“Well,” Daisy said, “I’m just so happy that she’s doing better and will be home soon.”
“Speaking of home, dear, what are your plans?”
Daisy took a slow sip of her coffee, then nonchalantly said, “Plans?”
“Why, yes. I hear your mother’s home needs extensive work. Certainly not something for a young woman like yourself to handle.”
“Why not?”
Lillian’s eyes startled. Clearly, she wasn’t used to a “young woman” like herself answering back so quickly.
She recovered, that same patronizing look safely back on her face. “You could, of course, handle anything that came your way, but why would you want to? Your mother had a stroke and I would think that for your own peace of mind—and for hers—you might want to consider Jade Gables as a suitable home for Wren.”
“The old folks’ home?” Daisy shook her head, a million thoughts crisscrossing their way through her mind. Like, how her mother could even be old enough to consider such a move. She couldn’t fathom it.
Lillian attempted to laugh away Daisy’s concerns. “Dear, Jade Gables is an assisted-living facility. Your mother would have her own room there. She’d have friends and caregivers. Really, you could not go wrong.”
Daisy snapped a look at the interloper who had interrupted her breakfast and who was attempting to derail her plans—her mother’s plans. “She wouldn’t have the beach,” Daisy said.
Lillian stared back at her. With barely a blink, she reached into her pocket and placed her business card on the table between them. She slid it over to her. “I can assure you that I have your mother’s best interest at heart. I can sell the house for top dollar, enough to pay for everything she needs at Jade Gables, including a chauffeur to take her to the beach anytime she would like to go.”
“No, thank you.”
Lillian’s forehead bunched like a Chinese Shar-Pei. “You can’t be serious.”
The bakery door opened and a familiar man strolled in. Daisy couldn’t place him but was glad for the distraction, and she took the opportunity to stand, leaving Lillian’s card on the table.
“Don’t forget my card, dear,” Lillian said, holding it out to her.
Daisy was about to remind the realtor of her first name when the man noticed them. He pivoted away from the bakery counter and approached. “Hello, Mother,” he said, and kissed Lillian on the cheek.
“Good morning, Trent.”
That’s it. His name was Trent. He had been one of the older guys in town, one of the cute boys that flirted with all the girls on the beach. Well, the ones that could fill out bikinis. Unlike her.
Daisy dared to remember those days, when she was the munchkin among models. She had worn a one-piece through high school, trying to hide the fact that she was flat as a crepe on top. Short, flat, and shapeless. Good thing memes had not been a thing back then because she was pretty sure her photo would have shown up on Facebook with those words plastered across her picture.
Trent looked at her, momentarily resting his chin on one bent finger. He snapped his fingers. “Daisy Mcafee!”
“That’s me.”
“Nice to see you again.” He glanced at his mother and a silent message seemed to pass between them, one she could not precisely translate. On second thought, that wary look he gave his mother may have been a warning.
“You too, Trent,” she said, trying not to sound pathetically enthusiastic over the fact that he remembered her. She picked up her coffee and the remnants of her breakfast. “Have a lovely day.”
Quickly, Daisy dashed out the door. Once home, she showered, grabbed her car, and headed out to hunt for inexpensive decor. She hoped to find items she could use to brighten up the house for her mother’s eventual return.
She also placed a call to her friend, Rafael, the handyman she’d lined up after they’d attended a wedding together recently—the infamous day that Jake had caught her up on that ladder. She bit her lip thinking about that. Anyway, she had called Rafael to tell him that work on the house would start soon. She pulled into a parking place, hoping that what she told Rafael was correct—that the city would be issuing her permit … fast.
Jake stared at the computer screen, four sets of eyes focused back on him. His lawyerly sister Grace watched him intently whenever he spoke. If this was how it felt to be on the witness stand, he wanted no part of court proceedings anytime soon.
He and his sisters had started these weekly video calls when Grace moved to the beach house for her month-long stay. They usually pulled the calls together on Sunday nights, but Lacy, who worked in hotel sales, had been on a plane to New York during what would have been their usual meeting—the reason they were all staring at each other on a Monday night.
