Pelican Point

Book 1: Bachelors of Blueberry Cove

by Donna Kauffman

Genres: Family Life; Small Town & Rural; Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

Blueberry Cove, Maine, is as small-town as small towns get. More than a little quirky, it has sheltered generations of families. But there's always room for a new face. Fixing things has always been Alex McFarland's greatest gift and keenest pleasure. But with her own life thoroughly broken, she's signed on to renovate the dilapidated Pelican Point lighthouse, hoping to reconnect with herself. The last thing she expects is to find herself falling in love - with the glorious coastline, with age-old secrets and welcome-home smiles - and with rugged Logan McCrae, the man she just might be able to build new hopes on. DIY is so much better with two.

Release date: December 13, 2013

Publisher: Audible Studios

Print pages: 400

Sample

Logan McCrae loved everything about his hometown of Blueberry Cove, Maine. From the rocky, isolated shores that fronted his generations-old family home out on Pelican Point, to the quaint but comforting heart of the small town nestled around Half Moon Harbor and dotted with businesses that had been run by the same families for generations. Gentle rolling hills shifted to thick forests as they moved inland, providing the townsfolk with a variety of living choices, from tidy little houses that marched along the handful of streets branching off the main road around the central harbor, to the farm properties that took over as town turned to field, and the more isolated cabins as field turned to forest. Blueberry Cove was a place where neighbor helped neighbor and no one remained a stranger for long.

He enjoyed the steady pace of small-town living, even the predictability of it. There was something to be said for handling the day-to-day issues that arose, while knowing they weren’t likely to be anything earth-shattering. He’d had enough of earth-shattering, thanks.

Not that being the police chief didn’t come with moments of danger, worry, and, on rare occasions, tragedy, but that’s why he’d taken the job. A fair share of that tragedy had been visited on him personally. So, he had a vested interest in keeping things going as smoothly as possible, for himself as much as for his fellow townsfolk. It was a bonus that being there when folks needed him had turned out to be so deeply gratifying. It was remarkably fulfilling, living a life surrounded by people who mattered to him; old friends, new acquaintances, family.

Well, most of the people, anyway. The downside to small-town living was that you couldn’t escape the thorns that came along with every rose. But he handled that, too. He just didn’t enjoy it as much.

That meant making yet another stop by Eula March’s antique shop. Apparently another “helpful” citizen had decided to make shutting down the store a personal mission. Funny how those do-gooders were never actually from Blueberry Cove. Or they’d know better.

He climbed out of his town-issued SUV cruiser and walked under the canopy of the sparsely leafed oak, pausing a brief moment to admire the lingering colors of fall dotting the ancient branches before pulling open the heavy teak door by its Alice in Wonderland-themed brass handle.

Everything about Mossy Cup Antiques was whimsical, from the flamingo mallet–shaped door handle, to the beautifully restored range of antiques that began with an array of practical items like tables and chairs, and ran all the way to the decidedly impractical but far more interesting bits of unique statuary and home decor—what Logan’s grandmother had called dust-catchers. He imagined there were few, if any, Blueberry Cove residents who didn’t own and proudly display in their homes at least one piece from the shop. Many, including some in his own home, had gone on to become treasured family heirlooms, their Mossy Cup origin only the beginning of their story.

But nothing was more whimsical or fantastical than the giant oak tree that grew up right through the middle of the generations-old building . . . much to the chagrin of the occasional activist-minded soul who discovered the store and became convinced the tree was a fire hazard and a home for any number of potential infestations.

The townsfolk all knew it had been there in some form or other for as long as there’d been recorded history in the coastal fishing village. And since it was one of his own McCrae forebears who’d help settle the little harbor town in Pelican Bay back in the early 1700s, that had actually been a substantial length of time.

As yet—though the shop built around it had seen a variety of changes over the years, with parts added and restored, and upgrades for things like central heating and plumbing and the like—the tree still stood, with nary a single incident in all those years. It had, however, spawned hundreds of well-told tales of lives changed and fortunes turned. Logan thought that part might have had more to do with the long line of eccentric March women who’d run the place since its first days. Most passers-through found the shop’s history and unique construction to be charming rather than alarming, but there was no accounting for how some folks chose to expend their energy.

