Page 19 of A Breeze Over Rosewood Beach
It was a chandelier shaped like an old wagon wheel with fake candles inserted around its edges. The candles looked strikingly genuine, and it looked like the kind of chandelier that mighthave been found in a saloon in the wild west or an inn along the coast in the early seventeen hundreds.
“Yay!” Hazel squealed. “Perfect! I love it.”
“Let’s order it right now,” Jacob said, clicking on the chandelier and adding it to their cart. “It says it’ll be here in a couple of days.”
“Yes.” Hazel rested her head on his shoulder. “Sounds wonderful.”
“I’m home!” A cheerful shout sounded outside the house, and a moment later they heard the sound of footsteps tapping up to the front door. Samantha burst inside, her cheeks rosy from the cold. “Hi, guys! We made the absolute coolest snowman! He’s got a pink scarf and this old costume top hat that Stacey’s sister gave us. You should see him! We gave him a baseball bat to hold because we thought that would be funny.”
“Sounds awesome.” Hazel stood up and gave Samantha a bear hug. “We’ll have to drive by Willow’s house on our way to school tomorrow so we can see it.”
“You want come cocoa?” Jacob offered. “We made a big pot of it and the rest is still on the stove. You might want to reheat a mug full in the microwave though.”
“Oh, yeah thanks.” Samantha scampered over to the laptop. “What were you two giggling over?”
“We weren’t giggling!” Jacob pretended to be offended.
Samantha just grinned at him and peered more closely at the laptop screen. “Ooh, chandeliers? Wait, I thought you already bought one.”
“We did,” Hazel said with a sigh, sitting back on the couch and patting the spot next to her so Samantha would sit there. “But then we found out that it got backordered, so who knows how long it would have taken to get here. We just picked out a new one—that one right there, with the wagon wheel and the candles?”
“Oh stop.” Samantha leaned so close to the screen that her nose almost touched it. “I love it.”
“Good!” Jacob gave Samantha a high-five. “We just ordered it. We’re going to have the coolest dining room ever.”
“I’ll say.” Samantha took the laptop from her mother as breezily as if she owned it. “But maybe we could have picked out an even better chandelier.” She started scrolling through the website’s options gleefully. “What about this one? All these big pink crystals? It’s giving Barbie. Yes queen!”
Hazel and Jacob exchanged a look over Samantha’s head and laughed. They were still confused by many of the things Samantha said, but they never ceased to be amused by her animated exclamations.
“And look at this!” Samantha crowed with laughter as she showed them a light fixture clearly meant for a kid’s room. It was shaped like a unicorn, with a pink mane and tail and a rainbow horn. “Can I have this for my room? Just kidding—I’ll be too old for it in about four seconds. Yup, too old for it. Ooh, what about this?”
“Um—” Jacob leaned forward, not sure what to make of the circular golden orb that he was seeing. It appeared to be swirls of golden flowers creating a sphere around a lightbulb.
“It’s so much, but it’s so pretty.” Hazel laughed. “I’d buy that if I was creating some kind of girly paradise room. You know, with white leather couches and soft pink pillows.”
“Barbie,” Samantha said, as if that summed everything up perfectly.
“I was thinking more modern princess,” Hazel said.
“So, Barbie.” Samantha grinned.
Jacob and Hazel chuckled. The three of them spent a few more minutes looking at the different light fixtures and laughing over the outlandish ones while they sipped their hot cocoa.
Jacob found himself watching Hazel and Samantha, and the way they chatted together like best friends. He felt a surge of love for the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with and her funny, affectionate daughter who he already felt like a father to.
I’m incredibly lucky,he thought, his heart filling with happiness.I’ve got the two best girls in the world to come home to. We’re going to have such a wonderful life together.
CHAPTER TEN
Oscar tugged open the front door of Ocean Breeze Café with an unnecessary amount of gusto. He’d been trying to convince himself for the past hour not to go to the café, but in the end, his boredom and a restless feeling that he couldn’t quite explain had won over.
The café was bustling with customers as usual, and he thought it smelled particularly wonderful that morning. There was a scent of fried onions in the air which mingled deliciously with the nutty aroma of the coffee.
He wasn’t there for food that time, however, just a cup of coffee. He’d told himself firmly that he wasn’t going to be going back to the charming little café as often, and he’d stocked up on more pizzas and cans of soup and microwavable frozen dinners. He’d been determined to stay inside and eat more meals in his little cottage, but he’d soon become more bored than ever, shut up in the little building surrounded by snowbanks on one side and the ocean on the other.
It was true that he’d run out of coffee in the little cottage, but he was there at the café for more than caffeine. He was there for something interesting, to help with the boredom that was plaguing him. He wanted to have someone to talk to, anddeep down, he knew that he wanted to talk to Sally. She was interesting, and she was always kind to him even when he was being grumpy.
“Good morning, Oscar!”
