by Serena Bell
“That’s good for you, right?”
Auburn shook her head. “Carl just had a heart attack. He’s seventy-one years old and ready to retire. And it’s Carl. I love Carl. I don’t want to put him in the middle of this. And I really don’t want to make him pick between me and his grandson—”
“He’ll pick you.”
Auburn shook her head. “That’s not the point. He loves Trey. You should hear the way he talks about Trey when he was little. The sun rose and shone on that boy, that was for sure. I’m not going to ask him to screw his grandson over. Not even for Beachcrest. So I think I might be shit out of luck. Maybe I should look into getting a real estate license so I can sell those fancy new condos of Trey’s.”
Her sister’s face was full of sympathy. “I’m pouring you more wine.”
Auburn took a healthy swig, leaned against the white upholstered headboard, and gave in, for a moment, to despair.
“Have you tried explaining to Trey why you love it so much?” Chiara asked.
Auburn shook her head. “I tried, but I just kind of babbled about magic, and he was disgusted. I didn’t tell him any of the real stuff. About how when Mom and Dad died, and you were at college—”
It was hard to talk about. How Levi had been busy trying to save them all. Hannah had been drowning in her own grief. And Mason had been as remote as ever. Untouchable. Unreachable.
Beachcrest had been an island of calm, a place where people went to be joyful. Carl and his wife had been her oasis and working there had given her purpose. She could create a magical experience for vacationers, even if her own life was full of pain. In the kitchen, there was peace—the rhythms of chopping, beating, stirring. In the dining room, there were the distractions of conversations with people from all over the world. There were the glimmering moments—two friends who hadn’t seen each other since high school, reunited. An engagement on the beach. A sixtieth wedding anniversary.
She shook her head. “Even if I could explain it, he’s not going to get it.”
“Maybe—?”
“He’s a bean counter, Chiara. A ones and zeroes guy. Beachcrest is the opposite of that. It’s all peopley and warm and fuzzy. It’s like he and I exist on parallel planes of the universe.”
Auburn’s phone vibrated. She leaned forward and flipped it over.
“It’s Carl,” she said, feeling a tiny buzz of hope. “He says to call him. He wants to talk about the Beachcrest sale.”
“Do it,” Chiara said. She poured herself another glass of wine. “Do you want some privacy? I can go out to the lobby.”
“No. Stay.”
Auburn tapped to make the call.
“Hello?”
“Hey, boss.” Carl’s gruff tones filled her ear. “I need you to do something for me.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re like a daughter to me, Auburn. Or another granddaughter. Whatever you want to call it.”
Tears filled her eyes.
“And Beachcrest is my life’s work. I’ve had my ups and downs, I told you, but Beachcrest is the one thing I’ve done right. I can’t see it torn down, Auburn. I can’t. I want to fight Trey. I want to sell it to you, and then I’ll know you have it and will take care of it for me.”
The tears ran down her face, but she swiped them away and took a deep breath. What he was offering—she wanted so badly to reach out and grab it, but—she had to keep Carl at the forefront of her mind in all this. Beachcrest was important, sure, but it was a thing, not a person. And Carl was sick, and tired, and old. “Trey doesn’t seem like an easy person to fight, Carl. Taking him on would be complicated and exhausting for you. And as your surrogate daughter or granddaughter or whatever I am, I can’t condone your fighting him when you’re also trying to recover from a heart attack.”
He sighed. “Yeah. I knew you’d say that. Here’s the thing, Auburn. I’m going to do it whether or not you condone it and with or without your help. It’s just a question of whether I have to make all the lawyer phone calls and have all the ugly conversations myself, or whether you’re in it with me. None of this would be happening if I hadn’t fucked up—”
“Don’t,” Auburn said quickly. “Carl, please don’t. We all make mistakes.”
He exhaled heavily. “I made a mistake with the rest of your life, Auburn.”
