A DELICIOUS AROMA drifted up the stairs. “It smells like cinnamon rolls!” Hailey shouted.
“Bacon,” Hannah said.
“I think it’s both,” Chelsea said. Surely Gabriel hadn’t gotten up early and made breakfast? He must have had someone come in. Possibly Brianna, who, last time they’d talked about the breakfast menu of her B and B, was up to one hundred recipes she rotated around. She hoped it was Brianna. She’d hate for a stranger to see her in ice cream pajamas.
But it proved to be neither Brianna nor a stranger. They entered the kitchen just as Gabriel was taking a casserole dish out of the oven.
“Good morning,” he said, greeting them as if it was merely a normal day and nothing was out of the ordinary. While in reality, nothing was ordinary. “I called Brianna and got one of her easier, quicker recipes that worked with stuff already in the house,” he said. “It’s baked French toast.”
“I love French toast!” Hailey said. “One of our nice foster moms used to make it for us. But then she was going to have a baby, so we had to go somewhere else where there was more room.”
It broke Chelsea’s heart that this vagabond life was the norm for Hailey. A thought occurred to her as she saw the way Hannah was looking at Gabriel. Remembering how she and all her friends had crushed on him back in middle school, she belatedly realized that Hannah was at that same age, with a heart just as vulnerable as hers had once been.
Had she made a mistake bringing the girls here? As tough as Hannah appeared to be on the outside, in many ways, she was the more vulnerable one. Even before the accident, she’d lost so much that wretched day with her father’s affair coming out in front of both friends and strangers. As distant and neglectful as her own father had become, he’d had never gotten in a physical fight. In public. Remembering times when she’d been furious at her father, Chelsea couldn’t imagine how much survivor guilt she would have suffered if he’d died while she’d been angry, never having had a chance to make up.
She was going to have to warn Gabriel about not letting Hannah fall in love with him. Which, she was discovering herself, was far too easy to do. But if she could find a new house sooner than later, there’d be no reason for him to be in the girls’ lives long enough for them to make an emotional connection. She didn’t need the perfect place. Just one suitable for now.
“It looks and smells wonderful,” she said. And from the glance he shot her, she knew that he’d recognized her fake, cheery, everything’s-just-fine-and-dandy-what-makes-you-think-I’m-nervous voice from her boat shop visit. “You certainly didn’t have to go to all this trouble, but I’d never turn down French toast. Or bacon.” If she kept eating like a lumberjack, she was definitely going to be getting her money’s worth from her gym membership. “What can I do to help?”
“You can pour some of the OJ that’s in the fridge. And milk for the girls. I made coffee for us.”
“That gets you sainthood in my book,” Chelsea said. Although she’d been exhausted when she’d fallen into bed last night, she felt nearly as tired this morning.
“Hannah and I can set the table,” Hailey piped up. “We’ve done it at lots of houses we’ve stayed at. I even know which side of the plate the fork goes on.”
“Then you’re ahead of me,” Gabriel said. “I still get them mixed up.” He took a handful of cutlery from the drawer and put it on the table, along with some beautiful linen place mats that Chelsea wasn’t sure were actually designed to be used, especially by children.
“That’s okay.” Hailey flashed him one of her bright melon-slice smiles. “I can teach you.”
As much as she was happy that the little girl seemed to have gotten through last night with flying colors, Chelsea also realized that Hannah wasn’t the only sister who’d already begun to make a connection with him.
“It’s the adrenaline,” he murmured as he handed her a mug of coffee. “There’s sugar on the counter and cream in the fridge.”
“I drink it black,” she said. “What do you mean, it’s the adrenaline?”
He put his hand on her back, leading her into the adjoining butler’s pantry, where they could have some privacy while still keeping an eye on the girls. “Adrenaline is why you have those circles back beneath your eyes.” He skimmed a finger along the shadows she’d cringed at while brushing the snarls out of her hair before putting it up in a high, messy tail. “It can create a helluva buzz, which messes with sleep.”
“Sounds as if you’re familiar with that.”
“Sweetheart, you just described my life. If you let it, it can become addictive.”
Yet another reminder that he wouldn’t be staying in slow-paced Honeymoon Harbor where the most excitement was the annual Christmas boat parade and the time a longhorn Angus bull had gotten loose from Eldon Manning’s ranch and gone running through town during the Fourth of July parade, creating havoc like, well, a bull in a china shop. One of the cowboys riding in a rodeo association group toward the back of the parade had finally raced his quarter horse down the street, just like something out of a Western movie, and lassoed the bull, putting a stop to the excitement.
“I’ll take that as a warning.”
“As it was meant. I also called my mom,” he divulged.
“Oh?” He’d certainly been busy while she’d been chasing sleep.
“Yeah. I figured she might have some ideas. She suggested putting the kids in day camp. Apparently they have all different age classes, and not only would that keep them busy, it sounds like a fun way to spend the summer. And those are two kids in serious need of fun. Which is an oxymoron now that I think of it, but you know what I mean.”
“I do. And that’s a perfect solution. But is there still time to enroll them with school already being out?”
“It was sold out last month. But don’t worry, that’s taken care of. Although I can’t remember her ever doing it before, she used Dad’s clout as mayor and got them in. It starts next Monday, so we only have to figure out what to do until then and how to tell them.”
