Sand dollar lane, p.15
Sand Dollar Lane, page 15
Still, every story had two sides. What was Lucy’s?
You are not interested, he told himself. Lucy Holmes was trouble. She was going to make his life miserable enough as it was simply being in the same town. He didn’t need to get any nearer the woman.
The Beach Bums found a fourth and the game was on, but his game was off. He kept double-faulting on his serves, not to mention biffing a lot of backhand shots that were normally no problem. It had nothing to do with Lucy Holmes though. Men could compartmentalize and he had locked her up way at the back of his brain. He was just having an off day, that was all.
“Did you forget to take your vitamins?” Ellis West teased him after their final set.
“I guess so,” Brody said. “Enjoy that while it lasts. Come next week you and Whit won’t get off so easy.”
Come next week he’d be bringing his A game.
He went home and showered, then swung by Beans and Books, where he complimented Rita on the new hairstyle she was sporting and picked up a latte. Then he went to the office.
Missy greeted him with a concerned look. “Did you read the morning paper?”
“Not yet. I was running late. Figured I’d read it later. Why? Did somebody die?”
“No, but you might want to murder somebody when you see the ad your competition has taken out.” She held out the copy she’d been reading and Brody took it to his desk and sat down with it.
It didn’t take more than a minute for him to find what she’d been talking about. Lucy Holmes had struck again, with a half-page ad. There she was, Photoshopped in front of a McMansion on a sunny beach that he knew was not any of their beaches. She looked lovely and professional in that suit, and her smile promised, “I’ll be your new best friend.”
You’ll Love Lucy, the ad was captioned.
“Yeah, ’til you get to know her,” Brody muttered and read on.
Buying or selling—Dream Homes Realty will make it happen for you. Let Lucy Holmes, premier real estate expert, make your dreams come true.
With a growl, he crumpled the page.
“My thoughts exactly,” Missy said. “You gonna run an ad?”
“You bet I am,” he said. Online and in print. And his would be a full-page ad.
Taylor Marsh walked in, wearing a frown. “I passed the Dream Homes office on my way to the soap shop just now. Do you know how many listing sheets Lucy Holmes has on her window? Four,” she continued without waiting for an answer. “She’s barely been here and she already has four listings.”
“And we’ve got a dozen,” Brody said, going for nonchalance.
“One of those should have been mine,” Taylor grumbled. “My daughter’s in school with Suzannah’s daughter. She was going to list with me. You know why she went with Lucy Holmes?”
“She’s a crummy friend?” guessed Missy.
“Because Lucy Holmes told her she was experienced and she could get Suzannah more money for her house,” Taylor said hotly.
“She downright dissed you?” Missy asked, shocked.
“Well, not exactly,” Taylor admitted. “But she did talk up how much experience she has and how she’s sold all these super expensive houses back in Seattle.”
“This is not Seattle. I suppose she let your friend think she’d get a million bucks for her place.”
“That’s the impression I got.”
“Look, she’s bound to get some business. Let it go,” Brody said.
“Let it go? Have you seen the ad she took out in the paper?” Taylor shot back.
“Yes, and don’t worry. I’m going to be doing one of my own. You’ll sell that house of your friend’s that Lucy Holmes listed and get the sales commission and it will all balance out.”
Taylor said nothing to that. She plopped down at her desk and took out her cell phone.
Brody smiled as he listened to her conversation. “Angela, what are you doing this weekend?...I have just found you the perfect beach house down here. You have to come see it. Tomorrow? Great. I’ll contact the broker and set up a time to show it.”
So a little healthy competition was good. It was motivating Taylor.
And it was sure going to motivate him. This was his town and it was about time Lucy Holmes realized that.
Come Monday he was at the Beach Times office, arranging for a full-page ad to run all week. Competition was definitely good for the local paper. Late that afternoon he followed a lead he’d gotten from Ellis West and visited a couple who wanted to sell their place. He got the listing.
