The Sweetheart Secret

by Shirley Jump

  “Dying alone, drooling into your Wheaties.” She grinned, then patted him on the arm. “See, Doc? It could always be worse.”

  Two

  When Daisy Barton was five years old, her mother had enrolled her in kindergarten, dropped her off in front of the James K. Polk Elementary School, and told her to be a good girl. Daisy had gone inside the building alone, scared, and overwhelmed, wearing the hand-me-down red plaid jumper and white buckle shoes she had chosen with such care that morning. Before the heavy metal-and-glass door shut behind her, she heard the high-pitched squeal of tires against the pavement, and her mother was gone. Off to pursue needlepoint in the Ozarks or meditation in the desert, or whatever lark had captured Willow Barton’s attention that month.

  Aunt Clara had been the one to pick Daisy up at the end of the day, to wipe away Daisy’s tears, and to mend the tear in Daisy’s dress. Aunt Clara had filled in as Daisy’s mother, in between Willow’s “adventures.” Aunt Clara, long married to Willow’s brother Lou, had been the closest thing Daisy had to a maternal figure, and when she’d moved away from Jacksonville and down to Rescue Bay for a few years, Daisy had felt as if her right arm was severed.

  She’d called Aunt Clara regularly, and spent one summer here at the Hideaway Inn, but missed those family ties something fierce. Even from miles away, Aunt Clara had been the voice of reason and support, a steady foundation for Daisy to stand on when her life got too crazy. Which was like every other week.

  So when Aunt Clara had asked something of Daisy in return, there’d been no doubt that Daisy’s answer would be yes.

  The problem? Daisy had no clue how big of a task Aunt Clara’s request would be. Or how impossible it would be to bring to fruition. Or how Colt Harper would become the one monkey wrench she hadn’t expected.

  Two weeks ago, Aunt Clara had laid in that big white hospital bed in Jacksonville, taken Daisy’s hand in one of hers, Cousin Emma’s in the other, and said, “I only ask one thing of you two girls. That you don’t let my family legacy crumble into the sea. It’s time I faced facts. I’m too sick and too old to get back to running the B&B, so I’m handing you girls the keys.”

  And now Daisy was here in Rescue Bay, and hoping that if she got started, Emma would follow along. Turned out, though, that Aunt Clara’s “family legacy” needed more than just a spit and polish to get it back up and running. Nine years of being empty had damaged the wooden building housing the Hideaway Inn. The building had suffered serious storm and saltwater damage, along with plumbing and electrical issues, according to the contractor she’d had look at the place. Which meant money—something that wasn’t growing on trees or sprouting leaves in Daisy’s paltry wallet.

  With Aunt Clara already financially strapped and Emma refusing to have anything to do with the inn, that left Daisy to come up with a miracle. For the first time in Daisy’s life, she needed someone else’s help to get what she wanted. Specifically, Colt Harper’s help.

  If your husband signs off on the loan, the banker had said, I could get this approved without a problem.

  The banker apparently didn’t know Colt. Or know that anything between her and Colt came wrapped with a double-knotted problem bow. Which was what had had her blasting into his office like a pissed-off hornet, because she’d seen the divorce papers and panicked.

  Without a husband, she had zero chance at the loan. And without the loan, she had zero chance at fulfilling Aunt Clara’s wish. There was too much at stake to let that happen.

  When she’d applied for the loan, Daisy had had no idea she was still married to Colt, or still connected via credit reports. It had taken her a good thirty seconds to process the words from the banker.

  Your husband.

  Her potential financial anchor, too. Assuming, that was, that she could convince him to cosign for the loan. Considering the way she’d burst into his office today, she hadn’t exactly won him over with honey. She needed to try again, but in a calm, collected manner. Or something close to that, considering nothing about Daisy Barton had ever been calm or collected. Either way, before she disturbed that particular hornet’s nest again, Daisy decided to see firsthand what she was getting herself into.

  Daisy left her car keys on the scarred, rickety wood laminate nightstand—that Toyota was on its last breath as it was—and changed into comfortable flats, then headed outside. The warm sun hit her like a wave, and she turned her face to greet it. She closed her eyes, and thought if heaven had a temperature, this was it.

