Winter at the Beach Read online

  But as Sabrina had taken to saying, “Love knows no age limits.” Where the heck had she heard that?

  They’d met when he’d answered an ad Jenna had put in the Beach Times Help Wanted section for a website designer. Sabrina had wandered into the motel office right after Jenna had hired him, and both their hormone centers had lit up like the Fourth of July. Before you could say young love, he was eating lunch with Sabrina and her two new friends, Jennifer and Hudson, every day at school, walking her home, trying to sneak in solitary walks on the beach.

  Even though he seemed like a nice enough kid, Jenna didn’t want her daughter jumping into a relationship with him. Or anyone, for that matter, and becoming sexually active at such a young age. They’d had a mother-daughter talk (okay, more of a mother lecture) but Jenna wasn’t sure it had been very effective. It was so much easier to be a mother when your kids were little and you could keep them safely corralled in the backyard.

  Boys, driving, the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse—so many land mines lay ahead. Ugh. How had she gotten here? How had she wound up with a teenage daughter? Oh, yeah. She’d turned forty.

  On which one should she blame the gray hair she’d found hiding among the blond highlights the other day—the kid or the big 4-0?

  “Don’t pull it,” her mom had advised during their last phone chat. “You pull one and two more come to its funeral.” Melody Jones, the expert on gray hair. She’d been dyeing her hair since she was thirty.

  The advice came too late. Jenna had pulled the thing. She’d heard that gray hair and wisdom went together, but she wasn’t ready to be that wise yet.

  “What are you and Tristan scheming now?” she asked as she kissed the top of Sabrina’s head.

  “Can I go to the Christmas ball with him?”

  “Yes, when you’re a senior. If he isn’t engaged to some college brainiac, he can come back from MIT and take you.”

  “That’s so not funny,” Sabrina said, her sunny smile dipping behind a cloud of teen irritation.

  “No frowny face,” Jenna teased. “Santa’s watching.” This had been one of Jenna’s favorite behavioral modification tactics, starting when Sabrina was four, and she’d used it plenty over the years, working it from November clear up to December 24.

  “Lame, Mom,” said Sabrina, who’d quit believing in Santa when she was nine. “Anyway, it’s only October. You’re way too early.”

  “I like to get an early start.” Obviously, so did Tristan.

  “Mom.”

  Every mother knew that tone of voice, half disgust and half pleading. “Maybe. Let me think about it.”

  Sabrina beamed at her. “That would be the best Christmas present ever.”

  “We’ll have a great Christmas, no matter what,” Jenna said, determined not to make any promises until she’d had more time to consider. She gave her daughter another kiss, then headed for her own room.

  Christmas. It was her favorite holiday. The joy, the lights, the parties, the hopeful message of peace on earth, goodwill toward men. She loved the candlelight church services, the cookies, the decorations and holiday songs, the gathering of family. Granted, her own little family had been fractured, but she still had her daughter and her mom and sister, and Aunt Edie, and she was looking forward to enjoying their first Christmas together in their new home at the beach. Her mom and Celeste, who both lived north of Seattle, would come down, and it would be one long party. The beach was always special, but even more so during the holidays.

  Christmas at the beach. Hmm. Now, there was a thought. Where could she go with it?

  Someplace good, she realized as she crawled into bed. A holiday festival was bound to lure people to town. Who didn’t like fairs and festivals, especially holiday ones? She could see it now—the storefronts all lit up with multicolored lights, trees in the restaurants decorated with glittery shells and little lighthouses and mermaids, amusement rides and cotton candy and hot chocolate down at the pier, a live Nativity scene in front of one of the churches. And a Christmas parade with Santa bringing up the rear for a grand finale.

  You had to include Santa. In fact, the jolly old guy was such a draw, maybe they could include his name in the festival. Sandy Claus? No, that was too close to Sandy Claws, the pet goodies shop. Santa in the Sand? That sounded like he’d gotten his sleigh stuck. Santa at Sea. Sea, seaside... Seaside with Santa! Oh, that had a nice ring to it. Come to Moonlight Harbor and experience the Seaside with Santa Festival. Waves of fun!

