“He was.” Noah nodded toward her sisters. “What happened to canning tomatoes?”
“We got things rolling and then Mom ran us out so she could finish up in peace. She seemed preoccupied, which isn’t like her, so we gave her some space.” Phoebe pulled a lightweight shawl up over her bare shoulders. “We’re figuring out some of the staging for the fashion show. It’s such a beautiful evening, we came out here.”
“Sounds perfect.” Noah suspected that she’d also recognized Olivia’s car and hoped she’d catch him and get details on his meeting with Hartley.
“Then they’re coming by my place to watch old movies,” Phoebe added. “Maggie might join us.”
Phoebe’s shawl fell back off her shoulders, and she adjusted it again. Noah resisted an urge to help her. He knew what he wanted was to touch her creamy skin. Would it be cool now, in the evening air?
“Is this the life you always imagined for yourself?” he asked her.
His question obviously caught her by surprise. “It’s the one I have.”
“What about your sisters?”
“Ava and Ruby are just twenty-three. We’ll see what they end up doing after graduate school.”
“Maggie?”
“She got married so young. It was right after Dad died. Brandon had such big dreams. I don’t know how she’ll react to him giving them up.”
“What makes you think he has?”
“He’s sleeping in a tent in Knights Bridge and working for his family.”
Noah shrugged. “He’s also two miles instead of seventy-five miles from his sons.”
Phoebe nodded, thoughtful. “He’s always been a good father. What are your plans for the rest of the evening?”
Noah didn’t know what he was doing beyond not inviting himself to a girls’ old movie night on Thistle Lane. “I didn’t gate Buster in the mudroom. I expect I’ll be picking dog hair off the couch.”
His touch of humor seemed to go right past her. She pulled up her shawl. “And Hartley?”
“On his way to Boston and then to California. I’m sorry if he caused you any alarm.”
“Are you satisfied with what he told you about his reasons for following you?”
“He didn’t give me any reasons.”
“So does that mean you’re still on the case?”
“It does, yes.”
Phoebe glanced back at her sisters, then shifted her gaze to him again. “Ava and Ruby have so many great ideas for the fashion show. I think they’re enjoying themselves.”
“And you?”
She smiled. “Yes, me, too.”
“You’re an interesting family,” Noah said. “Any idea how Julius Hartley would know about a scar on your knee?”
Her eyes widened, and then she burst into laughter. “Because everyone in town knows. I have no secrets, Noah. When I was twelve, I cut my knee at the Frosts’ millpond. Maggie, Olivia and Jess Frost and I were swimming. The water was so cold—not that it ever warms up—but it was still early summer so it was especially frigid. They got out and I stayed in. Next thing I knew, one of Brandon’s brothers was pulling me out of the water.” Phoebe tilted her head back, the turquoise of her eyes rich and deep in the gray dusk. “I had mild hypothermia, and I’d slipped on a rock. There was blood everywhere.”
“Did you get stitches?”
“No. We just bandaged up the cut. It’s not that bad a scar. I don’t know why people remember that story. It’s not as if a cut knee is any big deal.”
It wasn’t just the cut knee, Noah realized. It was also staying in the cold millpond and ending up with hypothermia, to the point that she’d had to get pulled to safety by a Sloan.
It was a big deal because it was Phoebe O’Dunn.
Everyone remembered her cut knee, hypothermia and rescue because they went against their ideas about her.
He touched a bit of fringe on her shawl and suspected it, too, was from the piles of old clothes donated for the fashion show. “You’re supposed to be the sensible O’Dunn.”
She smiled at him. “I am the sensible O’Dunn.”
Noah let her go and returned to Olivia’s car. When he arrived at Carriage Hill, Buster had, in fact, liberated himself from the back room and was camped out on the sofa. Noah settled in next to him. He wasn’t impulsive. He’d call Loretta. He’d stay focused.
He knew himself and he had clarity about what he wanted.
And he wanted Phoebe O’Dunn.
Fourteen
Phoebe opened a bottle of merlot and Maggie arrived with a variety of cheeses and crackers. They had fresh vegetables from their mother’s garden, although Ava and Ruby insisted they couldn’t look at another tomato right now.
They gathered in Phoebe’s small living room and put on To Catch a Thief. They sighed over the beautiful Cote d’Azur scenery, took a poll about who thought Cary Grant was sexy—all but Ava—and argued about their favorite Alfred Hitchcock movies.
“That’s my dress!” Maggie pointed at the television with an olive-oil cracker topped with goat’s cheese and cucumber. “Oh, my. I’d forgotten how beautiful Grace Kelly was. I looked like a frump in comparison.”