The Cliff House

by RaeAnne Thayne

  The cashier gave a rather sour smile as she ran the candles and the wine through and added them to Daisy’s total. Her sister would pay her, Daisy knew, minus the cost of the toothpaste. These days Bea was much more careful with her money, though it had taken Daisy several years to convince her the healthy alimony and child support she received from Cruz wasn’t exactly a blank check.

  Tommy looked happy to see her sister. “Hi, Bea,” he said. “Tomorrow is Stella’s birthday. She’s going to be forty.”

  “Isn’t that great?”

  “I bought her a present from here, a plant with pink flowers. I get an employee discount.”

  “Oh, she’ll love that. Nice job, Tom.”

  He beamed, as charmed by Bea as everyone else in the world.

  “See you later,” Daisy said, used to being invisible around her more vivacious younger sister.

  He gave an almost-smile as he handed her the cake. Bea reached in and grabbed the wine and the bag with the rest of the groceries.

  “Bye, Tom,” Bea said. She stopped to give him a quick hug, which seemed to please him, though he didn’t hug her back.

  As they walked out of the store, they had to pass a late-model luxury SUV limousine that was idling in the fire lane, one of Daisy’s pet peeves. It wasn’t just because of environmental reasons and the pollutants their idling vehicles were sending into the atmosphere. She hated the sense of entitlement, when people thought they were so important, they shouldn’t have to walk fifteen more feet to a parking space like the rest of the peons.

  A man was climbing into the back seat as they passed. He looked up, and for just an instant, their gazes met. She should have known. It was the gorgeous man with the sexy accent.

  He gave her a rueful sort of smile and a wave, which she pointedly ignored as she marched behind the vehicle toward her own fifteen-year-old BMW.

  “Who was that?” Bea stared after the limo.

  “No idea,” Daisy mumbled.

  “He looked like he knew you.”

  “He doesn’t.”

  “Are you sure? He waved at you and everything. He looks familiar. Is he some kind of celebrity?”

  Maybe. Daisy didn’t watch much television and her knowledge of pop culture was nonexistent. She couldn’t even tell which Kardashian was which and had no idea why she should care.

  “You’re the one who reads all the tabloids. You tell me. I don’t know who he is. I only know I’ve never met him before in my life.”

  Before she bumped into him ten minutes earlier, anyway.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “We’ve got to go or we’ll be late.”

  “Trust me, Stella won’t notice. Mari’s over there already and the two of them are probably in the middle of a hot game of slapjack.”

  She had to admit Bea was probably right. Stella hadn’t wanted them to make a fuss over her birthday anyway and wouldn’t care if they were a few moments late. “Here. You hold the cake. I don’t want to set it on the seat and risk it falling off.”

  Bea made a face but held out her arms for the cake. After a quick stop at the Italian restaurant their aunt loved so they could grab the preordered meal, Daisy drove to Three Oaks, the sturdy, graceful Craftsman house Stella had purchased for a song when she brought the girls here to Cape Sanctuary all those years ago.

  It had been a mess when they first moved in, she remembered, with only one tiny working bathroom and two inhabitable bedrooms. She and Bea hadn’t minded sharing, so grateful to be together again and with their beloved aunt.

  The three of them had worked together to make this a home: learning to put up drywall, painting, sanding floors, refinishing woodwork. Daisy had loved painting most of all, which was kind of ironic now, when she thought of it.

  It had taken them the better part of three years but the result was a lovely home, filled with laughter and joy.

  When they walked in, they found Stella in the kitchen wearing a ruffled apron splotched with huge yellow sunflowers. She was taking a tray of something out of the oven—her famous Oreo cookie mini cheesecakes, by the looks of it.

  Her face lit up when she spotted them. “Girls! You’re both here at last!”

  She set down the muffin tin on the stovetop, took off her oven mitts and rushed to kiss first Bea as soon as she’d set down the cake, then Daisy.

  Daisy hugged her back, so very grateful to this woman who had rescued two lost girls.

  “You’re not supposed to be doing anything,” Bea scolded. “We brought dinner for you. That’s what you said you wanted for your birthday gift.”

  “You know me. I’m not good at sitting around. These are so easy, though. Mari helped.”

  “Where is my child?”

  “In here,” Mari called from the room off the kitchen that Stella had always called the library, which functioned as an office, homework station and computer center.

  “We were watching a YouTube video one of her friends posted on the computer when my timer went off,” Stella explained as she set the cheesecake bites onto a rack to cool.

  Daisy watched her aunt with the same unease she’d been feeling for several weeks now.

  Though forty, Stella looked years younger. The three of them could have been sisters, really, as her and Bea’s mother, Jewel, had been ten years older than her only surviving sibling. Stella was only ten years older than Daisy.

  Stella had elfin features, high cheekbones and wide green eyes. She was petite, just over five feet two inches tall. Many of her middle school students topped her in height, something they all seemed to find hilarious.

  While Stella’s features were familiar and beloved, when Daisy looked deeper, she saw that her aunt still had the guarded, closed, almost furtive look that Daisy had first noticed several weeks ago. Something was up. She didn’t know what it was; she only knew Stella was keeping secrets.

