No Love Like Nantucket Read online

  No Love Like Nantucket

  A Sweet Island Inn Novel (Book Four)

  Grace Palmer

  Copyright © 2020 by Grace Palmer

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Contents

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  Also by Grace Palmer

  No Love Like Nantucket

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  A Note from the Author

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  Also by Grace Palmer

  Sweet Island Inn

  No Home Like Nantucket (Book 1)

  No Beach Like Nantucket (Book 2)

  No Wedding Like Nantucket (Book 3)

  No Love Like Nantucket (Book 4)

  * * *

  Willow Beach Inn

  Just South of Paradise (Book 1)

  Just South of Perfect (Book 2)

  Just South of Sunrise (Book 3)

  No Love Like Nantucket

  She built the Sweet Island Inn. But can Toni Benson build a life of happiness for herself?

  Toni Benson’s life has been a roller coaster.

  Years ago, the heartbreak caused by a cheating ex-husband left her in tatters.

  Then she discovered the rundown fixer-upper that would become the Sweet Island Inn.

  For a while, things were good.

  But when her brother Henry’s tragic death sends her reeling all over again, she’s back to square one.

  So she sets off on an overseas journey, in hopes of learning from scratch what kind of woman she is meant to be.

  She isn’t looking for love.

  But it finds her anyway.

  Follow Toni’s journey as the Nantucket native navigates an explosive romance, an unbearable tragedy, and the prospect of starting life anew in her late fifties.

  In the end, only one thing is certain: there is no love like her love for Nantucket.

  Travel back to the very beginnings of the Sweet Island Inn and follow along with the soaring highs and heartbreaking lows of Aunt Toni’s story in NO LOVE LIKE NANTUCKET, the fourth installment of author Grace Palmer’s beloved Sweet Island Inn series.

  1

  Atlanta, Georgia—June 15, 2000

  Looking back, it was easy to see that this was the kind of day that would change her life forever.

  But at the time, it seemed to Toni Benson like it was just any other day. Just a normal Thursday in the middle of June, two weeks shy of her ninth wedding anniversary to Jared. The sun was shining; the birds were chirping; not a thing looked out of place.

  Work that day went by in a flash. She spent most of it thinking about the surprise she was planning for her husband and browsing the internet to double-check all the reservations she had made.

  She’d never been much good at keeping secrets, especially not from Jared. He was the more mysterious of the two of them, certainly. As a matter of fact, in twelve years together, she’d hardly learned much about him at all.

  He always said, with the same sort of exasperated, Why are you even bothering with this? kind of tone, that there just wasn’t much to know. He had a mother he didn’t talk to and a hometown not worth mentioning. No father figure, no siblings, no past to speak of.

  If Toni pressed him on it—when she’d had a glass of wine, say, or if she was just feeling a little nosy—he’d mention something vague about small-town life. He’d been born in either Kansas or Arkansas—she never could remember which—and then, according to his version of events, he’d more or less shown up one day at the law firm where Toni worked as a paralegal. She remembered he was toting both a charming smile and an impressive binder with which to pitch the firm’s partners on his budding software company.

  That was that, as far as origin stories go. Jared had stayed behind after his presentation to flirt with Toni a bit, while she made excuses to linger and help him take down the backdrop he’d set up for his presentation. Neither of them had been in any great hurry to leave.

  Eventually, he’d asked to take her to dinner, and she’d pretended to ponder it for a bit before saying yes. He was awfully handsome, which made her a bit wary, but he seemed genuine enough. He had dimples set on either side of a country boy’s aw-shucks kind of smile, and that felt like something that could be relied upon.

  One date led to another, and before Toni knew it, they were moving in together into a house in Virginia Highlands, an up-and-coming neighborhood near Atlanta.

  It was fun for the longest time. Jared loved to take Toni on weekend drives in his Mazda convertible around the rich neighborhoods in Cobb County. They’d slow down or stop outside the gates of the truly jaw-dropping mansions to ogle. He would whistle and slap Toni on the thigh to point out this ironwork fountain or that fluted marble column, which always made her laugh.

  Jared was like a little kid on those excursions, just excited to see parts of the world that blew his hair back. And if he seemed a little overly keen on the trappings of the rich folks—well, who could blame him? They were awfully nice houses, after all. Anybody would get a little bit jealous, standing outside the gates of homes like that.

  His excitement made Toni excited about life, too. He could be such an infectious, spontaneous guy, the kind who shows up late to dinner and immediately orders three bottles of wine for the table. Not because he was rich, though his software company had at long last begun to show some real promise in that department. But because it was simply a fun thing to do.

  Which was why she was thrilled and nervous alike to be the one taking the lead in the “fun and spontaneous” category for their Fourth of July plans.

