Sweet Promises: A Candle Beach Sweet Romance (Book 3)

by Nicole Ellis

  “Tonight?” Jake asked. Maggie had called him at the last minute to ask if he could babysit that night. Not that he minded.

  “Yeah, the babysitter canceled. She’s sick and my parents are out of town. Can you do it?” Maggie sighed through the phone. “I know you just started your new job, and I wouldn’t ask otherwise, but I’m out of options.”

  He wasn’t sure whether to be happy that she’d thought to ask him, or offended that he was her last resort.

  “I worked a morning shift today, so I’m actually home now. I’d love to see Alex. He owes me a rematch of Mario Kart.”

  “Great.” The relief in her voice was evident. “He’s done with school at three thirty. Do you know how to get to his school?”

  “I do. I’ll be there to pick him up.” He set his phone back on the nightstand and looked around. Maggie was finally accepting him in Alex’s life and he was settling down in Candle Beach. His little room at the B&B wasn’t going to cut it much longer. He wanted somewhere where he could make a meal or play his music without fear of waking up the neighbor. And with his savings and the low housing costs in Candle Beach, he should be able to afford something decent. That was something Candle Beach had over living in the big city. There may not be much nightlife, but at least he could afford a home.

  He still hadn’t heard anything from the government about the Border Patrol job, but it didn’t really matter. At this point, he was committed to staying in town and he looked forward to getting involved in small-town life.

  Alex was ecstatic to see Jake when he picked him up from school. He jumped up and down and tugged at Jake’s arm.

  “Uncle Jake, can I introduce you to my friends?” He yanked on Jake’s hand, not giving him an option to say no. He allowed his nephew to pull him over to where a group of young boys stood. Their moms were grouped next to them, chattering away to each other.

  “This is my Uncle Jake,” Alex said proudly to his friends. “He was in the Army and went to Iraq.”

  The boys stared at him like Alex had told them that his uncle had invented the Nerf gun.

  “Whoa,” a tall, towheaded boy said. “Did you shoot anyone?”

  Jake smiled. Kids always asked him that question. “Well...”

  The curious kid’s mother overheard and approached Jake. “I’m sorry, sir, he’s pretty blunt. You don’t have to answer him.” She cocked her head to the side. “I haven’t seen you around before. Are you a relative of Alex’s?”

  “I’m his uncle. I just moved to town after getting out of the Army.”

  She appraised him from head to toe and gave him a thousand-watt smile. “Well, thank you for your service. If you need someone to show you around town, let me know.”

  He smiled at her and took Alex’s hand. He never knew what to say when people thanked him for his military service. While he was proud of what he’d done, it seemed strange to be thanked by a stranger for doing your job.

  After they were half a block away from the elementary school, Alex turned to Jake and said, “That was so cool. Max is always bragging about his dad being a scientist, but being in the Army is even better.”

  “Your dad was in the Army too, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Alex frowned. “But I never really got to know him. He died when I was a baby. I wish he was here so Max wouldn’t make fun of me for not having a dad.”

  Jake’s throat tightened. Did Maggie know how much Alex missed having a father present in his life?

  He stopped and knelt on the ground in front of Alex. He looked his nephew straight in the eye. “Your dad would have loved you so much. Correction, he did love you. He used to call me and tell me all the cute things you did as a baby.” The boy’s face had crumpled and tears streamed down his cheeks. Jake hugged him. “If you ever need me, I’ll be there for you.”

  Alex turned his face up, a glimmer of hope stretching across his face. “You promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “Hey,” Alex whispered. “Do you want to see my friends and my secret hiding place?”

  “Uh, sure.” What kind of hiding place could a little kid possibly have?

  Alex led him to a dilapidated white house a few blocks away. The windows were boarded up on the main floor, and the upstairs windows had been broken. A chain-link fence surrounded the property. It probably looked like an interesting place to a little kid, but to him it just looked dangerous.

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to play here, buddy.”

