Winter at the Beach Read online

  Kat was supposed to be lying on the couch, watching a movie on TV. He quickly shut his laptop and turned to look at her. “Hey, why aren’t you resting?”

  “I came to see what you were up to.”

  “You missing me?” he teased.

  “No, just making sure you’re not spending money on DVDs and signed baseballs. It’s getting too close to Christmas, and I don’t want you messing up my plans.”

  “You already got me something?” Why should that surprise him? Kat shopped for Christmas all year long.

  “Maybe. You’re not spending money, are you?”

  “Maybe.”

  She frowned. “On what?”

  Ah, yes, his thrifty wife. They’d lived on a tight budget for so many years that thrift had become second nature to her.

  “On a surprise. We do have an anniversary coming up, you know.”

  She smiled at that. “I sure do. And I have some plans of my own that I wanted to talk to you about.”

  Uh-oh. He probably should’ve checked with her before committing them to hitting the beach. It would only be a couple of days after her next chemo treatment, and she might not feel up to it.

  “I saw this offer on Groupon.”

  He smiled. Great minds really did think alike. “For a holiday stay at a beach motel?”

  Now she smiled. “You saw it, too?”

  “Saw it and just bought it for our anniversary.”

  “Yes! Perfect.” She plopped onto his lap and hugged him. He could still smell a hint of her perfume, and that soft little bottom in his lap made him think of other things besides anniversary trips. They hadn’t had much sex since her operation, even though the doctor had cleared them for it. Somehow, she still seemed so fragile. He didn’t feel right about it.

  But he sure had no problem holding her. “You think you’ll be ready for it?” he asked, and kissed her cheek. “It’ll be pretty soon after your treatment.”

  “It’ll be relaxing, just what I need. And I’ll have something fun to blog about. You’re brilliant.”

  “No, I’m lucky. Lucky to have such a great wife.”

  She frowned and touched the pink cap on her head. “A bald wife.”

  The no-hair thing was a constant lament. How she hated not having her hair. It had been long and thick and wavy, the color of chestnuts. He used to love to run his fingers through it, used to love how it spread out on her pillow...

  Of course, these days he never told her that. He reminded her (and himself) that hair grew back and told her he loved her no matter what, which he did. She’d shaved her head before chemo started, not wanting to deal with watching it fall out, and it had been a shock the first time he saw her bald. But she’d still had the same sweet smile. And she looked as attractive as ever in her scarves and fancy hats. And damn, what would he do if he lost her?

  Oh, no. He refused to think about that. She’d be fine. They were going to make it clear to their fiftieth anniversary and beyond. And meanwhile, he’d give her the most special thirtieth he could.

  * * *

  “So, what do you think?” Lisa Whitaker asked her sister, Karen Owens. The two women had met for lunch and a shopping spree at the Tacoma Mall, which was a convenient halfway mark between Olympia and Seattle.

  “It does sound good,” Karen replied. “But you know, Doug...”

  “Doug can suck it up for one weekend.”

  “He’ll whine,” Karen said, shaking her head.

  “He whines about everything,” Lisa said, dismissing both Doug and his whining with a flick of her hand. If you asked Lisa, her sister spoiled that man. She did everything for him short of cutting his meat at dinner. “You need to get away once in a while, have your own life. Chances are, you’ll outlive him.” Doug had high cholesterol and high blood pressure, plus he smoked—a triple threat. The reminder of her husband’s bad health made Karen scowl, so Lisa quickly took a different tack. “And when was the last time we did something, just the two of us? We’re past due for a girls’ getaway.”

  Karen waffled. “I don’t know...”

  “Doug will survive without you for a weekend.”

  “It’s so close to Christmas.”

  “We can finish our Christmas shopping at the festival. There’s bound to be all kinds of craft and food items for sale.” Honestly, when had her older sister become such a stick in the sand?

  “True.”

