Take Me To The Beach

by K. L. Grayson, Karina Halle, A. L. Jackson, Marni Mann, Monica Murphy, Devney Perry, Kristen Proby, Rachel Van Dyken

  “Do you, um . . . still talk to her? Your ex?”

  “Jealous?” I threw her question from last night back at her.

  She grinned. “Yes.”

  “No.” I chuckled. “I don’t talk to Emmeline. I doubt I ever will again.”

  “Hmm.” She pushed down her turn signal. I could have sworn I heard a “good” under her breath too as we pulled off the highway to a gravel parking area beside the lake.

  “We’re here.” Charlie’s small fingers hurried to release her harness, and she was out the door almost as fast as Thea.

  I got out of the car and met Thea at the back.

  “Here you go.” She handed Charlie a tiny red pail with a yellow handle. “For your rocks.”

  Then she reached into the back of the car for one of the larger buckets and gloves. “Here.” She shoved them at my gut, then got out her own bucket, a trash bag and another pair of gloves. “All set.” She stood and tried to scoot past me, but I caught her at the elbow.

  “How are we going to handle this?”

  Her eyebrows came together. “Handle what?”

  “Us. There’s no way I’m not going to kiss you today. I’m wondering if you want me to hide it from her. Or if you’re okay with her knowing that her dad is crazy about her mom.”

  She smiled and looked down at her flip-flops. “Crazy?”

  “Insane.” I hooked a finger under her chin, tipping it up. “Hurry, baby. She’s on her way back.”

  “Then we’d better sneak one in fast.”

  The inch between us disappeared, but not because I’d crossed it. She had. She stood up on her toes and pressed those soft lips deep into mine. Her tongue darted out for a quick taste before disappearing back behind her teeth. Then she moaned, making my cock jerk so hard I shuddered from head to toe.

  Fuck, this woman.

  She was ruining me one kiss at a time.

  As fast as she’d come at me, she pulled back. The flush in her cheeks was a sexy pink that matched her lips. With the tie of her swimsuit poking out around her neck, her hair up in a messy knot and that flush, she was the most beautiful woman in the world.

  “We’d better keep this between us for a while. Until we figure some things out. Let’s give her a chance to adjust to the three of us spending time together. And we should see where things go.”

  I nodded. “All right.” When it came to Charlie, I trusted Thea’s judgment. Though I already knew where things between us were going to go.

  She patted my stomach. “We’d better go.”

  “I need a second.”

  Behind those sunglasses, her eyes widened. She stood stunned for a moment but then she giggled.

  “What are you laughing about?” Charlie called back to the car. “Come on! Let’s go.”

  “Coming!” Thea yelled back and closed up the car. She started down the path to the lake but stopped. “Oh, and Logan?” She glanced back. “Her mom is kind of crazy about her dad too.”

  “Good to know.” I smiled, then took a few breaths, making sure that I had my dick under control so I wouldn’t have to explain to my daughter why my shorts had an odd bulge. Then I jogged down the path, catching up to Thea and Charlie as they headed for the lake.

  “What exactly am I looking for?” I asked, swinging my empty bucket at my side.

  “Trash,” Thea answered.

  “Not trash, Mommy.” Charlie stopped examining a rock to scold Thea before looking up at me. She had on her favorite baseball cap, but I could still see her smiling eyes. “We’re looking for treasures.”

  “Trash to become treasure.” Thea tilted her face to the sky, letting the sun warm her skin before smiling at me. “I like to take the tattered and lost and make it shine. Garbage doesn’t have to stay garbage. Things just need to find their right place.”

  Their right place.

  This was my right place. Being with Thea and Charlie gave me a sense of belonging I’d never felt so strongly before. I reached into my pocket to get my phone for a picture but realized it was gone. I’d left it in the car.

  I hadn’t left it behind in years.

  Should I get it? No. I’d enjoy the afternoon in Lark Cove.

  Besides, next week, I’d be back in New York and could get all caught up.

