the road. I figured I’d dig it out.” He picked up the shovel again, his eyes on her as he smiled. “Then I’ll get the junk removed.”
“I have to run out for a little while, but I can help when I get back. Feel free to check my garage for any tools or materials you might need. It’s unlocked. There might be work gloves in there that would fit you.”
“Good to know.”
His tone suggested he hadn’t considered work gloves. Although he was from Southern California, the chilly morning temperature and stiff breeze didn’t seem to bother him.
Olivia suppressed a shiver when the cold air coming in the open window overtook the warm air blowing out of her car heater. “You aren’t planning to do all this work yourself, are you?”
He stabbed the tip of the shovel into the gravel and squinted at her in the bright sunlight. “Not if I can help it.”
Maybe, she thought, she should mind her own business. “I’ll leave you to it.”
“Where’s Buster?”
“Who knows. I threw caution to the wind and let him have the run of the house instead of locking him in the mudroom.”
Dylan’s deep blue gaze settled on her. “Is that fair warning?”
Olivia laughed. “If you want to look at it that way.”
She rolled up her window and continued into the village and on to Frost Millworks, located on a wide, rock-strewn brook. The building was just ten years old and occupied a section of flat land above the brook, its exterior designed to fit with the rustic surroundings, its interior modern. Jess lived in an apartment in the original nineteenth-century sawmill overlooking the rock dam and millpond. It was one of the few surviving sawmills that had once dotted the streams and rivers of the region. As kids, Olivia and her sister used to swim in the millpond. The water was clear, clean and ice-cold, even on a hot August afternoon. They’d grown up a half mile down the road in the same house where their parents still lived.
By the time Olivia parked in the small lot, she had decided she didn’t have the whole story about Dylan McCaffrey and his intentions in Knights Bridge. Whatever they were, her reaction to him was perfectly normal. He was sexy, and there was no point in denying otherwise, at least to herself. His presence up the road from her was her doing, and if he complicated her life, it was her own fault.
She found her mother at her cluttered rolltop desk in the office just inside the mill entrance. Louise Frost smiled brightly at her elder daughter. “How’s your road?”
“Not a problem, except for the potholes. They’re brutal this year.”
“Do you keep a bag of sand in your trunk, just in case?”
Olivia shook her head. “I figure I can always call you or Dad if I get stuck.”
“That’s true, but sand makes sense.”
Her mother stood up from the desk. At five-five, she was shorter than either of her daughters. She worked out most days and was in good shape, wearing a fleece vest over a thick turquoise corduroy shirt, jeans and mud boots. She had dyed her hair auburn about five years ago and kept it cut short and, with her green eyes and round face, reminded Olivia of her younger sister. She tended to favor their father.
She peered at a new photograph taped to the top edge of the antique desk, this one of palm trees, sandy beach and ocean. It joined a dozen others her mother had printed off the internet of the famous 123-mile Pacific Coast Highway in central California: Monterey, Carmel-by-the-Sea, San Simeon, Cambria, Morro Rock, sea otters, sunsets, surf crashing on sheer rock cliffs.
“That’s the beach in Santa Barbara,” her mother said.
“It’s beautiful.”
“We’re going to fly into Los Angeles and spend the night in Beverly Hills or Malibu, then head up to Santa Barbara for at least one night. I’m investigating hotels and inns. I haven’t made reservations yet. I’d do a bed-and-breakfast, but I don’t think your father would like it.”
Olivia smiled. “You could try. It’d only be a couple nights, right?”
Her mother nodded, staring at the pictures on her desk. “They say driving south-to-north isn’t as unnerving with the cliffs and water as north-to-south, but people do both. Driving south you hug the coast. You see more, I guess. I think we’ll see plenty.”
“Are you going as far as San Francisco?”
“I think so. It depends on how much time we have.” She shifted from the photographs to a map of California she had tacked to the wall, with pushpins marking various stops she wanted to make. She seemed transfixed, then took a slow, deep breath and turned to Olivia, obviously forcing a smile. “It’ll be fun. I can’t wait.”
“When do you leave?”
“We haven’t set a date yet. Depends on the work here. Your father is overdue for a vacation.”
“You are, too,” Olivia said.
“I suppose. I started dreaming about this trip a few years ago when we did the custom windows for that house in Carmel. Remember, Liv? It was outside our usual area, but the family used to live in Boston and knew about us. They sent pictures…” She sighed, standing back from the desk. “It’s beautiful here. I don’t want to live anywhere else, but I knew I had to go to California, see this part of our country.”
“Good for you, Mom.”
“Yeah.” She seemed a little shaken, as if she’d said too much. “Thanks.”
Olivia heard the main door open. In another moment, Jess appeared in the office doorway, tightening the belt to her tan raincoat. “I’m on my way to Boston and thought I’d stop in. I’m meeting with clients. Want to come, Mom?”
“I should mind things here.”
“It’s quiet today. There’s nothing to mind—”
“There’s always something. I’m never bored.”
“You haven’t been out of town in weeks,” Jess said, impatient. “It’d do you good.”
“I have plans, Jess.”
Olivia could see their mother wasn’t about to budge and would only get her back up and go on the defensive if Jess kept pushing her. “I’m heading over to see Grandma. Care to join me?”
“You go, Liv,” her mother said, dropping back to her chair at her desk. “Tell your grandma I said hi. We’re having her out to the house this weekend. I’m doing a Sunday dinner for a change. You two will both be here?”
“Of course, Mom,” Jess said with a sigh, then left.
Louise Frost stared at the spot her younger daughter had vacated, then finally said, half under her breath, that she needed to get to work and started tapping keys on her computer. Olivia said goodbye and headed back out.
She found her sister standing on the rock wall at the edge of the millpond. “You can’t enable her, Liv.” Jess shoved her hands in her coat pockets and watched the rushing water, high with the spring runoff and yesterday’s rain. “It won’t help.”
“Arguing with her isn’t going to change anything.”
“What will? Medication? Therapy? Some herbal potion?”
“There are a number of herbs that can help alleviate anxiety, but she has to want to do something about it.”
“Planning a trip she’ll never take…”
“Maybe she will take it,” Olivia said.
“Dad doesn’t think so. It’s pathetic, Liv. She didn’t used to be this bad.”
Olivia watched a dead leaf float over the small dam into the