Chapter 6
Lucy
Lucy stared down at the same blank page in her journal that she’d been looking at for the past hour. On the mornings she didn’t meet Taylor to walk, she’d go out on her back porch overlooking the ocean and write in her journal while she drank her coffee and watched the sunrise. Spending time at the beach was the perfect start to every day.
Unfortunately, her peace and tranquility had been interrupted this morning when she spotted a man she was pretty sure was Logan Lancaster running on the beach. He’d been heading south toward town. Even from a distance, she could see the well-defined muscles that sculpted his chest and arms. That image of him had occupied her every thought since, and instead of journaling, she’d wasted a half hour chastising herself for thinking about Logan’s physique and those piercing green eyes. Her morning time was hers alone—until he’d barged in and taken over even that. Later today she needed to think about how to get him out of town and out of their business.
Pulling in a deep breath, Lucy closed her eyes and concentrated on the sound of the waves crashing on the shore beyond her porch. A laughing gull flew overhead, its unique call the only other sound this early. Later in the morning, families would set up umbrellas and scatter sand toys for kids to build castles, and the gentle breeze that blew in off the water virtually year-round would carry the sounds of the children shrieking with excitement as waves crashed over their legs. Lucy loved the soundtrack of living by the sea in the summer.
As the tension in her shoulders eased, she began to write.
I am grateful for this view.
I am grateful for?—
She paused; her pen suspended above her journal. What? That there was still time to stop Logan Lancaster and the rest of the council pushing for the development?
No. Her gratitude journal was for things she was truly thankful for, like her little cottage on the beach or the bookstore. Other days it was the Waterway Café having had her favorite soup on special or the peonies she’d brought home from the flower shop to sit on her counter. Lucy looked toward the edge of her porch for the dune sunflowers that sprang from the sand, but even they looked wilted this morning, and it wasn’t even that hot yet, at least not by Florida summer standards.
Frustrated, Lucy slammed the journal shut. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been unable to find something to write in it.
Annie had taught her to keep a gratitude journal back in high school when she was at that age when girls needed their moms the most. It had been hard to find anything to be grateful for when her mother had just walked out one day, telling Lucy and her father she was moving to Los Angeles because she needed “something more.”
Why wasn’t Heron Isle ever good enough for people as it was? First her mother, then Carter, her ex-fiancé. He’d left two summers ago for a job in Chicago saying the offer was “too good to pass up.” Now, even the people she thought cared about the island more than anyone else—the mayor and the town council—had decided what they had wasn’t good enough. They called it progress, but it mostly felt like a sucker punch. Why did everyone want something more? Bigger, better, more exciting, more growth.
People came to Heron Isle year after year because they loved the long stretch of beach that felt uncrowded even during high season, the freshly caught seafood that came in on boats every day, and the chance to slow down. Didn’t the council see that they could lose everything that made Heron Isle special? People came here for something different. Every major tourist destination from Myrtle Beach to Daytona Beach and beyond had chain restaurants serving frozen seafood, go-cart tracks, waterparks, and fancy stores lining their shores. And that was exactly what the last set of proposals had looked like—the first step to becoming what every other beach town had become over the past three decades.
Newly motivated, Lucy decided to hit some of the downtown businesses that opened early before it was time to open the bookstore for the day. She’d meant what she’d said last night: it was important for the business owners to get on the same page. She didn’t have time to wait for their meeting later in the week. Logan might stop by any one of them before then. She had to get there first.
She stopped by the bookstore to put her lunch in the fridge in back and quickly go over her notes from their previous Downtown Business Owners Council meetings to refresh her memory. She pulled the file from a cabinet beneath the front counter and turned on her computer to check for any new emails in the chain the group kept going.
While she waited for it to boot up, she checked the one message blinking on the answering machine. She hadn’t been able to bear throwing away the machine because it still had Annie’s outgoing message on it, and Lucy called to listen to it every once in a while, just to hear her voice. She knew eventually she’d have to figure out how to move the recording over to digital voice mail, but for now the system still worked. The message was from a literary agent asking if she’d received the details for an author’s signing the following month, so she went back to her computer to check her spam folder for the email since she hadn’t seen anything come in.