  Her aunt was usually an open book, free and spontaneous. She had even been known to tell her life story to strangers she met at the diner in town.

  Since about Easter, that had begun to change. She would take phone calls in another room and would often beg off arranged meetings for mysterious reasons.

  Was it a new man in her life? About time, if it was. Stella deserved nothing but unicorns and rainbows. She deserved the very best man around. As far as Daisy was concerned, no one would ever be good enough for Stella.

  She had often wondered why Stella had never married. She had dated here and there but nothing ever very serious, usually breaking things off right around five or six weeks.

  “Do you want us to set the food up here or out in the garden?”

  “Oh, it’s a lovely evening. Let’s eat outside.” Stella looked around. “Is Shane meeting you here?”

  Bea looked surprised. “You said only family.”

  “What do you call Shane? He grew up next door and was in and out of here more than his own house. He lives with you, for heaven’s sake. You should have invited him, poor man.”

  “I think he has plans, anyway,” Bea said. If Daisy wasn’t mistaken, her sister looked slightly put out by that, making her wonder what the man’s plans were and why they bothered Bea.

  “Shane has plans a lot lately.” Marisol, followed as usual by their little dog, Jojo, came in and swiped one of the cheesecake bites off the cooling rack. “We hung out with him more before he moved into the guesthouse. Hi, Aunt Daisy.”

  “Hello, darling niece.” Daisy hugged the girl she adored with all her heart.

  “Shane is busy right now,” Beatriz explained. “Sometimes we don’t see him for days. You know how it is. It’s the beginning of the football season. We won’t see him again until January.”

  After playing college football and spending several years in the pros, Shane Landry, Bea’s best friend since they moved here to Cape Sanctuary, was in his second year of teach
ing biology at the high school and coaching the state championship high school football team.

  One of these days Bea would get smart and figure out the man was crazy in love with her.

  “Do you know of any celebrities staying in the area?” Bea asked their aunt. “We saw this gorgeous guy outside the grocery store tonight in a big SUV limo. He looked familiar but I couldn’t quite place him. He only had eyes for Daisy.”

  “Do tell!” Stella’s own eyes widened.

  Daisy felt herself flush. “He thought he knew me. I told him he was mistaken.”

  “You didn’t tell me you talked to him!” Bea exclaimed.

  “Apparently, I missed the family rule where I had to tell you everything going on in my life in a twenty-four-hour period.”

  “Not everything, just the juicy parts about gorgeous strangers who show up in Cape Sanctuary and act like they know you.”

  “Well, that rule is stupid since that has only happened the one time.”

  “You’re stupid if you think I wouldn’t want to know you talked to him!” Bea said.

  Stella laughed. “We all do. Tell us everything.”

  “Nothing to tell. I bumped into him in the toothpaste aisle. Like I said, he thought he knew me. I said he didn’t. We went our separate ways. End of story.”

  Bea, she knew, wouldn’t have let that be the end of the story. Bea would have flirted with the man, would have tucked one of those long, luxurious curls behind her ear as she turned her head just so. At the end of sixty seconds of conversation, Beatriz would have had him hanging on her every word.

  But Daisy wasn’t her younger sister, she thought as she carried the meal outside to the garden of Three Oaks, with its long pine table and mason jars hanging in the trees, filled with solar-powered candles already beginning to spark to life in the gathering dusk.

  She wasn’t her sister by a long shot.

  2

  BEATRIZ

  “Do you really think Dad is okay?”

  Bea tried not to think about those tabloid photos or the man with the blood seeping out of his gut.

  “Yes, honey. I do,” she assured her daughter. “He said so himself when he called that first night, and his manager swears he only needed a few days to process what happened before he returns to his regular activities.”

  “Where do you think he might be?” In the rearview mirror, she caught Mari’s frown in the back seat of her SUV.

  That one was harder to answer. “I’m not sure. Maybe with his extended relatives down in Mexico or at the island he likes off Panama. He’ll be in touch.”

  “He should be answering his phone. It’s irresponsible of him not to. He has to know I’ll worry about him.”

  Sometimes she thought Mari was born sounding about Stella’s age.

  “You know he’ll be in touch as soon as he can, honey.”

  She was annoyed all over again at Cruz for not considering the impact on his daughter of the highly publicized attack against him. How hard would it be for him to make a freaking phone call to assure their child he was okay?

  Then again, he had never been particularly good at checking in with her when they were married and he was touring. Why should he change his habits for their child?

  When they returned to the house she had moved into along the coast road after her divorce, the lights were on out by the pool.

  “Looks like Shane is swimming!” Mari said. “Can I go out and swim, too?”

  She might have guessed he would be there, probably with his sweet yellow Labrador retriever, Sally, either playing in the water with him or lounging on the side.

  Her elaborate pool with its secret grotto, waterfalls and high-tech hot tub had become his favorite part of living in the guesthouse. Just a few nights earlier, he told her the pool would be the thing he missed most when the renovations to his own house were finished.

  She still wasn’t sure why that had stung so much.