  “And the pictures look really kind of nostalgic. We haven’t been to Moonlight Harbor since we were kids. Remember how much fun we used to have there?”

  “Hot dog roasts, flying kites, building sand castles.” Karen pointed a finger at Lisa. “I did most of the work and you took most of the credit.”

  Lisa grinned. “That’s how it works with little sisters.”

  “You’ve always been a pain in the neck,”

  “We all have to be good at something. Now, are you going to do this with me or not?”

  Karen heaved a long-suffering sigh, a sure sign that she was caving.

  “I can come pick you up on the way,” Lisa said, which she figured would clinch the deal. Karen was sixty going on eighty and she hated driving any distances, claimed it hurt her hip. The extra weight didn’t help.

  If you asked Lisa, her sister was turning into an old lady way before her time. When they were young and single they’d gone out dancing with their girlfriends until the wee hours of the morning every weekend. When they were raising their kids, they’d helped each other with huge home remodels and partied together with friends, staying up half the night playing crazy games like dark tag where they’d chase each other around a pitch-black living room, tripping over stools and chairs. In their forties, they’d taken up tennis and dragged their husbands to dance classes. Then Doug broke his foot and that was the end of the dancing, even after he was out of his cast. He began to put on weight and turned into a couch potato, and Karen had decided she preferred quilting and reading to dancing and smashing the tennis ball and joined him on the couch.

  Lisa liked a steamy romance novel or a good murder mystery as much as the next woman, and she understood that quilting was a wonderful artistic outlet. But watching her sister become increasingly more sedentary was hard. It seemed these days that all Karen wanted to do was sit home and quilt or watch TV with Doug the slug. She needed to get out before she mummified in that two-bedroom downsized house of hers. They’d moved to an over-fifty active community, but these days she was about as active as a caterpillar in a cocoon. “Active is the key word. You’re supposed to be doing stuff there,” Lisa kept reminding her.

  “We do,” Karen would insist. “We go out for dinner every Friday.”

  It used to be dinner and dancing. Their waistlines were expanding, and their lives were shrinking. Doug could do what he wanted, but Lisa had no intention of letting him take her sister down with him. She was determined to find the butterfly Karen had once been before it was too late.

  “So, how about it?” she pressed.

  “I was trying to finish a quilt for Jillian for Christmas.”

  “You’ll get it done.” It’s all you do anymore. And it wasn’t as though Karen’s daughter didn’t have enough homemade quilts at this point. She yanked back the words before they could slip out of her mouth. “Think of the fun we’ll have. Shopping, eating out. No cooking, someone to clean up after us.” Heaven knew Karen did enough cleaning up after her husband, who’d become a throwback to the fifties, leaving her to wait on him hand and fat foot.

  “It does sound like fun.”

  Lisa translated that as a yes, and pulled out her cell phone. “Good. I’m calling the Driftwood Inn right now.”

  “I’d better check with Doug first,” said Karen.

  “Give me a break,” Lisa snapped and punched the number for the Driftwood Inn into her phone. “Since when do you have to a
sk permission to spend a weekend with your sister?”

  “Since you got us lost finding the border in Canada.”

  “Anyone can get lost.”

  “From Vancouver? And with a GPS?”

  Lisa frowned. “I know how to find Moonlight Harbor. Come on. This will be fun, I promise.”

  “Okay,” Karen said with another sigh just as someone on the other end of the call said, “You’ve reached the Driftwood Inn where it’s beach time all the time. This is Jenna. How can I help you?”

  Beach time all the time. Oh, yeah, this was going to great. “I saw your Groupon offer and I want to reserve a room,” Lisa told her. “Do you have any left?”

  “For the weekend of Seaside with Santa?” confirmed the woman named Jenna.

  “Yes. It sounds like fun.”

  “It will be. And we do have a couple of rooms left. I can give you one with a queen or one with two singles.”

  “Two singles,” said Lisa.

  “Singles,” echoed Karen, horrified.

