Almost Home. Debbie Macomber

you come over? Please?”

      I had so much work to do. I was overwhelmed, exhausted. This book had to get out, or my editor would call and harangue me. He had actually been threatening me with his own heart attack if I didn’t get my book in. “It’ll be your fault, Chalese, your fault!”

      “Please, Chalese?”

      The life of a mother of three, pregnant with twins, is almost beyond rational comprehension. This I knew. Shortcake licked me again. “Give me five minutes.”

      Chapter Six

      “I’m still sensing you’re hiding something from me, Chalese,” Aiden said, his voice soft and low and sexy. “What else do you want to tell me?”

      I leaned back in the booth of Marci’s Whale-Jumping Café and tried to breathe.

      I shouldn’t have been surprised by his astuteness. Aiden was a prize-winning reporter, but I still felt struck, as if an elk had charged at me and the antlers were stuck in my gut.

      “No, there’s not anything else I want to tell you.” That was the truth. I inhaled the scent of buttermilk pancakes, bacon, and orange juice and wiped my hot hands on my jeans.

      “It would be better coming from you, sweet Chalese.”

      I tried not to blush at the “sweet” part.

      Our charming village on the island, a mix of very old and medium-old, well-cared for shops, churches, and restaurants, was small, and it hadn’t taken Aiden any time to find my truck parked in front of the café, a place with blue leather seats, windows to take in the view of the ocean behind the café, and a giant plastic whale hanging from the ceiling wearing a white captain’s hat.

      “Hey! Chalese!” Reuby, Gina’s son, yelled across the crowded room when I first arrived. “Hear ya got a special friend. If he breaks up with you, are ya gonna climb up on his roof and bust the skylight out?”

      Everyone laughed.

      “Very funny. Actually, if he broke up with me I would bulldoze his home with a tractor. I like tractors.”

      “Is the skylight thing going to be in Brenda’s next movie?” Jefferson Harris called out. He made art out of recycled materials and did pretty well.

      “No, it’s not. Brenda and I—”

      “And your sister,” Lavender Mercato called out. “Man, that gal’s gonna have five kids quick as a lick and ain’t nothin’ slowed her down since high school. She’s still gettin’ in trouble with you two. Did I hear you three were skinny-dipping again the other night?”

      I covered my face as they all cackled. “I’m going to sit here and go to a special place in my own gnarled head, have some breakfast, and pretend I’m alone.”

      “I don’t think you’re going to be alone for long,” Fred Mitchell called out, nodding his shaved head toward the door; the snake tattoos on his arm no longer alarming me as they once had. “Your man’s coming in.”

      “Lookee who’s here!” Shadow Morrison drawled. Shadow is a financial planner. She wears dresses over skinny black leggings, flowered hats, and sparkly scarves. She’s twenty-six and does almost everyone’s investments. A whiz kid. “I think it’s the special friend.”

      Reuby called out to Aidan, “Your special friend is right here, dude. Right here.” Now this was a smallish restaurant, but Reuby still felt compelled to point me out. “She hasn’t ordered yet, but she always has eggs Benedict, sauce on the side, blueberry pancakes, and her own Marion Berry jelly. Her jellies are awesome rad.”

      There was loud, general agreement. One of the island’s secret multimillionaires called out, “Jam Lady does it best, man.”

      I saw Aiden’s look of surprise at the attention. Then he covered it, and that easy smile came out. “Well, I’m hoping to eat breakfast with Jam Lady, if she’ll have me.”

      I groaned. Torture me further: he was wearing cool jeans, a black sweater, and a white T-shirt. Studly. I was sunk. I knew it.

      “Her sister always orders breakfast for dinner,” Reuby said, playing with the ring in his eyebrow. “Pancakes with strawberry syrup and sliced bananas and white wine. ’Cept when she’s pregnant. We all know when Christie’s pregnant, ’cause that’s when she starts ordering the weird stuff. Whole onions fried with garlic butter. Grape juice with her pasta. Guacamole and pink lemonade and sliced apples. She dips the apples in the guac, dude. It’s weird. Plus she sucks down Chalese’s marmalade like its water.”

      “Tell him about Brenda,” Shadow called, flipping her blond braids onto her back.

      “Yeah, Brenda’s the third sister, but they don’t share no blood. She orders whiskey sours sometimes for breakfast. That’s when she’s hungover. For dinner, she orders a salad with extra olives and pickles. One time she ate a whole pizza by herself and three beers. Those three, man, I dunno. Strange.”

      “Strange is good,” Aiden said, his voice low and rumbly. “Who wants a boring woman? I don’t.”

      “Cheers to that,” Fred agreed, holding up his coffee cup. “Bring me a high-kicker in red knee high boots.”

      Dear me, the joys of living on an island with not very many people …

      It took Aiden twenty minutes to walk to my table because everyone had to say hello, welcome him to the island, and then regale him with stories about me, his special friend.

      There was the red and pink streamer incident at City Hall (it was a protest, long ago), and the tractor Brenda and I borrowed and drove behind a group of racist skinheads over from the mainland who insisted on having a parade. We kept the tractor one foot from their heels. When they got worried they’d be run over and started jogging, we revved the tractor and followed close so we wouldn’t lose them. They called the police, but we explained we merely were trying to keep up with the skinheads!

      Charges dropped. We followed them out of town with the tractor.

      “Chalese sells the best jams and jellies ever. She sells to the stores, the restaurants. Probably makes a fortune—that’s our Chalese,” old Mrs. Chittick said. She carefully cultivated the “old, frail lady” image, but I knew for a fact that the woman could split wood faster than you could say “old, frail lady.”

      But the Chalese who made the best jams and jellies was all the Chalese I wanted to be. Nothing more.

      Not one thing more.

      “There is nothing else I want to tell you,” I whispered back to Aiden across the table, pushing what was left of my eggs Benedict aside. “Nothing.”

      We shared another one of those gazes. By gosh, why did I feel as if my soul mate was sitting across from me, right past the salt and pepper shakers?

      Aiden was clearly disappointed and worried. I was sure there was a miniature goat stuck in my constricted throat. Did he already know something was up? And if he did, how much did he know?

      He had another bite of my raspberry jelly. “Everybody’s right. This is incredible.” He rolled his huge shoulders then leaned toward me. “I know you’re hiding something. I can feel it. I’m already searching for it. This is my job, and I will find out what it is.”

      I blinked rapidly to clear the tears and the exploding fear. What would my friends here think of me when they knew?

      “The article is going to come out, and I can help you if I know the truth.”

      “I know the article will be printed, but I’m hoping it will have minimal impact for me here on the island. Maybe the day it comes out we’ll be hit by millions of falling stars and no one will read it.”

      “And you can continue to be anonymous? No one will know you and Annabelle are one and the same?”

      “Yes,” I