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Authors: Shelby Gates

Second Chance (10 page)

BOOK: Second Chance
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She laid the letter on the table and read it again.

It still didn’t make sense.

“Ma’am?” a voice called from the front door.

“What?” she snapped, whipping her head around.

The painter’s eyes went wide. “I just wanted you to know I was gonna look around inside now.”

She held up a hand. “Sorry. My mind is elsewhere. Yeah, that’s fine. Do what you need to do.”

He hesitated, then nodded, relieved she didn’t scream at him again.

She stared at the phone.
Call back
.

It didn’t ring.

She grabbed her phone and entered the address on Cash’s card into the maps function on the screen. It brought up the address. Less than two miles from the cottage. She knew right where it was. She could cut down the beach and the walk would take fifteen minutes.

She slipped on her sandals, kept the phone in her hand and found the painter.

“I’ve gotta go run an errand,” she said. “You alright with locking the door behind you?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Sure, if you are.”

She nodded. “Just leave the estimate on the counter in the kitchen.”

“No problem,” he said, smiling. “Cash also said to send the estimate over to him, too, as soon as I was done. He sends a lot of work my way so I’ll give you the best price I can. Really shouldn’t be bad at all.”

Elle nodded again. “OK. Great. Thanks.”

The painter raised an eyebrow. “You alright? You look a little out of sorts.” He chuckled. “Like you saw a ghost or something.”

“I’m fine,” she said. “Thanks again.”

He shrugged. “Sure.”

She grabbed her keys off the table and the letter. She headed out the back door, down the steps to the sand and up the beach, towards his office.

She glanced at the letter pressed between her fingers.

The letter. The letter was the ghost.

Her phone chimed in the pocket of her shorts and she let out an involuntary squeak. She felt her pulse quicken as she reached for it. Maybe it was Cash. And maybe they could have this conversation over the phone instead of in person.

Her heart sank when she saw the number on the screen. Nice Nannies. She’d forgotten to call Connie back, to give her a final answer on the job.

SEVENTEEN

 

 

Elle let the call roll over to voicemail. She had too much on her mind, too much that kept her from thinking rationally, to make a decision. She wouldn’t be able to give an answer to Connie. Not now. Not until she talked to Cash.

She made her way down the beach, her sandals kicking up a spray of sand as she walked. Irritated, she slipped them off and held them in her hands as she navigated around the throngs of beach goers. It was still early, not quite ten o’clock, but the shoreline was already littered with blankets and beach chairs, towels and boogies boards, and a small fortune in plastic sand toys. Parents corralled kids, slathering sunscreen on noses and shoulders, adjusting sunhats, forcing sunglasses. Small groups of older kids formed straight lines with their beach towels, parallel to the ocean. Girls in colorful bikinis, rubbing suntan lotion on, adjusting their earbuds and boys drinking cans of Monster, laughing and joking with each other, stealing glances at the slender, feminine bodies stretched out on the towels next to them.

She’d been one of those girls. Every summer. And Cash had been one of those boys.

She followed the shore as it curved, taking her around the north side of the island. She stopped in front of a massive, Cape Cod style two-story and headed up the wooden walkway through the dunes. She’d cross the street here, walk the remaining two blocks through the neighborhood. She lifted her hair off her neck, letting the breeze cool her heated skin. It was already hot.

Five minutes later, she found herself in front of Cash’s building. She’d memorized the address, knew his was the corner unit on the left. She studied it for a minute. The lines of the building and the angle of his particular unit allowed him an almost 180 degree view of the Atlantic.

She hesitated for a moment, the envelope still clutched in her hands. It was limp and she didn’t know if it was from the humid air or her sweaty palms.

What was she going to say to him?

She didn’t get much time to think about it. Before she could step forward, his front door opened and Cash was there. Looking at her. Smiling.

“Hey,” he said. “I just got your message. Was gonna head back up and see what was going on.”

She swallowed hard, clutched the envelope tighter.

“Is everything OK?” he asked, a flicker of concern in his eyes.

“No.”

He frowned. “Something with a contractor?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Then what? You said something about communicating…”

Elle took a deep breath, then thrust the envelope at him.

He stared at it, confused. “What is this?”

“You tell me.”

He took it from her, flipped it over. His face paled just a little as his eyes settled on the handwriting.

“Why do you have this?” he finally asked.

Elle folded her arms across her chest. “What?”

“This.” He waved the envelope. “Why do you have it?”

“What do you mean?” She stared at him, her mouth open in frustration. “It was addressed to me!”

“No,” he said, his voice impatient. “Why do you have it now? Why are you suddenly shoving this in my face?”

She stared at him, anger and confusion boiling over inside of her. “Because I just got it.”

“You just got it,” he repeated.

She nodded.

He stared at her for a long moment, then held it out to her. “I don’t want it. This is
…the past.”

“You aren’t going to read it?” she asked.

“I read it when I wrote it,” he said. “I know what it says. I don’t need to read it again.”

“Explain it then.”

“What is there to explain?” he asked. “You read it, didn’t you?”

Elle folded her arms across her chest. “Well, I don’t want it.”

He shrugged, folded it up and stuck it in his pocket. “OK.” He glanced at his watch. “I’m actually on my way out. I have an appointment in fifteen minutes.”

“So I just walked all the way over here and you won’t talk about it?” she said, incredulous.

“I would’ve driven over.”

“It’s not the walk I’m pissed about.”

