Shot Through the Hearth Read online

  “Can my crew and I help you carry your plants into the tower?”

  “No,” he said curtly. “Nobody touches my plants but me.”

  I held up both hands. “Okay then.”

  Rafe grinned at me. “I’m not sure I mentioned that Julian isn’t merely a plant guy, but is actually an ethnobotanist.”

  “Huh,” I said with a shaky smile. “I’m not even sure what that means, but I’m impressed.”

  I was relieved when Julian managed to lose the scowl. “Sorry to be so touchy. I’m usually pretty upbeat and easygoing, but when I see people hurting plants, I get defensive.”

  “We don’t want to hurt any plants here,” I said quickly.

  “Good.” And he smiled happily, as though he hadn’t been ready to strike out a minute ago. “Among the many aspects of my job, I study the influences of human beings on plants. As you might suspect, the effects are mostly negative, so I have taken it upon myself to fight for the rights of the plant world. It can be frustrating, but every small victory is its own reward.”

  He seemed to lose himself in his words and now wore a dreamy smile.

  He was one of Rafe’s true believers, I thought. His plants were his cause, his raison d’être, the main thrust of his life. There would be plenty more like him at the conference in a few months.

  I knew the Ecosphere was one of Rafe’s most important exhibits so I wanted to make sure everything was perfect.

  “I’ll try not to get in your way,” I said to Julian, “but I hope you’ll allow me to assist you in the Ecosphere.” I spoke carefully, not wanting another rebuff. “My guys and I can move stuff around or dig holes or get mulch or whatever.”

  He studied me for a moment. “You’ll do as I say?”

  “Of course. That’s your world.”

  He twisted his lips, probably looking for a way to say no. But finally he nodded. “I will need help. So, yes. I appreciate your offer.”

  “Great. Just tell me what you need and I’ll make sure you get it.”

  Four months later

  As the sun began its slow slide down behind the hills along the western border of Rafe’s property, I stood and stretched my aching muscles. I watched Niall Rose pack up his chisels and tools in his worn leather satchel and then pick up a broom and begin sweeping the patio area clean. He was a meticulous worker and took responsibility for leaving his work space in the same condition he found it every morning. Hiring him was one of the smarter moves I’d made this year.

  “The fireplace and hearth look awesome, Niall,” I said. “And the patio is just fantastic.” I wasn’t exaggerating. The fireplace and chimney was the centerpiece, bordered on each side by an eight-foot wall of stone—mostly variegated slate, with bits of colorful glass and chunks of granite. On one side of the fireplace was a wide hearth perfect for sitting near the warmth of the fire. On the other side was an outdoor kitchen that included a massive barbecue grill, a wide counter, warming drawers, and a fully operational sink. As soon as Niall’s stonework was finished, my guys would build a pergola over the spacious patio and Marigold would add lots of comfortable outdoor furniture.

  “Aye, it’s coming along,” Niall said modestly, his thick Scottish brogue making even the simplest words tricky to comprehend.

  But even if I couldn’t understand every word, it was no hardship to talk with him. The man was, to put it bluntly, drop-dead gorgeous. He was well over six feet tall with the broad chest and shoulders of a WWE fighter. He had warm chocolate brown eyes and he wore his light brown hair in a close-cropped buzz cut. His usual work uniform consisted of faded blue jeans, work boots, and a black T-shirt that showed off his amazing chest and arm muscles. At the end of each day, he pulled on a thick plaid Pendleton jacket and drove off in a dirt-encrusted four-wheel-drive Land Rover.

  The guy was just so . . . masculine. But he was a true artist as well and as gentle as a lamb, unless he was forced into a tangle—as he put it—with someone looking for a fight. My friend Emily, Niall’s sister, had revealed that back home in Edinburgh, there were always one or two idiots in the pub looking to take on a guy like Niall.

