Moonlight Man by Judy Griffith Gill Read Free Book Online Page B

my business, but I like to know who I’m dealing with.”
    She swallowed. “At dinner, whenever anyone asked you what you did, you evaded the issue. I don’t like evasions. To me, they are as bad as lies.” For too long, she had suffered from a man’s lies and evasions.
    “Are you asking me what I do for a living?”
    She sighed. “Yes. I suppose I am.”
    “I’m a cookie-maker.”
    She got to her feet. “Marc …”
    He rose and turned her to face him. “No, seriously, that’s what I am now. I’ve opened a cookie bakery in Victoria, another in Vancouver, and I’m working on a third in Seattle. I think that’s probably what I’ll do with the rest of my life. Make cookies.”
    “But you don’t actually make them yourself!”
    “The ones I brought to your kids, I did. From my grandmother’s and mother’s old recipes. That’s what the ones in my bakeries are based on too. I sell direct to university and college cafeterias, to day-care centers and hospitals, and certain select, small stores. It’s a good marketing ploy, keeping my product exclusive until there’s a real following. Then, when the time is right, and I’m sure quality control can be maintained, I might branch out into wider markets.”
    “Then why live here? Why Nanaimo? Why not Vancouver or Victoria or Seattle?”
    “I like it here. It’s a big enough town to have a few amenities, yet small enough to be friendly. Big cities are—” He broke off, frowning. “Big cities are part of my past, and I prefer to leave that where it lies, behind me.”
    “I’ve noticed.”
    “I’m sorry. There are things I don’t want to talk about. I’m not being evasive now, and I wasn’t being evasive at dinner. I have done all those things I said, have been to all those places, and I did learn to bake cookies in New Zealand. I even taught my boss to make some of my family’s recipes. It was the way they went over there that suggested to me maybe I could earn a living with them if I ever came home.”
    “But you aren’t ‘home,’” she said, moving restlessly away from him, crouching to put another couple of pieces of wood on the fire. She shut the glass doors and stood again, facing him with a much safer distance between them.
    “Why do you say that?”
    “Your accent. Where is home? Somewhere in Quebec?”
    “It was. It no longer is. Now, home is where I want it to be.” He moved closer, not touching her. “I want it to be here, Sharon.”
    “For the time being. Until cookies aren’t fun any longer.” Until I’m not interesting enough any longer.
    He frowned. “Maybe. I don’t know. Over the last few months I’ve come to realize that this might well be where I will settle, that cookies might well be what I’ll want to make my life’s work.” He paused, stroked a hand over her hair. “Those months, too, of knowing you—at least, seeing you, talking to you now and then—have told me that maybe I’d like you to be part of that life.”
    She laughed and shook his hand off her hair. “I don’t bake cookies worth a damn!”
    His smile warmed her right to the soles of her feet in a way she didn’t want it to. “So Jason tells me. I told him you have other, more important talents.”
    Together, as if pulled by a magnet, their gazes swept to her harp. She shook her head. “No. No more.”
    He took one of her hands and pulled her a step closer to him. Their bodies touched lightly. Her heart raced. Her breath caught in her throat. “Will you tell me about it? What happened? What changed you? Was it your divorce? Did it hurt you so badly that you died inside and your music died with you?”
    She shook her head. “Not that. I was … glad for the divorce. It eased my hurts. My music died long before that. At least, the music in my heart did. I kept on playing though, trying to find it again. Finally, I just gave up.”
    “Funny,” he said musingly, “when my wife and son died, I thought everything good in me had died too, but