Just South of Perfect

by Grace Palmer

  Just South of Perfect

  A Willow Beach Inn Novel (Book 2)

  Grace Palmer

  Copyright © 2020 by Grace Palmer

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Contents

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  Also by Grace Palmer

  Just South of Perfect

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

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  Also by Grace Palmer

  Sweet Island Inn

  No Home Like Nantucket (Book 1)

  No Beach Like Nantucket (Book 2)

  No Wedding Like Nantucket (Book 3)

  No Love Like Nantucket (Book 4)

  * * *

  Willow Beach Inn

  Just South of Paradise (Book 1)

  Just South of Perfect (Book 2)

  Just South of Sunrise (Book 3)

  Just South of Perfect

  A Willow Beach Inn Novel (Book 2)

  An unplanned stop in Willow Beach turns into an unexpected romance.

  Being a single mother was hard. But Stella Pierce did a good job, and now that her only child is off to college, she can sit back and relax.

  Except that these things never work out the way you’ve planned. Turns out that the empty nester life just makes her anxious. So when her friend Brenda suggests she take a vacation down to Boston, that’s exactly what Stella does.

  Too bad she never makes it that far.

  When her car breaks down in the small seaside town of Willow Beach, Stella finds herself stuck. And the sweet, handsome mechanic down at the car shop, Sam Warren, doesn’t seem to be in too much of a hurry to send Stella on her way.

  Fortunately, the Baldwin family at the Willow Beach Inn is there to welcome her with open arms.

  Maybe starting fresh is exactly what Stella has been looking for.

  Take off your shoes and stay awhile at the Willow Beach Inn in Book 2 of this heartwarming series. You’ll see Willow Beach through a newcomer’s eyes and fall in love all over again with the Baldwin family.

  1

  When it rains, it pours. Fortunately for Stella Pierce, it wasn’t actually raining. But that was just about the only thing that was going right. Otherwise, the situation in which she’d suddenly found herself was pretty much a perfect disaster.

  Cell phone reception? Non-existent.

  Car trouble? Oh heavens yes. Her vehicle was currently billowing smoke from under the hood and making an extremely worrying groaning sound like a dying animal.

  Signs of life on the side of the highway? Absolutely none. Not a single living soul in sight to help her get out of this mess.

  She was utterly and completely alone.

  She tried to breathe. Calm down, lady, she said to herself, using the same jokey cowboy tone that her dad sometimes used to talk her off the ledge whenever the demands of life started to feel overwhelming.

  But Stella’s heart rate wanted nothing to do with calm. It felt like it was about to beat its way out of her chest.

  How had things gone so wrong, so fast? She thought back over all the things that had brought her to this horrible moment. Only one thing was certain: this was all Brenda’s fault.

  A FEW HOURS EARLIER

  Things changed fast.

  Just a little while ago, Stella Price had been working on a craft project for her mom’s flea market booth. Meanwhile, on the television, soap opera star Marjorie was in the midst of learning that her long-lost twin sister was actually a con artist with access to Hollywood-level special effects makeup. Stella was only slightly ashamed that she’d been tearing up at the shocking twist. Poor Marjorie.

  A voice cut in. “If you complain about missing the end of your ridiculous program again, I’m going to stage an actual intervention.” Stella’s friend and coworker Brenda sat down on the end of the bed and tucked her legs up underneath her. She had kicked off her heels by the front door the moment Stella let her in but was still in the pressed gray dress and pantyhose that constituted her usual work attire. Stella’s lounge pants had never felt more repulsive.

  “Please don’t call it my program again. It reminds me of my mom. That’s what she calls Matlock. I bought her all the seasons on DVD last Christmas, but she still waits for it to come on cable every day.”

  Stella sighed. “And this isn’t an actual intervention?”

  Brenda looked at Stella over the tops of her thick-framed blue glasses. “Believe me, you’ll know when it’s a real intervention, deary.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be at work? It’s the middle of the afternoon.”

  “Mark can spare me. This is more important.”

  Stella and Brenda had worked together at the same design company for ten years. Brenda was a copywriter, while Stella was a designer, so they worked together on aspects of projects, but their friendship had mostly been formed in the break room. Even still, there was no precedent for Brenda showing up at Stella’s house unexpectedly. And there was certainly no precedent for her forcing Stella off the couch and on a vacation she never asked for.

  Stella threw her tennis shoes into the suitcase and then slumped forward with a sigh. “I don’t know about this. I mean, where am I going to sleep? I don’t have a room reserved.”

