Love Me if You Dare Page 9

  Glancing over at him, she found herself the recipient of a death stare.

  “And quit looking at me like that. I’m making a sincere suggestion. And it’s honestly the only way I can see the Happy Crab ever flourishing again. Which I’m sure you want. I’m trying to think of ways everyone can be happy.”

  “I wouldn’t be happy,” he said.

  She held his gaze. “Tell me why not.”

  “If I built a new motel somewhere else, it wouldn’t be the Happy Crab. The Happy Crab is staying where it is. And if you’re gonna keep hammering at me about this, I might consider it a deal broken and make you look like an ogre to the next person I introduce you to.”

  “All right, all right,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Calm down. Forget I said anything. What’s next on my big tour of Coral Cove?” They’d reached the end of the string of storefronts that lined the road across from the beach.

  Reece looked at his phone, apparently checking the time. “Early bird special about to start at Gino’s,” he said, pointing over his shoulder to the pizza place they’d passed by, which apparently was open and she thought should do a better job of making that apparent. “Wanna get a pizza, then head over to the Sunset Celebration? You can catch Fletcher’s act. And Tamra and other vendors sell their artwork there every night.”

  “Sounds nice,” she said, and then asked an honest question. “But where do the shoppers come from?”

  “Same as the beachgoers. They drive down from the resorts up the road.”

  She nodded, taking that in, thinking, again, that it was a shame the older part of town had all but died. Yet time marched on and so did progress. And Reece would surely see that soon and stop standing in its way.

  REECE took a lot of pride in his little town of Coral Cove—always had—and as he escorted Cami across the street and onto the sand, he found himself really wanting her to love the nightly Sunset Celebration. As they walked, though, it struck him that perhaps that was stupid. Maybe he should be trying to make her hate the place, showing her the worst—if he could find any—that Coral Cove had to offer.

  Maybe he should have painted Abner as a complete nutjob and Polly as a busybody—he loved Polly, but she sometimes did stick her nose in other people’s business. Maybe he should have tried to make Fletcher and Tamra out to be eccentric bordering on weird. Maybe he should have implied that the beach was just crawling with homeless people and wild iguanas on the prowl. Maybe if he made the town look bad, she’d decide it wasn’t such a great place for a Windchime Resort after all.

  So why hadn’t he done that?

  My love of this place trumps all that.

  He thought of his dad, and how much he had loved Coral Cove, too. Reece thought some things like that were just passed down through the genes. And he thought his dad would be proud of him for wanting to show Cami what he loved about the place, even under these particular circumstances.

  He’d checked the weather for the evening—warm and mild, his favorite kind of night on the beach. And as they approached the entrance to the pier—flanked by a small playground and a snack hut with bathrooms on the backside—music filled the air, currently Pharrell Williams singing about being happy. Little kids’ laughter trilled as they played on old swings and the same metal slide Reece had as a child. In the distance, closer to the water, people flew colorful kites as the sun dipped toward the horizon and the first hints of sunset lit the clouds with a purple glow.

  Just off to one side of the pier, Fletcher had erected his tightrope, same as he did each and every night. And they’d shown up just in time because that was when Fletcher’s voice began to boom across the beach.

  “Gather ’round, gather ’round! Come one, come all, to the most amazing show on Coral Cove Beach!” Then Fletcher held up one finger, looking to the passersby who had paused to see what was about to happen. “Ah, but it’s the only show, you say. It’s a small town—not my fault.” Light giggles wafted through the amassing crowd. “And I challenge you not to be stunned and amazed by the time I’m through.”

  “Will I?” Cami asked Reece as they stepped closer to watch.

  “Yep,” Reece said. “I’ve seen it dozens of times and I’m still amazed.” It was the truth.

  Cami tilted her pretty head, looked up at him. “That’s impressive.”

  He narrowed his gaze on her. “If you’re thinking how much the Windchime guests will love it, don’t waste your time,” he couldn’t help saying.

