The House on Blackberry Hill (Jewell Cove 1)

“Still hard, though,” Abby mused.

“Cheers to that,” Lisa said, touching the rim of her glass to Abby’s. “Honestly, I don’t know how single moms do it. I can barely handle my son and my husband.”

The hour wore on and Abby felt herself getting fuzzy around the edges. She really should have eaten dinner beforehand, she thought. The laughter was coming a little more readily when Summer, who’d been mostly quiet, treated the group to a sideways smile as she twirled one pink strand of hair around her finger. “I just wanted to give a toast to Jess for expanding her deck,” Summer said, lifting her glass to their host. “Tom was working with his shirt off the other afternoon. It was quite the visual treat.”

“Amen,” Abby said clearly, then put her fingers over her lips. “Did I say that out loud?”

After a second of stunned silence everyone burst out laughing. Why on earth had she said that?

Cindy snickered. “I’ll second that. Must be all that manual labor. A man like that must be good with his hands…” She looked up and flushed a little. “Sorry, Jess. Know he’s your cousin and all, but damn, you know?”

Gloria tut-tutted. “And you’re a married woman.”

“Hey, just because I’m on a diet doesn’t mean I can’t look at the menu.”

More laughs. “You have a boyfriend, Abby? Someone special back in Nova Scotia?”

Her throat tightened. “Not really.”

“Well, then.” Cindy sat back in her chair with satisfaction. “You should give our Tom a tumble.”

“Cindy!” This time from Lisa. She looked at Abby. “Don’t mind her. She’s off the market so she spends far too much time setting other people up.”

“Worked for you and Jason now, didn’t it?”

Lisa grinned. “Indeed.”

Abby took another long sip of wine.

Summer patted Abby’s knee. “You’ve been initiated now, Abby. Don’t take it personally. There’s not a single woman in Jewell Cove who hasn’t thought about Tom just a little bit.”

And yet, according to Jess, Tom didn’t date. Not since he’d had his heart trampled on. It must have been a doozy. It’d take a special woman to get him out of that dry spell.

She drained her glass and looked around. Someone like Summer, tall and pretty with a kind of quiet confidence and innate sexuality, perhaps. There was no ring on her finger after all. But definitely not someone like Abby. She was far too ordinary

. And far too timid despite her occasional sharp tongue. A man like Tom needed someone more adventurous.

“Come on, Abby, what do you really think of Tom? And don’t worry about Jess. She won’t say a word, will you, Jess?”

Jess made a motion like sealing her lips and throwing away the key. Abby giggled, the sound oddly strange to her ears. She never giggled. “Oh, no. You’re not going to sucker me into that.” She recalled briefly how close the air had felt in the confined space of the stairway, and wondered what it would be like to be pressed up against the cool wall, pinned there by Tom’s strong body. The very idea was quite exhilarating.

“And … we’ve lost her,” Cindy mourned. “Earth to Abby.”

She looked up, a little slow on the draw.

“That’s okay,” someone said. “Tom tends to have that effect on the female population of this town.”

Abby really shouldn’t have let anyone top up her wine. Jess rose and excused herself for a moment, and like some unspoken signal, the ladies got up and began cleaning up the remains of the snacks. Abby bit down on her lip. Did Jewell Cove even have a cab service? All the other women tonight had been smart and walked to Treasures. Abby couldn’t possibly get behind the wheel now.

“It wouldn’t matter anyway,” she confessed to the room at large as she made herself busy, putting vegetable sticks in a plastic container. “I’m only in town until the house is straightened away and I can put it on the market.”

“You’re not staying?”

Abby shook her head. “I wasn’t planning on it. What would a woman like me do with a place that big?”

Cindy grinned. “Marry Tom and fill it with babies.”

There was loud laughter then and the chatter dissipated, covering Abby’s hot blush. The evening seemed to be ending, so she kept her hands busy by tidying the rest of the food table until the last woman was gone and then she turned to Jess in the quiet of the workroom.