Beloved in Blue_Sweet Contemporary Beach Romance

by Elana Johnson

  They continued talking for a few minutes longer, and then Annabelle said, “Eli won’t stop crying. I have to go.” She sighed like being a mother was the worst thing in that moment, and Janey smiled as she said goodbye.

  She’d certainly had her fair share of moments like the one Annabelle was going through right now. But she’d been all alone, with no one to pass the fussy infant to so she could chat with her sister. No one to take a turn changing the diaper. No one to get up with the crying baby in the middle of the night.

  Adam had been there that first night, and she had her anonymous angel that had kept her going when things got really rough. She got up and collected her umbrella from where she’d left it against the front door when she’d come in.

  It flipped open and she moved down the steps and along Adam’s front sidewalk. Janey loved the rain, everything about it. The scent as it hit the dirty pavement. The sound of it against the roof, the windows, the umbrella. The way it cleansed everything for a new start.

  She walked slowly down the street, looking at the cheery yellow lights in the homes neighboring Adam’s. He probably knew every single one of them, took them soup on rainy days like tonight, and begged his forgiveness when his dogs went rogue in the neighborhood. Well, at least Fable. Gypsy probably knew the exact blade of grass that didn’t belong to her anymore.

  Janey smiled thinking about his dogs. Thinking about him.

  Don’t think. Annabelle’s voice rang in her head. Just act.

  She’d overthought her rapid relationship with Matt, but she’d been so enamored with him that she hadn’t had much time to get too far inside her head.

  “But you’ve been living inside it for twelve years,” she muttered to herself. The magic of the rain kept her melancholy thoughts at bay, and she wandered the neighborhood until her phone sounded.

  Where did you go? Your car’s still in the driveway.

  She smiled at Adam’s name on the screen, the concern in those simple words.

  Went for a walk, she typed out clumsily with one hand. Be back soon.

  After all, it was time Janey came back. Back from Matt’s death. Back to living a full life. Back to herself and finding her own happiness.

  She returned to the shed and leaned in the doorway with the rain dripping off her umbrella. “Hey, you two.”

  Jess looked up from where he sat on the ground, a variety of tools surrounding him. His hands held the grease she’d imagined, and his face beamed the brightest smile at her. “Hey, Mom.”

  Adam’s gaze flew to her, and he jumped to his feet, already wiping his hands on a blue mechanic’s rag. “There you are. I was worried when I went inside and you were gone.” His eyes carried that worry in their ocean-blue depths, and Janey felt herself slipping outside of her mind. Maybe even slipping down the slope toward love.

  “Sorry about that,” she said. “I worked a lot at my desk today, so I thought I’d take a walk.” She put the umbrella down and stepped further into the shed, surveying the scene before her and noting the metallic smell of machinery and the sharp scent of oil. “Wow, this looks like it’s in more pieces than before.”

  “Oh, it is.” Adam turned back to it. “But we’re making progress.”

  “How is more pieces considered progress?” She slipped her hand into his, and he pulled his attention back to her, his eyes full of questions. Janey didn’t know any of the answers, and for right now, that was okay.

  “Sometimes things have to be taken apart before they can be put back together,” he said, his voice on the edge of husky and hoarse and sending a rumble through Janey’s whole body.

  She nodded. “All right, then. I’ll leave you guys to it.” She looked at Jess. “Can Adam give you a ride home when you’re finished here?”

  “Yeah, whatever.” Jess barely looked at her.

  She pressed her free hand against Adam’s chest and said, “Not too late, okay?”

  He nodded, and Janey ducked back out into the rain, not bothering with her umbrella this time.

  Oh, I forgot to tell you not to mention that Adam and I are dating. Janey sent the message to her sister the following morning as she made her way out of town and up to the National Park. She loved the drive along the shore and through the trees, even if it did add thirty minutes to her day. The rain had stopped sometime in the night, and everything felt shiny and new.

  Oops....

