Chapter One
Beau Evers would rather be fishing.
That’s the thought that kept reverberating through his head as he stood behind the counter of his grandfather’s antique shop on Christmas Bay’s historic Main Street.
He watched the tourists walking by outside the old single-paned windows—coffees in their hands, bags slung over their shoulders, the summer sun shining brightly overhead—and wondered for the thousandth time how he’d ended up here at thirty. This wasn’t how his life was supposed to be unfolding.
Shifting on his feet, he ground his teeth together.
He was too serious. That’s what his cousins called him.
Also a grump. That’s what his niece called him.
But he had a good reason for being both since fishing was basically off the table until he got his shoulder surgery, which wasn’t scheduled for another month.
He’d managed to get in with a rock star orthopedic surgeon in Portland, some lady who’d just operated on a pitcher for the Mariners, but she had a waiting list a mile long.
Taking a sip of coffee, he scalded his tongue.
“Crap,” he muttered and set the mug down again, coffee sloshing over the side and onto his hand.
Grabbing a dishtowel from under the counter, he looked over at an elderly lady perusing the kitchen items and felt his chest tighten.
No, he definitely wasn’t supposed to be running an antique shop of all things.
Especially not with his formerly estranged cousins, Poppy and Cora Sawyer, but their grandfather Earl had passed away a few months ago and had left the shop to them.
Well, temporarily. His will had stipulated that they needed to run it together for a year in order to get their inheritance.
Only at the end of that year could they sell—if they wanted to.
It was a brilliant move by a man whose dying wish had been to see his family reunited by any means necessary.
They had to hand it to him. He’d usually gotten what he’d wanted.
The truth was Beau and his cousins had loved Earl very much and none of them cared about the inheritance.
But it was also true that they all needed their inheritance, and their grandfather had known that.
So Beau leaned against the counter and tried again to push away that ever-present thought of I’d rather be fishing and concentrate on the fact that he was going to be running this shop for a while now and the less he ruminated on that the better.
What was it Cora said? Live in the moment?
He’d try. Even if he couldn’t help but wonder what the fish were biting on this very minute.
“This teapot is cracked,” the elderly woman said from a few aisles away. She held the offending pot above her gray head triumphantly. “Would you take less for it?”
Beau stifled a groan. He didn’t like haggling with people.
Poppy was better at that than he was. He was the furniture guy, the one who bought the bigger inventory.
That meant he usually got to work from the office in back and didn’t have to deal with the customers at all, which was just the way he liked it.
But this was Saturday and on Saturdays Cora and Poppy had a standing girls’ date with Mary, his eleven-year-old niece.
They all went out to lunch and got their nails done afterward.
Or their toes. Or whatever needed doing at that particular point in time.
Cora had lost her husband to cancer not long before their grandfather had passed, so her daughter was having a hard time acclimating to life in a new town, as well as grieving the loss of her stepfather who’d raised her since she was a baby.
Beau smiled. “Let me take a quick look and I’ll see what I can do.”
The elderly woman pursed her lips, obviously hoping he’d just give her the discount already. And maybe he should’ve. He had no idea what he was doing.
The door to the shop opened with a tinkle of the little bell above it and Beau looked up with his standard greeting on his tongue. But when he saw the woman who’d walked inside, her long red hair pulled into a loose side braid, he found he couldn’t speak at all.
“It’s a big crack,” the elderly woman called over again. She hadn’t moved an inch. She was apparently going to hold her ground, dead set on getting that discount before making her way over to Beau and the vintage cash register. Maybe she had enough superglue at home to render cracks meaningless.
“Uh…” Beau forced his gaze away from the redhead who’d taken off her sunglasses and was now looking around the shop with interest. “How about twenty-five percent off?” He had no idea if that’s how much his grandfather would’ve taken off, but it seemed fair enough.
Plus, he was having a hard time engaging at all.
Teapots were not the number-one thing on his mind at the moment.
The elderly woman’s bright pink lips eased into a smile. She seemed happy with that.
He glanced at the redhead again but made sure she didn’t see him glancing.
It couldn’t be. Could it? After all these years?
What would she be doing in Christmas Bay?
He considered this even as another thought bounced across his consciousness.
Her family was from Eugene. That’s not that far away from the coast and a ton of people come over here in the summers…
He was sure he could smell her perfume, but that was ridiculous because she was all the way across the shop. It was the memory of her perfume that was messing with his head. That was threatening to knock the wind right out of him.
Narrowing his eyes, he watched her walk over to an antique coffee table and run her fingers lightly over the top. She seemed lost in her own little world. A world of things from long ago, of lives from long ago. Which was fitting, actually. He was lost in the past right then, too.
The elderly woman shuffled up to the counter, clutching the teapot with both hands.
She looked proud of her find. Even prouder of the fact that she was getting it for a discount.
She smiled at Beau and soft wrinkles exploded from the corners of her eyes.
He felt instantly guilty at being annoyed with her haggling.
Was that even what she’d been doing? He wasn’t sure if it qualified.
His grandpa would’ve known. Would probably have had her eating out of his hand by now.
“I just love this shop,” she said, sliding the teapot across the counter. “I try to come in whenever I’m in town.”
“Oh?” Beau rang her up then reached for the tissue paper underneath the counter. The redhead was now bending over to look more closely at the coffee table, and again he had to keep himself from staring. “Where are you from?”
“Springfield originally. But when my husband died, I moved into a retirement community in Eugene. It’s closer to my kids.”
Eugene. Another reminder that Christmas Bay was close. Close enough for an afternoon drive. Close enough for someone from his past to show up here.
“I used to live in Eugene,” he said. “Go Ducks.”
“Well, my granddaughter goes to Oregon State, so I have to say ‘Go Beavers.’”
“Ah.”
“Where’s the man who usually works here? Older, white hair?” She smiled. “I haven’t seen him in a while. He looks like an older Paul Newman with those sparkling eyes.”
Beau’s throat constricted. The loss of his grandpa was still so fresh that he sometimes forgot. And then something would jolt him back to reality—a well-meaning question, a memory, a scent. And the grief would come crashing back again. “That was my grandfather,” he said. “He passed this spring.”
“Oh no.” Her expression fell. “I’m sorry to hear that, honey. My condolences. He was always so nice, so helpful.”
“Yes, he was.”
“So you’re running the shop now? How wonderful.”
Beau had gotten this a few times. The truth was he wouldn’t be for long.
But he’d found it was easier not to go into the details.
My cousins and I are, but only until next year.
I’m a fisherman and I have to get back on the water, yada, yada, yada.
The more information he gave people, the unhappier they were.
They wanted to know the shop would continue on as it always had—especially the regular tourists who kept coming back again and again, season after season, year after year.
So he kept his mouth shut now and smiled as he handed over the teapot, all wrapped up and packed in a trendy, shabby-chic shopping bag that had Earl’s Antiques embossed in gold foil on the front.
Cora had ordered them a few weeks ago. She said everyone liked a nice bag to take their things home in.
He didn’t know about that, but they’d been expensive enough.
Maybe people just liked to feel like they’d splurged and had gotten something extra in the process.
“Thank you, hon,” she said. “Have a good day.”
“You have a good one, too. And drive safe.”
She turned and shuffled toward the door, her bag hooked over one arm. Beau watched her put on a pair of dark sunglasses that looked more like goggles and push the door open into the bright coastal morning. No sun was getting past those suckers.
And then the shop was empty again. Except for the redhead, of course.