One Hot Summer

by Heidi McLaughlin

  A Date for Hannah

  About the Author

  New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Katy Regnery started her writing career by enrolling in a short story class in January 2012. One year later, she signed her first contract, and Katy’s first novel was published in September 2013.

  Over forty books and three RITA® nominations later, Katy claims authorship of the multititled Blueberry Lane series. the A Modern Fairytale collection, the Summerhaven series, the Arranged duo, and several other standalone romances, including the critically-acclaimed fiction novel, Unloved, a love story.

  Katy’s books are available in English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, and Turkish.

  Check out Katy’s Website here: http://www.katyregnery.com

  Sign up for Katy’s newsletter today: http://eepurl.com/disKlD

  The Secret at Sunset

  Shari J. Ryan

  1

  Chapter 1

  It’s a beautiful sunny morning, the birds are chirping, and so are my two, rowdy girlfriends in the living room. The walls are far too thin in our apartment. I roll over, pulling my white, over-filled down comforter with me. I force one eyelid to open, peering at my smart-alarm that soothes me awake when time. It’s not time. I have thirty minutes more before I have to wake up but Macy and Grace have been pacing over the hardwood floors, back and forth in front of my door for at least an hour.

  I reach for my trusty ear-plugs and shove the foam into place, but before I have my right ear secured from noise, I hear a fist bang against my door. “Alexa, it’s time to get your caboose loose!” Grace shouts.

  My caboose loose. Does she even know what she’s saying?

  “I still have thirty minutes,” I whine.

  “No, no, no. It’s my bachelorette weekend, and I’m ready to rumble,” she sings.

  I’m not normal. I’m not. Nothing about me is normal. I should be out of my mind, happy for Grace. I should be supportive as a bridesmaid to-be, but the last thing I want to do is go to Cabo San Lucas on a girls' weekend getaway, which makes me an asshole. A totally lame asshole. The thought of a girl’s trip makes my stomach hurt.

  I’m not like them. I don’t take pleasure in spending hours getting dressed or dousing my face with bronzer. I don’t enjoy getting plastered or making a tally of how many pick-up lines I can attract in an hour.

  Macy has devoted the last week of her life shopping for bachelorette paraphernalia, which I haven’t seen, nor do I have a desire to see. When I get married someday, I’m eloping, and leaving all the bells and annoyingly loud whistles behind. I can’t exactly voice my thoughts on the situation because I’m not getting married anytime soon, and I’d be outlawed as a typical woman. It’s hard to believe I’m alone in this boat. It’s all cheese, and not the fancy soft French stuff—the cheese that comes in a can.

  Grace’s fist pounds on my door again. “I’m coming in if you don’t come out,” she states sternly.

  I close my eyes for another long second, taking in a deep breath through my nose and release the air from my pursed lips. Before I’m able to expel all the oxygen from my lungs, my door flies open.

  Grace and her long ombre-bleached hair, falsies, gloss, bronzer, white skin-tight pants, and a neon pink halter-top jogs into my room, keeping herself steady in her four-inch wedge sandals.

  My airport attire will be: sweatpants, an oversized tee-shirt, chucks, and my ten-year-old salty Red Sox hat.

  Grace scans my room, in search for something. She spots my open suitcase and grabs it as if it weights next to nothing, which is true since I haven’t packed yet. “Dude, where are your clothes? Oh my God. Are you bailing?” Grace is fanning herself, pre-panic attack mode. “Please don’t do this to me. You have to come. Why aren’t you coming? Why, Alexa? You’re my best friend.”

  “Grace, sweetie, I will be ready to leave our apartment within the hour, like planned,” I tell her, keeping my voice calm.

  “What? How? I’ve been packing for a week. There’s no way you can pack everything that quickly.”

  I finally push myself up, resting my back against my headrest. “I will be ready at the front door in thirty minutes, okay?”

  Grace glances down at her iWatch and nods her head. “Okay, have fun.”

  The second my bedroom door closes, I slide back down under my covers. How much could I possibly need for a four-day getaway?

