The Boathouse (A Pelican Pointe Novel Book 14)

by Vickie McKeehan

  “He looked over here, right at me. The guy with the knife spotted me. He’s looking right at me now. The guy’s blood is still on his hands. We’ve gotta get outta here. Now. Hurry. Move. Run to the car.”

  “Why? We didn’t do anything.”

  “I saw him stab the guy. He’s headed this way. Come on. Hurry. We don’t have much time. We need to get to the car and get out of here.”

  Britta began to gather up her things.

  “What are you doing? There’s no time for that. Leave it! We gotta move out of here. Now! He’s coming straight for us. And I don’t think he wants us on his Christmas card list.”

  “But we didn’t do anything wrong. We should call the police. Use that payphone at the pub.”

  Tate snatched her arm and pulled her through the opening of the tent. The two ran barefoot toward the car. But the sand slowed them down. They were almost to the VW, scrambling to get inside when the man with the knife caught up with them.

  One

  Present Day

  Pelican Pointe, California

  Bodie Jardine had mellowed. Over time, she’d let go of the giant chip on her shoulder against men, a chip she’d carried around for damn near a year and a half and come to terms with her role in the whole thing. Lousy judgment.

  It was a miracle. Or more like deciding to move on from the hurt. She’d locked her ex-boyfriend in a memory vault and vowed to learn from the experience. Letting the wrong person into your inner circle, trusting the wrong guy could leave you brokenhearted. Although brokenhearted, she could handle just fine. Financially strapped was the punch to the gut. Finding out he’d drained her bank accounts was the same thing as stealing from her.

  Her parents had warned her in the beginning about lending money to the man. Mostly her mother. And Valerie Jardine rarely allowed anyone to forget their mistakes. Her dad, Bobby, was far more forgiving, the strong, silent type prone to nudge rather than toss her mistakes back in her face every chance he got. That was her father taking the sympathetic approach. An attitude she appreciated. Her dad had offered to loan her money to get by. Behind his wife’s back, of course. Knowing that Bodie had politely refused to take a dime since it would come out of savings her parents needed to live on in retirement. She wouldn’t do that to them.

  So, she’d swallowed her pride, packed up her things and landed in Pelican Pointe, taking on three jobs to fill the void. She hadn’t done waitressing since high school. But she found she easily fit in with Margie Rosterman’s crew at the Hilltop Diner. Then Hannah Summers had saved the day by giving her an extra job cleaning houses.

  When Bodie wasn’t working the breakfast shift at the Diner, she spent her afternoons at someone else’s house cleaning and vacuuming. And why not? Margie didn’t mind how many jobs she took on as long as she showed up for work on time every morning.

  But then, she’d gotten lucky. Hannah’s husband, Caleb Jennings, had managed to work her into a four-hour shift on Saturday nights at The Plant Habitat, a shift no one else wanted for obvious reasons. But since Bodie didn’t have a social life, the timing wasn’t a problem. That left Sundays. Even that day meant work.

  After volunteering to open for Margie at the Diner on Sunday mornings, she headed to the garden center afterward, stopping only to change out of her uniform into a pair of jeans. At the nursery, she spent her Sunday afternoons until closing, helping customers pick out hanging baskets for their porches or summer flowers for their gardens. She knew enough about plants to be bold with her recommendations but shied away from selling hard-to-grow orchids or houseplants to beginners who might struggle with watering issues.

  Working at the garden center was her favorite job. She liked to think it showed in her interactions with the customers. Thanks to the cheat sheet Caleb provided, she could offer tips on the best variety of beans to plant to get the most yield or which potted plants could thrive in a low light bedroom.

  She yearned for the days when she could work at The Plant Habitat full time and have regular hours. But Shiloh Jones, a friend of the Jennings family, had beat her to the hiring line by a short four weeks. That gave young Shiloh seniority. After working here since early spring, it seemed to Bodie that Shiloh wasn’t going anywhere for a while.