“How fast will you be able to turn the place around?” Maggie asked him.
Jake tapped his pencil on the legal pad in front of him, the to-do list growing at a rapid rate. He’d spent the past couple of days scrutinizing the house in daylight and that alone added a page to the list in front of him. He would take care of a million small things—like ramping up the Wi-Fi while he was here. In the end, though, he had decided to pour most of his focus into the kitchen. “I’m putting in new cabinets and appliances this week and next.”
“Too pricey,” Maggie said.
Grace cut in. “Trust me, the kitchen needs an update.” While spending her month at the beach house, she had been put in charge of the initial list making, and Grace had made it clear that the place needed work. Not that he had been surprised.
Bella’s wide-eyed pout dominated the screen. “I thought you didn’t want to sell the house, Grace.”
Grace gave their youngest sister a sympathetic smile. “It’s not that I want to, necessarily, but it would probably be best for all of us if we do.”
Though she said the words, Jake sensed some hesitation in them. Grace hadn’t wanted to spend a month at the house when she did, mainly because she had just landed her dream job.
A whole lot of wrangling had happened during his sister’s month in Colibri Beach, and if he had to guess, Jake believed she might actually like to keep the place in the family. But she knew the others either did not want to—him, for example—or that they felt they could not afford to.
Lacy had been silent throughout most of the conversation. His sister, the jet-setting hotelier, had been sipping her wine throughout the call, nodding occasionally, her dark hair pulled back severely. She was the only one that reclined on the couch during these calls while the others appeared unnaturally close to the screen.
Finally, Lacy said, “I agree with the new kitchen. Check. What’s up next?”
Grace frowned, focusing on Lacy. “Are we keeping you from something?”
Lacy set down her glass and folded her hands in her lap. She yawned. “Maybe I just don’t want to stay in a rickety old house when it’s my turn. Hear that, Jake? I need you to get that place in shape for me.”
Maggie shook her head. “It’s going to take a lot of money to fix up the place and I, for one, don’t have it.”
Lines traversed his oldest sister’s forehead. He’d sensed for some time that life wasn’t exactly a party for her. Not that he expected being a single mother would be. But he had noticed her fretting on these calls more often than not, and that had led him to suspect it wasn’t from sheer bossiness, though she had displayed plenty of that growing up.
Jake shifted. “Don’t worry about the cost—”
Grace cut in. “Don’t forget about the budget.”
“I haven’t,” Jake said. “I have some favors owed me. Plus, as stipulated in our parents’ will, I’ll be providing most of the labor myself.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. He did have plenty of people in his profession who believed they owed him something—their words, not his. His sisters didn’t need to know where his financing came from.
Lacy leaned toward her computer camera. “Perfect, Jake. Now if you’ll all excuse me—”
Someone pounde
d on Jake’s door. He frowned.
Maggie squinted into the camera, as if that could help her see across the room. “Are you going to get that?”
He shook his head. “Probably someone selling encyclopedias.”
Bella sighed. “I bet they’re vintage.”
Maggie snorted. “Encyclopedias have gone the way of VCRs.”
Grace laughed. “Maybe, but you should see some of the thick volumes of research books we have in our law office. They’re worth hundreds each.”
“You mean they cost hundreds,” Maggie said.
Jake slid a look at Lacy. “Where were you when we were interrupted?”
Someone pounded on the door again, this time louder and for a sustained time. Jake looked into the screen. “Hang on a second.” He covered the room in three long strides and swung open the door.
“You did this!” Daisy hurled herself toward him, bumping into his chest, and when he didn’t step back, she shoved a piece of paper at his face.
Jake’s eyes ran across the document. He winced. The Mcafee house had been red-tagged. He shot her a look. “Daisy, I didn’t have anything to do with this. Why would you think that?”
Half circles hung beneath her eyes. “Because you said you were going to the planning office today. Even if you didn’t do it on purpose—”
“Which I wouldn’t do.”
