Christmas in July at Harbor’s Hope (Coastal Fresh Start Romance #1)

Weather Coming In

Chapter one

The fake snow was melting.

Margot Pine stood in the middle of the Evergreen Tide Resort lobby and watched three hundred dollars’ worth of artificial powder dissolve into a puddle on the marble floor. Outside, the North Carolina sun was doing what it always did in July. Burning through everything.

“We need more fans on the west entrance,” she said into her headset. “And somebody get a mop to the lobby before a guest slips and I have to explain to corporate why Santa’s village turned into a lawsuit.”

Static. Then Jimmy Buffett from the pool deck, which was the opposite of the holiday soundtrack she’d programmed.

She closed her eyes for two seconds. Two full seconds of darkness and salt-tinged air conditioning. Then she clicked her pen and moved on.

The main terrace was supposed to be a winter wonderland by now. It would be, once the garland stopped drooping and someone figured out why the twelve-foot Fraser fir smelled like it had been shipped inside a diesel truck.

The Atlantic spread out below the railing, blue-green and glittering, the kind of view that made tourists reach for their phones.

A banner reading CHRISTMAS IN JULY: HARBOR’S HOPE EXPO stretched between two palm trees wrapped in white lights.

One corner had come loose and flapped in the ocean breeze like a surrender flag.

Margot made a note on her clipboard. Item forty-seven.

“Margot!”

Caleb Henson was striding toward her with a roll of chicken wire under one arm and a grin wide enough to sell toothpaste.

“Tell me you’ve seen the ice sculpture molds.” He shifted the chicken wire to his other arm. “They were in storage C, and now storage C is full of someone’s folding chairs.”

“Check with the catering manager. She moved things around yesterday.”

He exhaled. “You know, I’ve done events in fourteen states. Never once had anyone answered that fast.”

“I keep a spreadsheet.”

“Of course you do.” He pointed the chicken wire at her like a sword. “You’re a lifesaver. Seriously.”

She watched him jog off toward the service corridor, still grinning. Caleb made chaos feel like a party. She liked him fine.

She just didn’t trust charm. Not anymore.

David had been charming, too. He’d smiled his way through a couple of years of partnership and then smiled his way out the door when the money disappeared.

Charm was a currency that bought goodwill on credit, and Margot had learned what happened when the bill came due.

By four o’clock, the florist and the baker were in a standoff over shared cooler space, and the terrace smelled like buttercream frosting and gardenia, which was either a candle waiting to happen or a disaster.

“I was promised a dedicated unit.” Dana, the florist, held up a printed email and jabbed the air with her reading glasses. “Dedicated. That means mine.”

Lou, the baker, folded his arms across his flour-dusted apron. “Lady, if your hydrangeas can survive next to my buttercream, I think we’ll all make it through the summer.”

“Don’t you ‘lady’ me.”

Margot stepped between them. “Dana, top two shelves. Lou, bottom two. Label your sections. If anything crosses the line, come to me, not each other.”

Dana opened her mouth.

“Nonnegotiable.” Margot clicked her pen. “Next.”

She was standing at the far end of the boardwalk, reviewing the fireworks permit for the third time, when she noticed the man on the dock.

Tall, broad through the shoulders. Faded T-shirt. He was crouched beside the cleat with a wrench in one hand, his movements slow and deliberate. His hair was the kind of brown the sun had been working on for years, lighter at the ends, long enough to push back and not much more.

The late sun caught the lines around his eyes, the kind men on the water earned from years of glare and weather. His forearms were brown from the sun, salt dried white along the hem of his shirt.

But the wear in his face looked like it came from something heavier.

“That’s Evan Cole.”

Jolene Watts, the resort’s head housekeeper, had appeared behind her with a stack of towels balanced against one hip. A woman built like a fireplace and roughly as warm.

“Dock master?” Margot asked.

“Marina maintenance. Dock master. Boat whisperer.” Jolene shifted the towels. “Whatever you want to call it. He keeps to himself. Does good work.”

“Sounds ideal.”

Jolene’s voice dropped half a register. “He’s had a rough go. Lost his wife a few years back. There was an accident during the Christmas boat parade.” She stopped herself and reset her expression. “Anyway. Good people. Don’t expect small talk.”

“I don’t need small talk. I need people who show up and do what they say they’ll do.”

Jolene gave her a look. “Then you two might get along just fine.”

Margot looked back at the dock. Evan had stood up and was coiling a rope with the precision that suggested muscle memory, not thought.

