“Synergy,” Loretta said. “Noah knows he’d have crashed and burned without Dylan’s help.”
“And now what? What’s next for both of them?” Olivia took a deep breath. “I don’t want Dylan to move to Knights Bridge just for my sake. It’s too much to ask, and I wouldn’t. It’s not that Knights Bridge doesn’t measure up to San Diego. It does, at least for me. It’s home. But this is home for him.”
“You can do both, you know. Knights Bridge and San Diego.” Loretta shivered in the gusty breeze, but she welcomed it at the same time, let it clear her head, keep back her own emotions. “It’s not like you two will be scrimping to pay for groceries.”
Olivia smiled. “You’re blunt, aren’t you?”
“You can’t help either of those two if you’re not. When Dylan was playing hockey, he could read the ice, read a defense, without thinking. He just knew. Same with NAK and his role there. Noah’s smart, but he doesn’t always pick up on what’s going on around him. Karate and fencing help him tune in, I think.”
“He gives people the benefit of the doubt until they give him reason not to.”
“It’s not a bad way to be. Dylan’s not cynical but let’s just say he gives people a shorter rope than Noah does.” Loretta walked a few more steps as the tide came in on the wide sandy beach below them. “Tell me about Phoebe O’Dunn.”
“What about Phoebe?”
As if Olivia didn’t know what Loretta was asking. Loretta had already gathered that not much went on in Knights Bridge that Olivia and her family and friends didn’t know about. That Grace Webster had managed to keep her affair with a British flyer and the birth of their son a secret for seventy years was a damn miracle as far as Loretta was concerned. Dylan said she’d understand when she met Grace. The assumption being that Loretta eventually would get to Knights Bridge.
Maybe she would. She wondered if she’d understand the late Duncan McCaffrey any better when she did.
Probably not.
She turned her attention back to the matter at hand. “Phoebe was Noah’s princess the other night. She overheard Julius Hartley talking on the phone to someone—probably someone out here.”
Olivia seemed more amused than surprised. “You do know everything, don’t you?”
Loretta laughed. “Not by half. Not when it comes to Noah and Dylan. So what about your friend Phoebe?”
“We’ve been friends forever. My younger sister and I grew up with Phoebe and her sisters.” Olivia glanced out at the Pacific, as if picturing her hometown in her mind. “Jess and I grew up at an old sawmill and the O’Dunns grew up on a small farm. It was a great childhood.”
Loretta prodded her. “And?”
“Phoebe’s the eldest. She’s always felt responsible for the rest of us—her sisters, and even Jess and me.” Olivia hesitated, lowering her arms, letting her sweater flap in the breeze. She seemed to welcome the cooler air. “Phoebe found her father after he died in a fall out of a tree he was trimming. His death was hard on all of them.”
“Phoebe tried to fix things?”
“I think she just tried to be there for everyone. Her mother was always a live-for-the-moment type but she became even more so after Patrick’s death.”
Loretta imagined a woman facing early widowhood with four daughters and a farm. “She can be impractical?”
“That’s one way of putting it. Phoebe commuted to college from home, so she’s never lived anywhere but Knights Bridge. She loves her job at the library. She’s good at it. She’s smart and sophisticated, Loretta. Don’t think just because she’s from a small town that she’s not.”
“Whoa. Phoebe’s not the only one who’s protective.”
Olivia sighed as they crossed a driveway to the hotel, its distinctive red turrets and white exterior glowing in the night lights. “Sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be sorry. It’s good to have friends who worry about you.” Loretta grinned, lightening the mood. “I wish I had a few.”
“You’re like Phoebe. You do the worrying.”
“Am I guessing right that something’s going on between her and Noah?”
Olivia tightened her sweater around her again. “I think so.” She slowed her pace as they continued along a curving walk to the hotel. “Will Noah hurt her, Loretta?”
“Noah’s more likely to get hurt himself than to hurt someone else.”
“He dates Hollywood types—”
“Who are more interested in his money and his connections than in him.”
“He’s a very wealthy man, and he can’t have taken his company to where it is without being driven, maybe even a little ruthless. Phoebe’s a gentle soul, unless she thinks one of us is in trouble.”
“Does she think one of you is in trouble now?” Loretta asked.
Olivia shrugged. “I don’t think so. I don’t know. I’m not there.”