  Wow, was she brilliant.

  Damien had always looked down his snobby artist nose at her various craft projects. She supposed she’d brought that on herself since when they first met she was the little crafter going to massage therapy school and he was the darling of the University of Washington’s art department. But after a while it got old hearing, “You’re just not creative, Jenna. Not everybody is, you know.”

  Right. Not everybody was as brilliant and special as him.

  But guess what, Damien. Your former wife is more creative than you ever realized. And she’s not mooching off her ex and sitting around making collages out of take-out containers. She’s coming up with something to help a whole town.

  Jenna smiled and snuggled under the covers, letting the sound of the surf lull her to sleep. Tomorrow at the Moonlight Harbor Chamber of Commerce meeting she was going to propose her brilliant plan. Look out, Icicle Falls. You’ve got competition.

  Chapter Two

  Jenna woke up every bit as excited about her holiday festival idea as she’d been when she went to sleep. “So, what do you two think?” she asked after she’d shared it with Aunt Edie and Sabrina at breakfast.

  “Call the cops!” Jolly Roger suggested, bobbing and weaving on his kitchen perch, happy to be cage free.

  “I think a festival sounds delightful,” Aunt Edie gushed.

  “If we have rides it’ll be cool,” Sabrina said. “And elephant ears and corn dogs.”

  “I love the idea of a parade,” Aunt Edie continued. “Like our Flag Day parade only with Santa. Who would we get to play Santa?”

  “I’m sure any number of men would be happy to volunteer,” Jenna said.

  At that moment Pete wandered in, following his nose right to where the bacon sat, fresh out of the oven on a foil-lined cookie sheet. Still unshaven, dressed in dirty, old jeans, a coffee-stained T-shirt and a rumpled windbreaker, he looked like he should have been squatting on a street corner holding a sign that said Anything Helps.

  “Volunteer for what?” he asked, getting himself some bacon.

  “For being Santa Claus in our holiday parade,” Aunt Edie said.

  Pete made a face. “Holiday parade. Since when do we have a holiday parade around here?”

  “Since we realized we need to find a way to bring more people to town in the winter,” Jenna replied. “We’re thinking about a holiday festival.”

  Pete shook his head. “We don’t need more people here in the winter. We have enough crowds in the summer. Edie, do we have any eggs?”

  “I’ll fry you one,” Aunt Edie said, and got up, happy as always to wait on him.

  “Hey, don’t eat all the toast,” he said as Jenna helped herself to a piece to go with her coffee.

  “Don’t worry, there’s some left,” she said.

  “Just one piece!”

  “We’re tightening our belts,” Jenna informed him. “Until we get more people staying down here, we need to cut back.”

  “An extra piece of toast isn’t gonna break us.” Pete snagged another slice of bread from the shrinking loaf on the counter and popped it in the toaster. Pete, the two-legged locust.

  “You’re welcome to contribute to the supplies,” Jenna told him.

  He scowled. “I’m on a limited income.”

  “So are we,” she retorted.

  “Well, now, what’s
on your agenda for the day, dear?” Aunt Edie asked her, obviously determined to distract Jenna from the irritation that was their so-called handyman.

  “I hope you don’t have a bunch of stuff for me to do,” Pete said, taking a few more slices of bacon. “My back is killing me.” Pete’s bad back was becoming legendary.

  “My back is killing me,” Roger repeated. He’d heard that phrase often enough to have added it to his birdie vocabulary.

  “I don’t have anything for you today,” Jenna told Pete.

  “Good. ’Cause I need a day off.”

  He had more days off than he had on, especially with their lack of guests, but Jenna kept that observation to herself. There was no sense upsetting Aunt Edie by squabbling with him. He’d been a fixture at the Driftwood long before Jenna arrived, and her aunt was fond of him.