“Morning, Eula,” he called out, doffing his uniform hat and wiping his feet on the beehive-shaped brush mat inside the door. “What’s the complaint this time?”

“Same as it always is,” came a scratchy, irritable voice from the back room. Eula March was tall and thin, rawboned and robust. She sported wire-gray hair of indeterminate length—it was always pinned up in a net-covered bun—and a manner that managed to be gruff and informatively helpful at the same time. When she wanted it to be, anyway.

After the first complaint under his watch as police chief some years back, Logan had tried to ask, as kindly as possible, if perhaps there was some other, underlying issue between Eula and the suddenly righteous-minded patron. She’d flatly and quite directly informed him that it was her shop and she’d treat those who crossed its threshold in the manner she felt they deserved. If they wanted to be disagreeable about it and run around filing complaints and such, that was their time to waste. She wasn’t about to mollycoddle those who needed anything but mollycoddling.

Logan had made a fast note never to do that again. He was pretty sure he still had a permanent scar or two from the blisters on his ears.

Eula came out from the back. Her face and hands were wrinkled and age-spotted, her skin appearing perennially tanned, though he’d have called it weathered. Her tall frame was slightly stooped but balanced by squared shoulders and a stiff posture that made a man remember to watch his manners. Her age, however, remained indeterminate. She looked exactly the same to Logan as she had in all the years he’d known her, which would be all thirty-four of them.

Her standard uniform of a floral print smock-like dress was in shades of lavender, buttoned to the throat, the hem ending just above spindly calves, the entire outfit neatly pressed and made by her own hand. It was all but covered by one of her handmade, whimsically stitched shop aprons. It was a scene from Winnie the Pooh—the original, not the Disney version—that had Pooh, Piglet, and Christopher Robin frolicking across the front of her apron pockets.

Apron notwithstanding, Logan would have said he’d never met a less whimsical woman in his life. If you looked up “stern New Englander” in the dictionary, her photo could have easily run next to it. But he knew, as did everyone else in the Cove, about the other side of Eula March, and the real reason folks felt such a strong bond to her and her shop. Eula harbored a unique array of skills that went far beyond her unparalleled ability to master any antique restoration, bringing back to life pieces others would have sooner turned to kindling. As had, apparently, the March women before her, hence the longevity and renown of the shop. On its own that was enough to make her something of a local legend.

When you factored in that . . . thing, that mystery in her clear gray eyes, if one chose to look past the disapproving set to her mouth and really notice, there was a certain sparkle, a kind of . . . knowing . . . as if she could see straight through any and all artifice and look right into your very soul. Most of the townsfolk were fairly certain she could indeed do just that.

“Nothing more than a nuisance,” she said in her clipped tone, looking faintly annoyed as always. She wiped her hands on a shop towel tucked into her apron pocket, indicating she’d been in the workshop at the back of the store where she did her restoration work. Or some of it, anyway.

The backroom area was tiny, whereas some of the pieces on display were of a size that would have been impossible to have been restored in such a narrow space. Yet, she lived in rooms over the rear workshop and accessed them by a winding set of interior stairs. As far as anyone knew, she didn’t lease, own, or rent any other space. Hence the whispered questions about the true origins of some of her beautiful pieces, and how folks couldn’t recall seeing them delivered to the back door, in any condition.

Logan dismissed that chatter as the kind of fanciful gossip that went hand in hand with a shop as old and storied as hers, the same way old buildings always seemed to have a ghost or two, whose stories were continually embellished as the years went on.

He met her halfway through the shop beside an English walnut keyhole desk that acted as a countertop for the shop’s beautifully restored and fully functional antique sales register.

“I told you not to worry about it,” she informed him. “It will amount to nothing, just as the others have. Don’t waste Tom’s time making him come over and run tests on the damn tree, again. It’s not good for the tree and surely your fire chief has better things to do with his time. If it was going to infest the town with parasites or burn us all to death in our beds, surely it would have done so by now.”

