Sweet Horizons

by Jean C. Gordon

  “So, you want to start this afternoon,” Jesse said.

  “I’d like to.” Even if Sonja doesn’t think it’s necessary.

  Lauren shook her head. “All right guys. You can talk while you walk. I want to see my baby.”

  Jeff started slowly for the stairs. Sonja wouldn’t object to him bringing the kids and Eric up to her place. He wasn’t out of place doing that, was he? Jeff stepped more purposely. She’d let him know if he was.

  “Daddy Jesse,” Shelley squealed when Jeff opened the door to Sonja’s place.

  The little girl charged past him to her father, who scooped her up and swung her in the air.

  “Go home now,” Shelley said.

  Jesse hugged Shelley. “Soon. I have to help your papa with something here.”

  Jeff caught the fleeting frown on Sonja’s face that he knew was for him. But he didn’t think he was jumping the gun on the hurricane protection.

  Jesse continued, “You can go home with Lauren and I’ll be there as soon as Papa and I finish.”

  “Or you and Lauren can stay here with me and wait,” Sonja said without hesitation.

  Jeff chucked his granddaughter under the chin. “Had enough of Papa and Grammy, eh?”

  “Yes. Go home.”

  Everyone but Sonja laughed.

  The B&B landline phone rang. “Excuse me,” she said. “I should get that.”

  Jeff’s stomach clenched. Another cancellation?

  Once again, the expression on Sonja’s face when she returned answered his question.

  “I’ll go get Shelley’s things,” she said.

  “I’ll help,” Lauren said, lifting Shelley from Jeff’s arms.

  Jeff’s gaze followed the two women out of the room. “We might as well get to work,” he said, hoping that some good old manual labor would work the uncertainty and confusion about Sonja … him and Sonja … out of his system.

  “What’s going on?” Lauren asked when they were in the bedroom, out of hearing range.

  “Other than the opening of the B&B imploding?” Sonja asked, placing Shelley’s suitcase on the bed and opening it. “Shelley, sweetie, please get Grammy your clean clothes from the clothes basket by the door.” That would give the little girl something to keep her busy while she and Lauren talked. “That call was my tenth cancellation.”

  “The storm.” Lauren placed a squirming Shelley on the floor to do as her grandmother had asked.

  “Yes, the storm and the cancellation of the bike rally. Some of the indoor activities are still on for now.” Sonja sighed. “I messed up royally. All the reservations were from people participating in the rally. Without the rally, I have no guests. I didn’t do any advertising for the week in addition to what Eric’s PR people did for me as part of the rally promotion.”

  “Mom, people who were coming just for a beach vacation might have cancelled, too, because of the hurricane reports.”

  “Or if it was their annual vacation, they might have waited,” Sonja argued. We’ve had hurricane warnings before that have ended up being just a couple days of rain.”

  “Mantee,” Shelley interrupted, showing Lauren her new pillow.

  “Nice. Put it in your suitcase for Grammy.”

  “Right here.” Sonja patted the clothes in the suitcase, glad for the interruption. She didn’t want to talk about the B&B and her bad decisions. It only churned up the dread of what she had to tell Jeff later.

  “Anyway, I wasn’t really asking about the B&B,” Lauren said. “I was asking about you and Jeff. Eric’s comment about interrupting you. Is there something I should know?”

  Lauren meant well, but her teasing grated on Sonja’s nerves.

  “No, not really.” And there certainly wouldn’t be after she and Jeff talked. Sonja shut the suitcase. “Now, who’d like help me make a batch of my triple chocolate brownies.”

  “Me, me.” Shelley bounced on the bed.

  Sonja pasted a smile on her face. As if brownies would make what she needed to do any more palatable to Jeff. Or to her.

  Sonja kept the conversation to Lauren and Jesse’s trip and other innocuous subjects while the three of them whipped up a double batch of brownies—one pan for the B&B and Jeff and one for Lauren and Shelley to take with them.

  “Watch Frozen?” Shelley asked after Sonja put the brownies in the oven.

  “I have a better idea,” Lauren answered. “I brought you a dolphin video from our trip. Come on. It’s in my bag in the living room.”

