Page 11 of Return to Lovett Cove
Despite the warm wind wafting through the beachgrass, River’s empty hand chilled. “My pleasure.”
They sat on the sand, legs pulled to their chests. Jasmine closed her eyes. River watched her features relax and the tension roll off her shoulders. He was glad he brought her out here. She’d been uptight and stressed from the moment she crossed the threshold at the inn. Whatever that work promotion was, he hoped she didn’t get it. Not because he wanted her to fail, but because if she succeeded, she would never smile like she just did.
“Do you ever miss the city?” she asked.
“Not really.”
“Never regretted your choice.”
Oh, he had regrets. “Not the move, no. But how things ended with my wife… I felt like a failure. That I didn’t deserve my career because I had sacrificed everything for it. Lily helped me see that carrying the guilt wouldn’t help if I wanted to start over.”
When Jasmine opened her eyes, tears lined their rims. “I wish I’d known this side of my mother,” she whispered.
“What side?”
“The one where she actually sat quietly on a dune and listened to the waves. As a single mother, she was always going. Never quitting. Money was tight, but she got us through it. School trips, expensive car repairs…I don’t know anyone who’s worked harder to support her family and have the career she wanted.”
“She was an admirable woman.”
“She was.”
River didn’t know this superwoman, who worked all the time and influenced her daughters to do the same. Jasmine’s frown spoke to the weight of expectations she carried from her mother. “I didn’t know that Lily,” he commented quietly. “I suspect she would’ve been miserable.”
“She was very successful. My promotion would’ve pleased her,” Jasmine sniffed defensively, tears gone.
“I don’t doubt it. She sounds like she loved you a lot. I only meant that the Lily I knew preferred to sit on the dunes and?—”
“What? Count the grains of sand?”
River chuckled. “Yeah. Lily used to say climbing the corporate ladder was a waste of time.”
“Earning enough money to feed us was a waste of time?” Jasmine’s voice turned shrill.
The breeze turned cool, and the normal scent of warm sand held a heavy odor of salt. “No. That wasn’t what she meant at all.”
“Well, you didn’t know my mother. Sheobviouslydidn’t have that kind of time.”
Jasmine struggled to her feet, ignoring his offer to help. She dusted off her pants, spraying him with sand. Jasmine almost tumbled down the dune. River lengthened his strides to match the quick stomps she made on their way back to his truck. He’d thought they had turned a page since meeting, but they were stuck in the sand.
And what River left unsaid, for Jasmine’s sake, was how Lily had feared not living long enough to open her inn.
CHAPTERSEVEN
“Mag, you’re not listening to me.” Jasmine pinched the bridge of her nose as she cut off her sister Magnolia’s excitement about the prospect of their mother opening an inn.
“Jas, I hear you. Floorboards need replacing, the corbels are rotted, you said the foundation feels off in the sunroom... The inn needs a lot of work, which is right up my alley!” she ended cheerfully.
Magnolia wasn’t wrong. As an interior designer, she could capture their mother’s vision for a charming cottage inn on the outskirts of a mountainous cove in a region that saw more rainy days than the often-humid busy streets of Philly. Jasmine recalled seeing a few sketches of her ideas among her mother’s papers. If she told Mag that, there would be no turning back. They would be in the inn business for sure.
Jasmine scratched at the faded-red, frayed edges of the understaffed armchair in the front room. Legs sprawled in front of her, she tapped her feet on the worn border rug. She could see her younger sister sweeping around the room, reassuring Jasmine that reupholstering chairs could be done for next to nothing, and how a botanical-pattern rug in light colors would freshen up the room.
“Renovating isn’t a quick process,” Jasmine continued. She ignored the familiar dull ache in her stomach and took a deep breath to calm her nerves. “And this house isold. Who knows what’s in the walls?”
“If it’s been hanging around this long, it probably has excellent bones. Send me some pics.”
Jasmine leaned away from the room’s opening and snapped a picture with her phone. She sent it to Magnolia before moving into the sitting room on the opposite side of the hall and then the staircase, the dining room, and the kitchen. Jasmine made sure she focused on the holes in the walls, the loose spindle on the banister, and anything else that screamed money.
“Mom left this dump to me,” Jasmine complained. “Renovating means I would have to quit my job.”
