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  Vanita made a face and set down the chip she was about to bite into. “Ew.”

  “Ew is right,” Jenna agreed. “But I’m feeling bloodthirsty tonight so I’ll drink to that. I think that one’s your winner,” she said to her sister.

  Celeste shook her head. “Oh, no. I can do better than that.”

  “Go for it,” urged Brittany.

  Celeste’s smile turned wicked. “May his ‘paintbrush’ shrivel and fall off.”

  “And to think you teach children,” Jenna said, rolling her eyes.

  Nonetheless, the double entendre had them all laughing uproariously.

  “Okay, I win the chocolate,” Celeste said.

  “You haven’t given Jenna a chance,” pointed out Brittany.

  “Go ahead, try and beat that,” Celeste said, waving the chocolate bar in front of Jenna.

  “I can’t. It’s yours.”

  Their waiter, a cute twentysomething Latino, came over. “Are you ladies ready for another drink?”

  “We’d better eat,” Jenna said. Her mojito was going to her head.

  Celeste overrode her. “We’ve got plenty of night left. Bring us more drinks,” she told the waiter. “And more chips.” She held up the empty bowl.

  “Anything you ladies want,” he said, and smiled at Jenna.

  Celeste nudged her as he walked away. “Did you hear that? Anything you want.”

  “Not in the market,” Jenna said firmly, shaking her head and making the sombrero wobble. Tonight she hated men.

  But, she decided, she did like mojitos, and her second one went down just fine.

  So did the third. Olé.

  * * *

  Saturday morning, she woke up with gremlins sandblasting her brain and her mouth tasting like she’d feasted on cat litter instead of enchiladas. She rolled out of bed and staggered to the bathroom where she tried to silence the gremlins with aspirin and a huge glass of water. Then she made the mistake of looking in the mirror.

  Ugh. Who was that woman with the ratty, long, blond-gone hair? Her bloodshot eyes were more red than blue and the circles under them made her look a decade older than what she’d just turned. Well, she felt a decade older than what she’d just turned.

  A shower would help. Maybe.

  Or maybe not. She still didn’t look so hot, even after she’d blown out her hair and put on some makeup. But, oh, well. At least the gremlins had taken a lunch break.

  She got in her ten-year-old Toyota (thank God they made those cars to run forever—this one would have to) and drove to her mother’s house to pick up her daughter.

  She found her mother stretched out on the couch with a romance novel. Unlike Jenna, Melody Jones, Mel to her friends, looked rested, refreshed and ready for a new day. In her early sixties, she was still an attractive woman, slender with a youthful face and the gray hairs well hidden under a sandy brown that was only slightly lighter than her original color.

  “Hello, birthday girl,” Mel greeted her. “Did you have fun last night?”

  As the night wore on Jenna had been distracted from her misery. That probably counted as fun, so she said, “Yes.”

  “Looks like you could use some coffee,” Mel said, and led her into the kitchen.

  “How’s my baby?” Jenna asked.

  “She’s good. She just got in the shower. We stayed up late last night.”

  Jenna settled at the kitchen table. “What did she think of your taste in movies?”

  “She was impressed, naturally. Every girl should have to watch Pretty in Pink and Jane Eyre.”

  “And?” Jenna prompted.

  “Okay, so I showed her Grease. It’s a classic.”

  “About hoods and hoes.”

  “I don’t know how you can say that about an iconic movie,” Mom said. “Anyway, I explained a few things to her, so it came with a moral.”

  “What? You, too, can look like Olivia Newton-John?”

  Mel shrugged. “Something like that. Now, tell me. What all did you girls do?”

  “Not much. We just went out for dinner.”

  “Dinner is nice,” Mel said, and set a cup of coffee in front of Jenna. She pulled a bottle of Jenna’s favorite caramel-flavored creamer from the fridge and set it on the table, watching while Jenna poured in a generous slosh. “I know this is going to be the beginning of a wonderful new year for you.”

  “I have no way to go but up.”

  “That’s right. And you know…”

  “Every storm brings a rainbow,” Jenna finished with her.

  “I firmly believe that.”

  “And you should know.” She’d had her share of storms. “I don’t know how you did it,” Jenna said. “Surviving losing Dad when we were so young, raising us single-handedly.”

  “Hardly single-handedly. I had Gram and Gramps and Grandma and Grandpa Jones, as well. Yes, we each have to fight our own fight, but God always puts someone in our corner to help us.”

  “I’m glad you’re in my corner,” Jenna said. “You’re my hero.”

  Jenna had been almost five and Celeste a baby when their father had been killed in a car accident. It had been sudden, no chance for her mom to say goodbye. There was little that Jenna remembered about her father beyond sitting on his shoulders when they milled with the crowd at the Puyallup Fair or stood watching the Seafair parade in downtown Seattle, that and the scrape of his five-o’clock shadow when he kissed her good-night.

  What stuck in her mind most was her mom, holding her on her lap, sitting at this very kitchen table and saying to Gram, “He was my everything.”

  That read well in books, but maybe in real life it wasn’t good to make a man your everything. Even the good ones left you.

