Love and Rumors: A Summer Sisters Beach Reads Contemporary Romance (The Summer Sisters Book 1) (2 page)

“You really think he’s going to get into one of those cars?” scoffed a male voice. Hailey jumped, nearly dropping her camera. “You should have set it up ahead of time and led him into it. You’re wasting your time.” Austin leaned over her shoulder, his cheap aftershave familiar in a way that made her distrust him.

She turned, pinned against the wall, his large build crowding her.

“Make your trap irresistible to a man like Finian.” Austin’s eyes roved over her and she wondered why on earth she’d pined for the annoying button-pusher after he’d broken up with her. He got under her skin faster than anyone she’d ever met. Although maybe she’d just pined for freedom and a life she could no longer have.

“I knew it wouldn’t be long before the worm crawled out from under his rock,” Hailey retorted, turning to face Finian again. “Did your mother run out of canned lasagna?”

“This is my arena and this guy hates the paparazzi,” Austin said, his mouth turning down. “Go back to your pretty art shots and leave this for the real photographers.”

Hailey gritted her teeth so she didn’t make an enemy out of Austin and took a few haphazard shots as though Finian was doing something intriguing. This was just like with the high school paper, when she’d wanted to take different pictures than he, the photo editor, had demanded. He’d wanted the publication to be a tabloid. She’d wanted it to be a liberal arts paper that covered anything and everything. An outlet and extension of her own artistic needs.

“I said—” he began.

She ducked as Finian looked their way. “Shut up! You’re scaring the subject.” She whacked Austin on the chest, just above where it softened into a small beer gut.

“He won’t stop because we’re here. Movie stars need the paparazzi. Free publicity—and he hasn’t had any in almost a week.” Austin glanced around the corner of the van. “They’re all locked.”

“I know,” Hailey said darkly.

“He’s not the joyriding type, you know.”

“Says who?”

Austin hitched his camera bag higher on his shoulder. “I’m going for a beer. Call me when he gets desperate enough to do something interesting.”

“Dream on.”

“Only if you’re in them and naked.” He gave her a wink.

Hailey bit back a snort of laughter. “You’re the nightmare and he’s the dream, honey.”

“Mmm. I love it when you call me honey.” Austin lightly pecked her cheek, then backed away, his arm outstretched, pointing at her. “I know you still have my number.”

“Only because you live with your mother.”

He clutched his chest as if shot, and with another wink, disappeared around the corner.

Austin actually made a pretty decent enemy seeing as he helped motivate Hailey to work harder and follow the path she truly wanted. Well, except when he was a complete ass and she wanted to shove him into the turbulent water near the falls in hopes that he’d drown.

Shaking her head, she turned to Finian once again. She’d had such a crush on him ever since his first movie—
Desperate Cowboy
,
a low-budget film nobody remembered. But she did. Especially the way his tight little butt had featured in one of the scenes. Mmm. That scene had replayed in many of her fantasies. Add in his black cowboy hat, the swagger and the way his bright blue eyes had blazed out of his dark, tanned skin, and she’d been a goner for life.

She vaguely re-aimed her camera, trying to calm her body’s reactions to thoughts about Finian. For several days she’d been casually tracking him, but all she’d seen was a regular man hanging out on vacation. Which was so wrong. He was supposed to mess up, with only her around to capture it in digital, not be a man she could envision living happily ever after with.

She was only supposed to catch him screwing up once, then sell it. That was the deal she’d made with herself to justify violating his privacy. Because even though he was a movie star, he was also a human. And in Muskoka there was an unspoken code—a code Austin regularly broke—stating that celebrities in the area were to be left alone if they weren’t obviously seeking attention.

She almost turned away when something caught her eye. Finian had finally opened the door to a 1950s Jaguar Mark I. She barely dared breathe. What had she missed while fuming to herself?

Finian rolled up the car’s window. Closed the door. Gave the roof a little pat, then walked away as the clouds submitted to the weight of their load.

What had she missed?

She popped her head above her camera for a ‘real world’ look. Why hadn’t he hot wired the car? Had he found something to take instead?

Whatever had happened, she knew one thing for sure: she’d missed her chance to save herself as well as her sisters.

