Love At The Shore

by Teri Wilson

  Beside her, Lucas was as cool as a cucumber. As per usual. “Nope. She’s definitely not my girlfriend. Just a good friend that I happen to employ.”

  Jenna’s embarrassment over her friend’s overt attempt at matchmaking took an immediate backseat to her astonishment.

  “What do you mean employ?” She blinked. “At the summer camp?”

  Lucas shrugged. “I guess technically you could call it my summer camp, but I’ve never been one for job titles.”

  Then he winked at her, and Jenna longed for the ground to open up and swallow her whole. All this time she’d been thinking of him as Mr. Slack when in reality he owned the summer camp where her kids had been going every day for weeks. Why hadn’t he told her?

  Probably because you didn’t give him a chance.

  “You are definitely joining us.” Maureen dug a frosted bottle of water from the nearby ice chest and handed it to Lucas, her business-owner neighbor.

  “Absolutely,” Ian said.

  “Thank you.” Lucas opened the water and took a sip. Jenna noticed that Ian’s expression had turned wistful. Could he be thinking, like she was, about how much he’d enjoyed camp as a kid?

  Lucas nodded. “Yeah, I feel pretty lucky. I mean, to be able to make a living doing this.”

  “So you actually own the summer camp. And that’s why you’re always there?” Maureen’s gaze flitted toward Jenna. The words two-week rule were written all over her face.

  “I also like the free food at the snack bar, so there’s that.” Lucas laughed.

  He was being such a good sport about the interrogation. Even so, Jenna was still trying to wrap her head around the idea of Lucas as an entrepreneur. The summer camp had a definite beach vibe, so it sort of made sense. But his next bit of news was too much to comprehend.

  “Before I moved here and opened up the summer camp, I worked at an investment banking firm. A normal work week included fifty-plus hours behind a desk and zero time outdoors, much less surfing. Two years in, I realized it was always going to be that way, so I decided to throw my corporate plan out the window and build the sort of life I wanted. I came up with a plan to give the new generation a real appreciation for the shore and keep them busy during the summer, both things I find a lot more meaningful than crunching numbers.” He grinned. “Plus now I have plenty of time to surf.”

  It had to be the most drastic professional transformation story Jenna had ever heard. She narrowed her gaze, trying to imagine him screaming into a cell phone and running around in a suit—both of which her ex-husband did on a regular basis. “You really did the whole corporate thing?” Lucas McKinnon didn’t belong in a coat and tie. Maybe he was joking.

  But he wasn’t. He was completely and utterly serious. “For a while. To save up some money for the camp. Luckily, I made some good investments.”

  “No.” Jenna couldn’t stop shaking her head. “I can’t believe it. I’m shocked.”

  “Which part?” He leaned closer. “That I own the place, or that I actually have a ‘schedule?’”

  She could practically see the air quotes hanging around his last word. “Nick mentioned that?”

  The corner of Lucas’s mouth tugged into a half grin. “He sure did.”

  “Kids are like parrots,” Maureen said in her teacher-of-the-year voice. “They’ll repeat everything you say.”

  Ian nodded. “Oh, yeah.”

  “He must have taken it out of context,” Jenna said, but she stumbled over her words.

  “It’s not a big deal. Hey, I would’ve assumed I was unemployed too.” He raised an eyebrow and she laughed.

  She also did her best to ignore Maureen and Ian’s curious glances. Not an easy task when the two of them were clearly under the impression Lucas was flirting with her.

  Was he flirting with her?

  “You’re funny,” she said.

  Lucas’s smile faded, replaced with an earnestness that made Jenna’s heart skip a beat. “How’s that?”

  “I don’t know. I just can’t figure you out.” There, she’d admitted it. Everything she thought she knew about Lucas was wrong. She wasn’t sure what to think anymore, except that she might actually like him. A lot.

  He shrugged one shoulder. “What can I say? I’m full of surprises.”