  And Bodie certainly couldn’t compete with a friend of the family. Even if Shiloh didn’t seem as dedicated, or as knowledgeable about the plants, or as enthusiastic, seniority counted. For now, Bodie had her eight hours a week there and had to be content with that.

  But there were other pluses and bright spots about living here.

  Her rental, owned by Logan Donnelly, cost her a fraction of what it would’ve cost to live on her own in Silicon Valley. And since she was done putting up with roommates, she could live here and pay the rent without help from anyone.

  The nine-hundred square foot adobe-style house on Sandy Pointe was small by comparison to the rest of the block. But it had all the space she needed. Her favorite spot of the entire house was the little backyard courtyard, where she had her container garden—a few herbs and hostas, a pot or two of daylilies and coreopsis. Although she never seemed to be home long enough to enjoy the experience, she yearned to test her growing skills in a real garden.

  One day she would have a place of her own where she could put in raised beds and grow whatever she wanted.

  It was a rare day off when she did find the time to stay home and enjoy the Spanish flavor of the place—warm-colored walls in soft apricot, terracotta tile floors, and a working fireplace that made it all the cozier on nights when she got to settle in and collapse on the sofa.

  And she did that a lot. On her feet all day, she sometimes didn’t have the energy to drag herself to bed. Instead, she’d curl up on the sofa, one of her thrift-store finds that cost her less than a week in tips and fall asleep. The fabric might’ve been a little outdated, but a slipcover dressed it up. Practical and budget-friendly, it was more comfortable than her bed. After crashing on it a couple of times, falling asleep nestled in the cushions had become a habit.

  Work and sleep, her boring routines that only friends like Keva Riverton and Ellie Woodside could breach long enough to get her out and about and mingle, to become part of the town she’d come to love.

  After years of enduring Silicon Valley’s urban sprawl, Bodie could appreciate the small-town atmosphere, the friendlier neighborhood attitude, and the bump up against a scenic coastline.

  She had Gilly Grant to thank for not-so-gently coaxing her into making the move. She’d known Gilly back in the days of her failed attempt at nursing school. Despite losing touch for a while, Gilly had thrown out a lifeline when Bodie had needed it the most. Moving here meant she didn’t have to suffer the indignity of moving back in with her parents in Arizona. She loved her parents, she did, but her mother couldn’t resist bringing up all the mistakes she’d made—like dropping out of nursing school, like loaning money to a man who ended up dumping her. Even now Bodie had to endure weekly phone calls that did the same thing.

  Living on her own was better this way. The distance provided the key factor that allowed her to put up with her mother’s criticism. Dealing with the constant and inevitable lecturing face to face would’ve put a wedge between them, one that would’ve taken its toll eventually on their already fragile relationship. Phone calls from nine hundred miles away was much better than listening to the critique her mother dished out up close.

  But today, she put all that out of her mind to do her part and help work on the Boathouse Project, a city-wide effort to spruce up the last decrepit part of the pier that needed significant renovation.

  The sixty-foot long boathouse had been used for decades to store commercial fishing trawlers and other essential boating equipment. Back when it was fashionable, if you were lucky enough to secure a spot out of the weather, your investment would likely last longer stashed away from the elements inside the boathouse. But when the fishing industry fell on hard times during the 1980s, so did the storage facility. Many f
ishermen lost their boats to repossession, forcing them to find another way to make a living.

  Without the commercial fishing activity the boathouse became obsolete and fell into disrepair. Decades of saltwater had rotted the wood. Over the years, coastal storms had battered the old two-story structure enough to cause it to lean slightly.

  Located to the left of the new hospital and parking lot, the hospital staff tended to label the boathouse an eyesore. And because it was near collapse, they’d talked Mayor Murphy, Nick Harris, and Logan into doing something about fixing it up.

  Instead of tearing it down, the town decided to put money into replacing the supports, shoring up the pilings, and rebuilding the foundation and walls. Part of that renovation included slapping on new coats of paint and protective stain on the flooring, inside and out.