She snapped those eyes at him. “Then you must have said something to somebody about our property.”
He reached out to her, but she ducked beneath his outstretched arm. A tug in his middle wanted to comfort the girl he’d known years ago, though maybe “known” wasn’t exactly the right term according to her. He slid a glance to where she retreated into the dining room, her arms hugging herself. In retrospect, no touching was best. They should stay a body’s length apart. He would be here only a short time, then head back into the abyss of problems at home. He’d be no help to her.
And vice versa.
She whispered, “If you said something to them, I swear, Jake…”
Lacy’s voice cut in. “Knock-knock. Yoo-hoo. What kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into now, big brother?”
Daisy jerked a look around the corner.
Jake gave her an awkward smile. “Video call with my sisters.” He strode to the computer. “You all remember Daisy, don’t you?”
Daisy stepped tentatively in front of the screen. “Hey, ladies,” she said, her voice subdued.
“Oh my gosh, Daisy!” Bella said. “Haven’t seen you in so long!”
“Sweet, Daisy,” Maggie said. “Hello.”
Grace smiled at her sympathetically. Jake knew that Grace and Daisy had spoken on the phone after Wren’s stroke, but he didn’t think they’d had much contact since then. “Good to see you, Daisy. How’s your mother?”
“She’s improving. I’ll always be grateful to you and your husband.” She wiped away a tear that streamed down her cheek, and, once again, Jake found himself fighting the urge to comfort her.
“And what is happening with your house?” Grace asked, pressing her gently.
Daisy held up the red-colored tag. “I’ve been notified that I need to vacate, which will make it hard for me to get the place ready for my mom to come home. They even had the electricity shut off!” She sniffed and righted her shoulders. “It’s for something that makes no sense at all.”
Jake held out his hand. “May I?”
Daisy turned to him, distrust in her eyes, and something painful twisted in his chest. She relented and handed him the document.
“You know, our boy Jake’ll help you,” Lacy said. “I believe he has some connections when it comes to building issues, right, brother?”
Jake slid a glance at Lacy. Something about the way she eyed him made him cringe, like there was a deeper meaning to her words.
“I have an idea,” Grace said. She wore that thoughtful lawyer look, the one that brought his hackles to attention. Somehow he knew that whatever his little sister said was going to involve him.
“You can stay in our place while you deal with the city. You can have the whale room that we all stayed in once upon a time.” Grace turned her chin toward Jake. “I’m sure that will be fine with Jake.”
Those hackles now stood at attention.
“Oh, that’s a perfect idea!” Bella said.
“Yeah, I’d have to agree with Grace on that,” Lacy said. She speared Jake with a look and held up her wineglass in a mock salud.
“Thank you for the gesture, Grace,” Daisy said. “But I—no, I couldn’t do that to, uh, Jake. I’ll figure something out.”
“Don’t be silly,” Bella said in that little girl voice of hers. “La rostra casa è la tua casa—your house is our house. That’s what our mother used to say.”
Maggie sat back, sighing. “She certainly did—I think Dad taught her that and it stuck. Really, Daisy, the timing is perfect and we’ll do whatever we can to support you. Won’t we, Jake?”
All eyes were on him.
He tilted his gaze to Daisy. “Of course we will,” he said softly. “This is a big place. Drafty, but big. You are welcome to stay as long as you need to.”
Lacy cut in again. “And Jake’ll help you with the city’s big, bad planning department.”
He nodded, still questioning Lacy’s motive. “I will, if you’ll let me.”
Truthfully, he did not care to have a housemate—he had plenty of work to do both on the family home and on the LA project breathing down his collar. But he knew how it felt to be falsely accused of something, and if his assessment of Daisy’s red tag was correct, someone had stretched the truth.
Plus, if he were to be honest with himself, there was a comparable-value element at play. If, for some reason, Daisy were to sell the Mcafee house as-is, the value of his family home could be greatly reduced. Not that he needed money. Far from it. But there was an intrinsic value in the place that he and his sisters had called home each summer and he hated to see it go for a pitiable number.