  They didn’t know it yet, but Thea and Charlie would be there with me.

  Thea

  I couldn’t stop rereading the email on my phone.

  * * *

  From: anonymous743

  Subject: You’re a fucking whore.

  * * *

  That was it. The subject line, anonymous sender name and nothing else.

  It had chimed into my phone a few minutes ago. I’d been stunned at first by the email, but the shock was fading. It had been sent to the bar’s account and since I was the only one who checked our emails, I’d had it set up on my phone.

  It had to be spam. Didn’t it? Who else would send an email like that? It was probably a scammer trying to get me to respond.

  I hit delete but it didn’t make me feel better. The timing was bothering me. It was odd that I’d get an email calling me a whore just days after I’d started sleeping with Logan. Wasn’t it? Except no one knew that I’d been with Logan except Hazel and Jackson.

  It is spam.

  Somehow, the bar’s account had been added to a hacker’s list somewhere and I was one of many who’d gotten an offensive email.

  “What’s the matter?”

  My head whipped to Logan as he stepped into the workshop. “Nothing.” I set my phone down, shaking off the email. “Is she asleep?”

  “Yep. She didn’t make it through the third book.” He grinned as he took up his regular leaning position against the cabinets.

  “Thanks for putting her to bed.”

  “Anytime.” He gestured to the table where I had our score from today. “How’d we do?”

  “Not bad. I was just brainstorming things to do with this stuff.” At least I had been before that email had come through.

  We’d spent the afternoon at the lake, alternating between wandering along the shoreline, picking up our “treasures” and taking breaks to splash in the water. By the time we’d turned back for the car, it had been nearly dinnertime. The three of us had loaded up and gone to Bob’s Diner, the other Lark Cove restaurant. Then we’d laughed and joked over my favorite greasy burgers and fries.

  It was the best afternoon and evening I’d had in ages. And the entire time, Logan hadn’t taken a single phone call or even checked his emails.

  After dinner, we’d come home and spent some time visiting with Hazel. Charlie had requested Logan put her to bed after bath time, so while they’d been snuggled in her bed reading, I’d come out to the workshop to start organizing our pickings.

  Charlie had added a pail of pretty rocks to her collection, while Logan and I had mostly found junk. We filled the garbage bag quickly and ended up using his bucket for more trash. But mine had come home with some real potential.

  “So what are you going to do with all this?” Logan asked.

  I picked up one of the two empty bottles of sunscreen we’d found. “I think I’ll add these to my collection.” I nodded to the box in the corner, overflowing with plastic sunscreen bottles. “I thought it might be cool to do something with the lids. Maybe melt them down into chessboard pieces. And then I could use the plastic from the bottles for the board. Cut them into squares and laminate them on plywood. Something like that.”

  “I call dibs on that one. I love chess.” Logan grinned. “What about the cans?”

  I ran my hand over one of the beer cans that I’d washed and was drying on my worktable. “Those get made into sparrows.”

  “Sparrows?”

  I nodded and went to a drawer by his side, pulling out a couple of the birds I’d made recently.

  The sparrows were small, about three inches from wing tip to wing tip. Each was different, depending on the type of can I used. And each was posed in flight, though
they all varied.

  “I make a bunch of sparrows from aluminum cans and then attach pins so they can be stuck into the wall. Usually I sell them in sets of fifteen or twenty so people can arrange them into wall pieces.”

  He studied the two birds in his hands. “These are amazing. How’d you come up with it?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I saw something similar but with ceramic butterflies at a fancy home decor store in Kalispell. They were all strung into a mobile for a baby’s room, but I thought a wall piece could be neat. It took me forever to figure out the designs. The wings are easy, but the body and head have to be bent just right. And aluminum is a bitch to work with. I had to wash blood off the first hundred I made because I kept cutting myself.”

  Hazel had ordered me a case of Band-Aids.

  He turned the bird over in his hand. “I love these.”

