One Beach House, Three Single Dads

Chapter 1

The first thing the blue-and-gold macaw said to me was, “Take your pants off.”

I stopped halfway out of my rental SUV with one sneaker on the crushed-shell driveway and one still trapped under the steering wheel.

Across the yard, three children froze. A man holding a shop vacuum closed his eyes.

Another man, shirtless and carrying two surfboards, laughed so hard he nearly dropped both.

A third man came around the side of the house with a coil of orange extension cord over one shoulder and looked at the bird perched on the porch rail. “Mango. No.”

“Pants off!” Mango screamed.

“Strong opening,” I said.

The shirtless man grinned at me. “He usually buys dinner first.”

There were moments in life when a woman could feel the universe taking notes.

Six days ago, I had signed the last document cutting me loose from the photography studio I had built with my cheating ex-fiance.

Four days ago, I had packed everything I still owned into my sister’s garage and two storage units.

That morning, I had driven five hours from Atlanta with three camera bodies, enough lenses to finance a small coup, and a six-week contract that was supposed to come with private housing.

Now a parrot wanted my pants.

Fine. Cape Mercy and I were establishing expectations early.

I climbed out and shut the door. Heat wrapped around me like a wet hand.

The air smelled of salt, sunscreen, hot pine, and something chemical drifting from the detached cottage behind the main house.

Fans roared through its open doorway. A strip of drywall leaned against the porch like it had lost an argument.

My stomach dropped before anyone said a word.

The man with the extension cord reached me first. He was tall, broad through the shoulders, dark-haired, and wearing a faded gray Tide & Timber T-shirt that had gone darker with sweat at the collar. He had the calm face of someone accustomed to bad news arriving with weather radar.

“Piper Hale?” he asked.

“Unless there is another photographer due at exactly the wrong moment.”

“Cole Mercer.” His mouth moved at one corner, almost a smile. “I’m sorry.”

That was not a sentence people used when handing over keys to a perfectly dry cottage.

The man with the shop vacuum stood and wiped one forearm across his forehead.

He was built like someone who moved heavy things because moving heavy things was faster than discussing them.

Brown hair, serious eyes, work shorts, boots, and a pencil tucked behind one ear. He glanced at the cottage, then at me.

“Supply line behind the kitchenette wall failed sometime Tuesday night,” he said.

“We found it Wednesday morning. Water was off within minutes of discovery. The flooring is out, lower drywall is open, dehumidifiers are running, and the moisture readings are still too high for you to sleep in there.”

I looked at Cole. “Please tell me he’s the contractor and not the welcome committee.”

“Gray Bennett,” Shop Vacuum said. “Both. Unfortunately.”

The shirtless man set the surfboards against the porch and approached with the kind of easy confidence that should have come with a municipal permit. He was tan, black-haired, and smiling in a way that suggested smiling had gotten him forgiven for a statistically significant amount of nonsense.

“Rafael Soto,” he said. “Rafe. Marketing, surf instruction, public apologies, and apparently wardrobe suggestions by parrot.”

I shook his hand. Warm, callused, firm. His gaze dipped once, openly, over my white tank top and denim shorts, then returned to my face without a hint of apology.

It should have annoyed me.

It did not, which was irritating in a completely different direction.

“I’m Nico!” announced a small boy in a shark T-shirt. “Mango learned that from Dad.”

Rafe put a hand over his heart. “Betrayed by my own blood.”

“You said it when your swim trunks got stuck,” Nico added.

“Context is the first casualty of parenthood.”

A girl with two uneven braids pointed at the detached cottage. “It smells bad in there.”

“June,” Gray said.

“It does.”

“Accurate isn’t always helpful.”

The oldest child, a girl of maybe nine, stood a little behind Cole with a sketchbook tucked under one arm. Her gaze had already found the camera backpack on my passenger seat.

“That’s a lot of lenses,” she said.

“Nora,” Cole said, and there was something softer in the way he said her name. “And yes. It is.”

“Not according to photographers,” I said. “According to photographers, the correct number of lenses is one more than you can afford.”

Nora considered that, then nodded as if I had passed a small entrance exam.

I turned back to the cottage because attractive men and observant children were irrelevant to the fact that my promised housing appeared to be undergoing an exorcism by industrial fan.

“How long?”

Gray answered, which I was already learning meant I would get the version without decorative optimism. “Best case, several days before we can close the walls. Longer before I’d call it ready for someone to live in. We’re not rushing drying just to make the calendar look better.”

