Chapter Six
Grabbing a couple more biscuits, I lead Georgie out the backyard and hope nothing has taken up residence in the pool house. When I first bought this place a few years ago, the pool house had been inhabited by a family of raccoons who were none too pleased to be evicted. I guessed the old owners, a retired couple who only came to the house every so often, didn’t bother with the structure at the back of the property and had no idea they had furry little squatters.
Originally, I planned to rent out the pool house, since I have great access to a calm beach across the street that would be a draw to tourists, but so many other things kept me busy. Updating the surf shop, training other instructors during the off season, renovating first the kitchen and master and then the other bedrooms, helping Uncle Bill when he started getting sick…
Prince Harry lumbers over to the gate of his pen as soon as he sees me, his dark eyes examining Georgie behind me with a bit too much interest in the dimming light of dusk. She hasn’t noticed the llama yet, too busy taking in the rest of the yard, and I’m not about to say anything. Instead, I hold out one of the biscuits to show him my offering and then duck just in time as the mad beast spits in appreciation of my gift.
Georgie screams when the wad of saliva splatters her in the face.
I snort. “Sorry, I should have warned you that he’s…broken.” Normally, llamas spit when they’re agitated or angry as a sort of defense mechanism, but not Prince Harry. This guy thinks it’s a way to show affection.
Now that he’s unloaded his slimy gift, I hold the biscuit closer and smile when he grabs it excitedly. “Good boy.”
Georgie scrubs her face with her sleeve, shuddering and looking like she’s on the verge of running away as she stares at the five and a half feet of llama a few feet away from her. “Why do you have a giant goat?”
Patting Prince Harry’s strong neck, I take a bite of the other biscuit and wish I grabbed more because I’m still starving. I’m loath to mention it to her, but she’s gotten way better than when she was a teen. Maybe it’s just that anything is better than a freezer meal. “Prince Harry is clearly a llama,” I say through a mouthful of buttery goodness. “And he was Uncle Bill’s.”
“Oh.” Georgie relaxes a bit. “I forgot how much he liked collecting animals.”
I’ve found homes for most of my uncle’s menagerie, but Prince Harry is a tough one, given he is huge, borderline suicidal, and unconventional in every way. But I think a part of me hasn’t been able to part with the last of the animals Bill collected, just like it is going to be nearly impossible to fully let go of the bakery.
Georgie may have agreed to limit her changes, but I know her. She’ll stick to her promise for a little while, and then her stubborn nature will kick in and she’ll forget everything I’ve said to her about preserving Bill’s legacy.
“So,” she says, taking a step back from Prince Harry as he leans over the fence to smell her. “The pool house?”
Right. Just beyond Prince Harry’s pen, the pool house looks like it’s in decent shape, which is good. I have to hope the interior boasts the same because there is no way in heaven and earth that I am sharing a bed with Georgie. I’d rather sleep on the couch despite the fact that it isn’t designed for that. It’s great for reclining, but I know from too much experience lately that a full night on the couch is rough.
The door handle feels loose, but I open the pool house without any difficulties and breathe a sigh of relief when it all looks relatively untouched. It’s a bit musty and dusty, but that’s an easy fix.
“Ta da,” I mutter.
Georgie pokes her head under my arm. “Um.”
“It’s this or the couch, unless you’d prefer to sleep on the floor.” I would never let her do that—the guilt would eat me alive—but I would rather keep her options limited to anything that doesn’t interrupt my already awful sleep.
Groaning a little, she ducks under me and steps deeper into the space. It’s small—no need for a pool house to be much bigger than this—but it has a bathroom and a little kitchenette. More than enough to survive for a few weeks while we get everything settled and done.
“What about a bed?” she asks. Skepticism laces her words with a sharp edge.
I nod toward the couch. “It’s a sleeper sofa.”
“Splendid.” She grits her teeth as her eyes continue to take in the room. “Does the door have a lock?”
“Nope.”
“What’s to stop you from sneaking in here while I’m asleep?”
“Self-respect, mostly.”
She throws a glare at me.
