Swept Away for Christmas

by M. J. Fredrick

  “I wouldn’t have blamed you.”

  His response eased the tension a little, and within five minutes he was pulling into the parking area for The Half Shell, the beachfront restaurant that served just about any type of seafood you’d ever want. Before they even walked through the front door, she knew what she wanted.

  When they reached their table and she took off her jacket, Luke chuckled at her shirt.

  “Told you I had one.”

  He flashed her Spock’s Vulcan salute.

  She pointed at the hand gesture. “I can’t do that, no matter how hard I try. My pinkie and ring finger totally refuse to cooperate.”

  “You have to build up enough nerd cred before it works.”

  She swatted him on the upper arm with the back of her hand before taking her seat. She didn’t even look at the menu, instead carefully watching Luke as he examined the offerings as if he hadn’t been to the Half Shell a million times. She wondered if he’d brought other dates here.

  When she ordered the endless shrimp basket, Avery caught the smile on Luke’s face. As soon as the waitress left with their orders, he leaned his forearms against the red-and-white checked tablecloth. “Think mighty highly of your construction assistant skills, don’t you?”

  She grabbed one of the hush puppy appetizers the waitress had brought. “A day ago, you didn’t have an assistant.”

  “A day ago, I didn’t have anyone dumping a tray of paint on my head.”

  “Still hanging on to that? Geez, let it go.”

  Luke laughed and nabbed his own hushpuppy. Avery made the unfortunate choice of looking up just as he took a bite. Her eyes locked on his lips, and she wondered what they would feel like against her own.

  Giving herself a mental slap, she looked out the window. But that proved useless since all she saw was the dark of the night. No people on the beach, no boat lights on the water, no distant sunset.

  “So how goes the job search?”

  Thankful for a safe topic, she latched onto it. “Disappointing so far. I’ve sent out some more inquiries, but so far bupkis.”

  “Might just be that everyone is taking time off for the holidays.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” She didn’t want to acknowledge the fear in her gut that it was more likely that there wasn’t anything open. Or if there were any positions, there would be so many applicants that it would be a dogfight to win them.

  “Maybe you should start your own magazine,” he said.

  “Yeah, with all that startup capital I have stashed away.”

  “That’s why they have business loans.”

  “Not sure I’m cut out to run the show.” For some reason, her conversation with LeeLee popped into her mind. She realized now that the look on LeeLee’s face had been hope. She was working toward her dream, and it was making her happy despite all the effort.

  Did Avery even have a dream beyond more of the same? Whoa, where had that come from? She’d never been dissatisfied with her job. Had she? She sat back in her chair, considering the unexpected question. Did she really want to find another magazine job, or was she just rushing toward what she knew? But if not that, what?

  “You look deep in thought all of a sudden,” Luke said.

  “Sorry.”

  The waitress arrived with their food, and Avery’s stomach growled in response.

  “Guess it’s a good thing you got the endless basket,” Luke said when the waitress left the table.

  “Hush. I’ve had a piece of toast and a slice of pizza today. And I could pretty much eat my weight in shrimp even when I’m not hungry enough to gnaw my arm off.”

  As she’d told her grandmother they probably would, they talked about former classmates, teachers and shared memories from high school.

  “I ran into LeeLee at the bakery. I had no idea she and Brandon weren’t together anymore.”

  “Yeah, he’s an idiot.”

  “Not a fan, I see.”

  “I never really liked him. He was an ass in high school, and he evidently hasn’t changed.”

  There was a little too much vehemence behind Luke’s words for his assessment to be a casual observance. “Did he do something to you?”

  He shrugged as he ate a fry. “Let’s just say he reminded me too much of people I went to school with in Miami.”

  There was more to the story, but she didn’t dig any deeper. “I’d forgotten you moved from Miami. Starfish Shores must have been a big shock.”

  “I liked it, right from the beginning.”

  “Really? Most kids who grow up in small towns want to move away as fast as they can.”

  “Like you?”

  “I wasn’t fleeing anything. I just knew that what I wanted to do, I couldn’t do here. Didn’t you ever want to go back to Miami or give another city a try? There would probably be more work than you can get here.”

  “I do fine here, and I have no desire to live in a city again. They’re not all they’re cracked up to be.”

  “Okay,” she said slowly then took another bite of shrimp. Man it was good to eat fresh seafood, really fresh, as in probably caught that morning.

  “That wasn’t a knock on you for choosing to live in a city. I just didn’t have a good experience.”

  Something in his eyes made her want to comfort him. “What happened?”

  “The classic story of the nerdy kid. Got bullied, beat up a few times. I withdrew so much that my parents were worried enough to move us far away from the problem.”

  “That’s awful. I mean the bullying, not that you moved here.”

  “It took a while for me to really believe things would be different here.”

  “But they were, right? Please tell me I was never mean to you.”

  “You?” He looked genuinely surprised by her question. “No, you were always nice to me. Maybe not as much as I would have liked, but...”

  She stopped with a fry halfway to her mouth.

  “You had no idea I had a big, fat crush on you, did you?”

  Avery placed the fry back in the basket. “No, you never said anything.”

