Grace’s heart fell. Cliff was obviously in love with her. For a while she’d been convinced she loved him, too, but now she was no longer sure of that—or anything.

“You’re the first woman my father’s shown any interest in since he and my mother divorced,” Lisa said as Grace set the last of the dirty dishes on the kitchen counter. The house was cozy, and Lisa had decorated it in a kind of English-cottage style. She was a tall, lithe blonde; Grace wondered if that was how Susan, Cliff’s ex-wife, had looked, too.

“I think the world of your father,” Grace told her, and it was true.

Lisa ran water into the sink, adding detergent, and slid the pans into the suds. “Mom hurt him badly. It’s taken a long time for Dad to get over the divorce. I was beginning to wonder if he ever would.”

“Some wounds go very deep,” Grace said as a niggling guilt worked on her conscience—because it was Will who dominated her thoughts, Will who sent her pulse soaring. If she’d needed anything to prove how strongly she felt about him, these last two days had done exactly that.

Accepting Cliff’s invitation had encouraged the relationship, and that had been wrong for both of them. Although Grace liked Cliff, enjoyed his company, she considered him a friend, a very dear and good friend, but nothing more.

“Dad’s been so busy lately, he’s worried that you’ve given up on him,” Lisa said. “We talk every week, and you’re the main topic of conversation.”

“Me?”

“You and the guy who turned up dead at the bed-and-breakfast,” she joked, then grew serious. “He asks my advice. I was the one who urged him to ask you out that first time.”

“Then I should thank you.”

“He admired the fact that you refused until your divorce was final.” Those had been bleak days in Grace’s life, as she’d confronted the unknown. Dan’s body had yet to be found, and she’d felt certain he was with another woman. Her self-esteem had been in tatters, and then along came this handsome rancher who courted her with gentleness and humor.

“I told Dad he should hire a full-time trainer, otherwise he was going to lose you,” Lisa said. She opened the dishwasher, a model as old as Grace’s, and arranged the dishes inside.

“I understand what it’s like to start up a new business,” Grace hurriedly assured her. The truth was, she’d barely noticed that she hadn’t heard from him much lately. Anytime she did hear from Cliff, it had seemed like an intrusion.

She hated feeling this way, but she couldn’t help it. Cliff was like Buttercup. He was big and warm and friendly and there when she needed him. On the other hand, her friendship with Will was exciting and new. The two of them talking for hours every day and keeping it a secret held a hint of intrigue. They were conspirators.

“Are you in love with my father?” Lisa asked, her arms elbow-deep in dishwater.

“I…I—”

“Are you embarrassing our dinner guest?” Cliff asked as he stepped into the kitchen. He stood behind Grace, slid his arms around her waist and kissed the side of her neck. She closed her eyes—not to savor the tenderness of the moment, but in relief because she didn’t have to answer Lisa’s question.

This was wrong, but she couldn’t say anything to Cliff. Not with his daughter and her husband so close. Not with Cliff’s granddaughter napping in the other room. It would have to wait until they were back in Cedar Cove, in familiar territory.

She could have told him on the flight home, but Grace refused to do that to him, especially after the hospitality his family had shown her. That would’ve piled wrong on top of wrong.

The instant Grace was back in Cedar Cove, she collected Buttercup from Kelly and Paul’s and headed home. Ten minutes after she walked in the front door, she was sitting in front of her computer.

“Oh, be there,” she whispered as she logged onto the Internet. She brought up the message board and hit the appropriate icons and waited an interminable few moments.

“Will, are you there?” she typed.

Almost immediately he responded. “Welcome back. How was Thanksgiving with your boyfriend?”

“Wonderful. How about yours?” she typed, wincing at the half lie.

“All right, I guess.”

“I had a good time, but I missed our chats,” she typed.

It seemed forever before Will answered. “Grace, thank you. I hated being without you. I didn’t realize how much I’ve come to rely on our talks to get me through the day.”

“I rely on you, too,” her fingers raced to tell him. She gnawed on her lower lip. “I thought about you constantly.”

Another long moment passed. “You’re all I thought about, too.”

Grace shouldn’t be this happy, but joy filled her. She felt like a teenager all over again—a teenager head over heels in love.

Fourteen

Thick, dark clouds marred the December-morning sky over Cedar Cove. Peggy Beldon walked down the stairs, and from her view through the upper hallway window, she saw that the waters of the cove were murky and restless, churning up whitecaps.

It didn’t surprise her that Bob was already awake. He’d probably been up for hours. Ever since he’d talked to Pastor Flemming, that day at the golf course, he’d been sleeping poorly. When she’d asked him about it, Bob had repeatedly shrugged off her questions. She’d pressured him until she got an answer, although it hadn’t been too satisfactory.

