It Happened One Summer (It Happened One Summer 1)

Still, she’d send the text soon.

Piper had worn one of the pairs of jeans Brendan bought her. The more time dragged on without a single customer, the more Piper felt like an imposter in the soft denim, so unlike her usual dresses or skirts. Seven o’clock came and went. Seven thirty. Patty and Val still weren’t there. No Abe or Opal.

No Brendan.

She ignored the worried looks Hannah kept sending her from the DJ booth, her stomach starting to sink. The locals had liked No Name. They didn’t want this place prettied up by two outsiders. This was their way of letting the sisters know it.

Finally, just before eight o’clock, the door creaked open.

Mick walked in with a hesitant smile on his face.

Piper’s palms started to sweat at the appearance of Desiree’s father. The last time she’d seen him was in the hospital, right after she’d been with Brendan for the first time. Before that, she’d crashed his daughter’s memorial dinner. They might have gotten off on the right foot, but that footing wasn’t so solid anymore. There was something about the way he looked at her, even now, that measured her up and found her lacking. Or, if not lacking, she was not his daughter. With Mick sauntering toward her to take a seat at the bar, Piper’s stomach started to churn. Brendan had obliterated her insecurities over Desiree, but right now, standing in the painfully empty bar, they crept back in, making the back of her neck feel hot. The lack of customers was a judgment. Mick’s gaze was a judgment. And she wasn’t passing.

“Hi there,” Mick muttered, shifting on his stool. “Guess I’m early.”

It was a lie for her benefit, and the generosity of it made Piper relax a little bit.

Momentarily, anyway.

“Would you like a beer, Mick?”

“Sure would. Bud should do it.”

“Oh, we have some local IPAs.” She nodded at the chalkboard mounted overhead. “There’s the list. If you’re a Bud drinker, I recommend the—”

He laughed nervously, as if overwhelmed by the list of five beers, their descriptions painstakingly hand-lettered by Hannah. “Oh. I . . . I’ll just sit awhile, then.” He turned in his stool, surveyed the bar. “Not a lot of interest in flashy changes around here, looks like.”

A weight sunk in Piper’s belly.

He wasn’t just talking about Cross and Daughters, that much was clear.

His daughter was the old. She was the new. The sorely lacking replacement.

Westport was small. By now, Mick had probably heard about Piper crying like a baby on the docks, watching the Della Ray blur into the horizon. And now this. Now no one had arrived at the grand opening, and she was standing there like a certified idiot. She’d been an idiot. Not only to believe she could win over everyone in this close-knit place by making over the bar, but by believing her stepfather would give a shit. She’d been an idiot to keep important things from Brendan, whether or not the omissions had been intentional, and he’d lost faith in her. Lost trust.

I don’t belong here.

I never did.

Brendan wasn’t coming tonight. Nobody was. Cross and Daughters was empty and hollow, and she felt the same way, standing there on two shaky legs, just wanting to disappear.

The universe was sending her a loud-and-clear message.

Piper jolted when Mick laid a hand on top of hers, patting it. “Now, Piper . . .” He sighed, seeming genuinely sympathetic. “Don’t you go feeling bad or anything. It’s a tough place to crack. You have to be strong to stay afloat.”

Words from Sanders’s wife came drifting back.

Oh. Honey, no. You’re going to have to be a lot tougher than that.

Then her first conversation with Mick.

Wives of fishermen come from tough stock. They have nerves of steel. My wife has them, passed them on to my daughter, Desiree.

She thought of running into Brendan in the market on her first morning in Westport.

You wouldn’t understand the character it takes to make this place run. The persistence.

In her heart, she knew his mind had changed since then, but maybe he’d been right.

Maybe she didn’t understand how to make anything last. Not a relationship, not a bar, nothing. Henry Cross’s legacy didn’t belong to her, it belonged to this town. How ridiculous of her to swoop in and try to claim it.

Mick patted her hand again, seeming a little worried by whatever he saw in her expression. “I better get on,” he said quickly. “Best of luck, Piper.”

Piper stared down into the luminous wood of the bar, swiping the rag over it again and again in a pretense of cleaning, but she stopped when Hannah circled a hand around her wrist.

“You okay, Pipes? People probably just got the time wrong.”

“They didn’t get it wrong.”

Her sister frowned, leaned across the bar to study Piper’s face. “Hey . . . you’re not okay.”