  Construction experts had weighed in from as far away as Los Angeles. Everyone from carpenters to stonemasons and structural engineers had voiced an opinion about codes and safety concerns.

  After months of listening to hammers knocking about like woodpeckers and drills burrowing into metal, there was still a lot to do. While the town waited for crews to begin work shoring up the support system, volunteers touched up the inside, sprucing up the walls.

  In between a few precious free hours of afternoon, Bodie’s role was to show up and paint. The volunteers before her had scraped off the grunge—layers of rust and algae. It was her turn to make her corner upstairs shine. She stood in the former storage area, a spot now designated to hold weddings or birthday celebrations or any other kinds of community meetings.

  She couldn’t argue with the view. From the second floor, it took in the entire harbor, spread out like a panoramic picture postcard. After deciding to take a break, she stepped outside on the catwalk to catch the summer breeze and cool down. From this elevation, she could see the lighthouse on the hill and the lavender growing in bunches on the beach. Taking a slug from her water bottle, she leaned on the railing and looked out onto the fields of rosemary and sage growing nearby. The wind carried the sweet scent of herbs from the cliffs to the boathouse.

  Behind her, country music blasted from someone’s boombox—Clint Black’s familiar twang reverberated in the background. Wiping her brow from the June heat, she glanced back inside. Her gaze veered off course to the tall guy painting the opposite corner wall. He was easy on the eyes. Dark hair. Lean waist. His shoulders filled out the black tee he wore. She caught herself staring at the nice shape of his butt, tucked neatly into a pair of light-colored jeans speckled with paint flakes.

  Her breath caught as she watched him continue to stroke the wood with an expert hand, a rather deliberate technique that showcased his long fingers guiding the brush in the sexiest way she’d ever seen anyone apply a coat of paint.

  Get a grip, she told herself, fanning her face. She held onto the railing to steady herself. It had been too long since she’d had sex. That was the problem. Five hundred and eighty-six days to be exact. Turning her face into the breeze again, she ignored that pull in her belly, tamping down the urge. She didn’t want to start up anything with anybody. Not now. Maybe not even six months from now. Maybe after she got her life back on track things would look better. But not now and not until she was ready.

  She flipped up the spout on her stainless-steel flask again and gulped down the liquid, hoping it took care of the thirst for the touch of another man. Longing tugged within, that pining in the soul that needed some attention, just a small stroke in all the right places.

  Relationships were far too risky—she didn’t want another one biting her in the ass.

  “So just cool your jets,” she muttered right before tipping up the flask again and taking another long drink that did nothing to quench the thirst she had for a man.

  Since taking over his dad’s hardware store and lumberyard, dealing with pissed off suppliers and angry customers had become the norm for Tucker Ferguson. He’d learned the hard way that his father had been as hard-nosed in business as in his personal life, a man who stretched the limits of loyalty with his unbending and unforgiving ways.

  In the end, Tucker had concluded that the man who’d raised him hadn’t liked people very much. It hadn’t taken him long to discover that old Joe seemed to find customers, in general, an overall nuisance like an annoying fly that wouldn’t go away.

  Convinced his father had never been a people-person, especially when a business like his catered to building relationships within a small community, Tucker had sought to make amends. Knowing the hardware store depended on word of mouth and repeat customers for longevity, he made changes to compete with the big-box chains.

  For the first time since taking on the job, Tucker was just now beginning to feel that he’d made headway. The son had turned the business around. For a full year, Ferguson’s Hardware had shown a profit. He’d single-handedly turned around a company badly in need of a consistent, bottom line.

  It hadn’t been easy or fun. It had cost him a social life. Women rarely tolerated taking a backseat to a job, any job, let alone a business that had been in deep trouble. He’d had a string of brief relationships that had gone nowhere because he couldn’t afford to take his eye off the ball long enough to commit to anything other than a casual fling every now and then.