* * *

Hailey stood under a shop awning, keeping an eye on Finian, the Big Letdown, as he ambled up the other side of the street, seemingly unaffected by the pouring rain. Which bar had Austin gone to for his beer? She needed to talk to him about a little thing called ruining another photographer’s shot. Preferably while keeping Finian in her sights, but not within Austin’s.

Hailey tried to sidestep the person who popped up to block her view.

“Hailey? Hailey?”

She glanced down to see her youngest sister, Daphne, clutching her arm, peering at her with concern.

“You okay? You look kinda pale.”

“Yeah, fine.” She peered around her sister, who was trying to rein in her bouncing five-year-old daughter, Tigger, who resembled Tigger from Winnie-the-Pooh more than her seldom-used given name, Kimberly. Hailey relaxed as Finian paused under an awning across the street. She looked toward a nearby bar. “I was just thinking about how I’d like to rip Austin Smith a new ass—”

“Hailey!” gasped Daphne.

Tigger looked up with a sparkle in her eyes. “Auntie Hailey said a bad word.”

Hailey sighed and gave herself a shake. “Sorry, kiddo.” She placed her hands over Tigger’s ears and gently rocked the girl’s head back and forth. The little girl’s long plastic raincoat rustled as she moved, one of her ever-present secondhand party dresses peeking out from under the hem.

“There.” Hailey held up her fisted hand. “It fell out.” She pretended to throw something on the ground and stomp on it. “It’s like you never heard that word.”

“Ass,” replied Tigger.

“Tigger!” Daphne clutched her daughter’s shoulders. “We don’t use words like that.”

“Auntie Hailey used it.”

Hailey winced. “Sorry,” she said again.

Daphne gave Tigger a stern look and turned to Hailey. “So, what’s up with you and Austin? You’ve barely talked since high school.”

“Professional complications.”

Daphne’s nose scrunched and her eyes followed Hailey’s to where Finian, protected from the rain, was leaning against a building as though he had all the time in the world and not a care to burden him.

The jerk. He wouldn’t last a second in the real world.

Daphne laughed. “You still have a crush on Finian Alexander.”

Hailey snorted and rolled her eyes as though the idea of her harboring a flaming, scorching torch for the movie star was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard.

Her sister giggled and stared across the street. “I can see why. He’s
delicious
.”

“Very delicious,” Tigger agreed.

“
And
I heard he just broke up with Jessica Cartmill,” Daphne added. “Hello!”

Hailey squinted at her niece. “Do you know what we’re talking about?”

“The ice cream store.”

Hailey found her attention drawn to Finian again. Yep, he was standing near the sign advertising twelve different flavors.

“I wouldn’t mind licking that,” Daphne said in a low voice. Hailey placed an arm across her sister’s chest, pretending to hold her back. Daphne let out a sigh of longing. “It’s been over five years. I’m dying here.”

“Do they have bubble gum ice cream?” Tigger asked.

“No sugar, Tigger,” her mother answered. Then she clutched Hailey’s arm again. “Tell me you’re not following Austin’s lead on photography. What he does goes against your principles.”

“I know.”

“You said the paparazzi are the ambulance chasers of the photography world.”

“They are.”

“Use your powers of photography for good, not evil.”

Hailey laughed and adjusted the heavy bag digging into her shoulder. If only her sister knew how out of options she was. It was either become an ambulance chaser or lose the one place that had always brought the four sisters together. The place where not only their great-grandmother had fallen in love, but their grandmother and mother, as well. It was the very place where little Tigger had been conceived. And as much as the grown sisters teased Tigger for thinking the small family-owned island was enchanted, Hailey knew they all secretly agreed. There was something about Nymph Island and their cottage, Trixie Hollow, that grounded people. The place had kept the family together when they could have easily ended up spread across the country, barely speaking to each other.

“You’re up to something,” Daphne said.

“Nope.”

“You won’t meet my eyes.”

Hailey stared into her sister’s blue eyes, willing her to realize that her own slim tax contributions toward the cottage hadn’t been enough. That none of what the four of them—especially Hailey, who held the cottage in trust—had done over the years had been enough, and that by the end of August the whole kit and caboodle would be sold off to cover years of back taxes. And it would be Hailey’s fault. For failing their ailing mother, her sisters and niece, and most of all, herself.

