Chapter 18

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

"Hey, Dad," Claire greeted Hudson within a minute of his knocking on her front door. "Thanks for bringing the food."

"Of course, baby," Hudson said, leaning in to kiss his daughter on the cheek. No matter how old she got, Claire would always be his baby. "You know you can always ask me for help."

Summers were always busy for the small businesses of Whale Harbor, and Claire's florist shop had been hopping recently. Between that and her lupus, she'd confessed to him on the phone earlier that evening, she was a little more tired than usual.

"Liam is helping out a lot, of course," she'd reassured him when she'd called. "But he's not getting off shift at the firehouse until just before we're set to meet for dinner. He won't have a chance to cook before you come over. I don't want to cancel on you, Dad, so would you mind picking up some takeout on the way over?"

Hudson, of course, did not mind. In fact, he was very pleased that Claire had asked. She'd been diagnosed with her condition in her late teen years, a time when parents already are struggling with the idea that their kids need them somewhat less than they used to. When they'd learned that Claire was chronically ill, as well, Hudson had had a very hard time not hovering over his daughter. The learning curve had been sharp for both of them, but he and Claire had gradually come to negotiate an adult relationship that worked. Her asking him for this favor meant that he was holding up his end of the bargain and being supportive but not overbearing.

Besides, as a dad, it was always nice to be needed. Even, or perhaps even especially, when your kid was in her thirties.

"I know," she said now, smiling softly as she stepped back to let him in the house. "I was going to swing by and grab it myself on my way home from work, but the lure of my soft clothes was too great."

She was, he saw, already dressed for a night in, in a comfy t-shirt and leggings.

"I can't believe you're not sweating in those slippers though." He chuckled as he followed her into her kitchen. "It's July!"

"Comfort isn't seasonal, Dad," she said with a laugh.

Claire's boyfriend, Liam Hiller, was standing at the kitchen counter, filling up a pitcher with ice. He was still wearing his work clothes, his WHFD t-shirt paired with the uniform slacks that the fire department wore when they weren't out on an active call.

"Hey, Hudson," Liam greeted, abandoning his task to take some of the takeout bags from Hudson's arms. They were having Chinese food that evening. "Don't listen to Claire. It's good that you got the takeout instead of her. She never gets enough crab Rangoon."

Claire wrinkled her nose. "Seafood and cream cheese does not go together. I'm a native Rhode Islander. I would know."

"I'm a lifelong Bostonian!" Liam laughingly protested. "Wouldn't I also know?"

"You were a lifelong Bostonian," Claire corrected. "Now you're just a Rhode Island newbie. You're going to have to restart your cred from scratch."

"Well, I've lived in Rhode Island longer than either of you two have been alive," Hudson chimed in, pulling plates from the cabinet. He had dinner with his daughter, and now Liam too, at least once a week. He knew Claire's kitchen as well as he knew his own. "And I say crab Rangoon is delicious."

He and Liam exchanged a high-five while Claire mock pouted at being outvoted. She tried to help gather plates and utensils, but Liam shooed her out of the kitchen.

"Go sit, Claire," he urged. "We've got this." When Claire looked like she wanted to argue, Liam merely looked at her, firm but patient.

She sighed. "Oh, fine."

As she left though, Hudson saw the tiny smile on her face.

"You're good at getting her to accept help," he praised Liam when Claire was gone.

Liam gave him an appreciative smile. "She's occasionally stubborn about it," he allowed. "But she knows that I love her no matter what. And even when she's stubborn, she's responsible. She knows her health is the most important thing."

Hudson liked how open Liam was about his feelings for Claire. Some people, Hudson knew, thought it was more "manly" to be reticent about emotional matters, but Hudson had always thought that to be foolish. When you loved someone, he felt, you should tell them so as often as you could. After all, having lost his wife, he knew that you might have fewer chances than you'd expected.

He watched his daughter and her boyfriend together as they all sat down to dinner, feeling a rush of gratitude that Claire had found such a wonderful partner.

