by Ciara Knight
Trevor halted his work and sighed. “You still think this is a phase, don’t you?”
He shrugged. “I can hope.”
And he knew Dustin did wish that Trevor would come to his senses and return to Seattle, but there was no way he’d give up on his lifelong dream of living on the ocean and running boats for a living. Okay, he was on the waterway to the ocean, but close enough. Nothing would agitate him enough to give up on his new charter company.
After a few hours of removing the engine and working on disassembling parts, carefully labeling and laying out the pieces on blankets, Dustin convinced Trevor to take a break for lunch. Despite the sun shield they worked under, the heat left them exhausted and in need of a break. Lunch didn’t take long, but Trevor found himself dozing in the chair, and before he realized it, an hour had passed.
He shot up from his chair, determined to figure out the issue and put the engine back together by the end of the day.
Dustin peeled himself off the couch and hobbled toward the door. “You owe me a night out when we’re done.” He opened the glass sliding door and halted, standing stone still, looking out toward the ocean, which obviously frightened him.
Trevor laughed. “You know a shark can’t sprout legs and walk up on land, right?”
“I don’t think sharks are the problem.” Dustin stepped aside. “Do you have large rats that steal engine parts?”
Trevor shot through the glass sliding door, catching his knuckles on the edge, sending a sharp pain deep into his hand. Outside, he spotted a long, thin, furry creature that looked like a weasel. It stood on its hind legs, held up a bolt from his engine, and if Trevor didn’t know better, he’d swear the creature smiled at him and then took off with the piece held in his teeth. “Get him.”
They both tore through the sandy grass sprouts and over to the side yard. The weasel raced toward a pipe. Trevor dove to catch it, hoping it didn’t have rabies, but all he grasped was air between his hands and sand between his teeth before the creature disappeared into the pipe. He spit the grains from his mouth and scurried to his feet, kicking sand up at a protesting Dustin.
He pointed ahead. “It goes that way.”
Trevor kicked off his flip-flops to get more speed and raced down the beach to a road that dead-ended onto a small beach. He hung a left. His feet pounded against the abrasive, searing asphalt, burning the soles of his feet and cutting his flesh.
“I don’t think it’s a pipe. It looks like a PVC wood, and wire mesh man-made tunnel,” Dustin shouted.
The weasel stuck its nose through some of the mesh, as if to make sure they saw him, and then took off again. Was the creature mocking him?
An old lady sat rocking on her porch with a man using a cane standing by her side. She pointed at Trevor, and the man pounded his cane against the old wooden decking and laughed. Trevor waved at them, and they reciprocated.
“That shop there. It ran through the side of the building.” Dustin took off, and Trevor followed on his heels, jumping around with each jagged shell or rock piece that gouged into his skin, knowing he was putting a show on for the residents.
Hopefully he’d hit the bottom of that ocean pit that Dustin said he’d dug for himself. At this point, he believed his friend was right. What else could happen? Nothing could top a stealing, mocking weasel-like creature that stole a part to an engine he couldn’t fix to run a boat he didn’t have any customers to sail off into the sunset.
Chapter Three
Julie straightened the old merchandise that screamed tourist junk and thought about making a few changes to the store. Maybe Bri was right. Perhaps it was time to find herself again, if for no other reason than to show everyone she was fine. That way, Bri could return to her own life instead of coming home to look after her mother. She didn’t need her old high school friends to come rescue her, either.
How pathetic they must think she was, receiving a message to return for some over-thirty-year-old teenage vow. She tried to shove off her mood, but the idea of facing her friends and their sympathy didn’t cheer her up the way her daughter had probably planned. A friendervention was the last thing she needed.
Houdini shot through the side door, up the plank ramp, and into the hole he always hid in when he was naughty. “What have you done?” She abandoned the display and stood below the opening to his hideout, waiting for his little nose to pop out. “Houdini. I know you did something. Come out here now so we can make it right.”
His pink nose sniffed over the wooden shelf-turned-walkway and his whiskers twitched.