But before she could, her hand froze on the mouse when she saw Leona Lord’s name at the top of her inbox. She hadn’t heard from her literary agent in months. Leona had landed Lucy her first book deal, but the publisher went belly up before it was released. Her agent had tried to shop the book around, but after a string of rejections she advised Lucy to start working on her next book. Lucy had written another, but it, too, was passed on by every publisher her agent had pitched.
Lucy was too dejected after that to write a third. The first deal had obviously been a fluke because the other publishers passed quickly, saying things like “cute idea but missing that special something.” She wasn’t even sure Leona actually was her literary agent anymore. The last time they’d spoken, Leona had implored her to write another book. When Lucy hadn’t, she assumed Leona had finally given up on her.
Taking a deep breath, Lucy clicked to open the email.
Lucy,
I heard from Sarah today. She’s still freelancing, but she thinks she might be landing somewhere soon. She asked if you’re working on anything new, and I told her I would check in with you. I know you needed time to get over the shock of what happened with your first book, but it’s been nearly two years. Have you been working on anything? Do you still want to pursue being an author? It would be a shame to see a talent like yours wasted.
Leona
Lucy read the final question again, her heart thumping. Did she still want to be an author? Of course she wanted to be an author. But wanting to be an author and becoming one didn’t always go together. She didn’t think she could survive spending months pouring her heart and soul into another book only to be told it wasn’t good enough. Again.
As she pondered how to reply to Leona, one of the bookstore’s resident cats, a gray-and-white tuxedo cat named Lizzy, brushed up against Lucy’s leg, arching her back as she begged for pets. Much like her literary namesake, Elizabeth Bennett, Lizzy was headstrong and impossible to ignore. Along with Alice, a muted tortoiseshell cat, Lizzy lived in the bookstore, much to the delight of customers both young and old. Lucy headed to the back room to see if the cats needed feeding, Lizzy following so closely at her heels she nearly tripped over her. As Lucy was pouring a fresh bowl of food, she heard the bells on the front door jingle.
“I’m sorry, we’re not open yet—” Lucy rounded a bookshelf toward the back of the store and spotted her best friend. “Taylor! Why are you here?” Lucy practically jogged across the store to hug her. “I thought you didn’t get back until the weekend.”
Taylor flopped down in the nearest armchair, letting out a huge sigh. “Never left. Jack twisted his knee walking up my stairs yesterday.” She rolled her eyes. “I’ve been telling him to see someone about his knee for months, but you know how he is. Thinks he’s Superman.”
“Oh, no, I’m sorry you didn’t get your vacation,” Lucy said, dropping into the chair next to Taylor. “But, boy, am I glad you’re here.”
“Yeah, I got your text. Sorry I didn’t text back; we were in the ER in Jacksonville all afternoon and evening. So they really did bring in some new consultant?”
“He’s the worst. Slick, arrogant. Thinks he knows what’s best for us when he hasn’t even taken the time to get to know us.” Handsome. The most gorgeous green eyes you’ve ever seen. An image of Logan’s lopsided smile, his lone dimple punctuating his chiseled features, flashed through her mind and she shook her head to try to dislodge it.
“Why do they always want to bring in someone from the outside?” Taylor said.
“New perspectives and all that.” Lucy waved her hand in the air dismissively.
“Yeah, Jack was complaining after he got back from his last business trip that we still don’t have DoorDash or Uber Eats. What do we need that for anyway? You can get anywhere on the island in fifteen minutes or less.”
Lucy sighed. Ever since Taylor had met Jack, when his company relocated him to Heron Isle to become the general manager of the resort on the north end, Lucy worried he would grow tired of small-town life and take Taylor away from her too. Taylor was a phenomenal hair stylist and makeup artist who made a nice living for herself with all the destination weddings that took place on the island, but Lucy was sure she could do that in any other town where she followed Jack. Taylor had moved to Heron Isle as a teenager, so although she liked it here, Lucy wasn’t sure she’d always want to stay. Jack could probably make a compelling case for somewhere else where Taylor could make a bigger name for herself.
“So what’s this guy’s deal? What’s he wanna build down by the water?” Taylor asked.
“Who knows?” Lucy threw up her hands. “He only spoke at the meeting for a few minutes. Babbled about big projects he’d done in Phoenix and St. Louis, like that’s supposed to impress us. Why would they even bring in someone from a big city? And why would someone who’s so fabulous want to work here anyway? Smells fishy to me.”
