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  “Oh, I get that now. Sorry. Okay. Right, I’m asking my best pal Erica and not the stunning Queen.”

  “Queen Gudgeon.”

  “Didn’t say that.” And he hadn’t. Again, it gave her hope.

  “Okay…Pal,” she tried to drop her voice like a guy friend and earned a bark of laughter. “This here Erica lady, she ain’t no princess or a queen. She’s just a woman with a head for business.” And a body and a heart that can’t be with anyone else but you. “Can you imagine wanting to be with someone other than her? Ever?”

  “Huh,” Ridley grunted. He dropped back in his chair. Now it was his turn to inspect the sky and the town and every damn where else other than looking at her. How did a guy get to do that, but she couldn’t? Something genetic that didn’t seem fair.

  But then he looked right at her. He slouched in the chair and stuck his legs partway out into the carruggio, doing his first night of arrival bad-boy act perfectly.

  “You know, Erica old pal…”

  “What?”

  He just smiled at her.

  “Rid-ley!”

  “Remember, dumb but not stupid.”

  “Or the other way around,” she snarled at him.

  “Or the other way around. Either way, I’m not dumb enough that I think I can ever meet anyone I want to spend my life with even half as much as you. Maybe not even a tenth…old pal.”

  It took her a second to unscramble that the most important words of her life were being spoken by a man slouched in a chair and teasing her.

  Then he jumped to his feet and knelt in front of her.

  “As for Erica Barnett,” his voice was suddenly soft as he took her hands. “If you marry me, I’ll do my damnedest to make you happy every single day of our lives.”

  All of her words were gone. Or perhaps all the ones that mattered had been spoken.

  Queen Erica, descended from her tower, answered her Prince Ridley with the softest kiss, and a gentle spill of tears.

  Epilogue

  The wedding had been a grand affair in the middle of the carruggio, spilling a long way up and down the street.

  Emilio and Leon had cooked. Bridget and Hal had filled in the edges of the feast. And Max had provided the gelato for dessert.

  They’d also put a serious dent in the town’s wine production for the year.

  Ridley hadn’t noticed Marissa slipping out of the crowd early, arm-in-arm with Vanessa the lovely baker, but Erica did. She saw them go and decided that they made a fantastically striking couple.

  There was so much to be done that a long weekend cruising on Ridley’s big motorcycle was all the honeymoon they’d wanted. He’d taken her north, past Genoa, to the old towns of Dolceacqua and Apricale. Monet and others since had loved the light there, many paintings had been inspired by that soft light on the river. They’d walked hand-in-hand through the extensive carruggios, older and far more twisted than Corniglia’s or the others in Cinque Terre. They’d eaten the gelato, watched the swallows soar above the river at dusk, and made love.

  But all it had really done was prove that they were coming home as they rolled down the steep winding road into Corniglia. Though the honeymoon had been short, it still seemed too long to be away.

  Ridley rolled up to the back of the café and let the thudding of the bike fade away.

  “Good to be home,” Erica whispered.

  “Good to have a home to come back to,” Ridley agreed.

  Erica rounded the corner of the building and stumbled to a stop so abruptly that Ridley almost toppled her over when he plowed into her from behind.

  She peered in, but something was wrong. Everything was wrong.

  “Are you seeing this?” Ridley whispered.

  “I don’t know.” Erica actually pinched herself, but nothing changed.

  The four tiny tables along the edge of the carruggio were now two larger rectangular tables with a bench along the café’s front wall and chairs lined up facing inward.

  From inside came the roar of a soccer game in full swing. Two big televisions were showing a World Cup game and the tables were packed. Max and Cedric were there. Tomas waved from a back corner where he sat across from Bartolo.

  She glanced back out the door, but Emilio’s restaurant was right where it should be. Claire’s shop was next door.

  “Why would they remodel?” Ridley asked.

  She could only crush his hand in hers for strength as they stepped over the threshold together.