  Brenda batted away her friend’s concerns with long red fingernails and jangly bracelets. “That is the beauty. You don’t need a plan. Drive until you get tired. Eat when you want to eat. Listen to what you want to listen to. None of Jace’s fantasy football podcasts or headbanger music.”

  That was a little unfair. Jace, Stella’s eighteen-year-old son, who had recently departed for college, did not play fantasy football or listen to headbanger music. “Jace and I usually listened to audiobooks, actually. There is this fantasy series he really likes—Circle of Time or something. It’s pretty good.”

  “Whatever.” Brenda cut her off with another jangly slash through the air. “Regardless, this trip is all about you, Stells. No plans, no stress, no responsibilities.”

  Brenda meant the words to be encouraging, but anxiety gripped Stella’s chest at the thought. She had survived the last eighteen years of being a single mom by having a plan—a structure. Even now, she had a meal plan stuck to the side of the refrigerator, along with a detailed calendar of every appointment, meeting, and activity for the week ahead. Admittedly, the calendar had been a bit thin the last couple of months since Jace left for college, and she only cooked once or twice a week and then survived on leftovers every other day, but Stella still sat down every Sunday night to fill both the calendar and meal plan out. The routine brought her peace.

  Stella must have spaced out because when she blinked, Brenda was standing in front of her with her hands on Stella’s shoulders.

 
; “Unclench.”

  Stella released a shaky breath.

  “This is going to be good for you.” Brenda lowered her chin and stared into Stella’s eyes. “When I got here, you were crying at an amateur actress on daytime television. Now, you are taking a vacation. This is progress. This is a good thing.”

  Stella resisted reminding Brenda for the second time that she was already on vacation. That’s what she called her time away from work, anyway—vacation—but apparently, those were just “days off.” Brenda seemed to think there was a very important distinction between the two.

  “You’re doing yourself a disservice by labeling this—” she waved her hand to encompass the couch, the soap opera, the craft project on Stella’s coffee table—“a vacation. Vacations require a change of location. Spontaneity, you know?” Brenda said, wrinkling her nose at the kitschy wooden signs scattered across Stella’s living room floor in various stages of doneness. She picked up one of the pieces of distressed wood and tilted her head to the side. “Cute.”

  The paintings weren’t cute. Stella knew that. Her mom sold glass jewelry from a rented booth at a flea market, but she hadn’t had as much foot traffic as usual lately, so she wanted to offer something more “commercial,” whatever that meant. She thought Stella could offer up some of her rarely used talents. Most of the signs said something like “It’s wine-o-clock somewhere” or “Get what you get and don’t throw a fit,” so the project wasn’t exactly stretching the boundaries of her talents, but it was something to do. Something to keep Stella busy.

  That was why she’d taken on the new project at work, too. Mark had made the announcement at their weekly meeting, making a big deal out of the clients being Australian, insisting this would mean putting the company on the world stage and expanding business. Stella didn’t care about any of that—mostly because she didn’t actually believe him. Really, she just wanted something to get excited about.

  Of course, if she’d known taking the project would mean daily design reviews with Mark, she probably would have passed. Even if the work required more than two firing neurons—which it most certainly did not—Stella didn’t need daily design reviews. She’d been a graphic designer for twenty years and with this company for ten. She had more experience in the work and company than Mark, yet he was her boss, and he refused to hear a word of protest. Stella could fight harder, but she’d never get promoted to lead designer if she didn’t appear to be a team player. So, she’d been cashing in her time off to get away from Mark and keep from exploding in frustration.

  She just never considered getting away from everything.

  “You’ve been moody for weeks.” Brenda had only been in Stella’s house twice over the length of their ten-year-long friendship, but that didn’t stop her from yanking Stella up the stairs and rooting through her closet for a suitcase. “Everyone can see you are in a funk. Ever since Jace left, you’ve been a big old ball of blah.”

  Stella never thought she was the office clown or anything, but she didn’t assume everyone thought she was boring. Even though she suspected Brenda had only the best intentions, the insult stung. Even after Brenda spent the next fifteen minutes encouraging Stella to let out the carefree side she knew was hidden deep inside, Stella couldn’t help but feel like one of those storage lockers she’d seen being auctioned off on TV. People bid money on them, expecting there to be a hidden treasure inside worth money, but instead, they found stained mattresses, waterlogged baseball cards, and broken furniture.

  “This is what I’m talking about,” Brenda said, shaking Stella’s shoulders. “You’re zoning out in the middle of my pep talk.”

  Stella shook her head and blinked. “I’m sorry. This is just a lot to take in.”

  “No, it’s simple. You are going to tell Mark you’ll be out of the office for the next week, get in your car, and drive to the first city that pops in your head. When you get there, you’re going to do something fun. And expensive!”