Chuckling, I fold my arms and lean against the door frame. “Georgie, this is Willow Cove. You’ll be fine.”
“I’ve never understood your misplaced trust in people.”
I sigh. It’s not that I trust everyone, but I like to see the good in people. Still… “You’re right,” I say slowly. “I should have learned better after I trusted you all those years ago.”
I’m being unfair, and I know it, but Georgie’s unexpected arrival this morning feels like opening old wounds, and I’m too tired to mask the hurt. I’ll be better tomorrow. Hopefully.
“Well,” I say, knocking on the door frame. “Goodnight.”
“Wait, can you give me a ride back to my car? All my stuff is there.”
I probably should, given she drove me here, but my stomach is still trying to eat itself and I haven’t had a proper chance to be annoyed that she’s back. So I shake my head. “But Marlin has a taxi service. I’m sure you can look up the number.”
It takes a second for recognition to set in. “Wait, Marlin Abernathy? Like, the guy who talks to chickens and thinks he can understand them? Does he even have a driver’s license?”
I shrug. “Good question. You should ask him.” And then I head back to the house in case I crack and tell her I’ll give her a ride. It would be the right thing to do, but I can’t bring myself to be gallant tonight. Instead, I eat three more biscuits loaded with gravy and finish doing my much-needed laundry before heading to bed, wondering the whole time whether Georgie will come back or if she’s opted to run away again.
I can’t decide which outcome I want more.
“Rise and shine!”
Georgie jolts awake at my call, tossing blankets and pillows and nearly tumbling off the lumpy sleeper sofa. I shouldn’t take this much pleasure from her disorientation, but I was pleasantly surprised to find her in the pool house this morning, which has put me in a strangely good mood. That, plus a clean pair of shorts and a decent night’s sleep for once, has made today feel like a turning point in the right direction.
“Royal?” Georgie mumbles as she tries to untangle herself from the sheets. She’s clearly still half asleep if she’s back to using my real name. “What time is it?”
I glance out the open door behind me, where the sky is starting to warm from black to blue. “Time for you to get yourself over to the bakery, obviously. I’m assuming you got your car back?”
The pool house is practically overflowing with clothes. I don’t remember her being a disorganized person, but then again I never went to the house her parents rented every summer. She always just appeared on the boardwalk. Maybe this is true Georgie and I dodged a messy bullet.
Groaning, Georgie slowly sits up and runs a hand over her wild curls. “It’s not my bakery yet,” she complains. “I didn’t get to bed until after one.”
“Not my fault.” It’s sort of my fault. If she really used Marlin to get back to the boardwalk, it likely took a lot longer than she planned for. He likes his detours. And then she would have had to bring all her stuff in from her car, and judging by the sheer volume of it all, it probably took a while.
I fold my arms, trying not to acknowledge my growing guilt for not helping her last night. I was sound asleep by nine and slept like a rock all night. “As for the bakery, I plan to spend my morning getting an appointment set up at the courthouse for later today, so I can’t be there.”
That wakes her up. “You want to get married today?”
“The sooner we tie the knot, the sooner I can file for a divorce.” I shrug, though the words taste bitter in my mouth. I’ve always thought of marriage as a one-time thing, not something to take lightly. Uncle Bill never married, but he talked all the time about how it was a special agreement that I should treat with respect.
So much for that.
“Your mama raised you to treat women right,” he used to tell me, “and I won’t let you forget it.”
He’d always liked my mom, from the day she met my dad, and Uncle Bill had been a staple in my life from the beginning. Dad was younger than Bill by several years, but they looked out for each other after my grandparents died, long before I was born. Bill was as much a parent to me as my real parents, rest their souls.
Kingstons have a habit of dying young, something I try not to think about. Dad was thirty when the car accident took him. Mom didn’t reach forty before she got sick. Bill made it to fifty-five, so maybe I’ve got a decent chance if the pattern continues.
Probably not if I keep eating questionable food from the freezer aisle.
Georgie finally rolls herself off the bed, pulling my focus back to her, and tugs her phone free of the charging cord it’s attached to. Then she swears. That’s new. “It’s dead. But I had it plugged in all night!”
