Petite, gray-haired Pat had stood there with the gun trained on Frankie like she did such things every day. Juli shook her head. She had questions of her own.
Pat had seen the backpack airborne. How had Adela come into the picture?
Adela was in the study with an officer now. Speaking her mind. Juli shuddered.
Luke turned toward her. His smile muted the what-ifs, even about Adela, at least for the moment.
“Ma’am, if you won’t go to the hospital, then you should see your doctor right away.”
He was a grandfatherly man, a local officer, and she appreciated his concern. She was sore, but the last thing she wanted was to attract more attention. Lying low, literally and figuratively under a feather quilt, had never sounded so good. Her feet were propped on the ottoman where Maia had put them—Maia, who was now returning with a pillow.
“No, Maia, I’m not going to lie down on the sofa. Not here among all of these people.”
Luke crossed the room to join her. “How do you feel? Which do you prefer? Hospital or doctor? We’re doing one or the other.”
“I’m staying here.”
Adela arrived and shoved Luke aside. “Juli—”
Luke tried to step in front of her. “Don’t, Adela.”
“Nonsense. Get out of my way.”
Adela thrust herself forward. Juli cringed. No more. She raised her hands, wanting to cover her face, but then changed her mind. She wasn’t up to doing battle with Ben’s sister, but she wasn’t going to hide from the woman either. Juli rubbed her hip. It ached where Frankie had kicked her. She tried to pivot on the sofa, away from Adela’s aggressive glare.
“Luke will drive you to the hospital. You’ve had a shock.”
“I’m fine.”
“You have obligations.”
“Obligations?”
“To Ben’s child. My niece or nephew. You have obligations and you can’t take chances with his, or her, well-being. Or your own.” Adela moved in more closely. She perched on the edge of the sofa. “What would Ben want you to do?”
Juli looked at her in disbelief. Did Adela intend it as a dig? “What would Ben want?”
“He’d want you and the baby to be safe. No more than what Luke wants.” Adela’s eyes teared up and in a very small voice, she said, “And me, too.”
The room was emptying. A fresh draft of cold sea air spilled in as Pat walked outside with the last officers.
Juli took a deep breath, then said, “You know there may be trouble. I didn’t steal. I wasn’t involved in it, but Frankie will say otherwise. You heard him. My fingerprints are on the stuff in the backpack because when I found it, I touched it.”
“You are not to worry. Clearly, you’re innocent. Frank…Frankie? Frankie’s record will speak volumes.”
“You say that, but—”
“I say you are one of us. One of the family. You aren’t alone and we aren’t without resources. You’re not to worry.” Adela took her hand. “I don’t mind saying what Luke won’t. I insist you go to the hospital. If you call your doctor and he’ll see you now, fine. We’ll take you there. Otherwise, it’s the hospital.”
Juli looked at him. “Luke?”
He smiled. “What she said.”
Maia gave up with the pillow and tossed it across the room. “Juli, what’s the doctor’s phone number? Oh, never mind. I know her name. I’ll get the phone book.”
“I’m outnumbered. Fine. I’ll go, but you’re forgetting something.” She pointed at the front door. The door frame was splintered. “I can’t leave the door unsecured. I need to get it fixed.”
Adela spoke. “Luke didn’t have time to fiddle with a key. I’ll call a carpenter and get it taken care of.”
Pat came back inside. “They’re going now. They got the statement from you, Juli, but they’ll want more. They understand they’ll get it later. First, you need to be checked out.”
“So, I’m told. How did you get involved in this? You were holding a gun on Frankie.”
Pat looked at Luke. Luke looked at his shoes.
“Luke?”
“Get angry if you must. You wouldn’t accept my help. I had to keep you safe. I hired Pat to keep an eye out for Frankie and for any other threats that might come your way.”
She digested that. She didn’t like the idea of people keeping secrets about her, from her. “Okay. Well, you were conspiring to help me. I can live with it this time. Thank you.”