  “Thanks.” I smiled, savoring a swell of pride. I’d always loved those tiny beer-can birds, even more now that Logan admired them too. “You can have those two.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I nodded. “Now that I have the pattern down, these are my easy project. I can crank out a half dozen on a good night. It’s what I do when I don’t feel like making anything new. It’s mindless, you know? And in the winter, I stock up. I’ll run out of beer cans from the beach in no time, but I just swipe the empties from the bar.”

  “An unlimited supply.” He set the bird down and stepped closer. “Your talents are wasted at that bar, Thea.”

  I shook my head. “This is just a hobby.”

  “No, this is incredible. I’ve been to my fair share of art exhibits and you’ve got something a lot of artists don’t.”

  “Trash?” I joked.

  “My daughter tells me it’s not trash, but treasure.”

  I smiled, falling into him so I could loop my hands around his waist and rest my cheek against his heart. “Today was fun.”

  “It was.” He wrapped his arms around my back. “The best day I’ve had in weeks.”

  I closed my eyes, taking a few deep breaths of Logan’s smell. He was still in his T-shirt from yesterday. It smelled of my conditioner from sleeping in it, but I could smell him on the cotton now too. It wasn’t the Armani-cologne Logan smell, but the real Logan smell. The one that was rich and spicy. The one he’d left on my pillow from last night.

  The one I’d miss when he was gone.

  Gone to the city. Gone to lose himself in work. Gone to be snatched up by a woman who was more suited for his lifestyle. She wouldn’t mind the long hours, constant calls and social commitments.

  Logan needed a woman like the one he’d lost.

  Emmeline.

  He’d been right earlier when he pegged me as jealous. Though not for the reason he thought. I didn’t care that Logan had been with other women. I didn’t like it, but I wasn’t naïve enough to think I was the only one.

  I’d been jealous because Emmeline had actually stood a chance. She’d had a shot at marrying Logan and building a life and family with him. A shot I’d never have.

  This thing with us was fleeting. I wasn’t going to move to the city. He couldn’t give up the career he’d worked hard to build. I didn’t blame him for that, but I was being realistic. Eventually, we’d drift apart to where our only connection would be Charlie.

  So I hugged him tighter, pressing my body into his muscles, wanting to imprint his heat permanently before the time came and I had to let him go.

  But not tonight or tomorrow or the next day.

  The one thing I’d always wanted to be was part of a family. A real family. The illusion of Logan with me and Charlie was too tempting to pass up, even if it only lasted a while.

  “Do you have more to do out here?” he asked.

  I nodded, easing out of his arms. “Just a bit. Feel like hanging out in here while I finish?”

  “Yeah. Would you mind if I poked around? I’d like to see more of your other pieces.”

  “Um . . . sure.”

  I felt a rush of nervous, excited energy. I wanted Logan to like my other pieces but I was working with actual garbage here. If he was going to inspect my workshop, I needed a drink.

  “Want a beer?” I jerked a thumb over my shoulder toward the door. “Hazel refilled the ice in one of the coolers so there are some cold ones left over from the party.”

  “I’d love one. Thanks.”

  I nodded and walked outside, fidgeting with my fingers as I hurried to the porch. I couldn’t recall everything I’d stashed away in the workshop’s drawers and cabinets. Most of it was just unfinished projects. I think I had a painting or two complete that I needed to drive up to Kalispell. And I’d finished my spoon nest while he’d been in New York.

  I climbed the porch and grabbed a couple of beers from the cooler. Then I picked up my pace, practically running back to the shed.

  Was my sketch pad in there?

  My feet skidded on the grass. Shit! Yes. I’d left it out there last week. I’d had trouble sleeping one night and come out here to draw the image plaguing my dreams.

  Logan’s face.

  In fact, during the two weeks he’d been gone, I’d filled a ten-page sketch pad with his eyes, nose and perfectly shaped ears. He did not need to see that.

  I jerked out of my stupor, running back to the shed. I hit the door but Logan’s back was to me. “Here,” I panted, holding out his beer.

  He turned, bringing something he’d taken out of a drawer with him.