There was something in the way he moved, unhurried but not lazy, that made her aware of her own posture.

Her own shoulders had been drawn up toward her ears since she’d turned off the highway.

She made herself lower them.

He glanced toward the terrace. Toward her.

For half a second their eyes met across thirty yards of sun-bleached boardwalk, and a forgotten warmth unfurled in her chest. Not attraction, exactly.

More like recognition. The look of someone who understood what it meant to keep moving because the alternative was standing still.

He didn’t wave. Didn’t smile. Just looked, the way you look at weather coming in.

Then he turned back to his work.

Margot was still watching the dock when Jolene shifted the towels against her hip.

“Speaking of people who show up,” Jolene said, “you’ll want to talk to Lacey Morgan before you start moving anything near the marina pavilion.”

Margot dragged her attention away from Evan and looked at Jolene. “Lacey?”

“Lacey Morgan. She runs events here, did Wish Upon the Harbor last month. She’s on through the summer. You’re over the big productions. She’s got the marina-side stuff and her festival. She’s still around, left you color-coded binders and enough notes to wallpaper a room.”

Margot remembered the folder. Elaine had sent six attachments at midnight and labeled all of them urgent. One had included photos of a wooden sailboat glowing in the pavilion while blue paper stars hung inside the sails.

Pretty. Sentimental.

Also, a logistical nightmare if the wind shifted.

“The wish boat event,” she said.

“That’s the one.”

“I read the recap. Missing wish cards. Pier issue. Storm relocation.”

“That’s the sanitized version.” Jolene’s mouth twitched. “The real version had more rain, more panic, and one maintenance man with enough sense to use stainless steel.”

Margot glanced back at the dock. Evan had returned to his cleat.

“Not him. Ben Carter. Carter Marine. He and Lacey handled the boat. Good people. They’ll be around this week if you need marina history or someone who knows which resort traditions are beloved and which ones need to stay in storage.”

“I’ll take all of that.”

“Thought you might.” Jolene pulled a folded note from the top towel and handed it over. “Lacey dropped this at the desk for you.”

Margot unfolded it.

Welcome to Harbor’s Hope. If the Christmas-in-July binder still has my sticky notes, ignore the one about the west pavilion outlet. Ben fixed it. Do not ignore the one about the south dock gate. It sticks when the humidity climbs.

Good luck. This resort is a lot.

But sometimes a lot is worth it.

Lacey

Margot read it twice.

Then she looked at the resort. The drooping garland. The melting fake snow. The terrace banner flapping between two palm trees like it wanted to surrender before she did.

“She sounds practical,” Margot said.

“She is.”

“And happy?”

Jolene’s eyes softened in a way Margot didn’t miss.

“Getting there.”

Margot tucked the note behind the first page on her clipboard. “Good for her.”

“Maybe good for you too.”

Margot looked at her.

Jolene lifted both brows. “Local contacts, Pine. That’s all I meant.”

“Sure it was.”

Jolene walked off toward the lobby with her towels and her secrets.

Margot looked back once more at the man on the dock.

Evan didn’t wave.

Of course he didn’t.

He just tightened the rope in his hands, checked the knot and turned back to the water like the harbor had asked him a question only he could answer.

That night, Margot sat on the narrow balcony of her staff-rate room with her laptop open and her to-do list glowing in the dark.

The ocean was a sound more than a sight, a low rhythm underneath the cicadas.

Somewhere below, a couple walked the beach path, their laughter rising and falling with the surf.

She pulled her knees up and rested her chin on them. Forty-seven items on her clipboard, and the one that kept floating back to the surface had nothing to do with vendors or permits.

The man on the dock. The way he’d looked at her. Not curious, not flirtatious. Just steady. Like he was seeing something she didn’t know was visible.

She shook it off. She had work to do.

Her phone buzzed. She glanced at the screen. David had posted again. New office in Charlotte. New chapter, same passion.

Her thumb hovered over the screen. Two years ago, that caption would have made her laugh. David had always been good with words. He’d been less good with money, specifically hers, and with the forty vendors who’d called her when his checks bounced.

She set the phone facedown on the railing and stared at the water. The moon was sliding behind a bank of clouds, and the ocean turned to ink.

Her phone buzzed again. Elaine Marston, at eleven fifteen at night.

We need to talk about the ornament collection. My office, 7 AM. Don’t be late.

Margot stared at the screen. She had no idea what ornament collection Elaine was talking about.

That was never a good sign.