It was a newer two-bedroom with sleek lines and he was pretty sure he had the perfect buyer for it. He took a perverse pleasure in the knowledge that it was right down the street from where the invader lived. Every day she’d get to drive past the For Sale by Beach Dreams Realty sign in front of their front lawn. Followed by the Sold banner.
The only thing not so perfect was the fact that whenever he showed the house, he’d probably drive by and see his son’s car parked at Lucy’s place. Dec’s car wasn’t there that afternoon but Brody noticed the truck that belonged to Seth Waters was.
Doing under-the-table work for Lucy Holmes. Brody’s jaw clenched.
It shouldn’t have irked him to see Waters’s truck parked there but it did. And he shouldn’t have felt betrayed, but he did. He and Waters had hardly been buds since they’d both been rivals for Jenna. But Jenna, the woman he’d helped and protected, the woman he’d asked to marry him... Darn it all, here she was loaning out her husband to help Brody’s competition. Everyone did, indeed, seem to love Lucy. It was all wrong. She wasn’t that loveable.
Let it go, he told himself.
That was easier said than done when he drove past her office the next morning and saw his son standing in the doorway with two to-go cups from Beans and Books. The door opened and a little cutie with honey blond hair like Lucy’s and big eyes smiled up at him with the same killer smile her mother wielded. Declan followed her inside the enemy camp.
Brody let out a growl and clawed his fingers through his hair. Lucy Holmes was like a siren, luring people to her right and left. And whoever escaped the mother was sure to be caught by the daughter.
Of all the beach towns in all the world...
* * *
“That was so sweet of you to bring us coffee,” Lucy said to Declan.
He shrugged off the compliment. “Just thought you might like it.”
“Oh, I do,” Lucy said, and couldn’t help taking perverse pleasure in the fact that the son of Brody Green the Jerk was bringing her daughter and her coffee.
Unlike his father, Declan was proving to be a nice man, the kind of man a woman would want her daughter to fall in love with. Too bad his father the skunk came with him.
Wednesday morning Lucy settled at her desk with her coffee and the paper and opened it to admire her lovely ad, which was still running. She’d already gotten one call as a result. It looked just as lovely as it had the last time she admired it. She turned the page and nearly choked on her drink.
When You Want the Best, it began. There was Brody Green in all his beautiful, smiling glory, wearing slacks and a sweater, seated on the porch of a charming beach cottage. A longtime resident of the community, Brody Green knows your needs and will help you make your dreams come true.
Make your dreams come true. She’d said that!
She read on. It’s your home, your investment, your future. Don’t settle for second best.
She knew exactly whom he was calling second best. What a snake! She hoped he slithered off into the ocean and drowned. No, drowning was too good for him. He deserved to be roasted over a beach fire.
Okay, these were not nice thoughts. But darn, that man brought out the worst in her.
Don’t get mad. Get better. Yes, they’d see who was the best. She was already looking ahead to the Fourth of July and had some ideas for making her presence known. Then they’d see who was best and who was second best.
Meanwhile, there were plenty of other people in Moonlight Harbor to enjoy, and come Friday evening she had the opportunity to hang out with several of them. She’d been invited to Jenna Waters’s house. The women who gathered in Jenna’s living room to drink wine and compare notes on how their businesses had done that week were all welcoming and had plenty to share about both their own lives and the town’s history.
And, oh, good grief, about Brody Green.
“If it weren’t for him, I’d have never been able to get my shop,” said Jenna’s friend, Courtney Greer, who owned Beach Babes Boutique.
“If you haven’t shopped there yet, you need to,” said Tyrella Lamb, owner of the lumberyard and hardware store where Lucy was buying her flooring.
“Of course, when it comes to Brody, the Driftwood has the best story,” Jenna said. “Although I don’t exactly come off looking like Snow White.”
“How could you know? Edie was so tight-lipped,” said Patricia White, who owned the Oyster Inn.
