nun one bit for lamenting his absence. Those abs, the same abs that had pressed against her back as he took her from behind this morning, were seared into her memory as well. But it wasn’t only his spectacular body that she missed.
She missed him.
She hadn’t seen Jake since they parted in the art room earlier in the day. Her grandfather had whisked him away to go fishing and, most likely, had him on lobster bake duty with the rest of the Woolwich men and boys as if he were hers, and a real part of all this Woolwich family