by Serena Bell
Auburn raised an eyebrow.
“Long story,” Brynn said. She looked at her watch, and alarm flitted across her features. “I gotta run and get Jacob to Tai Kwan Do. Text me later if my granddad needs anything else, okay?”
“Absolutely,” Auburn said. “And you text me if there’s anything I can do for Carl or you or the kids. Or your brother,” she added.
“More like, is there anything you can do about my brother,” Brynn said, rolling her eyes as she left.
Auburn stepped into Carl’s room. He did look better. He was sitting up, dispensing peanut M&Ms into his palm, and watching soundless television. “Hey, boss,” she said.
He smiled at her. “You’re the boss.”
It was an old joke between them. Carl said she ran Beachcrest better than anyone else, including him.
“Brought you more of those,” she said, and set a new bag on the nightstand. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I need to get out of here before I go postal.”
“Brought you these, too,” she said, and set two copies of Games magazine on his lap.
“Bless you.”
“Figured you were probably dying of boredom.”
He nodded. “And wondering how you were doing, holding down the fort.”
“Don’t you worry about me,” Auburn said. “I’ve got it covered.”
“I know you do,” Carl said. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. I don’t know what I did without you.”
She winced.
“That wasn’t supposed to make you feel guilty.”
“I just wish I hadn’t stayed away so long.”
“Well. You’re here now. Feels so much better to have you back. Beachcrest wasn’t the same without you. Sometimes I think you are Beachcrest.”
Auburn’s eyes filled with tears. She knew Carl loved her—but he wasn’t the demonstrative type. To hear him say that out loud—it meant a lot to her. It was probably the closest he would ever come to saying I love you.
“I think you’re Beachcrest, Carl. And the place needs you back, so hurry up.”
He sighed. Heavily. “My grandkids think it’s time for me to retire.”
Her stomach tightened. She’d worried this might happen, but she’d tried to think only of Carl’s recovery. Beachcrest’s future—and hers—needed to be the last of her worries until Carl was healed up. But now he’d brought it up …
“Do you feel like it is?”
His eyes found hers, uneasy but frank. “To be honest? I do. I was so tired, even before. And the idea of coming back from this and picking up where I left off?” He shook his head. “It was a big relief when I realized they were—giving me permission, I guess. That I could retire.”
The tears were falling freely now. “Oh, Carl.”
His eyes shone, too. “It’s hard to say that to you.”
“I’m glad you did.” She reached out and clasped his big, gnarled hand. They sat for a moment in silence, and then she said, “What will happen to Beachcrest?”
For the first time, he looked away from her, his gaze skittering around.
“Carl?” she asked quietly.
His eyes, a watery gray, came back to rest on her, and she knew she wasn’t going to like what he said next, even before he spoke. “My grandson is here.”
She raised an eyebrow. “So Brynn said.”
“He’s come to sell Beachcrest.”
Very carefully, she said, “You want to sell?”
Carl drew a deep breath. “I’ve always thought—known—that when it was time, I would sell to you. But—” He closed his eyes, and Auburn’s stomach plunged. “Shit,” Carl said. “Shit, shit, shit.”
Don’t freak out, she told herself. She opened her eyes to find that there were tears in his, and she started to panic in spite of herself.
“I’m so sorry, Auburn. I should have told you. I tried to tell you.”
“Tell me what?” she whispered.
“Not long after Sheila died, I got into financial trouble. Bad real estate investments. I couldn’t get back on my feet again. While you were in New York—the shit really hit the fan. I was going to lose everything, even Beachcrest.”
She’d been with Patrick in New York, half living, when Carl’s wife had died. Auburn had come home for the funeral, of course, but then Patrick had laid a trip on her about how much he needed her, and she’d boomeranged back to the city after just a few days. Not long enough to make sure Carl was really doing okay.
Apparently, he hadn’t been.
Yet another way Patrick had cost her what mattered.
As if he could see the struggle going on inside her, he shook his head. “It wouldn’t have changed anything if you’d been here. No one knew. Brynn only caught on because I needed her signature on an account that had once held her college money—there were a few hundred dollars left in it. That’s how bad it was. Anyway, Brynn got her brother—my grandson—involved, and he bailed me out. Took over the mortgage, though he wasn’t pleased about it, and he didn’t trust me not to fuck it up again. He insisted his name be on the title. So we’re—we’re co-owners. Officially.”
It took a minute for his words to penetrate. Beachcrest didn’t belong to Carl. Which meant it wasn’t his to give or sell or partially finance or whatever arrangement he’d had in mind all the times he’d said it would be hers one day.
“I meant to tell you right way. I should have told you right away.” He was clearly distraught, a few fine beads of sweat breaking out on his forehead.
Quickly she said, “Carl, don’t get yourself upset, okay? None of this is worth your health. You’re still recovering.”
“I am upset, Auburn. I’m upset with myself for not telling you right away, for letting you continue to think that Beachcrest could be yours one day—”
She squeezed his hand between both of hers. “Please don’t stress yourself out over this. We can solve this.”
