Sweet Nothings: A Bethany Beach Romance

by Lacy Hart

  I turned away from Damian and went back towards Jodie. Tears were welling in my eyes, and my face felt hot from yelling. Jodie put her arms around me and held me as I cried louder.

  I could hear Damian as he took a few steps across the room to come towards us.

  “Don’t!” I yelled.

  “Damian, maybe you had better go,” Jodie said strongly as she held me.

  “I’m not sure what is going on here or what happened, but I am going to find out and come back,” Damian said calmly.

  “Don’t bother,” I said curtly. I turned to look directly at Damian. “You got what you wanted. You got the property, got to have some fun, and pulled one over on me. That should be enough for you. Get out. This is still my place, for now.”

  “Kelly, please…” Damian took two more steps closer to me and put his hand on my arm. I wrenched my hand away as quickly as I could.

  “GET OUT!” I screamed. “You’ve fucked up my life enough, haven’t you?”

  Damian shook his head and shuffled out of the kitchen. I turned back to Jodie and sobbed loudly as she held me again.

  No sooner had Damian left than Mom and Alex came into the kitchen to see what was going on. Everyone peppered me with questions, asking what happened, why I was so upset and so on. I explained what I saw when I entered Damian’s house, with his arms wrapped around this woman in her bathing suit, smiling and laughing like they didn’t have a care in the world.

  “What a dick,” Alex said in disgust.

  “Alex, please go back out and watch the shop,” Mom said to her.

  “Why can’t I stay? I’m part of this too,” Alex complained.

  “Because we have customers out there that need help,” Jodie said, taking charge.

  “Did he say anything about the letter?” Mom asked.

  “I never even got the chance to ask him,” I said. I dried my eyes with a paper towel that Jodie had handed to me. “As soon as I saw them together I turned around and left.”

  “Kelly, are you sure about what you saw?” Mom said to me.

  “What is that supposed to mean? How else can I take that, Mom? He was hugging some woman dressed in a wet bikini in his house early in the morning. How am I supposed to react?”

  “All I’m saying is that there may be more to it than what you saw. After meeting Damian and what you have said about him, it’s just hard to believe that he would be like that.”

  “Mom, I know you always want to believe the best in people, but there are lots of assholes out there just looking to take advantage of people like you and me. I think he had you fooled… and he had me fooled too.” I started crying again and felt Mom pat me on the back as Jodie held me once more.

  Mom left the kitchen to go out to the shop, leaving me alone with Jodie.

  “Jodie, I can’t deal with this, I just can’t. It feels like everything is crashing down right now.”

  “I know, Kelly,” Jodie said as she consoled me. “We’ll figure all this out. There has to be something we can do that can save the bakery.”

  The bakery was certainly a primary concern of mine, but there was so much more that tore me up inside. I thought I had found someone I could be with, enjoy, and most of all, trust. Now all of that disappeared in a matter of minutes, and I was left with nothing.

  20

  Damian

  I walked slowly back towards my house, barely even noticing anyone along the way as I tried to figure out what was going on. Kelly didn’t even give me the chance to find out facts about whatever letter she was talking about, and apparently when she saw me hugging Shannon, it was just the icing on the cake. I had to get the opportunity to talk to her more about what she saw, but she was not going to let me do it when she was as distraught as she was.

  I tried to run through my head just what she could be talking about and how things got dismantled so quickly, and by the time I reached the house, I knew I had to start sorting through what facts I did know.

  I walked through the door and lumbered up the stairs, lost in my thoughts. I went right past James on the second floor as he was coming out of the pool area.

  “Everything okay, Boss?” he asked me.

  “No… no, it’s not.”

  I got up to the top floor and sat down on the couch, pondering everything that Kelly had said. James and Shannon both appeared, wrapped in towels from their swim.

  “Damian, what’s going on?” Shannon asked.

  “That was Kelly in the house before. She’s very upset. Something about a letter she got from our company saying we had bought the property on the boardwalk and were evicting her and the other businesses. Then she saw me hugging you, and I think the combination of the two was more than she could take.”

  “What property? I don’t know about us buying anything,” Shannon said with a confused look on her face. “Did you tell her who I was, or why we were hugging?”

  “I never even got the chance to get a word in edgewise. Every time I tried to say something, she cut me off, and it just made things worse. I have to find out what is going on so I can straighten this mess out.”

  I grabbed my cell phone out of my pocket and tried to call Paul at the office. His cell phone went right to voicemail, and I left him a message to call me back right away. I then tried his office phone and got his assistant, Miranda, on the phone.

  “Miranda, it’s Damian. Is Paul in his office? I need to speak with him right away.”

  Miranda could sense the urgency in my voice.