  Janey almost rammed her foot on the brake. She hit call and hoped she’d have service long enough to find out who Annabelle had told. “Annabelle,” she said when her sister picked up. Complete chaos came through the line, from children crying to talking to something sizzling that probably shouldn’t have been.

  “Who did you tell?” she practically yelled into the phone.

  “Just Esther and Opi.”

  Janey groaned. “Not Opi. She’ll tell everyone at the salon, and it’ll spread like wildfire down Wedding Row by the end of the day.” She kicked herself for telling her sister and not remembering to warn her to keep the info to herself.

  “They’re old friends,” she said. “They knew Matt and Adam in high school too. They thought it was sweet.”

  “Adam doesn’t want the whole town buzzing about it,” Janey said. Truth be told, she didn’t either. She’d always lived just outside of the spotlight, and she liked it that way. But Adam Herrin was as in the spotlight as someone could get.

  “Everyone talks about everything he does—oh.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I’ll tell them as soon as I get my kids off to school.” Annabelle said something to one of her kids that made it sound like breakfast wasn’t going so well.

  “All right.” Janey hung up, not sure what else to do. If Opi Gunnison didn’t say anything about this juicy piece of gossip, it would be a town miracle. She pulled over to the side of the road and sent a quick text to Adam, confessing what she’d told her sister and who Annabelle had then told.

  I’m sorry, she ended with. I’m headed through the forest right now and won’t have service for about twenty minutes.

  She sent the message and got herself back on the road, a sense of dread hanging over her she couldn’t describe.

  When she got to her office, Maya was already there. “Oh, good morning,” Janey said. “Am I late?”

  “No, I don’t know.” Maya grinned at her. “I just wanted to hear how pizza and motorcycling went with your secret boyfriend.” She stood from Janey’s chair and moved around to the other side of the desk.

  “You owe me forty dollars for pizza.” Janey stowed her purse in her bottom desk drawer.

  Maya laughed and pulled two twenties from her pocket. “Worth it, though, right?” She’d been the one answering Jess’s texts yesterday while Janey was in a meeting. When she’d finally gotten away from the camp managers, Maya had her whole evening planned for her, the pizza already ordered online.

  “It was fun,” Janey said. “Jess spent more time with him than I did.”

  Maya sighed a happy little sound and fell back into the chair. “Sounds wonderful.”

  “So what did you do last night, Maya?” Janey pressed the button to turn on her desktop computer, almost desperate to stop talking about Adam. It was too much to think about him all the time, get lectured by her sister, and then completely disrupt her evening reading routine because she couldn’t focus on the words in her book.

  “The same old thing,” Maya said. “Yoga downtown and then I stopped by the Anchor, hoping the firemen would be on their dinner break.”

  “And were they?”

  “No such luck. They must eat in shifts now or something.” A little frown appeared between her eyes. “Do you know how hard it is to meet a man in this town?”

  Janey did, and she hmm’ed and yeah’ed in all the right spots until Maya got up and said, “I guess I better go get ready for the Tuesday Trailhike.”

  “Yep,” Janey said. “I’ll meet you out there.”

  Adam still hadn’t responded to her text, and
she wondered if he was angry or just busy. Hopefully not busy dealing with a storm of gossip about his new girlfriend.

  She set her thoughts aside and reached into her cabinet to pull out her hiking boots. Once they were properly laced, she set out for the back patio of the lodge, where the Tuesday Trailhike met every week at ten o’clock.

  They usually had school groups midweek, but today there were several families also in attendance. Maya ran the Trailhike. All Janey had to do was hand her the rock samples and tree branches when she spoke about them.

  She also kept records of how many people attended the Trailhike, and how many went up the half-mile walk to the waterfalls. She loved the hike through nature, and she answered questions along the way.

  When they arrived, the sound of rushing, tumbling, falling water soothed her. She’d always found it strange that she could love the water and be terrified of it at the same time. But she’d made it across the sound to the beach house, and as the memories of the first time she and Matt had made this hike to the waterfalls came to mind, she didn’t push against them.

