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The
Man
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CHAPTER TWO
were out? What if the Nebbins kid was riding his bike? There
hadn’t been a fatal crash in Manningsport since he’d been
chief, and Levi planned on keeping it that way.
The yellow car sailed past him, not even a tap on the
brakes. The driver wore a baseball cap and big sunglasses.
Female. With a sigh, Levi put on the lights, gave the siren a
blip and pulled onto the road. She didn’t notice. He hit the
siren again, and the driver seemed to realize that, yes, he was
talking to her, and pulled over.
Grabbing his ticket pad, Levi got out of the cruiser. Wrote
down the license plate number, then went over to the driver’s
side, where the window was lowering. “Welcome to Man-
ningsport,” he said, not smiling.
Shit.
It was Faith Holland. A giant Golden retriever shoved its
head out of the window and barked once, wagging happily.
“Levi,” she said, as if they’d seen each other last week at
O’Rourke’s.
“Holland. You visiting?”
“Wow. That’s amazing. How did you guess?”
He looked at her, not amused, and let a few beats pass. It
worked; her cheeks flushed, and she looked away. “So. Forty-
two in a twenty-five-mile-an-hour zone,” he said.
“I thought it was thirty-five,” she said.
“We dropped it last year.”
The dog whined, so Levi petted him, making the dog try
to crawl over Faith’s head.
“Blue, get back,” Faith ordered.
Blue. Right. Same dog as from a few years ago.
“Levi, how about a warning? I have a, um, a family emer-
gency, so if you could drop the cop act, that’d be super.” She
gave him a tight smile, almost meeting his eyes, and pushed
her hair behind one ear.
KRISTAN HIGGINS 25
Faith opened her mouth, then closed it. “Oh. I—I am. Lo-
rena, I’m guessing?”
The woman Honor had warned about was a sight to behold
indeed. Dull black hair, obviously dyed, makeup so thick you
could carve in it and a squat body shown in horrifying detail
through a clinging, leopard-print shirt.
The woman shoved a Sharpie pen in her cleavage where
it stayed, quivering, like a syringe. “Just touching up my
roots!” she announced. “Wanted to make a nice impression
on the little princess! Hello there! Give us a hug!”
Faith’s breath left her in a whoosh as Lorena wrapped her
in a python grip. “Nice to meet you,” she wheezed as Pru
gave her a significant look.
“Can we please eat before my death?” Pops asked. “The
old woman here wouldn’t let me have my cheese. I’m starv-
ing.”
“So, die already,” Goggy answered. “No one’s stopping
you. I’ll barely notice.”
“Well, Phyllis Nebbins would notice. She got a new hip
two months ago, Faithie. Looks like she’s seventy-five again,
out there with her grandson, always with a smile. Nice to
see a happy woman.”
Goggy slammed down a massive bowl of salt potatoes.
“I’ll be happy once you’re dead.”
“That’s beautiful, Goggy,” Ned said.
“You two are such hoots!” Lorena practically yelled. “I
love it!”
Faith sat down, inhaling the scent of Goggy’s ham, salt
potatoes and home.
There were two houses on Blue Heron Vineyard: the Old
House, where Goggy and Pops lived, a Colonial that had
been updated twice since being built in 1781—once to in-
stall indoor plumbing, then again in 1932. Faith and her sib-
30 THE BEST MAN
was a boy. Tractor backed up, squished him in the soft parts,
so we never could have kids, though, hell, we sure got it on!”
Goggy was staring at Lorena as if she was a snake in the
toilet. Jack drained his wine.
“Good for you!” Pops said. “Have some more ham, sweet-
heart.” He nudged the plate across the table toward Lorena,
whose appetite was not restricted to the boudoir, it seemed.
“So, Faith,” Jack said, “Dad says you’ll be staying here
for a while.”
Faith nodded and wiped her mouth. “Yep. Finally gonna
fix up the old barn up on Rose Ridge. I’ll be here for about
two months.” The longest she’d been back since her wedding
debacle, and not just to fix up the barn, either. Both the mis-
sion and the length of time gave her a pang of alarm.
