16 Lighthouse Road

“Why do I have the feeling you’re not telling me something?”

Olivia slipped the sweatband around her forehead. “There’s nothing to tell, trust me.”

“Trust you?” Grace echoed, following her out of the locker room and into the aerobics area of the gym. Children and adults milled about, and Grace and Olivia had to stop several times to allow others to pass by. “Have you ever noticed that the only time people ask you to trust them is when they probably shouldn’t be trusted?”

Olivia paused, then started a few warm-up exercises on her own. “I hadn’t, but you’re right.” She propped her leg on the ballet bar and bent her forehead to her knee.

Grace leaned against the bar, envying her friend’s suppleness. Her own body was far less flexible. “Did you know people have been talking about the article all week?”

“Great.”

Disregarding her sarcasm, Grace continued, her voice deceptively mild. “Actually a lot of the talk has to do with Jack Griffin.”

Olivia raised her head. “Anything interesting?”

Grace shrugged and adjusted the waistband of her spandex shorts. “Oh, a few things.”

“Such as?”

Grace was determined not to make this easy. Olivia had never, to her recollection, shown this much interest in any man since her divorce. Grace had felt for some time that her friend should “get back into circulation,” as people called it. Appropriate comment for a librarian, she always thought. “You really want to know?”

The question seemed to require a great deal of thought. “No—forget it.” Then in the next breath, Olivia changed her mind. “All right, I’m curious. What have you heard?”

“He moved to Cedar Cove three months ago.”

“Old news,” Olivia muttered. “If that’s all you have…”

“From the Spokane area.”

This appeared to be something Olivia didn’t know. “Newspaper background, obviously?”

“Yes, from a paper with ten times the circulation of The Chronicle.” Grace wasn’t a gossip by nature, but she’d been wondering about Jack Griffin since she’d read his first Saturday column. She’d liked what he’d had to say, and it was apparent he approved of Olivia. She’d met him briefly at a Chamber of Commerce meeting shortly after he’d come to Cedar Cove but hadn’t formed an impression one way or the other.

“Why does a man give up working for a prestigious newspaper and move across the state to a town the size of Cedar Cove?” she asked Olivia.

Her friend shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps he wanted to be closer to his son.”

“He has a son?” No one Grace had spoken to knew that.

“Eric. He lives in Seattle.”

That was interesting. But before she could comment further, their instructor, Shannon Devlin, entered the room, clapping her hands to gather her students around her.

“Trust me. There’s more to this career change than meets the eye.”

“Trust you!”

“Yeah, trust me,” Grace joked.

Olivia grinned and placed her hands on her hips as she rotated her waist, making deep bends as Shannon led the class in warm-ups. “You’ve been hanging around the mystery section of the library too long,” she whispered as they took their places in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror.

Shannon was twenty, if that. A pretty girl with pliant limbs and a body devoid of fat. Grace’s own figure had once been that slim and perfect, she reminded herself—before two children and the onset of menopause.

The music, impossibly loud, gave her a surge of energy. She had a love/hate relationship with this class. If not for Olivia, she would have dropped out a dozen times. Unfortunately she needed the benefits of all this huffing, puffing and stretching. Despite the muscle pain, she didn’t mind the mat exercises, the sit-ups and such, but she hated Shannon’s little dance routines. Step back, slide left, cross right… Olivia never seemed to have a problem with the complicated patterns; Grace, on the other hand, had trouble living up to her name.

After fifty minutes of sweating and grumbling under her breath, plus cool-down exercises, they were finished. None too soon, as far as Grace was concerned. Not until they’d showered and changed back into their sweats did Olivia mention Jack again. The fact that she wanted to continue the conversation surprised Grace.

“Did you learn anything else about Jack Griffin?”

Grace had to think. It always seemed to take a while for her brain cells to stop bouncing around after her aerobics class. “You know more about him than I do,” she finally said.

Olivia reached for her gym bag. “I doubt that.”

“You’re interested in him, aren’t you?”

Olivia laughed off the suggestion. “Oh, hardly. I’ve got enough worries without adding a relationship to the mix.”

“Worries?” Sure, her friend had worries, but then everyone did.

“Mom’s getting on in years and Justine—I just can’t seem to talk to her anymore, and I haven’t heard from James in two weeks.”

“I thought he was out at sea.”

“He is, but he can still e-mail me.”

“Okay, okay, we all have kid problems, and our parents are a concern, but that doesn’t mean we have to stop living.”

“You think I’ve stopped living?” Olivia asked. “Because I don’t have a man in my life?”

Grace knew the question had offended her. First Dan and now her best friend, and Grace hadn’t meant to upset either of them.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she assured her. “I just think you should leave your options open when it comes to Jack.”

“Why?”

“Because.” And that was all the answer she was willing to give, but Grace had a very strong feeling that the new editor of The Cedar Cove Chronicle was going to bring something new and exciting to Olivia’s life.

Three

Cecilia was working as a hostess at The Captain’s Galley the night she’d met Ian Randall, and she continued to work there five evenings a week. Her father, Bobby Merrick, was one of the bartenders and had gotten her the job.

Soon after graduating from high school, Cecilia had moved to Cedar Cove at her father’s urging. After a long estrangement, he’d contacted her with promises of making up for lost time. He’d seemed genuine, and because she’d felt cheated out of a father during her childhood, she’d readily agreed. Following her parents’ divorce when she was ten, Cecilia hardly ever saw her father and she welcomed this unexpected opportunity. Refusing to heed her mother’s warnings, she’d packed up her entire life and moved across the country, from New Hampshire to this small waterfront community in Washington. Within three months she knew she’d made a mistake. Her dreams of a college education were simply that. Dreams. Bobby’s idea of setting her up for the future was talking to his boss and getting her a job at the same restaurant where he worked. Being a hostess and cocktail waitress wasn’t how Cecilia wanted to spend the next few decades, but it was all too easy to imagine. Without intending it, she’d let her entire life get sidetracked.

Now she was about to be divorced, up to her ears in debt and utterly miserable. Her illusions about her father and men in general had been shattered. Bobby wanted to be her friend, but as badly as Cecilia needed a friend, she needed a father more.

One day, she vowed, she’d find a way to attend college but first she had to figure out how to pay for it. With the legal fees and what it’d cost to bury her daughter, she suspected she’d be at least thirty before she could afford to get an education. Bobby couldn’t help her out financially; he’d made that completely clear.

In an effort to supplement her income, she was putting in extra hours on weekends, serving drinks in the bar once the dining room closed at ten. Often she wasn’t home until two-thirty in the morning.