“Show me.”
He scooted out of his hole and stood on his hind legs, holding up some rusty old screw.
“Be careful with that. It looks old. You could cut yourself.” She figured it was some piece of trash, so she didn’t worry about it. “You want to go for a walk to the beach? I could use some fresh air.”
Houdini abandoned the part on the shelf and skittered down the platform, but instead of snagging his leash, he went over to the art station Bri had set up for Julie this morning. He nudged a paintbrush with his nose.
“Not you, too.” She threw her hands up in the air and headed for the door. “I’ll go on my own walk. It’s been thirty years. I’m not an artist anymore. Let’s move on.” She grabbed the old brass doorknob to wrench the swollen wooden door free of the frame, but she never had the chance. It flew open, hitting her in the nose and sending her tumbling back against the display. Postcards, key chains, and other junk scattered across the linoleum floor.
Her head hit the register table, and she was twisted around the wire rack when she settled into her final resting place. She looked up to see two men, smelling of diesel fumes and ocean air, disheveled and wearing stained clothes, shoeless, yet ruggedly handsome with soft eyes and horrified expressions. “If you came to rob me, you won’t get much. It’s off-season.” She untwined herself from the unladylike position straddling the wire display rack.
“No. I mean, I’m so sorry.” The man who spoke wrapped his strong hands around her arm and lifted her to stand. He was sunburned like a tourist but was dressed like a dockhand. The first man she’d seen under eighty but above eighteen in months. That did something to a lonely widow. It was like dangling a piece of cake in front of women at a Weight Watchers meeting.
“Are you in life-threatening need of some tourist paraphernalia, or do you just enter stores with brute force?” she asked, ignoring the hum inside her body she felt at his touch.
“No. I-I was chasing…something.” He released her and ran a hand through his head full of hair. An attractive trait for any man over forty. Good thing Bri wasn’t in the shop, or she’d have them on a date before sundown. An idea Julie wasn’t ready for now or ever.
“Chasing something?” She chuckled. “Sorry, no bikini-clad beach groupies in here.” With a rub to the back of her sore neck, the one with the ache that hadn’t gone away since she started sleeping alone at night, she gathered some postcards from a pile on the floor.
The front man, the one who’d been speaking, dropped to his knees with a thud. “Sorry. Let me help with that. I swear I’m not a Neanderthal who tosses women around.” He paused, a look of horror on his face. “Oh no, I’ve hurt you.” He reached for her face, but she retreated from his foreign touch. A swipe of her fingers to her nose revealed some blood, which explained the stranger’s wide-eyed expression.
She abandoned the mess and found the mirror behind the registration desk to check her face but discovered only a small cut across her tender nose.
He was at her side, scanning the desk as if to find a fix for his mistake.
“Relax, I won’t break.” She snagged a tissue from the back shelf and dabbed at the cut. The way he looked at her made her feel uncomfortable yet warm inside. It had been a long time since a man paid her attention, even if it was because he’d slammed a door into her face.
“I am so sorry.”
“You said that.” She eyed his hand wrapped in a dirty rag
with bloodstains. “You appear to need more first aid than I do.”
“This?” He lifted his hand as if seeing it for the first time. “No. It’s nothing.”
“You should clean it at least. That dirty rag increases your risk of infection.” She raised her brows at him, waiting for him to explain what he wanted.
“I’m Dustin,” the other man said, “and my tongue-tied friend here is Trevor. Don’t worry. He’s housebroken most of the time.”
Julie laughed. “I’m glad to hear it.” She eyed Trevor, who was scowling at his friend with that sideways, you’re-dead-when-we-get-out-of-here gaze men shoot at each other before they pound on their chests. That’s what she imagined they did anyway.
“I’m Julie Boone.” She dabbed at her cut again. Seeing that the bleeding had already slowed, she tossed the tissue into the trash and returned to cleaning up the mess.
Trevor was by her side before she picked up the first key chain. “Let me help with that. If anything’s broken, I’ll fix it.”
