Page 26 of So Close

“I did eat the biscuit,” he reminded her.

“What a hardship,” she mocked.

Okay, true, it hadn’t been much of a self-sacrifice. Tender, flaky, and buttery—and it had been a long time since he’d indulged himself, so it had tasted like heaven. And the expression on her face—

“What the hell,” she said with a sigh. “Show me the plans, Money Bags.”

He gave her a look, and she shrugged again. “I just tell it like I see it.”

He jogged out to the freestanding guest house where his room was—the mother-in-law apartment, as he liked to think of it—then back to the kitchen with the roll of plans the developer had shared with him. He spread them on the center island.

There were architectural drawings and colored-pencil 3D concept drawings, and she looked them over quietly, without comment. “Clean lines,” he said, pointing. “Modern. Everything’s green—LEED Silver—”

She looked up at that. “Nice.”

“We’ve clustered the buildings to preserve as much land as possible. These are all windows here, see? Carl would be looking out over the ocean every day for the rest of his life. Even Beachcrest doesn’t have views from every room, does it?”

“No,” she admitted. “But Carl doesn’twantto live in your retirement community.”

“Sometimes people don’t know what they want,” he said. “Who wouldn’t rather live someplace like this—new construction, every amenity, comfort first—instead of—”

He didn’t finish the sentence.

“You know, Beachcrest isn’t just abuilding,” she said. “It’s an experience. That’s why I’m making you spend this week with me. So you can see some of the magic firsthand. Stuff happens here. Amazing stuff. Old friends, honeymoons, reunions, wedding anniversaries. People falling in love, falling in love all over again, meeting strangers who change their lives, seeing people they haven’t seen in years. People realizing they’re not living their best lives and starting over again, people realizing they’re living their best lives and haven’t been appreciating it and vowing to do better—

“There were these women, high school friends. They’d fallen out after a drunk driving accident; each blamed the other for not stopping what happened that night. They’d been close as sisters before. They ran into each other here, each with their separate families, and at first they pretended not to know each other, but their kids wanted to play together. Kids somehow know how to teach their parents to be better people. And one morning at breakfast, one of the women said, ‘I don’t hate you, you know. I never hated you. I hated myself.’ And they both cried. They’ve rekindled their friendship. They come sometimes at Christmas, together, the two families.”

It was a good story; he had to admit it. Not that it said anything about Beachcrest, the way she thought it did. “They could have run into each other anywhere, couldn’t they have? Their kids could have ended up in school together.”

She rolled her eyes. “And you think that would have been the same? Kids in school together?”

She looked so disgusted that he figured she was probably done trying to win him over with stories, but then she said, “You know the fishermen?”

He nodded.

“They’ve been fishing together for a couple weeks every summer—this is their tenth year. They came here as ‘just friends,’ but when they’re here, they’re not ‘just’ anything. Beachcrest is the one place they can betogether. I don’t know why that is, I don’t ask. I just know that they feel safe enough here—and Beachcrest did that, you know? And they keep coming and getting stronger, growing more sure of themselves and each other. Then they leave and go back to their own lives. But this istheyear, I can feel it. They won’t go back to their corners again. You’ll see. I’d love to host their wedding here, eventually. If there is an eventually for Beachcrest.”

She’d gotten animated. The curve of her cheeks had flushed pink, her mouth a lush near-red. She pushed her hair out of her face and leveled that cobalt-blue gaze at him, like she was daring him to contradict her.

Damn it. She wasn’t plain Jane at all. She was pretty as fuck.

Wait.

No.

He’d cut this deal with her—this deal with the devil—because it was the clearest, fastest, most expeditious route to what he needed. He couldn’t afford to soften toward her, toward Beachcrest—especially not at the behest of his dick. Doing so would be like handing the devil his soul on a silver platter.

He gathered up the plans, not bothering to fold them.

“Thanks for looking,” he said, and got the hell out of the kitchen before he couldn’t stand the heat anymore.

13

As soon as the kitchen was clean, Auburn took off for the Cape House Hotel to talk to her older brother. She walked away from Beachcrest and the ocean, up the short sand-strewn road that bore Beachcrest’s mailing address, and turned right onto Tierney Bay’s main drag. Her path took her past other inns and bed-and-breakfasts, a few up-and-coming restaurants that were tailoring themselves to the increasing number of well-to-do tourists in town, and her favorite coffee shop—she waved through the half-steamed plate glass window at Em, the barista.

Scrappy.

Scrappy!

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