Paradise Cove

by Jenny Holiday

  “You grew your hair to please Mrs. Robinson!” she teased.

  “Pretty much.” She laughed, but he had no problem owning that. Hell, he would have done anything Sarah, his Mrs. Robinson, had asked him to, so profoundly had she blown his seventeen-year-old mind. He still thought of her with fondness.

  “So you already had the long hair when you met your ex?”

  “Yep.”

  “I don’t understand people who get into a relationship with someone and then proceed to try to change stuff about them. Like, didn’t you kick the tires? Didn’t you know what you were getting?” She’d been speaking increasingly urgently and seemed to realize it suddenly. She flashed him a sheepish grin. “Sorry. Rufus hated my hair, too. He always wanted me to grow it and stop dyeing it.”

  “Does Chloe the Resident have long hair?”

  “You’d better believe it. Long, shiny blond hair—which isn’t any more natural than mine, but it’s a less extreme shade—to go with the perky, perfect boobs.”

  Nora’s boobs seemed pretty perky to him. Small, yes, but they were in proportion to the rest of her. Not that he was going to say any of that. He limited his commentary to her hair. “I like your hair. It suits you.”

  “I like your hair, too.”

  Which was something they’d said to each other enough times now that it was starting to feel like an inside joke. He smiled. It was a beautiful night. The sky was just beginning to turn a darker blue. They ate in companionable silence for a few minutes. Well, not silence. You could hear the lake. He glanced over at her.

  She must have felt his attention. She said, “Jake?” though she kept looking at the sky.

  “Hmm?”

  “Thanks for everything today. For the painting help, of course, but also just for…being here.”

  “No problem.”

  “I don’t want to freak you out or anything, but I think you’re my first real friend in Moonflower Bay.”

  He nodded. He found he didn’t mind that idea at all.

  He was also pretty sure the waves would not come today.

  Chapter Six

  When Jake got to the bar on Friday, it was packed with people, and not the usual crowd. Sawyer and Eve were at the bar, but so were Karl, Pearl, and Eiko.

  He approached with caution. Jake respected the elders of the town, but they were trouble when they had a mission—and he was pretty sure, based on the way they were talking animatedly to Sawyer and Eve, that they had an active one. Some of the younger folks had nicknamed the town Matchmaker Bay after the machinations of the older guard. They said it like it was cute. It was not cute. He started to turn. He was going to leave before anyone saw him.

  “Jake! Jake!”

  Dammit.

  Pearl was waving at him and pointing to his usual stool. He sighed and walked over, but he didn’t sit.

  “We’re talking about the new doctor,” Pearl said. “What do you think of her with Jason Sims?”

  “I say this with love, but you should leave that alone,” Eve advised. “She just got out of a five-year relationship. She told me last week she’s here to clear her head, and that she’s not looking for anything like that.”

  “Yeah, but I think Jason likes her,” Eiko said. “Or likes the idea of her, anyway. I don’t think they’ve met yet.”

  Eve curled her lip a little at the mention of Jason, perfectly summing up Jake’s thoughts about the town lawyer. He had mild douchebag tendencies.

  They all looked at Jake like they were waiting for his vote on the matter. Okay, then. “Her clinic isn’t even open yet. Maybe let her get settled for two seconds before you start meddling.”

  Sawyer shot him a puzzled look.

  “How cute would it be if the town lawyer and the town doctor got together?” Pearl said, apparently determined to ignore his vote if it didn’t line up with what she wanted.

  “She’s only here for two years,” Jake said, though he wasn’t sure why he was arguing with them. They only heard what they wanted to hear.

  “But plans change,” said Karl. “Especially when the heart is involved. Which brings us back to Jason.”

  Sawyer caught Jake’s eye and gave a small nod toward Jake’s stool—he still had not sat down.

  He shook his head no. This was not why he spent Friday nights at Law’s, to get caught up in the maddening machinations of the town matchmakers. So he turned around and went home.

  Nora was finishing up at the clinic when she got a text. Hi. This is Maya. I got your number from Sawyer.

