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  BE MY LOVE

  A Walker Island Romance, Book 1

  © 2015 Lucy Kevin

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  Come for a visit to Walker Island where you’ll find stunning Pacific Northwest ocean views, men too intriguing to resist...and five beautiful, close-knit sisters who are each about to find their one true love.

  After four years on the Seattle mainland, when Hanna Walker returns to Walker Island to make a documentary about the infamous Peterson-Walker feud from the early 1950s, she’s shocked to realize that passions still run high. Especially when it comes to Joel Peterson, the one man who is totally off-limits…but that she’s never been able to stop dreaming about.

  The last thing Joel wants is for Hanna to dredge up the past, but when he realizes she’s determined to follow through with her documentary no matter what, he knows he has no choice but to join her. Despite vowing to hold back his growing feelings for her, as Joel works with Hanna to unravel the mystery of what really happened between their two families, he soon begins to see that love is an unstoppable force…and that sometimes two people are meant to be.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  BOOKLIST

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  Hanna Walker stood on the deck of the ferry, enjoying the spray kicking up from the ocean and the wind whipping at her hair as she worked to keep her video camera steady against the roll of the boat. As the butternut-squash shape of the island came into view, she shifted her focus from the ocean and blue sky to Walker Island.

  Home.

  She’d spent four years at the University of Washington in Seattle while she worked toward her film degree, but the island still felt like home every time she returned. She hadn’t been able to get away from school and her part-time job nearly as often as she’d wanted to over the years, but Hanna could always picture the Walker crew clearly in her head.

  Her grandmother, Ava, an incredibly beautiful woman at eighty, running her dancing studio with the energy of a woman half her age. Her father, Tres, “losing” his glasses on top of his head at least three times each day as he graded papers from his English students and planned one of his school trips. Her oldest sister, Emily, making a huge breakfast for everyone in the house before she headed off for another busy day as a Guidance Counselor at the island’s combined junior high and high school. Her second-oldest sister, Rachel, who worked for an insurance agency, keeping track of at least three things at once while her five-year-old daughter, Charlotte, ran happy circles around her. Her middle sister, Paige, always elegant in a leotard and tights, teaching dance in the studio with Grams. Only her sister Morgan, who at twenty-five was just two years older than Hanna, wouldn’t be on the island. Instead, she’d be shooting her popular makeover segment in New York City. Or, possibly, working her magic with makeup brushes in Los Angeles or Paris to make some movie star look stunning before they went off to a premiere and posed with smiles on their faces so that the photographers could get their shots.

  Just the way I should be shooting right now, Hanna reminded herself. She turned her attention back to the water just in time to film a whale surfacing with her calf, the spray from her blowhole shooting a good fifteen feet into the air. Hanna caught every detail of the droplets, using the sun at an angle to capture the brief rainbow that sprang up in the fine mist. She spotted more whales from the same pod moving along beside the others and tracked them until the mother of the calf dove again, down into the ocean depths.

  The island would be at its busiest for the next few months, filled with both tourists and the research teams who came from all around the world to study the whale migrations. Summer was one of the most vibrant times of the year to be on Walker Island, apart from the winter holidays. The only downside to coming home over the summer was that her father was usually off in Europe on a school trip, teaching kids about the origins of great literature.

  Hanna searched the water for more whales, but they’d disappeared for the time being. And maybe that was a good thing, given that she could practically hear Professor Karlson talking to her as if he were beside her on the boat.

  “I know you can frame a shot, Hanna. Now it’s time to show me—and yourself, as well—something with some heart in it.”

  She’d lost track of the number of times she’d tried to dig deeper only to have him tell her that she still wasn’t quite reaching far enough inside the emotional core of what she was filming. Unfortunately, the last time he’d said it to her had been when she’d applied for the University’s master’s program in documentary filmmaking.

  “If you want to get into the program, you have to do more than show me you can hold a camera, or even tell a story. You have to show me your heart, Hanna. That’s the hard part, but it’s also the difference between a real documentary maker and everyone else.”

  She’d been lucky that he’d even given her a provisional acceptance into the graduate level program. Acceptance that was contingent on her showing him that she could rise to the challenge to create a documentary that truly moved her, so that it, in turn, would move others, too.

  That was when Hanna knew it was time to go home to Walker Island. Because if Professor Karlson wanted to see something from the heart, Hanna had to go where her heart was.

  She found a couple of facing seats on the ferry that weren’t occupied, then set up her camera on one of them and sat opposite. Morgan was the only Walker sister who regularly went in front of the camera for her makeup segments, but Hanna had been a part of enough other students’ film projects over the years to feel fairly comfortable being filmed. Behind her, there would be just enough of the ocean and the island for the viewer to see that she was on a ferry boat in the Pacific Northwest.