  “All my friends do. Don’t tell Mom though. She’d get upset.” He rested his backpack against the fence and pulled at a broken section to allow entrance to the backyard. “See? It’s easy to get in here.”

  Jake stared at the kid’s backpack, its bright colors a stark contrast to the run-down house’s dirty, flaking exterior.

  He got down to Alex’s level. “I don’t want you playing here anymore.” He pointed to the sagging porch steps. “Do you see those steps over there? Anyone walking on them could go through the wood at any time. This place is rotting and needs to be torn down.” He looked Alex directly in the eye.

  “Yes, sir,” Alex mumbled, his face crestfallen. “We don’t come here very often anyways.”

  “Good. I’m just getting to know you and I don’t want anything bad to happen to you, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Jake grabbed his hand and led him down the street to Maggie’s apartment. He used the key she’d left under the mat to unlock the door. When she got home, he needed to give her a lecture about safety. This may be a small town, but two days at the police department had taught him that even Candle Beach sometimes had problems.

  He helped Alex with a short math assignment and then they turned on Mario Kart.

  Alex screwed up his face in concentration as he veered from side to side in sync with his race car. “I’m winning, I’m winning,” he shrieked.

  Jake had to hide his smile. He’d been playing with only one hand as a handicap.

  Alex’s car soared across the finish line.

  “Good job! I guess you are the master of Mario Kart.” He put down his controller and gave Alex a high five, and a smile stretched across his nephew’s face.

  Then Jake stood and stretched. “I’m going to the kitchen for something to drink. Do you want anything? A glass of milk?”

  “No, thanks.” Alex was captivated by the highlights reel of their recent race.

  Jake filled a glass with ice water from the fridge and leaned against the doorway to the kitchen. The little boy looked so much like Brian had as a child. He thought again about how much Brian would have loved seeing his son grow up. Any man would be proud to have a kid as special as Alex. Or, for that matter, to be married to Maggie. His brother had been lucky to have them in his life, if only for such a short time.

  He himself had felt such joy being in their lives since he arrived in town. From the moment he’d seen Maggie again, he’d known he was physically attracted to her, and that attraction had grown to include mental and emotional components as well. He’d never felt this way before. Maggie seemed reluctant to consider him as anything other than Brian’s older brother, but he thought she may be warming to him.

  His eyes caught on Maggie and Brian’s wedding photo on the end table by the kitchen. Both his brother and Maggie wore huge smiles as they stared into each other’s eyes, consumed by their love for each other.

  What would Brian think if he were to ask Maggie out on a date? Would he be upset? He glanced back to Alex. His brother had asked him to help with his wife and son, but he probably hadn’t intended for them to be romantically involved. Was he moving in on Brian’s family? Trying to take what should have been his brother’s?

  He shook his head. He couldn’t think like that. Brian was gone and nothing could bring him back and make his little family whole again. Jake needed to look towards the future, and what he saw there was a chance at happiness for Maggie, Alex, and himself.

  9

  Snow had f
allen in Candle Beach overnight, just in time for the annual winter festival. Jake knocked on the door to Maggie’s apartment and breathed in the crisp, cool air while he waited for her to answer it. Had it really only been a week and a half since he’d arrived in Candle Beach? When he’d arrived, he’d had nothing, and now he had deepening family ties and a job with the police department.

  “Hey.” Maggie opened the door and smiled at him. She wore a long-sleeved cotton shirt and blue jeans that hugged her curves. “We’re almost ready to go. She thrust a thermos of coffee at him. “We’ll want this later.” She turned backward to yell, “Alex, let’s go!” His nephew skipped into the room.

  Jake took the coffee from her and leaned against the doorframe, gazing at the empty street outside and enjoying the juxtaposition of warmth from her apartment and the icy coldness of the outdoors.

  When she came out, she’d dressed both herself and Alex in fluffy winter jackets. Her apartment was a little too far from the Marina Park to walk in the winter, so she drove them there in her Prius.

