Lilac Lane (Chesapeake Shores #14)(55)

“To Sally’s. I’ll plant a few seeds here and there, and if I know my granddaughters, by tomorrow they’ll have turned this into their own idea and added a few embellishments.”

“Nell O’Brien O’Malley, should I be worried that one day this devious streak of yours will be used against me?”

She laughed. “What makes you think it hasn’t been already?”

*

Since in her eagerness to get away from Bryan and those knowing glances of his she hadn’t lingered at Nell’s long enough for a scone, Kiera decided she deserved one of Sally’s croissants to replace it. Perhaps the gathering of O’Brien women she was likely to find there would prove more settling to her nerves than the way her day had started.

Today Connor’s wife, Heather, Kevin’s wife, Shanna, and Bree were lingering over coffee when she arrived. The three had distinctive personalities that were echoed by the clothes they chose, Bree’s flamboyant and colorful, Heather’s soothing, and Shanna’s classic.

“May I join you or are you about to leave?” Kiera asked.

“Please join us,” Bree invited, pulling out the chair next to hers. “We’ve been commiserating over getting drawn into Gram’s fall festival planning again.”

Kiera brightened at once. “You’re on the committee, as well? That’s great news!”

“She’s asked you to come to tomorrow’s meeting, too?” Bree asked.

“Of course she has,” Heather said. “Have you ever known Nell to let an able-bodied person escape her clutches when she’s planning her favorite community event?”

“Forget able-bodied being part of the criteria,” Shanna said. “Poor Jaime Alvarez was still on crutches when she corralled him into helping last year.”

“Well, this year she’s added both Bryan and me into the mix,” Kiera said. “I’m excited about it.”

The other three women exchanged glances.

“Maybe that will let us off the hook,” Heather suggested hopefully.

“Not a chance,” Bree said ruefully. “I don’t think there’s an O’Brien alive who’s ever successfully squirmed off Gram’s hook once she’s set it.”

Kiera heard the grumbling complaints and couldn’t imagine why they weren’t more enthused. “It honestly sounds like so much fun to me. Is it really such a burden? I’ve never had a chance to work on a community event like this.”

“We need to stop trying to scare her off or Nell will never forgive us,” Heather said. “It really is fun.”

“Maybe the first ten years,” Bree groused. “I’ve been doing it since I was old enough to take fliers around town and climb on chairs to post them in shop windows. You’d think, given how many O’Briens have come along since then, that she’d cut the rest of us a break for time served.”

Shanna laughed. “Oh, stop acting like a martyr. You know perfectly well that there’s not a one of us who wouldn’t do anything Nell asked. She has her hand in half a dozen or more community projects. We’re all in awe of her energy and we’re trying to figure out where it comes from. Personally, I think she takes some magic elixir.”

“There’s no elixir. It’s pure O’Brien stubbornness,” Bree said.

“Maybe that explains why you and I don’t have it,” Heather told Shanna with exaggerated resignation. “We weren’t born with O’Brien blood.”

Kiera suddenly realized that the complaining was something that simply came with the territory. She suspected Shanna had been right, that the level of love and respect they all felt for Nell would make them all willing to walk over hot coals for her. Being on this committee might be a chore for them, but it was a more welcome responsibility than they’d ever let on.

Just then Bree turned to her. “You’ve really never been involved in planning any sort of community event?” she asked as if such a thing were unthinkable.

“Never,” Kiera told her. “Back home, I never had the time. I tried to take Moira and her brothers to festivals and the like, but there were so many temptations and there were times when money was too tight for me to give them even those small trinkets or treats.”

“Then we’re going to make sure this is a wonderful experience for you,” Bree vowed. “If there’s one thing that Chesapeake Shores knows how to do right, it’s our special events. You’ll see on the Fourth of July. And the fall festival is even more amazing, especially since Gram decided to shake it up a little. I think even she was stunned at how well the kissing booth and the dancing went over last year. We’re really going to have to use our imaginations to top that.”

The mention of the kissing booth sent Kiera’s imagination soaring off once again to the feel of Bryan’s lips on hers, albeit fleetingly, the previous night. She stood hurriedly before anyone thought to question the sudden flush in her cheeks.

“I’ll see you all in the morning, then,” she said.

She heard a few murmurs about her abrupt departure, but in her haste to go, it barely registered that the woman who’d just come in Sally’s door was Nell.





Chapter 13



After waiting for Kiera to leave, Nell crossed Sally’s and stared into the upturned faces of her granddaughter and the wives of two of her grandsons and saw suspicion written all over them.