  Having grown up with only one sister, I just couldn’t fathom the odd male characteristic that delighted in fighting. According to Emily, something similar had occurred in our very own pub right here in Lighthouse Cove. More than once. Maybe it was the kilt. I couldn’t say for sure, but Niall still ran into the occasional drunken tourist who would take one look at him and decide he needed to be brought down a peg.

  Emily’s simple explanation was that men were crazy.

  I wondered if maybe there were some guys who thought they could become an Internet sensation, courtesy of one of their friends’ camera phones. Which again, equaled crazy when you thought about it.

  Niall, not being as crazy as some, had made a strategic decision early on to get to know our police chief, Eric Jensen. The two big men had become fast friends and their small circle had grown to include Rafe, my boyfriend Mac, Emily’s beau Gus, Lizzie’s husband Hal, and some of the other good guys in town.

  These days, if he ran into any tourists tanked up and crazy enough to want to start a fight, Niall simply signaled the bartender to give the chief a call. Naturally, the bar phone had Eric on speed dial.

  “I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it lately, Niall,” I said as I walked him out to his car, “but I’m really happy to have you on my crew. You do beautiful work.”

  “Aye, you might’ve mentioned it a time or two,” he said, grinning. “But ’tis I who’s happier still to have a sister with such good taste in friends.”

  I gave him an appreciative smile. “We’re all very lucky.”

  “Aye, we are,” he said with a wink as he opened his car door. “See ya tomorrow, Shannon.”

  “Enjoy your evening, Niall.”

  I walked back to the front garden in time to see Marigold slapping her gloved hands together and swiping at the smudges of dirt on her sweatshirt. She had just finished planting a wide row of flowering succulents mixed with rosemary, lavender, and a few different grassy plants.

  “That looks really pretty, Marigold,” Jane Hennessey said, hands on her hips as she surveyed the results of our long day in the garden. She turned when she saw me. “Did Niall leave?”

  “Yes. He’s almost finished with the patio. Doesn’t it look beautiful?”

  Jane shrugged. “It’s nice.”

  “Nice?” I tried not to gape at her. “You think it’s just nice? Jane, the man is an artist. Everywhere he goes, he collects all sorts of beautiful glass and shells and rocks and then turns it into artwork. Nice isn’t the word for it.”

  “Okay, it’s very . . . it’s very attractive,” she said.

  I chalked up her understatement to exhaustion and gazed around, taking in all the beautiful colors and clever designs. “This is coming together.”

  Marigold nodded. “We do good work.”

  “We sure do.” I bent down to pick up my trowel and the three-pronged cultivator I’d been using to blend potting soil in with the dirt. “I don’t know what we would’ve done without your help, Jane.”

  “It’s my pleasure,” she said, and gave a little curtsy.

  She was joking around, but I knew she loved this stuff. The girl had a green thumb and a real gift for landscaping. The Hennessey Inn, owned and operated by Jane, had become renowned for its lovely gardens, so Marigold and I were both thrilled when Jane agreed to help us out.

  Jane was my oldest—and still tallest—girlfriend. Ever since kindergarten when we were both taller than all the boys in the class, the height thing had been a running joke between the two of us. Jane had grown up to be a few inches taller than me, but I liked to think I held my own at a mere five foot eight.

  Lizzie Logan leaned against me. “I’m so glad I came out here today. Got to hang with my buddies.”


  I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and squeezed. Speaking of height, Lizzie barely scaled five foot one. But as she always insisted, she made up for it with her great big heart. “Thanks for being here.”

  “I wouldn’t have missed it.” Lizzie was a few years younger than Jane and me, but she had grown up in Lighthouse Cove so we had known her forever. She and her husband Hal owned Paper Moon, the book and paper store on the town square. Hal had taken over the duties at the store while Lizzie pitched in to help us finish up the outside of Marigold’s new home.

  Lizzie, Jane, Emily, and Marigold were my best friends. The five of us tried to get together at least once a month for dinner, where we shared our deepest secrets, triumphs, and fears. And wine. And pasta. There was always pasta.