“Jenna remodeled the Driftwood and brought it back to life,” Tyrella explained. “And her great aunt left it to her when she passed. Well, sort of.”
Lucy raised inquisitive eyebrows.
“I was lucky I had Brody watching over it for me,” Jenna said.
“Watching over it?” Lucy asked.
“My aunt Edie left it to him with the proviso that, after I was done paying spousal support, Brody would hand it over to me. Which he did. But I didn’t know about that. Aunt Edie had left me the house, for which I was grateful. But not the Driftwood. After all the work I’d put into making it a paying business, to be just the manager... I was pretty bitter.” She shook her head. “Poor Brody. I thought he’d somehow convinced her to leave it to him and just keep me on as manager. I was so mad at him for so long.”
“Broken engagement,” put in Courtney.
Engagement? Jenna Waters had been engaged to Brody Green?
Jenna sighed. “Poor Brody. He never said a word to defend himself. Just kept the secret as Aunt Edie had instructed until I was done paying spousal support and he could safely transfer the Driftwood to me.”
“He’s a pretty amazing man,” put in Courtney.
Amazing was not the word Lucy would have used for Brody Green. It was as if these women were talking about a completely different man. Listening to them, he sounded like he should have been made a saint. Lucy was more inclined to think of him as an urban myth.
Never mind Brody Green, she told herself. He was nothing more than the human equivalent of a light sunburn—irritating and quickly forgotten. She intended to treat him exactly like that sunburn. She had a business to run and a house to renovate.
Come Monday Seth’s friend Carl Hawthorn, proud owner of Carl’s Construction, was knocking on her door promptly at eight thirty as promised. He appeared to be somewhere in his thirties and was big enough to alarm a grizzly bear. He wore jeans and a T-shirt and work boots on feet that could double as water skis. In defiance of approaching hair loss, he’d shaved his head, which could have made him a little scary except for the fact that he had a friendly smile and I Love Mom tattooed on one arm.
“Hiya, I’m Carl,” he said, just in case Lucy couldn’t figure it out from the truck parked out front.
“I’m Lucy. It’s nice to meet you, Carl. Seth Waters tells me you are great at house renos.”
Just as she was speaking, Hannah rushed up, waving her cell phone. “Wait! Can we shut the door and start this again?”
Carl blinked in confusion and Lucy frowned at her daughter.
“I want to film this,” Hannah explained to him. “For our YouTube channel.”
Carl looked impressed. “You got a channel?”
“We do. It’s called Always Beachin’ and we’re recording everything we do on the house for it.”
“Like Chip and Joanna?” he asked, his papa-bear voice practically quivering with excitement.
“Yep,” Hannah replied, all confidence.
“Sure,” he said, and stepped back.
Lucy still wasn’t sure how she felt about this. Hannah kept assuring her it would be great for business. They could become influencers. They could become famous.
Yes, if her daughter filmed her right at this moment she’d be famous for looking dumpy. That would hardly attract sponsors. The women on those shows were always perfectly made up and dressed to impress. Lucy was wearing no makeup and had on sweats and a pink T-shirt with a half-full wine glass on it that said Gotta Love Women Who Wine—a leftover from a girls’ weekend she’d had with a girlfriend and her sister in Icicle Falls two years before.
She shut the door on Carl and said to her daughter in a low voice, “Give me a minute to change. I’m not dressed for this.”
“You look perfect,” Hannah assured her. “Real.”
“No one looks real in those shows, not even the real housewives.”
Hannah kept saying how good this would be for her brand. How would this help her brand if she looked like a slob? Oh, yeah, she’d look like a real slob. Not happening.
“Come on, Mom, trust me.”
Right. As if a nineteen-year-old knew all about marketing.
Hannah aimed her phone and called, “Knock on the door.”
“Okay,” came Carl’s muffled voice.
“Not yet!” called Lucy.
“Uh, okay,” Carl replied.
