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  “Trust me. They’ll be wasting their money.”

  Jake shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “I’m not seeing her again. Connor’s already too attached to her.” He hesitated. “I told her to stay away.”

  “What?” The question exploded out of Jake. “You dumbass. She likes the kid. You’ve had it for her since you were fourteen at least. And you tell her to stay away? Are you a total masochist?”

  “I just don’t want him to get hurt.”

  “Well, hell, he won’t get hurt if you don’t let him live a little. But is that what you want for the kid? Is it what you want for yourself?” Jake scowled, punched him in the arm. “What if she doesn’t leave? What are you going to do then?”

  Margaux spent Saturday in Hartford and returned at dusk with most of the items on her list piled on the backseat of the Toyota. Six bolts of fabric lay wrapped in plastic in the trunk, and a bag of swatches rested on the seat beside her.

  She pulled alongside the curb in front of Le Coif. Linda appeared at the door so fast that Margaux knew she’d been waiting for her. She bounced down the steps and peered in the car window.

  Margaux handed her a box of dyes. “We’d better hurry. The sign says no parking.”

  “Don’t sweat it. I have friends in high places.” Linda lifted her chin toward Nick’s upstairs apartment.

  Margaux grabbed another box and followed her inside, wondering if he would actually come down to give her a ticket. Whether he even cared if he ever saw her again or not. She hadn’t talked to him since the night they ate at the Clam Shack with Connor.

  They went back to the car and began carrying the bolts of fabric inside.

  They were on the last load when Nick came down the stairs.

  “Shit,” said Margaux under her breath. She ducked back into the trunk and lifted out the last bolt of fabric. When she stood up, he was standing next to her. She pulled the bolt to her chest and held it there like a shield.

  He took the fabric from her. “Anything else?”

  She looked at him warily. “Before you give me a ticket?”

  Nick grunted and started carrying the bolt into the store. She watched him for a moment, wondering if she had just heard him laugh.

  When she reached the workshop, he was standing with Linda, looking around in surprise.

  “He’s in a state of shock,” said Linda, and whacked him hard on the back.

  Nick walked over to the fishing line where her designs were hanging. Only now in addition to the “ocean” dress there were two more sundresses, a long gown, a pantsuit, a sarong, several blouses and shirts, a hostess pants with a wrap top. She felt unreasonably embarrassed.

  “They’re . . .” Nick hesitated.

  If he said “nice,” she would get in the car and drive back to Manhattan. Of course, what did he know about fashion? She’d never seen him in anything but a uniform or jeans and a T-shirt. So why was she holding her breath waiting for his opinion?

  “You,” he finished.

  She blinked. Warmth suffused right through her.

  “Okay, that’s it,” Linda said. “Your fashion sense is much appreciated, but if you’re not going to start sewing, you might as well leave.”

  Nick grinned at her. “I’ll leave that to you aficionados.” He turned his smile on Margaux. “Ladies.” He left.

  Margaux stared after him. “Amazing.”

  “If you like the strong, silent, stubborn-as-a-mule type. Okay, let’s see what we have here,” said Linda, not missing a beat.

  Margaux had to pull her attention back from the empty doorway. She began unwrapping the bolts. “A beautiful orange crinkle batik, some muslin, silk I got for a song, a nice coral Chantilly, shantung, silk chiffon in white and another one in a pale blue that I thought was subtle enough to use as a background.”

  “Save a shitload of work,” agreed Linda, eyeing the chiffon. “Now come check out the kitchen.”

  The kitchen was completely transformed. A row of hot plates stretched across the counter. A nested stack of lobster pots sat on the kitchen table.

  “Where did you get all this?”

  “Harlan of the Harley knows a guy.”

  “Please don’t tell me this stuff fell off a truck.”

  “Nah. Harlan does some work over at the vets’ hall. They loaned him the hot plates. He picked up the lobster pots from the Lobster Pot.” She grinned. “I kid you not. It’s the name of a restaurant that’s going out of business. He got them cheap.”