  Erica stopped him a few steps into the café.

  “I don’t think they remodeled, Ridley.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The counter was now a bar. The menu was changed to more typical tourist fare: spaghetti with meatballs, and pizza.

  And no ceramic dog sat atop the counter or real one beside it.

  Erica pointed at the top of the menu board. “Not Il Cane. Il Gatto. The cat.”

  Before Ridley could say anything, a young Italian woman came up to them and asked in passable English, “You are being Erica and Ripley?”

  “Ridley.”

  “Scusi. I have lettera for you. Un momento.” She crossed to the bar and shouted over the soccer game to a man, who definitely wasn’t Hal and didn’t wear a tie, in a rapid string of Italian. She proudly bore back a letter. “I thinked it was you from how you described.” Then she hurried off.

  Erica opened it slowly and was simply glad that it didn’t go off in her hand like a bomb.

  A key slid out of the folded letter and dropped into her palm. She handed it to Ridley, then began reading the letter aloud.

  My dearest Erica and Ridley,

  “Must be Conrad,” Ridley looked over her shoulder.

  She flipped it over. It was. She turned it back and kept reading though each word seemed to catch in her throat.

  I am called off to another locale. I shall greatly miss my friends of Corniglia.

  Remember, if you ever truly need something, you have but to ask. Someone will hear you and be glad to provide.

  Though I doubt I shall return, if I should, it will be a privilege to purchase a bottle of your wine. I know it will not disappoint as it is not in either of you to fail—neither the wines nor one another.

  I have taken the small liberty of gifting you as a wedding present what I believe shall be an ideal location for your new shop and winery just two doors past Emilio’s restaurant. It has some lovely rooms above, sufficient for you and your future family. The bells of the towns sound particularly lovely from the top floor.

  Erica had to lean against Ridley for just a moment for strength. The tightness of his grip said that he felt the same. That one element—the proper winery and storefront—had eluded them but there was no doubting that if Conrad had chosen it, it would be perfect.

  I also took the liberty of shifting your effects there. Among Ridley’s I found a rather curiously engraved lock. I have used this to secure the door of your new business.

  “That’s why I couldn’t figure out the logo,” Erica said in surprise.

  “You forgot to put yourself in the picture,” Ridley held her close and made her feel so safe because he knew even that about her.

  She kissed his cheek. “It’s better than it being on the Via dell’Amore.”

  His smile agreed and was all for her.

  Erica sighed happily, and turned to read the back of the one-sheet letter.

  It has been an honor and a privilege. And I pass on Bridget’s heartfelt thanks for your kind assistance in managing my affairs.

  “They’re gone too,” Ridley whispered on a rough tone.

  Ciao,

  Conrad

  “Do you think they know?” Erica asked, nodding toward the people in the room. They acted as if the bar had always been here and the café had never existed.

  “I’d rather not ask and find out.” Then he glanced up at the ceiling. “Though I guess I wouldn’t be too surprised if we find that our old rooms are no longer there. Look.” He point
ed out the window.

  Erica turned in time to see a bright pink Ferrari as its engine purred to life. It was parked with its back to them. The top was down. The high seat backs mostly hid the occupants. But the driver had long brunette hair that flowed over her shoulders and the passenger was tall.

  Then, just as the car rolled off into the night, she could swear that she saw Snoop’s head stick up between the seats to look back at them.

  They held each other’s hands tightly as they went over to join Marissa and Vanessa at a small table. Hugs were offered and congratulations repeated.

  But the talk of the night was about the soccer game on the television, their honeymoon, and the wine. Not the strangely altered café.

  Erica pulled Ridley down to her and kissed him. She let herself get momentarily lost in the head-spinning power and the perfectly centering wonder of his kiss.

  Then she held him close as he whispered in her ear.

  “It makes perfect sense. The princess came down from her tower and married the court fool—”

  “Who turned out to be a prince in disguise.”

