by Rachel Magee
Veronica raised a questioning eyebrow. “Honey, all I can say is I wish I had a man who looked at me like that.”
There was that fluttery thing in Millie’s chest again, but she tried to play it cool. “I mean…it’s…” Millie quickly looked down at Bear in hopes to shield any of the lingering expressions that would give her thoughts away and make her more vulnerable than she already felt.
There was kindness and understanding in Veronica’s dark eyes. “Everyone here adores Braxton and it’s been a while since we’ve seen him smile like that. It’s nice to see he found someone who makes him happy.”
This time, apparently Millie couldn’t keep the mixture of emotions surging through her from being reflected on her face, because before she could respond, Veronica gently patted her arm.
“He’s one of the good ones. A real keeper.”
Heat flared in her cheeks, but before she could say anything, Veronica looked over her head. “And speak of the devil. Good morning, Braxton.”
Millie took another second, hoping the color in her face would fade, before she looked up to see Braxton strolling toward them with his confident gait.
“Morning, ladies. I hear the sky is clear and Summer Island hasn’t been washed away. How ’bout we raise up these shutters and take a look?”
He was extra adorable with the rumpled T-shirt and hair of someone who’d just woken up. He stopped next to her so his shoulder grazed hers.
“We were about to get to that. But you two have done quite enough for us already. It’s time for you to go home and check on your own places.” Veronica made a shooing motion.
“You sure? You have enough staff to help you out today?”
“Our building is still standing and the power company assured me an hour ago that we’ll have full electricity restored before lunchtime. We’re fine here. Go. Take care of your own stuff.”
“If you say so.” He turned to Millie. “You ready?”
A whole different set of nerves danced through her. “Yes,” she said while shaking her head no.
Braxton chuckled. “Time to see what kind of punch ole Axel packed.” He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze before he turned back to Veronica. “I’ll try to come back up to check on Henry today, but depending on what the houses look like, it will probably be later this afternoon.”
“No rush. We’ve got everything under control here. Be careful out there.” She turned to Millie. “It was lovely to meet you, Millie. We’ll talk soon.”
“Absolutely.” She hugged her new friend, a gesture that had become more natural in the six weeks since she’d moved to Summer Island, and then followed Braxton down the long, dark hall toward the door they had entered barely more than twelve hours before.
She wiggled her fingers then balled and opened her fists, trying to expel some of her nervous energy. This was the first hurricane she’d been involved in, and she had no idea what to expect of the aftermath. They’d be able to get their car out, right? Would the roads be passable? Was there anything left of her house?
When they got to the end of the hall, she held her breath as she waited for Braxton to raise the storm shutter and push open the door. Half blinded from the bright light of morning, she stepped outside. And what she saw stunned her.
Tons of leaves and branches littered the grounds. A broken plastic lawn chair was upside down in the middle of the garden and what looked like a section of metal fencing was curled up like a tumbleweed in the vacant parking lot. But other than that, everything looked okay. All the buildings around them were standing and the roofs appeared to be attached. Even Braxton’s minivan seemed to be unharmed.
“Only two trees down. The one that took out the generator at the beginning of the storm and that one over there.” Braxton pointed to the giant uprooted oak tree on the edge of the property. “I’d say they were pretty lucky.”
“I can’t believe it.” Millie walked out to the middle of the grassy lawn, careful to step over the fallen sticks and branches, and a sense of calm washed over her as she slowly turned in a circle to take it all in. “All the howling and banging during the storm, and only two trees came down.”
It was going to take quite a bit of cleanup, and the trees that had been stripped of a good chunk of their leaves and more than their fair share of limbs were going to look bare for a long while, but what she saw was encouraging. Much more encouraging than what she’d been expecting. “Let’s hope our houses did as well.”
Braxton slid his arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “Regardless of what we find when we pull onto East Shore Drive, we can fix it.”
There was that word again. We. It hung there in the air between them, begging to be addressed.
“You’re only saying that because you’re still sad you missed the chance to put on a new roof the last time I offered it,” she joked, trying to calm her jittering nerves as they walked toward his car.
He hit the unlock button and the back door slid open for Bear to hop in as they both walked to their own sides. “Exactly.”
Braxton tried to engage her in mindless chitchat on the ride home, which Millie appreciated, but she was having a hard time focusing. Every turn, every time they had to drive around a fallen tree or some sort of hurricane-caused damage, Millie’s body got more tense. By the time they turned onto their street, all her muscles were in one solid knot. Her heart started to race and her palms got sweaty.
She squeezed her eyes shut. “I can’t look. You’re just going to have to tell me if it’s still standing.”
Braxton wrapped his hand around hers. Leaves and twigs crackled and popped as they drove over them. Occasionally, she could feel the car swerve to the right or left as she assumed they dodged larger debris on the road, and finally they slowed to a stop.
“Okay, we’re here. Do you want to look for yourself?”