Unfortunately, such thoughts quickly turned to his own romantic misadventures. He frowned into his fried rice. It wasn't long before he felt his daughter's eyes on him.

"Is everything okay, Dad?" she asked, a worried expression creasing her brow.

He forced his own expression smooth. He didn't want to worry Claire. "Yes, everything is fine." When she merely gave him a skeptical look, he let out a rueful laugh. She knew him too well. "Okay, fine, you got me. Will you laugh at me if I admit that I'm brooding over a woman?"

He watched as Claire and Liam exchanged a knowing glance, conversing in that silent way that good couples had. When Claire turned back to him a moment later, her eyebrow was arched. Liam was gazing down into his lap, clearly hiding a laugh.

"I won't laugh," she said, "as long as you don't make me pretend that I don't know we're talking about Lori Sims."

Hudson's mouth dropped open. "How do you know that?" He hadn't told Claire that he was going on a date with Lori.

She gave him a look that said, Seriously, Dad? It made him feel like she was a teenager again. Or maybe he was the teenager in this scenario, grouchy that the girl he liked didn't like him back.

"Well," she said with a distinct air of patience, "for one: duh."

He took it back. She was the teenager in this.

"For another," she continued, "you told Wyatt Jameson you were working with her, and he told Marty, and Marty told our whole group. And even if it wasn't already suspicious that you'd neglected to mention that you were ‘working with' Lori," she said, accompanying this with finger quotes. "Wyatt said that you were…" She paused, searching for the word. "Moony."

Hudson frowned. The rest he could accept, but…

"There is no way that man used the word ‘moony,'" he challenged.

Claire made an okay, fine gesture while Liam clearly bit back a laugh.

"Marty might have editorialized that part a bit," she allowed. "But there seems to be pretty widespread agreement that there's a vibe ."

This almost made Hudson smile and think about telling Lori about the phrasing as part of their ongoing joke about young people's nonsense. But then he remembered how their date had ended and his smile fell flat.

"Yeah, you got me," he admitted with a sigh. "Lori and I… We went out on a date the other night."

Claire's eyes went wide and she let out a surprised squeak.

"Be cool," Liam muttered to her out of the side of his mouth. "We don't want to scare him off."

Both Boones shot him chiding looks.

"I'm cool, I'm cool," Claire assured them. She folded her hands in front of her primly. "Do go on, Father."

"Real cool," Hudson agreed sarcastically. She grinned.

He sighed again and then told the pair everything.

"So everything was going great," he said, after offering a quick explanation of their sparkling dinner conversation and romantic moonlit beach walk. "And then… Okay, Claire Bear, you might be ‘cool' and all, but I'm still your dad, so let's just keep it simple and say we shared a nice kiss and leave it at that."

Claire looked like she wanted to squeak again, but her voice was calm when she said. "And that was… bad? Because, Dad, what you're describing sounds good but your face says ‘bad.'"

"That part was very nice," he allowed, because really, he was not going to tell his daughter that kissing Lori had felt like a promise, like the start of something marvelous, like maybe they had a bright and shining future ahead of them. He wasn't going to say that it made him feel a way he hadn't in a long time.

"Okay, so what's the problem?"

"She kind of… ran away," he admitted, cringing at just how awful it sounded.

Liam had been mostly quiet through this tale, but now he cleared his throat, almost sounding like a student in class. "Uh, can you explain what ‘run away' means?" he asked a little awkwardly.

Hudson's wince intensified. "I mean what it sounds like. We had our… moment, and then she suddenly had to bolt, clearly making up some work crisis. Real estate agents don't have work crises on Saturday nights. We're not surgeons. Also, we've been working together. She even took a rideshare back home, wouldn't even let me give her a ride."

Liam was a trained first responder who kept his cool in even the most hectic situations. So when he offered Hudson a sympathetic expression it was equivalent to oh man, dude, you're completely toast from anyone else.

Claire, on the other hand, looked thoughtful.