“Well, I’m sure he’s no match for my best friend, Miss Downtown Business Owners Council President.” Taylor bowed from her chair, her brunette hair tumbling over the shoulders of her yellow sundress that highlighted her summer tan.
“Yeah, pretty sure they’re going to regret appointing me. They thought it was funny to nominate me when I wasn’t at the meeting, but the joke’s on them now.” Lucy tried to muster a laugh, but she was genuinely worried her fellow business owners had made a major mistake when they appointed her their leader.
“Nonsense.” Taylor rolled her eyes. “You’re young and you’re smart. You went off and got that fancy degree.”
“In Library Sciences.” Lucy shook her head. “I don’t know anything about city government or real estate development.”
“You’re good with people, though. No one’s ever met you who didn’t like you, and you’d talk to a brick wall. Have a conversation with this guy. Figure out what he’s all about.”
“Oh, we’ve had a conversation.” Lucy rolled her eyes. “I actually met him before the meeting. He probably thought I was flirting with him.” Lucy buried her head in her hands. “But it was before I knew who he was.”
“Wait.” Taylor sat up in her chair, turning to the side to lean toward Lucy with a smile, waiting for more details. “He’s cute? Is he single?”
“I don’t know, and I definitely don’t care.” Okay, the thought had crossed her mind, but she wasn’t going to let it go there again. “He’s the enemy, remember?” She was reminding Taylor as much as herself.
“Yes, absolutely.” Taylor wiped the smile from her face and did her best to look serious, her brow furrowed. “But how handsome of an enemy are we talking?”
“He could be cast in a Hollywood movie kind of handsome.” Lucy sighed. “And I think he knows it. Seems like the type who uses his good looks and charm to get what he wants. You should have seen Missy Goodwin at the meeting. She was practically drooling over him. He made this big show of tearing up the previous proposals, and she actually clapped.” Lucy shook her head. Missy owned the flower shop in town and was a hopeless optimist. She gave everyone the benefit of the doubt, even when they didn’t deserve it.
“What are you going to do?”
“I actually came in early so I could hit some of the other businesses that open before me. I think we all need to get on the same page. He said he’s going to start visiting all the big groups in town, and I want us to strategize before he gets to us.”
“Well, you were successful last time. They did abandon the other proposals.”
“Did they? Or did they just bring in reinforcements?”
“Did you just read a war novel or something? This whole conversation is starting to sound like a plan for battle.”
Lucy walked over to the counter, grabbed a book, and tossed it to Taylor.
When Taylor read the title, she laughed. It was a book about how to think like a military leader by a marine general. “You’re like the mad hatter.”
Lucy narrowed her eyes, her brows knitting together. “The mad hatter?” Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was one of her favorite books—it was why the other store cat was called Alice—but she didn’t understand the comparison.
“Yeah, the mad hatter had all those hats and he’d put one on and transform into a character that matched the hat. That’s how you are when you read.” Taylor stood and handed the book back to Lucy. “I can always tell what kind of mood you’re in by what you’re reading.” She winked at Lucy.
“You know what they say, a book a day keeps your problems at bay.”
Taylor laughed. “Who says that?”
“I do.”
“Of course you do. You should get that printed on a bookmark or something. It’s cute. Just don’t read a book on archery or marksmanship or something next. I’m confident you can take him in a war of words.” Taylor smiled and gave Lucy a quick hug. “I’ve gotta run. Poor Jack can’t even drive himself to physical therapy this morning his knee is so swollen. I’ll call you later.”
As she watched her best friend walk out the door, Lucy picked up the book by the marine general and took it back to the counter. The email from Leona was still open on her desktop. She closed the window and wondered how to tell her agent she wasn’t going to write another book and put herself through being rejected all over again. She also wasn’t sure she could bring herself to tell Leona she didn’t really need a literary agent anymore. It was the one part of the journey where she’d been successful—only a small percentage of authors made it out of the slush pile and were offered representation—and she’d clung to that small success.
She’d read the terms of her contract with Leona over and over, and it said either of them could terminate the relationship with thirty days’ notice, otherwise it would continue renewing annually. For now, at least, she could tell people she had a literary agent when they asked about her writing. She didn’t have to tell them she didn’t think she had another book in her.