She began to feel hot and as contrary as she had ever felt in her life.
Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
TAMRA FELT her eyebrows shoot up. “Him?”
Again, everyone just stared at her.
“What?” she said, defending herself.
“He’s a veteran,” Christy said, almost as reverently as if they were in a church. Tamra supported veterans and appreciated their sacrifice, but that didn’t mean she was going to let one treat her like crap.
“And he gave me a reference,” Cami added, “which I called and who spoke highly of him. Apparently he’s a great worker and knows what he’s doing. Once we get the concrete poured, he should be able to do everything else we need. With your help.” She added that last part with hopefully raised eyebrows.
And Tamra just stood there. The fact was, whoever did this job was someone she’d be working with closely. From erecting a small hut for money collection and equipment storage to laying the Astroturf for the holes to constructing the miniature features for each—which Tamra had designed to look like Coral Cove landmarks, she would work hand in hand with this guy.
No matter what he’d been through, he seemed like a jerk. A jerk with nice arms maybe, but still a jerk. She didn’t particularly want to spend the entire autumn butting heads with some ass who thought she was a princess just because she didn’t like rudeness. And though she was being paid for her work on the golf course, most of what she’d done this summer for the town had been on a volunteer basis, and she’d been generous with her time and skills. So she knew she’d be within her rights to tell Cami she just couldn’t work with him and that she’d have to find someone else.
She flicked another glance his way in time to see that he’d dropped the next sizable bush pretty much right in the middle of where other people had been working and that they all stood there looking after him with the same stunned expression she probably had. Because he was a Neanderthal.
But when she glanced back to Cami, her friend’s eyes still glimmered with hope. And a look that said, You’d really be helping me out if you can do this. She even added, through slightly clenched teeth, “He’s within the budget I promised Jack. Most guys with any experience aren’t.”
Tamra loved Coral Cove. It was the best home she’d ever had—the only home that felt real to her. The few people in the world who she cared about, and who cared about her in return, lived here. And the reason she’d been happy to give of her time to the town was because she valued her warm, safe seaside haven so much.
And this golf course was about bringing new business to the town.
And she was a team player.
And not a princess.
So finally she said, “Okay.”
The group of friends standing around her broke out into big smiles, and Cami’s face lit with relief. “You’ll work with him?”
“Sure,” Tamra said. Even if a bit stiffly.
Freeing one hand from her clipboard, Cami reached out to warmly squeeze Tamra’s arm. “Thank you! And I’m sure he won’t be so bad. Just a little rough around the edges, that’s all.”
“Hey, heads up—can you all move it? Heavy bush coming through.”
Everyone standing with her raised their eyes in time to indeed find another big bush headed their way, and as the Neanderthal dropped it heavily to the ground between them, they all took a quick step back.
Tamra looked up to see his broad shoulders and cargo shorts already walking away—then flicked her gaze to Cami, who smiled nervously.
FLETCHER McCloud knew he made it look easy. He made it look easy to be happy and mild-mannered all the time. He made it look easy to have faith—constant faith—that his wife was coming back. And he believed that with his whole heart.
But the truth was . . . there were moments when he began to doubt.
Only moments, though, and that was the important thing. As long as he came back to believing, as long as his crises of faith were short-lived, infinitesimal blips in his brain, it would all be okay. Kim’s note had promised him that very thing, in fact.
Standing in the living room of his beach cottage, he found himself studying the gifts he’d bought for her since she’d been gone. Pieces of jewelry he’d known she’d like, small and sometimes silly keepsakes he’d picked up on a lark—like the little stuffed parrot that had reminded him of the real one that had once sat on her shoulder during a stint in Key West and how she’d suddenly loved parrots after that.
Now he reached in the back pocket of his shorts and drew out his wallet, and from it the note Kim had left for him upon her departure.
I’m sorry, Fletch. I love you, but I just have to go. Don’t let this hurt too much. Everything will be okay.
Kim
It would only be okay again—fully okay—when Kim came back. And that was how he knew deep in his soul that she would.