  “—and the tower melted away because it was no longer needed.”

  “We’re home,” she whispered in her husband’s ear.

  “We’re home,” he assured her with all his heart.

  And she was. She would miss Bridget. She’d miss Hal’s ties and scratching Snoop’s head. But life still rippled through the heart of Corniglia, the center of the “Five Earths.”

  Here she and Ridley would have a business and the finest wine. Here she would have friends and family. And they’d have children.

  Here she would have her very own prince and there would be love for as long as they both should live.

  * * *

  (Don’t miss the adventure of Love Abroad B&B #1 “Heart of the Cotswolds: England” or the complete series of Eagle Cove set in small town Oregon. Turn the page for an excerpt.)

  Return to Eagle Cove (excerpt)

  If you enjoy the Love Aboard series, you’ll love a trip to Eagle Cove

  Return to Eagle Cove (excerpt)

  (Friday Morning)

  “Almost home, sweetie.”

  “Oh joy,” Jessica Baxter tried to clamp down on her sarcasm. It was a bad habit that worked fine in her social set back in Chicago, but sounded more petty with each mile they drove toward the Oregon Coast. She slumped down in the passenger seat of her mom’s baby-blue Toyota hybrid. It still had that new car smell. As much as she’d dreamed of owning a hot sports car some day, she knew that she was enough her mother’s daughter that this was probably the exact sort of eminently sensible car she would buy when her VW Beetle finally gave up the ghost.

  Just like her mom.

  Maybe she’d get it in red to be at least a little different.

  Jessica sighed again, keeping it to herself so that she wasn’t being overly offensive. Her mother was one of the many reasons that she’d gone as far away as possible for college and did her best to rarely return—she didn’t want to turn into her mother and it was too easy to imagine doing so if she’d stayed in the small town of Eagle Cove, Oregon.

  They were like twins separated by twenty-two years. The two of them had been able to trade clothes since Jessica hit puberty and had shot up to match her mother’s slender five-foot-ten. Other than a very brief mistake of dying her hair black as part of a tenth-grade dare, which had turned her fair complexion past goth and into bloodless vampire, they were both light blond.

  The one part of twin-dom that she couldn’t seem to pull off even though she wanted to was Mom’s casual-chic. Monica Baxter was always dressed one step above the world around her; not fancy, just really well put together. The closest Jessica ever managed was Bohemian-chic which wasn’t really the same thing, but she’d learned to make it her own. Of course, Bohemian was easier on the budget and often available in consignment stores which had only reinforced her chosen style.

  Jessica did her best to not regress as they drove up into the Coast Range that separated the beach towns from the rest of Oregon…and failed miserably at that as well. She felt as if she was rapidly descending back toward being a pouty, pre-pubescent twelve from her present urban and worldly thirty-two.

  Why did crossing the Oregon state line always take twenty years off her intelligence?

  Maybe it was only Coast County. Because of the landscape the Oregon Coast felt incredibly far from anywhere. The Coast Range topped out at a mere four thousand feet high, but only a half dozen passes made it through the three hundred mile range of rugged hills that separated the beaches from the broad farming and industrial realm of the Willamette Valley. The interior of the state might as well be in a whole other country for how little it had in common with where she’d grown up.

  “It’s so strange being back here,” Jessica rolled down the window and sniffed at the air. The scents were so rich and varied that they tickled. Bright with pine. Musty with undergrowth. Damp. A first hint of the sea.

  “Well, it has been four years, honey. That’s bound to make it seem a bit odd. But I’m so glad that you came.”

  “Me too, Mom.” Better. She managed to say it as if she meant it, however unlikely that might be. Chicago fit her like a…but it didn’t. The city was…something she was not going to give a single thought to for the next eight days. If she didn’t fit there and she didn’t want to fit in Eagle Cove, Oregon, then where did she belong?