  Nora and Sawyer had exchanged numbers and had spoken a couple times during the week about the naloxone situation.

  Maya: Are you going to Lawson’s tonight?

  She’d considered it. She wasn’t sure how informal the Friday-night thing was—did she need to be invited?

  Maya: If you are, any chance you can order a pizza and sneak me a piece or two? Or seven?

  Nora laughed. Sure. Or, and I know this is going to sound crazy, you could just order your own pizza.

  Maya: I can’t. It’s complicated.

  Maya: But also, that pizza is so freaking good I’m having literal dreams about it.

  Nora: Understood on both fronts. I’m just about done at the clinic, so I can be there in ten.

  When Nora arrived, Maya waved her over to a spot between herself and Sawyer. Eve was on Sawyer’s other side, and Pearl was on the next stool over.

  Nora looked around subtly for Jake, but he wasn’t there.

  Everyone made easy small talk, and when Law came to check on them, she said, “Can I order the mushroom pizza?”

  Maya kicked her in the shin.

  “Ow.” She turned to her assailant, who shielded her mouth from Law’s view but very clearly mouthed “Pepperoni.”

  “Actually, make that pepperoni.”

  “You got it,” Law said. “Small?”

  Maya coughed.

  “Uh, no, I think I’ll go for a large, thanks.” She turned toward Sawyer. “I had an idea about your measles problem this afternoon. The Mermaid Parade is coming up, right? What if I set up a public information booth along the parade route? Does it go down Main Street?”

  “That’s a great idea,” he said. “The parade draws lots of families with young kids.”

  “It’s not just about kids, actually. Most adults born from the seventies to the nineties never got a second dose of the MMR vaccine. It wasn’t standard practice then, but it is now. So there are lots of people walking around who need boosters to achieve full immunity. I was thinking we could distribute info sheets.”

  “Why not actually set up an outdoor clinic?” Maya asked. “Like, give the shots right there?”

  “I bet seeing prominent people in town getting their shots would make an impression,” Eve said. She swatted her boyfriend. “You should find out if you ever got a booster, Chief.”

  “I doubt I did.” He turned to Nora. “My childhood wasn’t full of a lot of, ah, oversight.”

  “Sawyer raised himself,” Pearl said. “And his sister.” She beamed at Sawyer like a proud grandma.

  Sawyer shook his head, clearly uncomfortable with the topic. “Anyway, assuming I need the booster, I’d be happy to be your first customer.”

  “Oh! Oh! I have the best idea!” Maya exclaimed. “You could do it on a float in the parade.”

  Law, who’d been popping in and out of the conversation, scoffed. “She’s not going to give shots on a float in the Mermaid Parade.”

  “It would definitely be a great PR stunt,” Nora said, not wanting to hurt Maya’s feelings. “The problem is, I can’t just randomly give people shots. I would need to take a medical history and all that.” She turned to Sawyer. “If you’re up for doing that in advance, I can definitely shoot you up during the parade.” She made an apologetic face at Maya. “Maybe not in it. I’m not totally confident in my ability to jab people while on a moving vehicle. And the vaccines need to be refrigerated, so it gets complicated logistically. Maybe for now w
e just set up a table outside the clinic?”

  “Works for me,” Sawyer said.

  “Okay,” Maya said, “but you have to let me make advertisements. We can hang them on the floats and they can say, ‘Watch Sawyer get stuck with a needle in front of the clinic.’ Or some catchier version of that that I have yet to think of.”

  “We can decorate the information table, too,” Eve said. “I have lots of paint left over from the renovation of the inn. Maybe we could make a big, colorful sign.”

  “Of mermaids getting shots!” Maya exclaimed.

  “Yes!” Pearl said.

  “Flu shots, on the other hand,” Nora said, thinking out loud about this whole festival-vaccine connection that everyone seemed to be running with, “I can just give to people if I take down some info from them. Jake Ramsey told me there’s this town-only festival in early October? It’s a bit early, but I can see if I can order some vaccines in time for it.”

  Suddenly Pearl and Maya, who had been yammering about vaccine-and-mermaid-related decor, went dead silent.

