Moonlight in the Morning (Edilean 6)

“Tristan said that?”

“Yeah. I talked to him a bit when I got to Edilean and he read me the riot act. I’ve never been told off so well in my life. I learned some new curse words from him.”

“Tristan? Cursing? He’s so gentle and sweet.”

“Not when he thought I’d played a trick on him that made you run away. I think some of those words were medical, but I understood him when he told me where I could put certain parts of the building.”

“You did play a trick that made me run away,” Jecca said, her voice rising. “Because of you I—”

“Why don’t you read that letter first and bawl me out later? The man that wrote it had a hard time finding you. I talked to him on the phone, and he said some woman named Savannah said you were a New York designer. Chambers tried New York, then New Jersey, and two addresses in Edilean before he found you—but by then you’d already skipped town.”

Jecca gave him a look that let him know she wasn’t through with him yet, then she opened the letter. A Mr. Henry Chambers, owner of six clothing brands, said that he had been thinking about starting a line of children’s clothes. His daughter lived in Richmond, where she had a tiny boutique of upscale women’s clothes—“all manufactured by me” Mr. Chambers wrote.

She and my granddaughter were invited to the McDowell birthday party and she saw your fashion show.

I’d like to talk to you about designing for me. You can call your line Nell’s Closet or the Achievers’ Club, whatever you want. My daughter says the name doesn’t matter because the clothes will sell themselves. That’s high praise from her.

I live in upstate New York, so if you’re interested, give me a call and we can meet.

Jecca read the letter twice before looking up at her father. “Is this for real?”

“Lucy looked him up on the Internet, and he’s a big deal in the clothing industry. Nice young man about my age. Lucy spent hours telling me all about what you did to pull that show off, so I called him.”

Jecca’s eyes started to grow misty at the memory of the happy days before the fashion show.

“You can work anywhere,” Joe said, his eyes boring into her.

She was reading the letter again. “You mean that I can set up shop in the big room off the hardware store.”

“That’s my first choice, but if you . . .” Joe said and there was no laughter or teasing in his voice, just pure pleading. At last Jecca was hearing the groveling she’d wanted from him, his apology. “When I got your doctor to buy that building, I didn’t mean to—”

She couldn’t bear to hear the rest of that sentence. She thought she’d wanted an apology, but she didn’t. All Joe Layton had wanted was to be near his daughter. To achieve that, he’d given up the store that had been his life. She clutched his hand, scarred from years of work,yeat=" hardened by steel and lumber. “It’s okay, Dad. Really. I understand why you did it. But . . .”

“But that stupid boy ran away,” Joe said, and there was disgust in his voice. “You’d think that a man who could curse like that would have some courage, that he’d—”

Jecca squeezed his hand. “It’s okay. I guess I didn’t mean as much to him as I thought I did. And it was all my fault.”

“Humph!” Joe said. “Since when do women ever make up their own minds? You think I let Lucy call the shots? Hell no! I told her what it was going to be like and the only thing she was allowed to say was yes.”

Jecca looked at her father’s eyes and saw pure terror. “You haven’t asked her yet, have you?”

“Lord no!” he said and ran his hand over his face. “I’m scared to death.”

“Dad, what do you say that I take today off from the gallery and you and I drive up to visit Mr. Chambers? And I think we should go see Joey and the kids too. He said he’s made some changes to the store.”

“Don’t get me started on that!” Joe said as Jecca got up to get her cell phone. As he started complaining about what had been done to his store, the fear began to leave his eyes.

Twenty

“This just came by bike messenger for you,” Della said as she handed Jecca a heavy package.

Jecca couldn’t help groaning. It looked like yet another artist had sent her a special delivery package of his work.

It had been four days since she and her dad had gone to see Mr. Chambers, but she hadn’t told Della about it. Jecca knew it was an offer she couldn’t pass up. It wasn’t what she’d had in mind for her life, but it was creative, she knew she was good at it, and she would be able to make a living at it.

“There’s a lot you’ll need to learn,” Mr. Chambers had said. “I don’t believe in designers living in high-rises and not knowing who sews the clothes. You’ll need to learn everything, from pattern cutting to buttons and trims,” he said. “All of it, from the ground up.”

“Then she’ll need to be in New York?” her dad had asked, and his expression said it all. He wanted Jecca to return to Edilean with him. He’d changed his life to be near her, and now she was going to be staying in New York.