“Nothing harmed. We’re good. Besides, no one’s going to be coming in here for about three more weeks.”
“Why’s that?” Dustin asked, deciding to join them in the clean-up effort.
“Because that’s when tourist season starts. Mostly returning families and couples. Well, we hope it will be. Hard to say since this area has taken a hit recently.”
“Three weeks. That’s not much time.” Trevor eyed Dustin.
“Time for what?” she asked, stuffing the key chains into the bottom basket of the display Trevor set upright.
“I’m opening a charter business. I have a catamaran and a speed boat to take guests out on adventures.” Trevor’s eyes lit up as if he knew exactly what he wanted to do with the rest of his life, something Julie envied. Yet, she didn’t like the idea either.
“Oh.”
“Oh? What do you mean by oh?” Trevor paused his clean-up effort and looked to her with a tilt of his head.
“Nothing. Just that the idea of touristy things in our little town seems so, I don’t know, panhandle-ish.”
Trevor scanned her souvenir shop. “You have a problem with tourists?”
“No. I just mean that the charm of Summer Island is that it’s different from other beach towns. It’s quiet and safe and family-oriented. Not full of noise and parties. We had a company here about a decade ago, but he retired and moved up north to live near his kids. It was a relief to give up the loud-music-playing booze cruises. None of us look forward to that returning.”
“Do you have a problem with fun?” Trevor chuckled, but she took it as an insult.
“Fun, no. Obnoxious people who damage property, yes.”
Dustin handed her the remaining key chains to put into the basket. “I think Trevor has a different business plan in mind. He came down here to escape the big city life and wants his own peace and quiet.”
That sounded better, but for some reason, Trevor accusing her of not being fun irked her. It wasn’t as if she cared what this stranger thought of her. A man who opened a business that would draw the wrong sort to their quiet corner of paradise.
Once all the merchandise was returned to its rightful place, Trevor stood staring at her as if he wanted to say something but didn’t know how.
“So, what brought you into my store today? In desperate need of souvenirs to pass out on your boat as parting gifts?”
“No.” Trevor toed the long crack in the linoleum floor. “Actually…” He let out a long breath and ran that hand through his dark waves again. “You’re not going to believe this.”
Dustin chuckled but put his knuckles to his lips. “I can’t wait to hear this,” he mumbled.
“We were chasing something, and it ran in here through that hole in your side door. Don’t worry. We can get it for you and put it outside or whatever.”
“Chasing something? What kind of something?” she asked, but she was already suspicious.
“A creature, like a mole or rat or weasel.”
Julie burst into laughter until her eyes watered.
“I’m serious. I know it sounds crazy, but it ran through these tunnel-like structures outside from our beach all the way up the road and into this building.” Trevor scanned the shop and moved to the registration desk, peering down into the cabinets and then standing up and eyeing the wood planks that lined the ceiling.
She stifled her laughter and readied for the trouble Houdini tended to bring with him each time newcomers came into her shop. “I believe you.”
He paused his investigation. “You do?”
“I do, but it wasn’t a mole or a rat. It was a ferret.” She crossed her arms over her chest and faced Houdini’s hiding hole that she assumed he retreated to when the men entered her shop. “Houdini, get out here now.” She tapped her foot and waited.
“That thing has a name?” Trevor asked with a hint of disgust to his tone that she didn’t like.
She sighed and moved the stepladder under the hole to climb up. Trevor wouldn’t be the first to take issue with a thieving ferret. “He does. Let me guess… That rusted old screw belongs to you.”
“It isn’t rusted and old. It’s an engine bolt.” Trevor sounded indignant.
Dustin clapped his friend on the back. “No, she’s got it about right. It’s old, rusted, and worthless except to a forty-eight-year-old divorcé who moved to Florida to restart his life.”
Julie dared a quick over-the-shoulder glance and caught Trevor’s scowl again. If she guessed correctly, Dustin was in for an earful when they left her shop.