“What about you, Adela? Where’d you come from? Why the change of heart?”
“I came because Luke told me about the baby.” She folded her hands together. “I was upset at first because I didn’t understand, but Luke explained something to me.”
“What?”
She struggled with the words. “That sometimes you have to trust people. Sometimes you have to—you have to have faith.”
“What?”
“If you insist, I’ll spell it out. Faith. That things will work out, sometimes in ways we don’t understand, if we—if I put my faith in God and not try to control everything myself.” She looked down, shaking her head. “But, it’s hard for me.”
Juli reached out and took Adela’s hands. “It’s very hard, I know. I’m trying to learn that wisdom myself.”
Maia said, “Dr. Oehler said you should come into the office now.” She put her hands on her hips. “Right now.”
Luke knelt next to Juli and took her hand. “We’re going to the doctor now, but when we’re done, you and I have to finish our talk.”
“You remember what I said before….”
“I do. I’ll wait if you insist, but after Ben’s child is born, I hope you’ll marry me and there’s no reason we can’t agree on that now.”
Adela snapped, “Marry?”
“I’d marry her this minute if she’d have me.”
“Nonsense.”
“I mean it, Adela.”
“Nonsense, Luke. It will take at least six months to arrange a proper wedding. Longer would be better.”
After a few speechless seconds, Luke said, “Six months is too long to wait.”
“Shows how much you know about planning a wedding. Let’s do this one right.”
Maia pushed in between Adela and Luke. “Wait a minute, both of you. You can fight this out later. Juli, get up. We’re going to see your doctor.”
“I’m taking her,” Luke said, “if she’ll go with me.”
Juli held out her hands. He clasped them, pulled her to her feet and wrapped one arm around her back.
“I’m with you, Juli, on this journey and any other. You can trust me.”
“We’ve already come a long way. Both of us. I can hardly wait to see what lies ahead, Luke. It’s going to be wonderful.”
Epilogue
On a Friday morning in late April, Juli knocked on the door of Sea Green Glory East. She could have telephoned, but she wanted to deliver the news in person.
Luke opened the door. “Is it time?”
“I think so.”
“We should have known it would be today.”
She laughed. “You mean the anniversary of the day Ben and I met? And—”
“And of the day we met.” He grabbed the keys from the table by the door and the jacket he’d kept nearby for the past two weeks. “We’re on our way.”
There was no suitcase to carry because it had been packed and in the trunk of her car for the past two weeks. Luke had insisted. He held her arm as they stepped carefully down the front stairs. He got her situated into the passenger seat and then himself, cool and calm. “Where are my keys?” He started checking his jacket pockets.
“In your pants’ pocket.”
“Right.” He grinned. “On our way.”
Atlantic Avenue ran straight and true ahead of them, with little traffic until they neared Atlantic Beach and the bridge to Morehead City.
The water below, in Bogue Sound, was calm and the sky was serenely blue.
“Are you nervous? Worried?”
Luke asked as he turned the car east on Arendell Street.
“I’m excited. I would be worried, but with you beside me, I’m happy.”
Benjamin Daniel Bradshaw was born on April twenty-third, seven pounds, eleven ounces of baby boy and, for a moment, as the obstetrician received him, Juli felt Ben nearby and knew he was smiling.
THE END
About the Author
Grace Greene writes fiction with romance, suspense and inspiration, always with a strong heroine at its heart. Vivid settings and quirky secondary characters round out the stories and there’s a happily-ever-after ending—most of the time.
Grace is also an artist and photographer. She is drawn to houses and landscapes that ooze character and is fascinated by history and human nature. When she’s writing, all of these interests show up on the page.
Beach Rental is her debut release. Her next novel, Kincaid’s Hope, is scheduled for release in January 2012. In Kincaid’s Hope, Beth Kincaid finds that swearing off the Kincaid temper and creating the perfect life free from untidy emotionalism has its own dangers and can even get you killed.