"Huh," she said, propping her chin in her hand.

"Huh what?" Hudson prodded when she didn't continue speaking.

She bobbled her head from side to side, eyes fixed blankly on the wall, like she was reasoning through something.

"Well," she said thoughtfully, "I get why your face looks like you just learned that your favorite historic building is going to be bulldozed for a strip mall."

He practically gasped. "Don't even say that. I'm already miserable enough."

"But," she continued, speaking over him, "I'm not sure it's all bad."

"Say more," he urged, "and I'll decide if I forgive you for the strip mall comment."

She shot him a teasing wink before returning to her serious expression. "Think of it this way," she reasoned. "You haven't dated anyone seriously since Mom."

He nodded. He'd gone out here and there, but mostly he hadn't been interested in finding anyone new, not for a long time after he'd lost Stella.

"And Lori's situation, it's pretty similar. So you can picture why she might be a little slow to get on board the dating train."

"True," he allowed, "but she said she wanted to go out. And we had a great time."

"For sure," Claire agreed. "But you asked her out, right?"

"Right."

"So maybe," she said, stretching out the word, "that means you had a little more time to, I don't know, adjust to the idea. Maybe she just needs a minute to catch her breath. Sometimes," she added, flicking a quick glance to her boyfriend, "a really good date can be a little scarier than a bad one or one that's only just fine. It makes you start to really think about things, really imagine what you want from life and whether that's possible between you and the other person."

Hudson nodded, unsure if he was so eager to agree because he really thought Claire was on to something or because he wanted so very badly to believe what she said was true. He supposed there wasn't much he could do about that part of things though. Lori was her own person. Her perception of their date was hers and nobody could change that.

"So what do I do?" he asked, because apparently he was onto a good thing, asking these two for advice.

"Take a job at the fire department," Liam said promptly. Hudson and Claire both stared at him. "It's a metaphor, sheesh," he said, slightly defensive. "Man, I am not on a roll tonight. Okay, what I mean is this: you have to put yourself out there." He pointed to himself. "Obviously the firefighting part was applicable to me only, but the general rule still stands. You have to make it clear that you're all in. Don't give her a reason to be nervous."

"But what if she doesn't feel the same?" Hudson asked. Darn it, he was the teenager again. "What if it makes it awkward for us to work together?"

"That's why it's called putting yourself out there," Liam said, not without sympathy. "It's a risk. But that's how you maybe end up with the reward of a really satisfying relationship."

"I feel the need to defend myself here," Claire chimed in. "I don't feel like I left you hanging too badly!"

Liam smiled at her and the expression was pure love. "I think we both know I was the one who needed to make up his mind," he agreed. "But honestly, it doesn't matter when you feel that strongly. I was still nervous as all get out. But, you know." He picked up her hand off the table and kissed the back of it quickly. "Big rewards."

Claire shot her partner a smile that was no less loving for its brevity before turning back to her dad.

"Liam has a point, Dad. Lori might have just gotten scared. She has a reason for that. She'd been hurt by love before. It wasn't anyone's fault, but it's what happened. So maybe your next move is to make her feel safe, let her know that you'll do whatever's in your power to not hurt her again."

"So I have to lay my feelings on the line," Hudson said, both scared and somewhat excited by the prospect.

Claire nodded, smiling at him. "Yeah, but if you do, who knows? Maybe she'll be willing to do the same."

Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Do not think about it .

Lori's brain was playing games with her. It wanted, for whatever ridiculous reason, to replay every detail of her date with Hudson over and over on a loop that never ended. And, in fairness, about ninety-nine percent of this loop was nice. There was the dinner, the conversation, the walk. Perfect, perfect, perfect.

And then there was the kiss which, in all honesty, was even more perfect. It had warmed her like a bolt of lightning. It had caused her heart to race in her chest. It had made her feel young and brave and happy.

And then…

And then she'd run away . She had almost literally run! Lori was not a runner, both in the physical and metaphoric senses. But she'd pretty much bolted like her life depended on it after that too wonderful, too perfect kiss.