  When she’d invited him to join her and Alex at the winter festival, he hadn’t known what it would be like. It turned out to be a big town event. He recognized several new acquaintances and waved at them.

  “This is my favorite time of year.” Maggie twirled around in the middle of the Marina Park. Twinkly white lights hung in all the trees and a light dusting of snow coated the ground like powdered sugar. She opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue to catch a stray snowflake. A group of people turned in her direction and smiled before returning to their conversation.

  “Mom, stop that.” Alex shuffled his feet around in the snow, clearly embarrassed by her antics. He turned to Jake. “Can you make her stop?”

  He laughed. “Your mom’s happy. Let her be.”

  Maggie shot him a grateful smile.

  “So, what’s on the agenda?” Jake reviewed the huge schedule posted on the bulletin board by the gazebo. It listed in blue paint a full day’s worth of activities that the Chamber of Commerce had planned.

  “I’ve been coming to the winter festival since I was a kid. It’s one of my favorite childhood memories.” She pointed to one of the items on the list. “How about sandcastle building at the beach? That’s always my favorite thing to do during the festival.”

  “Sandcastles? In the middle of December?” Jake stared at her dubiously.

  “It’s winter time on the coast. We don’t get much snow accumulation for a snowman-building contest, so we have to use what we do have—sand. They aren’t all sandcastles, more like sand sculptures of whatever you want.”

  “Sounds fun.” He picked up a brochure and leafed through it. “Maybe we can check out the pie-eating contest later?” His mouth salivated at the thought of freshly baked pies.

  Alex sulked. “I don’t want to build a sandcastle.”

  Maggie gave her son the evil eye and said sternly, “Let’s go.” She took his hand and pulled him toward the beach overlook.

  When they arrived at the overlook, she pointed out the crowd of people a hundred feet from the foot of the stairs. Like them, everyone in the crowd was dressed for winter. Jake found it humorous to see people hanging out on the sand in the dead of winter. Instead of wearing bathing suits to lounge in the sun, they wore puffy jackets and snow or rain boots.

  They walked down the icy stairs to the sandcastle-building contest headquarters. Down on the beach, the sand was clear of snow.

  “Where’s the snow?” Alex craned his head from side to side, searching for white powder.

  “When the snow hits the beach, it melts because of all the salt in the sand, just like when we put salt on the sidewalk.” Maggie took his hand and dragged him over to where a tall man with a clipboard and a portly woman were giving out instructions.

  “We’d like to enter the family contest.”

  “Sure.” The man consulted his clipboard and then pointed down the beach. “Do you see where that large family is down there?”

  She nodded. A family with at least four kids and two sets of grandparents were hard at work building an immense sand structure.

  “You can take the area of beach next to them. Good luck.” He handed her a piece of paper with the contest rules on it.

  She beamed at Alex and Jake. “So? Are you guys ready for some fun?”

  Jake looked at the beach. Making sand castles on a soggy beach, wearing a parka in the middle of winter, wasn’t exactly his idea of fun. But, it was obviously important to Maggie.

  He pasted a smile on his face and pumped his fist in the air. “Let’s go make a sandcastle!”

  Alex glared at him, but he grabbed his nephew’s hand and tugged at him until he followed his mother over to their designated building location.

  “So what should we build?”

  “An igloo?” Jake suggested. It made sense in the freezing weather.

  She smiled at him with condescension. “Half of these teams are making igloos. Get creative, Price.”

  “Fine, fine.” He thought for a moment. “How about a Christmas tree? We could build it lying on the ground instead of standing up, but you’d know what it was from above.”

  She considered his suggestion. “I like it. We’ll need ornaments and a nice star though.”

  Jake eyed Alex. “Your mom takes this very seriously.”

  “I know. She does this every year.” He sighed and looked enviously at a family ascending the beach stairs to town.

