Chapter 21

"Okay," Liam asked as he drove Claire from her house to her father's house for dinner the following night. "Is there any ‘don't touch' topics with your dad?"

"Don't touch topics?" she asked from the passenger seat. The sun was setting a little later in the evenings now that spring was coming, and the golden light just before twilight made her hair look aflame.

"Yeah, like things that I absolutely should not ever bring up, no matter what, because it would make your dad hate any boyfriend of yours, dooming my chances with you forever?"

He had his eyes on the road, but he still caught her smile out of the corner of his eye.

"Boyfriend?" she echoed.

He smiled too. "Focus, Boone. Topics."

She tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Okay, well… you're not a fan of Boston sports, are you?"

If he hadn't been driving, he would have stared at her, openmouthed. "Boston sports? Uh, yeah, Claire, I am."

She winced. "Oof, not great. Well, as long as it isn't the Red Sox, you'll be okay."

"It is the Red Sox!" he exclaimed, mentally trying to calculate if there was any way Claire's dad could know that he'd been at a sports bar with Dominic two nights before, watching a preseason game. And, shoot, there was a Sox hat in the back of his car and…

Claire was pressing her lips together, struggling not to laugh.

"Oh my gosh, you're messing with me, aren't you?"

She lost the battle against laughter. "I totally am. Sorry, I couldn't help it. There's no reason to be worried, though. My dad's a nice, normal guy, and since I like you, he'll like you." She gave him a sidelong glance. "You know, since you're my boyfriend and everything."

He rolled his eyes, doing a poor job at pretending to be annoyed at her for her little trick.

They arrived at the Boone house, the place, Liam knew, that Claire had grown up, only a few minutes later. She still had a key, so she let them in using the side door, calling out to her father as they entered and showing Liam where he could put his shoes.

"Since Dad's a real estate agent," she said, "he was always so fussy about clean carpets being a selling point for a house, never mind that he'd owned this place for more than thirty years and has no plans to put in on the market anytime soon."

"Better safe than sorry," her father said, coming through from the kitchen at just that moment. The smell of garlic and tomato sauce followed him in a delicious waft. "Hi, sweetheart." He kissed Claire on the cheek.

"Hi, Dad," she said. "I'd like you to meet Liam Hiller. Liam, this is my dad, Hudson Boone."

"Mr. Boone," Liam said politely, extending his hand for a shake.

The older man took it with an easygoing smile that illustrated the resemblance between him and his daughter. "Please, call me Hudson. Come in, both of you. Dinner's almost ready. I hope you don't mind Italian, Liam."

"I love it," he said. "And I really appreciate you letting me crash your dinner with Claire."

"Don't sweat it," Hudson said. "I love to have Claire's boyfriends come by so I can grill them."

"Nice try, Dad," Claire said, rolling her eyes affectionately. "Liam already tried to mess with me by dropping the ‘boyfriend' word on me in the car."

"Don't worry," Liam assured the older man. "She got back at me right away by trying to convince me you hate the Red Sox."

Hudson frowned. "I do hate the Red Sox."

For a moment, Liam felt an anxious lurch in his stomach. Then he recognized the same wicked gleam that often played in Claire's eye when she was teasing him. He chuckled.

"Man, I'm gonna have to brush up on my game to keep up with the two of you," he said, pretending to wipe his brow.

"Nah." Hudson slung a friendly, paternal arm over Liam's shoulder. "That's all the trouble you'll get from me, I promise. Can I offer you a beer?"

Liam accepted, and the trio settled in the kitchen, the men drinking beers and Claire drinking some sort of fancy soda that her father bought especially for her.

"You spoil me," she told him, kissing his cheek.

"That's my whole job," Hudson countered. "From ages zero to eighteen, I had to teach you to be a responsible person, but once you were an adult, the gloves were off. I can do as many nice things as I want now, and nobody can stop me."

While Hudson finished up the final touches on dinner, Claire gave Liam a quick tour of the house. He paused the longest in the front hallway, where a framed photo of a beaming, redheaded woman caught his eye.