It was, in a word, mortifying. And yet her brain seemed determined to make her relive it. Over and over and over again.

She laid her head down on the steering wheel for the length of three breaths before she sat up, gathering her composure. It was time to stop acting like a total ninny. She was an adult. A professional! Time to start acting like it.

With one more deep, steadying breath, she gathered her folio of paperwork and got out of the car. She walked up the driveway to the house Charity now shared with Dominic and their kids. They had a handful of offers that Lori considered decent. She had a feeling that the couple would accept one of them, likely today.

That, she told her silly, stubborn brain, is what I should be paying attention to. Closing on a house. Not handsome men and moonlight kisses.

Her brain ignored her.

She knocked on the door and heard the familiar cavalcade of noise that indicated that children lived in the house. Despite her mental turmoil, Lori smiled. She remembered her own house sounding like that.

The door opened revealing Lucas, Charity's son, and Milo, their dog.

"Hi, Mrs. Sims," he said brightly. "I'm allowed to open the door now if Mom or Dominic is home and it's daytime and we know who is probably coming."

"That's awesome," Lori congratulated him, matching his grin with her own.

"I know," he said with a no big deal shrug.

"Invite her in!" came Charity's laughing voice from inside the house.

Lucas nodded, suddenly all serious. "Would you like to come in, Mrs. Sims?"

"Thank you very much, Lucas," she said with an equally serious nod. He grinned, back to playful in a flash.

"Hey, Lori," Charity greeted when Lori came into the living room, folding the last couple of pieces from a pile of laundry. "Sorry, just wanted to wrap this up really quickly."

"No problem," Lori assured her. "I remember the days."

Charity grinned. "It's wild how tiny people have so many loads of laundry, you know?"

"I do know," Lori agreed with a laugh.

When they went into the kitchen, Dominic was finishing up his own chore. He placed a pan in the dishrack, the dishwasher whirring quietly behind him.

"Hey, Lori, thanks for making time for us," he greeted kindly. Everyone in Whale Harbor had agreed that Dominic Reeves had been a right grump when he'd first moved from Boston, but small-town life… or love had mellowed him out.

"Of course," she replied. The three adults moved to sit at their kitchen table, Dominic and Charity clustered on either side of Lori. She unpacked her folio of paperwork. "Okay, so we have three offers that I would consider within suitable range at this point," she said, feeling herself slip into her comfortable businesswoman role. "This third one," she said, sliding the papers to the side, "I would probably disregard. It's reasonable, but it's not as good as the other two, in my opinion."

"I trust your judgment, but why?" Charity asked curiously.

Lori shrugged. "Less money, honestly. Sometimes it really is that simple."

Charity nodded, understanding.

Lori adjusted the two remaining stacks of papers. "In the case of these two offers though," she added, "I don't think it actually is quite that simple. This offer," she said, tapping the papers under her left hand, "is worth more. Not a whole lot more, but a couple extra thousand dollars."

"A couple extra thousand dollars is nothing to sneeze at," Dominic chimed in.

"Absolutely agree," Lori said. "And in most cases, I'd urge you to go for the best price, because that money can always go somewhere, especially when you're raising kids and running businesses. But ," she went on, tapping the papers under her right hand, "I still think this is the one you're going to want to go with, given what I know about you."

At their quizzical looks, she explained. "I don't know for sure," she admitted, "but I think this higher offer is from people who intend to use it as a rental property. I double-checked, and it's zoned for that to be legal. They didn't officially say anything and I can't make them tell me, but something about the way they talked about it made me suspect."

Charity's nose wrinkled. "So what would that mean?"

"Could be a few things," Lori allowed. "Could be that they'll rent out to long-term tenants, and you'll get regular new neighbors and the extra cash. But given this area...? I suspect they'll use it for short-term rentals in the summers, for tourist season. Which would mean it would be mostly empty during the winters, and then different people every few days or weeks in the summer. People who are here on vacation."