  “You two go ahead. I’ll clean up in here quick and join you.” That would give Shelley and Lauren some time together and less time with the three of them together for Lauren to ask questions.

  A few minutes later, Sonja stood in the doorway to the living room. Shelley was on Lauren’s lap pointing at the TV and chattering. She and Jeff would have to take Shelley to the animal preserve. Her stomach sank. Or she’d have to tell Lauren and Jesse about it so they could take her.

  The door to the flat swung open and Jesse stepped in, followed by Jeff.

  “Done already?” Lauren asked.

  “The first two floors,” Jesse said. “It went so fast with the three of us that we decided to leave this floor until tomorrow morning.”

  “You’ll still have enough time to get all the buildings done?” Lauren asked. “Shelley and I are fine waiting.”

  And I’m fine putting off my talk with Jeff.

  “We’re good,” Jeff said. “I texted Liam, and he and some of his friends are taking care of what needs to be done at the shop. I’ll take a look at their job tomorrow before we put the shutters up at the duplex.”

  “You guys must be hungry. Want to order a pizza or something?” Sonja asked, knowing she was stalling.

  Jesse glanced at Lauren and Shelley. “We’ll take a raincheck.”

  “Yeah,” Lauren agreed. “I’d like to get home.”

  “Sure, I understand.”

  Jesse picked up Shelley’s suitcase and Lauren got their brownies from the kitchen.

  Sonja saw them out.

  “Be sure to lock the front door on your way out,” Jeff said.

  Him and his locked doors. Sonja would have smiled if she had any smile left in her.

  “Looks like it’s just you and me, now,” Jeff said.

  “What about Eric.”

  “I think we wore him out,” Jeff said with a satisfied grin that twisted Sonja’s heart. “He headed to his room to kick back with a beer.” He pulled out his cell phone. “What do you want on your pizza?”

  “I’m not really hungry. We need to talk.” Sonja motioned to the couch.

  “Sounds ominous.”

  Jeff’s words may have been meant as a tease, but to Sonja they lacked his normal teasing tone. He took a seat.

  “Lauren, Shelley and I made brownies. The triple chocolate ones you like, if you need something to tide you over.”

  “No. Thank you. Please sit and tell me what’s wrong. You’re dancing around like Shelley, and it’s making me nervous.”

  He thought he was nervous? She looked into his deep brown eyes, saw the real concern in them and on his face and nearly gave in. She shook her head.

  “No? You can’t sit?”

  Sonja sat on the edge of the couch, taking care not to touch Jeff. “I can’t … we …” She took a deep breath and caught a glimpse of the wooden rocking chair by the window. It was an antique, one of the few furnishings she’d brought to Indigo Bay from Chenango Falls. A wedding present from her grandmother, who’d died shortly after the wedding. The chair normally didn’t remind her of her old life. But for some reason the glimpse of it today did, and that fueled her determination to tell Jeff.

  “I can’t continue dating, seeing you as other than a family member.” She folded her hand to keep them from shaking.

  “Care to tell me why?” Jeff’s confused expression, the muscle working in his jaw, and the steel in his tone were at odds with each other. “You didn’t seem to have any problem with it
the other night.”

  “It’s not you. It’s me.”

  Jeff pinned her gaze with his. “That’s pretty trite.”

  “Everything moved too fast. When I admitted to myself that I had feelings for you, I wanted to take things slower, have the B&B opening out of the way, the business on its feet financially.”

  “It isn’t a business decision. You and me. At least not in my eyes.”

  “Nor in mine.” Sonja struggled to find the words she needed to make him understand. “I borrowed from my retirement plan at the real estate office to renovate the mansion into a B&B. When that amount fell short, I borrowed against the duplex.”

  She sucked in a quick breath, afraid that if she didn’t barrel on, she wouldn’t be able to finish. He’d say something that would stop her. “The short of it is that I have a balloon payment on the duplex loan that I was going to pay with the proceeds from the condo sale I made. I figured I’d have the profit from the B&B opening for living expenses. Now, I don’t.”