  “Is this your chamber of commerce meeting day?” she asked Jenna.

  “Yep. And I’m going to see what they all think about my idea.”

  “It’s a dumb idea if you ask me,” Pete muttered. As if anyone would?

  “Well, I think it sounds like fun,” said Sabrina, who’d been dawdling over her granola. The honking of the school bus outside galvanized her, and she jumped from the table and grabbed her backpack. She managed a quick kiss for her mom and aunt and then bolted out of the kitchen.

  “She’s gonna miss the bus,” Pete predicted.

  “They’ll wait for her.”

  He retrieved his toast and buttered it. “When I was a kid you had to walk to school.”

  “Which is probably how you got your bad back,” Jenna said sweetly, then took her coffee and left him to grumble and scarf down more bacon.

  The school bus driver had, indeed, waited for Sabrina, and Jenna gave her a cheery wave as she walked across the parking lot to the motel office. She’d do a little research online and write up her idea, then print out copies for the chamber meeting. Hopefully there’d be more Sabrinas and Aunt Edies present than Petes.

  * * *

  “What have you got there?” Brody, who was president of the organization, greeted her when she arrived at the banquet room in Sandy’s Restaurant for the lunch meeting with her handouts. As usual, he was looking like Mr. GQ in slacks and a blue twill shirt that showed off his broad shoulders and matched those baby blue eyes.

  “An idea to bring more people to town. Can you add it to the agenda under new business?”

  “Sure. We’re always open to ideas.”

  She hoped they’d be open to hers. She thought it was a good one. Of course, she was the new kid in town, having only arrived a few months earlier. Maybe no one would take her seriously.

  Lunch options consisted of either fish and chips or clam chowder in a bread bowl and a small tossed salad. Jenna was almost too excited to eat. Almost. But it was impossible to resist clam chowder. She ate the chowder and left the bread bowl. She already fought enough carb battles at home with Aunt Edie’s baking binges, and a girl had to draw the line somewhere.

  “I was never much of a seafood eater before Leroy and I moved here,” confessed Tyrella, who was seated on one side of Jenna. “But I got hooked on fish and chips in a hurry.”

  “No pun intended,” joked Nora Singleton, who was seated next to Tyrella. Brody had, as usual, claimed the seat on Jenna’s other side.

  Tyrella smiled. “Before we moved north, Leroy and I weren’t big on seafood. With that man it was barbecue or fried chicken, macaroni salad and green beans or collard greens. Oh, and grits, of course. But after we came to Moonlight Harbor we sure changed our eating habits. Salmon, cod, fish and chips, sushi. Remember when my baby brother and his girlfriend came up to visit last year?” she asked Nora, who nodded. Tyrella shook her head. “I bought them salmon dinners right here in this restaurant. You’d have thought I’d tried to poison them.”

  “They did like my huckleberry ice cream, though,” said Nora.

  “You’d have to be from the moon not to like huckleberry ice cream,” Jenna said.

  Nora pointed a teasing finger at her. “I haven’t seen you ordering any in months.”

  “If I ate everything you and Aunt Edie tried to feed me, I wouldn’t need a car. I could just roll down the street.”

  “You worry too much about your weight.” Tyrella told her. Tyrella was a curvy woman, and she never let concern over an extra pound keep her away from her mac and cheese. “But I get it. A lot of men like their women skinny, and you’re still young.” She cast a surreptitious look in Brody’s direction. “You won’t stay unattached forever.”

  Jenna was aware of Brody on her other side, eavesdropping, and her face suddenly felt hot. So did other parts of her.

  “You’re too young to go through life alone,” added Nora.

  “I’m too young to go through life alone,” Tryella said and gave her dreadlocks a flip. “That darned Leroy, keeling over on me in the prime of my life.” She sighed. “There’ll never be another Leroy.”

  “You might meet someone else,” Jenna said.

  Tyrella rolled her eyes. “In case you haven’t noticed, there aren’t exactly a lot of middle-aged single black men down here at the beach.”