  I was happy that Rafe had found jobs for all of us. Jane had been put in charge of hotel accommodations, naturally. Lizzie and Hal’s books and paper shop had designed the conference programs and notepads for the attendees. They would also be setting up a number of book signings and had ordered books for those participants who had written them. Emily was the official caterer, of course. Marigold would be giving one workshop on quilting and another on her Amish background and ways that her Amish community had lived off the grid. The whole gang was involved, much to our delight.

  “It looks fantastic, Shannon.”

  I turned and saw Rafe standing on the other side of the front gate, just staring at the beautiful results of our long day of landscaping.

  “You like?” I asked, giving him a cheeky smile.

  “I’m blown away,” he said.

  I smiled. “That was the goal.”

  “You guys really kick butt when you get together.”

  “We sure do.” I gazed at my friends, who were finishing up in different areas of the spacious, colorful garden. “Jane is the real powerhouse. We just do whatever she tells us and it always works out.”

  Last month, Rafe and I had discussed xeriscape landscaping and he had confessed that despite wanting to stick with an environmentally responsible garden, he wasn’t thrilled with the idea of seeing a bunch of cactus plants everywhere. His tone made me chuckle and I had quickly explained that there were a surprising amount of leafy green and flowering plants and grasses that were drought resistant, too. Of course, I had every intention of slipping in a few of my favorite cactus plants here and there because I knew they would add some striking pops of color and texture to the space.

  But Rafe shouldn’t have worried too much anyway, since our little corner of the world had an average rainfall way above the rest of the state. It had to do with the amount of fog that rolled in off the ocean and settled in the pocket between the coast and the nearby mountains.

  Rafe had finally suggested that I work with Marigold to come up with something special for the landscape that would “blow him away.”

  From Rafe’s reaction just now, it appeared that we had succeeded.

  The landscapers had taken care of planting small and medium-sized trees all around the house and along the road. Once they grew in, they would provide even more privacy as well as a natural sound barrier.

  Niall and his crew had built a smooth stone driveway from the road to the house, with two-foot-high stone barriers along the sides. The reclaimed stone was craggy and uneven and looked as if it had been standing there for a hundred years. Rafe loved the rustic look of it.

  Marigold walked over, kissed Rafe quickly, and then turned to admire the whole picture. “Isn’t it great?”

  “Made even greater with you here,” Rafe said with a grin and wrapped his arms around her.

  “Okay, you two . . .” I laughed and some of the tension in my neck melted away. Rafe was a great guy, but he could be a little zealous. Seeing him relax and simply enjoy being with Marigold made me feel better about a lot of things, including their relationship. After all, they had gone through almost a year of home renovation craziness and were now plunging themselves into a very important business conference that promised to take up every minute of their time to the very end.

  “You guys did an amazing job, Shannon,” Rafe said.

  “You know what? I agree.” I laughed. “We really did.”

  The entire yard around the house was now bordered by a three-foot hedge with a front gate that opened to a charming brick and stone walkway that Niall had designed. The walkway led to the stairs up to the new porch and the very impressive thick oak double doors with classically Victorian leaded glass windows.

  The interior of the house was sensational, if I did say so myself. It was now three stories and everything inside and out had been updated. New windows everywhere brought massive amounts of sunlight into all the rooms. The small top floor was one big room with windows on all sides, designed like a lookout post, ideal for watching the sunset—preferably while drinking a glass of wine.

  The outside of the house was covered in thin horizontal wood siding that we had painted classic white with dark sage green trim on the shutters and eaves. The brand-new porch wrapped around the entire house and was wide enough to provide an outdoor seating area with a teakwood couch, two chairs, and several tables. At Marigold’s request, we had also hung a pretty porch swing near the front door.

  Rafe and Marigold were both very happy, to say the least.

  I was happy, too, and relieved, because we had made our deadline with two weeks to spare. The house, the patio, and the landscaping were finished. The fireplace and hearth would take a few more days to complete since Niall had spent so much time constructing the vertical tower for the conference, along with the driveway and various decorative stone borders across the property.