  “You think he’ll like this one, Solange?” she asked nervously. Her fellow paralegal, Solange—a gorgeous woman with skin like caramel and perfect, voluminous ringlets that Toni, with her stick-straight blonde hair, was eternally jealous of—looked over to Toni’s computer screen for the umpteenth time that day.

  “Stop,” Solange counseled patiently. “You’re freaking out. He’s gonna love it. He loves you. You love him. What else matters?”

  Toni bit her lip. “Everything matters, Sol. I want this to be fun. And you know Jared. He can be, I don’t know…particular, sometimes.”

  That was true, too. For every memory of fun, life-of-the-party Jared she had, there was an equal and opposite memory of a time when he just hadn’t reacted the way she thought he would to something.

  The last time she’d tried to surprise him was at his thirty-fifth birthday party four years ago. She’d promised him a quiet, candlelit evening with just the two of them at a restaurant. But when they showed up to the dinner spot, his friends and coworkers came out of the woodwork to hoot and holler, “Surprise!”

  She thought he’d laugh. She did so love his laugh.

  Jared hadn’t laughed, though. Not even a little b
it. Instead, he’d stood stock-still in the middle of everyone for one impossibly long moment with his jaw and fists clenched before storming out of the restaurant steaming mad.

  He wouldn’t even look at her for a while after she followed him out into the night and tried to figure out what on earth was going on in his brain.

  “I just don’t like surprises,” he growled again and again through gritted teeth, as if that explained anything whatsoever.

  He seemed like he was terribly close to making Toni send everyone home. But at the last second, he’d relented and gone back inside. After reluctantly shaking everyone’s hands and doing his rounds, he’d corralled a drink and nursed it by himself in the corner until it was time to go.

  Toni didn’t plan any surprises for a long, long while after that.

  But for reasons she wasn’t quite prepared to confront at the moment, it had begun to feel important to her over the last couple months to do something big and dramatic in her marriage.

  She wished she knew why. If she’d had something she could point to, a specific instance or conversation or something along those lines, she might feel better about this plan she was conjuring up. But, as frustrating as it was, she didn’t have anything of the sort. All she had was a vague feeling that she ought to do something.

  She’d tried to bring her concerns up to Solange or to her sister-in-law Mae or one of her other close friends at least half a dozen times since she’d first noticed the little thread of anxiety unspooling itself in the pit of her stomach. But every time she tried to muster up the words, she fell silent before she could spit it out. It just sounded silly, shrewish, insignificant.

  Something’s wrong in my marriage.

  Like what? They would inevitably ask her. Did he cheat? Did he lie? Did he hurt you?

  No, no, no, nothing of the sort. I can’t say, exactly, can’t quite put my finger on it. But I just know it’s something.

  If it sounded silly when she practiced that little exchange in her bathroom mirror, it would certainly sound worse in a conversation with one of her friends.

  And if it sounded absurd with one of her friends—well, then, Jared was likely to just roll his eyes and stomp out of the house rather than engage with it for even a fraction of a second. He didn’t have the patience for anything that wasn’t concrete, that he couldn’t put his hands on.

  The disquiet grew over time as she ignored it. So after she’d decided that she had to do something, the question then became, what kind of something?

  And then, one day, the solution had presented itself. They needed some time to recharge and reconnect, she and Jared. A weekend away on Lake Lanier would be just the ticket. They could celebrate the Fourth of July, their ninth anniversary, and their love all at once. Three birds with one stone. Problems solved, presto change-o, cue the happily ever after.

  It seemed like a neat answer to their unspecified problems. And besides, Jared had mentioned from time to time over the years that he wanted a boat. Toni figured that he’d get a kick out of renting one and captaining it out from the dock attached to their cabin. Truth be told, she quite liked the thought of a shirtless, suntanned Jared issuing nautical orders.

  So she’d dived in headfirst with the planning. When Toni Benson put her mind to something, she did it thoroughly. It was part of why she was so good at her job. Working in a law firm, especially with the high-powered, “I want that document on my desk by yesterday!” types who owned the practice that employed her, meant never missing a step.

  She hadn’t grown up wanting to be a paralegal. But it suited her in its own stiff, paper-shuffling sort of way. There was a part of her soul that sang when all the numbers in the spreadsheets tied out, or when she could clear the stacks of paper from her desk at the end of a satisfying workday and say, “Ahhh, all done.”

  She didn’t need romance in her workplace. She had that at home. Or rather, she used to. And after she and Jared had their weekend away, wrapped up in each other, she’d have it back again in spades.

  “Show me again, then, honey,” Solange said. She was a wonderfully patient woman, thoughtful and kind.