“You’re absolutely right. But we still have a process—”

“The process is a waste of time. And mine is too valuable to be spent filling out ridiculous paperwork every time some tree-hugging nitwit gets his we’reall-going-to-die-if-we-don’t-respect-the-environment knickers in a twist. It’s not like I’m keeping the tree captive. And here’s a newsflash for you. We’re all dying. From the moment we come out squealing, we’re counting down the days to the end. Mother Earth, on the other hand, will outlive us all, each and every one. I see no purpose in making what days we’re blessed to spend with her any more of a challenge than they already are by lecturing folks on how she should be treated.”

Logan barely blinked at the diatribe. Nor did he even consider any discussion that had the words global or warming in it. They were both just going through the motions, each knowing their part in the routine by heart, having played the scene too many times to count.

“Well, Eula, I can see your side in this, and I know these complaints are an occasional thorn in your side.” Mine, too, he wanted to add. If you wouldn’t antagonize some of your customers, no matter how well deserving, maybe they wouldn’t become so hell-bent on sticking it back to you. But he said, calmly and deliberately, “If you’d complete the paperwork filing your own formal complaint, I’ll process it and have a chat with—what did you say his name was?”

“Elmer Alvin Swinson. Can you believe that? Even his mama knew he was going to be an annoying whiner.”

Logan hid a chuckle behind a sudden, short cough. “Be that as it may, I still need to question Elmer—er, Mr. Swinson—and get this over and done. Just make your nuisance complaint official and I can get started.”

Eula grumbled the entire time she filled out the forms, her shaky, spidery scrawl at odds with the intricate restoration work Logan knew she performed with those very same hands. She pushed the finished papers at him in a dismissive gesture. “Now, I’ve got work to do. Good day, Chief.”

“Good day to you as well, Miss Eula.” He turned to go, thinking not for the first time that both of their lives would be made a lot easier if she’d hire some sweet-natured local teen to run the register out front while she stayed in the back doing the work she clearly loved most. But since he rather liked his ears still attached to his head, he kept that suggestion to himself.

“Logan Matthew McCrae.”

He stopped and turned back to Eula, eyebrows arched in curiosity at her use of his full given name. She used to call him Logan, or the more old-fashioned Master McCrae, right up until the day he’d become a sworn member of the local police department. Then he’d been Officer McCrae, and eventually, Chief. Never his given name. He’d taken it as a sign of respect. He had no idea what, if anything, this sudden reversion meant. He wasn’t sure he wanted to find out. “Ma’am?”

She pointed a bony finger at him. “Change is coming.”

He smiled at that. “To Blueberry Cove? Well, unless you’re referring to the weather, nothing much changes here. It’s—”

“To you,” she said, more specifically. “Be open to it.”

He frowned then, and fought the urge to rub away the little tingle that ran across the back of his neck. “I like to think I’m open-minded.”

“Change hasn’t generally been a harbinger of good for you.” Her stern expression relaxed slightly. “It’s the reason you love it here, as I believe you were about to say. The reason you stayed on, even after your sisters grew up and moved away. They wanted change, needed it. Not so with you. You made your life here—where nothing changes. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to fear.”

Her comment about his past had caught him off guard. Who knew what she might have seen flash through his eyes? He didn’t bother trying to bluff. Everyone in town knew all the details, so there was no point. “Eula, I appreciate the concern. I do. But I’m fine. It was all a very long time ago. I’m not hiding. I’m here because I want to be here. I belong here.”

“Not all changes are bad, Logan.”

“I never thought they were.”

Her lips curved in what, on anyone else, might have been a hint of a smile. Whatever it was on her, it made him feel distinctly uncomfortable, and, well . . . exposed in some way. Vulnerable.

“Just because it’s difficult, or challenging, doesn’t mean it isn’t a good thing. Sometimes the best changes need to be both.”

“Agreed.”

“Good. Keep that in mind. Good day now.” With that, she turned and headed back to her workroom.

Late in the afternoon, Logan was more than ready to head home. After spending an hour and a half dealing with Ted Weathersby’s pompous posturing and general obnoxiousness at the latest council meeting, he’d ended up having to mediate a scene between Becky and Walt Danneker in the middle of the Cove’s one and only intersection that had involved single-handedly keeping Becky in her vehicle while convincing Walt that if Becky’s temperature was where the doctor said it needed to be and Walt not only wanted children, but wanted to keep Becky from doing something that would permanently prevent him from ever being able to have them, maybe he should reconsider his afternoon meeting and go home with his wife.