  Thirty Minutes Later.

  I yank the zipper closed, slide my suitcase off my bed and shove it to the door. I look in the mirror, press the messy hair bump into my loose ponytail and grab my phone on the way out the door. “Ready,” I holler.

  “How is it even possible you packed and got dressed within thirty minutes?” Macy asks. “I know your drawers and closet aren’t in an organized fashion, so it isn’t because of that.”

  Macy is the over-achieving responsible one of the three of us. It’s not that I’m not responsible. I just don’t obsess over details or the small stuff in life. Grace sort of breezes by responsibilities because she’s always focused on something sparkly. She’s adorably irresponsible, though. Grace is the type to get away with missing a stop sign.

  * * *

  “It’s easy to pack because I don’t have an excessive amount of clothes. I did laundry the other day, so everything was already in my laundry bin. Easy.”

  “What about your incidental stuff? Soap, shampoo?”

  “I’m buying it all there. It’s easier than lugging it and having to worry about it blowing up in my bag.”

  “What if there isn’t a store nearby?” Macy continues.

  “I’m sure there is somewhere to get soap. Hotel rooms usually come with soap.”

  “You’re ridiculous,” Macy sighs as we walk down the taupe carpeted hallway of our apartment building.

  “Should we call an Uber?” I offer.

  “Alexa, we scheduled a car pickup two weeks ago to make sure we get to the airport—”

  “Exactly two hours early?” I finish her sentence.

  “We’re flying internationally, so yes, we need the full two hours.”

  “You realize we will end up sitting at our gate for at least an hour, right?” I follow.

  Two Hours Later

  “Oh my God. Oh. My. God. We’re going to miss our flight!” Grace is pacing in the three feet of allotted space within the security line, glaring at her watch as if she can summon the time to stop moving.

  “Folks, I’d like to apologize for the hold-up, but we appreciate your patience. We’re having a medical issue up here and need to keep the space cleared until we can resolve the situation at hand. Thank you again for your continued patience.” TSA’s announcement will surely add a layer of fun to our travels this morning.

  * * *

  “We’re going to miss our flight,” Grace shouts, slapping her hands down against her thighs. “Perfect. My bachelorette weekend is officially ruined.”

  * * *

  Between the time the message was announced and now, Macy has retrieved her phone and is making a call, holding up one finger to the Grace and me as if we’re children nagging our mother on the phone. “I see. Thank you so much,” she speaks into the phone.

  Macy never loses her calm. Her appearance might say so, as well. Her dark hair is pulled up into a sleek ponytail and though she’s sporting the appearance of cutting loose, she’s wearing a sleeveless white button down and tailored black shorts that fit just right. Of course, she wouldn’t be caught dead without her favorite black Tory Burch sandals, pearl earrings, and a matching necklace. The three of us look like a contradiction, but we have been friends since Freshman year of high school. We all stayed stateside for college, attending Northeaster, and all snagged jobs within a year after graduation. We have been living together for eight years, and Grace is the first one to get hitched. We thought Macy would be the first with her tight-nit twenty-year plan, but she’s so particular about everything that no guy has been a good—err—perfect mat
ch for her.

  I’m just a serial dater and have little patience for most types of men, so I’ve always claimed a last place for the marriage card, and I’m fine with that.

  A TSA agent walks around the line of people looped around metal barriers and ropes. Macy smiles at him as if she knows him. “Barron,” she croons. “It’s been so long!”

  Macy knows this guy? He’s at least fifty by the looks of his white peppered receding hair line, added gut, and arched shoulders. He’s a big guy, at least six-foot-five. In any case, he’s not really someone I want to mess with right now.

  “You know him?” I whisper in her ear.

  “Barron, this Grace and Macy, my two very best friends. We’re heading off to Mexico to celebrate Grace’s bachelorette weekend,” Macy says, wiggling her arms out to the side as if she’s doing some Spanish dance I’m not familiar with.