  At least her dad hadn’t left voluntarily. Her mom had chosen a good man. So had Gram, whose husband was also gone now. Both women had picked wisely and knew what good looked like.

  Too bad Jenna hadn’t listened to them when they tried to warn her about Damien. “Honey, there’s no hurry,” her mom had said.

  Yes, there was. She’d wanted to be with him now.

  “Are you sure he’s what you really want?” Gram had asked. “He seems a little…”

  “What?” Jenna had prompted.

  “Egotistical,” Gram had ventured.

  “He’s confident,” Jenna had replied. “There’s a difference.”

  “Yes, there is,” Gram had said. “Are you sure you know what it is?” she’d added, making Jenna scowl.

  “I’m just not sure he’s the right man for you,” Mel had worried.

  “Of course he is,” Jenna had insisted, because at twenty-three she knew it all. And Damien had been so glamorous, so exciting. Look how well their names went together—Damien and Jenna, Jenna and Damien. Oh, yes, perfect.

  And so it was for a time…until she began to see the flaws. Gram had been right: he was egotistical. Narcissistic. Irresponsible. Those flaws she could live with. Those she did live with. But then came the one flaw she couldn’t accept. Unfaithful.

  Not that he’d asked her to accept it. Not that he’d asked her to keep him. Or even to forgive him. “I can’t help how I feel,” he’d said.

  That was it. Harsh reality came in like a strong wind and blew away the last of the fantasy.

  But here was Melody Jones, living proof that a woman could survive the loss of her love, could climb out of the rubble after all her dreams collapsed and rebuild her life. She’d worked hard at a job that kept her on her feet all day and had still managed to make PTA meetings. She’d hosted tea parties when her girls were little and sleepovers when they became teenagers. And, in between all that, she’d managed to make time for herself, starting a book club with some of the neighbors. That book club still met every month. And her mom still found time for sleepovers, now with her granddaughter.

  Surely, if she could overcome the loss of her man, Jenna could overcome the loss of what she’d thought her man was.

  Mel smiled at her and slid a card-size
envelope across the table. “Happy birthday.”

  “You already gave me my birthday present,” Jenna said. Her mother had given her a motivational book about new beginnings by Muriel Sterling with a fifty-dollar bill tucked inside. Jenna would read the book (once she was ready to face the fact that she did, indeed, have to make a new beginning) and she planned to hoard the fifty like a miser. You could buy a lot of lentils and beans with fifty bucks.

  “This isn’t from me. It’s from your aunt Edie.”

  “Aunt Edie?”

  She hadn’t seen her great-aunt in years, but she had fond memories of those childhood summer visits with her at Moonlight Harbor—beachcombing for agates, baking cookies with Aunt Edie while her parrot, Jolly Roger, squawked all the silly things Uncle Ralph had taught him, listening to the waves crash as she lay in the old antique bed in the guest room at night with her sister. She remembered digging clams with Uncle Ralph, sitting next to her mother in front of a roaring beach fire, using her arm to shield her face from the heat of the flame as she roasted a hot dog. Those visits had been as golden as the sunsets.

  But after getting together with Damien, life had filled with drama and responsibilities, and after one quick visit, the beach town on the Washington coast had faded into a memory. Maybe she’d say to heck with the lentils and beans, spend that birthday money Mom had given her and go see Aunt Edie.

  She pulled the card out of the envelope. All pastel flowers and birds, the outside read For a Lovely Niece. The inside had a sappy poem telling her she was special and wishing her joy in everything she did, and was signed, Love, Aunt Edie. No Uncle Ralph. He’d been gone for several years.

  Aunt Edie had stuffed a letter inside the card. The writing was small but firm.

  Dear Jenna,

  I know you’ve gone through some very hard times, but I also know that like all the women in our family, you are strong and you’ll come through just fine.

  Your grandmother told me you could use a new start and I would like to give it to you. I want you to come to Moonlight Harbor and help me revamp and run the Driftwood Inn. Like me, it’s getting old and it needs some help. I plan to bequeath it to you on my death. The will is already drawn up, signed and witnessed, so I hope you won’t refuse my offer.

  Of course, I know your cousin Winston would love to get his grubby mitts on it, but he won’t. The boy is useless. And besides, you know I’ve always had a soft spot for you in my heart. You’re a good girl who’s always been kind enough to send Christmas cards and homemade fudge for my birthday. Uncle Ralph loved you like a daughter. So do I, and since we never had children of our own you’re the closest thing I have to one. I know your mother and grandmother won’t mind sharing.

  Please say you’ll come.

  Love, Aunt Edie

  Jenna hardly knew what to say. “She wants to leave me the motel.” She had to be misreading.

  She checked again. No, there it was, in Aunt Edie’s tight little scrawl.

  Her mom smiled. “I think this could be your rainbow.”

  Not just the rainbow, the pot of gold, as well!

  © Roberts Ink LLC 2018

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  WELCOME TO MOONLIGHT HARBOR

  The first in Sheila Robert’s brand new

  Moonlight Harbor series,

  coming soon from MIRA Books.

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  ISBN-13: 9781488097508

  SAME TIME, NEXT YEAR

  Copyright © 1995 by Debbie Macomber

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