Sea Glass Sunrise by Donna Kauffman Page A

McCrae was average height and build, but with the finely sculpted body of an athlete. And that’s where any resemblance to being a civilized human being ended. Fiona and Logan had wild, amber-colored eyes, and Hannah had stormy blue ones, but all three of them had thick, dark, almost black hair, of varying lengths and textures. Logan’s was relentlessly rumpled, Hannah’s sleek and shiny, Fiona’s a wild mass of corkscrew curls that drove her insane. So no one knew, exactly, how it was that Kerry had somehow popped out with wild red curls and green eyes so bright and sparkling, they put emeralds to shame.
    Fergus had often teased her that she was but an unruly forest sprite the wee folk had left as a babe under the magic oak tree that had grown up through the middle of Eula March’s antique store in town. Kerry had been a very impressionable ten-year-old when Fergus had come over from Ireland and into their lives. She’d loved his stories and had taken that one particularly to heart. An unruly forest sprite, indeed.
    Having just recently turned thirty, she still looked every bit of the role. Her hair was wildly out of control, with random braids flying out here and there and odd bits of who knew what tied to this strand or that. Her latest grand life adventure had been living in Australia and New Zealand, so her skin was brown as an island native’s, which made her brilliant emerald eyes shine somehow mystically from her angular and beautiful face. She hugged them back with a fierceness that made Hannah feel as if her heart could explode with the joy she was feeling.
    “Look out, Blueberry, the McCrae sisters are back!” Fiona sang, as they all bounced up and down.
    “And we’re having a wedding!” Kerry crowed, then led them in some kind of aboriginal-style dance that, when the typically more staid and proper Hannah gave herself completely over to it—including the bit Kerry called “tribal twerking”—had them all collapsing on the big, sleigh bed in peals of laughter.
    God, it was so good to be home.

Chapter Five
    Calder paused on the sidewalk and looked up at the towering oak tree. There was nothing particularly special about the tree itself, except for the fact that it was growing straight up through the interior of a small antique store, and right out through the roof. M OSSYCUP A NTIQUES, the oval sign read. The background was navy blue, the store name in raised white script, and the oak tree—a mossycup oak, he presumed—was in beautifully rendered gold relief in the background. “ Founded: At the Beginning ,” he murmured, reading aloud the small line of script under the store name. Hmm. The beginning of what ?
    He’d noticed the eccentric little place on his way into town the day before—it was hard to miss—and decided he’d stop in on his way in that morning to talk to Owen Hartley, owner of Hartley’s Hardware and the new mayor of Blueberry Cove. More importantly to Calder, he was apparently the town historian as well.
    Calder’s meeting with Winstock had been pushed back from dinner the previous evening to a late lunch today, midafternoon, so he’d headed back home to the farm the evening before, right after leaving the police station. His thoughts drifted, as they’d done with a little too much regularity, to Hannah McCrae. He found himself wondering what her story was, even knowing it didn’t matter. Couldn’t matter. She was in Blueberry for a wedding, then would go back to Virginia. At least that’s what he assumed, given her little Audi had Virginia plates. Driving in that morning, he’d wondered how her injuries had fared, what her face looked like now, how she was holding up under what was likely a crush of last-minute wedding details.
    Recalling her sister Fiona’s getup the day before, he smiled. Yeah, he didn’t even want to know what all was going on with that. Just as well he was out of her particular orbit. Now if he could just stop thinking about her.
    Switching