Some days it was still hard to believe she’d left him. They’d been happy. Or at least he’d thought so. They’d spent the previous ten glorious years traveling all over the country, living simply but comfortably from the money his tightrope act drew in.
Kim had been his assistant. He still missed that, even now. He missed looking down at her from atop the rope, feeling that perfect connection, looking into the eyes of the one woman who got him, who understood him, who loved him.
For the first month after she’d gone, he hadn’t been able to walk the tightrope. He’d simply been unable to regain his balance, mentally or physically. Everything in our heads, and in our hearts, was linked to how our bodies operated.
He’d only started to perform again by tricking himself, telling himself Kim was in the crowd watching him, cheering for him. When he remembered she wasn’t really there, it all felt emptier, hollow, and he came to understand that what he’d taught himself to do as a boy, through painstaking practice and faith and repetition, he’d eventually begun doing . . . for her. He’d realized that when he climbed up onto the tightrope every day or night, in every city or town, at every street fair or carnival, it had been to impress his wife, to show her the magic she inspired in him.
Even now, each night when he ascended to the rope, he scanned the crowd looking for her, and each and every night, he believed he would find her there. And when he didn’t, he simply pretended that he did, that she had come back and was watching him, and that was what enabled him to keep his balance.
He flinched when a loud knock knock knock sounded on the side door. No one used Fletcher’s front door—everyone entered through the one on the porch that overlooked the ocean, the porch that had become a place to pass lazy afternoons with friends, commiserating their losses or celebrating their successes. He liked having that kind of a door, that kind of a house. It had been here, in Coral Cove, that Kim had so suddenly left him, and he’d sold their well-used motorhome to get the down payment for the cottage—so that he could wait for her here.
As much as he missed his old life with Kim, there were certain aspects of living in Coral Cove he valued greatly now and would never have known otherwise. Life on the road had taught him to make fast friends with people but also not to get attached—and it was nice that now he could get attached, nice that everything wasn’t temporary. Everything happened for a reason, and the worth he’d found in building a new life here provided for him some of those reasons. And when Kim came home he’d understand the rest of it, why it had to happen this way.
When the knock came again, he realized how lost in thought he’d gotten. “Fletch, you home?”
It was his neighbor and good friend, Jack. “Yep,” he called. “Come on in.”
As Jack stepped inside, his gaze dropped to the note Fletcher still held in his hand. “You, uh, reminiscing?”
He’d shared the note with Jack early in their friendship, but it wasn’t like he sat around holding it in his hand all the time, and he felt as if he’d been caught at something.
So he let out a chuckle, laughing it off. “Only for a minute.” Then he refolded the note on its well-worn creases and put it back in his wallet as he smiled into Jack’s eyes. “What’s up, my friend? Can I get you a beer?”
“Actually, I need your help with something. Christy has me building this elaborate arbor for the wedding. I just picked up the wood and was hoping you’d help me unload it and get started.”
“Happy to,” Fletcher said. He was always pleased to help his friends. “Though”—he stopped, tilted his head—“I think most people just rent that kind of thing. You could probably save yourself a lot of trouble.”
“I know,” Jack said, “but Christy wants to put it in the yard afterward, like a keepsake.”
Ah, keepsakes again. Fletcher understood about those. So he began to nod. “That’s a nice idea.” He’d learned the value of putting down roots somewhere, of making a house a home. He only hoped Kim would like the home he’d made for them when she finally got here.
Midday Florida sun beat down on the two men as they crossed Sea Shell Lane toward Jack and Christy’s bungalow. He supposed Jack might prefer to wait until a cooler hour to unload and start constructing his wedding arbor, but Fletcher’s friends had learned to work around his schedule, knowing he made his living performing at the Sunset Celebration every night.
“You okay?” Jack asked, slanting an inquisitive glance Fletcher’s way as they began carrying the thin strips of wood, tied in bundles, from the bed of Jack’s pickup to his backyard.
