Seaside Sweets

by Melissa Chambers

  “Why don’t you let her make her own decisions about what she wants?”

  Blake looked at the play set and then back at Bo. Here was a guy who deserved someone like Seanna. He had a happy family, a nice house, dreams of his own family…even let a swing set sit out in his bachelor pad back yard in hopes of having his own children play on it someday. He knew right then exactly what needed to be done.

  “Why don’t you take Seanna out?”

  Bo laughed. “Me? Are you kidding?”

  “What’s so funny about that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. She’s crazy about you for starters.”

  “She’s not. Whatever she is, she’ll get over it. Especially if she’s got a good guy in the wings.”

  “So you’re seriously asking me to ask out the girl you just said you could see a future with.”

  “I can see that. I can’t have that. Have you not heard a word I’ve said this whole time?”

  “Oh, I’ve heard you. And I think you’re nuts,” Bo said.

  “Well, good then. It’s settled.”

  “Ain’t nothing settled, you idiot. I’m not asking out Seanna.”

  Blake eyed him. “What? Don’t have the game for it?”

  Bo waved him off and headed back toward the house. “Your stupid little Jedi mind tricks aren’t gonna work on me.”

  Blake followed him inside, meeting him at the refrigerator. “Just think about it, okay?”

  “It’s time for kickoff,” Bo said. He set two beers down on the coffee table. “Bring over that bag of fine hors d’oeuvres you brought.”

  Blake grabbed the bag of Fritos and handed them to Bo. They watched the game for a few minutes and then in between plays, Bo narrowed his gaze at Blake. “Say, now that I know you’re a doctor, I was wondering if you could check out this bump on my ass.”

  Blake smiled for the first time all day. “Fuck you.”

  “What?” he asked with a laugh. “I’m on an HMO. You’re the best I can afford.”

  They went back to the game and the beers, but Blake could think of nothing more than how lucky he was to have Bo in his life and how hard it was going to be to say goodbye.

  Chapter Twelve

  Seanna had learned more lessons in the first week and a half in Chase’s kitchen than she had in four years at the firm. First of all, the pace moved way slower with a single residential kitchen than it did with a building full of kitchens. One set of custom-made cabinets took four months to be ready to install. And everything hinged on the cabinets.

  She and the crew had emptied Chase’s existing cabinets and stored all his dishes and things neatly in his dining room, which made her feel like she was packing to move apartments. Then they’d demolished the existing cabinets and measured for a set of ready-mades that she hoped would pass for just as nice. And they did…sort of. She had some adjustments and add-ons in mind that she hoped would help.

  The countertops had been cut to the wrong size, and the backsplash didn’t compliment the paint color like she’d hoped. The newly installed faucet was leaking, and the ice maker on the refrigerator wasn’t working.

  None of this would be nearly as irritating if she wasn’t dealing with heartbreak on top of it all. She knew how silly that sounded, especially since she’d never even kissed Blake. But she had fallen for him. She hadn’t realized how hard until that night on the dance floor at the bar in Panama City. She’d fallen fast and had been ready to hand over her heart and every inch of her body to him until he’d wheeled down Cassidy’s street like the reincarnation of Dale Earnhardt.

  Chase was out of town for a couple of days, and he’d agreed to let her stay as late as she wanted to work. She had to get this paint right. That was one thing she could easily control. She’d tried a lighter paint, but with the darker paint behind it, she was just digging herself a bigger hole, so she’d gotten a couple of gallons of primer to give her a blank canvas.

  Her phone rang, and since she was ready for a break anyway she pulled it out of her pocket to see who was calling. Jason. How fitting for her week. She was all alone in this house, nobody to hear her conversation. She figured this was as good a time as any to take his call, and she did need to check in.

  “Hey, Jason.”

  “Hello?” he asked. She hesitated, waiting for him to let it sink in. “Oh, wow. I didn’t expect you to…never mind. So, how are you?”

  “I’m fine. What do you need?”

  “Well, I need my fiancée back is what I need.”

  “Jason.”

  “This is hard for me. You just left. You didn’t give me a chance to explain anything. I didn’t know where you were. I’ve been worried sick.”

  “I know you called the shop and talked to Cassidy, so don’t try to act like you didn’t know I was here.”

  “Well, yeah, but I thought you’d just be there a few days…a week tops, and then you’d be back. I’ve been watching the door every night, waiting for you to come through it.”

  He’d be waiting a long damn time. “I’ll be back in December when it’s time to move out.”

  “Move out? Of this condo?”

  Just the idea of his acting like this news was a shocking revelation was about to send her over the edge. “Yes. We’re moving out in December when our lease is up. You know this. You’ve known it since last January when I found out you’d run up my credit card and cleared the accounts.”

  “You never said—”

  “Jason!” she shouted, not proud of the way she handled herself around him, but he knew how to push her buttons better than anyone on earth. “Did you think I was going to sign on for another year of paying a hundred percent of the rent for me and my ex-fiancé who has piled up my credit card debt, cleared my bank accounts, and gotten me fired from my job? Have you lost your mind?”

  “All right. You just need to calm down.”

