Secret under the Stars: Lucky Stars Series Book 3 Read online

  She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. Nothing much in Endicott was reminiscent of her childhood, really. Sure, some of the shops on Water Street that she remembered were still there. But Barton’s Bookstore had rearranged its shelves and done away with its music section entirely, and there was a coffee bar at the back that hadn’t been there before. The ice-cream shop next door to it had newer, trendier flavors. The waitresses at the diner wore jeans and Deb’s Downtown Diner T-shirts now instead of the retro waitress livery they used to wear. None of those places was the way she remembered them. None of them was the same.

  But she wasn’t the same, either. And neither was Max. Marcy may have come home again, but this wasn’t her home anymore. Nor was Côtes de Provence. Or Manhattan, where she’d lived when she was in college, and where she’d been couch-surfing with what few friends she still had there since leaving France a year ago. And San Francisco seemed so long ago now. But it had never felt like home. She’d been too raw during the time she spent there, still missing the place where she grew up and all the friends and familiarity she’d left behind in Indiana.

  She shook her head. Marcella Robillard would be ashamed of Marcy Hanlon preferring small-town Indiana over the thrill of a buzzing metropolis or European countryside. So Marcy told her to please just be quiet and let a girl get some sleep.

  * * *

  Marcy was still a little dream-hungover and haunted by visions of Max when she went downstairs for breakfast in the room her mother had always referred to as “the salon.” Back then, it was a room she’d only seen used when her parents were hosting parties, or on Christmas morning, when the loot from Santa for the four Hanlon children had been enough to satisfy the population of a small sovereign nation. Now it was dotted with tables covered in white linen and filled with strangers enjoying the generous continental breakfast buffet. Her mother would be horrified. But Marcy had to admit the croissants looked delicious.

  She filled a plate and was lucky enough to sidle up to a table just as its occupants were leaving. A busboy quickly cleared the used dishes, and after a quick thank-you, Marcy set her phone on the table next to her plate to read the morning headlines. But it was only a moment before a pair of heavy work boots poking out from under faded blue jeans entered her line of vision beneath the table. Presumably, they belonged to someone who expected her to share because it was a four-seater she was hogging to herself. Fine. She’d share the table with a stranger in a room where she’d once had free rein to do whatever she wanted.

  When she looked up, however, it wasn’t a stranger who had approached the table. Well, not a literal one. It was Max, who had also filled a plate with pastries and fruit and held a steaming mug of coffee. In addition to the boots and jeans, he was wearing a sage-green T-shirt bearing the logo for Travers Landscaping and Design. It was just light enough in color, and just snug enough in fit, that she could make out luscious bumps of muscle beneath. It was all she could do to keep herself from reaching out to strum her fingers along every one of them.

  She suddenly felt overdressed in her sky-blue tunic and striped palazzo pants. Though, admittedly, that wasn’t really the reason she was thinking about taking them off. In a word, Ahem.

  “Mind if I sit down?” he asked a little sheepishly.

  He did the one-shoulder-shrug thing again, an action she could recall now from their youth. His shirt sleeves today were too long for her to make out even a tiny bit of the tattoo she knew lingered beneath one of them. But that wasn’t the reason she was thinking about taking his clothes off, either. Ahem.

  “Place is pretty crowded,” he pointed out unnecessarily. “Not many places to sit.”

  “Of course,” Marcy said, gesturing toward the chair across from her. “I didn’t realize you were a guest here?” she added when she realized the significance of his appearance. “Are you not living in Endicott anymore?”

  It seemed a ridiculous question in light of the fact that he had a business here, but maybe someone else managed it for him, and he lived somewhere else now and was only in town periodically. She’d simply assumed he was still a resident. She couldn’t imagine Endicott without him.

  “Oh, I still live here,” he said as he settled into his seat. “I bought the old Lambert place out on Route Forty-two a few years ago and have been fixing it up.”