“Fine, as always,” Fletcher replied. And he meant it. Yeah, he had his moments when he wasn’t as fine as he generally portrayed himself to be, but they were few and far between. Jack had just happened to catch him in one, but it was past now.
“Because . . . the way you were holding that note before—”
“Every now and then I look at it. To remind myself everything will be okay. That’s all. And it will, so no worries.”
They both lowered their armfuls of wood to the grass behind Jack’s house. Jack looked from the wood up to Fletcher and the hot air felt weighted with tension until he finally said, “Four years is a long time, buddy.”
“I know,” Fletcher answered quietly, calmly.
“And sometimes I just worry . . .”
“Don’t,” Fletcher assured him quickly. Assuring himself at the same time. “All is well.”
Just then a burst of female laughter cut through their somber tones, breaking the mood, making them both look up. Christy rounded the corner of the house with a young woman Fletcher didn’t know. Dark hair hung nearly to her trim waist, and she wore a short tie-dyed dress belted at the hips. She had a unique look that he instantly dug and related to, and she appeared wholly out of place on quaint, idyllic Sea Shell Lane.
“Oh hey, Fletch,” Christy said in greeting. “This is my friend from Cincinnati, Bethany. She’s here early for the wedding—I’m so excited that she’s staying for so long!”
“Ah yes,” Fletcher said, remembering the stories Christy had relayed about her old roommate. She was an artist, a painter—and if his perceptions from Christy’s tales were apt, maybe a slightly lost soul searching for something she hadn’t yet found. Though his first impression was that she didn’t feel lost—and something in her eyes instantly told him that she saw the world through a slightly different lens than most people. Like him. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” he greeted Bethany. “Fletcher McCloud, your friendly neighborhood funambulist. Welcome to Coral Cove.” He held out his hand and she took it.
“Funambulist?” the dark-haired woman said with an easy confidence that nearly dripped from her. Not arrogance, but an obvious comfort in her own skin—she clearly knew who she was and embraced her individuality. No, not lost at all.
“Technical term for a tightrope walker,” he explained. “I like to think I put the fun in funambulist.”
She laughed, the sound a pretty trill that seemed to fall all around him like happy raindrops. “And I,” she said, “am Bethany Willis, officially Christy’s dark side.”
And Fletcher laughed. He recalled from Christy that indeed her friend walked more on the wild side than her. “You don’t seem so dark to me,” he said anyway. There was a big difference between darkness and wildness. “More of a free spirit, I think,” Fletcher said. “More light than dark.”
The slight, saucy tilt of her head and the quirk of her bright red lips made him think she liked that. Even when she laughed and said, “I don’t know about that. Just ask Christy—hang around with me long enough and I’m bound to get you in trouble.”
That made Fletcher let out another laugh, Jack and Christy joining in. “I love her, but she’s telling the truth,” Christy added with a grin.
“Ah, I’m not afraid,” Fletcher replied.
And Bethany smiled at him. She had a lovely, honest smile. He knew already that she didn’t give it away easily, automatically, like most people—but that when you got it from her, it was the real deal.
“Well, we’ll let you two get back to work,” Christy said, an excited-about-my-wedding gleam in her eye. “We’re going inside to make some plans for the shower.”
And as the two disappeared into the side porch door of the small house, Fletcher couldn’t help feeling uplifted, and as if he’d just stumbled upon a kindred soul.
“Cute girl,” he told Jack, thinking out loud.
Causing Jack to glance up from where he’d just begun to focus on the instructions for his arbor, a speculative look in his eye.
And Fletcher read his mind. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, my friend. I simply made an honest observation. You know I’m unfailingly honest.”
Jack gave a short, accepting nod. “That I do.”
And then they got down to the task at hand, Jack studying the arbor plans, Fletcher helping him sort the wood into various piles.
It was a few minutes later when Jack’s cell phone buzzed in his pocket, and he pulled it out to take a look. After which he raised his gaze to Fletcher and said, “I don’t want to blow your mind—or risk getting ahead of myself—but . . .”
“But?”