Charity frowned. "As a small business owner, I'm not about to knock tourists. They're what keep my doors open. But I don't know that I would want to live next door to an endless stream of tourists, to be honest."

"And people who aren't here for the long term might not be as cautious about keeping the property nice, or as mindful of noise," Dominic said. "If it was just me, or even just us, Char, I might say go for it, and decide to use part of the extra money for a good pair of earplugs. But with the kids…"

"I'm with you," Charity agreed. "That sounds like it could be fine or it could be terrible and we wouldn't know until the renters got here which one it was going to be." She turned to Lori. "So you got a different impression of the other offer?"

"Oh, yeah," Lori said with a chuckle, thinking back to just how different. "These guys had a lot of questions about the schools. They have three kids, the first a little older than Addie, the third one maybe preschool aged. The dad was so proud, showing me pictures. And then there's a fourth on the way. They seemed really motivated to get moved in before baby number four arrives and acted definitely like they're here to stay."

And, as she'd suspected, Dominic and Charity were exchanging smiles that only grew the longer she spoke.

"What do you think?" Charity asked her boyfriend.

He held up his hands. "In the end, it's your decision. We're in this together, but it is technically your house."

She rolled her eyes. "Sure but come on. We go with the nice family with the kids over the possible renters, right?"

"Of course we do," he agreed instantly.

"Even considering the money?"

"Even considering the money."

Charity's smile was overtaking her face. "Okay. Okay!" She turned to Lori. "Yes. We're accepting that offer. The family. Let's do it!" She let out a happy laugh at her own breathlessness.

Lori grinned. She loved this part, where she got to share in happy moments in people's lives. Then her grin faded as the thought took her back to her dinner with Hudson… and the way it had ended. She shoved those thoughts aside and refocused on Charity.

"Wonderful," she said. "I have the preliminary paperwork for you here but, as you no doubt remember from buying the house, this stage is papers, papers, and more papers. For today, we just have one or two signatures, since you're just certifying that you're entering the beginning stages of an agreement. From here, I'll talk to the buyers."

She continued the well-practiced explanation, pausing periodically to answer Charity and Dominic's questions.

"Amazing," she said when they reached the end of the day's proceedings. "Here is your copy of everything we went over today, and I'll take the signed ones back to the office and file them. I'll let you know when the next steps are ready. But get excited. Getting to this point usually means you're looking for a straight shot to having your house sold."

She stood, as did the couple, Dominic heading upstairs to check on Lucas and Addie who had been quiet for a suspiciously long time. Back when her girls had been young, Lori knew that such silences meant a bottle of nail polish dropped on a rug or somebody having gotten an impromptu and unapproved "haircut" from the other.

Charity, meanwhile, waited behind and gave Lori a hug, which the older woman warmly returned.

"Thank you so much," Charity gushed, eyes shiny with emotion. "Seriously, we couldn't have done it without you."

"Oh my goodness, of course!" Lori exclaimed. "Please, Charity, you know I'm always here for your family. And as clients? Pfft." She waved a dismissive hand. "You guys were a dream. Seriously. I'll sell your house any day of the week."

"Well," Charity said with a laugh, "hopefully we won't be going anywhere for a while."

Lori pressed a hand to her chest, feigning shock. "Oh, was I not clear? I would not sell your house if you were planning to leave Whale Harbor. Nuh uh, missy, you're stuck with us."

"I wouldn't want it any other way," Charity promised.

She walked Lori to the door. Lori waved goodbye, waving again when she saw Lucas and Addie's little faces appear at the upstairs window. As she drove back to the office, however, and tried to get back into the usual swing of her day, she found that the excitement she typically felt at this stage of sale just… wasn't there. She loved her work, of course. She always would. And she felt beyond grateful that she got to be a part, however small, of Charity and Dominic's happy ending.

But for the first time in a very long time, her work did not feel like quite enough to satisfy her. She wanted something else. She wanted… more.