  Oddly, relief spread across Jeff’s face.

  “Jesse and I can help. We own the shop free and clear. I’m sure we could get a short-term equity loan to fill your gap until the B&B is in the black.”

  Sonja tapped into her inner fortitude. “No. My deal with Jesse on the B&B was that I provide the funding and he provide the manpower needed to renovate it and get it going. I’m not going back on that agreement.”

  “It’s really not a big deal for us.”

  “You don’t understand.” And Sonja wasn’t sure she could make him understand. “I went into my relationship and marriage to Tom bringing nothing of my own, expecting him to take care of me. He took advantage of that. I can’t start things out with you coming from the same place I was in then,”

  “That was then. Him. This is now.” His word, although soft, held a note of anger.

  She reached over and placed her finger on his lips to stop his words. He stilled and her heart cracked. “It’s how I have to do things. For myself. I can’t ask you to hang on indefinitely for something that may never happen.”

  Jeff jerked to his feet. “No, it’s what you want to do. Punish yourself at both of our expenses,” he said in a voice so cold it made her shiver.

  Sonja had speculated that mild-mannered Jeff was a man you didn’t want to anger. She took no satisfaction knowing she’d been right.

  “Please try to understand. We can talk tomorrow when you come with Jesse to finish the shutters.”

  He stalked to the door. “No need. I’m not your ex and if you think I am in any way, we can’t have anything more between us.”

  Sonja watched Jeff leave, taking three-quarters of the broken pieces of her heart with him. Her cell phone rang before she’d had the energy to get off the couch. Caroline’s name flashed on the caller ID. She took the call. Maybe talking to her friend would help her cope with her heartbreak.

  “Hey,” Caroline said. “I just need to check something with you quickly. You’re probably busy with hurricane preparations.”

  No, she was busy falling apart. “Okay.”

  “Eric Slade checked in at the B&B on June 30, right?”

  “No, not until July 1. Why?”

  There was an extended silence on Caroline’s end. “Oh, Sonja. I’m so sorry. Someone challenged the B&B’s nomination for the best new business. They were right. A business has to have been in full operation by June 30 to be nominated. That means …”

  Sonja finished Caroline’s sentence. “The B&B has been disqualified.”

  C H A P T E R 13

  Jeff really would have rather pounded nails into the structure’s siding to affix the Bahama hurricane shutters to his cottage. But the frames called for using screws, so he had to satisfy his urge to pound something with hand screwing the frame and giving each screw a final twist with his drill. He would have thought spending the day finishing the shutters at the B&B and putting up the ones at the duplex would have taken some of the edge off his anger. Anger at himself mostly, because he hadn’t done a better job of understanding Sonja. When working on the B&B and duplex hadn’t cooled all his anger at himself, he’d told Jesse and Eric that he could handle the cottage without them.

  He gave the last screw on the last window frame a hard twist, zapped it with the drill, and affixed the shutters themselves. His restless night, him going over and over what Sonja had said, thinking deeper into possible hidden meaning had helped soothe his hurt, but it hadn’t changed the opinion he’d gone to bed with. Sonja was wrong. And it was a good thing she’d decided she needed to be at the real estate office this morning when he and Eric and Jesse had been at the B&B finishing the shutters. Because if’ she’d been there, he would have told her she was wrong, and most certainly made things worse.

  She didn’t have to come into their relationship at some specified level of financial independence. So what if she could use his help now with the duplex loan payments? If his first marriage was any indication, there would come a time, probably sooner rather than later, when he’d need her help—emotionally, financially, whatever—and more than one time. As far as he knew, a successful relationship was a give and take thing, and most of that exchange had nothing to do with money. What he needed to do was come up with some way to help Sonja pay her loan and get the B&B going that didn’t look like he was behind the help nor that he was manipulating her.

  He looked at the ugly gray clouds nearly obscuring the unusually bright colors of the sunset behind them, put his tools in his tool box, and dropped the top closed. He didn’t know about a hurricane, but the sky looked like it was going to do something tonight. Inside the cottage, he left his tools by the door and grabbed a beer from the refrigerator. The sub he’d had late that afternoon should tide him over until breakfast. He sat in his recliner and turned on a baseball game. His last thought was that the game would be a mindless diversion from thinking about Sonja and that at the first crack of thunder, he’d turn the TV off.