Privately, Logan wished him luck in the performance department because Becky was, well, let’s just say, not at her most enticing at that moment.

He had been hoping to use the remaining daylight hours to tackle the stacked stone wall he was uncovering, but Fergus had asked him to stop by the Rusty Puffin. From his overly cheerful tone Logan knew something was up. The lunch crowd had departed and the evening crowd had yet to start making their way in. His great-uncle Fergus, who owned the place—and was actually his grandfather’s cousin some number of times removed—was nowhere to be seen.

A clang came from the kitchen, followed by a strident string of rather blue language that would have made the local fishermen proud.

“Fergus,” he called out. “What’s the trouble?”

There were a few more clangs, a lot more swearing, followed by a short bellow and what sounded like a wrench being thrown against—well, he didn’t really want to know—then Fergus pushed through the swinging door, wiping grease-covered hands on the bottom edge of his apron. He was a short, broad-shouldered man with a thick neck and a stout frame, like an old-school pugilist. At seventy-three, he still had a full head of dark hair, though there were threads of gray and white in it. His thick thatch of beard had turned faster and was mostly steel gray and white, as were the matching bushy eyebrows. His eyes were a bright sky blue with the sparkle of a much younger man, and he was quick to flash a wide grin.

“Confounded contraption. We’d be better off with a bloody pellet stove and a stack of peat than that piece of—”

“Why don’t you let me have a look at it?” Logan set his uniform hat on the bar and unzipped his jacket.

Fergus waved him off. After scrubbing his hands clean at the small sink, he set two short glasses on the bar instead, smacking the bottoms on the varnished teak surface. “We’d be better off warming ourselves with a sip than swearing at that auld heap. I’ll put a call in to young Broderick. Boy’s a wonder with a wrench, or so I hear.”

“Broderick. You mean Brodie Monaghan?”

“One and the same. Have you spent any time with the lad since his arrival? He’s about your age.”

Logan smiled. “I’m a bit too old for afterschool pals and playdates, Uncle Gus.”

“Well, it’s never too late to make a new friend,” Fergus went on. “He’s a good lad. Sharp mind, good with his hands, not afraid of hard work.” He smiled. “Quite the charmer, too. Good with the ladies, if you know what I mean.”

“So I’ve heard.” In a town the size of Blueberry, it would have been impossible not to. Brodie Monaghan had come over from Ireland just the previous spring, intent on restoring his family’s centuries-old shipbuilding business. Monaghan’s Shipyard had been one of the founding businesses in Half Moon Harbor centuries before, but over the course of the previous three decades, it had slowly become a rundown relic, a mere ghost of its former glory.

“Wouldn’t mind hearing a story or two of home,” Fergus went on, “or just a bit of the brogue.” He grinned. “After all, ’tis no fun swearin’ alone.”

Logan eyed the glasses Fergus had set on the bar, and was tempted, but tugged the zipper back up on his jacket instead. “If you’ve got the problem in hand, I’m going to try and get out to the Point before another call comes in. I’ve got a stone wall needing some attention.”

“I didn’t call you here about the furnace.” Fergus set a bottle on the bar anyway and motioned to the stool. “Park yer bum there, laddie. We need to talk.”

Logan paused, his hat halfway to his head. “About?”

“You know how there’s all this plottin’ and plannin’ going on, for the town tricentennial.”

“Which is almost two years from now. But yes, I’m very well aware.” It was another looming headache as he tried to quell the tensions already brewing as folks began taking sides on how the town should best celebrate such a monumental occasion.

“Well, then you’ve been hearing talk about the lighthouse.”

Surprised, Logan leaned back. “The lighthouse? You mean our lighthouse?”

“You know of any others in Blueberry?”

Pelican Point was not only the sole lighthouse in the Cove, it was the only one on all of Pelican Bay. The only one left, anyway. The tower was a big part of Blueberry Cove’s history and Maine’s rich seafaring history. A book had been published by one of its keepers—Logan’s great-great-great grandfather, in fact—with an account of his life on the job as its first keeper during some of the more turbulent years of the bay’s history. It was still available in several shops dotting Harbor Street.