  “I’m on my way home to Walker Island, and before we get into the harbor I’d like to give a quick history of the island.” Hanna knew she would probably have to cut parts of this out, but she could always edit in some better images to go with the sound if she needed to toward the end of her project.

  “There have been native settlements on the island for at least three hundred years, and there are many interesting and important archaeological finds from Snohomish settlements. In 1921, my great grandfather William Walker lost his family farm north of Seattle. Utterly despondent, he sailed off into the ocean, intending never to come back or to farm again. But when his boat washed up on the shores of Walker Island—and he found varieties of wild blueberries and blackberries that were twice as plump and flavorful as any they’d grown on the mainland—he took that as a sign that he should try again. Not just with farming, but to rebuild the Walker family, as well. It turned out to be a great decision, because with its own microclimate like many of the Pacific Northwest islands, his farms were able to survive both the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. The major problem my great grandfather ran into was how to best transport the berries off of the island. Fortunately, this was solved with the help of a local mussel-farming family, the Petersons, who also ended up running the largest shipping c
ompany on Walker Island, and the island’s ferries.”

  Hanna continued to tell the story she knew by heart to the camera. “My grandfather, William Walker II, who was always more interested in education than in running a berry-growing business, built the combined junior high and high school on the island. He was also engaged to marry the Petersons’ only daughter, Poppy, which would have cemented both the business and personal relationship between the two island families.”

  Hanna had done this ferry ride so many times between Seattle and Walker Island that as they rounded the southern tip of the island, she knew the ferry captain was about to make his announcement for everyone to return to their car on the deck below the seating area. In the sixty remaining seconds she had before his announcement boomed through the ship’s speakers, she said, “This documentary is going to follow the history—and ramifications—of what happened next. Namely, the engagement being cancelled, the berry business being sold to one of the largest jam makers in the United States, and a feud between the Petersons and Walkers that has lasted for decades.”

  Just as the captain’s announcement came, Hanna picked up the camera and headed down to the pedestrian waiting area on the deck to get a long shot of the harbor as the ferry docked.

  A few minutes later, after Hanna hopped off the boat, a man wearing a “Walker Island Whale Watching Tours” hat smiled at her. “Hi, Hanna. It’s good to see you back on the island. Your grandmother has been talking about your return for weeks.”

  Jonas had been giving tours for so many years that Hanna knew him quite well. “It’s great to be back,” she said with a smile. “How’s Jenny doing?”

  “Great.” His grin widened. “We just had a little girl named Madison.” He quickly pulled out a picture of the cute baby which Hanna, and everyone else in line, oohed and aahed over.

  “She’s just lovely, Jonas. Congratulations.”

  As she stepped away to let everyone get on with buying their whale watching tickets, she marveled at just how nice it was to be back home. As much as she loved Seattle, there was no place quite like Walker Island.

  Knowing everyone in her family was likely to be busy with work for the next couple of hours, she decided to get some good B-roll footage of the island while the weather was so clear. She filmed a small team of scientists about to set off for the tide pools, and one of the women who had come in several times to give guest lectures at the high school recognized Hanna and waved a hello to her. Next, she got some footage of one of the many local artists working on an oil painting of the harbor, and found herself agreeing to pose for a painting if she could carve out a few hours here and there in the coming weeks.

  Once she felt that she had enough footage of a typical summer’s day on Walker Island, she put down her camera to call the head of the local historical society. Benjamin Neale also ran the extremely popular ice cream stand, so she wasn’t surprised to get his voicemail. “Mr. Neale, this is Hanna Walker, and I’d like to make sure that it is still okay for me to come take a look through the local archives as we had discussed a few weeks ago. I’ve just arrived back on the island and would appreciate a call back when you get a chance.”

  Hanna was just ending the call when she felt a small hand tugging at her pants. A little boy who looked to be around her niece’s age had broken away from the family of tourists he was with and was looking up at her.

  “Are you famous?”

  Hanna smiled back at him. “Why would you think I’m famous?”

  “Everyone here seems to know you,” the boy said, “so you must be famous. Plus, you have those pink streaks in your hair like a rock star.”

  “I’m not famous,” Hanna told him with a grin. “My sister, Morgan, is a little famous, but only because she’s on TV sometimes. Mostly, though, people just know me because I’m a Walker.”

  “Wow,” the boy said in a clearly awed voice, “so since this is Walker Island, does this mean it’s yours?”

  Hanna laughed. “No, it doesn’t quite work like that.”

  In fact, she reflected as the boy ran back to his family to give them the full scoop, it didn’t work at all like that. Her great grandfather might have had the whole island to himself for a little while, but all her life they’d been just like any other family, doing the same things everyone else on the island did to get by.