"This is your mom?" he asked, although he didn't truly need the confirmation, not when the resemblance was so obvious.

"Yeah," she said, smiling. "This was about a year before she died."

"She looks just like you," he said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. Claire leaned into him heavily, and he felt a warm sense of pride that he was the one she turned to for comfort.

"Yeah? Thanks, that means a lot," she murmured, staring at the picture.

"The two most beautiful women in the world," Hudson said, coming up behind them. "Dinner's ready, kids."

Then he shepherded Liam and Claire into the kitchen, although Liam saw the older man kiss his fingers and touch the picture lightly before they left the hallway.

"Claire's like her mother in more than looks," Hudson said, picking up the thread of the conversation when they were all settled into their seats, plates full of spaghetti, meatballs, and crusty, steaming garlic bread in front of them. "She also got her smarts, her talent in the garden, and her terrible taste in movies. The jokes she got from me," he added with a wink.

"It sounds like she was really special," Liam said. "How did the two of you meet?"

Hudson smiled as his gaze grew distant, lost in memory. "She was really special. And we were college sweethearts. When we graduated, I was terrified that she wouldn't want to move back to a tiny town with me, since she was from Connecticut, much closer to New York City. And I was so desperately in love with her that I worried that she'd feel stuck in a small town, and that was the last thing I wanted for her. Then, as graduation got closer and closer, I started to wonder if I shouldn't even try to keep her. And then do you know what she did?"

"What's that?" Liam asked. Claire, who had obviously heard this story many times before, was chuckling into her dinner.

"She marched to my dorm room one night, pounded on the door, and said, ‘Hudson Boone, is there something wrong with you? Are you going to ask me to marry you or what?'"

Liam grinned. "And did you?"

"Are you crazy? Of course I did! I told her I didn't have a ring and she rolled her eyes and told me that being embarrassed about that was the price I had to pay for not being braver. And then she came back to Whale Harbor with me, and we were never separated again, not until she passed."

Hudson's expression had been happy and playful as he recounted the story of his wife demanding a proposal; as he spoke, however briefly, about her death, his expression grew solemn, the ghost of old pain that hadn't vanished with time flickering across his features.

"It sounds like you had an amazing life together," Liam said quietly.

Hudson gave him a soft smile. "We did," he confirmed. "Not as long of one as I might have hoped, but a great one. And, of course, she gave me the greatest daughter in the world." He reached an arm out and snagged Claire around the neck, tugging her in to press a noisy kiss to her cheek, one she pretended to scrub off like a disgruntled kid.

"I'll toast to that," Liam said, and the two men clinked their beer bottles together.

The remainder of the evening passed cheerfully, with Hudson eager to hear about every detail of how things were coming with Claire's shop. Claire animatedly told the story of coming in one morning to find her shelves built and Liam asleep on the floor, playing up both her shock and his bleariness in a way that had her father roaring with laughter, even as he gave Liam an approving look for going above and beyond to help Claire.

"Well, I always knew your store would be a success," Hudson said as they cleared away the plates from their dessert. "Even if you did have to go and buy your building from that Lori Sims."

Liam recognized the last name as the same as the maiden name of two of the friends in Claire's set. He shot his girlfriend a questioning glance, grinning privately at how nice it was to think of her that way.

Tell you later, she mouthed behind her father's back.

It was only after they'd said goodbye to Hudson and piled back into Liam's car to return to Claire's house that he got an answer to that question.

"Oh my gosh," she said, playfully exasperated. "So, my dad has had this rivalry with the other real estate agent in town, Lori Sims, for years."

"Is she related to your friends?"

"Yes! She's Darla and Marty's mom."

Liam pulled up to a stop sign, paused to check the coast was clear, and kept driving before he asked, "And so they compete for listings, is that it?"

"Yes, but more that they compete over everything. He's kind of obsessed with her in a way."