The lighthouse had been decommissioned in the early 1930s and listed for public auction by the early ’70s. A member of the McCrae family had manned the Pelican Point light during all of its years in service, all the way back to 1821 when it had first been built, and the family had continued to maintain a residence there even after decommissioning, so they’d made a deal and bought it outright before the auction. The family had been struggling to keep the place from crumbling down around them ever since, but at least the burden was on them, and not the community.

“Folks have been talking about wanting to get the lighthouse up to snuff in time for the town celebration. Blueberry’s tricentennial coincides with the lighthouse’s bicentennial, give or take a handful of years. Close enough anyway.”

“Up to snuff?” Logan laughed. “Gus, it would take an army and a state lottery win just to get it up to code, much less functional or safe enough for the public. And what ‘folks?’ I haven’t heard any talk.”

“You would, if you spent any time in here. This is where all the real chatter happens. You spent enough time tending bar here through your college years to know that.”

“Gus, I have—”

“A job. I’m well aware. What you don’t have, boy-o, is a life. One that includes things like socializing. When was the last time you shot a game of pool, threw a dart or two, or, God forbid, bought a woman a drink? Wouldn’t kill ye.”

“I have two jobs,” Logan said. “One, seeing to the people of Blueberry Cove, and the other trying to keep two hundred years of McCrae history from crumbling into the sea. Both are full-time.”

“I know, and we’re all proud of ye, working so hard like you do. But you could do with a bit more socializing. Can’t hide out there all the time.” He eyed Logan. “Would help curb that irritability of yours.”

Logan smiled. “I’m only cranky when some people bug me about living my life as they think I should rather than leaving me to live the life I already have and am liking just fine, thankyouverymuch.”

He rose from the stool and leaned over the counter to give his uncle a one-armed hug and hearty buss on the head. McCraes were, by nature, huggers and kissers and he realized it had been far too long since he’d done either. With anyone.

He picked up his hat. “I’ll be in, okay? Scout’s honor. Now, I need to be getting on the road if I want to—”

“Have a seat there, laddie. We’ve a bit more to discuss.”

Logan lowered his hat once again.

“We haven’t finished discussing the lighthouse.” Fergus grabbed a towel and was making quite a business of wiping down the perfectly clean bar.

Ah, so now we’re at the real reason I’ve been summoned to the bar. Eyeing Fergus’s too innocent expression, a knot of tension started to ball up in Logan’s gut. He put his hand on the towel. “What did you do, Uncle Gus?”

“Now, now, I did this with your best interest—with all of our best interests—in mind.”

The knot jerked a little tighter. “What did you do?”

“I . . . hired on some help.”

“You hired on help where? Here?”

“No, laddie. For Pelican Point. I hired someone who specializes in lighthouse restoration. Now we’ll find out exactly what needs to be done. Alex MacFarland is—”

“A waste of your good money. Gus, I can tell you for free that the list of what needs to be done is longer than any of our bank accounts is deep—even if we combined them.”

“You’ve got the trust.”

“Yes, there is the trust, but that’s not enough by itself. Get your money back, Gus, and invest in a new furnace.”

“If the lighthouse is as bad as you say, then let MacFarland’s report prove it. You can use that as your final word with the council and the townsfolk, and the matter will be put to rest.”

“I’m confused. I thought you were trying to get the thing repaired.”

“I said it would be a wondrous thing, but I’m nothing if not a realist.”

“So, this is helping me out . . . how, exactly?”

“They’ll listen to an expert with generations of experience in such things whereas they might not so quickly with you. Or, more to the point, Weathersby and the council won’t. Teddy will make it his personal mission to make life hard on you.”

Logan eyed the older man, not believing for one second that Gus had spent a dime of his hard-earned money to hire someone to prevent a headache that hadn’t even happened yet.

“Just keep an open mind, okay, laddie?”

Change is coming. Be open to it.

Logan did rub the back of his neck this time, but he knew better than to argue. Not with Eula, or with Fergus. He drained the ale and tucked his hat under his arm as he rose to leave. He was halfway to the door when he thought to ask, “When is this MacFarland due to arrive?”