  “Thank him beaucoodles for me.”

  Linda flashed teeth. “Not to worry. I will.”

  Fourteen

  Margaux agreed to go to Sunday Mass even though she really wanted to work. But as her mother pointed out, it was always good to have God on your side when you started a new venture.

  They had just sat down at their regular pew when Margaux felt someone nudge her knee. She looked over to see Connor Prescott, his hair slicked back and wearing a navy blue suit, smiling at her.

  “Hi,” he breathed.

  “Hi,” Margaux whispered back, thinking Connor was probably the only kid in town who didn’t need to be reprimanded to be quiet in church.

  Jude leaned over. “Hi, honey. Where’s your grandmother?”

  Adelaide Prescott appeared behind him. “I’m so sorry he bothered you. He’s been talking nonstop about Margaux, and when he saw you come in he just slipped away before I could stop him.”

  “That’s just fine,” Jude said, glancing sideways at Margaux. “Why don’t you join us?”

  “Oh no, that’s very kind but we have our seats.”

  Connor pulled himself up on the pew and scooted close to Margaux. He patted the place next to him for his grandmother to sit down.

  “Connor!” she admonished.

  “He’s a boy with a mind of his own,” Jude said, smiling congenially at Mrs. Prescott. “Please, sit with us.”

  At that moment organ music announced the beginning of the service. Mrs. Prescott sat down.

  Connor hardly moved for the next hour except to slide off the pew to kneel, then climb back up again. He occasionally cast a shy smile up at Margaux. She was flattered and uncomfortable at the same time. She could feel herself getting attached to this strange child, and she knew she shouldn’t. Especially because she couldn’t separate her enjoyment of Connor from her desire to have her own children. And that couldn’t be healthy for either of them. And then there was Nick.

  After church Connor took her hand as they walked outside. Mrs. Prescott and Jude walked behind. Margaux was acutely aware of the interest they were affording certain members of the congregation and wondered what conclusions they would make.

  “I hope you don’t mind us barging in,” Mrs. Prescott told Jude.

  “Of course not. It was lovely to have you.”

  Mrs. Prescott turned to Margaux. “That was so sweet of you to go with them to Deke’s. Connor has been talking about it ever since.”

  “Oh?” Jude glanced at Margaux.

  “It was nothing. I had a good time, too.”

  “Thank you.” Mrs. Prescott leaned over to Connor. “Say goodbye. We have to be going. Uncle Nick is coming to lunch.”

  “Bye,” he said, and let his grandmother lead him away.

  “Nick Prescott asked you to dinner?”

  “Actually Connor did. We kind of got suckered into agreeing. And it was just Deke’s.”

  They crossed the street to Jude’s car. “Dottie insists we come to brunch, so don’t argue. After next week, the summer crowd will descend and there won’t be a booth to be had without waiting.”

  “Sounds good. I have a couple of ideas I want to kick around.”

  Dottie’s was packed with everyone getting their last Sunday brunch in before the tourist season began. Dottie came over to personally take th
eir order.

  “And now it begins,” she said. “Not that I’m complaining, mind you. Summer traffic keeps me in business the rest of the year.”

  They gave their orders, waited while a new summer waitress poured their coffee under Dottie’s eagle eye. When she was gone, Dottie said, “So I hear Nick Prescott asked our Margaux out to dinner.”

  “Who did you hear that from?” Margaux asked.

  “Lydia Braithwaite who heard it from Seamus McGuire who heard it from Doug Loomey who was there.”

  “He didn’t invite me to dinner.”

  “Don’t make me drag this out of you,” Dottie said. “I have three new waitresses today that I have to keep an eye on.”

  “He came to give Linda his rent money. Connor wandered into my workshop, asked Nick if I could go to Deke’s with them. Nick, being polite, asked me. And I didn’t have the heart to say no to Connor.”