  Then his gaze fixed with hers for a long, breathless moment, and Jenna forgot all about her noise complaints and Tank jumping in the middle of her manuscript and Lucas’s lack of houseplants. She even forgot about the nagging reality of her book deadline. Every bit of her awareness was centered on Lucas’s dark eyes and how very alive she felt when he looked at her like that—like he really saw her. Not just as a mom or an author or an obsessive control-freak of a neighbor, but as a woman. No one had looked at her that way in a very long time.

  Lucas was full of surprises indeed.

  And they kept on coming. After they’d listened to the band for a while and eaten a few of Maureen’s legendary pimento cheese sandwiches, Lucas joined Nick, Ally and Grayson for a game of catch. He tossed the ball with the kids while Tank leapt in the air, trying his hardest to get a bite out of the football.

  Jenna kept trying to remember how she’d come to believe that he didn’t like children. He was a natural. She felt like she’d been spending the past few weeks with her head buried in Tybee’s fine white sand.

  “See. He’s not such a bad guy once you get to know him,” Kayla said as she stepped beside Jenna in line for ice cream at one of the food trucks lining the park.

  “Oh, hi.” Jenna looked away from Lucas, but apparently it was too late. She’d already been caught watching him play with the kids. “No, I didn’t think he was a bad guy.”

  Did the entire island know about the fence? Terrific.

  “No?” Kayla’s forehead creased. She’d definitely heard about the fence.

  “Okay, I wasn’t a huge fan at first. But he’s been really amazing to my kids, so there you go.” Across the grassy field, Tank yipped and ran circles around Lucas as he caught a wobbly toss from Nick. Jenna cleared her throat. “I actually thought you two were together.”

  “Please. I’m so not his type.” Kayla let out a laugh. “And he’s not mine.”

  “Really? Because I think you’re everybody’s type.” Kayla was lovely. And kind. And young. Sometimes Jenna felt one hundred years old around her.

  Maybe it was the cardigan.

  But Jenna liked her cardigan. Just like she enjoyed staying home with a good book or playing board games with her kids. It was simply who she was.

  “We’re just good friends.” Kayla shook her head.

  “That’s good. I mean, either way would’ve been good. But…” Stop talking. If she kept stammering like this, Maureen wouldn’t be the only one who thought she had a crush on her neighbor. “…good.”

  Kayla started to say something, but before she could get it out, the ice cream guy asked for her order. They’d reached the front of the line.

  “Can I get the lemon sherbet, please?” Kayla said.

  Jenna breathed a sigh of relief. Talking to Kayla about Lucas made her profoundly uncomfortable.

  But Kayla wasn’t finished. She turned back to Jenna while she waited for her order. “Can I just give you a friendly warning?”

  “That sounds ominous.”

  “He’s a sweet guy, for sure. But a family man he is not.” She sighed. “He likes his freedom way too much.”

  It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Kayla’s words confirmed everything Jenna already knew.

  Still, they hurt.

  “Then I guess it’s good I’m not looking for anything.” She pasted on a smile.

  “You sure about that?”

  Am I?

  Of course she was sure. Yes, Lucas was charming. And yes, he was pretty great with her kids. He might not be Mr. Slack, but he wa
s still a surfer who lived at the beach year-round and she was a suburban mom who packed lunches and organized carpool. What little free time she had was spent writing, and somehow she was still always behind.

  Besides, she wasn’t ready for a relationship. She might never be ready.

  “Yeah. I’ve already been disappointed by one relationship. I’m not trying for another.” She couldn’t survive another divorce. She’d rather be single for the rest of her life than be blindsided like that again.

  Jenna nodded toward the ice cream truck. “I think your sherbet is ready.”

  “Thank you.” Kayla took her order and dug into it with a spoon. “Bye.”

  “Bye.” Jenna waved before turning her attention to the menu, grateful to be thinking about something as simple as ice cream flavors. “How about two vanillas and one strawberry sorbet?”

  The sorbet was for Ally. Nick’s favorite was mint chocolate chip, but the ice cream truck’s selection wasn’t quite that vast. Jenna always chose vanilla. She liked her ice cream simple and classic.