“So,” Grace said, “will you take us up on it?”
“Yeah,” Lacy said, “will you move in with Jake?”
Daisy pressed her lips together, her eyes wide, a vague wrinkle forming before them. A sexy, vague wrinkle. She took a tentative look at Jake, as if wondering how on board with this he really was.
He held her gaze. “It’s the best solution, Daisy.”
She nodded and whispered, “Thank you,” but the expression on her face told him she felt as conflicted as he did.
After grabbing her clothes, toiletries, and tools from her mother’s using her phone’s light to guide her—pretty much everything she’d brought with her—Daisy wandered down the creaky wooden hall of the Morelli house. She’d been here before, but it had seemed larger to her then. And foreboding, too. She blushed, thinking of the way she pined for Jake as a teenager. He was three years older and barely noticed her, choosing instead to hang out with tall, skinny girls in tiny, string bikinis.
Whatever.
He’d been traipsing behind her ever since she walked through the front door. He hovered in the doorway of the girls’ old room. “Sure there’s nothing back at the house that you would like me to get for you?”
She gave him a brief glance over one shoulder. “No, thank you.”
“Tomorrow I’ll stop by the planning department and snoop around. I won’t mention that we’ve talked—no need to draw unnecessary attention to your situation.”
Daisy listened to him in silence. He was ashamed of her and her mother’s home. Check. She appreciated the effort, even if it did feel forced and the message he sent was off-putting.
He shifted and she barely looked at him. “Well, then, good night,” he said.
After he had gone, she wilted onto the bed, her things at her feet. The room was exactly as she remembered it, except for appearing smaller. Double bed, off-white bedspread with a fat, spouting whale on it. Sea glass green walls, white bookshelf, and wicker TV stand. The windows, h
owever, looked newer than the house itself.
Her stomach grumbled and she realized, quite suddenly, that she hadn’t eaten. She sneaked a look toward the doorway. She did not want to interact with Jake any more than absolutely necessary, but though it was only a little after nine o’clock, he had said good night and she remembered hearing his footfalls going up the stairs.
She tiptoed to the doorway and peeked out. Nothing. Daisy slipped out of her sneakers and padded down the hall in her socks. The wind had begun its nightly howl, slamming itself against the old house. Daisy shuddered. The wind, so typical for this stretch of the beach, had one positive outcome: tomorrow the sky would be clear and blue. But that wind had also helped spread the fire that had made its way to her mother’s home last month.
As she stood in the living room now, debating whether to dart across the divide between the two houses to search for food, a car pulled into the driveway. She stepped back, watchful. A person stepped out of the car and shut the door. She held her breath, wondering. Was Jake expecting someone? Was there another roommate? Someone she did not know about?
The man rounded the car and bounded up the steps. He wore a blue baseball cap and smelled like … pepperoni. “Evening.”
“Hi.” She noted the large pizza box in his hands. “Um, I think you have the wrong—”
Jake’s voice cut in from behind her. “I’ll take that. What do I owe you?”
After he paid for the pizza, Jake pivoted, box in hand. “Hungry?”
Yes, yes, she was. But she shook her head no anyway. “Thanks, but I’m fine.”
His eyes brushed over her face. “You look hungry.” Her stomach growled and he laughed. “Thought so. Join me?”
She shrugged. “Sure.”
“Have a seat.” He plopped open the pizza on the island and picked up a bottle of wine. “Chianti?”
When she didn’t answer right away, he pulled two wineglasses from a shelf and began to pour. He set a glass in front of her. “I’m not a fan of drinking alone.”
“Thanks.” She took a sip, her thoughts inundated with memories and worries. Jake was being nice to her. That’s all. She had to keep her mind clear of the past, of the feelings she’d had for him way back when. This moment was a vapor that would soon pass and she’d better hang onto that fact so she didn’t somehow get sucked into any other daydream.
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