Carla Neggers - The River House

Maggie pointed to the glass. “You’re going to finish that, right, Olivia?”

Olivia smiled at her friend. “I’ll keep it at hand. I’ve drank so much water I could float away.” She turned to Felicity, who remained on her feet, half ready to bolt. “How do you like being back in Knights Bridge? Did you ever think you’d return here to live?”

“I never gave it much thought one way or the other. I’m good at planning events, but planning my life is a different story.”

Maggie snorted in solidarity. “I can identify with that. I plan. Then I revise the plan when life intervenes, which it always does. I mean, an O’Dunn and a Sloan together? How could my life be anything but chaotic?”

“Also perfect,” Olivia said.

“Mostly perfect. I have a tendency to take on too much in case you haven’t noticed.”

Both Olivia and Felicity laughed along with Maggie at her dead-on insight into herself. In addition to Brandon and their two young sons, his parents, feisty grandmother, four brothers and one sister, and her own three sisters and widowed mother, Maggie was also a caterer, innkeeper and budding entrepreneur of handmade essential oils and goat’s milk bath products. It was a full, busy life, for sure, but Felicity could see how it could get overwhelming. Any sense of “overwhelm” in her own life came not from the sort of abundance Maggie enjoyed but from her own bad habits.

“I hadn’t really considered moving to Knights Bridge until Mark put the house up for sale,” Felicity said. “Once I toured it, I knew. I’ve always loved that spot on the river.”

Maggie tilted her head back. “Nothing to do with the Flanagans?”

She tried to look as if mention of the Flanagans didn’t faze her. “I remember before Mark built the house. I assumed he and Jess would stay there, but they seem happy in the village. It makes sense they’d want to restore an old house.”

“Gabe never wanted to live in Knights Bridge,” Maggie said.

Olivia nodded. “That’s why he let Mark buy out his interest in the riverfront property.”

“Mark bought Gabe out?” The words were out before Felicity could contain them. “Never mind—”

“They pitched in together to buy the camp from their grandfather,” Olivia said. “Didn’t you know?”

Felicity shook her head. “I didn’t know.” She absorbed the news and shut down the dozen questions that erupted all at once. She forced a smile. “I guess it doesn’t matter. I’m enjoying putting my own stamp on the place.”

“You can plant all the flowers you want,” Olivia said lightly. “Jess says Mark didn’t want so much as a petunia out there. He’s more amenable to flowers in the village. I think he still sees the river house as a camp.”

Maggie grinned. “I’d get a flower doormat, too. De-Flanagan the place altogether.”

Felicity couldn’t help but laugh, but she also decided a shift in subject was in order. Then a quick exit. “How did Dylan get Gabe to do the boot camp?”

Olivia shrugged. “I don’t know the details. I imagine Mark was involved. Gabe has quite a reputation as a start-up entrepreneur. He’ll have a lot to offer on Saturday.”

“You two were always tight, Felicity,” Maggie said, plopping onto a chair by the cold fireplace. “You didn’t stay in touch?”

“We did for a while.” Felicity left it at that and hoped it was a sufficient answer and didn’t sound evasive. She didn’t want to get into any details about her and Gabe’s parting-of-the-ways. “I should get going. Thanks so much for dinner, and the company. Take care, Olivia, okay?”

“I will. Thank you again. I’m glad you were there when I went wobbly.”

Felicity didn’t argue, but she was convinced Olivia had actually fainted.

Maggie took another glass off an open shelf. “You’ll have to join us for one of our girls’ nights out, Felicity. We’re overdue for one.”

“I’d like that. The brownies are great, Maggie. They’ll be perfect for the party.”

“We’ll have low-carb goodies, too,” Maggie said. “It’s awesome to have an event planner in town. I’m good with food, but party favors, guest lists, registrations, RSVPs, entertainment—my head starts to spin.”

“We make a good team, then, because I’d poison everyone if I did the food.”

“Accidentally, of course,” Maggie said with a grin.

“Don’t get Maggie started,” Olivia said, tucking her feet under her on the couch. “She’s got a list of people she’d merrily poison.”

All in good fun, Felicity thought as she said good-night and headed outside.

She took the stone walk back to her beat-up Land Rover. It was tucked in the back of the barn’s discreet parking area. She understood that buying the house from Mark was naturally a source of curiosity in town, but she doubted anyone knew just how much work it had taken the past three years to get to the point where she could qualify for a mortgage. No doubt in her mind she’d have done it without Gabe’s prodding, but she doubted he’d see it that way. He’d take credit.

Didn’t matter. He didn’t need to know her financial status.

And it was a reach, wasn’t it, to think he might be interested? He’d had three years to show an interest in her, and he hadn’t.

“Just as well.”

She focused on the drive out to her house. It was a beautiful evening, the sort that used to draw her and Gabe out to the river to sit on a blanket and look up at the stars.

It was nearly dark when she arrived. She went inside, poured herself a glass of merlot and took it out to the deck. She was grateful she’d been there to help Olivia and that she’d only been a bit dehydrated. She didn’t want to imagine what would have happened if she’d left two minutes earlier and Olivia had fainted without anyone around. If she’d hit her head... But she hadn’t, and all was well.

Felicity listened to the river as she sipped her wine and forced herself to relax, calm her thoughts. “I love it here,” she whispered. “Totally love it.”

Gabe’s arrival in Knights Bridge and his involvement with the boot camp party were temporary distractions. Get through Saturday, and her life would return to normal.

* * *

Felicity refilled her wineglass, lit a citronella candle and sat with her feet up on another chair, listening to the soothing sounds of the river as dusk gave way to night. She deliberately avoided thinking about work. Her days often didn’t have hard start and stop times, and she always had eighty million things on her to-do list. All eighty million could wait until tomorrow.

Halfway through her wine, she heard a car out front. Hers wasn’t a well-traveled road. She expected the car to continue on its way and loop back to the main river road, but instead she heard an idling engine and, in another moment, silence.

Company?

She set her wineglass on the table, jumped to her feet and trotted down the deck steps and out to the driveway. A gray BMW SUV was parked behind her car. A man was behind the wheel, but she couldn’t make out his face. No one else was with him. She didn’t recognize the car. Dylan McCaffrey, here to get reassurance about his pregnant wife’s fainting spell?

Then the driver’s door opened, and Gabe Flanagan got out, stretched and looked straight at her in the shadows. “Hey, Felicity. Long time.”

“Almost three-and-a-half years.”

He grinned. “I knew you’d remember.”

She’d fallen into that one, hadn’t she? Not off to a great start. What was he doing here?

He shut the driver’s door, standing now in the light from the house. He was as strikingly good-looking and confident as ever. Visibly muscular and more obviously the successful start-up entrepreneur in his expensive, perfectly fitting clothes. Three years ago, he’d sit for hours at his laptop in a T-shirt and cargo shorts.