  Marcy knew the farm well. Everyone in Endicott did. The whole Lambert family had been regular fixtures at the Saturday farmers’ market when she was a kid. And, during peach season, she’d often gone to the farm with her mother for fresh peaches. She recalled that the house had been pretty run-down back then, but there had been a lot of land surrounding it. The property couldn’t have come cheaply. Just another example of Max profiting off the things he’d stolen from her family.

  She bit back her anger and strove for a lightheartedness she was nowhere close to feeling. “I remember the Lambert farm. Are the orchards still there?”

  He nodded as he speared a strawberry with his fork. “Peaches and apples, both.”

  “Must be a lot of work trying to run a business and a farm.”

  “Oh, I don’t farm the land,” he told her. “Nothing’s been planted since Mr. and Mrs. Lambert retired and moved to Arizona to be closer to their daughter. I’m rewilding the place.”

  “Rewilding?” she asked. “What’s that?”

  “It’s letting the forces of nature return the land to its natural state over time. I just leave it alone and let it do its own thing, including the orchards. And they’re still thriving pretty well all by themselves.”

  “What happens to all the fruit? Does it just rot?”

  He looked at her as if she’d just sprouted a third eye. “Of course not. I wouldn’t let all that deliciousness go to waste. Everybody in town knows they can come out and pick whatever they want when there’s fruit on the trees.” Now he smiled, igniting little fires deep in Marcy’s midsection. “That’s a perfectly natural way to manage the land.”

  “You just give all the fruit away?” she asked incredulously. Maybe he couldn’t get rich off a few dozen trees, but there was still money to be made with them.

  He seemed confused by her response. “Sure. I can’t eat all that. The gate’s always open for whoever wants to come out.”

  Well, that wasn’t very greedy or horrible of him. And he had to be greedy and horrible, considering what he’d done to her family.

  She forced her mind back to the matter at hand. “Then what are you doing here eating breakfast?”

  “I always have breakfast here before I go to work here. Perk of the contract I signed with the historical society.”

  It took her a moment to understand. “You still take care of the grounds.”

  He nodded. Then he smiled again. Marcy tried not to spontaneously combust. Then, softly, he said, “I still take care of your garden, Marcy.”

  Heat bubbled inside her. But all she said was “It was never my garden. It belonged to my father.”

  “I don’t know,” Max said. “You sure seemed to spend a lot of time in it. I still think about you sometimes when I’m there. And I’ve planted more of the flowers you liked best.”

  How did he even know what kind of flowers she liked? She’d never even given them much thought.

  “There are more lobelias than there used to be,” he continued, “because the Gibraltar azaleas your dad insisted on having near them aren’t great to grow here. The soil’s too acidic. And the ash trees can’t survive here anymore with the emerald ash borer, so I replaced them with more pink dogwoods. All the exotic plants are gone, in fact. The historical society wanted the garden to have plants that were indigenous to the area and time when the house was built, and I was totally on board with that. I planted more sweet william, too.”

  The more he spoke, the more Marcy’s mouth dropped open. He was right, she recalled now. Her father may have been superstrict about how the garden looked and was laid out, but he’d never forbidden any of them from going in there, as long as they didn’t run wild and make a mess of it. Marcy remembered now how much she’d liked to read there. On a bench near the lobelias. Or in the shade of the pink dogwood. Both of which she had always loved. And the sweet william? She’d been charmed by their colors and always picked one to tuck behind her ear whenever she was near them, being careful to remove it before she went back inside so her father wouldn’t know of her transgression.

  How could Max have remembered all that when she hadn’t even remembered it herself until he reminded her of it?

  As if reading her mind, he said, “I remember a lot of things, Marcy. And every time I come here to work, they all come tumbling back.”

  She shook her head slowly. The way he was looking at her now, over the rim of his coffee cup, his smoky gray-blue eyes full of...something... Something she told herself she shouldn’t try to figure out, because the way he was looking at her now...

