by Nicole Ellis
“Yeah. Communication is always good,” Gretchen said. “Believe me. If you’re not honest about things, they have a way of building up and spilling out, which causes even more problems.”
“I guess. It’s just hard to talk to him about such things. Not that I don’t trust him to listen, but in my family, we never communicated much. I’m probably bad at it.” Charlotte spooned some filling into a piece of butter lettuce. When she bit into it, the lettuce made a satisfying crunch and gave the seasoned filling a burst of moisture.
“Pshaw.” Maggie held out her fork. “Just tell him how you feel. He’s a good guy, he’ll understand.”
Charlotte finished eating her lettuce wrap but didn’t say anything. It was easy to talk about communicating with someone else, but reality was something completely different.
Gretchen seemed to notice how uncomfortable Charlotte was and changed the subject. “How are the wedding plans going, Maggie?”
Charlotte breathed a sigh of relief that the well-meaning advice session seemed to be over.
Maggie’s face lit up. “Great! It’s amazing how much easier it is to plan a small wedding than a large one. With my first wedding, I would lie awake and stare at the ceiling at night, wondering if I’d remembered everything. With it just being close friends and family at this one, I figure if I’ve forgotten something, they’ll understand.” She laughed. “Plus, it helps that I own the venue.”
“It’ll be a beautiful wedding,” Charlotte said. “I can’t wait to see what the barn looks like for the fundraiser and your wedding.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” Gretchen added. “It’s so different than when you first bought it.” She wrinkled her nose. “I mean, I could see the potential, but it was no place for an event when I first showed you the property.”
“Jake thought the same thing about the barn. But wonderful things can come out of rough beginnings.” Maggie scraped the last bite of creamy cheesecake and blueberry syrup off of her plate.
Charlotte stirred her fork through some of the chicken and vegetables that had fallen out of her wraps. Her relationship with Luke had certainly come from a beginning that was less than smooth, but she was optimistic about their future together.
16
The next morning, Charlotte awoke to sun streaming through the gap that always seemed to slip through hotel curtains, no matter how tightly you closed them the night before. The rest of the room was dark and quiet.
She rolled over to see Gretchen still sleeping next to her.
“Good morning,” Maggie whispered from where she was sitting at the desk with a cup of coffee in her hands and her laptop open in front of her.
“Coffee?” Charlotte motioned blearily to the coffee pot. She was useless before her first cup of the day.
Maggie laughed quietly. “I’ll get you a cup.” She walked over to the single-cup coffee maker and set it up to brew.
Charlotte picked up her clothes, then padded to the bathroom in her pajamas. After getting dressed, she splashed some water on her face and stared at herself in the mirror. Dark circles had appeared under her eyes from stress and not enough sleep in the weeks leading up to the art show, but the way she felt was completely opposite. After the successful show the night before, she could take on anything.
Maggie set a steaming hot cup of coffee on the counter in front of her. She blew on the liquid at the top and took a cautious sip. Ahh. Caffeine.
Gretchen sat up in bed, her dark hair tangled around her shoulders. “Am I the last one to wake up?”
“Yes, sleepyhead,” Maggie teased. “And we’d better get going. It’s almost nine and I want to make sure we’re home well before the dinner rush.”
“Yes, Mother,” Gretchen said, favoring Maggie with a mock-glare. She jumped out of bed and grabbed her clothes out of her bag. “Do we have time for breakfast at the hotel coffee shop?”
Maggie nodded. “If we hurry.”
Maggie and Gretchen finish packing their suitcases first and lined them up by the door. Charlotte was almost done packing hers when the phone rang.
She looked to see who was calling. Raymond from the art gallery. She held out the keys to Gretchen.
“I have to take this call, but here are the keys so you can put your stuff in the car. I’ll meet you downstairs at the coffee shop when I’m done.”
As they left, Charlotte hurriedly pressed the button on her phone to accept the call.
“Hi, Raymond.”
“Charlotte. I wanted to touch base with you about the show last night.” He cleared his throat.
“Okay.” What did he want to talk with her about? She’d felt pretty good about last night. Maybe she’d sold all her paintings. A thrill shot through her.
“About the show. We didn’t sell as many paintings as we hoped for.”
Her heart sank. “How many were sold?” She hoped at least a few, although she wouldn’t be too upset if the one of the sun setting over the candlestick rock wasn’t one of them.
He cleared his throat again. “None of them yet.”
She froze near the hotel room door with her hand on her suitcase. “None of them?”
“This sometimes happens with new artists. I’ll ship anything back to you that doesn’t sell in the next couple of days in the gallery.”
“Oh. Well, thank you. I appreciate you taking a chance on me.”
“You’re very welcome. It was nice to meet you Charlotte, and I enjoyed working with you.”
He hung up and she couldn’t do anything but stare at the wall. How was it that she’d been so happy only a minute before and now she felt as though her world was crashing down upon her? All she wanted to do was call Luke. Luke. She had somebody to call, somebody she could count on to share in her news, good or bad.