  She didn’t have to hide her tears. She smiled at the sweetness of them, at the way he’d held her hand and snapped a selfie with the falls in the background. Though their life together had been short, it had been sweet.

  Not bitter.

  After she’d returned to the lodge and done her daily trail checks, she met Maya in the break room. “Great job today,” she said. “You get better and better at that every week.”

  “You think so?”

  “Everyone was laughing today.” Janey stuck her leftover pizza in the microwave and turned back to her friend. “So yeah. I think so.”

  Maya beamed under the compliment. Janey pulled her pizza out and sat across from her friend. “So I’m dating Adam Herrin, and I think I might be ready to move past Matt.”

  Maya’s eyes rounded and her spoon paused halfway to her mouth, loaded with raspberry yogurt. “Adam Herrin?”

  “Yeah, you know. Chief of Police.”

  “Yeah, I know.” She stuck the yogurt in his mouth. “Wow, Janey. You go big or go home.”

  Janey laughed, sobering quickly. “Is it bad that I can think of Matt now without wanting to cry?”

  Maya put one hand over Janey’s their tan skin blending together in an array of fingers. “Of course not. He’s been gone a long time.”

  Janey nodded, and as her mind started sucking her down a path about the dangers of Adam’s job, she pulled herself right back out.

  Think less. Act first.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Adam left the station about mid-afternoon and went home to make another batch of soup. He’d heard a rumor that the judges strongly favored an autumn themed recipe, and as he looked back through the previous dishes he’d won with—pork with roasted apples and heirloom beets when the theme was apples, and a pumpkin chocolate chip soufflé when the theme was pumpkin, and sausage with sweet potatoes and pecans when the theme had been sweet potatoes.

  So he couldn’t serve beef stew at the Fall Festival. He’d stopped by the grocery store and picked up several autumn squashes—acorn, butternut to be precise. They, along with three heads of garlic, were currently roasting in the oven with olive oil, salt, and pepper while Adam studied a recipe card that had been used so many times, the edges were curled.

  He picked up the phone and called his mother, saying, “Hey, Ma,” when she answered. “I’m looking at Grandma’s recipe, and I can’t read one of the spices.” He lifted the card and peered at it on a slant. “It says spicy curry powder, and cumin, and then smoked...something. What is that?”

  “Paprika,” she said immediately. “And cinnamon. And cayenne pepper. Are you making that for the Fall Festival?”

  “I’m trying it.”

  “It’s different. Granny Stevie will like it if you win with her recipe. She switched out some of the butternut for acorn squash you know. And she used to add a single carrot for color too.”

  Adam frowned at the card. “She did? That’s not written here.”

  “Well, write it in. I was with her the last time she made it, and she added a single, peeled carrot with the other squashes when she roasted them. It gave the soup a richer orange color.” She laughed and Adam heard something bang in the background. “My mouth is watering just thinking about that soup.”

  “I’ll bring you some before City Council meeting.”

  “If you have time,” she said. “I know these Council Tuesdays are busy for you.”

  With all the new ingredients—from coconut milk to goat cheese to smoked paprika—he wasn’t sure he’d have time to get out to the lavender farm before his meeting. He loved cooking while the afternoon sun slanted through the windows along the back of his house, and before he knew it, the soup had come together nicely.

  It did look a bit pale, halfway between yellow and orange, and he scratched out a note to add a carrot for color next time he made it. He swirled the coconut ginger cream on the top, and added the goat cheese, the roasted pistachios, a bit of chopped cilantro, and a few arils of pomegranate to the top of the soup. The white, the brown, the pink, the green, and the yellow made a beautiful food picture, and Adam smiled at the soup.

  He knew the judges awarded points for presentation, and he wondered if he needed more of a crunchy element. Maybe croutons? He could easily herb up squares of bread and toast them while the soup cooked and add a few to the medley of garnishes.