The first thing that struck her was that he’d said we. As if they’d become a team. Which, by default, they probably had. Still, he could’ve just let them stay at this house and left it at that. There’d been no reason for him to get involved.
“I should feel sorry for people who don’t have your family’s influence,” Chelsea murmured, watching as Hailey chattered away while the girls set the wooden table in the breakfast nook. Like seemingly every room in the house, it boasted expansive windows offering a spectacular view. It was a waste, she thought, not to have a family living in this stunning home. “But I’m not going to.”
Chelsea couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten breakfast with anyone other than librarians at an out of town conference. She and Brianna had shared that doughnut at Cops and Coffee, but it wasn’t the same thing as sitting around the table, almost like a family. No. Exactly like a family, she considered, watching Hannah devour the stories Gabriel was telling about his days growing up in Honeymoon Harbor. She was definitely going to have to find a new place sooner rather than later.
AFTER TELLING THEM about the camp, Hailey was over the moon, but Hannah was unsurprisingly skeptical. “What do you do at a camp?”
“I’ve only ever been to a sleepaway camp,” Chelsea said, refusing to allow her own dismal experience to color her conversation. “But I think they have lots of fun arts and crafts stuff. And probably singing.”
“Will I get to color?” Hailey asked. “I love coloring!”
“I’m sure you will. And I’m sure the events will be age appropriate,” she assured Hannah.
“If I don’t like it, do I have to stay there?”
“Of course not. But you might want to give it a chance, in case your sister wants to stay. But here’s the deal—you cannot take off on your own. If you decide to leave, you have to promise to call me to come get you.”
Hannah shrugged. “I guess I can do that.”
“Then it’s settled. I was thinking that we should go to Seattle and get you some new summer clothes, but it’s getting a little late in the day to get there and back. So, how about you put on some swimsuits and we’ll go down to the beach and build a sandcastle?”
“We don’t have any swimsuits, either.” When color rose in Hannah’s cheeks, revealing embarrassment, Chelsea wanted to bang her head against the nearest hard surface. From the lack of pajamas, she should have guessed that. So far, her mom skills were not exactly stellar.
“I want to build a sandcastle,” Hailey shouted, just in case her big sister was going to shut the plan down.
“Sandcastles are for kids.”
Hailey put both small fisted hands on her hips. “I am a kid.”
“They’re not just for kids,” Chelsea said. “Long Beach’s SandSations Sand-Sculpting Competition was named as one of the top ten best sand-sculpting competitions in America by Coastal Living magazine.
“People compete to build sandcastles?” Hannah still wasn’t convinced. But she was intrigued enough to take the bait.
“They do. There are different skill levels, so beginners have a chance to win, and there are even classes beforehand.”
“There are not.”
“It’s true. We can go online and I’ll prove it. Meanwhile, shirts and shorts will be fine until we can buy you suits. I’ll gather up some measuring cups and whatever else I can find to make shapes, then we’ll go down to this cove’s beach and see what we can come up with.”
“If you’re going to drag us to that sandcastle contest, I’m not going to compete in front of strangers,” Hannah warned her.
“Did I say you had to? Watching’s fun, too. And did I mention there are free hot dogs?”
“I don’t like hot dogs. They’re gross.”
“We’ll pack a picnic, then. Or pick something up at a food booth or restaurant when we get there. It’ll be fun.”
“You have to come, too,” Hailey insisted, looking up at Gabriel, showing that she did, indeed, possess an inner princess accustomed to bossing people around. “That way we’ll look like a real family.”
Damn. Wasn’t this what Lily had warned her about? Chelsea exchanged a look with Gabriel, who looked as trapped as she felt. “We’ll see. If Gabriel has time. He has work to do this summer.”
“What kind of work?” Hailey asked, showing a bit of her older sister’s distrust of any adult’s promise.
“He’s building a boat.”
“Like a model?” Hannah asked. She didn’t use the word stupid, but from her tone, it was implied.
“No,” Gabriel said. “A real boat. Like you sail in a lake. Or the Sound. Or even along the coast.”
“It’s a faering,” Chelsea jumped in. “Like the Vikings used. But smaller.”
Hannah’s eyes widened, and for the first time since they’d met, she looked like a normal twelve-year-old excited about something. “I never knew anyone who built a boat before. Can I see it?”
Gabe exchanged another of those WTF do I do? looks with Chelsea. They just kept getting in deeper and deeper. She shrugged.
“Sure,” Gabriel said. “We can go down there after building the sandcastle. And get something to eat in town. Do you like tacos? I get them from the Taco the Town food truck most days so I don’t take a long break from the boat because I need to get it done before I go back to New York City.”
“You live in New York?”
“Yep. That’s where my job is. I’ve racked up a lot of vacation time, so I decided to take the summer off.”
“Oh.” Chelsea watched Hannah digest that subtle warning. “Yeah. Okay. I like tacos.”
As they unearthed measuring cups and various-sized mugs to use as molds, Chelsea realized that she and Gabriel would have to have a discussion about what to do about the fact that not only did the two of them have a connection, but right now, at this moment, they were behaving a lot like a family. Which could only end in heartache when Mrs. Douglas moved the girls to their new home.