Fergus suddenly got busy again, ducking his chin as he wiped perfectly clean glasses with a fresh towel. “Should be waiting on you out at the Point as we speak.”

“What? He’s—at the house? Please tell me you didn’t give him a damn key to the place.”

“Didn’t have to. Since when do you lock up, anyway?”

“And you told him that?” Logan opened his mouth to say something else, then snapped it shut. He pushed through the door of the pub, climbed in his truck, and decided he could get some satisfaction out of this lost cause of a day by heading home . . . and firing Alex MacFarland before he even started. What Fergus had done could just as easily be undone. Logan could have the guy on his way and still have a bit of daylight left to do a bit more surveying on the stone wall.

“What the . . . ?” Logan braked as he rounded the final bend on the coast road before crossing the causeway over to the Point.

An old truck with an even more beat-up trailer on the back had broken down on the short ramp leading to the bridge, blocking it completely. In fact, the back end of the trailer was jutting out onto the main road.

So much for getting to the damn wall. Hell, he’d be lucky if he managed dinner before eight—which reminded him that in his frustration with Fergus, he’d forgotten to stop by the grocery and pick up a few things. Preferably edible things, as he was presently all out of those.

Swearing under his breath, as much at himself as at the latest thorn in his day, he rolled closer and angled his truck behind the trailer before flipping on his lights. It would be dusk soon and he didn’t need anyone zipping around the bend and slamming into the damn thing.

Then he saw the sign painted on the side of the truck, chipped and peeling, but clearly legible. MAC-FARLAND & SONS.

“Seriously, Gus? This is our expert?” The old pickup truck and dented trailer looked more like they’d been abandoned by a gypsy caravan, than the work vehicle of a trustworthy restoration expert.

Yes, he loved Blueberry Cove, but, oh, there were days. As he climbed out of his truck, he thought there are days.

Alex MacFarland should never have taken the damn job.

What had she been thinking, attempting something like this on her own? Except . . . she was on her own. And that wasn’t going to change. So, it was either figure out how to keep MacFarland & Sons afloat for yet another generation—specifically hers—or . . . what? Give up? Lie down and die? Both of those had been pretty tantalizing options fifteen months ago.

Losing her father, so abruptly, so . . . horribly, how was she supposed to get over that? Much less figure out business stuff? She couldn’t give less of a damn about business, about restoration, about any of it. All those things she’d loved for as long as she could remember, all the satisfaction, the dreams, the challenges, the hard work, every last bit of it, all of which had defined her . . . had died right alongside her father.

She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to find a way to resurrect it.

But, plain and simple . . . she needed to eat. And though her skill set was broad by some definitions, it was ultimately good for only one thing—building things. More specifically, restoring things someone else had built. Even more specifically, things that happened to be lighthouses. Not just everyone had one of those in their backyard, so she could hardly be choosy.

It had been a long, painful, frustrating, and very exhausting year. The lawsuit and the estate—if you could call it that—had finally been settled. What could be sold off had been sold off to resolve the debts her father had owed, none of which she’d known about, and the rest had gone to the lawyers. Thank God there’d been some life insurance money to cover the medical costs from the day of the accident, and, later, her father’s burial. She’d been grateful to have had that much, but nothing was left.

Less than five days after packing up and moving out, she sat in her grandfather’s banged-up sideboard truck a thousand miles away on a wind-whipped coastal road on the edge of Maine. Their oldest and only remaining trailer was hooked on the back. Between the two, she was carrying pretty much everything she owned. Well, everything worth hauling anyway. Except for four generations’ worth of accumulated tools and her laptop, she’d sold off everything else of value, including their newer and sturdier work trucks.

No one had wanted Grandpa Mac’s old truck or trailer, which had been parked at the house back in Thunder Bay after he’d passed four years ago. She’d hung on to them, then used every trick she had to get the damn truck running again. But running it was, and had been—with a few additional nudges and a steady string of swearwords along the way—all the way from her home on the shores of Lake Huron. The home that someone else lived in now.

She’d made it all the way to this ramp, leading down to the beautiful old stone causeway that ran across a corner of Pelican Bay and out to a rocky point jutting into the sound, atop which sat Pelican Point lighthouse. . . .