  “You’re the best,” Toni murmured. She turned to her screen and started clicking through the photos one by one.

  The cabin on the shore that she’d chosen really was gorgeous. The first picture showed a long wooden dock that reached out like a finger to stroke the surface of the lake. The water around it was still, smooth, and so blue that it made her eyes hurt. She was already savoring the thought of unwinding out there in the evening, sipping a glass of wine as the sun set over the trees in the distance.

  The rest of the house was just as cute. It was one of those homes built to coax its residents out onto the wraparound porch whenever possible. Half of the porch was screened in and festooned with fans to keep beating at the lazy summer air while someone snoozed in the hammock or one of the big, cozy rocking chairs. The other part was open to the breeze. Tasteful red cloth upholstery tied together all of the patio furniture.

  Indoors was rustic and snug. Blond wooden beams held up the ceiling, the stairs, the mantelpiece, and the railings that lined the walkways between upstairs bedrooms. She loved how the light of the homey, DIY mason jar lamps in the kitchen added a warm shimmer to the wooden cabinetry.

  And the master bedroom upstairs, with its massive French double doors, opened right up onto a second intimate porch holding another pair of rocking chairs that practically had “Jared” and “Toni” written on them already.

  “If he doesn’t like that, then you’re gonna have to throw the man out,” Solange said wryly.

  Toni laughed, maybe a little louder than she intended to. She glimpsed Rogelio, one of the sterner partners, glance up in irritation from his corner office.

  “Just tell me one more time that he’ll love it.”

  “Honey,” Solange said, resting a comforting hand on Toni’s forearm. “He’s going to love it. Just ease up. Have a fun weekend. Drink some wine, smooch your hubby, watch the sunset. You’re gonna have fun, okay, doll?”

  When she said it like that, there was no room for disagreement. Toni smiled. This time, she meant it.

  A little while later, it was finally quitting time, thank the Lord. Toni swept her things into her bag, turned off her computer, and spent a minute making sure that everything was neatly organized so she could start tomorrow with a clean slate.

  She was just about to turn and head for her car in the parking lot when Rogelio strode up to her desk and announced his arrival with a rap of his knuckles.

  “Hi, Rog,” Toni said with a smile. “You need anything from me? I was just about to head out.”

  Rogelio was a tall, tanned man from the Philippines with a shiny bald spot and big hands that were constantly in motion. He had a way of talking, sort of stern and borderline angry, that some of the other paralegals found intimidating. But his mannerisms had never bothered Toni. He just liked work to be done right, and she liked doing it right. In fact, they got along fairly well.

  “Did you get the deposition transcripts from the Martinelli trial finished?”

  “The coroner’s or the husband’s?”

  “Husband’s.”

  She nodded. “In your in-box already. The coroner’s, too, actually,” she added with a wink.

  “Did you set up the admin hearing for the Gantt Co. case?”

  “July 17, 4 p.m.”

  “Did you—”

  “Dr. Tompkins from Georgia Tech will be providing expert testimony on the blood spatters, the latest draft of the motion for retrial is uploaded to the firm’s cloud, and I sent the appendices for the two memos in the Buchanan thing over to Desiree to approve.”

  Rogelio, for a change, was actually smiling by the time Toni was done listing off all the tasks that she’d already squared away.

  “You know, sometimes I don’t know why I even bother to ask. You are always on top of things. What would we do without you, Toni?” he mused playfully.

  Sh
e laughed. “You’d find a way.”

  “I’m not so sure we would.”

  “Need anything else from me before I head out?”

  “No, no,” he said, waving a hand in a fatherly sort of way at her. “Go home. Tell Jared I said hello.”

  “Will do. Have a good night, Rogelio. G’night, Solange!”

  She waved goodbye to everyone as she looped her purse over her shoulder and strode out into the early evening sun.

  Atlanta traffic being what it was, the drive home was agonizingly long. But that was all right with Toni. She usually did her best thinking on her commute to and from work. Something about the warm silence of the car and the sun rising or setting over the downtown skyscrapers always kept the wheels in her head turning nicely.

  She spent the first fifteen minutes going over and over the plan for the lake house. They would get there on Sunday, two days before the Fourth, so they could unpack, unwind, and make a quick run to the grocery store to pick up food and wine for the remainder of their vacation.

  She had a menu planned already—seared scallops with endive and radicchio, which would pair perfectly with the buttery, oaky chardonnay she had in mind—and smiled at the thought of strolling down the dock after dinner, hand in hand with Jared, to watch the boaters heading home in the dying evening light.

  Just then, her cell phone started to buzz in her purse. She fished it out and smiled even bigger when she saw who was calling.