It Happened One Summer (It Happened One Summer 1)

After she’d floated back down to earth from their intense lovemaking, she dressed for her jog and went to meet Abe, helping him up the stairs of the museum before continuing on her way. She’d return home and shower, then have breakfast with Brendan and Hannah before heading to No Name for work in his truck. Apart from the sign, the bar just needed décor and a few final touches. Brendan hung the chandelier, laughing at the way Piper squealed in victory, declaring it perfect. They arranged high top tables and stools, hung strings of lights on the back patio, and cleaned sawdust off everything.

“I’ve been thinking about the name,” Piper said one afternoon, waiting until her sister looked at her. “Um . . . how do you feel about Cross and Daughters?”

A sound rushed out of Hannah, her eyes taking on a sheen. “I love it, Pipes.”

Brendan came up behind her, planting a hard kiss on her shoulder. “It’s perfect.”

“I wish we had a little more time,” Hannah said. “That name deserves a great sign.”

“It does. But I think . . . maybe what’s perfect about this place is that it’s not. It’s personal, not flawless. Right?” Piper laughed. “Let’s paint it ourselves. It’ll mean more that way.”

Hannah’s phone rang, and she left the room to answer, leaving Piper and Brendan alone. She turned to find him scrutinizing her in this way he’d been doing often lately. With love. Attentiveness. But there was more happening behind those eyes, too. He said he wouldn’t pressure her for a decision, but the longer she left him hanging, the more anxious he grew.

They painted the sign on Thursday with big, sloppy buckets of sky-blue paint. Brendan had spent the morning sanding down a long piece of plywood and trimming the edges into an oval shape with his table saw. Once Piper made a rough outline of the letters with a pencil, they were off to the races, applying the blue paint with playful curves and tilting lines. Some might’ve said it looked unprofessional, but all she saw was character. An addition to Westport that fit like an acorn in a squirrel’s cheek. After the paint dried, Brendan stood by anxiously, prepared to catch them if they fell off the ladders they’d been loaned from the hardware store. Now they affixed it over the faded original sign with his nail gun, Brendan instructing them patiently from the ground. When the sign was nailed on all sides, the two sisters climbed down and hugged in the street.

She couldn’t say for certain how Hannah felt about having the bar completed, but in that moment, something clicked into place inside Piper. Something that hadn’t even existed before she landed in this northwest corner of the map. It was the welcome home Henry Cross had deserved but never got. It was a proper burial, an apology for deserting him, and it soothed the jagged edges that had appeared on her heart the more she’d learned about her father.

“Now all we need is beer,” Hannah said, stepping back and wiping her eyes. “And ice.”

“Yeah, time to call the wholesaler, I guess. Wow. That was fast.” She peered up at the sign, warmed by the curlicue at the end of “Daughters.” “If we want to serve spirits eventually, we’ll need a liquor license.”

“If you want to, Pipes,” Hannah said softly, putting an arm around her shoulder. “Leaving you is going to suck, but I can’t be here forever. I’ve got my job with Sergei waiting. If you decide to stay . . .”

“I know,” Piper managed, the sign blurring.

“Are you? Staying for sure?”

Through the window, they watched Brendan inside the bar where he screwed a light bulb into the chandelier. So capable and reassuring and familiar now, her heart drew up tight, lodging in her throat. “Yeah. I’m staying.”

“Shit,” Hannah breathed. “I’m torn between happy and sad.”

Piper swiped at her eyes, probably smearing blue paint all over her face but not caring one bit. “I swear to God, you better visit.”

Her sister snorted. “Who else is going to bail you out when all this goes south?”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Things were too good to be true.

On the water, that usually meant Brendan was missing something. That he’d forgotten to flush out a fuel line or replace a rusting winch. There was no such thing as smooth sailing on a boat, not for long. And since he’d long lived his life in the same manner he captained the Della Ray, he couldn’t help but anticipate a time bomb going off.

He had this woman. This once-in-a-hundred-lifetimes woman who could walk into a room and rob him of fucking breath. She was courageous, sweet, clever, seductive, adventurous, kind, guileless one moment, mischievous the next. So beautiful that a smile from her could make him whisper a prayer. And she loved him. Showed him exactly how much in new ways every day—like when he’d caught her spraying his cologne onto her nighttime shirt, holding it to her nose like it could heal all ills. She whispered her love into his ear every morning and every night. She asked him about fishing and googled questions to fill in the blanks, which Brendan knew because she was always leaving her laptop browser open on the kitchen counter.