A Saltwater Christmas (The Southern Isles #1)

Chapter One

A llie Westley refused to believe impossible things. Coincidences were just coincidences, unexplainable phenomena were merely things that lacked verifiable facts, aliens did not exist, and gut instincts were merely your subconscious taking in veiled clues. How anyone ever believed in Santa Claus was beyond her. Even as a three-year-old, she knew the truth. Christmas was just a guilt-inducing holiday that forced people to spend time with family they’d rather not be around. Her mother and her new boyfriend, in particular. There would be no candy canes, Christmas trees, red sweaters, eggnog, gingerbread, or gifts this year. Christmas was to be spent on the beach alone eating a ham and pickle sandwich in honor of her father. And then, maybe a nap.

Allie’s job was starting in two days, and her new roommate, Sam Clare, was scheduled to move in that afternoon. She sat up in bed and took several deep, cleansing breaths. According to Sam’s profile, she was supposed to be quiet and clean. Allie hoped that was true. Sam also came with a dog, but Allie was looking forward to that. Access to a pet without having to pay for vet bills was fine with her. And Buttercup the dog sounded cute.

Allie tapped the floor with her right big toe three times before she got out of bed, then straightened the sheets and comforter before the messiness caused her anxiety to skyrocket. By the time she was out of the shower, she was excited to get the day started. Maybe she and Sam could do some shopping in Charleston for colorful pillows or something pretty to jazz up their shared space. Her big white couch fit in the family room perfectly, but some down-filled pillows to go with her hand-tufted Persian rug would add to the coziness. She wound her long auburn hair into her special ultra-absorbent towel and wrapped a bath sheet around her body before walking out into the hallway.

“Allison?”

She nearly lost both her towel and her footing at the sound of a deep male voice. She spun around to see a tall, muscular man standing at the end of the hallway. Like a possum, she froze. Thankfully, he wasn’t moving toward her. He just stood there holding a can of Red Bull with a strange little smile on his face.

“I’m Sam,” he said.

“What?” Her voice was oddly high-pitched. “You’re not Sam. Sam is a girl.”

“My mother will be shocked to hear that,” he joked.

“I asked for a female roommate.”

“Then one of us clicked the wrong button.”

Clearly, he’d been the one to make the mistake. Probably on purpose. Allie would never mess up like that. She pulled at her towel to make sure all of the important parts were covered. “Well, you need to unclick it and find some other place. I am not living with a man.”

“I already paid my portion of the deposit,” he said.

The unworried smirk on his face made her want to kick him. “So did I,” she spat back. “And I paid mine first.”

He turned and walked toward the kitchen like he’d been living here all his life. “I guess we’re gonna have to make the best of it.”

“No.” Her voice rose as she clutched her towel tightly at her chest. “I was here first. You need to leave. We’ll work out the deposit thing with the landlord.”

“If you don’t want to live with me, then I’m happy to help you clear out your stuff.”

He spoke in the most smug, obstinate way, and if she weren’t wearing only a towel, she would have physically forced him out. He was twice her size and at least a foot taller, but in that moment, she didn’t care.

He placed his Red Bull on her pristine mahogany console table and picked up a moving box, then forced her to press herself against the wall as he walked past her to the empty bedroom across the hall. “I just put some fried chicken in the fridge if you want some.” He threw the words at her like he was the nicest guy on the planet and she was the one with the problem.

Was he trying to ply her with chicken? She fumed. “Don’t touch my groceries,” she said, finally able to move again. “I know exactly how many kombuchas I have in there.” She stormed into her bedroom.

“Gut problems?” he asked like the interfering jerk he was.

“No. Roommate problems.” She slammed her door and leaned against it, breathing heavily. She’d been so looking forward to her new friend Sam Clare—to nights drinking wine, having girl talk, and watching reality television. It had been a mistake to agree to live with someone she’d never met—never even seen . Sam Clare had no presence on social media. The picture he’d included with his application was of an entire family. She’d assumed he was one of the girls. How had she been so stupid? The only things she’d asked in their brief text introductions were where he was coming from and what kind of dog he had. Montana , he’d said. And, a well-trained mutt .