  After an uncomfortable moment, Maya finally spoke. “Jake told you about the Anti-Festival?”

  Law had arrived with her pizza—well, with Maya’s pizza—and he paused, holding it over the bar, his eyebrows raised.

  “Yeah. Was he not supposed to? It’s some kind of inside joke, I gather?” Maybe she was too new to take part in it?

  “No, no,” Eve said. “It’s not a secret—at least not from you. It’s just that Jake doesn’t…talk a lot.”

  “I was actually thinking Jake could probably help me with a flu-shot clinic.”

  “He’s the wrong person for that,” Sawyer said quickly.

  “On the contrary, he’s the perfect person. There’s an argument to be made that when you know someone whose life has been affected by flu-related complications or deaths, you’re more likely to…” She trailed off, realizing that everyone was looking at her with some degree of shock. “What?”

  “How did you know about Jake’s son?” Eve asked.

  Why was she getting the feeling that she was treading on forbidden ground here? “He told me,” she said warily.

  “He told you about Jude?” Sawyer’s tone was a combination of skeptical and defensive. Nora glanced at Maya, who was openly gaping.

  “Uh, yeah?”

  “He just came out and told you?” Pearl asked. She seemed less gobsmacked than the others, but she was looking at Nora with an intense curiosity that made Nora nervous.

  Why did Nora feel like saying yes was somehow a betrayal of Jake? She didn’t have to answer, though, because Pearl got up. “I’m having an epiphany. I gotta go.”

  Eve turned to Nora. “Sorry we’re being weird. Jake is kind of famous for being antisocial, so we were just a little surprised.”

  “Antisocial?” Maya said. “Try mute.”

  That didn’t accord with Nora’s impression of him. Yes, he didn’t seem like the kind of person who wasted words, or who hurried to interject himself into things—witness his silently watching over both the birth on the green and her confrontation with Rufus. But they had spoken easily, and, between the topics of his son and her loser ex-boyfriend, rather intimately.

  “Anyway.” Eve was clearly trying to move the conversation beyond Jake and what he had or had not told Nora, which Nora appreciated. “I heard you like baseball.”

  “You did?”

  She smirked. “Pro tip: Do not utter a word anywhere in this town—or wear a Tigers T-shirt to Curl Up and Dye—that you don’t want getting out.”

  “There’s a group of town elders who have their noses in everything,” Sawyer said. “They tend to congregate at the hardware store.”

  “Right,” Maya said. “Except they don’t really congregate at the hardware store so much as plot there. So beware of the following individuals: Karl Andersen, who owns Lakeside Hardware. Pearl Brunetta”—she pointed at Pearl’s abandoned drink. “Eiko Anzai, who’s the editor of the town newspaper. And, to a lesser extent, Art Ramsey, Jake’s dad.”

  “What does that have to do with the salon, then?” Nora asked.

  “I think Carol sort of reports to them,” Eve said. “Last time I got my hair done, I thought I was making idle conversation about maybe starting a little vegetable garden, but the next day Karl was on my case about it.”

  “Basically, if you want your business to stay private, be very, very careful what you say in front of the elders of Moonflower Bay, regardless of location,” Maya advised.

  “Anyway, baseball,” Eve said, apparently correctly intuiting that Nora’s head was spinning with all these names. “There’s a town softball league—that was my point.”

  “Oh, thanks, but I’m more of an eat-nachos-while-watching-other-people-exert-themselves sort of person than I am an athlete.” Actually, though, that was another thing she was hoping to change while she was here. She needed to find a way to get some exercise into her routine.

  “What about theater?” Maya asked.

  “Like watching it? Sure.”

  “No. Like being in it. I’m putting on a gender-swapped Death of a Salesman—so it’s gonna be Death of a Saleswoman—at the Anti-Festival this fall. You would make a great Wilhelmina Loman.”

  “You mean like Death of a Salesman where it’s all grinding poverty and family dysfunction and he kills himself at the end?”

  “That’s the one!” Maya trilled. “Except with a she instead of a he. And I can totally see you in it.”