“I will figure out the rest of my life, Carl. You don’t have to do penance. And you don’t owe me anything. You’ve given me so much already.”
“It’s not just you, boss. I can’t hand Beachcrest over to be torn down. It’s my home. And I can’t just let some butt-ugly condos get built there. It’ll be a blight on the whole beach.”
She sucked in a breath.
“See, you agree. If you won’t do it for me, Auburn, do it for Tierney Bay.”
She smiled at that. “Carl. You know I would do anything for you.”
“Then I’m telling him I refuse to sell Beachcrest to a developer. I’m selling it to you.”
She looked around her room—the popcorn walls, the distressed white furniture that had been so fashionable when Carl had last redone the rooms, the drapes that Sarah kept clean and ironed but that were starting to show wear. This was where she belonged. Beachcrest was home.
And it was where Carl belonged, too, in his retirement. If Trey prevailed, Carl would lose not only his legacy but also his home. If she fought for him, with him, the room he occupied now could be his as long as he wanted it.
She took a deep breath. “Carl—are you sure? This isn’t going to be an easy fight, and you’re supposed to be getting your strength back.”
“Sure as I’ve ever been of anything.”
“You know I don’t have the money. Yet.”
“Auburn Campbell, I’ve known you your whole life. You’ll find a way to get it.”
She wished she were as sure as he was, but his faith warmed her.
“He’s supposed to show up around two tomorrow. Why don’t you plan to come at two fifteen? That way I can have a few minutes to talk to him alone, but you can swoop in as my backup.”
She hesitated again. But he’d been more than clear. She’d given him every out. And—well, he wanted what she wanted.
“You got it, boss.”
“You’re the boss.”
She closed her eyes to hold back tears, ended the call, and turned back to Chiara.
“Ready to roll up your sleeves?” she asked her sister, who was watching her intently.
Chiara grinned. “Hell yes. Trey Xavier isn’t the only stubborn ass in Tierney Bay.”
6
“Seriously? You would do this to me? Your own grandson?” Trey had to work hard to hold his voice to a hospital room-appropriate volume.
Carl sat up straighter in the bed. “I’m not doing anything to you. You and I are just two co-owners who disagree about next steps.”
“Bullshit. You’re keeping me from doing the smart thing with a piece of property that you forfeited your right to care about. When you threw good money after bad, Beachcrest became my responsibility.”
Carl took a deep breath. “I know when you had to come bail me out, you were very disappointed in me—”
Trey didn’t have time to listen to his grandfather’s pop psych crap. “No, I was just irritated to have to take time off work to solve your problems.”
His grandfather flinched. Trey knew he was a dick to fight with a seventy-one-year-old man consigned to a hospital bed. But this conversation had been a long time coming, and he couldn’t let Carl be snowed by a pretty girl who believed in magic.
“I know you wanted me to be different from your dad.”
Yeah, he had. Carl had taught Trey everything he knew about business. And he’d flat out told Trey it was because he needed a role model who was better than his own father. Someone who didn’t act on impulse and throw away everything decent he got his hands on. But in the end, Carl had turned out to be cut from the same cloth as his son-in-law.
“Did
she put you up to this?”
He could see Auburn in his head, fierce, stubborn, arms crossed, and he felt a twinge of something that wasn’t quite anger. He wished he could un-see her the way he first had—the woman who’d knelt to help a waitress, the standout in a bar full of pretty girls, a spitfire he’d wanted to spar with as much as he’d wanted to take her home. That image kept getting in the way of what he should be feeling, which was straight-up, pure fury at the way she was thwarting his plans and putting his future at risk. Undoing everything he’d worked for.
His grandfather shook his head. “No. It’s what I want. Tierney Bay doesn’t need luxury condos. It needs a personal touch, a place that feels like home to people.”
What if he just laid it out? Explained why he needed the sale? Explained the situation he’d gotten himself into—
Explained that he was really no better than his father or his grandfather?
