Shore Lights

Table of Contents

 

 

“AN AUTHOR OF IMMENSE TALENT”*

 
“Bretton's characters are always real and their conflicts believable.”—
Chicago Sun-Times

“Soul warming . . . A powerful relationship drama [for] anyone who enjoys a passionate look inside the hearts and souls of the prime players.”—
Midwest Book Review

“[Bretton] excels in her portrayal of the sometimes sweet, sometimes stifling ties of a small community. The town's tight network of loving, eccentric friends and family infuses the tale with a gently comic note that perfectly balances the darker dramas of the romance.”—
Publishers Weekly

“A tender love story about two people who, when they find something special, will go to any length to keep it.”

—
Booklist

“Honest, witty . . . absolutely unforgettable.”—
Rendezvous

“A classic adult fairy tale.”—
Affaire de Coeur

“Delightful characters . . . thoroughly enjoyable.”

—
Heartland Critiques

“Dialogue flows easily and characters spring quickly to life.”

—
Rocky Mountain News

“No one tells a story like Barbara Bretton.”

—Meryl Sawyer, author of
Unforgettable

“Highly entertaining . . . sparks with rapid-fire repartee . . . unforgettable.”—*
Romantic Times

SHORE LIGHTS
ONE AND ONLY
A SOFT PLACE TO FALL
AT LAST
THE DAY WE MET
ONCE AROUND
SLEEPING ALONE
MAYBE THIS TIME

 
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents
either are the product of the author's imagination or are used
fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
SHORE LIGHTS
A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with
the author
PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley mass-market edition / May 2003

Copyright © 2003 by Barbara Bretton.

eISBN : 978-0-425-18987-0

BERKLEY®
Berkley Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
BERKLEY and the “B” design
are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Many thanks and much love to James Selkirk; Kay Butler; Jeannie Perrin; Robin Kaigh; Cathy Thacker; Dottie Martin; Mary Preisinger; Shelley Wester and everyone from Open Your Heart; the Hurts; Rabbi Sheri; Fredericka; Doreen Babott, M.D., and Carole; Inez and Beth; and, as always, my husband for just about everything.

 
And, last but not least, thanks to Squirt for keeping me company during the run for the finish line.

 
ONCE UPON A time in the Emerald City there lived a woman named Maddy Bainbridge who believed she could move back home with her mother and not lose her mind.

Now, Maddy was old enough to know that the things that drove you crazy when you were seventeen would probably drive you even crazier when you reached thirty-two, but her mother's offer came at a moment when her defenses were down and her options extremely limited.

“I need help and God knows you need a job,” Rose said during the fateful phone call that changed their lives. “The Inn is doing turn-away business, and I'd rather share the profits with my daughter than a perfect stranger.”

“I appreciate the thought, Mother, but I'm just going through a dry spell here.” An eight-month dry spell, but Maddy wasn't about to put too fine a point to it. “I'm sure the voice-over work will pick up any day now.”

“You're an accountant, Madelyn. You have a degree. You can do much better than voice-over work for a used-car dealership.”

“I
was
an accountant,” she reminded her mother. “Not much call for bean counters when there aren't any beans left to count.” The great dot-com collapse of a few years ago had littered the landscape with the fallen careers of fellow accountants from Washington down to Baja.

“Be that as it may, you have a child to take care of and no husband to help you out. You need a chance to get back on your feet, and I need someone I can trust to help me with the business. Give me one good reason why this isn't the perfect solution for both of us, and I'll never broach the topic again.”

Are you listening, God? Just one good reason
. . .

On any other day Maddy could've given her twenty, but that evening she couldn't come up with a single one.

“Hannah has a brand-new dog,” she said finally, knowing her mother's negative stance on anything furry or four-legged. She had spent part of her childhood wishing she could turn Rose into an Irish setter. “Her name is Priscilla and she has a few issues.”

“What kind of dog?”

Oh, how she longed for something large and prone to drooling. Bulldog! Saint Bernard! Irish wolfhound with an overbite!

“A poodle,” she mumbled, praying it sounded like bull-mastiff on Rose's end of the line.

“Did you say poodle?”

“Yes,” said Maddy. “A poodle.”

“How big a poodle?” Rose sounded amused.

Maddy glanced down at the tiny bundle of curly fur asleep in her lap. Sometimes the truth was a royal pain. “Too soon to tell,” she said, “but her paws are gigantic.” For a stuffed toy. There was always the chance Priscilla might make it to a whopping five pounds if she pigged out on Purina.

“No problem,” Rose said calmly. “Just so long as she doesn't piddle in the common areas.”

Was this her my-way-or-the-highway mother talking, the woman revered in three counties as the undisputed Queen of Clean? Rose had been known to change her sheets after a fifteen-minute nap. “Okay,” Maddy said, “now I get it. My real mother is trapped in a pod in the basement behind the washer and dryer.”

Rose's answer was a surprisingly long span of silence. No snappy comeback. No withering maternal observation. Just enough silence to unnerve her only child.

Maddy would have liked to match her mother silence for silence, but Rose had thirty years on her and she had no doubt her mother could stretch that silence until Christmas if she felt like it. “I was making a joke, Mother. You were supposed to laugh, not take me seriously.”

Rose cleared her throat. “Quite frankly, I don't see what's holding you there in Seattle now that Tom has . . . moved away.”

“He didn't just move away. You can say it. I promise I won't fall apart. Tom married somebody else. I've made my peace with it.” Which, of course, was a big enough lie to grow her nose to a size worthy of the men of Mount Rushmore.

“Maybe you have,” Rose said, “but Hannah certainly hasn't. She's the one you should be thinking about.”

Instant guilt, supersized with fries. This was no pod person; this was her mother.

“Hannah is the main reason I'm staying in Seattle. This is the only home she knows.” She paused, waiting for a response from her mother. Rose, however, remained silent. Rose had never been one to play silence to such advantage. “Besides, Hannah will be starting preschool in a few weeks.”

“We have schools here in New Jersey.”

“All of her friends are here.”

“She's four years old, Madelyn. She'll make new ones.”

“Seattle's our home.”

“Home is where your family is. What Hannah needs right now is to be surrounded by people who love her.” People who won't leave her. Oh, Rose didn't say those words, but then, she didn't have to. She had already wheeled out the heavy artillery and aimed it straight at Maddy's heart.

But she didn't say any of it. The words were trapped behind all the years they'd spent away from each other, all of their differences both large and small. The ghost of the lonely little girl she once was rose up between them and she wouldn't go away. Only this time the little girl looked like Hannah.

How Hannah adored her father! Her world had revolved around their Sunday brunches, their excursions to the Space Needle and Mariners games, strolls along the waterfront where he taught her how to eat crab. The loss of those weekly visits had turned her happy child into a sad-eyed little girl Maddy barely recognized. How did you tell the child you loved more than life that not every man was cut out to be a 24/7 father?

“This wasn't part of the plan,” Tom Lawlor had said the day Maddy told him she was pregnant. It hadn't been part of her plan, either, but sometimes life handed a woman a miracle and trusted her to do the rest. Tom's children had children of their own, and he had been eagerly anticipating retirement from the company he owned and a life that didn't include potty training and the Tooth Fairy.

Not that Maddy had been ready to punch her ticket on the Baby Express herself. Children had been out there somewhere in the shadowy future, a concept to be dealt with at a later date. She had never doubted that somehow, some day, Tom would warm to the idea of another child, but until then she was quite content with the life they shared. She took her birth control pills religiously, popping one each morning with her orange juice, trusting her future to God and country and modern pharmaceuticals.