Millie’s heart thundered in her chest. She clamped her hands over her already closed eyes. There was no way she could look. At this point, she was struggling just to breathe. Every worst-case scenario played through her mind along with some that didn’t have anything to do with damage from a hurricane. She was fairly certain there wasn’t a smoking meteorite crater where her house used to be, but that image flashed through her mind nevertheless.
“Just tell me. I think I can deal with whatever it is if I know before I see it.” At least she hoped that was true.
The car inched forward and then made a sharp turn.
“Wow.” Braxton’s voice had a hint of amazement that made her rapid heartbeat kick up a notch.
“Is that a good wow or an it’s-worse-than-I-imagined wow?”
Braxton chuckled, a warm sound that calmed her overactive nerves just a bit. “It’s a good wow. Lots of leaves and branches. I mean, lots of leaves. I’m not even sure where they all came from. Are those pine branches? Is there even a pine tree around here?”
Millie was tempted to crack her fingers and take a peek at the mystery pine branches, but the fear of what else she might see made her squeeze her fingers tighter together.
“The house. How’s the house?”
“There used to be a house here?”
She could hear the joking tone in his voice. “Braxton!”
He chuckled. It wasn’t the forced, nervous chuckle of someone trying to figure out how to share bad news. It was a legit, joyful sound of someone who was happy. It wasn’t enough to calm her fears, but it did make her pounding heartbeat relax just a smidge.
“The house looks fine. All those flowers I planted the other day took quite a beating, which I’m taking as a personal offense, but from this angle, the house looks good.”
Slowly, she spread her fingers and peeked through the cracks. He had pulled the car all the way around so her door opened at the base of the front steps and from what she could see, it didn’t look like there was one bit of damage to t
he house.
Dropping her hands, she took in the full site, fear turning to shock. “It’s still here.” She opened the door and stepped out, careful to step over a large palm frond sticking out from under the car. “And it has a roof.”
Her eyes were probably the size of dinner plates, but she couldn’t help it. She’d imagined a lot of scenarios over the past twenty-four hours, but this scene was never one of them.
Braxton walked around the front of the car to join her. “It does still have a roof. In fact, I don’t see any major damage to the house.”
“It’s still here,” she said a second time. Relief cascaded over her, leaving behind a warm, euphoric feeling in its wake. “Let’s look at the back.”
Without waiting for him, she headed around the side of the house, taking in the paint job. There were places that looked scratched and scuffed from where debris must have hit it, and it was missing that fresh glow it had before, but it still looked decent. Bear trotted along beside her sniffing one fallen limb or leaf pile after the next.
She rounded the final corner and without looking out over the yard, she immediately gazed at the back of the house. And she gasped.
Braxton followed and stopped next to her. “I’d say the wind is no match for Seascape. Look at that, it doesn’t look like even one of those shutters moved an inch. You’re quite the installation beast.”
Millie shook her head, walking along the patio and gently touching the old wooden shutters covering the many French doors she’d struggled to lock into rusting tracks. “It worked.” She paused in front of one that had given her particular trouble and gave it a shake. “I wasn’t so sure it would when I was putting them up.”
Shock gave way to excitement and she turned to Braxton and flung her arms around him. “The shutters worked! Thank you so much for helping me. I couldn’t have done it without you!”
His arms wrapped around her waist and she marveled at how nice it felt to be held by him. “I battled the spiders, but you pretty much did the rest.”
She let go of him and gazed up at the house again. “You feel like battling those spiders again? I guess now that they’ve done their job, it’s time to take them down and store them for next time.”
“I don’t think the spiders made it.” He pointed to something behind her. She turned around and took in the rest of her yard. This time she could feel her eyes getting wide for a whole different reason.
“Oh my.” She’d been so focused on any damage done to the house, she hadn’t looked at the damage done to the rest of the property. One of the tall palmetto trees that lined the property had fallen right on top of the wooden shed where the spiders lived and the shutters were stored, crumbling the entire back half of it. “Honestly, that thing was already falling down. I’m surprised the wind didn’t knock it over.”
There were several other trees down, and the fence between her property and the nature preserve next to her was going to need some repairs. Then her gaze landed on her newly finished boardwalk. Or perhaps it would’ve been more accurate to say it landed where her newly finished boardwalk used to be.
She pointed in the direction of the dunes. “It looks like my bridge to the beach was washed away.” There was a spike of disappointment as she considered the cost that had been carried out to sea. That boardwalk had been her biggest nemesis during this whole renovation. It was the one thing that no matter how hard she tried, still refused to be conquered. She was determined to beat it, but right now, she had to admit it had her against the ropes.
“It’s possible you’ll find the wood in there. Along with half the trees from the neighborhood.” Braxton pointed to her pool which was completely full of leaves, branches and random other things that had been blown into it, sending murky water sloshing out the top.
“What is all this stuff?” Millie let out a chuckle as she walked over to examine the ludicrous sight. “Eight feet. That’s eight feet of leaves and branches at the deep end. It’s like Axel dropped all his junk right here in my pool.”