  She started walking, inhaling the sweet salty tang of the ocean air, marveling at the palm trees and bright flowering shrubs that lined the streets, the way everything was so green and bright and pretty. For the first time in a long time, Daisy was filled with hope. Hope that things could be truly different—that she would be truly different.

  Oh, how she had missed this place.

  Daisy hadn’t been back to Rescue Bay in more than a dozen years. Her one stay here—that wonderful, crazy, amazing summer she’d spent at the inn—had been the best summer of Daisy’s life. For a little while, her world had been perfect, normal, and she’d thought—

  No, prayed, that it would last.

  Then Willow had pulled up in her beat-up Lincoln to uproot Daisy like a dandelion hiding among the roses. Daisy had never returned to the Hideaway. The following summer, Uncle Lou had died and Aunt Clara had moved back to Jacksonville. The Hideaway had withered away, managed from afar by a woman who couldn’t face carrying on the business without her husband.

  Despite all the time that had passed, Daisy still remembered the route to the inn. Her feet took the same streets, made the same turns. Even though the landscape had changed, populated with more houses and more businesses, the route felt as familiar as her own hand.

  She rounded the corner onto Gulfview Boulevard. The Gulf of Mexico spread before her in all its glistening blue glory, enticing, warm, gently whooshing in and out against the sandy beach. To her left lay the boardwalk that made up most of the touristy area of Rescue Bay. An ice cream shop, bakery, coffee shop, and T-shirt store sat in squat, sherbert-colored buildings, their doors propped open to catch the ocean breeze.

  Daisy turned right, passing a long line of tall palm trees, their fronds swaying like lazy hula dancers in the breeze. Around the next curve in the road lay the Hideaway Inn. Daisy stopped walking, tugged her phone out of her pocket, then dialed a number she knew as well as her own. A moment later, the connection was answered. “I’m almost to the inn. And I wanted to share the moment I saw it again with you, even though you’re not, well, technically here.”

  Emma let out a long sigh. “We’ve had this discussion, Dase.”

  “Come on, don’t you miss the place, just a little?”

  “No.” Emma bit off the word, succinct and cold. There’d been a time when Emma had loved the Hideaway as much as Daisy. Then something had changed, something Emma wouldn’t talk about, a dark shadow she kept behind closed doors, and she’d never returned. Daisy had thought about coming to the Hideaway over the years, but knew it would never be the same, not without Emma.

  Had Daisy made a mistake? She’d been so sure that if she just took the bull by the horns and came here, getting the renovation wheels spinning, so to speak, that Emma would follow.

  “We used to have so much fun here, Em,” Daisy said. “Don’t you remember that summer we spent on the beach? The—”

  “Daisy, I’m not interested in that place. I don’t know why my mother thinks I should be. It’s a family albatross. All it did was drag my grandparents down, then my parents when they took it over, and now it’s got you wrapped up in its tentacles.” She let out a low curse under her breath. “Why are you so intent on getting it up and running again?”

  “Because Aunt Clara asked us to.”

  Emma sighed. “I know that, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why. You would think my mother would ju
st let that place go after . . . everything.”

  “What do you mean? Aunt Clara loves the Hideaway.”

  “Used to love it,” Emma said. “Now it’s just . . .”

  “Just what?” Daisy sensed that shadow again, the closed door. She waited, but Emma didn’t explain.

  “It’s just another disaster,” Emma said. “Do you know how much work it needs?” Daisy turned the corner and for a moment, she saw the old Hideaway Inn, the two stories of sky blue siding with soft white trim, the wide front porch that stretched from one end to the other, the lush green lawn, the gauzy kitchen curtains drifting lazily in the breeze. Then the mirage cleared and she saw the reality.

  A faded building with broken shutters dangling like missing teeth in a welterweight’s smile. The lush lawn had gone brown and dead. The kitchen windows were boarded up, and the front porch sagged to one side.

  “One hundred and ninety-two thousand dollars worth of work,” Daisy said and let out a sigh. She’d been hoping the contractor had been wrong, that maybe he’d overestimated, to scare her off from such a giant project. “I got an estimate.”