  He sipped his coffee slowly, savored it, then lowered the cup back to the table. And never once did his gaze leave hers. A tsunami of feelings began churning inside her, spinning faster and faster until she began to feel light-headed. Thankfully, he finally looked down at his plate to stab a chunk of pineapple with his fork, and the moment was gone.

  “So what brings you back to town?” he asked as he lifted the pineapple toward his mouth. “Is it just the comet festival? Or is there another reason?”

  And why did he seem to have an ulterior motive with that last question? And if he did, then just what, exactly, was that motive?

  Oh, what the hell, Marcy thought. She might as well just go ahead and tell him why she was back in town. Not the real reason, of course. Not the part about unmasking his thievery and making him pay. And not the part about needing the wish she’d made when she was fifteen to come true. She’d just tell him the pretense she’d created, the one she planned to tell everyone in town who asked about her return so that no one would question her true motives. The one that she was kind of halfway thinking she might actually do.

  “I’m writing a book,” she told Max. “About Comet Bob’s regular visits to Endicott and the wishes he’s granted over the years. And I’m hoping it sells like hotcakes.”

  Chapter Three

  Max was surprised by Marcy’s announcement, even though he knew he shouldn’t have been. Back when they’d worked on their school essay together, she’d talked a lot about how much she wanted to be a writer someday. Then he wondered why she hadn’t started writing before now, especially since she’d studied literature in college and, from what he’d learned about her during their conversation yesterday, seemed to have been living a life for years that would have been conducive to that. He guessed, like so many things in life, the timing just had to be right. And with Bob returning to the place where she grew up, it made perfect sense for her to start writing now and tell the comet’s story. He kind of wondered, too, why no one else had done it before now.

  “That’s a great idea,” he said. “You’re the perfect person to do it.”

  She smiled at that, but there was something a little strained in the gesture. She still seemed to be nervous about something, still didn’t seem to want to let him get too close. And something told him it wasn’t just because the passage of time had wedged too much space between them.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I thought so, too.”

  When she didn’t elaborate, he asked, “Is it going to be fiction or nonfiction?”

  She opened her mouth to reply, but hesitated. Then she closed it again and reached for her coffee. After a thoughtful swallow, she finally said, “I’m not sure yet. At first, I thought nonfiction. Talk about the comet’s history and my own experiences with Bob’s last return when we were fifteen, and how it is or isn’t different this time. I was going to interview other comet kids who were born before us about what it was like for them in their day and whether or not their wishes came true. And I figured I’d talk to some of our classmates about their experiences and wishes last time and whether or not they came true this year.

  “What did you wish for fifteen years ago, Max?”

  Although Max should have seen that question coming, it threw him totally off-kilter.

  Yeah, no. There was no way he was going to tell Marcy that. Mostly because—duh—he didn’t want her to know how he felt about her, then or now. But also because no one had ever really decided whether or not revealing the wish diminished its possibility of coming true. Sure, he and Chance and Felix had all always known what each other wished for. But that was because they were best friends. None of them had ever told anyone else what they wished for, save Chance’s older brother, who was pretty much just an extension of Chance. Now Both Chance and Felix had seen their wishes come true in one way or another. Max hadn’t yet. So he wasn’t going to jinx it by telling anyone anything.

  “I’m not saying,” he said, hoping his smile was mysterious and not miserable, the way it felt.

  She nodded, her own smile perceptive. “Meaning your wish hasn’t come true this year.”

  “Not yet,” he countered. “But the festival isn’t over for another week. And the year isn’t over for more than three months.” Then he turned the tables. “What did you wish for, Marcy?”

  Her smile dropped and she dodged his gaze. “I’m not saying, either.”

  This time, Max was the one to nod. “Meaning your wish hasn’t come true, either.”

  “Not yet,” she echoed, reestablishing eye contact. “Like you said. There’s still time.”