Braxton stood on the edge and peered into the mounds of branches heaping over the side. “You could hold a botany class on all the vegetation on Summer Island right here. There might even be some things that blew over from other places it visited.” He pulled a branch out from the pile near his feet. “Like this thing. Do you recognize these leaves?”
Millie scanned her property for a tree boasting similar leaves but came up short. “Not from my yard.”
Braxton tossed it to the side and shrugged. “On the positive side, the spiders have a new place to call home.”
Millie giggled again. After all the stress of the past twenty-four hours, it felt good to laugh. Some of the insecurities that had been weighing her down lifted just a little.
“If finding the money to build a new boardwalk and deforest my pool is the biggest job I have, I’d say I’m pretty lucky.”
Braxton nodded. “Yes, we were. It looks like even the storm surge didn’t come up as high as they were predicting. You can see the waterline way out there.”
He strolled out past the pool to where a jagged line of seaweed, dirt, and bits of fishing nets ran across her yard about four feet from the end of her patio. He stood on the line and looked across to his house which sat closer to the beach than hers did.
“It looks like it stopped right along the back of the garage. With any luck, there’s not any flooding.”
Millie studied where the waterline hit the concrete wall that separated their properties. “You should check on it. Do you want me to come with you?”
His gaze lingered on his house for another second before he looked toward the road, his face filled with concern. “I’ll check on it in a minute. But first there’s something else I need to show you.”
“But we’ve seen the whole house.” Her newfound confidence gave way to nerves that had plagued her all night. “What else is there to show me?”
She wanted her argument to prompt his confident grin to return along with a joke about the mess she’d have to clean up. Instead, his look of concern shifted into sadness.
“You didn’t see everything. There’s one thing you missed.”
…
Braxton led Millie back to the front of her house, wishing she didn’t have to see what he was about to show her.
“But it’s fine. The front of the house is fine.” Panic flickered in her voice, causing a pang in his gut. He didn’t want to walk her back to the front of her house and point out that her beloved fountain, the one she had worked to restore for three solid days, had been crumpled by the storm.
“No, yeah, the house is fine. It’s not the house.”
Maybe he should’ve pointed it out as soon as they pulled up, but he just couldn’t stand that being the first thing she saw. After how hard she’d worked on this place for the past six weeks, she deserved better. That was why he chose to park as close to the house as he could, using the van to block her view. Then he tried his best to keep her focus on the house in front of her when she opened her eyes. In fact, if he could’ve used misdirection to keep her focus on cleaning up the mounds of yard debris in the back while he restored the one feature of the house she loved best and spared her from the pain, he would have. But the fountain was beyond repair.
“Tell me it’s not the driveway. I am not paying to have that driveway redone again. Seriously. The driveway cost the same as three bathrooms. Three. If the driveway washed away, my guests are now parking on the dirt.”
“It’s not the driveway.” It was much, much worse.
“Then what could it be?” They rounded the minivan and the fountain, or lack of a fountain, came into view. Millie stopped in her tracks and her whole body sagged as if all her air had just been let out. “Oh.”
She let go of his hand and walked across the wide driveway to where the remains of the fountain lay. Her bottom lip quivered, and she
squatted down among the rubble. She ran her finger along what was left of one of the bowls. His heart broke.
“Did you know this was the first thing that was built on this property? My great-great-grandfather installed it as a promise of what was to come. And it ran every day the inn was open.” She let out a heavy breath and picked up a chunk of concrete. “It’s just a fountain, but…”
“I’m so sorry, Millie.”
She stayed like that for a while, shifting through the chunks on the ground. Finally, she stood up. “So much for holding on to past sentiments.” She closed her hand around the chunk of fountain in her hand and gazed at the boarded house she’d put so much time and energy renovating and redoing since she’d arrived. “I guess it’s new beginnings all around.”
Man, he loved her determination. Life threw up roadblocks, but she didn’t let them stop her. Instead, she plowed right through them, armed with a smile and a YouTube video. Time after time, she’d come toe to toe with disappointment and stared it down until it turned into opportunity. She was brave and strong and beautiful, and he wanted her to be part of his life more than he’d wanted anything in a long time.
“From what I hear, there’s a how-to video on making your own concrete fountain. It doesn’t look that hard.” Repeating her catchphrase back to her earned him a full-fledged grin.
“And since I’ve already mastered tiling, roofing, and painting, a new hobby is exactly what I was looking for.”
Braxton’s heart did one of those somersaults that were becoming familiar whenever he was around Millie. But letting himself fall in love was terrifying. There were so many ways it could go wrong, so many ways everyone could end up hurt that he had absolutely no control over. The wounds from his past and pains of his present had etched deep scars on his heart. Every sensible part of his brain told him it was safer to walk away than risk everything again. But there was something about her bravery and determination that made walking away impossible.
He slid his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “The new fountain can symbolize the promise of the new Seascape Inn.”