The jokingly used nickname Hailey-Failey would finally fit. Big time.

Familiar anxiety swirled within her and she tightened her hold on her camera bag’s strap. She needed something lucrative, and fast, or she’d be forced to ask her sisters for help. And she couldn’t. Just couldn’t.

Not yet.

She glanced across the street to where Finian was still standing. Maybe it was true, what her mother always said—that if the cottage was meant to stay in the family, a solution would present itself. Maybe Finian wasn’t in Muskoka by coincidence. It was fate. Destiny. Karma giving Hailey a hand up for her years of taking care of the family.

Tigger whispered to her, “Mom always finds out if someone is up to something.”

“Not always,” Hailey whispered back.

Especially since she was going to solve this problem. Right now. Before anyone knew the gambles and risks she’d taken, and how she’d messed it all up.

She straightened her spine. If anyone in the family were to be voted most likely to succeed in solving this dilemma, she was. She’d pulled them through their father’s death when they were teens and kept the family afloat with after-school jobs. Then five years ago, after their mother’s debilitating stroke, Hailey had moved in with her and taken over responsibility for the cottage. When it came to the point where their mother needed more care than Hailey could provide, she’d found the perfect nursing home offering the right balance of support and independence.

Not only that, but Hailey had been there for Daphne when her sister’s summer boyfriend went home, never to be heard from again, leaving her heartbroken and pregnant. And she’d been there to help however she could when their two middle sisters, Maya and Melanie, went off to university.

Their mother had placed the cottage in her trust for a reason. Hailey solved problems and made things happen. And yeah, things looked bad right now. Really bad for the 110-year-old cottage. But she’d solve this problem just as she had all the others, and her sisters would never have to learn how close she’d come to losing the place they all loved.

Besides, telling them would just stress them all out, and they’d start running around in a panic, distracting her from getting the job done.

She could do this.

Her solution was waiting for her across the street.

Easy as drooling over apple pie.

“What’s wrong?” Daphne repeated. “What did Austin do?”

Hailey waved a hand. “He pissed me off, that’s all.”

“Auntie Hailey said ‘pissed’!”

“You didn’t hear that,” she replied quickly.

“How did he rub you the wrong way?” Daphne asked, head tilted.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I heard he moved home to chill out for a while after that last fight with George Clooney.” She leaned closer. “Did Austin ask you out? I don’t think he ever got over you, you know.”

Hailey scoffed and pushed her away. “Don’t you have a protest to organize?”

“Oh, that reminds me. Can you join us for the picnic and protest for the dam?”

“Picnic?”

“It brings out more families.”

“Um, I think I have a…” Hailey scrambled for an excuse.

“It’s tomorrow and we desperately need a good photographer.”

“Please?” Tigger asked, jumping up and down as she yanked on Hailey’s hand.

“I think I have to take Grandma to an appointment, hon. Sorry.”

“I already asked Maya to take her,” Daphne said. “It’s just a few shots for a brochure and the website. Please?”

Hailey felt like a poser when she went to rallies. Yes, she usually believed in whatever her sister was protesting, but felt awkward yelling and shouting and making a scene about it. Although maybe if she helped her, Daphne would speak up for Hailey if she lost it all. The cottage. Her business. Her home. She gulped for air and squeezed her hips like a runner after a sprint, knocking her swinging camera bag out of the way. This wasn’t good. Not good at all. She was going to default on all the promises she’d made their mother. All her cover-ups were going to be revealed. She was going to fail.

“Relax. Maya will take good care of Mom.” Daphne rested a hand on Hailey’s shoulder. “She only forgot her that time by accident. She won’t forget again. And besides, she didn’t even get all the way out of the parking lot.” Her sister squeezed her shoulder. “It’s okay, Hailey, we can all take turns helping. It doesn’t always have to be you.”

Hailey sucked in a deep breath, her mind tangled in the complications of allowing Maya to help. “It’s faster and easier—”

“On your own. We know. But she’s our mother, too, and we’ve all grown up. The doctor has all her medical info, you don’t have to be there to tell him everything. Let us show our love for you, Hailey. Let us help.”