Sherryl Woods - Seaview Inn

Ten minutes after the battle had died down, Hannah had stormed out of the house looking like a thundercloud, gotten behind the wheel of his rental car, which was almost an exact duplicate of her rental car, and tried to start the engine. Naturally the key hadn’t worked. She’d gotten out, kicked a tire, then glanced at the car beside it and apparently grasped her mistake. A minute later she’d squealed out of the driveway at a speed that had him wincing. She hadn’t acknowledged his existence with so much as a wave. He gathered things hadn’t gone her way with her grandmother.

As soon as she was out of sight, the screen door opened and Jenny slipped outside. “That girl’s going to get a ticket or run into a ditch if she keeps on driving like that,” she said disapprovingly.

“She seems upset,” he noted as the woman settled into the rocker beside his and poured herself a glass of lemonade, then grabbed the last cookie. Luke barely contained a sigh at the loss. He’d had plans for that cookie, even after all the others he’d eaten.

“I think her mood has something to do with her daughter,” she said, glancing sideways at him.

Luke chuckled. “And I think it might have something to do with you. You trying to put something over on her, Mrs. Matthews?”

“I told you to call me Grandma Jenny,” she said testily, then slanted a look at him. “Why would I be trying to put anything over on her?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. So far, here’s what I’ve got. You want Hannah to come back here and take over the inn. She doesn’t want to. You figured having a paying guest—me—would force her to stick it out here for a while, maybe start getting used to the idea.”

Jenny didn’t bother trying to deny it. “Think you’re smart, don’t you?”

“Far from it, but I know a con artist when I meet one. Is this just about you not wanting to sell this place because it’s been your home for all these years?”

She gave him a scathing look. “It is not,” she said emphatically. “I know that’s what Hannah thinks, too, but this is about her. She’s been living in New York for twenty years now, but she’s not happy.”

Luke bit back a comment. Hannah had seemed happy enough to him until she’d found out he was staying here. Then, again, they hadn’t done a lot of catching up before that.

“Oh, she thinks she is,” Grandma Jenny continued, “because she’s busy every second of every day, dealing with all sorts of powerful clients and going out to fancy dinners and the theater and hosting elegant parties in the hottest clubs. She sends the clippings from the newspaper down here, so I’ll be impressed with how successful she is, and I am. I’m real proud of her, but career success isn’t all there is to life.”

“Maybe not, but it doesn’t sound like a bad life to me,” he remarked. “Especially if it’s the one she wants.”

“It’s bad, if at the end of the day she goes home to an empty apartment and a cold bed. Her daughter’s clear across the country at Stanford. Her husband, who wasn’t worth much to begin with, is long gone, every bit as irresponsible as her daddy. She’s alone and she’s forgotten who she is and what’s important. She’s chasing the almighty dollar, is what she’s doing, and in the end, that’s never enough to make a person truly happy.”

Luke wondered what her assessment would be of his life. His view of success had matched Hannah’s for a time. Money had certainly been high on his ex-wife’s measure of success, as well. Now he saw Grandma Jenny’s point. He’d made a lot of money, but he’d never been entirely happy, though he hadn’t been able to say why. That was another part of the reason he’d come to Seaview Key. He wanted to believe he’d get his priorities in order while he was here, maybe get back to the values he’d been taught by his parents, to the love of medicine he’d had when he first went into practice.

“Do you think Hannah will rediscover herself here?” he asked.

“I’m hoping,” she said. “I love this shabby old inn, no question about it. My parents built it and my husband and I had a good life running it and raising our kids here. Hannah had a good life here, too, though she’s chosen to forget that. She was surrounded by family and a tightknit community, not millions of strangers who are scared to even look each other in the eye on the street. You must know what I mean. It brought you back here, didn’t it?”

“Not to stay,” Luke said softly. “Just to get my bearings.”

She gave him a sly look. “Seems to me like the place you go to get your bearings ought to be home.” She tapped her glass to his. “Something to think about, don’t you agree?”

“You could have a point,” he conceded. “And maybe I did come here because this was once home. I wanted to recapture a simpler time in my life.” He met her gaze. “I’m not really sure it’s possible to do that, though. Maybe all I’m doing is postponing dealing with reality.”

“If you’d care to explain what you’re talking about, maybe I could help you figure it out,” she said. “Lots of folks think with age comes a little wisdom.”

“I don’t question that for a minute, and maybe one of these days we will talk more about what’s going on in my life,” he said.

She patted his hand. “Whenever you’re ready to tell me, I’ll be ready to listen. Now I need to start thinking about dinner. Kelsey—that’s Hannah’s daughter—will be hungry after eating nothing but airline food today. I’m thinking fried chicken and macaroni and cheese, good comfort food. How does that sound?”

“Like it’ll clog all our arteries,” he said. “And better than anything I’ve had in months.” He watched as she struggled to her feet. “You want some help?”

Her expression turned indignant. “The day I can’t get into this house on my own two feet is the day I’ll walk away from it and check into that retirement home Hannah’s so anxious for me to move into.”

The show of spunk made Luke chuckle. “I meant with dinner.”

“Now, that I can use. You know anything about cutting up a chicken?”

“I’m a surgeon. I think I can manage.”

She gave him a startled look. “Well, I’ll be. I hadn’t heard that.”

“My folks moved away before I went into medical school, much less chose a specialty,” he said.

Luke waited with dread for her to ask him a thousand and one questions about why he was hiding out in Seaview Key, instead of back home performing surgery.

Surprisingly, though, she just gave him a knowing glance and another pat on the hand. “Like I said, this is a good place for figuring things out.”

Luke was counting on that. It was a far cry from the hospital in D.C., its hallways crowded with wounded soldiers whose souls were as shattered as their limbs. Compared to that or the hell that had been his life in Baghdad or the complications waiting for him in Atlanta, Seaview Key was pure heaven.

Iraq, a few months earlier

The calendar on the wall in Luke’s quarters had big, bold X’s marked through the days. Practically from the minute he’d arrived in Baghdad, he’d begun counting down the time until he could go home again. He’d signed up for one year of active duty, partly out of patriotism and partly out of a sense of obligation. The army had paid for his medical degree, and though he’d already served the required amount of time in return, he still felt a moral duty to sign up for another tour when guys he’d served with were sent to Iraq.

He and Lisa had had a blowup of monumental proportions when he’d told her about his plan to volunteer for reenlistment.

“You got out of the military, Luke,” she said, tears streaming down her face. “How can you even consider this? You’ve paid your dues. You have a family now. You have kids. Your medical practice is growing. We’re finally financially stable. If you walk away from it now, what will that do to our income? Do you expect us to live on a soldier’s pay?”