  She pressed her lips together, slanting a glance skyward, clearly weighing this. “I was actually only thinking that it was impressive, but now that you mention it . . .” Then she smiled.

  And he just shook his head and laughed. Maybe because it was easier than arguing with her. And it was his own fault for bringing it up this time anyway.

  “He seems so much . . . louder than he did yesterday at the pool,” she observed as Fletcher went on with his crowd-gathering schtick.

  He was addressing small children now, but loudly enough for all to hear, his eyes wide and playful as he made the kids laugh. “What’s the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen?” he asked a small boy of about seven.

  “My dog, Tootles, can walk on his hind legs,” the little boy said.

  “Well, I’ve got bad news for your dog, my friend,” Fletcher told him. “You are about to witness far more amazing feats than that. Though when Tootles can walk on his hind legs on that rope”—he pointed behind him and upward—“then introduce me, because I might want to offer him a job.”

  “It’s the performer in him,” Reece explained. “The guy you met yesterday is the real him. This is just part of the show.”

  “What about the stuff regarding his wife?” she asked. “Real? Or show?”

  “Real,” Reece said. “Crazy, but real.”

  Cami turned to him. “Crazy? So you don’t think she’s coming back?”

  Reece looked over at Fletcher for a minute, thinking it through, then back to the woman at his side. “Ya know, I have no real reason to think she’s coming back. One day they were working here, side by side—she was his assistant in the show—and the next, she’d left him with nothing but a note. But he’s convinced himself she’ll come back, and I think over time he’s almost convinced the rest of us, too. So the answer is . . . who knows?” He shook his head lightly. “And I shouldn’t call him crazy—he’s my friend and a damn good guy.”

  He sensed Cami considering the situation. “Maybe it’s better to live with hope,” she suggested.

  “But what if it’s really just wishful thinking? What if it’s just a way of not facing the truth? Guess I’m a realist,” he said. “I’d rather see things the way they are, accept things I can’t change.”

  When she stayed quiet at that, Reece could almost read her thoughts. She was wondering, if he was such a realist, why didn’t he just accept the fact that Windchime Resorts intended to move in here no matter how much he tried to prevent it? And why didn’t he accept that the Happy Crab was a thing of the past?

  Logically, he understood her way of thinking. And he grasped exactly what he stood to gain if he’d just sell. But his Coral Cove didn’t have a big high-rise resort sitting across from the beach, leaving the Hungry Fisherman and the Beachside Bakery to look like tiny specks in its shadow. His Coral Cove wasn’t about luxury or room service or lagoon-style pools. His Coral Cove was small and quaint and friendly—and his Coral Cove had a neon smiling crab in the middle of it all to greet people. And it was going to keep right on having that as long as he had anything to say about it.

  “Are you all ready to be stunned and amazed?” Fletcher asked the crowd at large. He’d drawn a sizable gathering on the beach, a reminder to Reece that it was almost summer—high season. There’ll be more business at the Crab in a month or two. Has to be. Or . . . there will be if I can figure out a way to get rid of that sign in the old snowcone lot.

  As Fletcher mounted the tightrope to the delight of his audience, Reece knew Cami was w
atching closely, taking it in, studying his innate sense of balance, and the way his toes seemed to curl around the rope he walked across. And it reminded him that sometimes the impossible wasn’t impossible. After all, who’d think you could walk across a rope suspended above the sand like that and not fall off? Little miracles happened every day. And sometimes bigger ones.

  And he supposed he kind of needed a miracle for the Happy Crab. Keeping it out of Vanderhook’s hands was one thing, but Cami was right—this part of town was dying and if something didn’t happen to turn things around, he’d be the proud owner of an empty shell of a motel that no one but him cared about anymore. He wasn’t much of a praying dude, but he glanced skyward and said silently: I could use a miracle down here if you have one to give. And he wasn’t sure if he was talking to God or his dad or maybe just the planets and the stars, but either way, he tried to put a little of Fletcher’s faith behind it. Just for this moment anyway.

