It Happened One Summer (It Happened One Summer 1)

In response to her friend’s question, she seemed to notice where she was standing for the first time. Those eyes grew even bigger as she catalogued the interior of No Name and the people occupying it. Brendan knew what she was seeing, and already he resented the way she recoiled at the dust on the mismatched seats, the broken floorboards, the ancient fishing nets hanging from the rafters. The disappointment in the downturned corners of her mouth spoke volumes. Not good enough for you, baby? There’s the door.

With prim movements, Pipes—keeper of ridiculous names and purses—snapped the handbag open and drew out a jewel-crusted phone, tapping the screen with a square red nail. “Is this . . . sixty-two North Forrest Street?”

A chorus of yeses greeted the strangled question.

“Then . . .” She turned to her friend, chest expanding on quick breaths. “Yes.”

“Oh,” responded UCLA, before she cleared her throat, pasting a tense smile on a face that was pretty in a much subtler way than Pipes’s. “Um . . . sorry about the awkward entrance. We didn’t know anyone was going to be here.” She shifted her weight in boots that wouldn’t be good for anything but sitting down. “I’m Hannah Bellinger. This is my sister, Piper.”

Piper. Not Pipes.

Not that it was much of an improvement.

The floppy hat came off, and Piper shook out her hair, as if they were in the middle of a photo shoot. She gave everyone a sheepish smile. “We own this place. Isn’t that crazy?”

If Brendan thought their entrance had produced silence, it was nothing compared to this.

Owned this place?

No one owned No Name. It had been vacant since he was in grade school.

Originally, the locals had pooled their money to stock the place with liquor and beer, so they’d have a place to come to escape the tourists during a particularly hellish summer. A decade had passed since then, but they’d kept coming, the regulars taking turns collecting dues once a week to keep the booze flowing. Brendan didn’t make it over too often, but he considered No Name to be theirs. All of theirs. These two out-of-towners walking in and claiming ownership didn’t sit right at all.

Brendan liked routine. Liked things in their place. These two didn’t belong, especially Piper, who noticed him glowering and had the nerve to send him a pinky wave.

Randy drew her attention away from Brendan with a baffled laugh. “How’s that now? You own No Name?”

Hannah stepped up beside her sister. “That’s what you call it?”

“Been calling it that for years,” Randy confirmed.

One of Brendan’s deckhands, Sanders, disentangled himself from his wife and came forward. “Last owner of this place was a Cross.”

Brendan noticed the slight tremor that passed through Piper at the name.

“Yes,” Hannah said hesitantly. “We’re aware of that.”

“Ooh!” Piper started scrolling through her phone again at the speed of light. “There’s a custodian named Tanner. Our stepdad has been paying him to keep this place clean.” Though her smile remained in place, her gaze crawled over the distinctly not clean bar. “Has he . . . been on vacation?”

Irritation snuck up the back of Brendan’s neck. This was a proud town of long-standing traditions. Where the hell did this rich girl get off waltzing in and insulting his lifelong friends? His crew?

Randy and Sanders traded a snort. “Tanner is over there,” Sanders said. The crowd parted to reveal their “custodian” slumped over the bar, passed out. “He’s been on vacation since two thousand and eight.”

Everyone in the bar hoisted their beers and laughed at the joke, Brendan’s own lips twitching in amusement, even though his annoyance hadn’t ebbed. Not even a little bit. He retrieved his bottle of beer from the windowsill and took a pull, keeping his eyes on Piper. She seemed to feel his attention on her profile, because she turned with another one of those flirtatious smiles that definitely shouldn’t have caused a hot nudge in his lower body, especially considering he’d already decided he didn’t care for her.

But then her gaze snagged on the wedding band he still wore around his ring finger—and she promptly looked away, her posture losing its playfulness.

That’s right. Take it somewhere else.

“I think I can clear up the confusion,” Hannah said, rubbing at the back of her neck. “Our father . . . was Henry Cross.”

Shock drew Brendan’s eyebrows together. These girls were Henry Cross’s daughters? Brendan was too young to remember the man personally, but the story of Henry’s death was a legend, not unlike Randy’s evil crab story. It was uttered far less often lest it produce bad luck, whispered between the fishermen of Westport after too much liquor or a particularly rough day on the sea when the fear had taken hold.

Henry Cross was the last man of the Westport crew to die while hunting the almighty king crab on the Bering Sea. There was a memorial dedicated to him on the harbor, a wreath placed on the pedestal every year on the anniversary of the sea taking him.