But he was better. He had an escape plan. There was a way out, a way forward, and all he needed to do was remove one curvy obstacle from his otherwise straight path.
Trey shook his head. “So you’re serious about this. Keeping me from making this deal.”
“If you want to put it that way,” Carl said. “I prefer to think of it as encouraging you to make the right deal.”
He’d forgotten his grandfather had a stubborn streak, too. And at that moment Carl was cool as a cucumber, and Trey was not—which knocked him off his game. He took a deep breath. “You know this means I have to get a lawyer involved. And if I do, it’s going to be expensive, and I’ll probably win in the end.”
He was bluffing the fuck out of the situation. Because he didn’t have time for lawyers. But they didn’t know that. And they didn’t know that time was on their side, that even though he would force the sale eventually, he couldn’t afford eventually.
Carl nodded.
“I don’t fucking understand.”
“No. That doesn’t surprise me.”
Suddenly he’d had enough. He turned and strode out of the room, and nearly collided with someone. Someone soft and curvy. He grabbed her to steady her, but failed to prevent the collision of her breasts with his chest. Her arms were bare, soft and satiny in exactly the way he’d imagined.
Enemies should not smell this good or feel this soft.
So. Goddamn. Inconvenient.
“You,” he said darkly. “Are you having fun cock-blocking me?”
“I could ask you if you’re having fun being a cock,” she snapped. “But if you must know, no. This isn’t my idea of a good time.”
“I bet you haven’t had a good time in your life, sweetheart,” he shot back. “And things are going to get a whole lot less fun if you keep fighting me. The fact remains, you have no money. And you have no idea who you’re dealing with. At the end of the day, you’re going to make all our lives miserable, and you’re still going to lose Beachcrest.”
“I’ll get the money.”
“I’m calling my lawyer,” he said. “I don’t know how much experience you have with lawyers, but they change everything. Right now, we’re three people who can talk this out like civilized adults. Once there are lawyers involved, things are going to move fast. You’re not ready for just how fast. And Carl owns far less than half of Beachcrest.”
He saw the flicker of anxiety behind her eyes, but she pulled herself up to her full height and stared him down, that flicker vanishing into cobalt blue conviction. He felt a flare of heat in his chest. It might have been anger—or something else.
“I wouldn’t fight you if it was just me,” she said. “Beachcrest means more to the people of this community and the people who come to stay here than you give it credit for. This is what Carl wants. And Carl has been there for me my whole life. After my parents died. When I came home again after—”
She stopped. Her eyes found his. “I won’t give up until Carl tells me he surrenders. Which he won’t.”
She stepped neatly around him and continued down the hall to his grandfather’s room. And he found himself standing alone in the hospital hallway, the feel of her arms still soft and hot against his empty palms.
7
“He’s right,” Auburn told Chiara later that evening. They were eating Tierney Bay diner takeout in the Beachcrest dining room. In the breakfast area next door, the romance authors were having some kind of plotting session. Periodically, a few words would burst into audibility. Blow job. Hot mess. HEA. They were obviously having a lot more fun than Auburn and Chiara were.
“If I don’t have the money, I’m just making his life miserable for no reason. Not that he doesn’t deserve it.”
Running into him had felt like colliding with a solid wall of muscle. He hadn’t been wearing Patrick’s cologne this time. Something else, something spicy and musky that had lowered her IQ by a hundred points. She was so irritated with her monkey self, she could shake it. She was a grown woman with a big brain and plenty of self-control—
Except when he gave her that look. The one she couldn’t read. She’d swear he wanted to throttle her, but the look said he wanted to push her against the wall and kiss her until both of them were breathless.
What was she supposed to do with that?
Nothing. She was supposed to do nothing. She was supposed to plant her feet and stand her ground, and ignore her howling, hooting bonobo self.
“You’re going to get the money,” Chiara said. “Do you know what price he’d accept from you?”