  “I almost did once, the day our senior year when there was that big beach party. But that was when you got with Mike Hartnell.”

  “Ugh. I wish you had said something to save me from that waste of a Y chromosome.”

  Luke laughed. “I kicked myself for a while, but it’s what changed me. I decided I didn’t want to be the guy on the sidelines anymore.”

  “You shouldn’t give up who you are just to get someone else’s attention.”

  “I didn’t. I’m still a big geek boy inside with the sci-fi movie collection to prove it. No, I just needed to figure out what I really wanted, and I did.”

  “I’m glad.” She picked up the abandoned fry again, ate it as she thought about everything Luke had just revealed. “You ever think about how you could probably beat up those bullies now?”

  “I’m not so sure about that. They were big, even then.”

  “Yeah, but I’m betting they were dumb as a box of rocks. Not only are you not a wimp physically, but you could outsmart them.”

  “I think I’ll just leave them to whatever pathetic life they’re probably living.”

  “You’re a better person that me.”

  “How so?”

  She pointed a fry at him. “Would you believe I got bullied once, too? Jana Phelps, in the third grade. She thought it was great fun to tease me for not having parents.”

  His expression darkened. “God, Avery, I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. She got hers.”

  “Don’t tell me you slugged her on the playground.”

  “No. Even though she stopped with that particular line of teasing, she was never a nice person, not to anyone.”

  “I gathered that.”

  “I mostly ignored her and her snide comments throughout the years, but she crossed the line our senior year when she pulled a mean girl move against Lily Anton.”

  “Lily? Who co
uld be mean to her?”

  “Exactly.” Lily had been smart and cute but also painfully shy. And she’d had the misfortune of being paired with Jana on a project in their history class. “Jana noticed that Lily liked Sam Treadway and encouraged her to ask him to prom. When Lily got up the nerve to do so, Sam told her he was already going with Jana. And Jana witnessed the whole thing from across the room and laughed about it. I wanted to bust her nose on Lily’s behalf.”

  “But you refrained.”

  Avery smiled. “Yeah. Came up with something better. You remember when we came back from the senior trip and someone had put a dead octopus in her car, and it had sat there in the sun and baked for a week?”

  Luke’s mouth dropped. “That was you?”

  Avery just smiled then chomped down on her fry.

  Luke laughed so much his eyes watered, and Avery found herself joining in.

  “She had to have all of her interior replaced,” he said when he could finally form words.

  “Payback’s a bitch.”

  As they finished their dinner, including key lime pie for dessert, Avery realized she was glad she’d come. Hanging out with Luke was a lot of fun, and she didn’t want the night to end. Too late she realized that it would be oh so easy to let herself fall for him. She might already be halfway there.

  Chapter Five

  Luke couldn’t remember the last time he’d had such a poor night of sleep. When he and Avery had left the restaurant the night before, it had taken all of his willpower not to pull her into his arms and kiss her. But they’d had such a nice time, and he was hopeful of being able to do so again. If he made the wrong move at the wrong time, there would be no more dinners together. And she might not even darken the door of the motel while he was working.

  He glanced up from where he was cutting boards for the soda fountain counter. Avery sat behind the front desk with her head down working on something. Jenni had taken the afternoon off to see her kids in the school Christmas concert.

  He replayed part of their conversation from the night before, remembered how beautiful she’d looked when she’d smiled, how infectious her laughter was as she told the octopus in the car story.

  Wanting to be near her again, he wiped his hands on the towel hanging from his pocket and walked toward her. He leaned on the front counter and looked over at the array of papers she had spread out in front of her. “What are you working on?”

  “Just doodling.”

  It looked like more than doodling to him. He reached over and grabbed a stack of papers.

  “It’s nothing, really. Just ideas for if I had a limitless supply of money.”

  Luke glanced at the combination of sketches and print-offs from websites, all 1950s era interior design ideas. “These are good. If you really went all in on the nostalgia theme, I bet you could draw a lot of people here. The same types that go for road trips on Route 66 or watch Antiques Roadshow.”

  Avery looked up at him with surprise and maybe a little appreciation. “That’s what has been spinning in my head ever since I got the idea that the place might benefit from a bit of sprucing up, some new life.” Her expression dimmed as she looked down at the rest of the papers in front of her. “But business has been down enough the past couple of years that Grandma and Grandpa don’t have a lot of capital to play with. And I’m no help at the moment, unemployed as I am.”

  Luke nodded toward what would become the soda fountain area. “That’s a start. You get some teenage kid to dress like an old school soda jerk, making malts and shakes and banana splits, and I think you’ll see business begin to grow some.”

  She tapped the top paper in front of her. “We’d have to sell a shake to everyone in Alabama to afford the big ideas my brain keeps coming up with. It’s like once I get started, I can’t stop.”

  He eyed the paper in front of her and spun it to face him. It was a picture of a drive-in movie theater. “Remember the drive-in that was at the edge of town? It closed right after we moved here.”

  “Yeah, the fish market is there now.”

  The front door opened, and Alice walked in. “Thought I’d come over and see how things are progressing.”

