Wait one sec…What if Dylan was pushing the yacht club because he knew Mom would hate the idea? Oh, the insufferable jerk. He’d played her. And she’d let him do it. That was not going to happen again if she had anything to say about it.
“Mom, it’s your engagement party too,” she said.
“I know, but I want Jim to be happy. So if Dylan thinks the yacht club is the right choice, we should maybe go along with that idea.”
Great. Now what?
Chapter Seven
A deluge hit the island on Thursday morning, so Dylan decided to take the Honda instead of the Harley. He pulled the car into the Howland House parking lot at about seven o’clock for his regular monthly breakfast meeting with Rev. Micah St. Pierre.
They’d been having breakfast together since last November, ever since Dylan had assumed the role of secretary on the Jonquil Island Museum Foundation’s board of directors. Micah was its president, taking the position because his sister-in-law, Jenna, who had endowed the project, had nagged him until he’d given in. Jenna’s husband, Jude, had twisted Dylan’s arm and he’d also reluctantly agreed. But Dylan had never expected to become the board’s recording secretary. That had happened when Simon Paredes suffered a stroke last November, and Dylan had been goaded into taking the position.
Today’s breakfast provided a face-to-face opportunity to review and tweak the agenda for this week’s meeting before Dylan sent it out to the rest of the board. Since Micah lived across Lilac Lane from the inn and had a standing invitation to take his breakfast at Ashley Scott’s table, these breakfast get-togethers were always at Howland House.
Micah and Dylan took their usual places at the end of the inn’s communal dining table, which was almost full this morning because of the influx of spring break tourists. Ashley’s guests weren’t college kids, of course. They were young marrieds and a family with school-age kids. But all of them seemed unusually grumpy this morning.
“Where the hell is my coffee?” one Izod-shirt-wearing customer muttered as he twisted in his chair to glare at the kitchen door.
“Uh-oh,” Micah said, leaning in. “Things have been a bit chaotic since Judy left for Colorado. Maybe I should—” He started to get up, but the door into the kitchen swung outward, and Ella McMillan appeared, her auburn hair more awry than usual. She wore a blue striped apron over her jeans and T-shirt, and judging by the scowls aimed in her direction, the guests were not pleased with her.
“Sorry,” she said on a huff of air. “I’m new, and I have yet to reach an understanding with the industrial coffee maker.” She leaned awkwardly and placed plates of eggs and bacon in front of the most impatient guest and his wife. And then started refilling coffee cups.
The coffee ran out before she reached Micah and Dylan. “Be right back,” she said in a tense voice and raced into the kitchen.
Dylan turned toward Micah. “Ashley hired Ella? Really? That was a mistake.”
Micah turned a pair of dark brown eyes on him, and Dylan had to stifle the urge to slink under the table in shame. Hadn’t he been irritated with Dad’s patients who had judged him harshly over the last few days? He’d just done the same thing to Ella. He was a better man than that. Maybe he didn’t want Dad to marry Brenda, but that didn’t mean he had to take his frustrations out on Ella.
“Sorry. That was unkind,” he said to the minister, who nodded.
“She just started today, and I’m sure she had issues with that coffee maker. I’ve had my own run-in with that machine.”
“You’ve made coffee for Ashley?” Dylan asked.
“Last Friday, when the temp Ashley hired failed to show up.”
“You’re a good man, Micah.”
Just then, Ella came flying out of the kitchen again, her tray heaped with plates of food and glasses of orange juice. She rushed to the man sitting beside Micah and placed his plate in front of him. Then she turned and headed the other direction, to where the man’s wife was sitting. But as Ella came flying around the end of the table, she must have lost her balance or stubbed her toe on something. Whatever the reason, she tripped, and her tray went flying off like an errant Frisbee.
It connected with the side of Dylan’s head, where its forward momentum came to an abrupt halt, dumping four plates of eggs and bacon and two glasses of OJ onto Dylan’s shoulders.
Dylan was momentarily stunned by the blow to his head and the twin sensations of hot eggs and bacon and icy-cold OJ inching down his back and landing in his lap. He reached up to touch the spot where the tray had connected with his head. A bump was already forming.
Damn. That hurt.
He blinked a couple of times, trying to process what had just happened, and then he heard Ella’s cries of pain.
“Ow, ow, ow,” she said from the vicinity of the Persian rug, where she’d apparently done a face-plant. Dylan would have normally gotten up to render aid, but time seemed to be moving in slow motion for him.
Not so for the minister, who got up and helped Ella up from the floor.
“Are you okay?” Micah asked.
She studied her palms. “Uh, um, yeah. I think just rug burns.”
“You didn’t break a wrist?”
“Uh…” She looked up, her gaze landing on Dylan like another blow. “Oh my god, Doctor D. I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”
She grabbed a napkin and started ineffectually beating his soaked shoulders, but when she leaned over and started scooping eggs and bacon out of his lap, he finally pulled himself together and grabbed her hands.
“Stop,” he said. “I think you’ve done quite enough for one morning.”
* * *
Dylan’s hands were warm and rougher than Ella expected. They paralyzed her for a moment as she shifted her gaze to his face. A strange hum sounded in the back of her head, but it soon became