  “Ladies, could you please step out of line for me?” Barron asserts. Oh shit. Macy crossed a line and we’re going to jail now. That might be a fun way to celebrate Grace this weekend. “Follow me.” I still don’t want to mess with this guy.

  With reluctance, the three of us follow Barron around the side of the roped off area, finding ourselves in a secluded security area. “Um, what’s going on behind those curtains?” I whisper into Grace’s ear. I’m not expecting an answer since she still hasn’t told me how she knows Barron, but I don’t like the looks of this private area.

  “You ladies can place your bags on the belt and each one of you can step behind one of those curtains.”

  Grace is biting on her freshly polished thumbnail. “You really know how to pull some strings, huh?” Grace asks Macy.

  “You’ll forget about all of this when we’re sitting on the plane,” Macy tells her.

  “What does that mean?” I ask placing my sneakers down on the belt next to my backpack.

  “We’ve been through worse,” Macy continues.

  A female TSA agent is waiting for me on the other side of the curtain. The next two minutes of my life, I’d prefer to forget. The three of us walk away almost simultaneously, grabbing our belongings from the belt, and quietly replacing our shoes on our feet.

  * * *

  We walk for a good minute toward our gate when Grace lets out an exhausted sigh. “I was just touched everywhere,” she says. “Like, I’m a little disturbed.”

  When she says everywhere, she isn’t exaggerating. “Look, it was the only way to get through security. Would you rather miss the flight?”

  Getting a high dose of frisking was Macy’s way to save the day. “It was more action than I’ve gotten in months,” I top off Grace’s comment.

  “People have to go through this daily at the airport. Don’t think twice about it. Let’s just get to the plane, okay?” Macy is so reserved about the fact that she was just patted everywhere. It surprises me, but when Macy is given a task, she won’t let anything get in the way, which is exactly why I made it clear that she should be the maid-of-honor. Grace was struggling to choose, so I volunteered Macy. Maybe this goes along with the whole I’m just not that into girls’ weekend activities. I’m also not cut out to be a maid-of-honor.

  “They are still boarding!” Grace shouts, picking up the speed, trampling along in her high wedge shoes. “Wait for us!” I don’t think her pleas are going to keep that gate door open, but if it makes her feel better, more power to her.

  “Flight 1104 to Cabo San Lucas, will be closing the gates shortly. All passengers on Flight 1104 please report to the Gate 21.”

  We make it to the gate, out of breath and sweaty, but the attendant takes our tickets and closes the gate door behind us. “See, I told you we’d be fine,” I tell them.

  “Alexa, did you book these tickets?” Macy asks, staring down at the remainder of her ticket.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “We’re not sitting together?” Macy continues.

  “I figured we could ask someone to switch seats. There weren’t any seats left together.”

  We board the plane and follow the rows to the back, searching for row thirty-two. “Look, we get the back row. I know we’re not together, but we’re all in the same row at least.”

  The other two don’t respond to my moment of positivity, but I think I know why when I shove my backpack under the seat in front of me. The toilet in the bathroom directly behind me flushes, and when the door opens, a waft of sickness wafts with a passing breeze. “Were sitting in the toilets,” Macy says. “How fun.”

  2

  Chapter 2

  “Folks, we’re here in a holding pattern … ahhhhh … our estimated time of arrival will have a slight delay.”

  Our five-hour flight wasn’t long enough so we need to make it a little longer. “Psst,” Grace not-so-subtly hisses at me.

  I lean forward, as I’ve done at least twenty times to see over the gentleman sitting between us. He has been complacently working on his laptop, punching in numbers to a spreadsheet until we were cleared to move our non-movable seats into a more comfortable position. He smells like the toilets now, or maybe it’s me that smells. I thought I would have gotten used to the smell after a half hour or so, but it is still as ripe as when we first sat down.

  “What?” I whisper back.

  Grace holds up her phone and points to it as if I’ll understand what she’s trying to tell me. I shake my head with question.

  “Do you think anyone will know if I take my phone off airplane mode? Rex is probably sick out of his mind with worry because we didn’t land a half hour ago like we should have.”