  “Hey, everybody over by the snack stand!” Fletcher called then from atop the wire.

  People there looked toward his voice.

  “There’s a guy walking on a tightrope over here and he’s really good! You should come watch!” he said. The crowd around him seemed amused as usual, and a handful of people who hadn’t been paying attention began to head in their direction.

  “Good decision,” Fletcher told them all en masse. “Because now I’m even going to juggle! Feel free to ooh and aah.” The gathering obliged.

  And Reece could tell that Cami was pretty awestruck with his friend. But his mind remained on other things. “When Vanderhook gets tired of trying to buy me out,” he told her, “I’ll be happy to take the snowcone lot off their hands.”

  She glanced over. “You have the money for that?”

  So she assumed he was broke. Understandable maybe, under the circumstances. But there was so much about this she didn’t know. “As long as they don’t ask some insane price, sure.”

  “What would you do with it?” She looked sincerely curious.

  And he shook his head. “Not sure—I’d have to think about it. But mainly I’d keep some big company from putting a sign up in it that drives my business away.”

  To his surprise, she appeared a little contrite. “Sorry about that. That truly wasn’t my doing—I don’t have any control over that aspect of things.”

  “So your sole job is wearing down people who don’t want to sell?” he asked.

  “Pretty much.”

  It struck him as a grim existence, but he didn’t say so, because something potentially more interesting had entered his thoughts. “Do you spend this much time with all the people you’re trying to convince to sell?”

  She was back to watching Fletcher—who now juggled bowling pins and was about to advance to knives—but tossed him only a sideways glance to say, “No. Never.”

  Was there a hint of flirtation in her voice? A bit of admission that this might be about more than her job? “But never say never, right?” he quipped with a grin.

  “Right,” she said, returning an easy smile. “There’s a first time for everything.”

  And maybe it was from talking about hope, or maybe it was from trying to have a little of Fletcher’s boundless faith, but in that moment, Reece began to wonder for the very first time if maybe, just maybe, it might be possible to get Cami to change her mind here—if maybe there was a chance he could convince her Coral Cove was fine just the way it was and get her to call off the Vanderhook dogs. A couple of days ago, he’d have said that was impossible. But now he was beginning to wonder if maybe that kind of miracle could really somehow happen.

  “ . . . I feel sure she knows they have souls.”

  J. M. Barrie, Peter and Wendy

  Chapter 8

  AFTER FLETCHER’S show, he passed a hat for the tips that provided his income, and Reece and Cami hung back until most of the crowd had dispersed. But when they’d gone and Fletcher approached them to say hi, Reece watched as Cami extracted a twenty from her purse, folding it so that the face value wasn’t obvious, and added it to Fletcher’s take for the night.

  When they’d parted ways with him, Reece couldn’t help making the observation: “Generous.”

  “See, I’m really not a monster,” she told him as they meandered toward the pier where vendors currently sold various types of art.

  But Reece just shrugged. “Maybe the jury’s still out on that one.”

  “What will it take to bring them in?”

  He tilted his head and raised his eyebrows, thinking the answer obvious. “Surely I don’t have to tell you.”

  She gifted him with a soft smile. “I go away?”

  Peering into her eyes, he realized that while the tougher Cami was a good sparring partner, the nicer side of her actually appealed to him much more. “You don’t have to go away, Tink,” he informed her. “You just have to quit trying to take what I don’t want to give.”

  They walked on slowly for a moment before she replied without looking at him, “Sometimes it’s easier for other people to see what’s in your best interest than it is to see it yourself.”

  Reece considered the argument. She was suggesting that perhaps he was blind to the reality of the situation, in denial or something. That was a new tactic. “Debatable,” he rebutted reasonably. “For drug addicts, maybe. But otherwise, debatable.”

  “Fair enough,” she countered. “But sometimes people get so set on something that they can’t see the forest for the trees.”

  His reply was simple. “This,” he said motioning all around him with his arms, “is my forest. And the Crab is my tree. I’m keeping my tree.”