  Voices woke him the next morning, still in the recliner. The TV. Jeff dropped the recliner’s foot rest and sat up straight. He’d been here all night. Slept through the hurricane? He focused on the woman newscaster from some network in Georgia, according to the tag running across the bottom of the screen.

  “That,” she concluded “was one of the many vacationers who, along with residents, are being evacuated from coastal vacation areas in Southern Georgia and Northern Florida with no place to go. All flights are cancelled in the area due to the expected landfall of Hurricane Arlene on the Georgia-Florida boarder.”

  The TV flashed back to the station’s newsroom and a meteorologist standing in front of a map. “Thank you, Cecily,” the man said. “Let’s take a look at Arlene’s trajectory again. She was expected to make landfall on the South Carolina coast yesterday evening, but took a sudden turn back east and circled around to the south, heading our way.”

  Jeff leapt to his feet. “That’s it.” He grabbed his phone from the table, scrolled down his contacts and punched a number, tapping his foot while the phone rang.

  “Hello,” a female voice answered.

  “Mayor Strickland. Jeff Brewster.”

  “Jeff.” Her voice sounded a little groggy.

  He looked at his phone clock. 7:30. Not that early. “I want to run an idea by you.”

  “O-kay. About what?”

  He ran his fingers through his hair, hoping he didn’t sound like too much of a lunatic. “I was watching the news, a segment about vacationers displaced from their hotels and resorts due to Arlene. I know Sonja has empty rooms at the B&B due to the cancellation of the rally and other Independence Day celebration activities. Other places here must, too. Indigo bay could take some of the vacationers while they make plans to get home. Our hotel and lodging businesses may be able to recoup some of their losses from cancelled reservations.”

  “You’ve got something there. Caroline’s son Dallas has a couple of his cottages available. I’ll contact the local authorities in the ar
eas being evacuated and put Caroline on seeing how many beds we have available. I’m sure the local churches will help, too. Any ideas about getting the displaced people here?”

  “One. Chartered busses. I’ll get back to you.”

  “All right. Let me know.” The mayor hung up.

  Jeff punched another number into his phone, which rang for what seemed forever.

  “Do you know what time it is?” Eric finally answered.

  “Yep, quarter of eight.”

  “Exactly,” Eric said.

  A wave of nausea rolled through him. Had Eric been up late? With Sonja?” Jeff threw off the unfounded thought. “How’d you like to be a good Samaritan?”

  “What? Get to your point.”

  Jeff explained his idea, ending with “I thought you might want to finance, help finance, some chartered busses to bring the people here. I can discount Chris’s bike some.”

  “Forget the discount. I’ll charter the busses if you tell me what’s up with you and Sonja? She was moping around last night like she’d lost her best friend, who I assumed was you. I told you not to mess up. But if she’s fair game …”

  Jeff bristled. “She not any kind of game. You take care of the busses, coordinate with Mayor Strickland.” He gave Eric the mayor’s number. “Don’t say anything to Sonja about me being involved. I’ll take care of Sonja.”

  “Ah, the White Knight to the rescue again.”

  Jeff huffed. “Shut up and go charter some busses.”

  One more call. Jeff tapped the familiar contact icon.

  “Hey.”

  “Jesse …” Jeff said, rubbing the back of his neck over his planned subterfuge.

  “Okay, Jesse, I’ll get right on it,” Sonja said into her phone, her mind already going to what she’d need to pick up at the grocery store. The people would want more than breakfast. She didn’t care if she didn’t make a dime on the guests. She sorely needed something to keep her occupied so her thoughts quit going right to Jeff and what she’d done … said … to him last night.

  She stared toward the shuttered front windows. Jeff wouldn’t try to dominate her as her ex-husband had. He wouldn’t manipulate her. He was the most upfront guy she’d ever met. Footsteps sounded on the stairway. Good, she wouldn’t have to wake Eric to watch the front desk for her while she went out.