  But as her gaze strayed back toward Lucas and the kids, she couldn’t help wondering if maybe choosing something new every now and then might not be such a bad idea.

  Chapter Ten

  Nick needed a break from the pool.

  Lucas took one look at him the following day at camp and knew the poor kid had hit a wall. He’d been practicing so much that his arms hung at his sides limp as spaghetti noodles. Swimming laps in his exhausted state would be fruitless. His times were bound to be slower, which meant Lucas would have a very frustrated child on his hands at the end of the day.

  But the lessons didn’t have to stop entirely.

  He shot Jenna a quick text message asking if it was okay to take Nick on a quick outing away from camp. He had, after all, promised to keep her in the loop. She agreed right away and thanked him for checking with her first.

  Lucas grinned to himself. Progress.

  Then, when the other campers lined up poolside to swim their afternoon laps, he handed Nick a bike helmet and told him to put on a t-shirt and shoes and meet him in the parking lot. He aired up the tires in two of the camp’s cruiser bikes and had them cleaned up and ready to go by the time Nick joined him on the gravel drive.

  Lucas straddled his bike, waited for Nick to fasten the strap of his helmet, and then pushed off toward the northwest end of the island.

  They peddled in silence, side by side, as Lucas led them off the main road toward the bike path that ran along the island’s old historic trail. Sand crabs skittered across the dusty track, and they could hear the splish-splash of dolphins playing in the nearby river channel. Nick grinned when he spotted a pair of them cresting in the distance.

  It wasn’t until the Cockspur Island lighthouse came into view just offshore that Nick got curious enough to press Lucas for some information. “I probably shouldn’t ask this, but why are we here and not at the pool?”

  Lucas slowed his bike to a stop as they rolled from the path onto the loose sand of the beach.

  “You see that out there?” he said, pulling off his helmet.

  Nick climbed off his bicycle and squinted at the horizon. “The old lighthouse?”

  “Yeah.” Lucas raked a hand through his helmet-hair. “That old lighthouse is how I got over my fear of swimming.”

  Nick laughed. “Oh, please. You were never afraid.”

  “You’re right.” Lucas nodded. “I was terrified.”

  Nick took off his helmet and stared at him. The kid apparently thought he was Aquaman. “Of what?”

  “The open water.” The sea and the mysteries of what hid in its depths had scared the life out of him when he was a boy. Every time a piece of kelp touched his foot, he’d been convinced it was a shark. “That’s not great when all you want to do is surf. So I told myself if I could swim to that lighthouse and back again, I’d drop the whole scared stuff.”

  Nick studied the lighthouse’s worn exterior. Originally built on an oyster bed, it had been part of Tybee’s landscape since the mid-eighteen-hundreds.

  “How old were you?” he finally said.

  “I don’t know.” Lucas thought about it for a second while a seagull swooped low in front of them. “Probably about your age.”

  Nick’s eyes went wide. “Oh, great. So now you want me to swim out there too? To improve my time?”

  “No, definitely not.” The channel wasn’t deep, but it had a powerful current. “In hindsight, it wasn’t the most logical plan.”

  It had been pretty reckless, actually. He hadn’t brought Nick to the lighthouse to teach him anything about swimming. He wanted to try and change the way the kid thought.

  Nick sighed.

  “Look,” Lucas said, “I’m not worried about your swim trials. I know you’re going to hit your time.” He was within a fraction of a second of 1:18 already. “All I’m trying to say is, it’s pretty amazing how strong you can be if you’re pushed to it.”

  He paused before adding, “Even if you have to push yourself.”

  Because the truth of the matter was that Lucas wouldn’t always be there cheering Nick on. When he went to school swim try-outs in the fall, he’d have to make it across the pool on his own. If he could teach the boy anything, it would be to push for the things he cared about. Things he loved. But maybe that wasn’t a lesson he could impart so easily. He and Nick were running out of time together.