  “And . . .”

  Margaux gritted her teeth. “The three of us ate at Deke’s and they dropped me off at Le Coif. It was probably eight-thirty, hardly a date.”

  Dottie glanced quickly at Jude. I told you so. “Gotta go.” She hurried away.

  Margaux turned on Jude. “What have you two been concocting?”

  “Nothing. We just want you to be happy.”

  “I am happy. Or at least I will be when I get back on my feet. Which is what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  Jude leaned forward on her elbows. “Okay.”

  Now that the time had come, it was hard to begin. “I’ve been working on some new designs.”

  Jude nodded.

  “Well, yesterday I bought some fabric. A lot of fabric actually. Pretty much wiped out what was left of my bank account.”

  “Honey—”

  “I thought I’d do a few mock-ups and send out a video. Maybe get a foot into a new house.”

  “Work for another designer?”

  “If that’s what I have to do. But that’s not the issue at this point. I need to take out a small business loan.”

  “Stop right now. I’ll loan you the money.”

  “Thanks, Mom, but I’d rather do it this way. I’m thinking twenty or thirty thousand would get me started. Then if I get any nibbles, I can decide which way to go from there.”

  “I have that much lying around in stocks. If you won’t let me give it to you, at least borrow it from me.”

  Margaux shook her head. “I really, really appreciate the offer, but I need to do this myself.”

  Jude sighed. “Then what do you want me to do?”

  “Give me some advice. What do you think the bank would require as collateral?”

  Jude thought about it. “I don’t know. I think we should consult Roger.”

  “Roger Kyle?”

  “Yes. He has much more business acumen than I do. I’m sure he’ll be able to guide you in the right direction. What are you frowning at? You can trust him.”

  “It’s not that. It’s just his name sure has come up a lot since I’ve been back.”

  “It has? Well, he is an old friend.”

  “He’s not . . . You’re not . . .”

  “Not what?” Jude tipped her chin and looked totally guileless.

  “Nothing.”

  “Then shall I ask him for advice?”

  “I guess.” It sounded innocent enough. Maybe he could help her. And even if he couldn’t and even though it was none of her business, it might give Margaux a chance to see just what might be going on between him and her mother.

  Nick sat at his desk and shifted the cells of the spreadsheet that held the department summer schedule. He’d been at it all morning, feeding in staff availability and requests for vacation time. Memorial Day was only a few days away and it would mark the beginning of summer, which meant his small staff would be working overtime.

  When he finally finished, it was almost noon and too late to go home and change out of his jeans. He headed straight to his mother’s house for Sunday lunch. It was a Prescott tradition, as with so many other families, to have Sunday lunch together, and he guessed his mother insisted on keeping the ritual to lend some order to their lives.

  She didn’t comment when he apologized for his attire, just told him to go wash up and make himself presentable. Connor was watching television, the sound muted.

  “Hey, sport. How was Mass?”

  “Good. We sat with Margaux.”

  Nick leaned closer. “What?”

  “We sat with Margaux.”

  “You did?”

  Connor nodded and went back to his silent cartoons.

  Nick returned to the kitchen. Looked into a pot of mashed potatoes. “Connor said he sat with Margaux Sullivan at Mass today.”

  “Yes, we did.” His mother nudged him out of the way and opened the oven door.

  “How did that happen?”

  She slid a roasting pan out of the oven and placed it on a trivet on the counter. “Connor saw them sit down, and before I knew what he was doing, he’d followed them. Then Jude asked us to sit with them. Wasn’t that nice? Connor is really smitten with your Margaux.”

  “She’s not my Margaux. But that’s just what people will think. Do you want the whole town talking?”

  “You care too much about what people say.”

  “My job is kind of dependent on my reputation.”

  “Oh, pooh. Your reputation is clean as a whistle. And besides, what can they say? She was nice to a little boy.”

