Nolan: Return to Signal Bend Read online

  Geoff had explained that most of his profit was made in private sales rather than in the store, so he focused on deep knowledge of his stock and rapport-building with his clientele. His notes in the ledger showed where, when, and how each item had been acquired, gave specific details about the history and provenance of each item, and sometimes had notes about the people who’d given or sold the item to him. She felt like she was doing research for a paper or something—something she’d always enjoyed.

  Iris had loved school, but she’d never quite understood the drive to pick a major in college that was only about getting the best job possible. She’d tried that at first, because it was what her mother wanted, but she didn’t have a good idea about a career she’d like. There truly wasn’t anything she felt driven to do. Rose, on the other hand, perfect, precious Rose, had known before she’d even gone to college that she wanted to work in fashion. She’d picked her major right away and charged forward into a career that let her shop professionally.

  Their mom had wanted Iris to get a business degree, saying again and again that it was the best chance for a lucrative career. So, with no better idea, Iris had tried that. But business classes were boring, and when she was bored, she couldn’t focus. Her grades showed as much.

  What she’d found interesting was anthropology and literature and history—the way people made their world. Those classes she’d excelled at. But she hadn’t really wanted to be a teacher or anything like that, either. She’d thought about going to graduate school, but her flailing as a business major, and then, briefly, a psychology major, had hurt her GPA too much. And anyway, more school would have been fun, but grad school was expensive, and she hadn’t known what she’d do with a Master’s any more than she’d known what to do with her Bachelor’s.

  Iris just wanted to have a good life. To be happy. She didn’t really think her job would be the thing that would determine her happiness.

  But sitting on the floor in Jubilee Antiques & Curiosities, reading in the ledger about a rug that had been in a woman’s family since that family had come over from Norway two hundred years ago, Iris thought that maybe a job could make her happy after all.

  ~oOo~

  She had moved from the rug and painting room and had just started in the room she’d already developed the habit of calling ‘Edgar’s Room’—where she’d found Shannon’s Christmas present. She was going through the drawers of butterflies and moths. So far, they’d all come from the estates of the same few collectors. The blue butterfly she’d bought for Shannon had actually been pinned by the man from whose estate Geoff had acquired it. And the bell jar as well. Mr. Frederick Jergen had traveled the world hunting for specific butterflies. She now knew that Shannon’s—which her stepmother loved—was a Violet-spotted Emperor butterfly that Mr. Jensen had found in South Africa.

  “What do you think?”

  Iris looked over her shoulder and saw Geoff leaning against the door jamb, smiling at her.

  “I think you have the best job in the world.”

  Geoff’s smile went wide. “I think so, too. When the weather is a little warmer, we’ll go hunting together. That is, by far, the best part. You know, it’s almost noon—I was thinking I’d call in a pick-up order at Marie’s. If you fly, I’ll buy.”

  “Yeah? Thanks! Sure, I’ll go get it.”

  “Excellent. I’ll call it in. What would you like?”

  ~oOo~

  When Iris was a little girl, lunch at Marie’s was busiest around ten-thirty or eleven in the morning. Most of the customers then had been farm folk, whose days started before dawn, so noon was late for lunch. But things had changed a little since then, and there were more people, and more different kinds of businesses in town, so lunch started early and kept going until the afternoon. Back in the day, Marie’s had been strictly breakfast and lunch, opening in the dark of the predawn and closing for the day in the afternoon. But since Marie had retired and the Sachs family had taken the diner over, it was open for supper now, too.

  It was a couple minutes shy of noon when Iris opened the front door and headed to the counter to pick up the order Geoff had placed. The wind had picked up, and she paused a moment to get her hair out of her eyes.

  At one of the booths nearest the door sat a crew from Signal Bend Construction: Cox, Tommy, Kellen…and Nolan. They must have all turned when she’d opened the door, because now they were all looking at her.

  “Hey, Iris,” Kellen called with a nod.

  They were Horde, her family, so she didn’t exactly have a choice about whether to go over and talk for a minute. Not that she had a mind to duck them. After that weirdly sweet conversation with Nolan on Christmas Day, Iris had decided not to make too much of anything he did. She didn’t know if she believed his whole ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ deal, but it didn’t matter. If they were just friends, it was fine. She liked him a lot, and she didn’t mind letting him know that, but she had never been one to pine after things she didn’t have.

  “Hey, boys. You working on the houses today?” Signal Bend was building its first-ever subdivision, Signal Bend Station. It wasn’t much, as far as subdivisions went, nothing at all like the place on a golf course her mom and stepdad had in Little Rock, but it was kind of weird to think of a subdivision here in town, anyway.

  All four nodded in answer, but Nolan answered with words, too. “Yeah. Just some interior work. You want to join us for lunch?”

  They were four men in a diner booth, so she wasn’t sure how he thought that would happen, unless he planned to pull her onto his lap. Knowing that wouldn’t be the case, she smiled. “Thanks, but no. I’m picking up lunch for work.”