  Though seeing the inn now, Daisy had to wonder if the contractor had instead underestimated. A lot. The vacation retreat she remembered from childhood had become a sad, rundown ghost.

  “You did? When?”

  “I called someone the day I left the hospital. I told you I was serious about this, Em.”

  Emma laughed. “Dase, I’ve known you all my life. You’ve never been serious about anything. I’m the one who overanalyzes and overschedules and over-everythings. You’re the one who lives on the edge.”

  Emma was right. Maybe it had been a part of being raised in an untraditional house. Maybe her mother had instilled some kind of wanderlust or need for spontaneity in her only child. Daisy had dropped out of school at seventeen, got her GED at twenty, but had flitted from job to job all her life. She’d never lived in one apartment long enough to celebrate two holidays. She didn’t balance her checkbook, didn’t bake cookies, didn’t make friends with the neighbors.

  And yet, here she was, in a town as traditional as turkey on Thanksgiving. Trying to be a dependable, mortgage-paying, tax-filing grown-up.

  “Even if we wanted to fix up the Hideaway, where are we supposed to get two hundred grand?” Emma asked. “That place has sucked my mom’s bank account dry. What money she had left from when she and my dad took over for my grandparents was wiped away in the years that she let it go.”

  “I’m working on getting a loan, Em. We can get it up and running, just like it was before. Don’t you remember how much fun we had here? How for a little while, everything was”—Daisy took in the depressing sight before her, and tried her best to remember the way the inn used to be—“perfect?”

  “Daisy, you’re living in a fairy tale. Nothing is ever perfect.” Emma’s voice held low, sad notes. “Not one place, not one person.”

  “Emma—”

  “I can’t do this. I’m sorry,” Emma said. “I . . . I just can’t.”

  The connection ended, leaving Daisy with silence. She stared up at the inn, seeing the bright, cheery building that had once housed two girls on the brink of being women, two girls who had believed in fairy tales and princes on white horses. The inn held a special magic, Daisy had always believed, and if she could restore it to its former glory, maybe Emma would find that magic again, too.

  That meant Daisy needed that loan. And if the money wasn’t going to come to her, she was going to go get it. No matter what it took. Or who it meant asking.

  Three

  “You . . . are gonna . . . kill yourself. Or . . . me.” Nick Patterson bent at the waist and heaved in a few deep breaths. Sweat poured from his brow, plastered his faded gray T-shirt to his chest. “Jesus, Colt, what’s . . . with you . . . today?”

  “Nothing.” Colt stepped back, aimed his shot, and let the ball fly toward the netless hoop. It missed its target, pinging off the battered orange rim and bouncing outside the chalked foul line. Colt’s concentration had been zero all day, ever since Daisy came storming into his office, disrupting his life. He’d hoped a few rounds of hoops with Nick would ease this tension in his gut, but so far, the frustrating game was having the opposite effect. “Damn it.”

  Nick jerked to the right, grabbed the ball on a rebound, but didn’t shoot. His childhood friend stood a few inches taller than Colt. On the court, Nick had the height advantage, but most days, Colt moved faster, which made for nicely competitive games. On the days when Colt’s mind was on basketball, that was.

  “Nothing’s wrong? Bullshit.” Nick tucked the ball under one arm. “Is it your grandpa again? My grandpa’s been asking about Earl. Said something about missing him at the card games lately.”

  “It’s not my grandpa.” Colt put out his hand. “Just throw me the ball, Nick.”

  “I will when you tell me why you are turning a friendly game of one-on-one into a death match.”

  Colt swiped off the sweat beading on his forehead, then crossed to the sidelines and grabbed a bottle of water out of the cooler. He twisted off the top, handed it to Nick, and grabbed a second for himself. The two men sat on the old, faded bench and faced the pockmarked basketball court that had long ago been forgotten by Rescue Bay’s teenagers.