“Give me five minutes to put on makeup or I’m not doing this,” Lucy said sternly.
“Okay,” Hannah conceded. “Makeup, but keep the shirt. Please? It’ll come across great. And if some winery sees you in it, they might sponsor us.”
It was a stretch, but Lucy decided she could compromise as long as she had on cute jeans and makeup and her hair looked better. She rushed to her bathroom, applied foundation, eyeliner, mascara and lipstick, then took her hair down and brushed it. Okay, that was better.
She lost the sweats and slippers, then donned jeans and the sandals and hurried back to the front door.
She got there just in time to hear Carl, on the other side of it, asking, “Can I come in yet?”
“Count to three real slow and then knock,” Hannah instructed him through the door.
Then she aimed her phone and started talking. “We’re about to meet our construction genie. Mom doesn’t want you all to see her looking normal, but I think she looks cute. Don’t you? Show us your shirt, Mom.”
This was embarrassing. Lucy was sure her face was turning red.
But, oh, well. She struck a pose and pointed to the wine glass on her T-shirt. “If you drink enough of these, I’ll probably look fine,” she quipped.
Carl knocked on the door again, so hard it looked like it might bounce off its hinges. Lucy opened it and said, “Hi there. You must be Carl.”
He looked momentarily confused, probably because he’d already introduced himself. Then he blinked and nodded and grinned. “Yeah, that’s me. I hear you need help.”
“Boy, does she,” said Hannah the comic.
Oh, yeah, this was going to be great branding. Not. Lucy pointed a finger at her daughter. “At this rate, you’re going to be out of the will,” she joked. Ha ha. She could be clever, too.
Carl guffawed and Hannah giggled. “That was great,” she said as she stopped recording. She played it back for them to watch.
“I look fat,” said Carl.
“No, you look manly,” Hannah assured him, and he smiled.
So did Lucy. It was rather cute and, really, her daughter was very clever.
She followed Lucy and Carl around the house, taking reels and pictures, sometimes using her phone, sometimes her camera, making them wait while she set up lights and microphones.
“This is taking a lot of your time,” Lucy apologized to him.
He shrugged. “No problemo. I got ’til noon.”
Lucy didn’t. She had work to do.
They discussed removing a wall, opening up the living and dining areas and redoing the kitchen. She’d settled on flooring during a visit to Tyrella Lamb’s hardware store with Hannah and Tyrella had given her a deal. Cabinetry for the kitchen and the quartz countertops would come from another source and Carl assured her he could get a builder’s discount. They discussed dollars and cents—off-camera, over Hannah’s objections.
“People want to know how much all this costs,” she protested.
“They may want to know but they don’t need to,” Lucy said. “You should have plenty of material for YouTube and Instagram with what you’ve already shot.”
Hannah frowned but respected her mother’s wishes on the matter. She also agreed to shoot some pictures and reels at the office with Lucy dressed like a professional.
“I not only love fixing up houses, I also love selling them,” Lucy said later as her daughter filmed. “Which is why I’m a real estate broker in beautiful Moonlight Harbor on the Washington coast. Here at Dream Homes Realty, we specialize in helping people find their dream house.”
“Let’s do it again and add just like I found mine,” Hannah suggested. “That’ll be good for both businesses.”
It was a good suggestion and Lucy was impressed. “You are a clever girl,” she said to her daughter.
“I take after my mom,” Hannah replied with a grin.
That afternoon when Lucy stopped in at Waves to make an appointment for a haircut, she offered to do exactly what she’d promised on the reel. A woman had come in while she was visiting with Moira, the creative genius behind so many of the great hairstyles she’d seen around town. The woman’s name was Tamara Gordon and she and her husband were ready to sell their landlocked house and get something on the beach.
“I doubt we’ll be able to though,” Tamara concluded with a sigh. “Houses are more expensive in the area where we’re looking and the one we want is just out of reach. We wouldn’t get enough from the sale of our house.”