  “Ma, I don’t know that it’s a good idea to encourage this friendship with Ms. Sullivan.”

  “Why on earth not?”

  “Because she’ll be going back to New York. I don’t want Connor getting attached to her and then have her leave.”

  She cocked her head at him, a sparrow’s gesture. “Oh, Nicky, are you sure it’s Connor you’re worried about?”

  “Who else would it be?”

  She reached up on tiptoe and patted his cheek. “Go get Connor for lunch.”

  For the next week, Margaux threw herself into work. She knew she was setting up expectations. She’d rented a work space and worked every day. Just like a real job. Just like she was putting down roots. Just like she was going to stay.

  She could see it in the looks Dottie and her mother exchanged. In the expressions of people she met on the street. The last time she’d gone into Oglethorpe’s Hardware, Roy had said, “It’s good to have you back home where you belong.”

  And even though Margaux tried not to look ahead, she found herself wandering into images of the future. Images of Crescent Cove. Images of Nick Prescott. Then she would pull herself together and remind herself to keep her eye on the prize. And the prize was New York, Fashion Week, Vogue.

  She didn’t see Nick or Connor, and she tried not to think about them. And yet she missed them both.

  She focused solely on the design, ignoring all the extraneous things she’d had to worry about before: deadlines, cost bearing, competitive placement. She just drew and created, letting color and texture dictate her hand and mind.

  Dyed and hand-painted swatches of fabric lay over every surface of the work space. Soon she would need a real workshop with equipment to dye large amounts of fabric.

  Except that if the designs caught on and sold, they would get sent to a fabric designer and then to a professional manufacturer. And then a betraying thought would creep into her mind. I want to do the fabric myself, not farm it out to another designer. Not to depend on someone else’s interpretation no matter how creative and brilliant it might be.

  But that was totally unfeasible. For one thing, it was too time-consuming, and too expensive. It would drive the prices into the hundreds or thousands of dollars just to make overhead. Which wouldn’t be bad if she had the clout to make it happen.

  A few months ago she
might have been able to pull it off, but now she would just have to swallow her ego, her pride, and hire on to another already established design house. Then maybe someday . . .

  When she was busy, she stopped dwelling on what she’d lost. But at night when her mind was still firing on all circuits, panic would seize her, disbelief that only a few short weeks ago, she’d had everything she’d dreamed of. And now it was gone.

  Strangely enough, it wasn’t the money, the apartment, or the lifestyle that she missed. That loss was staggering but not nearly as bad as the career and momentum that had been destroyed. There was nothing she could do but push the bitterness aside and force herself back to her new enterprise, try to dream ahead and see her new designs taking Paris by storm. And at last she would go to sleep.

  She lived on diner food and adrenaline. She and Linda cleared out the former dining room, which Linda had been using for storage, in order to create more space for the workshop. They carried boxes upstairs and took over one of the three spare bedrooms for storage.

  A giant man in a black leather vest and shaved head came in to help with the heavy stuff.

  “Hey, babe,” he said in a deep voice any actor would be proud of.

  “This is Harlan. He’s the man with the muscle.” Linda winked at Margaux and led him into the dining room. A minute later Margaux heard scraping and grunting. She got up to see if they needed help, but when she looked into the dining room, Harlan had hoisted a heavy chest onto his back and was carrying it into the hall. Linda followed behind him, swishing a broom and humming a song from Cinderella.

  They hung cotton cording across the ceiling and taped a plastic tarp on the floor so that drying fabric wouldn’t drip on the polished hardwood. They uncovered two unused bookcases which Margaux filled with neatly folded material.

  When they were finished, Margaux stepped back and looked around the two rooms. Her mark was everywhere. And she had one thought.

  This is what I want to do.

  Fifteen

  On the day of the flea market, Nick rose before dawn. It was still dark when he left his apartment. His eyes felt gritty and his muscles ached. It seemed like he’d been working forever.