Paradise Cove

by Jenny Holiday

  He turned. Held himself back from saying, “Anything.”

  “Let me know if you have any ideas on places to stay short-term. Though maybe I should just go back to the hardware store and ask them.” She rolled her eyes. “They seem to have an answer for everything.”

  They would have an answer, but God knew what it would be. He didn’t trust them not to mess up her life. He wanted to invite her to stay at his place while she looked for a more permanent solution. He would clear out his mom’s studio, even, make it into a second bedroom. But that was too weird. He cleared his throat. “Don’t go back to the hardware store. Let me ask around a bit.”

  “Thanks. And I’m not picky about anything except that I need a place that’s pet-friendly.”

  “About Mick. I actually took him with me on my way out of your place. He’s in the truck. I thought I’d keep him for the day if that’s okay with you? I felt bad leaving him there—the little dude wheezes enough as is.”

  “You sure he won’t be in your way?”

  “Nah. I’m out at a job site today. Big house with a fenced yard. He’ll have fun.”

  “Jake. You are the best. Thank you.”

  Her praise warmed him. “No problem. I’ll meet you back here at the end of the day. I actually have an idea regarding your housing situation.”

  An idea that was not her becoming his roommate.

  Which bummed him out more than it should have.

  Black mold.

  Nora had managed to mostly put the whole disaster out of her mind—minus a very annoyed lunchtime voice mail to Harold—because the day had been packed. She had not allowed herself to imagine a scenario in which the clinic got going so quickly. But it turned out that the town was hungry for local medical care. Almost everyone she saw gave a little speech about how happy they were not to have to drive to Grand View or even to London to see a doctor. She and Amber had been run off their feet all day, and every time she’d popped her head into the reception area, Wynd was taking a call—and that was how it had been for weeks.

  She had wondered if a family practice clinic in a small town was going to be boring. And while it wasn’t the heart attacks and broken bones that had gotten her adrenaline pumping at the hospital in Toronto, she was digging the variety and the ability to get to know her patients. In the emergency department, her job had been to address the immediate problems she was presented with and either admit patients or patch them up and send them on their way. Here, she was going to be able to follow people over time—or, rather, over two years. She had seen a pair of newborn twins the other day and was looking forward to seeing them again at their next checkup.

  Wynd stuck her head into Nora’s office, drawing Nora from her thoughts. “Hey, Nora. Eve Abbott and Jake Ramsey are waiting for you out front, and I’m headed home.”

  She glanced at her watch. She’d been catching up on charting and had lost track of time. Amber had long since left. “Yeah, okay, thanks, Wynd. See you tomorrow.” Jake she wasn’t surprised about, but she wondered what Eve was doing here. “Actually, hang on a sec, will you?” Wynd came back. Nora didn’t know how to say this. She honestly wasn’t sure it was any of her business. But she’d ordered the flu vaccines for the Anti-Festival earlier in the week, and it had been on her mind. “I wanted to ask you a question. You don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to. But are your kids vaccinated?”

  “Oh my gosh, yes.”

  Well, that was a relief. Wynd had a little postcard taped to the wall above her desk that said, “Mindset is Everything,” and Nora hadn’t been sure if she meant it literally.

  “I don’t think there’s a single person in this town who went to Jude Ramsey’s funeral who wouldn’t vaccinate their kids,” Wynd said uncharacteristically vehemently.

  “I’m sorry for asking.” And sorry she had made assumptions. “It’s just that flu season is rolling around, and I’ve been thinking about this stuff.”

  “It’s okay. I get it. I’m a hippie. But my kids have all their shots.” She flashed Nora an irreverent grin. “Mind you, if you want to talk about fluoridated toothpaste, I will fight you. But they have all their shots.”

  “Nah.” Nora smiled. “Let’s fight about fluoride later. You go home now.”

  She followed Wynd into the waiting room, where her friends were waiting. “Hi, guys. What’s up?”

  “Hey, Nora. Jake says you’re in the market for new housing.”