  “I am not calming down!” Why did she let him reduce her to a horrible, screaming, senseless mess? She forced herself to calm down despite what she’d said. “Why are calling? What do you need? Let’s just get this out of the way right now.”

  “A letter has come in from our landlord. Your last check bounced, and he’s requiring cash—”

  “Jason, my god. I know you’re lying.”

  “I’ve got the letter right here. I can scan it to you.”

  “You can skywrite it above the Gulf of Mexico if you want. I know it’s a fake.”

  “It’s notarized.”

  “Why the hell would it be notarized?”

  He hesitated just a moment before saying, “I don’t know. I’m not a lawyer.”

  Man, he was slipping, bad. Six months ago he’d have had this explanation all sewn up, iron-clad.

  “Listen to me, Jason. I make my last payment on that place on December 1, and we have to be vacated and have it swept clean and empty by December 31. I will be there the day after Christmas to move all my stuff out and clean the place. You have until that day to clear out. If you have any stuff left there on the twenty-sixth, I’m going to clear it out for you. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

  It was so hard to imagine a time when she was this man’s girl, a time when she willingly had sex with him, when he took her out on dates, selecting a wine for the two of them to try. What a world away those times were.

  “I understand. I just…I need help.” There was that strangle in his voice that used to bring her down every single time. That desperation that would gut her to her core. Not anymore.

  She rubbed her temple. “I am helping you. I’m paying your rent and your electric bills.”

  “You do know they cut off the cable, don’t you?”

  “I’m no longer there to watch it, so why should I pay for it? You’re lucky I haven’t cut off the electricity.”

  “I can’t watch anything.”

  “I’m sure you’ve worked that out. Do you still have your job?”

  “Yeah, I’m still working.”

  “That’s grea
t,” she said, encouraged just slightly, but ready for the catch.

  “I’m not at the same place though.”

  She didn’t want to know anything more. The more she knew, the more she got sucked in, and being so far away from him was helping her cut the cord between them.

  “I’m going to hang up now.”

  “I love you,” he said.

  “Bye, Jason.”

  “Wait,” he said.

  She held the phone away from her, finger hovering over the red button. She let out a big sigh and then put the phone back up to her ear. “What is it?”

  “All bullshit aside, I really miss you. I can’t believe how badly I’ve taken you for granted. I know we’re done, and I’m accepting that. I just want you to know that there’s no doubt in my mind that you are the love of my life, and—”

  She ended the call and rested against the cabinets, sans the countertop. Nothing in the world mentally exhausted her like a conversation with that man. She couldn’t take it anymore. She’d been taking it for way too long. He’d said a million sweet things to her just like that on so many occasions, then the next day she’d find her credit card missing or herself sitting in her boss’s office with the pit of her stomach a mess.

  Her belly told her it was way past her dinnertime, but she had to put that call behind her and get the base coat done before she left. That way, she could start on the new paint in the morning. She blew a stray wave out of her face and wiped her forehead with the back of her arm, getting a stinky whiff of herself while she was at it. She needed a bath and a glass of wine. Hell, she might even be too tired for the wine.

  The drip, drip, drip of the sink echoed in her brain with each drop of water. The guy who had installed it earlier that day said he was coming back but he’d lied to her…just like Jason. Why did she believe anyone anymore?

  She didn’t need a man to fix a dripping sink. She had YouTube. She watched a video, finding it was easier than she’d even expected. She had the tools, and she had the brainpower. This was something she could take charge of and fix right this minute…and then she would finish rolling the wall, and then head home to eat or pass out, whichever came first.

  She started going through the steps that she’d committed to her memory—remove the faucet handle, remove the nut that holds the stem in, pull the stem out with plyers…when she was met with a geyser of water to her face.

  She stumbled backward from the shock of it, and then scrambled back over to the gushing water, idiotically trying to stop it with her bare hands. She’d failed to turn off the water, of course. Why had she not quit while she was behind?

  She found the shut-off valves below. She got the hot one turned off, but when she grabbed the cold water cutoff, the handle was stripped, and it just spun nonstop like a merry-go-round.

  “Fuck!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, because if ever there was a time to use that word it was now. She was backing away, pulling the hair that had fallen out of her ponytail back off her face when she stepped on the side of the aluminum paint tray, catapulting white paint all over her leg and shoe. “Seriously?” she shouted.

  She flung off the shoe covered in paint and ran outside to get the water turned off, leaving the gushing geyser behind to demolish Chase’s kitchen. Realizing she had to have a flashlight, she ran back inside the house, searching desperately for one and coming up empty. She picked up a bucket with some tile scraps in it, emptied it, and held it in front of the spray to collect the water. Was she going to sit here all night doing this until Jorge arrived the next day? That sounded like a super intelligent way to handle this.

  She remembered her phone had a flashlight on it…duh…and she ran back outside to find that cutoff, hobbling with one shoe on and the other off. She flung off the other shoe out of frustration, but it certainly didn’t give her clarity on how to find the cutoff to the water. Was she looking for something attached to the house? Or was it something for the whole street that was in a box somewhere that a few houses shared? She was infuriatingly clueless.