  Lisa lowered her cell. “It’s either that or a queen.”

  “We’ll take the singles. I’m not sharing a bed with you. You’re a bed hog.”

  “We’ll take the singles,” Lisa said to Jenna, then dug out her credit card and read off the necessary information. “My sister and I are going to do a girls’ weekend,” she said.

  “She doesn’t care,” muttered Karen.

  “This festival will be perfect for that,” Driftwood Inn Jenna said. “We’ve got lots of vendors coming, and most of our shops and restaurants will be offering specials.”

  Oh, yes. This really was an inspired idea. “Now, admit it,” Lisa said after she’d ended the call. “Aren’t you glad we’re doing this?”

  “In theory, yes. But it seems like every time you and I take a trip together, something happens.”

  There was some truth in that. They’d gone to the tulip festival in LaConner, and Lisa’d had an allergic reaction. Who knew she was allergic to tulips? Then there’d been the three-day cruise when everyone on board had gotten sick. And yes, the weekend excursion to Canada when they’d gotten a little lost. But those experiences made for some pretty funny stories after the fact. Anyway, they’d had a couple of wonderful getaways, too.

  “They haven’t all been disasters,” Lisa pointed out. “We survived your church’s women’s retreat and that trip to Portland with the girls.”

  “Let’s hope we survive this,” Karen said. But she sounded doubtful.

  * * *

  “We got another reservation today,” Jenna informed Courtney when she showed up for her evening shift.

  “That’s great.”

  Courtney came around the reservation counter, ditched her purse and helped herself to one of the oatmeal cookies from the plate Aunt Edie had sent over for their guests—all three of them. One of them was a man on his way home from a business conference in Seattle who’d gotten tired of driving and wanted a place to crash for the night. The other two were an older couple who had just checked in and who didn’t do gluten.

  “Was this reservation, by any chance, another Groupon special?” Courtney asked.

  “Yep.”

  “That turned out to be a smart move.”

  “It did. We’ve only got a couple of rooms left for the festival weekend.”

  “Hopefully, we’ll get those booked tonight,” said Courtney.

  The bell over the office door jangled, and the female half of the older couple came in, wearing a frown.

  “May I help you?” Jenna asked.

  “Our room smells,” the woman informed her.

  The rooms had all been redone with new carpet. Jenna always made sure they were well cleaned and sprayed with room freshener.

  “What does it smell like?” She’d cleaned the room herself that very morning.

  “Like air freshener,” the woman said, making a face. “I have a sensitive nose.”

  “Air freshener,” Courtney repeated as if she was hearing wrong.

  “I can’t stand the smell of that stuff,” the woman said.

  “I’m sure we can find you a room that doesn’t smell like air freshener,” Jenna said pleasantly. She took a key for another room and suggested the woman accompany her. “Let’s see how this one smells.”

  It had been shut up for a while and still held the faint odor of new carpet from the summer’s renovation, but the woman sniffed the air and pronounced it acceptable and the switch was made.

  “Air freshener? Seriously?” Courtney said when Jenna returned to the office with the other room key.

  “It takes all kinds.”

  “I guess. And I can hardly wait to see what kinds you get from that Groupon special.”

  “I don’t care how weird they are as long as their money’s good,” Jenna said. “I’ll cry all the way to the bank.”

  And she meant it. Having the place completely booked for the festival weekend was all she wanted for Christmas.

  Chapter Six

  Jenna was working in the office the afternoon Seth’s truck pulled into the motel parking lot, followed by a tow truck carrying the skeleton of a car. Half a skeleton, as it had no top. It looked like the big-daddy version of the go-carts Nora’s sons rented out over at the funplex.

  She put on her jacket and went outside to check out what had to be the beginnings of their float.

  “Here it is,” he greeted her, sweeping his arms toward it.

  “In all its glory.”