“Ah, yeah, I should have mentioned that the outlets only work if the lights are on.”
“Of course.” Her eyes flick back to me, her gaze cold. She looks younger this morning than she did yesterday, probably because her hair is a mess and she’s not wearing any makeup. She looks more like the girl I knew before, the one who couldn’t care less about eyeshadow and contouring and hadn’t yet figured out how to tame her curls. There was always a wildness about her. A sense of adventure and ambition.
I liked that Georgie.
“Are you going to bake some bread, or what?” I ask and force myself to look away. I don’t need reminders of the girl I knew. Just the sight of her disheveled and undone is twisting up my insides. “I’ll warn you, Meg doesn’t like being left on her own, and you can’t afford for her to quit on you.”
And then I leave, heading straight for my truck so I can put some distance between us. I really shouldn’t force Georgie to jump right into the morning baking, but it’s not like I’m all that good at it anyway. Her work ethic will have her joining Meg in half an hour or less, and I meant it when I told her I planned to get us in front of Judge Delgado as soon as possible.
If I don’t, I’m going to chicken out.
It’s too early to call the courthouse, so I drive to the boardwalk. Coop won’t be happy about my early visit, but this feels like the kind of situation a best friend should know about. Sure enough, he’s still sound asleep in his boat house and looks like he doesn’t have a care in the world. That’s not true, but Coop would never admit he’s got his own worries. Still, I need his easygoing nature this morning if I’m going to survive the day.
Grabbing a pillow, I smack him in the face at the same time I say, “Up and at ’em, Heyes!”
He wakes with a shout, almost as entertaining as Georgie’s reaction this morning as he flails about. “Whosere?” When his eyes find me in the dimness of the cabin where he sleeps, he groans and falls back onto his pillow. “Someone had better be dying, Kingston.”
I didn’t used to be a morning person, but running the bakery necessitated that I change my habits. Coop, who flies tourists around in a floatplane, has no such reasons, and he’s never been good with early wakeups.
“This is equally important as death,” I tell him and lean against the driftwood table we built a while back. “I’m getting married today and need a witness.”
He lifts himself onto one elbow, squinting at me as he yawns. “Yeah, definitely heard you wrong just now. I thought you said you’re getting married.”
I lift an eyebrow.
Taking a slow breath, Coop looks around the boat and then sits up. “Okay. Well, who’s the lucky woman?”
I expected more from him. Most likely, he’s gearing up to laying his thoughts all out there. Especially once he hears who my prospective bride is, he’ll have plenty to say.
I fold my arms, prepping myself for his reaction. “Georgie Carpenter.”
He blinks. “Georgie Carpenter.”
“Yep.”
“As in the Georgie Carpenter who used to make you think holding hands and walking along the beach was fun. The same one who called me an idiot on multiple occasions and had you so whipped that even during the school year you would rather video chat with her than get out of the house and live your life.”
Heat rises up my neck. Coop wasn’t thrilled when Georgie and I started dating. I always wondered if it was because I spent most of my free time with her rather than hanging out with the guys, and it’s looking like I may have been right. There aren’t many of us left in Willow Cove, but Coop has generally been as single as I have with no indication that that will ever change. Though it’s not like Georgie and I will be married in truth, she’s still going to take up some of my limited free time.
I barely see Coop as it is.
He’s not done, adding one last qualification to his list. “You’re talking about the woman who disappeared without a trace after she literally left you stranded on an island when you proposed to her?”
“Technically you left me stranded on an island. But yes.” I wait for him to have any sort of reaction that isn’t blank confusion. “That’s the one.”
His eyebrows dip low. “Can I ask why you’re marrying Georgie Carpenter today?”
I explain the situation as succinctly as I can, growing more tense with every nod he gives me. He’s being way too calm about all of this. “So we’re heading to the courthouse today to make it official,” I finish.
Coop takes a breath, his expression still decidedly empty, and then he climbs out of bed and stands in front of me so he can put his hands on my shoulders. “King, I mean this with all the sincerity of our lifelong friendship: you’re an idiot.”
Don’t I know it.