  “I am indeed. I apparently have a black mold situation.”

  “Well, I happen to have a room at the inn I don’t know what to do with. It’s yours if you want it. But fair warning: you might not want it.”

  “Why not?”

  Jake gave a sort of snort-guffaw, and Eve said, “Seeing is believing.”

  A few minutes later, they were climbing the stairs to the third floor of the Mermaid Inn. “When I was a kid, I spent summers here with my great-aunt, who owned the inn before me, and this was my room,” Eve said. “It’s too small, and, frankly, too bonkers to rent out. Sawyer and I lived in it for a bit, but we’ve since moved downstairs to the owner’s suite.”

  She swung open the door, and Nora stepped into a one-room Barbie Dreamhouse. Both the walls and the tile floor were pink—baby pink on the walls and fuchsia on the floors. “Wow.”

  Eve followed Nora inside. “Yeah, my aunt let me decorate it myself when I was nine.”

  Nora wanted to ask why the room hadn’t been remodeled as part of the renovation Eve had done last year, but she didn’t want to be rude.

  “I should just redo it,” Eve said, reading Nora’s mind. “Or knock down the wall and expand the room next door, but I’m sort of weirdly emotionally attached to this room, even if I don’t want to live in it anymore.”

  It really did look like someone had decorated with a cotton candy machine, but Nora wasn’t in a position to be picky. And, hey, she could definitely walk to work from here. It was all of fifty feet to the clinic across the street. Except…

  “It’s great of you to offer, but I can’t live here. I have a dog.”

  “I can take him until you find a place,” Jake said.

  Damn. Were there no limits to how great this guy was? She turned to face him. He was lurking in the doorway, the room itself being too small to accommodate two normal-size adults and one man-god-size adult. He must have read the skepticism on her face, because he said, “What? I like Mick. He’s low maintenance. He napped in the shade all day today.”

  “I can’t just ask you to take my dog.”

  Could she? Then again, what choice did she have? A hotel, she supposed, but could she find one that would take Mick?

  “What are you asking for it?” she asked Eve.

  “Oh, nothing. It’s just sitting empty anyway.”

  “What is it with you Moonflower Bayers refusing payment?” It was slightly maddening. She twisted around to shoot Jake a look.

  “How about this?” Eve said. “I’ve talked Sawyer into taking our first-ever vacation—in a couple weeks. It’s hard to get away because of both of our jobs. I’ve got one of the cleaning staff lined up to manage the place during the day, but I haven’t yet figured out what to do for the evenings. I need someone here. It probably won’t be any actual work beyond checking people in if they arrive late in the evening and just being around if there are any issues. I was going to hit up Maya, but if you’re here anyway…”

  Nora still didn’t feel like that was a fair swap, but she wasn’t in a position to argue. “You got yourself a deal. I’ll look for a new place and try to be out of your hair as soon as I can, but either way, I’m happy to cover your holidays.”

  “Great. Let me give you a quick tour. Bathroom is shared and down the hall, unfortunately. I’ll show you the kitchen, and laundry is in the basement.” She walked over to a small window. “This sticks a bit. You have to really lean into it if you want to open it.”

  Jake stepped into the room to peer at the window, which put him right behind her.
She could have sworn she could feel heat radiating from his body, but that was crazy.

  “I’ll fix this,” he said.

  Of course he would.

  Chapter Ten

  It turned out Nora liked living downtown. She could even see the lake from her tiny window.

  She couldn’t hear it like at the old house, but she could see a thin slice of it if she craned her neck, and that seemed like an even trade.

  And she’d gotten her wish about walking to work. In fact, she could walk to get pretty much whatever she needed. Since she wasn’t a cook—Eve had told her to treat the inn’s kitchen as her own, but she had yet to take her up on that offer besides by keeping a stash of Diet Coke in the fridge and a box of granola bars in the cupboard—she had taken to walking around town and cobbling together meals from Jenna’s General and from Law’s.

  And she could walk to the little beach, which she was planning to do this evening, in fact, with Maya and Eve, to take part in the town tradition of throwing moonflowers into the lake on a full moon.