  She ran back inside and grabbed the bucket again, trying to think. She’d remembered unpacking a platter last week when they’d taken the cabinets down. Where had she stored that? She found it in a box in the dining room, and then ran back into the kitchen. Holding it up against the spraying water like Wonder Woman with a shield, redirecting the water back into the sink, she turned to her best friend Google with the other hand and tried to figure out the most common place to find a water shut-off. But she discovered quickly that she needed a tool called a curb key to accomplish this task.

  She needed help…desperately. Cassidy knew even less about plumbing than she did, and she couldn’t call Jorge this late. Besides, she didn’t want him to see what an epic failure his boss was.

  However, she knew someone in Grayton Beach who was five, maybe ten minutes away, who had tools and very likely knew something about plumbing. He might not want to date her, but he could damn sure get his butt out of his house and help her.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Blake found Seanna in Chase’s kitchen looking like a drowned rat. She was soaked from head to toe, her pale pink T-shirt clinging to her chest. He was trying not to look since she hadn’t voluntarily entered this wet T-shirt contest, but forcing his eyes upward was like trying to get a dog to go out in the rain.

  “I assume you are responsible for getting the water cut off,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I could kiss you right now.”

  Jesus Christ, she didn’t need to be saying stuff like that looking the way she did. He was doing his best to do the right thing with regard to her, but he was only human.

  He held up the curb key. “You have to have one of these.”

  She motioned to it. “Of course you do. Out of curiosity, where exactly is the water cutoff for the house?”

  “Down near the ditch by the street.”

  “Naturally.” She let out a huge sigh, pulling her hair back out of her face, looking around the kitchen at the puddles of water sludgy with paint. “So, you think Chase is going to give me that gut-job?”

  He set the tool down on the table. “I’ll go get the mop.”

  “I’ll just stand here dripping and try not to destroy any more of my client’s house.”

  Blake found the mop in the garage and brought it to her. “I’ll go find some dry clothes.”

  She took the mop, looking at him like she was so defeated. “Thank you, so much.”

  He wanted to pull her into his chest, wet clothes and all. He wanted to rip those wet clothes off of her, actually, but he was trying to be so good and do the right thing…which was getting harder by the minute. “It’s not a problem.”

  He went up to Chase’s room and found some gym shorts and a T-shirt in his dresser. He grabbed some socks in case her feet were cold. By the look of her chest, she could use some heating up. He hadn’t meant to look, not really, but the way her nipples were poking through that shirt she was either freezing cold or really happy to see him, and he doubted it was the latter.

  When he got back downstairs, he found her wiping her eyes and standing up straight. “Sorry, these allergies are killing me. I thought Nashville was bad.” She pushed the mop back and forth, not looking at him.

  His heart went out to her. She’d clearly been trying to do something on her own…who knew why, to save money? To prove something to herself? But whatever the reason, it was late at night, and it didn’t appear she’d be done here anytime soon.

  “Hey,” he said, “go get changed. Better yet, take a shower. You can use the guest bathroom down the hall. I’ll put that sink back together and go turn the water back on.”

  “No, I’ve got to get this all cleaned up.” He touched her arm, and she stopped mopping and met his gaze.

  “Go,” he said. “I’ve got this.”

  She nodded, trying desperately not to show emotion, like it wasn’t written all over her face. He looked away from her, not wanting to m
ake things worse. He went to the sink and reassembled it, and then headed outside.

  He had the floor as dry as it could be when she appeared in the doorway, hair wet with Chase’s clothes hanging off of her. He wanted those to be his clothes on her, not another man’s.

  “You’re incredible,” she said. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  He gauged the situation on the floor, trying not to look at her…figuring she didn’t have on any underthings beneath that shirt and shorts, because all that was soaking wet. The thought of it wasn’t helping the situation—the two of them alone in this dark house.

  “I think the best thing to do is let it dry, and then you could probably use some commercial grade paint remover to take off the dull film in those spots over there.” He waved a hand dismissively, realizing he sounded like a know-it-all, when really he was just trying to avoid looking at her. “But you know all that.”

  “I had to go with the dark grout, didn’t I?” she said, looking at the spots where the white paint had stuck to the grout. “If I try to go back over it with more, it’ll be too high.” She narrowed her gaze at it. “Maybe if I took a nail file and sanded those parts down…”

  He couldn’t stop looking at her, knowing there was nothing between the two of them except a little cotton.

  “Do you think?” she asked.

  “Hmm? Oh, yeah. A nail file. That’s smart thinking.”

  She ran her fingers through her hair, shaking it out, her waves falling around her face. “I think I need to just let it all dry and reassess it tomorrow.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  She blew air out her mouth, upward toward her hair. “What a nutty night.”

  He scratched his forehead, knowing he needed to back out of there as quickly as possible. “So, you say the shut-off valve is broken?” he asked, kneeling down by the sink. She joined him there, and he really wished she wouldn’t have. He needed distance, not to be closer.

  She pointed to the back of the cabinet. “I got the hot one off, but the cold one just spun around like a top.”