She changed as quickly as she could into her matching cream knit set in case he kicked her door down or peeked in through a crack or something. Her heart thumped with disappointment and fury. She had no intention of living with a man. Her mother would be horrified. Allie brushed out her hair and tied it into a wet bun on top of her head. If she lived with a man, people would make rude assumptions about them. His presence in her life was going to bring about all sorts of gossip. Not only that, but surely he’d make the place stink like body odor or meat or something equally horrible, and he’d probably play music too loud and leave dishes in the sink. He might have a nice smile and warm eyes, but he still looked arrogant and obnoxious.

When she finally came out to the kitchen, she saw that he’d found the cabinets she’d left empty and was busy putting away what looked like a rather nice set of dishes. “Can we talk about this like adults?” she asked.

“Sure.” He didn’t bother to look at her.

“What just happened in the hallway is exactly why we can’t live together.”

He turned to her with that self-confident smile. “I’ve seen girls in towels before.”

She was sure he had. He knew he was good-looking—like Thor, only thinner, with short military-cut hair. Which was even more reason why they couldn’t live together. “I had this all planned out,” she said. “Everything was lined up. You are supposed to be a girl, not some creepy guy who just got an eyeful.”

“What makes you think I’m creepy? I had nothing to do with you being in a towel.”

“Because of the way you looked at me!”

He shook his head, but his voice was as calm as ever, even a little amused. “I was trying to introduce myself to my new roommate, who had just stepped into the hallway. I didn’t know what you were wearing until I’d already said your name.”

“Did you state on the application that you’re a girl?” She jutted out a hip. “Were you trying to connive your way into a female roommate?”

“Connive?” He pulled his phone from the back pocket of his jeans. “I’ll show you my application.”

Allie waited impatiently, looking anywhere but at him. Something in their marshy backyard caught her eye. “Oh my God,” she whispered, as if the beast might hear her. “I think there’s a wolf out there.”

“Naw, that’s Buttercup.”

“That is not little Buttercup.” The long-legged raggedy-looking gray mongrel could easily eat small dogs for breakfast.

“I never said Cuppie was little.” He stepped next to her to show her the rental application on his phone, and she realized how very tall he was. She didn’t want to feel small and feminine next to him. She wanted to feel mad. “Right here,” he said, noting the checkmark next to the word male . “But I did say that I had no preference on my roommate’s gender.”

“Then the rental company messed up,” Allie said. “Because I specifically said female.” Now that he was so near, she distinctly smelled soap, her favorite scent. And his eyes had smile lines beside them, which only served to make her dislike him more. She leaned away from him. “I can’t deal with this. I start my dream job tomorrow and I need to be well-rested and”—she didn’t know how to finish the sentence—“man-free.”

He nodded like he was appraising her. “Got it. I’m steel, you’re silk. I’ll do my best to keep my high testosterone ways from bothering you.” He tucked his phone into his back pocket and went back to putting dishes and coffee mugs in his cabinet.

Silk? She didn’t know if she should be flattered or offended. But she did know that her morning was ruined and her entire year might be too. She had to get out of this house, away from Sam Clare. Even though she’d just taken a shower, she needed a run. She would have to go longer than usual in order to deal with the surprise of her awful new roommate. She had at least seven miles’ worth of frustration in her.

Running was the one constant in Allie’s life. It had been ever since joining the cross-country team in junior high. She changed quickly and hit the ground at a warm-up pace, already feeling better. She’d only been on Goose Island two weeks, but she was already getting used to the swampy terrain and the briny smell of pluff mud, which on warmer days reeked of rotten eggs.

According to her running app, she was two miles in. The sidewalk had long since started cracking and rising up with roots as she ran in the shade of old oaks and palmettos and overgrown greenery that occasionally opened to ponds marked by alligator warning signs. Her breathing was steady and her feet sure. Parked outside her neighbor’s old low-slung brick house was a bright yellow food truck with the words Salty Dot’s painted in blue curlicues on the side. Each time she saw it, she was reminded to track it down and try the food. Aside from the sandwiches and barbecue made by an old guy named Fred at the local gas station, there were no other restaurants on Goose Island.