“Yay!” Abby said.
“Yay,” Ned echoed, winking at her.
“What are you doing with the old barn?” Pops asked.
“Speak up, sweetie.”
“I’ll be turning it into a space for special events, Pops,” she
explained. “People would rent it out, and it’d bring in some
extra income for the vineyard. Weddings, anniversary par-
ties, stuff like that.” She’d first come up with the idea when
she was in graduate school—transform the old stone barn
into something that blended into the landscape effortlessly,
something modern and old at the same time.
“Oh! Weddings! I’d love to get married again,” Lorena
said, winking at Dad, who simply grinned.
“It sounds like too much work for you, sweetheart,” Goggy
said.
Faith smiled. “It’s not. It’s a great spot, and I’ve already
got some plans drafted, so I’ll show them to everyone and
see what you think.”
KRISTAN HIGGINS 33
across her chest. “So he says to me, why not give it a try?
Like the Playboy models? So I say to him, ‘First of all, Carl,
if you have a Playboy in this house, you’re a dead man walk-
ing. We have a teenage daughter, and I don’t want her look-
ing at fake boobs and slutty hair.’” She shifted in her chair.
“A bikini wax! At my age! I have enough trouble with facial
hair management.”
“Speaking of terrifying older women,” Faith said, ducking
as Pru tried to swat her, “Lorena Creech. Yikes.”
“She asked Jack to sit on her lap the other day,” Pru said.
“You should’ve seen his face.”
Faith laughed, stopping as Honor cut her a cool look. “It’s
funny until Dad finds himself married to someone who’s
only after his money,” Honor said.
“Dad has money?” Pru quipped. “This is news.”
“And he wouldn’t get married without it being someone
great,” Faith added.
“Maybe not. But this is the first woman he’s ever had as
his ‘special friend,’ too. And why her, I have no idea.” Honor
adjusted her hair band. “She’s asked Sharon Wiles about the
price of building lots the other day, so, Faith, don’t waste
time, okay? I don’t have the time to cruise dating websites.
You do.”
With that, she left, going back to her office, no doubt. All
Honor did was work.
THAT NIGHT, AFTER FAITH had brought her stuff to the Old
House and returned the rental car to Corning (Dad had said
she could use Brown Betty, the aging Subaru wagon, while
she was here), she climbed between the clean sheets in her
grandparents’ guest room and waited for sleep.
Mom wasn’t the only one whose absence had been felt
KRISTAN HIGGINS 37
nally told Jeremy what they both already knew: they needed
to truly break up. No more emails, no more calls, no more
texts.
“I understand,” Jeremy had whispered.
“I’ll always love you,” Faith had said, her voice breaking.
“I’ll always love you, too.”
And then, after a long, long moment, Faith had pushed the
button to end the call. Sat there on the edge of the bed, star-
ing into space. The next day, she’d been offered a freelance
job working with a well-known landscape designer at a new
marina, and her post-Jeremy life began. Her father had come
out to visit three times that year—unheard of if you were a
farmer—and Pru and the kids had come once. They all had
called and written and texted.
Forcing yourself out of love…it seemed impossible. Some-
times, she’d forget—someone asked her if she wanted kids,
and her answer was, “We definitely do,” and then came the
slap of remembering that there would be no beautiful, smil-
ing, dark-haired kids running through the fields of the two
vineyards.
And now, here in the Old House, it was impossible not to
think of Jeremy. Memories of him were everywhere—he’d
sat on the front porch, promising her father he’d take good
care of her. He’d pushed Abby on the swing when she was
little, took Ned for rides in his convertible, flirted with Pru
and Honor, had beers with Jack. He’d helped her repaint this
very room the same pale lilac it was now. They’d kissed right
in that corner (lovely, chaste kisses, perhaps not what one
would expect from one’s twenty-six-year-old fiancé) until
Goggy had walked in on them and told them there was no
kissing in her house, she didn’t care if they were engaged.
Faith had kept one photo of her and Jeremy, taken one
weekend when they’d gone to the Outer Banks…the two of
KRISTAN HIGGINS 39