  He snapped a picture and sent it to Janey, along with What do you think of this for the Fall Festival?

  I want to eat that right now, she sent back immediately.

  Where are you? He checked the time and realized he only had an hour until his meeting. I’m headed out to my mother’s to drop off some of this. I can swing by your place too, if you want.

  Not home yet, she messaged. Don’t worry about it.

  A sense of loss Adam didn’t quite understand enveloped him. He pushed it away and messaged, All right. City Council tonight. Talk later, before shoving his phone in his back pocket and packing up the soup.

  He arrived at his parent’s farm and went in the back door to find Joel washing his hands at the kitchen sink. “Hey, brought some soup.” He put the containers on the table and faced his step-dad. “How’s the farm?”

  Joel smiled as he dried his hands. “Just fine. Did Drew tell you he’s thinking about getting another dog?”

  Adam’s eyebrows shot up. “No, he didn’t say that.”

  “He wants a smaller one,” Joel said, opening the fridge. “How are you and Janey?”

  It had been two days since the beach trip had ended. What did Joel think could happen in two days? “Just fine,” he said, echoing Joel’s comment. “Look, I have City Council tonight. I just stopped by to drop this off. Tell my mom hello, okay?”

  He wondered where she was, but he didn’t want to ask.

  “She’s just getting up,” Joel said. “She should be out any second.”

  “Getting up?”

  “She took a little nap this afternoon.”

  Adam cocked his head to the side and looked at his step-dad. For the first time, Adam realized how old he looked. His hair had gone white at some point, and while he was still tall and wiry, he looked like he’d lost some of his strength.

  “Is she okay?” Adam asked. He wasn’t alarmed. No sense in worrying over a nap if it was nothing. He took naps sometimes, too.

  “She caught something at the beach,” Joel said. “A cold or something. She’ll appreciate this soup.”

  A moment later, footsteps sounded, and Adam glanced toward the doorway that led into the living room. His mother appeared, and she looked older than the picture in his head. And pale.

  Her smile was the same, as was the warmth she exuded whenever she looked at him. The only time he’d seen her anything but welcoming and wonderful had been when his father had passed away.

  “Adam.” She swept over to him and gave him a hug. “Good to see you.”

/>   He chuckled, though he loved a good hug from his mom. “We just spent the weekend together.”

  “Oh, no.” She stepped back and glanced at the soup containers. “You spent the weekend with Janey. We barely saw you.”

  Adam scoffed. “That’s not true. She spent hours and hours planning the wedding. I was a glorified babysitter for her and Gretchen.”

  His mom laughed and picked up a soup container. “So are we. We like it.”

  Adam grinned at the two of them, glad he could come here and bask in the memories of his childhood, feel his mother’s love, and see what great people she and Joel were. He hooked his thumb over his shoulder. “All right. I’m going to be late.” He nodded at the containers. “You put most of that on top. It’s pretty good.”

  “I’ll let you know.” Joel stepped between Adam and his mom and plucked a container from the table and put it in the microwave.

  Adam ducked out the door and got back in his cruiser. He had five minutes to spare when he arrived at the city offices, and the number of cars in the parking lot didn’t soothe him. Sometimes these meetings could go for hours, and he was foolish to think tonight’s would be different. It was the last City Council meeting before the Fall Festival, and there was a group of people who wanted to take the city funding for the festival and put it toward road improvements.

  As soon as he walked in, he spied all of those people, and he couldn’t help the sigh that blew through his lips. It was definitely going to be a long meeting.

  By the time he got home, his exhaustion reached all the way into his bones. He pulled into his driveway, his headlights cutting a swath across a green Jeep. His heart pumped out an extra beat, and he hoped Janey had gone inside as autumn had chosen the last two days to arrive with a vengeance.

  She sat on his front steps, both dogs crowded around her and her hands buried in her coat pockets.

  “Hey,” he said as he climbed the steps slowly. “Why didn’t you go in?”