  Jake shivered, but Maggie didn’t appear affected by the chilly weather. She instructed them on how to form the individual tree branches and ornaments so they’d look more realistic. Two hours later, when every part of his body was frozen, he thought it was done, but she stared at it, tapping her chin with her finger.

  “It’s missing something.”

  “What?” Most of the other contestants had finished, and while he had to admit that their Christmas tree looked nicer than the neighboring family’s igloo, he envied them being off the beach, probably drinking hot cocoa in the town square. He pulled out the thermos of coffee and took a swig of it. It was lukewarm, but tasted fine.

  “Presents,” Maggie said. “We forgot to make presents for under the tree.” She scooped up some sand and knelt down to form a square at the base of the tree.

  “Mom, I’m tired of this,” Alex whined.

  “Just a little longer. Then we can all go get pie and hot chocolate.” She added a ribbon and a bow.

  “I’m going back to town. All my friends are probably playing at the park by now.” He ran off toward the stairs.

  “Alex, get back here,” Maggie called. She and Jake jogged over to the stairs to catch up with him, but it only made him go faster, taking the steps two at a time without holding on to the railing. When he was only ten feet in front of them, Jake watched in horror as he slipped on a patch of ice and crashed down to the step, landing on his left arm.

  “Owie, owie.” Tears streamed down Alex’s face as he cradled his arm. Maggie was at his side in a second.

  “Are you okay? Can you move it? I told you not to run on the stairs.” She touched his arm and he winced. She shook her head. “They should have put sand on the stairs. Someone could have broken their neck.”

  His arm hung at his side at an awkward angle. Alex tried unsuccessfully to rotate his arm.

  Jake knelt by his nephew and inspected the injury. “Yep, I’d say that was broken.”

  Alex burst out into a fresh torrent of tears. “Now I can’t ride my bike.”

  Jake smiled. “You’ll be okay in a few weeks. They’ll put a cast on your arm and you’ll be good as new.”

  Maggie turned to Jake. “What do we do? He’s never broken a bone before.”

  “His pediatrician should be able to set it.”

  Her face fell. “It’s Saturday, they won’t be in.”

  “Okay, well, let’s take him to the hospital in Haven Shores.” They helped Alex to a standing position. Slowly, they made their way to the car. T
ears were bright in Alex’s eyes and Maggie cringed whenever his face twisted in pain.

  Jake put his arm around Maggie, who looked like she was about to cry herself. “Boys break bones, it’ll be okay. It’s part of growing up. Did Brian ever tell you about breaking his leg falling out of a tree when he was a kid?”

  “No, never.” Maggie looked at him with interest as they helped Alex into the car and carefully strapped him into his booster seat. “What was he doing?”

  Jake looked at Alex in the rearview mirror as he related the story. “Well, you see, your father bet me that he could get an apple from the top of the tree in Grandma and Grandpa’s backyard. Have you seen that tree?”

  Alex nodded. “It’s huge.”

  Jake smiled. “It is very tall. Your dad picked out an apple near the very top to be his goal. He actually did make it to the top, but when he tried to carry his prize apple down, his foot slipped off a branch and he toppled out of the tree. I was standing below him, but there was nothing I could do. He was down there on the ground, with the bone sticking out of his skin and blood everywhere.”

  “Ew,” Alex said. “That sounds gross. At least the bone isn’t sticking out of my skin.”

  Maggie made a face and turned a little green. “I can’t believe he never told me about this. I always wondered how he got that scar on his leg, but I never asked.”

  “Yeah, and of course, I got blamed for it. I was the older brother and according to my mom, I should have been more careful.” He glanced at Maggie. “But you know Brian, he was headstrong and ready for any challenge that came along. There was no way I could talk him out of climbing that tree once he’d set his mind on it.”

  Maggie laughed. “That does sound like Brian. I remember trying to talk him out of climbing out on a ledge one time when we were hiking. He scared me so badly that I refused to talk to him until we had reached the trailhead.”