  Yeah, it was weird, but it was Friday and it had been another satisfying but long week, so she was just going to go with it. Apparently it was some kind of rite of passage: you couldn’t really be a Moonflower Bayer until you threw a moonflower into the bay—which made an odd sort of sense, she supposed.

  There was only one thing she missed about her old house: Jake.

  Without a falling-down dump, she had no need for his handyman services.

  It wasn’t like she didn’t see him, though. They had fallen into a habit whereby if he was on a job in town or wasn’t working or out on the boat, he would bring Mick by the clinic at lunch and she would step out for ten minutes. It was like supervised visitation with her dog. Although she missed Mick, neither he nor Jake seemed to mind the new arrangement. They seemed genuinely fond of each other, and it had become normal to see Mick lumbering along behind Jake as he strode through town. Whereas Nora always kept him on a leash—he tended to wander off on her otherwise—Jake didn’t seem to need to. She supposed that was one of the perks of being a man-god: small dogs instinctively obeyed you.

  Her ten minutes at lunch were sort of like supervised visitation with Jake, too. They’d walk Main Street or sit in the gazebo on the town green, but there were always people around. They never talked about anything real like they had over the handful of dinners they’d had. They didn’t talk about Jude or Nora’s grandma.

  She was surprised by how much she missed it.

  On Friday night, she pushed open the door to Lawson’s Lager House and there he was, sitting next to Sawyer at the bar, nursing a beer. Her stupid heart skipped a beat.

  She made her way over and sat, leaving a few empty stools between them—she was meeting Maya—but he looked up and right at her.

  “Hey, Nora.” Sawyer gestured to the empty stool next to him. “Join us, will you?”

  “Thanks.” She slid over a few stools. “If you’re sure I’m not interrupting. I’m waiting for Maya, but I’m early.”

  Law ambled over from behind the bar. “These two dudes have been warming those two stools every Friday night for I don’t know how many years, so at this point, they’re practically begging for someone to interrupt them.”

  “I don’t know, Law, I’m pretty sure the bromance is a three-way thing.” A young woman had come up behind Sawyer, and she did a thing to his shoulder that was a sort of half hug, half punch.

  He grinned. “Clare Bear!” He turned to hug her properly. “Clara, this is Dr. Nora Walsh. Nora, this is my sister, Clara. Clara’s home from school in Toronto. She’s studying electrical engineering.” The pride was positively radiating off him.

  “Can’t miss the Anti-Festival.” Clara shook Nora’s hand and went to sit on the other side of Jake. “What’s up, Jake?”

  Jake gave a half shrug.

  “You don’t say? That’s so interesting.” Clara kissed him on the cheek even as she teased him. Then she leaned up and availed herself of an over-the-bar hug from Law. The two men seemed to have an easy familiarity with Sawyer’s little sister.

  The conversation turned to what Clara, who was in her second year at the University of Toronto, was up to at school and why she had taken a taxi from the Greyhound stop instead of calling Sawyer to come and get her.

  “Because it’s Friday night!” Clara protested. “It’s bromance night!”

  “You know I would have thrown these two over in a heartbeat to come get you,” Sawyer said to his sister.

  “But Sawyer, it’s not just Friday night; it’s full-moon Friday!” She turned to Nora. “Do you know what that is?”

  “I do! That’s why I’m here. Eve Abbott and Maya Mehta are indoctrinating me in this weirdo tradition you all have. Eve is coming later—she’s checking in some guests at the inn, but I’m meeting Maya here for a drink first.”

  “Wait no longer, my friends. Maya is here.” She appeared on Nora’s other side. She made a funny face. “And apparently Maya now talks about herself in the third person.”

  “Here we go,” Law muttered.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say, Benjamin?” Maya set her elbows on the bar.

  Law set a wineglass in front of her and started filling it. “I said, ‘Yay! Full-moon Friday!’”

