Christmas in Hawthorn Bay

Nora pulled back instinctively, as if the words had burned her. Her heart was beating triple time, and her flesh felt cold.

“Don’t talk like that, Megs,” she said. She forced a teasing note into her voice. “It’s absurd. I know you love melodrama, but this isn’t the time. You need to focus on your breathing.”

“Not yet.” Maggie’s gaze bore into hers. “If it’s absurd, we’ll all have a good laugh about it later. But just in case. I want you to promise me that you’ll take the baby.”

Ethan was wrapping the towels around her. He must have done something that hurt. Maggie cried out, and her legs stiffened.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. Nora saw a bead of sweat make its way down his hairline and mingle with a smear of blood on his cheek.

“Promise me, Nora.”

“Okay,” Nora said as she began to shiver. “Okay, Maggie, I promise. Now please. Focus.”

“And you must never let my parents know. About Colin. They can’t have him. My father—”

Maggie bent over again, making a sound like a small animal.

Ethan cleared his throat. “Nora, you have to help me carry her.”

When had Ethan stood up? Nora felt confused. This was a nightmare, where things happened in confusing, nonsequential jerks. But she had her part to play in the nightmare, too, so she struggled to her feet, though she no could longer feel them or trust that they were rigid enough to carry her own weight, let alone a bleeding woman and an unborn baby.

Maggie was so light, though, frighteningly light, as if part of her had bled away into the beach. They tried not to jostle her, but once or twice she seemed to pass out, then come back to consciousness with a groan.

Ethan cradled her in his arms while Nora made a pallet out of blood-soaked beach towels on the floor of the cockpit. As they placed her on it, Maggie seemed to rally a little. With one hand that, though it shook, seemed surprisingly strong, she pulled off the chain that held the mysterious gold ring.

She held it out to Nora.

“For you,” she said. Her voice seemed slurred. “For Colin.”

Nora took it, and her first tear fell.

Colin Trenwith.

Once a pirate, twice a father, now at rest with his Lord.

While Ethan towed the boat out to deeper water, Nora chanted the epitaph silently, over and over, like a prayer.

And then, with the words still circling through her mind, like a slender chain wrapping its fractured pieces together, Nora watched Ethan climb into the little boat, and the three of them set sail for home.

CHAPTER TWO

Eleven years later

MOTHERHOOD, NORA CARSON decided as she retreated to the kitchen, leaving her eleven-year-old son pouting in the living room, was not for the faint of heart.

Nora had three jobs—mayor of Hawthorn Bay, co-owner of Heron Hill Preserves and mom to Colin Trenwith Carson.

Of the three, being Colin’s mom was by far the toughest.

At least it was this week. Last week, when the Hawthorn Bay City Council had been sued by a recently fired male secretary claiming sexual discrimination, mayor had been at the top of Nora’s tough list.

Luckily, Nora had kept some of the secretary’s letters, all of which began Deer Sir. She produced them at her deposition, explaining that she didn’t give a hoot whether their secretaries were male, female or Martian, as long as they could spell.

The lawyers withdrew the suit the next day.

Now if only she could make this problem with Colin go away as easily. But she had a sinking feeling that it was going to prove much thornier.

She put the blackberries and pectin on to boil—she had orders piled up through next Easter, so she couldn’t afford a full day off. She read the letter from Colin’s teacher while she stirred.

Cheating.

Fighting.

Completely unrepentant.

These weren’t words she ordinarily heard in connection with Colin. He wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot. He was a mischievous rascal and too smart for his own good. But he wasn’t bad.

This time, though—

“Nora, thank heaven you’re home!” Stacy Holtsinger knocked on the back door and opened it at the same time. She was practically family, after eight years as business partner and best friend, and she didn’t bother with ceremony much anymore.

Nora folded the letter and slid it into the pocket of the World’s Greatest Mom apron Colin had given her for her birthday. “Where else would I be, with all these orders to fill? Out dancing?”

Stacy, a tall brunette with a chunky pair of tortoiseshell glasses that she alternately used as a headband, a pointer or a chew toy, but never as glasses, went straight to the refrigerator and got herself a bottled water. She wanted to lose ten pounds by Christmas and was convinced she could flood them out on a tidal wave of H

O.

Nora thought privately that Stacy would look emaciated if she lost any more weight, but the water sure did give her olive skin a gorgeous glow. She wondered if Stacy had her eye on a new man. She hoped so.

“Well,” Stacy said, raking her glasses back through her hair as she slipped onto a stool, “you could be down at city hall, I guess, trying to knock sense into those Neanderthals. Which would be disastrous right now, because I need you to make an executive decision about the new labels.”

Nora groaned as she added the sugar to the blackberries. Her mind was already packed to popping with decisions to make. What to do about the latest city-council idiocy—trying to claim eminent domain over Sweet Tides, the old Killian estate by the water? What to do about that crack in her living-room wall, which might be the foundation settling, something she could not afford to fix right now?

And, hanging over everything, like a big fat thundercloud—what to do about Colin?

“Labels are your side of the business.” The berries were just about ready. Nora pulled out the tablespoon she’d kept waiting in a glass of cold water, and dropped a dollop of the jam on it. Rats. Not quite thick enough.

“Come on, Nora. Please?”

Nora looked over her shoulder. “Stacy, do I consult you about whether to buy Cherokee or Brazos? What to do if the jam’s too runny? No. I make the product, you figure out how to sell it, remember?”

“Yeah, but—” Stacy held up a proof sheet. “This is a really big change. And I drew the artwork myself. I’m sorry. I’m weak. I need reassurance.”

Nora put the spoon down. It was probably true. Stacy was one of the most attractive and capable women Nora knew, but her self-esteem had flat-lined about five years ago when her husband had left her, hypnotized by the dirigible-shaped breasts of their twenty-year-old housekeeper.

Zach was a fool—although rumor had it he was a happy fool, having discovered that The Dirigible was into threesomes with her best friend, whom Stacy had dubbed The Hindenburg.

“Okay.” Nora wiped her hands. “Show me.”