  “Are you out of your mind?” The man between us finally speaks. He has a higher-pitched voice than I thought he would have. It’s almost comical, but I’ll keep my thoughts to myself. “Haven’t you heard that those signals can take an entire damn plane down?”

  Oh. My. God.

  “Sir, is there a problem over here?” A flight attendant has quickly unlatched her restraints from behind us, where she was sitting next to the bathroom door.

  “Yeah, this twit wants to turn off airplane mode on her phone. It’ll take the plane down. Tell her!”

  “Sir, I’m going to need you to calm down, please,” the flight attendant with a French twist worked into her brownie-brown hair with uncomplimentary fuchsia lipstick that’s painted over her two front teeth, replies.

  “Oh no, you aren’t blaming this on me. She’s the one threatening the plane,” the man continues. For someone who has been so quiet for so long, this is mildly shocking, and somewhat entertaining.

  “Miss, we need all electronic devices to stay on airplane mode until we land. It’s just for the safety of our passengers.”

  “See! It is for the safety of not taking the plane down.”

  A man two rows in front of us, stands up from his seat. He’s dressed in business attire, sharply clothed with a stern look on his middle-aged face. He looks like a thinner version of John Cena.

  The man leans over Grace. “Excuse me, miss, pardon my reach.” Grace, rather than looking horrified at what she’s kind of started, is blushing. “Is this part of my bachelorette weekend?” she mumbles.

  “Stop,” I hush her. It’s obvious she knows nothing about air marshals.

  “Sir, please come with me,” the deep-voiced man asserts.

  That shut the guy up. He’s probably about to make his pants smell like the bathroom’s wafting odor. He’ll blend right in at least. I’ve always wondered where they take people like this jackass who can’t keep his mouth shut.

  Now, I know. It’s exactly two rows up in the one empty seat on the plane next to the man who I assume to be the air marshal.

  “See, now we can sit together,” Grace chirps. Grace quickly unlatches her seatbelt and scoots over. We both glance over at Macy who was lucky enough to land in a window seat. She’s been asleep for the last hour and is probably none the wiser that we have been flying in circles for the last thirty minutes. Grace’s knees are bouncing and her hands are tapping against he
r thighs. “I’m so excited.”

  “You were just so nervous a minute ago. You need a drink,” I tell her.

  Forty-Five Minutes Later.

  “I’m so excited, and I just can’t hide it!” Grace is singing into her mini-size water bottle as we follow the pack off the plane. “I know, I know, I know—”

  “Grace,” I mumble. “People are staring.”

  As if my words were motivation for her to take her show to the next level, she pokes her head into her small duffel bag and pulls out the sash Macy made for her and two for us. Grace’s says, “Bride-to-be.”

  “I’m getting married, and I just can’t hide it!”

  Macy is following behind the two of us, busy on her phone. “What are you doing back there?”

  “Checking on our hotel transfer,” she says without lifting her head.

  “Why don’t we just find a ride outside?” I ask.

  “Transfers came with our hotel package.”

  “Oh,” I respond, feeling like I should have asked a few more questions about the trip. I checked out the hotel and booked the flights. Macy said she was handling the hotel. I don’t recall ever staying in a hotel that came with transfers, but I also haven’t been to Mexico before.

  “Hola, mi amigo. Me voy MARRIED!” I took my eyes off Grace for less than a minute, but I begged the flight attendant to pass us a couple of shots from the snack cart while we were circling. Nothing a twenty-dollar tip can’t take care of.

  Grace has her hand on some guy’s chest. His downward dark brows, and attire to drive a bus, don’t give off the friendliest look. “Vamos a la Playa Grande Hotel,” he responds to her.

  “That’s not where we’re going, Grace,” I tell her in case she didn’t pick up on the Spanish.

  “We should go there! It would be fun,” she croons.

  “No, no, we’re going to the hotel we booked, and our shuttle is just down there,” Macy says, waving back at the guy who is waving to us.