He sighed, pulled the sunglasses down from the top of his head to cover his eyes. “We can talk about it later.”

“How ironic.”

He stepped past her down onto the sidewalk. He turned around. “You know…” His words trailed off. Then he shook his head. “Never mind.”

“Never mind what?” she demanded.

He fished his keys from the pocket of his pants and adjusted his sunglasses. “Maybe I’m not the person you should be talking to about this.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

He glanced at his watch again. “I gotta go. I’ll find you later.”

He walked around his car at the curb, opened the driver’s door and slid in. She watched him put the key in the ignition and turn the engine on. He glanced at her through the passenger window. He didn’t smile, didn’t say anything, just looked at her.

Elle stood there, seething at being blown off and more confused than ever. She stared back at him, wanting him to see everything she was feeling.

Then he pulled away from the curb and disappeared around the corner.

EIGHTEEN

 

 

Elle headed back to the cottage, walking slowly this time, letting her anger burn off beneath the warm, summer sun.

His reaction wasn’t what she’d expected. She’d expected an explanation. She’d expected an answer. She’d expected a lot.

Instead, she got indifference. And more questions.

She shook her head in frustration as she walked. Maybe all of this was a mistake. First, the blown-up nanny job and now trying to take care of selling the cottage. Maybe her mother was right. Maybe she was here for all of the wrong reasons and she needed to shake herself and grow up a little bit. If Cash wasn’t willing to go back in the past, then why should she bother caring? If it mattered that little to him, then she’d wasted her time thinking that it was anything important.

She walked past the downtown shops rather than going back on the beach. She pushed thoughts of Cash aside and tried to focus instead on the charming little downtown area of Keefer Island. Surprisingly, it looked nearly the same as it had years ago. The ice cream store. The tailor. The drugstore. The boutique jewelry store. They looked exactly as they had the last time she’d been there. Lots of things in the world had changed, but somehow, they’d managed to hold on to their spots on Keefer Island. They were as much a part of the island as the sand and the ocean.

Her life felt like the opposite of those shops. Always in flux, always changing, always in some state of chaos. She wanted stability. She wanted security. She wanted to feel like she had it all under control.

Right at that moment, she felt like she didn’t have any of those things on Keefer Island.

She pulled her phone out of her pocket, found the Nice Nannies number and dialed. An unfamiliar voice answered.

“Could I speak to Connie please?” Elle said.

“I’m sorry, she’s in a meeting,” the pleasant voice said. “Can I take a message and have her call you back?”

“Yes,” Elle said. “Tell her Elle Middleton called and ask her to call me back when she can. I think I have some good news for her.”

NINETEEN

 

 

The contractors kept coming.

Elle got back to the cottage just as the roofing guy showed up. He was on the roof looking at the shingles when the window guy showed up. The painter had left the estimate on the counter as promised. She figured she’d have costs to share with her mother by the end of the day and then she could decide how she wanted to proceed with the sale.

Forward progress.

She made herself a sandwich and sat on the deck while she ate it, the sun sparkling on the ocean. Kites flitted across the sky and laughter from the shoreline drifted in the air. The roofer came down off the roof and left her with a sloppily written estimate and the window guy gave her a printed out estimate that spit out from his portable printer. She thanked them, laid the paperwork with the other estimates on the counter and turned toward her bedroom. She should change into work clothes, she thought. Put on a ragged t-shirt and a pair of old shorts and tackle the weeds. Or the wallpaper.

But she didn’t want to.

If her time on the island was going to be short, she wanted to at least get a little beach time. She told herself that being free of the responsibility of the cottage was the best thing to do. She could focus on getting back to Madison and fitting in with the family she would be nannying for when she got back. As soon as Connie called back, she’d have a firm start date and she could start planning.

More forward progress.

She changed into her bathing suit, grabbed a beach towel from the closet and a tube of sunscreen from her toiletries and headed down the sand. She found a spot between a family with three small kids and an older couple. She spread the towel, covered herself in sunscreen and sprawled out on her back, closing her eyes. The sun warmed her and she forced her brain into a slow, lethargic shutdown as the sounds around her began to die away.

A little while later, her eyes fluttered open and even behind her sunglasses, the sun was bright. She stretched her arms and legs, the afternoon nap on the sand stiffening her limbs and back. She rolled over onto her stomach.

And found Cash sitting right behind her.

“Your skin was starting to sizzle,” he said. “I was afraid someone might mistake you for a rotisserie chicken or something.”

She shifted her weight on the towel so she was propped up on her elbows. “What are you doing here?”

“I went to the cottage,” he said. “You weren’t there. I walked around to the back to see if you were on the deck. I saw you down here. But I didn’t want to wake you.”

“How long have you been here?”

He shrugged. “Maybe half an hour?”

She’d been asleep for awhile then. And she didn’t like that he’d been there, watching her. “What do you want?”

“All the guys come by?”

Business. Of course. That was all he wanted to talk about. The past was the past, he’d said. If he was going to be all-business and not bring up her visit earlier that day, she would be, too. She didn’t need the complication, didn’t need the agony of all of the unanswered what-ifs and whys.

She nodded. “Yeah.”

“They leave estimates?”

“On the counter inside,” she told him.

He nodded. “OK. They look alright?”

“I guess,” she answered. “I’ll send them to my mother tonight. If she’s good with them, I’ll get them set up tomorrow.”

BOOK: Second Chance
3.02Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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