They were paused at another stop sign, so Liam turned to Claire, eyebrow raised.

"I know, I know," she said with a laugh. "It sounds like they're little kids on the playground and he's tugging her pigtails because he secretly likes her. Marty has a theory that they're going to totally fall in love one day, but Darla and I are a bit more skeptical. I mean, they're both in their sixties! You'd think they'd be a little more emotionally mature by this point."

He shook his head. "People are never what they seem," he said. "And I don't know what happened to Lori, if she has kids but is single, but it was obvious tonight that your dad loved your mom so much. It can be scary to be brave about your feelings… especially after that kind of loss."

There was a silence while she mulled this over. "You know, I hadn't thought of it that way, that's a good point."

They pulled into her driveway and got out of the car so Liam could walk her to her front door. Under the faint buzzing of her porch light, she turned to face him with a smile, then popped up onto her toes to give him a sweet, lingering kiss.

"What was that for?" he asked, one hand on the curve of her waist. She was wearing flat shoes for a casual night at her father's so she seemed shorter than usual, as she often wore heels on their dates.

She grinned. "For helping me be brave," she said. "You were right about what you said about my dad; it's hard to risk your heart, to be brave about your feelings. But you are always so open, so brave… it makes me want to be brave too."

He shuffled with slight embarrassment under the praise.

"I don't always feel brave," he confessed, thinking of how he'd fled his firefighting career. But Claire silenced both his words and his thoughts with another kiss.

"I'll be here to remind you whenever you can't remember it yourself," she promised. Then her sweet smile took on a sad edge. "And I hope you'll learn to always remember it on your own, soon enough."

Liam fought the urge not to flinch at the implication, that soon there would be a time when she wouldn't see him anymore, because he would be gone from Whale Harbor, back to his old life.

More and more, when he thought about leaving Whale Harbor, leaving Claire…

It just felt wrong. He wasn't sure he could do it, felt less sure that he even wanted to try with each passing day. He knew he couldn't make her any promises until he figured out his vision for his future, however; it wouldn't be fair to her to get her hopes up.

So he merely smiled down at her, determined to banish his sadness and enjoy the moment.

"I will," he said.

And then he gave her one last kiss before bidding her goodnight and heading home, mind buzzing with questions about how to figure out what kind of future he wanted… for himself and for her.

"Okay, Scout," Darla said as the puppy zoomed excitedly around her feet. "Ready to go visit your Aunt Charity and the kiddos?"

Scout, who had been feeling better ever since switching to hypoallergenic food, yipped in happiness. She knew the word "kiddos" from the children she encountered on their daily walks. She knew perfectly well that "kids" usually meant "lots and lots of pats and belly rubs and ear scratches for Scout."

"Come here, puppy," Rick said, entering the room with Scout's leash in his hand. "Let's get you hooked up."

The dog was so excited that it took a few tries to get her attached to the leash and into the car, but they managed it eventually and were in the big backyard space between Dominic's and Charity's houses just a few minutes later.

They'd barely made it out of the car before they were mobbed by the combined forces of Addie, Lucas, and Milo, each of whom was trying to outdo the other in eagerness to get to Scout.

It was mayhem. Joyous mayhem.

"Okay, okay," Charity said with a laugh, wading through the chaos to greet her friends. "Addie, you grab Milo. Luke, you get Scout. Backyard, all of you."

Two kids and two pups scampered off in a frenzy, followed closely by Charity and Dominic. Alone with her husband for a moment, Darla wrapped her arms around Rick's waist in a tight hug.

"You know," she said quietly, "looking at all this madness and happiness makes me think."

"Oh yeah?" He gazed down at her fondly.

"I know we haven't been married that long yet, and we only just got Scout, but—" She waved a hand out over the playful scene. "I think I'm ready for the next step."

His eyes lit up with excitement. "Kids?"

She nodded. "I think having kids with you would be the greatest adventure I can imagine."

He bent down and stole a quick kiss. "Me too. And I'm ready too. And I can't wait."