  Jessica breathed in deeply this time, trying to clear her thoughts with the fresh air of the Coast Range and nearly choked herself on how green everything smelled. The harsh slap of the mountains was almost an affront. The two-lane road dove and twisted along narrow corridors sliced through towering spruce and Douglas fir trees. The babies were sixty feet high along the shoulder as the car twisted up toward the pass; the mother trees behind them were much, much bigger.

  And it wasn’t just the trees that were lush. As they wound deeper into the Coast Range, each branch became covered with mosses and lichens. It soothed her eyes, so used to towering concrete and glass, with a living tapestry of greens, golds, and silvers. Beneath the trees grew an impenetrable tangle of salal and scrub alder. Old barns on the roadside didn’t have shingle roofs, they had moss ones; some of them were covered inches thick. Many RVs, left unattended in front yards for too long, had a sheen of green growth on their north side.

  “I really want to hate this,” the Coast Range had three times the rainfall of Chicago, often surpassing a hundred inches a year. She expected to feel the weight of all that biomass crashing down on her shoulders, but instead she noticed the start of a disconcerting lightness as if coming home was a good thing. Jessica did not like that encroachment of pending appreciation, perhaps even enjoyment, upon her true feelings. “But it smells so good. Like sunshine and new growth.”

  Her mother’s laugh was amused as they twisted along the two-lane road slowly climbing up a narrow valley.

  “I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”

  “But you said it anyway.”

  “Not helping, Mom.”

  Thankfully her mother’s laugh said that she had understood Jessica’s response as a tease. Which it mostly was, partly.

  Jessica didn’t want to like coming back to the coast. She didn’t have small-town dreams. That was the main reason she’d left Eagle Cove. She had big city dreams…which weren’t exactly coming together for her despite her efforts over the last fourteen years. But scurrying home wasn’t going to fix those. And the selection of men in such a tiny town was, to put it kindly, pitiful. Puffin High—

  Why they hadn’t called it Eagle High in Eagle Cove was a subject of heated debate by every single class.

  Puffin High’s problem was that she knew every male her age all too well. The only reason the town had its own high school was that it was too far away from everywhere else for busing to make sense. Her senior class had just thirty-four students. Grades seven through twelve numbered under two hundred. And she knew far too much
about every single one of them.

  Even more obnoxiously invasive on her sense of right and wrong, instead of dumping rain, it was a perfect day. The sun sparkled down revealing a thousand shades of green in the living walls that lined the road. The air coming through the open window was thick with pine sap and the gentle tang of rotting undergrowth. There was so much oxygen in the air that it made her feel a little giddy.

  Yes, a perfect day, if she’d been alone…and still in Chicago.

  “I could have rented a car and saved you the drive, Mom.” Actually, her budget had been thrilled when her mother had offered to come and fetch her. Also, once in Eagle Cove there wasn’t a lot of use for a car, except when the rain poured down. The whole town was only a few miles long and she could walk most places she’d want to go. As if there were any old haunts that she’d care to revisit. She’d made good her escape to Northwestern University’s School of Journalism at eighteen but every now and then the town still sucked her back.

  “Nonsense, honey. I’m always glad to drive up and get you. Besides, I needed a few things for the wedding.”

  “How many is this?” As if she didn’t know. It took much of her journalistic skill to keep “that judgmental tone” out of her voice. Something her early teachers had dinged her on until she’d learned to eradicate it. But since she was regressing as they neared the coast, it was trying to make a comeback.

  “Number four.”

  “Why, Mom?”

  “Because I love the man.” Her mother actually glanced away from the road to offer her a scowl. “I’d have thought that was obvious.”

  “It is. But you’ve divorced him three times.”

  “Because your father can drive a woman crazy without even trying.” They giggled together because that was an absolute truth about Ralph Baxter.

  “I meant, why marry him again? You’re both legal age, your daughter lives in Chicago,” and wouldn’t complain if she lived on another planet entirely. “Just shack up together. Then you can lock the door whenever Daddy becomes too much like himself.”