She quickly dialed him, but the phone rang and rang. When she got his voicemail, she hung up, then reconsidered. Maybe he hadn’t heard it ringing. She tried again. The same thing. This time, she left a message. Hopefully he’d get back to her soon. She gave the hotel room a once-over and determined that they hadn’t left anything behind. Then she dragged her suitcase down the hall, the wheels leaving behind a trail of crushed carpet before she entered the elevator. When the elevator stopped in the lobby, she found Gretchen and Maggie waiting for her. They still had their suitcases with them.
“You’re still here,” she said in surprise. “I told you that you could go put your stuff in the car.” They’d parked her car in the parking lot near the hotel to avoid paying for valet parking.
“Eh. We figured we would just wait for you,” Maggie said. “It seemed easier than us going separately and then having to try to find you afterward.”
“Okay, thanks.” Charlotte’s eyes blurred with tears.
“What’s wrong?” Maggie asked sharply, immediately going into mom mode.
Gretchen looked at her more closely. “Who was that on the phone?”
Charlotte bit her lip. “It was the gallery owner.” She didn’t want to admit to them that her show had been a dismal failure.
“I take it that it wasn’t good news.” Gretchen moved away from her suitcase and came over to Charlotte, wrapping her arm around her.
“No.” Charlotte fought to keep from crying.
Maggie came over too. “I’m sorry, Charlotte. I’m sure it will all turn out okay.”
She just nodded. If she said anything, her words would probably turn to sobs. Instead, she let herself be comforted by her two friends. Her friends that had come all the way from Candle Beach to see her art show, and believed in her and her work. She should be happy that she could count on them, so why did she find herself wishing that her parents and Luke were there too?
“Well, let’s get these suitcases out to the car and get some more coffee into us.” Maggie reached for her suitcase and led them out of the hotel and to the car.
“And plenty of pancakes,” Gretchen said. “I think we could all use a sugar and carbohydrate coma.”
“Thanks, guys.�
�� Charlotte smiled gratefully at her friends. If they hadn’t been there, she didn’t know what she’d have done. Driving home knowing that people hadn’t liked her art would be painful, but she knew they’d do their best to distract her.
When Charlotte returned to her shop after dropping Maggie off at the café and Gretchen at her house, Sandra, the teenager she’d hired to help out over the summer jogged up to her, carrying a sheet of paper.
“Is something wrong?” Charlotte asked.
“Some old guy dropped off an eviction notice.” She held out the paper, her arm wavering as her eyes met Charlotte’s.
“What?” Charlotte grabbed it from her and quickly scanned the document. Sure enough, it read EVICTION in big capital letters. “I have to move out within three days?”
Sandra shrugged and her tank top rose above her waistband. She tugged it back down. “He said to tell you he’s tried to contact you through the mail, but you haven’t responded.”
Charlotte’s mind flashed back to the stack of mail still sitting on an end table in her living room. She’d been meaning to open it, but had been so busy that it had piled up and may have been there longer than she’d intended.
“Thanks.” Her voice was tight, then warmed slightly as she addressed her employee. “I appreciate you working today. It’s such a nice day—I’m sure you’d have rather been out with your friends or something.”
Sandra shrugged again. “I don’t mind. I need to earn money for college next fall. Let me know if you need my help again. Oh, and it was a little slow, so I organized the inventory under the counters.”
Charlotte nodded. “Thank you.”
Sandra left and she walked inside the trailer and sat down at her stool behind the cash register. Everything looked in order, right down to the neatly filed receipts in the folder next to the register. How was it that a seventeen-year-old seemed to have better organizational skills than Charlotte did in her late twenties?
She picked up the eviction notice again. Why was her landlord kicking her out? There had to be some mistake.
She checked the time. Two o’clock. If she closed the shop, she could probably make it over to the landlord’s office and back in thirty minutes. Then she could get this mess sorted out.
After locking up Whimsical Delights, she walked the few blocks over to her landlord’s house, where he maintained an office with an exterior entrance in a converted garage. A car was parked in the carport of the neatly painted green house.
She knocked on the office door, which was open slightly to take advantage of the breeze.
“Come in,” he said, without looking up.
“Hi, Mr. Devine.”
He looked up, his white hair fuzzing around his head like a puffy cloud. “Ms. Gray.” He lowered his reading glasses. “Did you get the notice I dropped off at your trailer? You weren’t there, but I gave it to someone I assume is your employee.”
“I did get it. That’s actually why I’m here.” She sat down in the chair across from him. “I’d intended to extend my lease for another year. How can I make that happen?”
He pressed his lips together. “I’m sorry, but I’ve already leased the space you were occupying. I contacted you about a renewal, but I didn’t receive a response so I figured you didn’t want to renew it.”
Her eyes widened and she leaned forward, causing the hard, plastic seat to dig into her thighs. She knew not taking the time to open her mail would come back to bite her. “I’m sorry. Isn’t there anything I can do?”
He shook his head. “No. Your lease was up a month ago, and the new tenant signed for the space a while ago.”
“Can you at least tell me who is taking the space? Maybe I can talk with them.” She peered at him. “I love the location I’m in right now and I don’t want to have to move.”
He sighed. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to tell you. Luke Tisdale with that barbecue food truck is taking over the whole space. He said something about wanting room for more picnic tables. I didn’t catch all of the details.”