  Nora didn’t know how to say that there was no way on God’s green earth she was going to star in Death of a Salesman. Or -woman. But she didn’t have to answer because Maya presented her with another option. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance you’re into English Premier League football?”

  “You mean like soccer?” Nora asked.

  “Yeah. I got into it when I was doing a semester abroad in the UK. It turns out to be very dramatic. The rivalries, the arc of the season. You want to watch the next game with me? My team is Crystal Palace.”

  “Back off, everyone.” Sawyer turned to her. “They’re just trying to make you feel welcome, but you don’t need to sign up now for a season of softball playing or soccer watching. What about a boat ride? A group of us heads out on the lake a couple of times a month on Law’s pontoon.”

  “That sounds perfect.”

  Chapter Seven

  The next Friday afternoon, Jake was working on Nora’s fence when she got home. They had argued about him working on her place—inside and out—but he’d won her over with a promise to charge her market rates for it all and with the assurance that he would fit her in between existing jobs. He did not intend to keep his promise about billing her, but he was fitting her in between other jobs, which meant he worked in little stretches, often at odd times. That, plus the fact that she was putting in long hours at the clinic getting ready to open, meant he hadn’t actually seen much of her. They’d overlapped once and shared another pizza, but that had been it.

  “Jake,” she said when she appeared from around front. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  Mick, who had been sleeping in the sun, got up at the sound of her voice and started wiggling his butt.

  “I hope you don’t mind that I let Mick out for some…Well, I was going to say exercise, but that’s not really his thing, is it?” She’d given him a key to the house so he could scope out repairs that needed doing inside, and he’d taken to letting the dog out to keep him company while he worked on the fence.

  She laughed. “Of course I don’t mind. The sun and the grass are good for him. Probably a shock for an old city dog.” She glanced over her shoulder. “I have a semiawkward favor to ask.”

  “Shoot.”

  “My grandma’s here for a visit. She’s recovering from a bout with cancer, and she’s pretty frail. My sister and I—my sister’s here, too—have been driving her around and showing her the sights, and we took her for lunch in Bayshore. But she wants to see my house before the
y hit the road. I thought we’d be able to help her up the steps to the porch, but she’s in worse shape than I expected. I saw your truck in the driveway, and I was wondering if you could, like, hoist her up.”

  “Of course.” He wiped his sweaty hands on his jeans and went hunting for his discarded T-shirt. “Let me just make myself presentable.”

  “She would probably appreciate it more if you didn’t put that back on,” Nora said, smiling as he pulled his shirt over his head.

  “Yeah?” he said, not quite sure how to respond.

  “Let’s just say she’s not your typical little old lady. She’s been known to appreciate a hunky man-god from time to time.”

  “Did you just call me a hunky man-god?”

  “I didn’t call you a hunky man-god. I just said my grandmother would say you’re a hunky man-god.” She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “Sheesh. Don’t get a big head.”

  To his great surprise, Jake found he didn’t mind Nora teasing him.

  Or thinking of him as a hunky man-god, for that matter.

  He followed her around the house, whistling for Mick, who came up to trot happily alongside him. The two women out front were clearly related to Nora. The sister was a carbon copy of her—except her hair was more of a strawberry blond—and the grandmother, though she had darker coloring, had the same small, almost elfin features as her granddaughters.

  “Jake, this is my sister, Erin Walsh, and my grandmother, Dr. Penelope Walsh. Grandma, Erin, this is my friend Jake Ramsey.”

  “And my knight in shining armor,” her grandma said.

  “Oh, I don’t know about that, Dr. Walsh.” It tickled him that she was Dr. Walsh, too. “Maybe more like your pack mule, but I’m happy to be of service either way. You ready?” She nodded and handed her purse to Nora’s sister. As gently as he could, Jake lifted her into his arms and ascended the short flight of stairs to the porch.

  “I could get used to this,” the elder Dr. Walsh said, a teasing note in her voice. He set her down, and she immediately took his arm, so when Nora opened the front door, he escorted her inside.