  The Walkers had never shied away from hard work. Her older sisters had taken part in the berry picking when they were all younger, and she’d had to work her way through college, the same as everyone else. Just because their great grandfather was the first settler on the island, it wasn’t like they were royalty or anything.

  Still, whenever Hanna wondered what it would have been like to grow up in a town that wasn’t named after her family and that wasn’t so small most people knew her by sight, she knew one thing for certain: It wouldn’t be home.

  Just then, her phone rang and she was thrilled to see that Mr. Neale had found a moment or two between ice cream scoops to get back to her.

  “Hanna, hello. I’ve been meaning to get back to you about your visit to the archives. I’m afraid that there has been a bit of a…” He cleared his throat before continuing. “Well, it’s a bit of a hitch regarding your project.”

  “A hitch?” Hanna didn’t like the sound of that. Ava, her grandmother, was going to be the heart of the documentary, but the interviews with her needed to be backed up by proper research. Names and dates. Documents. Important elements that would give the piece the depth it would need to win her a place in the graduate filmmaking program. “What sort of hitch?”

  Again, Mr. Neale cleared his throat in obvious discomfort. “I’m afraid one of our committee members has blocked your application to use the archives.”

  “Why would someone do that?” Hanna had assumed that the whole process of applying for archival access was just a formality.

  “I’m afraid I can’t speak for the committee member, Ms. Walker.”

  “Do you know how long this glitch will take to iron out?” she asked in what she hoped was a patient voice. “Because I really only have the summer to finish this documentary. And I absolutely have to finish this documentary.”

  “I’m sorry,” he replied, and to be fair he did sound sorry. “But Joel Peterson was quite clear that he doesn’t want you to have access to the archives for a documentary. In any case, I have to get back to work now. It looks like there’s a party of kids coming in. Take care, Hanna.”

  As she slipped her phone back into her pocket, she tried to make sense of what the historical society’s chairman had just told her. Why would Joel want to keep her out of the archives?

  Joel had been her sister Rachel’s age at school, which made him seven years older than Hanna. She could remember sitting on the sidelines of a school football game, watching him play. He’d been the quarterback, and it always seemed that when he had the ball, no one could touch him. On top of that, he’d been the best looking boy she’d ever seen.

  She’d seen him from time to time around the island over the years since high school, but she suspected he still only knew her as Rachel’s kid sister. They’d certainly never spoken as adults.

  Clearly, it was time to correct that. She could go home and get settled in, but it would be better to find Joel and get this mess straightened out first. Once they actually talked, she was sure that his refusal to let her into the archives would turn out to be no more than a mistake.

  Besides, she had to admit, she was interested in seeing how the handsome boy from the football field had turned out.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Good morning, Margaret,” Joel said as he walked into his office at Peterson Shipping Company. Margaret had been his father’s secretary before him, and Joel had known her for nearly thirty years, back when he was just starting to learn the basics of the business that he’d always known he would inherit. “What do we have on tap for today?”

  “There are a few messages for you to look through on your desk before your meet
ing with Frank Williams from the Mussel Farmers’ Union at eleven. And if you don’t mind me saying,” she said with a fond smile, “your tie looks great with that shirt.”

  Margaret had given it to him for his birthday a few weeks back, and though wearing a tie always made him feel like he had a noose around his neck, Joel smiled back. “Thanks, Margaret. And please let me know when Frank arrives.”

  He stepped into his office, which had been his father’s office and his grandfather’s before that. Joel had kept the framed newspaper pictures of the two of them collecting industry awards, along with the big solid cedar wood desk by the window that had a clear view out over the water. Joel swung the door shut behind him, and only then did he reach up to loosen the tie so that he could breathe again.

  “If we don’t set a standard,” his father had often said, “how can we expect people to respect us?”

  Peterson Shipping wasn’t the biggest shipping company in the world, but the company still needed constant attention. As a child, Joel hadn’t been able to understand why his father had to work so many Saturdays. Now he knew.

  The ocean didn’t care what day of the week it was, and a skipper running into trouble around the island didn’t either.

  Joel began to read through his emails and messages. The ones from the boat skippers came first, of course, because if you didn’t look after the boats and their crews, then you didn’t deserve to run a shipping business. Simple as that.

  Well, perhaps not exactly simple. Nothing around the island was simple. There were usually at least three or four complaints waiting for him. The most pressing complaint today was about a rogue operator, which he’d have to see the harbor master about. Of course, the upside was that he might actually get out of the office and down to the harbor at some point.

  When Joel was a kid sailing small boats around the island on school holidays with his father, running Peterson shipping had seemed like the best job in the world. Yet the truth was that every season, Joel spent less time on boats and more doing paperwork and sending emails.