Page 5 of Second Chance Spring in Paradise

Her eyebrows rise above the rim of her glasses. “I sure do appreciate that, Deputy Lovett,” she says with a forced twang and a smile.

The sun is sinking fast, and my bare arms are prickling with goose bumps, even though the temperature doesn’t seem to be dropping.

“We better find the rest of those clothes before we lose our light.”

She shakes her head. “I’ve had enough humiliation for one day. Looks like my second chance is starting without my old T-shirt and leggings.”

Without another word, she limps down the trail toward the big limber pine, holding her hair back with one hand. I don’t take my eyes off her until she gets to the opening in the trees and calls over her shoulder, “I’ll get your shirt back to you!”

She holds up her arm in a wave, then squeezes through the trees and disappears.

That’s when I realize I never got her name.

And based on what I’ve seen so far, I think I’d like to know it.

Chapter 3

Tessa

I barely recognize Aunt D’s place when I pull into the Little Copenhagen Resort. I barely recognize the Little Copenhagen, for that matter. The summer resort, with its Danish-inspired cottages and community center and shops with the Nyhavn Harbour facade, used to be the heart of Paradise. Now it looks like it needs its own second chance.

My favorite weeks of the year when I was a kid were always the weeks I got to spend with my Aunt Dorothy at her house in this resort. Technically, she was Dad’s aunt—my great aunt—and her family had leased the house since she was a child. She’d been meticulous in taking care of this place back then, but she lives in a care facility a couple hours away now. I visit her every chance I get, but I haven’t been back to this house in over a decade.

Looks like no one else has either, including her own grandchildren. The old, one-story rectangular cottage shows its neglect. The once-vibrant red paint is faded and peeling. The screen door I’d run out of every morning before heading straight to the shores of Smuk Lake is torn and hanging by its hinges. The once welcoming windows are dark and dirty.

The surrounding cottages haven’t fared much better. Most, look like they’ve been empty for years, like Aunt D’s. Only a few children play on the swings and teeter totters in the common area, where once there’d been lines of kids waiting for their turn. When I get out of the car, I don’t hear the splashing and squealing from the pool that, as a kid, used to signal summer vacation had really started.

Of course, I don’t hang around too long outside listening for those sounds, since I’m still wearing only underwear and a cowboy’s pearl-button, semi-see-through, white shirt over my towel. When I’d arrived at the trail to Second Chance Spring, I’d parked my car on the side of the busy highway, whose traffic had only gotten busier by the time I got back to my car, sans clothes. I got at least one honk from a big truck full of teenage boys, so I didn’t take time to pull clothes out of my suitcase and get dressed there.

Maybe it’s a good thing the Little Copenhagen isn’t as bustling as it used to be, because I’m able to grab my suitcase from the trunk of my car and wheel it to the front door unnoticed. But the moment I open Aunt D’s door, I’m hit with dust and a moldy smell that threatens to chase away the hope I’d carried back from Second Chance Spring.

I flick on the lights. A bulb in the fixture above my head pops, and the room goes dark again. It’s probably better that way. If I’m going to keep hope from bolting, I may not want to see this place in the clear light.

But a cold homesickness inches closer and closer with each step I take inside. I open the blinds to let in the last bit of daylight before the sadness of my divorce and present circumstances settles back in—the despair of this house makes it too easy. I’ve worked too hard to claw my way out of the darkness of the past year to let it pull me back in. Instead I try to focus on the feeling I had at the spring. Hope. Confidence. Peace

I automatically go to the guest room I used to stay in and, thankfully, it feels better here. I pull back the dusty drapes to let light in before slipping on some sweatpants. Then I step outside to watch the sun set over the lake. Aunt D has the best view from her front porch, and the pink and orange rays reflecting off the lake do their trick. My hope is restored.

Which is exactly why I came to Paradise.

That and because Aunt D said the seventy-five-year lease on the cottage is up in a few months, and the owners of the resort may be selling the little houses.

I’m hoping part of my second chance will be buying this place with what little I have left in my bank account. The bank account my ex steadily emptied by mismanaging my earnings during the last two years of our marriage.

I fired him as my business manager once I found out he’d expensed things that benefitted him more than they benefitted my writing business. I’d hired him as my business manager so that he’d have a job after losing his at a tech company. I lost years of royalties, along with any financial trust I'd had in him. That’s on me for assuming he had the skills to run a business when he’d never done anything like that.

What’s on him is letting his ego get in the way of staying married. He couldn’t take me letting him go as my manager. To Dan, that meant I was letting him go altogether.

He asked for a divorce, then sued me for alimony, claiming he was my business manager and would be out of work once the divorce was final..

The judge awarded him twenty-five percent of the royalties on books I’d written while we were married.

The problem is, I didn’t publish anything the last two years we were together when things were going haywire. The older a book is, the less it sells, so my backlist isn’t earning much right now. But I still have to pay Dan a quarter of my diminishing royalties while not earning money on anything new. Which means, I never know how much money I’m going to have from one royalties payout to the next.

So maybe it’s crazy to want to buy a broken-down house I’d really only be able to use during the summer. But this old house feels like just what I need to bust through the writer’s block that’s plagued me for the past two years. A writer’s block that directly paralleled the end of my marriage.

The sun finishes its descent, and the sky goes dark. I step back into the house and flip on the hall light. There’s no popping this time. And in the dim light, things don’t look so dreary. This house looks exactly like the second chance I need.

Given the circumstances of our meeting, I wonder if Rowdy Lovett is part of that second chance, too. I may not believe in magic or voodoo, but you can’t write romance—like I do—without a little faith in fate. And I have to believe fate had a hand today. Otherwise, the only explanation is pure bad luck.

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