If she didn’t have to hit her nine-minute-mile goal, she would slow down to look closer at the windows of Salty Dot’s old home, where it seemed like a different color cat sat on the sill of every front window. She covered her cold nose with her hand, wishing she’d worn her neck gaiter so she could pull it up for warmth. Back in Nashville, a gaiter was a running necessity on cold and snowy days. She didn’t even know if South Carolina got snow. But it didn’t matter. Snow was for cozy nights and white Christmases, and she was actively trying to minimize Christmas—not ignore, not skip, just scrape through unscathed.

Allie took care to avoid stepping on the sidewalk cracks and lines, but most importantly, at the end of the run she must land with her right foot on the front porch welcome mat. If she didn’t, disaster would follow—someone would get hurt or something in her life would go wrong. She had learned to tell from a fairly long distance which foot she would end on, and lengthened her stride to make sure.

The chill of the wind in her face and the steady cadence of her breathing was helping. Sam Clare wasn’t going to ruin things for her. She simply wouldn’t allow it. Every successful roommate scenario included rules and boundaries. Simple.

She’d come to her favorite part of the run—the stage where she felt like she could go on forever. But she was now back on Evergreen Way, past Salty Dot’s for the second time, and her app was nearing exactly seven miles. Seven because it symbolized a connection between the mortal realm and higher places. Spiritual places, like where her dad was—somewhere in heaven.

The quaint white clapboard cottage came into sight. She’d loved it since the first time she saw it online. It had two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a nice large kitchen that opened up onto a family room and a screened-in back porch. The furniture she’d had in her Nashville apartment fit perfectly in the space. Her creamy rugs toned down the dark oak floors, and her antique landscape paintings brought the green from outside in. Her things combined with the existing dainty yellow-flowered wallpaper and chipping white metal chandelier felt perfectly cozy until Sam showed up. The dude probably came with a lava lamp, or worse, a gaming system.

She landed with her right foot on the front porch mat, and that eased her mind, but she still wasn’t ready to go inside. She made her way around the outside of the house and across the backyard to the dock on the salt marsh. It was a little chilly outside, but her body would stay warm from the run for a while. She sat at the very end on the cold, splintery wood and looked beyond the marsh hay to the water, watching pelicans fly overhead and listening to the pop-pop-pop of clams buried in the muddy shore.

Carefully, she scooted her sitz bones so that she wasn’t touching the crack between wood slats, then did the same with her heels, hugging her knees. Her stomach grumbled. There was no way to avoid it: she was going to have to face her new roommate. She set the timer on her watch for exactly three minutes, then tested herself to see if she could be like one of Pavlov’s conditioned rats and know exactly when the bell would ring.

She did.

“I need to eat breakfast,” she said when she found Sam still in the kitchen putting cans of food in the pantry. She’d already reconciled that he hadn’t meant to surprise her, but she couldn’t pretend that she was comfortable with her new living situation.

“Yeah,” he said. “There’s fried chicken in—”

“I know,” she interrupted. Who ate fried chicken for breakfast? “That’s yours. We might as well set up boundaries now.”

“So I can stay?” He pretended to be pleasantly surprised.

“I didn’t say that.” She rifled through the refrigerator and pulled out a tub of cottage cheese and a bowl of washed blueberries. “You can have the top shelf of the refrigerator since you’re taller. And the left side of the freezer.”

“Yes, ma’am, boss lady.”

She flinched. She’d been called bossy before. Well, her whole life, really. “It’s probably better if you don’t speak to me right now.”

He saluted her and went back to work.

She sat at the table eating her meal, trying not to be obvious about watching him from the corner of her eye. “Please tell me your dog isn’t aggressive.”

“Am I allowed to talk now?” He chuckled. “Cuppie’s well-trained. She won’t bother you unless I let her.”

Allie regarded the huge dog staring at her through the glass door leading to the back porch. She took another bite of cottage cheese, then got up to retrieve a bottle of PH water from the refrigerator. “Good. She stays out of my room and off the couch.”

“Yes, ma’am. Any more rules I need to know about?”

Truthfully, there were probably 2,352 more rules, but she would introduce him to those slowly. “I need quiet after ten P.M. but would prefer earlier, if possible.”

“Cool.” He seemed to find her amusing, which was highly annoying. “I’ll tell all of my party chicks to keep it down.”

She choked on her spoonful of cottage cheese and was grateful she had water nearby. Chicks? As in women ? Even if he was kidding, it was totally uncalled for.

Living with Sam Clare was going to be horrible. Absolutely dreadful.