Page 23 of Love At The Shore
“Then I guess we’d better hurry up and figure out what we want to do today. We could go to the sand dunes or the butterfly park?” Jenna glanced back and forth between Nick and Ally. Neither appeared thrilled at her suggestions.
Nick yawned. “Can’t we just go to the beach?”
A day at the beach made the most sense, seeing as it was practically right outside their door. But Jenna was really hoping to steer Nick’s thoughts away from his surfing fantasy before it took root.
“Yeah, I guess we could go to the beach,” she said. But she still wasn’t giving up on the butterfly park. Butterflies, after all, were completely innocuous. “What do you want to do, Ally?”
Her little girl grinned. “I want to go to the beach.”
Jenna knew when she was outnumbered. “All right, the beach it is. Let’s do it.”
An hour later, she was halfway buried in sand—not a butterfly in sight. It wasn’t so bad, really. The ocean shimmered in the morning light, sunshine glinting off the water like scattered gemstones. She closed her eyes and tilted her face toward the warm sun, letting the sound of rushing waves ease the tension in her neck and shoulders. The air smelled like salt and sea—the sweet perfume of her childhood summers.
Jenna couldn’t believe she’d been at the beach for a week already and this was the first time she’d had a chance to wiggle her toes in the sand. If Ally had her way, she wouldn’t be able to wiggle them much longer, though. She’d already completely buried Jenna from her waist to her ankles, and she’d vowed not to stop until she’d transformed her mother into a sandy mermaid.
“Wow, you’re doing a really thorough job,” Jenna said.
Ally patted the sand around her torso more firmly in place as she surveyed her handiwork. Her brow furrowed. “I can still see your toes.”
“Maybe we should let them breathe a little bit.”
“Nope. I need another bucket.” Ally plunged her plastic shovel into the sand.
Jenna laughed, but then she spotted Lucas farther down the beach and grew pensive. “Is that our neighbor out there?”
Of course it was. He had all the standard Lucas accessories—surfboard, wetsuit and lazy grin, complete with charming dimples. Watching him stand at the water’s edge with foam swirling around his ankles made her heart beat hard for some strange reason.
Ally squinted at him in the distance and then dumped a fresh load of sand onto Jenna’s feet. “He’s not a criminal, Mom. Why don’t you like him?”
“What?” Jenna blinked and tore her gaze away from Lucas. “I didn’t say I didn’t like him.”
Ally scooped more sand into her bucket. “He has to be nice. His dog is nice.”
Ah, if only such logic could be trusted. “I think owners look like their dogs, sweetie. I’m not sure they act like them.”
Maybe that was a good thing. She wasn’t sure she wanted her human neighbor pawing through her manuscript.
On second thought, she definitely didn’t want that.
But she also didn’t want Ally to think she disliked Lucas because she didn’t. She just disliked his self-purported bachelor lifestyle. Every time she started to cave and think he might be a great guy, she remembered what he’d said about keeping her kids contained.
I’ll keep my furry kid on this side if you keep your kids on that side.
What kind of person had a soft spot for baby turtles but didn’t like kids?
Then again, who built a fence to keep a cute dog off their side of the patio?
There was more to it than that.
She needed a barrier around her heart even more than she needed one around her living space. Had the divorce really been four long years ago? Sometimes she felt as tender and wounded as if it had happened yesterday. She felt like she was walking around with her broken heart on display for the entire world to see, and she just needed to hide for a while. To rest. Trying to keep everything in her life in perfect working order was exhausting, and somehow when Lucas was around, Jenna felt more unsettled than ever.
She didn’t have a thing to feel guilty about but her throat grew thick all the same.
She swallowed hard and concentrated all her attention on the shells Ally was pressing into the sand around her legs.
“Where’s my mermaid tail?”
Lucas shielded his face from the sun with his hand and watched the waves pound the sand. He couldn’t have asked for better surfing conditions. The water was glassy with a fine spray coming off the tops of the waves, breaking in a nice, steady line parallel to the shore.