“But according to Christy, she thinks you’re cute, too.”
JEREMY used a spade he found on the jobsite at the miniature golf course to begin moving a thick layer of dirt and sand that an overnight rainfall had washed onto the concrete for what he assumed would soon be Hole 1. He’d arrived early and this seemed like as good a thing to do as any. He liked how quiet and empty the area was this early in the day—less to keep an eye on, less uncertainty around him. He listened to Pearl Jam sing about sirens through a pair of earbuds.
It occurred to him that for a guy who had nightmares about gunfire and sirens and bombs, maybe lighter music would be wise—but he didn’t like lighter music. Despite himself, he still felt drawn to a certain darkness.
That’s what you came here to get away from, get rid of.
Well, regardless, at least he was doing something useful for a change. It felt good to use the muscles in his arms, shoulders, back—good to feel them stretch taut. One of the ways he’d spent his time at Lucky’s was lifting the weights Lucky kept in his shop. Using his muscles, experiencing that pull, had been one of the few things that had helped him keep feeling alive—and it still proved true now, but it was better to be doing something productive with them.
As the song faded to its end, a voice, at once brash and feminine, cut into his solitude. “Hey!” it was saying. “Hey!” And it sounded damn impatient.
He stopped shoveling and turned to see—oh, the princess. Figured. She seemed like a damn testy woman. And she looked downright put out—already, this early in the morning.
Most people had no idea how good they had it, how tiny their problems were. The things they bitched and complained about were so small in the big picture. And whatever this chick’s problem was—it was small, too. So he simply leaned on the handle of his spade, reached up to remove his earbuds, and said, “Good morning.”
And at this, she appeared even more annoyed. “Good morning?”
He stood before her bewildered, but still unruffled. “Is that not a greeting you’re familiar with?”
If it was possible, her green eyes sparkled with a bit more irritation. “Is answering someone when they address you repeatedly something you’re not familiar with?”
At this, Jeremy let his eyes widen slightly. Then he reached down and picked up an earbud that dangled from his jeans pocket now. “I was listening to music.”
She blinked and looked a little embarrassed. But then she went right back to sounding snippy. “Well, I’m not a psychic—and I couldn’t see through all that hair that you had anything in your ears.”
“Well, now that you know, maybe you can cut me a little slack, huh?”
Uh oh—wrong thing to say. Now that sparkle in her eyes shifted toward being irate.
And even though at 6’1” he was considerably taller than her, she took a step closer and stared pointedly up into his eyes. “Look, I just expect you to be on time, do what I say, and be respectful. We don’t have to like each other—but we have a job to do, so if you can follow those few simple rules, this will be much easier.”
He just looked at her. This from the woman who had shown up fifteen minutes late—which was why he’d started shoveling the overflow of dirt and sand in the first place.
“Are you hearing me?” she asked.
Wow, she could be brusque for a little slip of a thing. Not that she was tiny actually. He supposed, now that he was really looking at her, her build was . . . average. But in a nice, curvy way. Though that might have been easier to see if she weren’t so irate.
“Yep, princess, I sure am.”
This time he could almost feel her bristling before he saw it in her big round eyes and stiffened posture. “And that’s another thing. Don’t call me princess.”
At this, Jeremy just shrugged. “You got something against princesses? Most women dig that sort of thing.” Then he winked. Because at this point, she was egging him on, kind of asking for it.
“Well, I’m not most women. And I’m not a princess, by any stretch of the imagination. Understood?” Still asking for it.
So he delivered. “You got it, babe.”
She kept on looking put out. “I’m not your babe—I’m your supervisor.”
“And you might just need to relax a little,” he muttered under his breath. But apparently loud enough to be heard, given the look she flashed him. Oops.
She crossed her arms beneath ample breasts. “Who do you think you are anyway?”
“Just a guy trying to do a job,” he said. “Didn’t know I’d get told off before I even started.” Jeremy had thought he was going to like doing this work, but now he suspected his non-babe boss might make that difficult.
“Listen, I just want to work peacefully here.”