A Virginia native, Grace lives in central Virginia. Stay current with Grace’s releases and appearances at www.GraceGreeneAuthor.com
Coming in 2012
Kincaid’s Hope
Primary Locations in BEACH RENTAL
And Et Cetera From the Author
Summertime. Toes in the sand time. Time for a trip to the beach.
What’s your favorite east coast beach?
Ocean City, Maryland has wide, clean sandy beaches and a horizon reaching into forever. I visited there last summer and had a grand time. I hear the Jersey shore is beautiful, but I’ve never been there. Maybe someday soon! Miami Beach, Daytona Beach—marvelous. Virginia Beach, Virginia, where I first wet my toes in the Atlantic Ocean, has impressive beaches and is my heart’s favorite. But the Bogue Banks….
Bogue Banks and Emerald Isle, North Carolina
Never heard of the Bogue Banks? Put your pointer finger on the justly famous Outer Banks of North Carolina. Duck, Nags Head, Hatteras, Ocracoke and so on. Trace the line of beaches and barrier islands until it curves west and then west again.
See Shackleford Banks where the wild horses run? And where you’ll find a world class shelling beach? I didn’t see the horses, but the shells were amazing. Then skip over the inlet and you’ll be at Bogue Banks—the barrier island shared by Atlantic Beach, Pine Knoll Shores, Salter Path, Indian Beach—and last, Emerald Isle, altogether twenty-one miles of sand and waves.
In Emerald Isle and the other towns on the Bogue Banks, you can walk or jog to the sunrise in the morning and the sunset in the evening. You can enjoy the timeless beauty of the Atlantic Ocean or cross to the sound side for a more serene water experience.
I love to walk to the rhythm of the waves. The timelessness, the eternity of it, echoes deep inside and restores me.
Don’t forget the sunscreen and don’t forget a good book. BEACH RENTAL.
Get the details at: www.emeraldisle-nc.org. For information about the Crystal Coast, check out: www.crystalcoast.com and www.crystalcoastnc.org.
These are only a few URLs. Search on Crystal Coast and Bogue Banks and you’ll find many more.
Beaufort, North Carolina
Beaufort is one of the three key locations in Beach Rental. It’s where my hero, Luke Winters, owns an art gallery. His gallery is as fictional as he is, but Beaufort is a charming town—no fiction there.
It’s pronounced bo-furt.
Beaufort is on the Inner Banks and is North Carolina’s third oldest town. It’s a natural treasure trove for romance writers. Blackbeard hung out here. In 1718, he ran his ship Queen Anne’s Revenge aground in Beaufort. The ship was found in 1996 in the Beaufort Inlet. You can see the recovered artifacts at the Maritime Museum. The Old Burying Ground has been around since the early 1700’s and is worth a visit. Some of the shipwrecked crew members of the Crissie Wright who froze to death in 1886 are buried here in a common grave, as is the little girl who died at sea, but was brought home by her father to be buried—in a rum barrel.
Stroll along Front Street with its charming storefronts and the long, gorgeous waterfront on Back Sound. Enjoy the marinas, galleries, gift shops, bookstore, antiques, boutiques and a wide variety of restaurants and you’ll get a fine Carolina welcome in all of them. Tour the restored sites and Victorian homes and the B&Bs. There’s something here for the history buff, the romantic, and the shopper. I hear there’s fishing, too.
In the summer, you can get a boat ride over to Shackleford Banks to look for those elusive wild horses or to find sea shells—and those you’ll find in abundance. Be warned—there’s no shelter from the sun and no facilities!
Here are a few URLs in case you’d like to know more about Beaufort and Front Street.
www.beaufortnc.org
www.beauforthistoricsite.org
www.tourbeaufort.com
Morehead City, North Carolina
Beach Rental opens in Beaufort, but it really begins in Morehead City when Ben tracks down Juli.