  “Online dating,” Jenna said. “You could find someone and import him down here.”

  Tyrella didn’t look thrilled with the idea of online dating.

  “Just sayin’.” Hey, if her friends could meddle in her love life, she could meddle in theirs.

  “Speaking of dating,” Brody said to Jenna, “what are you doing Saturday night? Want to catch a movie?”

  “I might.” But it wouldn’t really be a date. Brody knew they were just friends. With no benefits.

  “He’s a nice guy,” Tyrella whispered as Brody tapped a spoon on his water glass to get everyone’s attention.

  “We’re just friends,” Jenna whispered back.

  “That’s how Leroy and I started,” Tyrella informed her. “Next thing I knew he was proposing. Get that boy whipped into shape first, though, cuz they don’t change once they’re married.”

  Was she kidding? Jenna had her hands full getting herself whipped into shape.

  “I think we can begin now,” Brody was saying. “Will our secretary read the minutes from our last meeting?”

  Cindy Redmond pulled up the notes on her iPad and began to read. “We had an impressive influx for Labor Day weekend and our motels and B and Bs reported an uptick in guests. We had a lower turnout for beach cleanup the day after, and it was suggested by Rian that we get our local Boy and Girl Scout troops involved. It was also suggested that we hire a firm to do a study and show us how we can make Moonlight Harbor more attractive to tourists. Ellis West was going to get quotes for us.”

  “And did you, Ellis?” Brody asked.

  “I did.”

  “Okay. We’ll deal with that when we get to old business,” Brody said.

  Cindy finished her report, and the members voted to accept the minutes as read. Then their treasurer, Rian LaShell, reported on the current state of their budget, which hadn’t changed much since her report the month before.

  Then it was on to old business, with Ellis reporting what he’d found in the way of experts. He quoted a figure that dropped several jaws, including Susan Frank’s.

  Susan had worn one of the outfits from her shop, Beach Babes, to the meeting—beige slacks, which Jenna knew would have the same elastic waistline as all the slacks there. Her lemon yellow sweatshirt had a starfish embroidered on it. Beach Time is Happy Time it said. Susan, who was frowning as usual, obviously didn’t subscribe to that philosophy.

  “That’s ridiculous,” she said. “A waste of money. We already know what we need.”

  “And what would that be, Susan?” Nora goaded her.

  “Better weather year-round,” Susan snapped. “But that’s not happening. This isn’t California.”


  “The weather is what it is,” Ellis said. “But people, especially people in the Pacific Northwest, don’t let it dictate their lives. If they did, nobody would have a life. We need to find a way to let people know that the beach is a great place to be, no matter what the weather’s doing. We need more attractions.”

  “Like an aquarium,” said Kiki Strom, who owned the popular tourist shop Something Fishy. Kiki was still going strong at seventy. She wore her gray hair in spikes, sported glasses with bright red frames and wouldn’t be caught dead in anything from Beach Babes. She had a reputation for thinking outside the box, and the crazy entrance to her store, which was shaped like a giant open shark’s mouth, was proof of it. In fact, according to Kiki, there was no box. Period.

  “We don’t need to hire an expensive firm to tell us we need more attractions,” Susan said.

  “It wouldn’t hurt to bring in an expert,” Ellis argued.

  “That’s a lot more money than we have,” Rian pointed out. “We’d have to convince the city to spend money.”

  “Good luck with that,” Susan said with a sneer.

  “It’s worth a try,” said Steve Hampton, who managed the Quality Inn.

  Susan shook her head. “I move we table the whole thing.”

  “Well, I move we look into this more,” Steve countered.

  “We can only have one motion on the floor at a time,” Brody said. “Susan, how long should we table it?”

  “Forever,” she said, and Brody frowned at her.

  “That’s not exactly tabling it,” he said. “That’s killing it.”

  “Okay, I move we kill it and put it out of its misery.”

  Brody kept his frown, but did his duty as the president and asked, “Do I have a second for Susan’s motion?”