  “No Mr. Woods, he’s not. He took today off to relax. He said something about you telling him to relax more, and then after this big deal he wanted to celebrate.”

  “What big deal?” I raised my voice more than I normally would have, and I think it shocked Miranda on the other end.

  “The purchase that he… he just closed on. The property in Delaware for the new office. He said it was just what you would have wanted and that he got it for a great deal.”

  I sighed deeply, trying to hold back my anger.

  “Miranda, do you have copies of the paperwork of the deal? I would like to see it.”

  “Yes, I have the hard copies here, but the electronic ones are only on Paul’s laptop, and he has that with him.”

  “Scan the pages in and send them to my email,” I said gruffly. “And do all you can to get a hold of Paul. As soon as you reach him, tell him to call me, or you call me and let me know what’s going on.”

  “Did I… did I do something wrong, Mr. Woods?” Miranda said with hesitation.

  “No,” I told her. I tried to regain my composure as best as I could. “You didn’t do anything. Thanks for your help, Miranda.” I hung up the phone abruptly and sat down on the couch.

  “Paul closed some deal this week for the property. Miranda is sending me the paperwork so I can see what this is all about.”

  “Can he really do that without getting your approval first?” James asked me.

  “He can, but he’s supposed to let me know about it before he goes ahead with anything like that.”

  Shannon sat on the couch next to me.

  “He has been trying to reach you for days,” Shannon said quietly.

  “I know, but he also knew that this was time away from work for me. He couldn’t wait to try to do this deal until after my vacation was done so I could say no? What was the big rush to do this? I don’t get it. And now things are royally screwed up with Kelly. She thinks this was all my doing like it was some devious plan on my part to get the property.”

  I got up and paced around the room a bit, trying to figure out what I could do to convince Kelly that this wasn’t any of my doing. Accomplishing that seemed impossible at this point, especially since it was my company that did all this, and she did see me with Shannon without knowing who she was or why she was in my house so early in the morning.

  I heard my email ding at the arrival of a new message and saw it was the scanned files from Miranda. I opened them quickly and began to study them, lo
oking over the contract and then the sample of the letter that was sent to all the business owners that were being forced out of their locations so quickly. After reading everything I sat back on the couch, resting my head on the back cushion and staring up at the ceiling, trying to decide my next move.

  “How’s it look?” Shannon asked me, handing me a cup of coffee that she had just made.

  “It seems pretty cut and dry as far as a real estate deal goes. There’s nothing special about it. It’s a good chunk of that area of the boardwalk. It’s going to force out about a dozen or so businesses. There’s a cash incentive there for businesses to vacate quickly that some may have taken advantage of already. I don’t know how he managed to get this done so fast. It’s not like he knew about the house I had down here already or my plans, and we’ve only been here for a few days. Something’s not right about all this.”

  I closed my laptop and tossed it into my briefcase, and then picked up my phone and tried to reach Paul again, without any luck. I slammed my phone down on the table in disgust.

  Shannon came over and put her hand on my shoulder.

  “What can we do to help?”

  “At this point, I don’t know what anyone can do. The contracts have been signed and filed. Technically, the business owns the property right now, and with people already taking the incentive cash, I don’t see a clear way out of all this. No wonder Kelly was so mad. God, she must really hate me right now, and I can’t say I blame her.”

  The sun was up and shone brightly now, and I looked out the windows, out over the ocean, and tried to imagine what had been running through Kelly’s head after we had spent the past few days together. The time I had spent with her was better than any I had spent with anyone else, and to see all that tossed away so suddenly was devastating to me. I had to do whatever I could to try to make things right, to see what had truly occurred. Even when I ran over the scenarios myself, I didn’t see how to make things better.

  I walked over to the table, grabbed my briefcase and started to make my way down the stairs.

  “Where are you going?” Shannon yelled.

  “I have to get back to New York,” I replied as I made my way down towards the garage. “I’m taking the Mustang. If you find out anything from Paul or hear from him, get in touch with me right away.”

  “Boss, why don’t you let me drive you?” James said as he followed me down the stairs. “Maybe you aren’t in the best state of mind to drive yourself right now.”

  “I appreciate the offer, James, but I can handle it. I’ll be careful, I promise.”

  I took a quick look at my watch and saw it was almost eight in the morning. I knew if I left right now, I could be in New York by one or two, giving me plenty of time to get to the office before everyone was gone for the day.

  I pulled the Mustang out of the garage and headed out towards Route 1 as fast as I could. I hoped to get this taken care of and get back to talk to Kelly, if she would let me, before things went too far to save.

