“Yes, we heard about that,” Jolene said.“So tragic.”
“I hope you buried that horse’s body on your own property,” Brenda Pickford piped up, giving Tom a disgusted look.“I don’t want its carcass stinking up my land.”
Sam made a noise of disbelief beside me.
“She has been laid to rest on my land.I assure you,” Tom said patiently.
Brenda gave me another weird look.This one seemed slightly more wary, and then it shifted to Sam beside me, then to Tom, then back to me.A burning unease flickered behind the soulless, muddy-brown of her eyes.
What was going on?
“How did you two meet anyway?”Karen asked.She owned a trinket and souvenir shop down in the main harbor near the ferry terminal and was one of Jolene’s “yes” minions.The woman didn’t really have two independent thoughts in her skull to rub together.
“Uh …” I swallowed.
“Cameron Arendelle,” Tom replied.“Their daughters are friends.”
“Yes, butwhydid he introduce you?”Jolene probed.
I stepped forward, holding out my hand.“Hi, I’m Danica,” I said to the woman I didn’t recognize and who I’d yet to be introduced to.“My cousins and I own the winery on the island.This is my daughter, Samantha, or Sam.She comes here to brush the horses once in a while.”
“Is that something you offer all the children on the island?”Brenda asked.
Tom shook his head.“No.”
Brenda looked like she’d been slapped the way her eyes went wide and her jaw went slack.
I still awkwardly held out my hand to the unknown woman, and she glanced at Brenda for a second before accepting my hand.She was probably around the same age as the other women—late sixties, early seventies.“Cindy Shoals.I’m Brenda’s cousin.”
“Oh, are you on the island visiting?”I asked.
She glanced at Brenda again, as if asking for permission to answer.“Yeah.Just visiting.Arrived earlier today.”
“Tommaso, I really do think the community deserves to meet this sweet little man.I know the schoolchildren would love to see him,” Jolene went on.“I mean, Brenda could talk to Otto, and he could just tell Palmer Figgs to drive the bus here, and they’d make a field trip of it.”
“No,” Tom said, a little more forcefully this time, and causing all the women to rear back in surprise.“No field trip.No bus.No kids.”
“Not verycommunity-minded,if you ask me,” Jolene said, her knickers in a twist.She clucked her tongue like a scandalmongering, old, brood hen before she ushered her posse out the door.“I never could understand why you wanted your proposal for Bonn Remmen’s land to be kept a secret.”She turned to the other hens in her flock.“Would you believe Keturah and Hattie told me they’d string me up by my ears if I told a soul that Tommaso was the fifth party interested in the land?”She scoffed.“They can be so rude sometimes, those two.Treat me like the island gossip, they do.”
Karen and Brenda shook their heads, agreeing with Jolene.
I had to roll my lips inward to keep from smiling because I’m not sure I’d ever met a person less self-aware than Jolene Dandy.She was known as “The Island Mouth” for a reason.You couldn’t tell her a damn thing if you wanted it to remain a secret.Hell, she couldn’t evenseeanything, and keep it to herself.The fact that Keturah and Hattie had to threaten her brought me more joy than it should, but the gossipy old woman deserved it.
I’m sure she’d be spreading all kinds of rumors about Tom and me, and by this time tomorrow, people would think we were living together and he was buying half my share in the vineyard.
“Youdoknow who we are, right?”Brenda asked after Tom closed the stall door, leaving Raven and Midnight alone with Sam.
I stood beside him for support, but I didn’t dare reach for his hand this time.What kind of message wouldthatsend to Jolene?That I was pregnant with Tom’s baby—it was a boy, and we planned to name himRotini?
“It would serve you well, Tommaso, to remember that Jolene is on the Island Elders Council, and my husband is the school principal,” Brenda went on.Then she zeroed in on me, driving home that last bit.“We’re powerful people, if you ask me.”
We?
Brenda had zero power, yet she seemed to think that by sheer association, she was empress of the island.It was all I could do not to shake my head and roll my eyes.
“I didn’t ask you,” Tom said flatly.
Brenda’s brows rose.“You owe me tulips.”