“I could go for some peace, too, believe me,” he informed her.
“Good,” she replied with a terse nod, sounding a little too satisfied for his taste. Like she’d conquered him or something.
And he knew he should shut up, just ask her what she wanted him to do to get started here, yet instead he heard himself beginning to talk. “But for the record, all this started when you snapped at me because you didn’t know I had earbuds in. So a little respect goes both ways, ya know.”
She pursed her lips and sized him up beneath half lowered lids. “No,” she said, sounding a little more calm, but also a little more calculating. “This started when you rudely told me to get out of the way and nearly dropped a big root ball on my toes.”
Something about that made Jeremy laugh, though he wasn’t sure why. Maybe because he thought she was taking that a little too seriously. He’d known in retrospect he probably could have been more polite, but he’d just been trying to get the damn bushes in place, and they’d weighed a ton. “They were heavy,” he said.
“I know. You told me.”
“So I didn’t have time to be nice.”
Her tone got a little more indulgent then; she sounded slightly more appeased. “Well, maybe I didn’t take the time to be nice just now. But we’ll get along a lot better if we can both take the time going forward. It’s not that hard.”
Jeremy turned that over in his head. There had been a time when he was the nicest guy in the world—when that had come naturally. He supposed spending so much time alone had screwed with his people skills. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll try.”
“Thank you,” she answered quietly. “Me, too.”
And he realized her face had changed. Calming down had taken away the sharp edges, the harsh lines, and left behind a much softer, prettier woman.
Huh. He hadn’t seen that coming, thinking she was pretty. But she was. Not Barbie doll pretty, not supermodel pretty, not schoolgirl pretty—but pretty in a more . . . solid sort of way with her large green eyes, wide mouth, and the long, auburn hair that hung down behind her in messy spiral waves, pulled back in an elastic band. He wondered vaguely what it looked like loose, falling around her face.
“Why don’t we get started?” he suggested.
She gave a short nod. And even though she still regarded him warily, at least she’d quit raking him over the coals.
She opened the large three-ring binder she held and said, “Why don’t we take a look at the project plans and discuss the best route to move forward. As you can see, the course has already been designed and the concrete forms are in place.” She motioned at the flat lot they stood in, surrounded by slabs of concrete that had been poured in what was otherwise a sea of the same dirt/sand mix he’d been shoveling. “Our job is . . . to do everything else.”
As she began to unfold a large map of the course, Jeremy said, “Why don’t we take this to my truck—I can open the tailgate to use like a table.”
The surprised light in her eye told him she hadn’t expected him to be smart, even in such a small way. “Sure,” she agreed, and they walked together toward the old red Ford.
Once he lowered the tailgate, she showed him the course and began outlining the various aspects of construction. “I’m not an architect or anything,” she said, “so you’ll need to be able to take my drawings and build from them without plans. Can you do that?”
He looked down at her sketches of the obstacles that would sit on the course—miniature versions of the Happy Crab, the Hungry Fisherman, the pier, the lifeguard stand on the beach, and other Coral Cove landmarks. “Not exactly the Taj Mahal—think I can handle it.”
When she reached the part about the small building where the cashier would take money and hand out equipment, he said, “Would make sense to get that erected first thing—be a good place to keep tools where they can be locked up at night and under roof when it rains. And a good home base for paperwork and other things. Don’t ya think?”
Again, she looked slightly surprised he’d come up with an intelligent idea. “Um, yeah.”
And he let out a small laugh.
“What?” She was instantly back to looking wary again.
“You don’t have to act so shocked I have a brain,” he told her. “Just ’cause I don’t bend over backwards to kiss anybody’s ass, that doesn’t make me an idiot.”
Her face colored slightly with a pretty pink blush. “I didn’t think it did.”
He flashed an I-know-better expression and tapped his head with one finger as he said, “Don’t underestimate what I got goin’ on up here, pri—” He stopped himself and let out a small chuckle.
“If you’re so smart,” she pointed out, “I’m sure you can stop yourself from calling me princess.”