  Maya rolled her eyes—but subtly, so that only Nora could see. It gave Nora a little thrill. Nora had never really had close women friends, which was funny because she’d grown up in a house of women—she, her sister, her mother, and her grandma had outnumbered her dad and brother. But school, and then residency, hadn’t left a lot of time for socializing. Then she’d met Rufus and, without really meaning to, integrated herself into his life.

  Living at the Mermaid put her at the center of a certain social circle in town. Pearl, whose bakery was next door, was always poking her head into the inn. Maya lived across the street and seemed to pop up everywhere, often pleading for Nora to illicitly supply her with some of the pizza she couldn’t admit to liking. Both women were usually in attendance at the cocktail hours Eve hosted a few days a week at the Mermaid for guests and friends.

  Nora still missed Jake, though. She glanced at him only to find he was already looking at her.

  Before she could think how to react—smile? Look away?—Maya was back to needling Law. Nora gathered that it was almost like a hobby of hers. “You should come with us. You could wish for a personality.”

  “I would, but Amber quit”—he looked pointedly at Nora and hitched his head at a young man manning the bar on the far side—“and I don’t trust the new guy alone yet.”

  Nora winced. “Yeah, sorry about that.”

  He grinned. “Nah, I’m just giving you grief. She was only ever planning to be here through school. You said it yourself: she was never going to be a lifer.”

  Well, look at her. Not only did Nora have girlfriends, she was enough of a regular that the bartender was teasing her.

  After Eve arrived and greeted Clara, Maya hopped up. “Let’s get this show on the road. Everyone who’s coming, drink up and let’s go.”

  Nora slid off her stool.

  “You’re really not coming, Benjamin?” Maya asked.

  “Nope. Some of us have jobs that prevent us from wasting our time on wishes.”

  “You wouldn’t know a wish if it bit you in the ass.”

  “On the contrary. I just wished that you would leave, and look—it’s coming true.”

  “Are they always like this?” Nora whispered to Eve.

  “Yeah, it’s kind of their thing.” Eve shrugged. “We’re all so used to it, it doesn’t even register.”

  “Let’s go!” Maya called. “Chop-chop!”

  Jake swallowed the last of his beer and got off his stool. Everyone stopped talking and swung to face him. He gazed back at them with no particular expression on his face.

  Maya cocked her head. “You’re coming, Jake?” He made a vague noise that sounded like assent, and everyone remained quiet. Nora wondered if
maybe it wasn’t normal for Jake to join their flower-wishing ritual.

  “Well, great!” Maya said with a suspicious amount of enthusiasm. “Come on, everyone.”

  A few minutes later, they all were crowding into A Rose by Any Other Name, Maya’s father’s flower shop. The small store was packed with people, some Nora recognized and some she didn’t.

  “Hey, Nora, have you met my parents?” Maya introduced her to a smiling fiftysomething couple behind the counter.

  “We’re so glad you’re here,” Maya’s mom said, echoing the refrain Nora had been hearing from everyone in town.

  “On the house,” her father said, smiling as he set a flower on the counter in front of Nora. Then he slid one over to his daughter and said, “Two dollars.”

  “I’m family!” Maya feigned outrage, but there was obvious affection in her expression.

  “That’s the friends and family discount.” Her father’s eyes twinkled. Nora could see where Maya got her sense of humor. “They’re four bucks apiece retail. Amaryllises are expensive. Now if you wanted to, say, start working here, you’d get the employee discount.”

  “Nice try.” Maya shook her head fondly at her father as she clapped her hands to get everyone’s attention. “Cue up your wishes! We’re heading out!”

  Jake hadn’t done this since before Jude was born. Kerrie used to like to come and make wishes every once in a while. He suspected that the last couple of times, she’d been wishing for Jude. She’d wanted to get pregnant so badly. She had just started her law career and had decided that “right now” was the optimal time to have kids, even though they were young. She’d reasoned that it was either that or wait until she made partner. He was game either way—he liked the idea of kids, and Kerrie was smarter than he was. He had trusted her judgment regarding timing.