  There was a twinkle in Alice’s eye that made Luke wonder if she was referring to more than the renovations. He wanted to keep talking to Avery, but instead he walked with Alice into the breakfast area and showed her what he’d done so far.

  “We’re waiting on the black and white floor tile to come in. Once I get that down, I can start building the fountain area.”

  Alice patted him on the arm. “I know you’ll do a good job. I hear nothing but great things about your work.”

  “Thanks. Glad to hear it.”

  Alice glanced back at her granddaughter, whom Luke saw was giving her grandmother a suspicious look. He had to press his lips together to not smile.

  “How did your date go last night?” Alice asked.

  “We had a nice time.”

  “Good, good.” Alice nodded.

  He felt like Alice was saying more than she was actually saying, but he didn’t ask. He suspected that Alice would love for Avery to stay in Starfish Shores but would never say so because she wanted her granddaughter to have whatever her heart desired. Luke suddenly wanted, really wanted, Avery to desire him.

  Alice moved to leave. “You two should go out and have fun while she’s here. You know what they say about all work and no play.”

  He gave her a little grin. “Yes, ma’am.”

  As Alice was leaving, Tina, one of the other desk clerks, came in for her shift. Not wanting Avery to leave, Luke scrambled for some way to make her stay. She was done with the painting in the small lobby, and he doubted she had any experience cutting lumber. And then, as if the thought had popped into his head on a silver platter, he got the perfect idea.

  He met her as she passed from behind the front desk into the main part of the lobby. “You up for going on a little ride?”

  Avery glanced past him to where he had a two-by-four laid across two sawhorses. “We need more supplies?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  She wrinkled her forehead at him.

  “Trust me.”

  “Okay, but I need cupcake fuel to get through the rest of the afternoon. I was up way too late job hunting.”

  The idea of her leaving again twisted his insides. How could this slip of a woman still have such an effect on him? Had he really not changed from when he was a teen admiring her from afar?

  “I wouldn’t mind a cupcake myself.”

  They ended up buying half a dozen assorted cupcakes, and Luke chomped down on a German chocolate one as he pulled out onto Main Street and headed north over the Intracoastal Bridge.

  “Where are we going?”

  “It’s a surprise.”

  “That seems to be your thing.”

  He glanced across the cab at her. “You not like surprises?”

  She shrugged. “No, I’m good, as long as they don’t involve my imminent demise or an octopus in my car.”

  He smiled. “Did Jana ever figure out it was you?”

  “Nope, a miracle in a town the size of Starfish Shores.”

  Another ten minutes of driving brought them to Grater’s Auto Emporium, a humorous name for a junkyard but one that fit owner Jamie Grater’s personality. He hadn’t been named their senior class’s Class Clown for nothing.

  “You brought me to a junkyard?”

  “Don’t say I don’t know how to show a girl a good time.” He slipped out of the truck, trusting that she would follow.

  She did. “Okay, gotta admit I’m curious as heck now.”

  “Hey, Luke,” Jamie said as he walked out of the little office by the front gate. Then he stopped in his tracks. “Avery Phillips. Girl, you’re just as hot as you were in high school.” Before Avery could respond, Jamie closed the distance between them and gave her a big, smacking kiss on the cheek.

  Luke’s hands knotted into fists, but Avery just l
aughed.

  “I see you haven’t changed either,” she said.

  Jamie looked at Luke. “As much as I love my place, I’m not sure this is where you should be bringing a pretty girl.”

  Avery snorted a laugh at that.

  “Because you’re such an expert in the Romeo department,” Luke said.

  Damn it if Avery didn’t laugh again, probably because of that ugly shirt she’d given him the day before.

  “You still got the parade?” Luke asked.

  “Yep. You know where.”

  Thankfully, Jamie didn’t follow them. Luke led the way through the maze of car bodies and miscellaneous auto parts to the back of the fenced-in junkyard. When he reached what Jamie had dubbed “the parade,” he stopped and pointed at the line of ten 1957 Chevys in various states of disrepair.

  “Um, it’s a bunch of old car bodies,” Avery said.

  “From the same era as the Pelic-Inn.” He walked forward to stand beside the nearest car. “This might be crazy, but your photo of the drive-in got me to thinking. What if we took the ends of a few of these cars, cut them off and refurbished them so they held tables and booths.”

  “For the soda fountain?”

  “No, it’s too small of a room for that.” He tapped the car’s fender. “You could convert the back deck into an open air restaurant and put a movie screen on the back wall of the motel.”

  He saw the moment that the idea lit a fire of excitement in her, and it sent a very different type of excitement surging through him.

  “We could show old movies, serve snack stand type foods — hamburgers, hot dogs, fries, popcorn.” Her voice grew more excited with every word she spoke. “Oh, Luke, this is a great idea.”

  And in the blink of an eye, her excitement drained away, doused by reality.

  “We just can’t afford it. Maybe if things turn around, if the soda fountain and the updates bring in more business.”

  “Sometimes you have to make a big leap of faith to reap big rewards.”

  “Yes, but I can’t leap with my grandparents’ money.”

  Luke hated the look of disappointment on Avery’s face. He wanted more than anything to bring back her smile.

  “I could go ahead and do the work, and they could pay for the supplies when they could.”