He arched one eyebrow in her direction and said, “I just did.”
The woman next to him pulled in her breath, but he couldn’t read her thoughts. The only thing he knew for sure was that she didn’t want him to get the best of her—which meant that even if they’d technically made peace, they were still secretly at odds. And which, of course, made him want to get the best of her—just because she still seemed to be asking for it a little.
After briefly meeting his gaze, she quickly pulled her eyes away, down to the open binder. “Let’s . . . look at the supplies you’ll need to get started.”
“Sure,” he said easily, dropping his gaze there as well. He found himself watching her hands, turning pages, using her fingertips to point at particular pieces of information. Her nails were longish but not well manicured. And there was something in that he liked. Natural. It seemed . . . feminine but natural. There was no trying, no affectation—it was just real.
They went over what he’d need and decided he’d head to the Home Depot out on Route 19 to get it.
After which she closed her notebook, picking it up to walk away, and Jeremy followed. Only to hear an oomph as she fell, sprawling in the dirt before him, the binder flying out of her grasp to land nearby.
“Damn. You okay?”
She sat up, gave her head a quick shake to clear it, and said, “Yeah.” Then, “I tripped over something.”
Jeremy bent to find a large root jutting from the ground. “This.”
She drew in her breath. “We paid to have this lot completely cleared and graded before the concrete was poured.”
“Eh, sometimes something gets missed,” Jeremy said reasonably. If war had done anything positive for him at all, it had made it so he didn’t sweat the small stuff.
“I didn’t pay for things to be missed,” the woman on the ground informed him. Man, she was tightly wound.
He reached a hand down to her, helping Tamra to her feet. Then murmured under his breath, “You really could stand to lighten up a little.” After which he glanced up in time to see his new boss flashing him a death glare.
“What did you just say?”
She was right—she wasn’t anybody’s princess. “I said . . . why don’t I go get a shovel and see if I can dig this thing out?” Then he dared cast her a small grin, since they both knew that wasn’t even remotely close to what he’d said.
To her credit, she simply brushed the dirt off her shorts and quietly answered, “Okay.”
Not to Jeremy’s credit, as he began digging up the wayward root, he found himself watching her ass when she bent over to pick up her binder. Her shorts were loose, but he still thought she might have something nice underneath them. Pretty legs anyway, even if a little paler than he might expect from a woman who lived at the beach. And he considered asking about that, but thought better of it, pretty sure it would only get him snipped at some more.
As she turned to face him, he darted his gaze away from her shorts and pretended to be engrossed by his work. Turned out the root ran deep. The earth around it was fairly loose, consisting largely of sand, so the digging was easy—but no matter how deep he went, he couldn’t find the base.
“Maybe if you just pulled on it, it would come out,” she suggested.
Jeremy doubted it. But he wasn’t inclined to argue with her, so he dropped his shovel, bent down, and used both hands to grab hold of the root.
As he’d suspected, it remained firmly attached to the ground, but he continued to pull, putting to work all those muscles he’d built on Lucky’s weight bench. “Damn,” he muttered—but then something loosened beneath his grasp and he knew part of the root had broken free. Grabbing onto it a little farther down, he gave it every ounce of strength he had, yanking hard. So hard that the root came loose from the earth’s grip and sent him flailing backwards.
Instinct made him shift his body forward, midair, not wanting to land on his ass—just as he felt himself connect with the softer female flesh of his boss and he knew he was taking her down with him.
They hit the soft dirt with a gentle plmmmp, and his fall was made even softer by having her body beneath him. They ended up face to face.
When Jeremy met her gaze—filled with a little bit of shock and little bit of something else he couldn’t quite read—a small, unplanned grin left him just before he said, “We gotta stop meeting like this.”
The woman beneath him didn’t smile back. “You can get off me now.”
Yeah, he knew that. But for some reason, he didn’t really want to. It wasn’t a bad place to be. “Before I do,” he said, “I just realized we were never officially introduced. I’m Jeremy.”