In the beginning, their marriage had been shaky. Bob wasn’t the same after Vietnam. They’d married shortly after he was discharged from the army, but he’d started drinking by then. At first it was just a few beers with his friends after work. Peggy didn’t begrudge him that. Then Hollie was born, followed two years later by Marc, and Peggy had been so preoccupied with motherhood she hadn’t really noticed what was happening to her husband. Soon he was out with the boys every night or bringing his drinking buddies home. She and Bob had argued often and she’d grown increasingly desperate.

The summer afternoon Bob received his first DUI, she realized that his drinking was more than a few beers with friends; it had become a serious problem that dominated their marriage and their lives. Despite her tears and her pleas, he refused to acknowledge there was anything wrong.

Peggy would always be grateful to the friend who’d recommended she start attending Al-Anon meetings. Without the support and encouragement she’d received from other men and women married to alcoholics, she didn’t know where she’d be today. It forever changed her life. She’d stepped back and stopped protecting Bob from the consequences of his addiction. If he drove drunk, she phoned the police; if he fell down on the floor too drunk to get up, she left him there. His drinking was his problem and she refused to make it hers, refused to be caught in the eye of a hurricane because he chose to hide his sorrows in booze.

Thankfully, after Bob had been fired by the third plumbing contractor in a row, gotten his car insurance canceled only to be renewed at rates that rivaled a house payment and been called before a judge, his head started to clear. Then and only then did the light dawn. He’d gone to his first AA meeting and by the grace of God, hadn’t touched a drop since.

Shortly after he’d achieved three weeks of sobriety, he came to her and told her everything that had happened one terrible day in Vietnam. He’d wept bitter tears of guilt and self-recrimination as she held him and cried with him. She’d marked the date he sobbed out his story on her heart, because it was that day their lives and their marriage had changed. It was that day she knew Bob had the power to stop drinking. That had been twenty years ago now, in January 1983. He’d helped many an alcoholic through the AA program since then, and she continued to attend Al-Anon.

As Peggy came into the kitchen, Bob smiled at her. He had the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.

“How long have you been up?” she asked. Since he was already dressed and shaved, it must’ve been a while.

“A few hours. I have an appointment with Roy this morning. I wouldn’t mind company if you’d care to tag along.”

Although he tossed out the invitation in an offhand manner, Peggy knew her husband well enough to realize he wanted her with him. He’d been nervous for days. Ever since Troy Davis had come by the house.

The local sheriff had asked Bob a few questions regarding the John Doe who’d died in their home. As far as she could tell, they were the same questions he’d asked months earlier, when the body was discovered. Troy didn’t stay long, but afterward Bob had paced the house for hours until Peggy thought she’d go mad if he didn’t sit down.

“Sure, I’ll go,” she told him as she poured a cup of coffee. The pot was nearly empty, and she started a fresh one. They had no guests at the moment, but extra coffee never went amiss.

“Looks like we might get snow,” her husband said, staring out the window.

Peggy sat down across from him and reached for the remote control. They kept a small TV in the kitchen, where she generally watched the morning newscast from the local Seattle station. There’d been rumors of snow all week, but only now had the temperature descended to the point that it was a possibility.

Snow in the Puget Sound area wasn’t a common occurrence. Contrary to popular belief, Seattle and its outlying regions actually had a moderate climate. As long as records had been maintained, it had never gone over a hundred degrees in summer or below zero in winter.

“I hope it does snow,” Peggy said, thinking how the schoolkids would love it. As a matter of fact, so would she. The Christmas lights were up outside, the wreath hung on the door and the illuminated family of deer stood in the middle of their front yard. Snow would be the perfect complement.

Bob closed his Big Book and yawned loudly.

“What time did you get up?” she asked again.

He shrugged. “Early.”

“Two? Three?”

“Around there,” he agreed, settling his gaze on the television screen.

Peggy suspected it might’ve been even earlier. Her husband couldn’t get the notion out of his head that he knew the dead stranger. The John Doe had received extensive plastic surgery, which certainly complicated the process of identifying him. For a while, there’d been speculation that it might be Dan Sherman, but that had turned out not to be the case, since Dan’s body was found a few weeks later. All this death in Cedar Cove—it was hard to reconcile in such a friendly, sleepy town.

“What time’s your appointment?” Peggy asked.

“Ten.”

“I’ll be ready,” she promised him.

A few hours later, Bob and Peggy arrived at Roy McAfee’s office not far from the Harbor Street Art Gallery. Corrie, Roy’s wife, acted as his secretary. Peggy liked Corrie, although she didn’t know her well. Roy was a no-nonsense man, a stolid, Detective Friday kind of investigator who tracked down the facts. The similarity between Roy and Joe Friday from the old Dragnet TV show reassured Peggy. He was a bit distant, an observer, a man who didn’t allow emotion to cloud an investigation. Corrie was just the opposite, warm and outgoing. Even though she now worked for her husband, she appeared to be the stay-at-home-and-bake-cookies type of wife and mother. Peggy suspected that was the reason she’d been drawn to Corrie. They were a lot alike.