CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

IT TOOK SOME TIME AND SCHEDULE SHUFFLING BEFORE everyone could get together at one time, in one place. At Justine’s request, they met in her home. There, she felt, everyone could talk and speculate freely.

And if she had everyone who mattered to her most under one roof, they might as well make a party out of it.

She knew her men, so she marinated flank steaks, picked up corn at her favorite roadside stand, harvested tomatoes and peppers fresh from her garden.

“You don’t have to fuss so much.” Willy B sat at the counter, snapping beans, his contribution from his own little garden. His pug curled devotedly under his stool.

“It feels good to fuss some. This summer’s flown by, and we’ve hardly managed to all get together like this. And it keeps my mind settled.” She sprinkled paprika on a platter of eggs she’d deviled—one of Owen’s favorites. “When I think about it all, Willy B, how I just had to have that inn, felt that pull in my heart for it. Now it turns out there’s this connection. Billy Ryder. All this time.”

She sighed. “I never asked questions about my people, or not many. Never bothered to find out much at all.”

“You lived your life, Justine. You had Tommy and your boys, and Carolee.”

“I know it, and it’s always been about the now and the next for me. And still, aren’t I the one for buying up these old places? So there’s something. Anyway, Carolee doesn’t know any more than I do. Daddy, either. When we find out whatever we find, I’m going to make more of an effort to learn about who came before me. You looked into yours. I remember.”

“It was kind of interesting to find out.” He paused his snapping to scratch through his red beard. “Where they came from in Scotland, how they came here—those who did. And I thought Avery should know. Maybe I thought she didn’t have much on her mama’s side, so she should have as much as I could give her on mine.”

“You’re the best daddy there is. Nobody could’ve done better.”

“Well, I had the best girl to work with.” He smiled over the beans, then shifted, cleared his throat. “Justine, you don’t want to get married or anything, do you?”

“Why, Willy B MacTavish.” She fluttered her lashes. The question may have come out of left field, but she knew how to catch. “That’s the most romantic proposal ever uttered.”

“Oh now, Justine.”

She laughed, the sound full of amused affection. “What makes you ask?”