  “He might not be there much longer. We don’t know how long he’s already been in the pool. But I don’t mind if he doesn’t. Go ahead and change into your suit.”

  “I’ll hurry. I can go fast. Come on, Jojo,” she said, already racing for the door with their little dog scampering along behind her.

  Mari, like everyone else in town, adored Shane. Bea had gone with him to enough restaurants or community events to see how people in town respected Shane. Everybody wanted to talk to him, to tell him about their son or nephew or grandson who was on his team, to shake his hand and tell him thanks for all he had done for the town and to wish him well on bringing home the state championship again.

  After the shoulder injuries that ended his glowing NFL career, Shane could have thrown a serious pity party. Instead, he had moved home to be with his father during Bill Landry’s final two years and spent six months of that time finishing his teaching certificate to go with the biology degree he earned playing college ball.

  He could have taken a position on a major university football staff and possibly worked his way up to a Division One head coach. She knew he’d had offers. Good ones. Instead, he was choosing to make his home here in this little town on the Northern California coast, teaching freshman and sophomore biology and coaching a ragtag group of kids.

  Feeling restless for reasons she couldn’t identify, Bea headed to the vast master suite, which she slept in alone, to change into her swimming suit.

  Since Shane had moved into the guesthouse two months earlier, something had changed between them and she wasn’t sure what it was or how to fix it.

  They used to be best friends. She used to be able to talk to him about anything going on in her life: her latest art show, the problems Mari was having with a friend, how Daisy had frustrated her that day. All her hopes, dreams, worries.

  He had been there when her marriage broke up and she tried to find her way as a single mom.

  She, in turn, had helped him navigate the end of his NFL career and had provided emotional support during the final difficult months of his father’s life as heart disease and diabetes eventually claimed Bill Landry.

  Bea had been the unofficial football team mom to his high schoolers the previous year. She took refreshments to practice; she hosted game-viewing parties in her home theater; she knew all their names and cheered on every single game, home or away.

  Things had been fine until Shane decided to renovate his father’s home next door to Stella’s. The place hadn’t been updated since the sixties when it was built and needed extensive work. It had been Bea’s bright idea to offer Shane the guesthouse here while the inside of his place was gutted and redone with new electricity and plumbing.

  She wished she had never opened her big, stupid mouth.

  She hated this edginess that had tormented her around him over the summer. She wanted things to go back to the way they’d been before.

  Life rolled on. That was one of Cruz’s songs that she had helped him write, back in the glory days of their relationship. Life rolled on. You either rolled with it or let it flatten you as it rolled by.

  She changed quickly and found her daughter throwing on her flip-flops near the patio doors.

  Shane was swimming laps and didn’t notice them at first, giving Bea a chance to admire the picture he made in the moonlight: muscles rippling across his wide shoulders, tapering down to slim hips in red board shorts.

  She used to tease him that if he grew his sun-streaked hair out to his shoulders, he could pass for Thor before the buzz cut of the more recent movies.

  She sighed. She hadn’t teased him in a long time. When she tried, her words tangled and she ended up sounding stupid and awkward.

  Marisol didn’t wait for him to notice them. She jumped headlong into the deep end, just feet in front of him.

  Shane paused in midstroke and lifted his head out of the water. His hair was wet, droplets clin
ging to his face, and Bea curled her fingers at her side against the urge to wipe them away.

  Cut it out, she snapped at herself. He didn’t see her that way. To Shane, she was like a kid sister, one he’d had to bail out of one too many scrapes.

  He smiled as Marisol swam toward him like the little fish she was. “Hey, Sunshine.”

  Mari grinned at the nickname he always called her, a play on the sol part of Marisol, which meant “sun.”

  “Hey, Shane. Guess what? We went to Aunt Stella’s birthday party tonight. She turned forty. Can you believe she’s that old?”

  He sent an amused look toward Bea that made butterflies explode to life inside her. “Forty is far from old, kiddo. And anyway, your aunt Stella is the youngest forty-year-old I know.”

  “I guess. Race you to the other side. I’m gonna win this time.”

  “Says who?” He took off after her and the race was on.

  Bea contented herself with swimming laps while the two of them were being silly, taking turns on the diving board with the most elaborate dive, then playing a hot game of one-on-one basketball with the freestanding hoop Shane had bought the previous summer.

  Bea swam into the grotto and watched them play through the waterfall. Jojo and Sally, the best of friends, had climbed out some time ago and were curled up together on the outdoor carpet that marked one of the seating areas around the pool.

  They loved the pool as much as their humans.

  Keeping it heated year-round was sheer indulgence, but Bea didn’t care. Fortunately, Cape Sanctuary had a fairly temperate climate and the thermometer rarely dipped below freezing.

  As she might have predicted, Mari started to tire after about an hour in the pool, especially as she’d already had a long day with friends earlier, then the excitement of Stella’s party.

  After winning the basketball game by one layup, her daughter climbed out of the pool and started drying off, which seemed to signal to Shane it was time to do the same. After a moment Bea dived through the waterfall so she could exit, embracing the cold drops on her back.