  “Yeah, Nolan said you were working on Main Street,” Kellen said—and then he put his hand around her wrist and tugged gently. “Where at?”

  Iris stared down at his hand. That was a strangely affectionate gesture from Kellen, who hadn’t, as far as she knew, paid her any extraordinary attention before. She lifted her eyes from his hand gripping her wrist and up to his face, and yeah, she thought she saw flirtation happening there.

  Kellen was cute. He was blond and cut, and he had nice eyes. But he wasn’t all that bright. She’d heard her father say a few things about Kellen’s tendency not to think. He was also well known for his wandering dick. And she thought he was pushing thirty, which seemed a bit old, as far as she was concerned. There was a long list of men she’d be more interested in than Kellen Frey. The one sitting across from him was on the top of that list.

  That said, she wasn’t above playing up a little flirtation while Nolan was watching.

  So she gave Kellen a flirtatious smile back and, with her free hand, flipped her hair over her shoulder. “Jubilee.”

  “That’s that weird shop across from Fosse’s.” Kellen’s thumb brushed over her arm, and that made Iris uncomfortable. She didn’t actually want to start anything with the guy.

  “Yeah. I started today. Well, I need to go pick up our order. You boys have a good afternoon!” She eased her hand from Kellen’s grip and turned toward the counter. On her way by, she thought she saw a dark look on Nolan’s face. Good.

  George Sachs—or, as he was known in the Horde, Saxon—worked the grill, and his sister, Kari, stood behind the counter, prepping a fresh batch of coffee.

  “Hey, Kari.”

  “Hi, honey. What can I getcha?”

  “Picking up an order for Geoff at Jubilee.”

  “Got it right here,” Saxon called through the prep window. “Hiya, little girl.”

  Saxon had always called her ‘little girl,’ even though he wasn’t all that much older than she was. She’d never minded.

  “Hey, Saxon.”

  He leaned on the window. “I ask you: what kind of man is allergic to onions?”

  “I’m guessing Geoff is?”

  “Yeah—have to clean the damn grill just for him. He’s a good tipper—otherwise, I’d just poison him with a Bermuda.” Saxon grinned and winked at her.


  “Shut up, George. You would not.” Kari took a bag from him, added one of her own, and handed both to Iris. “Bottles of Coke and napkins in the bags, too. I put a couple of pieces of Marie’s pumpkin pie in there, too. You’re all settled up, so you have a good afternoon.”

  “You, too. Thanks, guys.”

  She turned and nearly crashed into Nolan. He reached for her bags, but, in an act of instinct more than anything else, she yanked them away.

  He frowned. “I was just going to offer to carry them to your truck for you.”

  “Thanks, but it’s two bags. I think I can handle it.” He didn’t move, and he was blocking her passage, so she huffed her irritation. “Excuse me, Nolan. I need to get back.”

  “You know Kellen fucks everything that looks his way twice, right?”

  He was jealous. Interesting. “I’m aware of his reputation. I don’t know why it’s relevant to me needing to get back to work, though.”

  A long, steady stare, those dark blue eyes boring into her plain blue ones.

  “Nolan. I need to go.”

  He swung to the side and made way.

  ~oOo~

  Shannon held to her chest an emerald-green sweater shot through with metallic threads and considered herself in the standing mirror. “What do you think, ladies?”

  Iris and Millie sat side by side, cross-legged at the end of Shannon and their dad’s huge bed. Iris turned to her little sister, who had one of her mother’s fancy scarves wrapped around her head. “What do we think?”

  “It’s sparkly,” Millie offered.

  “It is that,” Shannon agreed. “I don’t know. Is it tacky?”

  “I like it. It’s festive. Dad’ll think you’re gorgeous if you wear a burlap sack. And he’d be right.” Iris got up and went to Shannon’s standing jewelry chest. “You always look so great in green. I know what you should wear with it.” Smiling at the framed butterfly sitting prettily on top of the jewelry chest, Iris opened one of the necklace compartments and pulled out a piece that their dad had given Shannon for their tenth anniversary a few years back: a large pendant of a sapphire and an emerald in an intertwined platinum setting.

  Shannon cocked her head. “A bit much for the clubhouse, don’t you think?”

  “It’s New Year’s Eve. Do it up. Those leather pants, the new boots, a sparkly sweater, and this. Dad won’t know what hit him.”

  “I can’t believe I let you talk me into those pants. My butt is too wide for leather pants.” After Shannon said that, she cast a guilty eye toward her daughter. One of her big deals as a mom of girls was to always try to avoid saying negative things about her own body so that they wouldn’t think it was okay to hate themselves.

  Shannon wasn’t skinny—or fat, either, in Iris’s estimation. Rose thought she was fat, but Rose could have milkshakes morning, noon, and night and never gain an ounce. She thought Iris was fat, too. She didn’t understand the struggle of having a body that stored any extra weight at all.