  21

  Kelly

  Usually, the bakery was my happy place, the place I could retreat to that was my domain. I could get lost in what I was doing, be creative, and know that I owned what was happening. After everything that went down in the morning, I no longer felt that way. Every time I looked up or tried to concentrate on work, the thoughts would just flash across my mind about how Damian had let me down, betrayed me, taken all I had worked for in one fell swoop. To make things worse, he had captured my heart and then broken it quickly, and I wasn’t sure how I would recover from either of these devastations.

  My family did their best to try to make things better for me. They encouraged me to leave the bakery, go home and figure things out. Honestly, I always did my best thinking when I was working so I just kept at it. I voraciously dove into the dough, and made tray after tray of cookies and pastries, crafted pie dough and even made some breads just so I could keep my hands and my mind busy working on something else, anything else but what had happened.

  By the time we got close to the end of the day, my body and mind were spent. I went out to the storefront and slumped into one of the chairs, causing a puff of flour to rise off my covered apron. I leaned my head against the wall and covered my face with a sack towel as I closed my eyes. I could hear Alex whisper to my mother, and then the clang of Alex dropping some of the empty trays from the display cases onto the floor. I heard scurrying about and then the kitchen door whooshing open and closed, and the slow, shuffling feet of my mother as she came over and sat in the chair across from me. The familiar sound of a coffee mug sliding across the table was in front of me, and as I peeled the towel from the front of my eyes, I could smell the rich aroma of what Mom had just brewed for me.

  I tossed the towel onto the table and picked up the mug, inhaling the smell so it could perk me up a bit before I took a sip.

  “We were busy today,” Mom noted, trying to skirt around the real issues that were in front of me. I just nodded to her as I sipped more coffee.

  “Kelly,” Mom started, “I know you feel like you got body slammed today by all this. I wish I could do something to take what you are going through away from you. I always hate when one of you is struggling or hurt. I know it sounds cliché, but you will get through this – WE will get through this.”

  “That’s easy to say, Mom. It’s a lot harder to do. We’re losing everything, all we worked so hard far, all the money we sunk into this place to get started. We put our souls into this place, and one piece of paper is going to take it all away.”

  “Maybe,” Mom said softly, “Maybe we should just take his money. To hell with him and take the buyout. We can start over somewhere else in town. We have a good core of local customers. People will support you, Kelly, you know they will.”

  “Even if we took his money it wouldn’t be enough to get started over at a new location. We would have to find a spot, get equipment, and spend months getting set up again. Think of all we would lose in that time. By then, summer is over, all the tourists are gone, and a huge chunk of our business with it. And we’ll never find a spot as good as this one, right on the boardwalk with lots of foot traffic. If we’re off in town somewhere, we get fewer people coming by and less business. I don’t see how we can make it work.”

  I took another sip of coffee and then gripped the towel in my hand, squeezing. I was frustrated, angry, and sad all at the same time. I had let myself trust again, let myself get close to someone – let myself fall in love – and it all came back to bite me. Nothing seemed fair about any of it. I put the towel back over my eyes to cover the sting of the tears that were forming in my eyes. I heard myself start to sniffle, and my mother reached over and gently took my hand in hers while I cried.

  The bakery front door opened as the bells on it lightly jingled. Mom’s chair creaked as she pivoted to look back at whoever had entered, and she stood up to go behind the counter.

  “I’m afraid there’s not much left,” Mom said to the patrons. “It’s pretty near to closing time.”

  “I’m actually here to see Kelly… Kelly Barton,” a woman’s voice stated.

  I removed the towel from my face, wiping my eyes as I did, and looked at the woman standing in front of me. It was the person I saw in the bathing suit hugging Damian. She looked over at me and turned to face me.

  “I’m Shannon,” she said to me. “I think we need to talk about a few things.”

  “I really have nothing to say to you,” I said gruffly. I stood up and moved away from her to go back to the kitchen.

  “Kelly, wait!” I heard a man’s voice yell. I looked back and saw James just inside the door. “There are a lot of things you’re missing to all this. Let us at least fill you in, and then you can decide what to do, okay? Please?”

  I sat back down and crossed my arms over my chest. “Go ahead,” I replied. “Tell me about how Damian screwed me out of my business, and about how he was holding…” I was tearing up again as I spoke. “Holding you
in his arms. I saw you with him. There’s nothing you can say that will change what I saw.”

  Shannon sat down across from me.

  “Yes, you saw him hugging me, but you don’t know why he was doing that,” she explained. “I’m Damian’s personal assistant…”

  “I bet you are,” I said sarcastically.

  “Kelly, let her explain,” Mom interrupted. “Maybe there’s more to this.”

  “Sure, maybe they want the keys to my house too since they are taking everything else away.”