  “I can’t leave for an entire week. The Australia project is—”

  “—the exact same as every other project you’ve ever worked on,” Brenda finished. “Everyone there knows you could build that town down under’s website with your eyes closed. Mark is making a big stink over nothing.”

  “It could put the company on an international stage. It’s important that it be done right.”

  “You sound like Mark.”

  Stella frowned. “That’s the meanest thing you’ve said to me since you got here.”

  “I’m not worried about you, Stella. You have been an amazing mom for the last eighteen years. You raised a smart, thoughtful young man, and you did it with dignity and grace. But now it’s time to put yourself first.”

  For years, especially when Jace was small, Stella daydreamed about having a weekend to herself. About sleeping in, eating something sweet and covered in sugar for breakfast, and then getting in her car and going wherever she wanted without worrying about tantrums or the inevitable sugar crash.

  Now that her baby boy was gone, though, Stella just wanted him back.

  Brenda pulled Stella to the bed and forced her to sit. “When the twins went off to school, I cried for days. I teared up every time I walked past their room, and I kept buying their favorite snack foods at the grocery store for months afterward, forgetting they wouldn’t be around to eat them. I knew they were safe and happy in their dorm rooms, but it didn’t make it easier to bear. My babies didn’t need me anymore, and I felt useless.”

  Stella swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. “What did you do?”

  “I got a tattoo, unfortunately.” Brenda’s eyebrows rose dubiously high before she snorted out a laugh. “Then I took two weeks off work and turned their room into a home gym. Now, they sleep on a bunk bed in the basement when they come home, and thanks to my Stair Master, I could climb to the top of the Empire State Building twice before even feeling winded.”

  “I don’t want a home gym. Or a tattoo.” Stella had considered getting a tattoo when she was younger and more reckless. Nothing scandalous. Maybe just a flower somewhere near her collarbone. Then, she found out she was pregnant, and the door to impulsivity slammed shut in her face.

  She could have still gotten a tattoo as a single mom, but there was enough stigma to fight back against already. People assumed the worst about her when they should have been assuming the worst about Jace’s biological father. Sure, she could have accepted his marriage proposal and saved her reputation, but it wouldn’t have been happy or healthy for anyone. Stella took the harder road, but she knew in her heart that it was the right road. She never once doubted that decision.

  “That’s what the trip is for: to figure out what you want.” Brenda jumped up from the bed and plucked a sun hat off the hook inside the closet, plopping it on Stella’s head and pulling it low over her eyes. “Maybe you should figure it out somewhere tropical. A beach is a great place to do some thinking.”

  Stella had never been able to tan. She took Jace to Disney World when he was eight, and even though she lathered herself in sunscreen every hour, her shoulders and cheeks turned a blistering red and then peeled for two weeks after they got home. But she always liked the water. The sound of the ocean lapping against the sand, the lullaby of rolling waves…

  Her mom always said, “The only thing that never changes is that everything always changes.” It was true. When Stella got pregnant, she wanted her life to go back to how it was before. She wanted to go to her job at the photo center during the day and then come back to her studio apartment and send out applications to every job she could find that had even the slightest bit to do with design. Stella imagined a big life for herself—maybe in New York City or Chicago or at least Boston. She imagined working a job that required some actual artistic talent and making a lot of money doing it. Maybe she even imagined love, though that always felt like an afterthought. Her career came first.

  Then, she had Jace, and everything changed. Stella loved him—adored him. Stel
la lived for Jace, night and day, for eighteen years. She gave up her dreams and her entire self to raise him and love him, and it never once felt like a sacrifice. It felt as natural as breathing.

  Now that he was gone, Stella could hardly breathe.

  Once again, everything had changed, but rather than jumping in with both feet, Stella got caught in the wave. She was trapped in the space between what once was and what would be, and she had no idea which way was up or how to make it out of the swell.

  Honestly, she wasn’t exactly ready to figure it out, either.

  “What have you always wanted to do, Stella?”

  “Nothing.”

  Brenda rolled her eyes and wagged a disapproving finger in the air. “No. Not acceptable. We both know there is something you’ve always wanted to do but haven’t because of Jace or fear or money or whatever. So, what is it? What’s your dream?”

  In the lineup of people Stella was mostly likely to bare her deepest, darkest secrets to, Brenda was towards the back. To be fair, the line wasn’t very long to begin with. Stella was close with her mom and Jace, and beyond that, her friend list was limited. Her siblings all lived out of state and, aside from talking to the other moms at Jace’s basketball games and choir concerts, Stella had never made friends of her own. She honestly thought she didn’t need them.