  “That’s j—”

  “What’s this?”

  Thank god. I nearly collapsed with relief to see him holding an old, tattered box instead of my sketch pad. “Oh, that’s nothing.”

  He lifted the lid, revealing a stack of old Polaroids.

  Hazel must have snuck them in here one day. She’d been on me to do a scrapbook with these photos for years. I guess she thought that by leaving them in my workshop, I’d be inspired.

  “What are all these?” Logan asked, lifting a handful from the box.

  “Just some pictures Hazel took a long time ago.”

  Pictures I didn’t like to look at because of the memories that came with them. Hazel thought I needed to embrace my childhood and be proud of how far I’d come, considering my start in life.

  I didn’t agree. I preferred to block out all the lonely nights and uncelebrated birthdays.

  I hated thinking about how a mother could dump a newborn baby in a pile of garbage. I’d spent the first two hours of my life with food scraps, foul odors and filth—or so I’d been told. The theory was that my mother had pushed me out, then tossed me in a Dumpster.

  That was after she’d gotten me hooked on heroin in the womb.

  Luckily for me, a homeless man who’d been sleeping in that Dumpster’s alley had come “home” a little early that night and carried me to a nearby hospital. I’d detoxed. I’d grown. I’d made it further than most thought I ever would.

  But while Hazel reveled in all that I’d become and my fighting spirit, I didn’t like to think about how a mother could abandon her child. I didn’t want the reminder of how the one person who’d been supposed to love me had so easily thrown me away.

  I had no idea who my mother was, or my father.

  I never would.

  “Hey.” Logan touched my arm. “Where’d you go?”

  “Sorry.” I forced a smile, blinking away the threat of tears. “Just thinking.”

  “Is this you?” He turned up a photo from the top of the stack.

  I nodded, taking in the photo.

  I was standing outside the home where I’d grown up. The one where I’d met Hazel.

  My jeans were too short for my string-bean legs, but considering how skinny I’d been, they were probably the only ones that would fit my waist. It was winter, so I had on a stocking cap, which covered my long hair. It was freshly washed for a change and Hazel had just trimmed it that afternoon. My sweatshirt was a size too big and frayed at the hems. My tennis shoe
s were worn, but for hand-me-downs, they’d been some of the nicer ones I’d owned.

  But I was smiling, because the twenty-year-younger Hazel had just told me a joke.

  “How old were you here?”

  “I think ten or eleven. Hazel would know right off the top of her head. She took that one. And all the other ones.”

  She came to my orphanage when I was eight. I remember walking into the kitchen one day, and there she was with a cigarette burning in the ashtray by the window. Her dark hair had been tied back with a red bandana.

  “Let me see those for a sec.” I took the stack from his hands, thumbing through them until I found the one I’d been searching for and handed it over. “This was her back then.”

  He chuckled. “She was a real-life Rosie the Riveter.”

  “Chambray shirt and all.”

  He handed back her picture and I stared at it for a long moment. While my own pictures dredged up pain, seeing her from back then was like a warm hug.

  Because of Hazel, I had a few fond memories of my childhood. She’d come to work as a cook for the orphanage where I’d been raised. The home had been one of the few open orphanages in New York at the time. While most other children had gone into the foster care system, the director of my orphanage had retained a small group of us. I’d been the youngest, and after I’d turned eighteen, the place had closed.

  Hazel had come back to Montana.

  Jackson had followed her out here first.

  Then I’d come last.

  “Is this Jackson?” Logan held out one of the Polaroids.

  I nodded. “We’ve been friends for a long time.”

  Jackson was sitting next to me on a park bench, glaring at Hazel behind the camera because she’d made him buzz his hair off that morning. The foster home where he’d been living at the time had been infected with lice. And she wouldn’t let him near me until they’d all been killed. He’d bitched and moaned about that haircut, but he’d never grown it longer than an inch since.

  Logan’s forehead furrowed as he thumbed through the stack. “There are only kids in these pictures. Is this a school? Is that how you met Hazel?”