  “Nobody’s gonna see this. All we care about is that it runs.” He turned to the husky thirtysomething guy in the droopy jeans and dirty windbreaker, wearing a baseball cap, who’d emerged from the tow truck. “And it runs great. Right, Dino?”

  “Yep,” Dino said, and spat a stream of something gross onto the parking lot. He wiped off his scruffy beard with a hand grimy from car grease. “Dinner’ll be great,” he added, and grinned at Jenna, showing a set of teeth on their way to rotten.

  “Dinner,” she repeated weakly.

  “What time do you want me to pick you up?”

  “Um.” What was going on here? Why was she having dinner with Dino? Jenna shot a frantic look in Seth’s direction. He was busy examining the car’s carcass.

  Her hesitation made Dino frown. “Seth said you were up for going out.”

  “He did, did he?” She narrowed her eyes at Seth, but he missed it as he was still busy not looking at her.

  “’Cause you’re so grateful Dino came through for you with the chassis,” he said.

  This was the going price for a chassis, dinner with Dino? “Of course,” she said.

  “How’s about seven? We can go to the casino. Tonight’s all-you-can-eat crab night.”

  “Okay.” She liked crab. Maybe she’d even like Dino. But that was a big maybe. “How about I meet you there? No sense you having to come all this way.”

  “I don’t mind,” he said with a shrug.

  Jenna did. “It’ll be easier for me to meet you there. Around seven? I, uh, have some errands to run first.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Suit yourself.”

  He turned to his tow truck and began to unhook the carcass. Jenna tried to catch Seth’s eye, but he was very busy helping Dino.

  She stayed put and watched them. It was a nippy afternoon, but she wasn’t cold. In fact, she was steaming.

  The carcass slid to the ground in front of the two end units where Pete and Seth stayed. Then, his mission complete, Dino saluted Seth, told Jenna he’d see her later, climbed back into his tow truck, and rumbled off down the road.

  “I’m gonna go over to the hardware store, pick up what we need,” Seth said and bolted for his truck.

  Jenna caught him by his jacket. “Not so fast. Why am I having dinner with Dino tonight?”

  Seth
shrugged. “All-you-can-eat crab. You love crab. And he’s paying. Besides, Dino gave us this chassis for almost nothing.”

  “Almost nothing and me. You pimped me out.”

  “I didn’t say you’d sleep with him.”

  “What, exactly, did you tell him?”

  “Just that you were new in town and needed somebody to show you around. That you’d wanted to come with me to meet him but you, uh, couldn’t get away.”

  “So I’d love to go to dinner with him?”

  “Dinner out’s a cheap price to pay.”

  “Then you go out with him.”

  “He’s not into guys,” Seth said with a grin.

  Jenna pointed a finger at him. “You’re enjoying this.”

  “Hey, you said you couldn’t afford to pay anything.”

  “I can’t.”

  “We got this for fifty bucks—and you for dinner.”

  She was going to kill Seth and feed him to the seagulls.

  “Come on now, don’t look at me like that,” he said. “I’m trying to help you out here.”

  “I’d believe that if you didn’t look like you’re on the verge of an evil cackle.”

  “Guys don’t cackle. Don’t worry, Jenna. It’s only dinner. I told him you don’t put out on the first date.”

  “Gee, thanks,” she said, and he chuckled and got in his truck and drove off.

  Well, it was for a good cause. And underneath his rough exterior, Dino was probably a nice guy.

  * * *

  Or not. Dino was more cleaned up when Jenna saw him next. He’d exchanged his baggy jeans and dirty jacket for...baggy jeans and a sweatshirt. He’d lost the baseball cap, and his reddish hair was slicked back to show off the gauges in his ears.

  She’d kept her own attire simple and as unsexy as possible, going easy on the makeup and wearing jeans and a loose sweater and boots. Unsexy apparently worked for Dino, and he looked her up and down like a thirsty man eyeing a tall glass of beer.

  “You look nice,” he told her.

  “Thanks. So do you,” she lied.