Houdini’s pink nose and whiskers made an appearance but no more of him before the metal bolt rolled off the platform and into her outstretched hands. “You need to say sorry to these men.”
“That varmint’s your pet?” Trevor asked with wide eyes.
Houdini popped out, hissed, and ran back into his hole.
“Not nice,” Julie scolded.
“Is that thing dangerous?” Dustin asked, backing toward the door as if her two-pound ferret could take down all hundred and eighty or so pounds of him.
“No. He’s gentle, kind, and sweet.”
“I’m not seeing that,” Trevor grumbled.
“Can’t make fun of my shark phobia anymore,” Dustin said loud and clear, but she didn’t follow. Obviously some inside joke between them.
Julie made kissing noises, trying to get Houdini to come back out. “He’s upset that you called him vermin, that’s all. He really is a sweet thing. Poor little guy was abandoned by some tourists who brought him here, and the town has looked after him ever sense.”
“I’m sensing a trend in your dislike of tourists,” Trevor stated, as if it were a fact, not an opinion.
“Dislike, no? Distrust—only the loud, obnoxious, left-my-brain-at-home kind.” Julie avoided any further discussion about the type of person who vandalized her store the week after Joe died because they were upset she didn’t open the shop that day. “Houdini’s really smart. He brings Mr. Mannie his morning paper, he checks on Mrs. Watermore each day and helps get things off of out-of-reach places, and he keeps me company. However, I’m afraid that with intelligence comes a certain amount of mischievousness.”
“If you say so,” Dustin said in a you’re-an-eccentric-ferret-lady tone.
She’d show them how wrong they were about her sweet boy. “Houdini, come out now or you’ll be kept in the house for a week. No tunnel time or visits to your friends.”
Houdini nudged to the edge of the shelf, stood on his hind legs, put his paws together, and bowed his head.
“That’s a good boy. Now, you’re staying inside the rest of today.” Julie went to the side door and pushed the hatch lock over into the eye, sealing the tunnels from Houdini.
He whined, tugging at her heart. She’d play with him this afternoon and snuggle with him while she worked so he wouldn’t be too disappointed.
She handed Trevor his old rusted bolt that he’d made such a fuss over. Before she c
ould usher them out of the shop, the front door swung open and in strutted a smiling, meddling, blast from the past, Wendy “Wind” Lively. “Good afternoon,” she said in her flirtatious, fun, everyone-will-notice-me way. “Who do we have here?” She touched Trevor’s arm as if to analyze his strength, and the way her gaze moved from his head to his toes made Julie want to slap instead of hug her long-lost, reappearing friend. “Not bad. Based on my conversation with your daughter, I thought you were hard up and lonely. Guess she had it wrong. Jewels has got game.”
Julie flinched at her words. A heat crept up her neck, and she wondered if it was a summer moment or embarrassment. These days it was hard to tell. Jewels. A name she hadn’t been called for a long time. It didn’t fit her anymore. She was no longer the creative, unfocused child who drew pictures on friendship beach or created art out of street lamps and honeycombs.
Wind strutted over and plopped her purse on the registration desk.
“I haven’t seen you in over thirty years, yet you waltz into my life again in the same old embarrassing way as if a day hasn’t gone by.”
“I know, I look great, don’t I?” She tossed her long hair behind her shoulders and gawked at the men. “I’m glad you’re moving on, but I think you should start off dating just one for now. Until you get your dating legs back anyway.”
Trevor moved away from Wind, which made Julie think the man wasn’t such a nuisance. “They were just leaving.” Julie opened the door, cringing at her rude behavior, but she’d learned years ago that the best way to handle a situation when Wind walked in was to clear the room.
Trevor held up the metal bolt in his hand. “Thanks for getting this back for me.”
Wind blocked his exit. “Wait, not so fast.” She smiled that millions-of-people-look-at-me smile. “I was only teasing. No need to run away.”
“Not running. I just need to return to work before daylight hours are gone.” Trevor tilted his head to have Dustin follow him to the door.