“Carl and I are getting a going-concern appraisal on it, so I’ll know soon. But it’s going to be—” She took a breath, because she knew the number would sit with Chiara about as well as it had with her. “Probably three to five million. A down payment of at least several hundred thousand, if not more.”
Chiara drew her own sharp breath, and the sisters sat for a moment with the truth of it.
“So what are your options?”
“Convincing a lender to give me financing with little or no down payment.”
“Yeah,” Chiara said. She didn’t sound any more optimistic about that than Auburn felt.
Auburn speared another tender bite of steak. Lily—the co-owner of the diner—could cook. “Or. Getting a loan for the down payment. I could ask Levi.”
Chiara nodded. “You should definitely talk to him.”
“There’s Patrick.”
Chiara winced. “Really?”
“No. I just had to put it out there. But no.”
Chiara had been the first person brave enough to tell Auburn she didn’t like or trust Patrick. In the end, Auburn had almost lost Chiara over it, but her sister had been too loving and stubborn to let Auburn slip away.
God, she loved her.
“When I walked away, he said, ‘If you ever need anything money can buy, you know where to find me.’”
“Who the fuck makes those his parting words? I hope you flipped him the bird as you walked out of his life forever and said, ‘Freedom doesn’t cost a thing, motherfucker!’ Even Beachcrest isn’t worth stooping to that level.”
“At the time, I said, ‘I will NEVER ask for your money.’ And that goes double now, especially since he’s still leaving me messages saying he wants to talk.”
They both winced at that, and Auburn looked away. Given what he’d done to her, there was no chance she’d let Patrick back into her life, which meant she couldn’t afford to take his money. Even if he was made of it.
“You could use one of the cloud-sourcing sites, like Bootstrap.”
“Would Bootstrap work for something like this? This is a shit-ton of money we’re talking about, and what kind of stake could I really give people in it?”
“Free one-night stays,” Chiara said. “Plus, that would be a terrific loss-leader, because who wants one night? People would redeem their free stays and then spend a few nights.”
Auburn tilted her head. “It seems like a long shot.”
“It’s worth a try. I can sit down with you and help you figure
out how to set it up.”
“That would be amazing. And in the meantime, I’ll talk to Levi and the banks, I guess.”
Chiara leaned over and gave her sister a hug. “If I can help, I want to.”
“You’re helping by listening.” There was no way Auburn would take a penny of her sister’s hard-earned money.
Auburn sucked down a slug of root beer. Another thing Tierney Bay Diner did right—served an amazing locally brewed root beer.
“Aub?”
“Mmm-hmm?”
“Why did you take Trey’s business card home?”
Startled, Auburn caught her sister’s knowing gaze and felt herself blushing to the hairline.
“I didn’t think you saw that.” She’d grabbed it behind Chiara’s back as they’d walked out of the bar. Because. Because it was beautiful and so was he, and even if she had no intention of doing anything about it, she couldn’t quite bear to leave behind the evidence that he wanted her. “Anyway, it’s moot. No way I could possibly have sex with him now.”
“Well, it might help convince him to sell you Beachcrest,” Chiara said playfully.
“I would never sleep with someone to get something from them. Never.” Auburn’s voice cut right across her sister’s teasing, steely.
And more than a little defensive.
Her stomach hurt, suddenly.
“Never again, anyway,” she said quietly, finding her sister’s gaze.
Chiara raised her eyebrows and put a hand on her sister’s knee. “It wasn’t like that. You know that, right? You weren’t Patrick’s…mistress.”
Auburn set her root beer down on the coffee table. She took a deep breath. Mistress was nicer than the word that had flitted through her own head during Chiara’s long pause.
“Maybe so—but it was sure how it felt, in the end. I promised myself that I’d never let anyone own my life like that again. And since my life is Beachcrest at the moment, that means I can’t let anyone take it from me.”
She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders.
“I’m here to win.”