  He and Nick had been coming to this court for twenty-plus years, to shoot a few hoops and talk, in the way that guys talked—between beers and points. Of all the people in Rescue Bay, Nick was the only one who had known Colt all his life. They’d suffered through the same parochial school in a nearby town, lived on the same block, and fished the same lake with their grandfathers. And when Colt had needed a friend, needed someone who wouldn’t judge him or condemn him—

  Nick had been there.

  Colt took a long swig of water and waited for the cool liquid to slide down his throat. “It’s Daisy.”

  The water bottle popped out of Nick’s mouth. “Daisy? As in . . . Daisy? Holy shit. Now there’s a blast from the past.”

  “And apparently a blast into the present, too. She’s in town. I found out when she came roaring into my office earlier today when I was with a patient. Pissed off as all hell, and ready to rip me a new one.”

  Nick chuckled. “Sounds like your entire marriage. As short-lived as it was.”

  Colt snorted and took another swig of water. “You can say that again.”

  “Well, that sure as hell explains why you’re killing yourself on the court. Working off a little frustration?”

  “Just a little.” Understatement of the year. Seeing Daisy again had woken a beast inside his gut, the same one that had sent him straight to her bed when he’d seen her in New Orleans. There was something about Daisy Barton. Something irresistible. Exactly why he should try to avoid her. Quit thinking about her. And most of all, talking about her.

  Yeah, and look how that plan was going so far.

  Colt got to his feet, picked up the ball, went to line up his shot, then stopped. All he saw in his head was Daisy’s curves, Daisy’s lips, just . . . Daisy. He shook his head.

  “Damn it. I don’t want to think about her,” he said more to himself than to his friend.

  Nick put down the water bottle and crossed in front of Colt. He bent at the knees, and fanned out his hands, shifting his weight back and forth, playing defense, waiting on Colt’s next move. “Give me one good reason why any straight man with a pulse wouldn’t think about Daisy in some seriously unholy ways.”

  “Because we’re not getting involved again. Or ever.” Colt dribbled a few times, stepped right, lined up again. Focus on the ball, on the shot, instead of on one horrific day fourteen years ago. A day when Colt realized what happened when he put himself ahead of those he loved. He wouldn’t do it again. “Daisy and I are like iron pills and milk. The two don’t work well together. At all.”

  Nick swiped th
e ball out of Colt’s hands, pivoted, then sent the ball sailing through the basket. “Only you would turn a conversation about Daisy, who is, I have to say, one of the hottest-looking women God ever put on earth, into a lecture about multivitamins.”

  Because if Colt thought of Daisy in terms of RDAs of ferritin and calcium, maybe it wouldn’t make him drive over to the Rescue Bay Inn and finish what they had started back in New Orleans. Wouldn’t make him want to tangle himself again with the one woman on earth who drove him crazy, in more ways than one. The one woman who made him forget his responsibilities and his promises. No. Never again.

  “I already learned my lesson,” Colt said. “I married her, remember?”

  “So? Doesn’t mean you can’t do it better now that you’re older, wiser.” Nick grabbed the rebounding ball, made another three-pointer, as easy as tossing pennies into a pond. “More experienced.”

  “Apparently not wiser. Turns out”—Colt stepped in, grabbed the ball, and pivoted in front of Nick—“I’m still married to her.”

  The ball pinged off the rim and back into Nick’s hands. He didn’t dribble, didn’t shoot. Just stared at Colt, mouth agape. “What the hell? Still married? How’s that?”

  “When we got divorced, someone didn’t finish filing the paperwork.” Colt shrugged.

  “Someone . . . like you?”

  Colt gave a half nod. He’d always prided himself on being organized and detail oriented, but when it came to Daisy, all those little charts and checklists flew out the window. They’d been in a rush to get married, and he’d been in a rush to get divorced. Apparently such a rush that he hadn’t made sure the paperwork got to the courthouse. Some psychologist would probably call it a Freudian desire to stay attached to Daisy or something, but Colt would disagree.

  “I was young and stupid then,” he said, echoing Daisy’s words.

  It was more than that, but Colt didn’t want to talk about it. He never talked about the day he returned to Rescue Bay, and found the family he had left behind, the family he had been in such a rush to leave, irreparably destroyed. Because of one foolish decision. Because of Colt’s selfish choices.