  Those first few months back home, he’d been racked by sleepless nights. He spent his days agonizing over the debts—so much that at one time, he thought his hair might fall out. Worry and stress tended to do that. He didn’t want the business going under on his watch. He didn’t want to be like his father or his grandfather. Both men had almost gone broke several times in the past. Plus, he’d wanted to prove something to his old man, prove that he could do things better, more efficiently, without alienating an entire customer base.

  Tucker had succeeded by reversing many of his father’s business practices. He’d done what Joe Ferguson had not—the son had listened to the customers. He began slowly by stocking the things they needed at a price they could afford. He advanced credit when the situation warranted it. At times he issued emergency rations to those in need. He donated materials to community causes like the Boathouse Project without putting conditions on his donation. When the neighborhood reached out, Tucker wanted to lend a hand, without a fuss or applying restrictions.

  His father would not have approved. But then, the old man was living comfortably in Sarasota Springs these days on funds he’d socked away, far removed from the mess he’d created.

  Tucker had no illusions that his dad had generated his retirement savings purely on the up and up. After all, Tucker had spent years going over the books, analyzing profit margins, and knew it wasn’t fiscally feasible. The truth had become clear on day one. Joe Ferguson had spent years gouging and overcharging his clientele, along with a long list of suppliers and vendors until they’d gotten fed up and refused to do business with him.

  It had been up to Tucker to straighten the mess out or tuck tail and head the other way. Tucker had bowed his back, put his business degree to the test, and set out to make things right.

  He did it all because he’d grown up here. He loved his hometown and didn’t want the hatred his father had created to live on. At one time, he’d thought to raise a family here. At the very least, be able to hold his head up, proud of a business that had been around since the 1940s. He wanted to open the doors in the morning, have people greet him with a smile instead of a snarl.

  That might not be a popular business acumen in the twenty-first century. But it was something he strived for since coming back. But thanks to the ruthless way his father had done business for over thirty-five years, some days it felt like a losing battle, for sure.

  It was times like now, when he could donate his time to a good cause. He didn’t mind spending his Saturday afternoon wielding a paintbrush for a few hours when he could look across the bay and see a future for himself, one that was a little brighter than the month before.

  Right this minute, his eyes had wa
ndered over to where Bodie Jardine stood, taking her sweet time spreading cream-colored paint on her section of the wall. She treated the job like it was the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel instead of a rundown boathouse. It amused him the way she inched her way along the wall painting her section to perfection before moving on to the next panel.

  A willowy figure with hair the color of sun-kissed gingerbread, she caught him staring.

  “Envying my brushstroke, are you?”

  He cocked his head and smiled. “Something like that. I tried to talk Logan into using a sprayer. But he said we’d get more people involved if we did it the old-fashioned way.”

  “I like the old-fashioned way. It gives me a chance to let my mind wander. You’re the guy who owns the hardware store. Right?”

  “Guilty. Tucker Ferguson.”

  “Bodie. I’d shake hands, but I have paint all over my fingers.”

  “You also have a smudge on your nose and a drop on your cheek. But hey, what’s a little paint on a pretty face, right?” Despite the smudges on his own fingers, he stretched out his hand, took hers in his anyway. “You bought the drill we had on sale last week.”

  She lifted a brow. As come-ons went, this effort was on the lame side, but…kinda cute in a corny sort of way. Despite her earlier warning, despite trying to tamp down that pull in the belly, old habits were too hard to break. She wasn’t as repulsed by his flirting as she had hoped. “How do you know that? Do you stalk all of your customers or just me?”

  Chuckling, he turned back to his portion of the wall and spread more paint over the weathered boards before his brush dried. “You know this part of the second floor will probably need three more coats of this stuff before we’re finished.”

  “You didn’t answer the question.”

  He cut his eyes back to her and lifted a shoulder. “I try to keep up with the inventory. We sold six of those drills. One was to you. Any problems with it?”