Page 66 of The Treasure House

“It’s seven forty-five.”

“You know what I mean. It’s dark.”

“Yeah, well, that happens at night.” He slowly lowered his hands. “I’m just here to pick up my niece. She’s in rehearsals for a school play.”

“Oh.” My heart was still racing. In fact, it now felt like it was racing and stumbling. Partly from memories of Tina, partly from having the pants scared off me, and partly because… well, Jake. The man was stupidly good-looking. The streetlights cast sharp shadows on his face and accentuated the hollows of his cheekbones, the dip where his dimples hid.

“I, ah, didn’t realize you had a niece,” I said lamely.

“I have three of them.”

I sank back down onto the swing, trying to calm my galloping heart.

“Is Flo in the play too?” He joined me on the swing set. He was wearing a light sweater that hugged his chest.

I nodded. “She’s playing the dog.” I let out a slow breath. At least Jake had pulled me back from the past. I could feel my feet on the ground and the sharpness of the fall air.

There was a beat of silence. “And is she… happy… about that? Being the dog?”

“What do you think?”

“Well, I know Lainey would hate it.”

I jerked on the swing. “Your niece is Lainey Mullins?” Oh, Flo was going to hate this.

“You know her?”

“No. It’s just that Flo’s mentioned her. She got the lead in the play, right?”

“Always,” Jake said dryly. “Lainey was born to take center stage.” He laughed. “If she’d got the part of the dog, she would have made placards and marched on the principal’s office. She probably would have made me glue glitter all over those placards too.”

“Flo seemed happy to avoid having to sing,” I admitted. “She’s only really doing the play to make some friends.”

“Is it working?”

“I’ll let you know. This is only the first rehearsal.” We lapsed into an almost comfortable silence.

“Oh,” said Jake, turning his swing toward me. “I meant to say, I’m putting in an order for firewood this week. You want me to order you a delivery at the same time? October’s just about on us and it’s going to get cold.”

For a guy who had resting grumpy face, he sure was solicitous.

“Wayne said I should probably get the chimneys checked before I light any fires,” I said regretfully. I’d been looking forward to a winter fire crackling in the parlor. Once I cleared out the parlor and could get to the fireplace, anyway. My house was just an endless list of things to do. But at the same time, the thought that it was my house filled me with a cozy warm feeling.

“I can look at your chimneys,” Jake volunteered.

I shook my head. He’d done so much for us already. “It’s fine, you don’t have to—”

“All good. I’m checking Elton’s too.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

He had a very reassuring presence. He was like the solid mass of the cliffs at the edge of Beach Road, immovable and calm. There was a permanence to him. Like he knew what he was and felt no need to be anything else.

“How come you live in Oxeye?” I asked abruptly. We’d never finished that line of questioning on the night we found Mac and the Cheeses, and I was still burning with curiosity about him. While I couldn’t imagine Jake anywhere but Oxeye, he was an anomaly in a place made up primarily of vacationers and retirees. He was just about the only full-time resident. And me and Flo, of course. “I mean… how did you come to run the hardware store and everything? Are you from here?”

He gave me a sideways look that seemed a little wary and a little shy. “Not exactly,” he said slowly. “I mean, my family summered on the coast every year when I was growing up, but we came from Boston, mostly. But the coast has a pull on you, you know? Or on my family, anyway. This place gets in your blood. No one is watching the clock in the summer, no one is in a rush to be somewhere else. And you spend the rest of your life wishing you could get back to the timeless summer at the seaside.”

I was speechless. Usually, Jake was a man of few, mostly grunted, words, and yet here he was speaking like a poet. And he kept talking.