She leaned back, her mind spinning. Luke was the reason she was losing her space? How was that possible? He wouldn’t do that to her. He’d just told her that he loved her. This was nuts.
“Are you sure? Can you please check your records?” She held her breath, hoping that Mr. Devine had remembered incorrectly.
“Of course, I’m sure.” He glanced at his computer and then back to her, before shuffling some papers around on his desk. “Look, I’ve got work to do. I’d have been happy to rent to you for the coming year if you’d answered the letters that I sent you, but the truth remains—you didn’t respond. I’m a businessman and I can’t wait for people to get around to talking to me.”
She bit her lip. “It wasn’t like that.” She stopped. Somehow, telling him that she hadn’t bothered to open the mail he’d sent her didn’t seem like a smart move either. If only he’d called or something, but he was very old-school and that wasn’t how he ran his business. She stood. “I’ll talk to Luke about it. If I can get him to back out of taking over my spot, will you let me rent the space?”
He waved in the air. “Fine. Let me know what he decides.”
She left the office feeling both better and worse than when she’d entered. There was a chance that she could get her space back if she could convince Luke to relinquish it. But there was still the question of why he’d done it in the first place. She’d thought they had something special between them and now he’d stabbed her in the back. Was this why he wasn’t answering her calls? Was he too embarrassed to admit that he’d stolen her spot?
She made her way back to the trailer on autopilot, seeing the Airstream parked there that she’d worked so hard to purchase. She’d gritted her teeth and worked for her parents for years to earn enough money to purchase it outright and buy inventory for the store. The trailer was beautiful, exactly what she’d wanted for her shop.
If she couldn’t renew her lease, how was she going to operate her business? Empty lots in areas of Candle Beach with high tourist traffic were few and far between. She’d made a lot of friends in this town and she hoped it wouldn’t come down to moving her business elsewhere.
17
Luke couldn’t wait to get back to Candle Beach, but his plane was delayed by several hours and by the time he arrived in town, it was after eleven at night. He showered and fell into bed, exhausted.
The long weekend had been too full. When he got to Houston, his friend had whisked him and the other groomsmen away to a camping trip in a remote area for two days, and then back to the hotel just in time for the wedding. He’d wanted to call Charlotte, but there hadn’t been cell service or electricity where they’d camped, and then his phone had been dead the day of the ceremony. He missed seeing her or hearing her voice at the very least.
Early the next morning when he went to the food truck to start up the smoker, he found a note taped to the door.
Luke—we need to talk. Charlotte
What was that all about? He’d intended to check in with her as soon as he got back, but his plane had been late and he hadn’t wanted to bother her so late at night. He checked his watch. Six a.m. He glanced at the Airstream trailer. He’d wait and talk to her in person when she got in to work.
Not knowing about why Charlotte wanted to talk to him was killing him. In his experience, when a woman said they needed to talk, it was usually to break up with him. As far as he knew, everything was great between the two of them, but then again, when he’d told her he loved her, she’d said nothing. He’d thought it was because the timing was wrong or that he hadn’t given her a chance to respond and they hadn’t talked since, but what if that wasn’t true?
She knocked on his door a few hours later while he was chopping sweet potatoes into fries.
“Hey,” he said, smiling at her. “How was the show? I really wish I could have been there.” He set down the knife and removed his gloves, then stepped toward her, stopping when she frowned at him.
&n
bsp; “Hi.” She took a deep breath. “Why did you take over the lease on my half of the lot?”
Her words reverberated through his brain. What was she talking about?
“What?”
“Mr. Devine told me he isn’t renewing my lease. Said you’d already signed for the other half of the lot.”
Ice shot through his veins. He vaguely remembered that amid everything else he’d done in preparation for opening a business in Candle Beach, the landlord had asked him if he’d be interested in expanding to the rest of the site after a few months. He’d said yes, not knowing that the other tenant was Charlotte.
“Oh.” How was he going to explain this to her?
“Oh?” She cocked her head to the side. “So, you did sign for my half of the property?” Her voice escalated in volume with each word.
“No. Well, yes.” He shook his head. “I did sign the lease, but I had no idea at the time that you were leasing the other half of the lot. And Mr. Devine told me that you wouldn’t be there much longer—I do remember that. I was in the middle of getting a business license, arranging to move the truck here, and figuring out how to advertise the food truck, and I totally forgot I’d signed the lease for the extra space.” He peered at her. “Did you tell him you didn’t want the space? It seems odd he offered it to me without talking to you first.”
She averted her eyes. “There was a mix-up, but I had no intention of leaving. I love it here.” She motioned to the lot. “Do you need all of it?”
“No, of course not. Our current arrangement is fine. I can fix this. Do you think he’d let me sublease it to you?”
She sighed in relief. “He said if you agreed, it was fine with him.”
He felt a smile spread across his face. “Great.”
“Great.” She smiled back at him. “So how much do I owe you for my half?”
He held up a finger. “Let me check my paperwork.” He disappeared into the truck, then reappeared holding the lease he hadn’t looked at in several months. “So, half would be …” He gave her the amount.