“Good,” I said automatically. I was a photographer, not a mold enthusiast.

Cole folded his arms. “We should have called before you got on the road.”

“You did.”

All three men looked at me.

I held up my phone. “Three missed calls while I was driving. I don’t answer on the interstate. I assumed it was a shot-list question.”

“That’s on us,” Cole said.

The reflex rose in me so quickly it barely felt like a choice. No, it’s fine. These things happen. Don’t worry about it. I’ll figure something out.

I had said versions of those words for eight years while Evan forgot batteries, overbooked sessions, promised rush edits, spent money we had not collected yet, and eventually put his penis in an employee while I was color-correcting a bride’s entire reception at two in the morning.

I swallowed the sentence.

“Okay,” I said instead. “What’s the housing plan?”

Gray’s eyes flicked to mine. Something about his expression changed, not warmer exactly, but more attentive.

Rafe leaned a hip against the porch post. “We have called every hotel, motel, vacation rental, bait shop with a cot, and one woman named Barbara who apparently rents a converted garage to visiting bird-watchers.”

“Opening-week festival,” Cole added. “Town’s full through next weekend.”

“Barbara said no?”

“Barbara said absolutely not after I mentioned Mango,” Rafe said.

“Reasonable woman.”

Mango clicked his beak at me.

Cole gestured toward the main house. It was a big, weathered three-story beach place with cedar shingles faded gray by sun and salt.

Not luxury-rental glossy. Real-house messy.

Three life jackets hung from porch hooks beside a pink backpack, a coil of rope, and a child’s plastic shovel.

Wet towels occupied a rail that had clearly surrendered to them years ago.

“We have a spare bedroom,” Cole said. “Private room. Door locks. Bathroom is across the hall, mostly yours. The kids use it sometimes when the downstairs one’s occupied. You can stay there until the cottage is safe.”

I stared at him.

Rafe lifted both hands. “Before you say anything, yes, we understand how that sounds. Three strange men invite the woman they’ve hired to move into their beach house. If this were a documentary, the narrator would already be using a concerned voice.”

“You’re not strange,” June said.

Gray looked down at her. “Thank you.”

“Rafe is.”

Gray nodded. “Also accurate.”

Rafe pointed at his daughter-not-daughter. “You’re cut from the will.”

“I’m not in your will.”

“Then this saves paperwork.”

Against my better judgment, I laughed.

That was dangerous. Not the laugh itself. The ease of it. I had spent the past month treating every pleasant emotion like a suspicious package.

I glanced toward the road. Beyond the houses, I could see a blade of blue Atlantic between dunes and sea oats.

A golf cart crawled past loaded with six adults, two coolers, and the confidence of people who had never met a parking ordinance they respected.

Somewhere farther down the island, music thumped from the commercial strip.

My contract was good. Not change-my-life money, but six weeks of solid work, half paid up front, the rest tied to deliverables.

Commercial lifestyle images, staff portraits, charter and surf coverage, repair-shop detail work, social crops, and a defined license for Tide & Timber’s advertising.

It was exactly the kind of clean, independent job I needed under the name Piper Hale.

It also included housing.

I looked back at the three men.

“I need to see the room.”

Rafe pushed away from the post. “I knew my devastating charm would close the deal.”

“Your devastating charm is currently losing to air-conditioning.”

“Still a win.”

Cole took my largest camera case before I could reach for it. “Just the tour first. You can decide after.”

“I can carry that.”

“I know.”

He did not say it like I was being difficult. He simply lifted the case, checked that the latches were secure, and headed inside.

That tiny distinction landed harder than it had any right to.

I followed them into chaos.

The house was cool, loud, and aggressively inhabited.

A basket of clean laundry sat on the dining table beside a stack of marina invoices.

Someone had left a half-built model boat next to a bowl of peaches.

Flip-flops crowded the entry. A wall calendar had three colors of handwriting plus a fourth color that appeared to be reserved for Tide & Timber bookings.

The refrigerator wore children’s drawings under magnets shaped like fish.

And everywhere I looked there were signs that adults actually lived here with children instead of staging a lifestyle around them.

Nico ran past carrying a snorkel.

“No snorkel in the house,” Cole said without raising his voice.

“I’m testing it.”

“Test it without running.”

Nico slowed instantly to a power walk.

“That somehow became worse,” I said.