  And with any luck you’ll fall in love with Coral Cove just the way it is and realize a Windchime Resort would ruin it. And that, he fully realized, was indeed why he hadn’t tried to make her hate the place. That was why he wanted to show her what was so nice about it instead of try to drive her away from it. He just hadn’t completely understood that until now.

  They ventured out onto the pier past Larry, an older guy who painted beach scenes on pieces of tile, and Marjorie, who sold her homemade ice cream from an old-fashioned cart—and Reece bought them both cones, surprised when Cami chose strawberry.

  “Strawberry?” he asked as they walked on, cones in hand.

  She gave him a look. “Yeah. What’s wrong with strawberry?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing wrong with it—it’s just sort of . . . girly, I guess.”

  She flinched. “I am a girl.”

  “But a tough one, you keep trying to tell me.”

  “So I should have ordered a tough flavor like your butter pecan?” She raised her eyebrows challengingly.

  He was mainly kidding her, but said easily, “It’s a tougher flavor. It has nuts.”

  “Well, for your information,” she said, looking up at him, “just because something has nuts doesn’t mean it’s tough. And it so happens I can be tough and girly at the same time.” And with that, she licked a trail around her ice cream that was completely feminine, but struck him in a far different way than she’d probably intended. Because it suddenly made him think she would be good using her tongue on other things—and he was glad his cargo shorts were loose enough that the entire town didn’t see his reaction.

  “What?” she asked. “Why are you looking at me weird? Is there ice cream on my face or something?”

  Hell. He shook his head. “No.” But then he noticed a melty trail of strawberry beginning to run down her cone and said, “You’ve got a drip,” just before he automatically reached out a finger to swipe it away—and his hand touched hers, and it felt too good.

  He drew back, broke eye contact, and licked her ice cream from his finger, kind of wishing it were her licking it off.

  “Melts fast,” she said, her voice now seeming a little breathy, sexy.

  “Yep,” he said, trying to diffuse the heat that had built so suddenly between them.

  Well, not suddenly. It was always there, all the
time. Had been from the beginning. But it was just more unavoidable in some moments than others.

  He was glad when his eyes fell on Tamra then—his friend provided a much safer place to focus his attention. “Hey Tam,” he said, approaching, still working on his own ice cream to avoid any further drippage situations.

  Her eyes lit up when she saw him. “Reece!” And her sweet smile put him at ease, as usual. But then she frowned. “Where’s Fifi—you didn’t bring her tonight?”

  He hadn’t had a chance to reply before Cami came up beside him—and though Tamra’s smile stayed in place, her eyes changed. “Oh, I see. You brought someone else.”

  Huh. Her tone bordered on rude, and that wasn’t like Tamra at all.

  “Hi,” Cami said anyway. “Nice to see you again.”

  Tamra gave a short, almost terse, nod. “You too.” But not really. That was obvious.

  “Your pieces are lovely,” Cami complimented her, studying Tamra’s stained glass suncatchers. She touched a bright yellow and orange piece in the shape of a sun, and then one in various shades of aqua and turquoise in an abstract design Reece thought was supposed to look like ocean waves.

  “Thanks,” Tamra said but left it at that.

  Reece interjected some small talk to Tamra—“How’s business tonight?” and “Think it’ll rain?”—to distract from the odd tension, and when Cami let some seascape paintings displayed by the next vendor draw her away, he couldn’t blame her.

  “Look,” he bent closer to Tamra to say quietly once Cami was out of earshot, “I know you’re just trying to do the loyal friend thing here, but she’s not so bad.”

  Tamra peered up at him, her long mane of naturally curly hair falling around her shoulders. “She’s trying to take the Crab from you, right?”

  Okay, fair point. Talk about not being able to see the forest for the trees. “Right.”

  “Then how can I really be nice to her? And how can you?”

  “Maybe I’m . . . just trying to win her over, show her how great Coral Cove is without her big resort plopped down in the middle of it.”