  Thinking about it made Lucas feel oddly hollow inside, and he’d been thinking about it quite a bit lately.

  “Wow. That was kind of deep,” Nick said.

  “Don’t get used to it, kid. Deep is boring.” Lucas used to think so, anyway. But he was beginning to have a whole new perspective on the things that made life interesting.

  Lucas shot a quick glance at Nick and reached for his helmet. He’d said what he needed to say. It was time to stop thinking about the end of summer and enjoy the moment for what it was. The sun was high in the sky, and back at camp there was a hot dog with his name on it. “You hungry?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Nick swung a leg over the seat of his bike.

  “I’ll race you to lunch.” Lucas waggled his eyebrows, hoping to stoke some of the competitive fire he’d seen when Nick raced Grayson on field day.

  It worked.

  Nick pumped hard on his petals, zipping past him and leaving a ribbony trail in the sand.

  “You’re on.”

  At long last, Jenna was closing in on the end of her manuscript. Over the past few days, she’d written a detailed outline for her final chapters plus an epilogue. Now all she had to do was finish getting the words she’d planned so carefully onto the page before her deadline, which was now less than two and a half weeks away.

  Thankfully, Nick and Ally had both been in bed since eight-thirty. They’d both been so exhausted after another day at summer camp that they’d fallen asleep on the couch during family movie night. Even a bowl of popcorn sprinkled liberally with mini-chocolate chips couldn’t keep Ally awake.

  Jenna had been banging away on her laptop for over an hour at the kitchen table, but just as she was hitting her stride, the sleepy silence of the beach house was interrupted by music drifting through its walls. Jenna’s fingertips paused over her keyboard. She heard voices above the beat of the music—loud, cheery voices.

  Was Lucas having a party?

  She glanced at the time display on her cell phone. It read 10:05 p.m.

  “Okaay.”

  His party, or whatever he had going on over there, was in clear violation of the 9 p.m. rule that had been established after her volleyball victory. She’d earned that victory, and she’d had the sore biceps for days to prove it.

  Maybe she should cut him some slack, though. He’d been so great with the kids lately.

  She started typing another sentence, but before she got to th
e period at the end, the music cranked up a notch. Jenna glared at the wall separating her half of the house from Lucas’s. When she glanced back down at her computer screen, she’d forgotten what she’d been trying to say.

  Great. She was going to have to go over there, wasn’t she?

  Never mind the fact that she was once again going to come across like a major wet blanket, but now she’d have the added humiliation of busting up a party to which she wasn’t invited. She and Lucas were friends now. She’d thought they were, anyway.

  Right. And you’re just the sort of party animal he’d want at one of his bachelor bashes.

  It didn’t matter. She had work to do, and it was a full hour past the noise curfew.

  She pushed back from the table and slipped out of the house as quietly as she could so she wouldn’t wake Nick and Ally. As soon as she stepped out onto the deck, she could see silhouettes of people milling around Lucas’s side of the duplex. Ten or fifteen, at least.

  His door was wide open, so she waltzed inside without bothering to knock. Jenna realized a second too late that even though she was wearing a plain blue t-shirt, it was paired with her favorite shorty pajama bottoms. Not exactly festive attire.

  Oh well.

  No one seemed to register her presence anyway. The lights were dim, and a crowd was gathered on Lucas’s sectional sofa—Tank included, of course. Nearly everyone balanced a laptop or tablet on their lap, and the huge flat screen on the wall was paused on a still of a swimmer doing the backstroke. EPSN, maybe.

  What was this? A fantasy water sports league?

  Jenna crossed her arms. “Are you really having a party on a Tuesday?”

  On the far end of the sofa, Lucas looked up from his computer and flashed a smile, giving her the full-on dimples treatment. “Are we really being that loud?”

  She looked around and spied another small group of people in the kitchen. Soda bottles and pizza boxes littered the counter.

  Jenna sighed. Pepperoni sounded delicious right about now, but that was beside the point. “I don’t want to be a killjoy, but—”

  “It’s nice to see you,” Lucas said.