Her mind was racing, trying to figure out the implications. Carl’s grandson—maybe he would respect his granddad’s wishes. Maybe he would hire her to run it. Maybe he would give her time to figure out how to buy it. Maybe this wasn’t as bad as it seemed.
But Carl was shaking his head, even though she hadn’t said any of it out loud. “He’s selling it to a developer. I don’t know what the rush is, but he says the purchase and sale has to be inked by right after the 4th of July.”
“Developer.” Auburn’s voice sounded strangely flat, even to her. Raze Beachcrest? The thought made her ache all over. The inn where she’d worked all through high school and college—where she’d found terra firma when everything else had slid out from under her feet. The place she’d imagined she’d one day own and build a future on. And he, this absentee grandson, wanted to build some impersonal hotel or ugly condos? It was bad enough that she might lose Beachcrest, but that it would go away for good, forever? She couldn’t—
She couldn’t breathe.
“Auburn,” Carl said. His eyes met hers, matching pain. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“Maybe you could—maybe you could convince your grandson to see it your way?”
“You don’t understand, Auburn. He’s not that kind of guy.” Carl closed his eyes. “He was the sweetest little boy. Biggest heart. Warmest smile.” Grief crossed his face. “He loved everyone. And he loved Beachcrest. But when—when his mother died … he got tough. Hard. And now he’s—it’s like he’s made of money. I blame myself.”
She shook her head, but he brushed off her reassurance. “No. If I could have helped out with things, made life easier for his parents, then maybe he wouldn’t be so bitter.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them.
“I’m the one who set him on the business path, too. He used to say he wanted to be a businessman like me when he grew up, so I did his first lemonade stand with him, and then—well, he caught the bug. But I had no idea what he’d turn into. Now he’s this Silicon Valley tycoon: all work, no play. When his
wife left him, I’m not sure if he even noticed. It’s all about more, bigger, power, control. I don’t think he cares what the business is, just how much he can sell it for. He’s going to sell this one for more than half a billion next month.”
“That’s what this is about for him? Getting even richer?”
Auburn could hear the distress ricocheting in her own words, but something had distracted Carl, drawing his attention toward the door of the room.
“Well, well, well,” said a familiar voice, low and cultured. “We meet again.”
4
Seriously? This was the universe’s idea of a joke, right? The curly-haired woman sitting at his granddad’s bedside, glaring at him like he was something soggy a rat terrier had dropped on her shoes, somehow knew his granddad.
“This is your grandson?” She looked back and forth between him and his grandfather, as if desperate to reconcile the two things. Carl and him. Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.
He loved his grandfather, but the two of them couldn’t share more than a handful of genes. Unless Carl’s knack for losing money and his for accumulating it were two sides of the same coin.
“This is my grandson,” Carl affirmed. “Trey Xavier. Trey, this is Auburn Campbell—”
“We’ve met,” Auburn said.
Although technically they hadn’t met, exactly, because she’d never told him her name. If she had, he would have run the other direction because while he didn’t know Auburn personally, he knew all about her. She was his grandfather’s “adopted daughter,” his protege, and the woman—his grandfather had once been fond of saying—who would keep Beachcrest alive after his decrepit bones rotted to dust. As if Beachcrest were an important legacy and not just an overgrown shabby beach shack and two awkward, freestanding cottages trying on “inn” for size.
Thank God she’d turned him down last night. She would have caused him to break the most important rule in his book: never mix business and pleasure.
“You’ve met?” Carl’s head was on a swivel.
He was looking a little less elderly today. When Trey had first seen his grandfather shrunken under hospital sheets, it had clawed at some old emotion he’d prefer not to revisit.
“We ran into each other at Bob’s last night and Trey offered to buy me a drink.” Auburn glared.
She’d looked at him the same way in the bar last night—except last night there’d been something else mixed in. A different kind of challenge in her eyes. Like she wasn’t sure if she wanted to fight or fuck.
It had made him want to do both.
“So you know Auburn is Beachcrest’s manager.”
“I’m starting to get the picture.”
“Carl said you’re going to sell Beachcrest to some other egotistical, money-hungry ‘businessman’ who plans to build bland ticky-tacky boxes and sell them to equally unimaginative people.” She’d gotten up from her seat and now stood in front of him, arms crossed.
Whoa, okay, so they were going there, and fast. He might quibble with her descriptors, but at least he didn’t have to be the bearer of bad news.
“That’s right,” he said.
He should tell her the whole plan. She obviously genuinely cared for his granddad. If she knew why he needed to sell the inn and what was in it for Carl, maybe she’d see things differently. He wished it hadn’t taken his grandfather’s illness to give him a solution to his own business problems, but he was seriously fucking grateful that the universe had stepped in with an answer when it had. And the fact that he could orchestrate things to leave his grandfather in the best possible situation—that was better than a billion-dollar valuation any day.
“I want to purchase it.”