  He suddenly wanted very much to know what Marcy wished for fifteen years ago. What did a girl who already had everything ask a wish-granting comet to bring her? She hadn’t needed money or friends. She hadn’t needed good looks or good fortune. So she couldn’t have wanted any of those things. Just what had a fifteen-year-old Marcy Hanlon wanted back then? Max couldn’t begin to imagine.

  “Well, if you need any help with your book, let me know. Chance and Felix both got their wishes granted already.”

  This revelation seemed to both surprise and delight her. “Really? How?”

  “Chance wished for a million dollars, which he recently inherited from his brother.”

  Marcy sobered. “Oh, wow, I didn’t realize Logan passed away.”

  “No one did until a couple weeks ago,” Max told her. “He left town before Chance graduated and never made contact with anyone again. Chance also inherited Logan’s two kids.”

  “Double wow. That must be a life-changer for him.”

  “Definitely,” Max agreed. “Felix and I are going over to his place tonight to meet them. They have a temporary guardian with them for now, but Chance is going to be on his own after she’s gone.” He grinned. “He’s trying to convince the guardian to stay in town for a while longer. Though that may not be entirely just because she’s good with the kids.”

  “So what did Felix wish for?” Marcy asked.

  Max’s grin broadened. “He wished that something interesting would happen in Endicott.”

  Marcy chuckled. “Oh, now that must have been a really tough one for Bob to grant.”

  She wasn’t exaggerating. As nice as Endicott was, and as much as Max had always loved living here, it had never been the most exciting place in the world, comet festival notwithstanding. It hadn’t even been the most surprising. Or, you know, the most interesting.

  Max said, “A couple months ago, a woman came to town and bought the storefront next to Felix’s restaurant.”

  “And in what way is that interesting?” Marcy asked.

  “She’s easily the most interesting woman in the world. She’s a Rhodes scholar, and a sharpshooter who qualified for the Olympics, and a former aerialist for Cirque du Soleil. She climbed Mount Kilimanjaro... The list goes on and on. Also, Felix has developed a major thing for her.”

  Marcy gaped at that. “Felix Suarez? The guy who never dated a girl for more than a month when we were kids? The guy who, if memory serves, was in fact stringing along three girls at one time the last time I saw him? And none of them minded about the others?”

  “That’s the one,” he assured her.

  “How many girls is he dating now?”

  “None,” Max said with a laugh. “He hasn’t dated anyone since Rory moved in next door.”

  “Not even Rory?”

  Max shook his head. “Nope. She wants nothing to do with him.”

  Marcy sat back in her chair, clearly impressed. “That is interesting.”

  “So you might want to talk to them about your book.”

  “I definitely will, if I keep it nonfiction.”

  “So you might write a novel then?”

  “Like I said, I don’t know yet. It could make for a good story.”

  A moment followed in which neither of them seemed to know what to say next. So they only nibbled at their breakfast and studied each other in silence, each seeming to find their meal way more enjoyable than it actually was.

  Finally, after Marcy had finished the last of her croissant, she asked, “So what else has changed in Endicott since I was last here?”

  Max wanted to tell her that everything had changed after she left. Because, for him, at least, everything had. Despite the fact that the two of them hadn’t been particularly close, nothing had really felt right without her in town. There had just been something...different. About everything.

  So he lied and told her, “Nothing, really. I mean, your house, obviously,” he amended, gesturing around the room. “And me buying Mr. Bartok’s business and the Lambert farm. And Chance has a house now, too, in the same neighborhood where your friend Amanda lived when we were in school. Felix’s grandmother passed away a couple years ago, so he’s taken over the restaurant, and that’s going really well—he’s won some big awards. There are a few new shops on Water Street that weren’t there before. Kickapoo Park is now named after Mrs. Barclay’s late husband, but everyone still calls it Kickapoo Park. They tore down the drive-in and built a spa there...”