  The new barn foundation had been poured and the plumbing and electrical were mapped out. The framing for all the walls had been completed but nothing had been nailed into place. The massive side frames were currently stacked along the edge of the foundation and they would be raised and fitted into place on the second day of the conference.

  The barn raising would be an immense undertaking. I had scheduled the manpower: fifty reliable construction workers, all vetted by Wade; Carla; my head carpenter, Sean; and me.

  Rafe planned to give a short speech about green technology before we began the barn raising. He was pretty excited about it.

  I was completely exhausted.

  “Are we still meeting at the pub later for a celebratory burger and beer?” Lizzie asked. “I think I can talk Hal into joining us.”

  I winced. “I would love to see Hal, but right now I’m honestly ready to drop. Would you mind if we moved the celebration to later in the week?”

  Jane drooped next to me. “Thank goodness you said that. I’m totally beat. And filthy.” She grimaced as she held up her dirty hands.

  “Yeah, we’re all a mess,” I said with a tired laugh.

  But it had been a good day. Jane, Marigold, Lizzie, and I had met the landscapers at six o’clock that morning. Their big truck was loaded with dozens of trees, bushes, plants, flowers, succulents, rocks of all sizes, wood chippings, planting soil, and fertilizer. And we all got to work.

  Niall had arrived shortly after that and went out to finish the patio.

  At noon, our friend Emily had shown up with sandwiches, salads, and sodas from her tea shop on the town square. With Emily, our little circle of best friends had been complete.

  Now it was after five o’clock and while the others cleaned up and prepared to leave, I took a stroll down the walkway and out the front gate to get some different perspectives of the house and surrounding yard and trees.

  Wandering around to the finished back patio, I took a closer look at Niall’s stonework. The fireplace itself was large and imposing, a beautiful work of art. The stones of the hearth had been fashioned into intricate wave patterns, while the floor of the patio was a winding, circular design that wove its way across the wide space.

  I though
t again how lucky I was to have him on my crew. And I would have to commend him for juggling all of the other jobs he’d done for Rafe, especially the three-story tower. We had started building it almost five months ago. It was a simplistic design, basically a bunker-style structure, and it only took the ten of us a few weeks to complete.

  I gazed across Rafe’s field to the tower that Julian Reedy had used to create the incredible vertical gardens, inside and out. The interior was now the lush green tropical haven Rafe had described in our very first conversation. A combination of magical fairyland and verdant jungle, with moss and ferns hanging everywhere and vines streaming down the walls. Every type of flowering plant and greenery was tucked along the pathways and ramps and terraces, and they had all grown so thick so quickly that you could no longer see the concrete structure beneath. Julian had even managed to plant a colorful circle of tulips in one of the corners.

  The louvers that covered the windows were another amazing feature. When I first had them installed, I watched as they slowly moved with the sun as it passed over the tower. It was a real thrill to actually feel the temperature rise or drop inside the tower, depending on which way the louvers moved. I couldn’t wait to install them inside some willing client’s house. Or my own. Someday.

  For some reason, the thought reminded me of my father. I wanted him to see the Ecosphere. He needed to come out here and see the progress we’d made. I was so proud of everything we had done here, and I knew I would see that same pride reflected on his face when I showed him around.

  It was a miracle that we had been able to keep to our precise timeline for the rehab and all the added jobs we’d taken on for Rafe’s conference. Those included building the tower; grading two acres of property to level the conference center area and make it comfortably walkable for the attendees; grading another acre, then trucking in enough pea gravel to make a suitable parking lot; and various other jobs. There could’ve been so many more problems if we hadn’t worked out the logistics from the beginning. For instance, if Niall hadn’t finished the tower on time, then Julian couldn’t have started planting the vertical garden on time, and the Ecosphere would’ve been a bust. Instead, it was guaranteed to be one of the major highlights of the conference.