“You want to purchase it,” he repeated. More to buy himself time than because he hadn’t understood. But it was incomprehensible to him. He’d stopped by to see it yesterday, as if to reassure himself it was really there, his salvation. The roof had been replaced sometime in the last ten years and the building exteriors looked sound. But the yard was scruffy—grass tufts in sandy soil—and the gardens were overgrown. Probably the word “gardens” was too generous. The rampaging flowers—every shape, color, and height—were an offense to Trey’s sense of order; the urge to rummage in the shed for pruning shears and clippers had been almost too fierce to resist. And when he’d gone inside—his fingers had itched with the urge to tear out every last scrap of finish work and put the beach “shabby chic” furnishings out on the curbside for pickup.
“Yes. I want to buy it from you.”
Her arms were crossed, pushing her tits up. He’d fantasized about palming those curves last night while he helped himself to the crush of his fist, and he’d come in fewer than ten strokes.
That was when he’d still been deluding himself that he’d ever lay hands on those breasts. They were a long way from that right now, and if she thought she was going to buy Beachcrest, they were about to be a lot further away still.
“I promised to sell her Beachcrest when I retired. That was the plan, before your grandmother died,” Carl said.
Trey wasn’t surprised. Of course he fucking had. That was Carl for you, impulsive and impractical. He turned on his grandfather. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“It was before you bought in—”
“Then you should have told me that you’d made a promise you couldn’t keep. And you should have told her the truth, right away when I bailed you out and we added me to the title. That you didn’t have the right to make that decision anymore.” He turned to Auburn. “I’m not the bad guy here, I’m just making the best business decision.”
“You’re making the best business decision for you,” Auburn said. “You’re not making the best business decision for Beachcrest, because it will cease to be a business if you have your way. And maybe he should have told me, but he didn’t.” She squared her shoulders. “Now I know. And I can’t just let you sell it to someone who wants to tear it down.”
She was gutsy, he’d give her that. She didn’t flinch or back down. Her eye contact didn’t even waver. He’d have to shut this down right away. He needed this sale, and he needed it to be quick and easy.
“What are you going to do to stop me, exactly?”
For the first time, he saw uncertainty in her gaze. She bit her lip, a pearl of white digging into the soft red flesh. “I told you. I’m going to buy it.”
Oh, sweetheart, you have no idea who you’re dealing with.
“And why would I sell it to you?”
She cast a look Carl’s way.
“Because I love Beachcrest. I’ve poured myself into it.”
“She has,” Carl jumped in. “No one works harder than Auburn for Beachcrest. Not even me. No one knows Beachcrest better. No one understands its magic as well.”
“Magic,” he said, scornfully.
Auburn, who had stood straighter during Carl’s speech, turned hard eyes on him now. “Yes, magic,” she said. “It’s an amazing place. It brings people together. It changes lives.”
He rolled his eyes at that. If Beachcrest was magic, he was fucking Dumbledore.
She’d opened her mouth to say more, but he cut her off. “Do you have the money to buy it?”
“Not yet—but I can get it,” she said eagerly.
He felt the weight of some unexpected emotion, and then he realized: It was disappointment in her. She was just a goofy idealist, and he’d thought she was going to put up a real fight. As much as he didn’t want complications—as much as he couldn’t afford any delays, he’d been excited by the idea of sparring with her.
How long had it been since he’d been excited about anything?
Since long before Karina had walked away.
Longer than that.
“Don’t bother.”
All the eagerness on her face fell away, and for a split second he wanted to reach out, like he could somehow stop it before it faded. Then her glare was back. That was better. He liked her best that way—all her de
fenses up against him. No chance for anything like a detente. This wasn’t a game, anyway. He had a deal to make, and he wanted to get it done, not joust with a girl who believed in magic. He’d packed up his wands and spell book by the time he’d made his first sale, which was at the age of five, thank-you-very-much.
“You’re a cold-hearted bastard,” she said.
He didn’t let himself look at his grandfather. He didn’t let himself question why he’d chosen not to explain himself.
“Yes,” he said. “I am. But I believe I gave you my business card? Feel free to call me when you’ve managed to get your hands on a down payment for a multi-million dollar sale. Until then, I have other matters I need to attend to.”
And ignoring her expression of disbelief, he turned on his heel and walked out of the room.
5
“I’m going to lose Beachcrest.”
Chiara rubbed Auburn’s back in small, comforting circles. “You’re not going to lose it.”
Auburn’s face was buried in her hands. After her showdown with Trey Xavier in Carl’s hospital room that afternoon, she and Chiara were sitting on Auburn’s bed, doing justice to a bottle of Oregon Pinot.
“You don’t understand. This guy isn’t going to budge. He doesn’t have a budging bone in his body.”
“I got that feeling, looking at him,” Chiara said dryly.
“Don’t joke. I shouldn’t have pissed him off in the bar.”
“What should you have done? Slept with him so he’d give you Beachcrest? Just think how much more of a mess this would be now if you’d done that.”
“God, yes, that would be a goat fuck. But—did I have to make him hate me?”
“From what you’ve said, he would have been a dick about this anyway.”
“Probably.” Auburn sighed.
“Did you talk to the lawyer?”
“Yeah. Carl can’t sell Beachcrest without Trey’s buy-in, which sucks. The good news is that Trey also can’t do anything without Carl’s buy-in. So they have to meet in the middle.”