  Iris had always admired Shannon’s self-image. She was an imposing woman—the absolute definition of curvy, with ginormous boobs, a narrow waist, and round, sultry hips and ass. She was really tall, too—in those new boots, she’d only be a couple of inches shorter than their six-foot-five father. Her face was lovely, but her body was hardly the Vogue or Cosmo ideal of beautiful. Yet she was the most beautiful woman Iris knew—inside and out.

  Men seemed to like her just fine, too. Iris had often seen men stop dead in their tracks and watch Shannon walk for as long as they could. And their dad could not keep his hands to himself. It could get gross, actually, all that old-people PDA. Shannon wasn’t as old as their dad, but she was still more than fifty.

  Shannon was, to Iris, the model of that idea that if you thought you were beautiful, if your heart was beautiful and your mind confident, then you were beautiful, and people would know it.

  She looked at her little sister. At nine, Millie was looking like she’d favor Rose. She was tall and slender—their dad, who liked nicknames, said she was ‘coltish’ and called her ‘Millie filly’—and her hair was the kind of strawberry blonde that Iris had tried and failed to replicate chemically.

  “You look great in those pants, Shannon. What do you think, Mills?”

  “I think you’re pretty in everything, Mom. I wish I could go to the party and see you.”

  “We’re going to have a great time here, Mills. Our party will be just as big as Shannon and Dad’s. We’ll have music and dancing and games and movies and overindulging, and we’ll stay up past midnight—and for midnight, I have a surprise.”

  “What’s over—over—?”

  “Overindulging. It means we’re going to eat a lot of ice cream and pizza and popcorn.”

  “Ooh! Can we make caramel corn?”

  “Yep. We can do whatever we want, because the grownups will be gone all night long.”

  Millie bounced up and down on the bed and clapped happily.

  “Easy, you two. I’d like the house to be standing and everybody to be in one piece when we get back.” Shannon turned her back to them and stepped into the black leather pants, shimmying them up under her elegant silk robe. She really did look good in them.

  “That’s a low bar. I think we can manage it.”

  “Are you sure you’re good with this? It’s a lot of kids, and you’re young. You should be out partying on New Year’s. I’m the old fart who should be staying in and going to bed at ten.”

  Iris had decided that the Horde New Year’s Eve party sounded like a terrible idea this year. She didn’t want to end up drunkenly making out with Nolan. The next time they kissed, if there was a next time, it was going to be for a good reason. She didn’t want to see him drunkenly making out with anyone else, either. And she didn’t want Kellen pushing up on her—which he’d done twice more since Monday. So she’d volunteered to have Camp New Year so that all the Horde parents could have a whole night off.

  It hadn’t worked out exactly like she’d first thought—Lilli had said that it would be too much for Bo, her and Isaac’s boy, who had Asperger’s and didn’t do well in situations out of his control, and Badger and Adrienne had decided that John, their youngest, a toddler, was too young for the occasion. So Bo and John were spending the night with Lori Mortensen, who had been Bo’s babysitter all his life.

  But Iris had charge of all the other kids: Isaac & Lilli’s Gia; Bart’s Lexi, Ian, and Deck; Nolan’s little brother, Loki; Badger and Adrienne’s three oldest, Henry, Megan, and Caroline; and, of course, Millie and Joey. Ten kids in all.

  She was excited. It would be a party, and probably more fun than getting stupid drunk and doing something stupid, then spending the next day hung over and miserable.

  “I’m very sure. Gia’s fourteen. She can help. And Millie, you’ll be my helper, right? You’ll keep the little ones entertained, too?”

  “Yeah! We can do art!”

  “We can. We can do lots of stuff.”

  Millie jumped down from the bed. “I’m going to get my art stuff! Can we make an art station like at the museum?”

  “Sure. Why don’t you set that up in the dining room. I’ll help in a few minutes.”

  “Okay! We need to make sure everything’s safe for little hands!” Millie had run most of the way down the hall before her sentence was complete.

  When Iris turned back, Shannon was standing there in her black leather pants and pretty black lace bra, her silk robe open. Her expression was wisely amused. “You dispatched her handily. There something on your mind?”

  “I have a question.”

  “About Nolan.”

  Iris sat down on the end of the bed. “Is it that obvious?”

  Shannon sat next to her. “Honey, I won’t say everybody knows that something is going on between you two, but I will say that it is known. Your dad knows, too. We’ve talked about it.”

  Great. People were talking about her and Nolan, and Iris didn’t even think there was a her and Nolan. “Bu
t that’s just it—nothing is going on. Except…I don’t know. It’s strange. I think we’re just friends, though. Pretty sure.”

  “Then what did you want to ask?”

  Now, Iris was shy and ashamed to ask. “I think it’s stupid.”

  “Ask, Iris. No harm in that.”

  “I was going to ask you to let me know if he was…with anybody tonight. I know that’s creepy and awful, but things are weird between us, and it would help me know what’s going on.”

  “Weird how?”

  There was a protective edge to Shannon’s tone, so Iris smiled and shook her head. “Nothing bad. It’s more that I don’t think he knows what he wants, and I don’t know how to be around him.”