Some people are born to luck, some aren’t. Juli Cooke knows she’s one of the latter. She’s a cashier in a grocery store in Morehead City and works second jobs where she can find them. She’s a hard worker and proud of her self-reliance, but more and more she feels like she’s getting nowhere. She meets Ben Bradshaw while moonlighting for a caterer at a fancy party in Beaufort, but it’s in Morehead City where Ben finds her again and meets her for lunch at Cox’s Family Restaurant. The grocery store is fictional, but not the restaurant. I’ve eaten there and they have fabulous grilled cheese sandwiches and lots of other good food at great prices.
Juli and Ben stroll down the road to a vacant lot that overlooks Bogue Sound and, in the shade of the huge Live Oak trees, Ben proposes the ‘business arrangement.’
Morehead City is a sound-side mainland seaport. It was officially incorporated as a town in 1860. It’s known for its sport fishing, but in Beach Rental, it’s the annual Carolina Chocolate Festival that gets the attention. The Carolina Chocolate Festival, ‘Celebrating Charity & Chocolate,’ benefits a number of local charities. Check it out here:
www.carolinachocolatefestival.com
For more information about Morehead City, try this URL:
http://townofmorehead.com
Romance and Stories
Romance writers write about romance. We throw other stuff in—suspense, grief, attraction, peril, faith elements—and create sub-genres, but, bottom line, it’s romance. Beach Rental is published as Women’s Fiction because, ultimately, Beach Rental is Juli’s story. But it’s also romance. And suspense. And a touch of Inspirational.
I’m told there are a limited number of story types or plots in romance. Let’s take a look at a few of them.
One of the concepts in Beach Rental deals with marriage as a business arrangement that leads to love, versus the love-at-first-sight falling head-over-heels kind of love. Marriage of convenience (or as a business arrangement) is an old idea well-used many times by authors through the centuries, and never gets old.
The next concept in Beach Rental is unrequited love—somebody loves someone who loves somebody else. Unrequited love is something most of us have experienced, painfully, often as a crush in school or even more painfully as an adult when our hearts are less quick to mend.
In the end, Beach Rental becomes the story of two people, widely separated by circumstance, background and economics, who grow toward each other, finding in each other something they lack and, together, they are now whole—a theme similar to Pride and Prejudice. This is also the concept we hope is true for every relationship—that we see in each other something we lack in ourselves. Two become one.
Human beings want to love and be loved and the Romance genre embodies that basic need and explores it in variations of the theme. The fictional characters in Beach Rental also suffer deceit, grief and danger, but my characters forgive me becaus
e I give them a romantic, happily-ever-after ending—most of the time.
Here are some places to read more about Romance as a genre:
www.rwanational.org
http://romanceuniversity.org
Kincaid’s Hope
Coming in 2012
What do romance novels have to do with real life? Especially the old-fashioned kind from many years ago? Beth Kincaid finds the answer to that question and discovers that some things never change—including human nature.
Beth Kincaid had left her tragic childhood behind, and her hot temper, too—the infamous Kincaid temper—the only legacy she had from her birth family. She had moved to the city a decade earlier, had sworn off emotionalism, and built a successful, well-controlled life.
Successful, until the day it all blows up.
Beth returns to her hometown, Preston, in southwestern Virginia, to settle the estate of her former guardian—and runs smack into the mess she’d left behind: her alcoholic father and the long-ago crush, Michael, who let her down, not to mention the poor opinion that almost everyone in town has of her. At first, all she wants is to sell her guardian’s house and get out.
Soon Michael is being friendly and attentive, and her ex-fiancé follows her to Preston to win her back, but for money, not love.
As she goes through her guardian’s possessions, Beth discovers that the woman who saved her and raised her had secrets, and the truths revealed begin to chip away at her self-imposed control. She begins to question her plans for the future.
But the future is not within her control. It’s the man she doesn’t know—the tall man with the freakish neon blue eyes—who could end, forever, Beth’s opportunity to build a better, truer life.
Thank you!
Beach Rental Page 27