Gypsy Beach (2 page)

Running her hands over the railings, badly in
need of sanding and a coat of paint, she tried to survey her newly
acquired home with fresh eyes. Guests, to what she was determined
to make one of the nicest beachfront B&B’s around, probably
wouldn’t find the warped floors, peeling kitchen laminate, and
rotting handrails as charming as she did. They would have no
memories of the beach house before the storm, and it wouldn’t
likely matter that this house was the only place in the world that
Sienna ever felt at home.

Tempted to turn and see the McNamara’s
beachfront mansion, she ordered herself not to, but she was never
one for following anyone’s directives, even her own. Her boots
crested the top step, and she spun. There it was, though the
grandeur of what had once been the jewel of Gypsy Beach now looked
rather worse for wear. The McNamara’s was in one piece but was in
need of repairs. The expansive decks appeared to be sagging even
from her vantage point on the opposite curve of the beachfront.
Recollections of sitting on the front porch swing and waiting on
Ryan to sprint over every summer morning rubbed vinegar in the
wounds that still battered her heart.

She shook her head and refused to feel the
pain. The storm may have left her beloved beach town beaten and
battered, but it was still standing. Anticipation and possibility
blew in on the sea breeze. The fortitude brought her hope.

Sienna turned back and tried not to see the
love that she’d been so certain burned there in Ryan’s hunter green
eyes. She tried not to feel the heat that always shot through her
body when she recalled his muscular arms encapsulating her in his
safety.

“That was a decade ago, and you have a job to
do. You don’t need him or anyone else. This is what Nana would’ve
wanted, and everyone else can just go to hell.” Her resolve
stiffened her spine as she marched the last few steps towards the
screen-covered front door.

She realized that perhaps her temper and her
determination were overblown when her right boot went straight
through a rotten board on the porch and met the dirt below.

Refusing to just sit down and have a good
cry, she wrangled her foot free and drew a deep breath. The creak
of the screen door reverberated in her heart as she slid the key
into the lock and used all of her body weight to force the swollen
door open, certain the memories were going to engulf her like a
riptide she couldn’t outswim.

Trying to focus on the good and not the
crippling doubts, she travelled through the large living room and
into the smaller kitchen. A smile automatically formed on her face
as she inhaled deeply. The walls of the home held the perfume of so
many memories. Nana’s cooking, the patchouli oil she would apply to
Sienna’s skin when she stayed in the sun too long, and the
wildflowers that were always on the kitchen table whispered in the
air.

Out of habit, she skipped the third step on
her way up to the bedrooms. It squeaked and bothered the guests.
Sienna couldn’t stand it when people complained to Nana about the
Inn.

Her right hand slid along the walls of the
hallway. She peeked in each room and breathed in the musty scents
of summers past. When she reached the end of the passage, she
touched the fabric on the doors of the old chifforobe. Leaning
down, she tried to push a bottom drawer back into place. It
wouldn’t budge. The humid air had probably made it swell. Sienna
decided that she liked it that way anyway. It was Nana’s, and it
was perfect.

Trekking to the other end of the hall, she
opened the door to Nana’s old bedroom. Her eyes fell on her
grandmother’s large jewelry box. Her heart swelled as she rushed to
it. She loved jewelry just as much as Nana, and Nana would always
let her play. She could wear as much as she wanted. None of it was
worth anything. Nana never had much money, but Sienna loved it all.
Adding a few more bracelets to the ones already adorning her
wrists, another necklace, and an additional ring helped a sense of
peace and belonging working through her weary veins. She’d been
running for far too long. Running from the memories, running from
the decline of Nana’s health, running from her mother’s constant
derision, just running endlessly. All she wanted was somewhere that
she belonged, and this Inn had always been that for her.

His body and his mind couldn’t withstand any
more bad news. It was an impossibility, but Ryan forcefully
unclenched his jaw to answer John’s call. The fact that his best
friend, since his ill-fated days at UGA, turned out to be a divorce
attorney seemed like maybe the universe was trying to make a few
apologies about the sham of a marriage he’d been forced into.

“If you’re about to tell me that she’s trying
to have me arrested again, so help me, I’m driving this truck off
of the pier when I get there.”

A half-chuckled sigh was John’s response.
“No, for now, Alexa seems pleased that you’re heading out of the
state.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll be back in two weeks. She’s
not getting one minute longer with my baby girl than that
ball-slaying vampire of a lawyer of hers got her.”

“I happened to think that your recording her
asking you to come get Evie when she called was rather ingenious. I
had you out of jail in less than four hours.”

A dramatic eye-roll and annoyed grunt was
Ryan’s response to John’s self-pride. Four hours in a holding cell
at the Atlanta PD was not his idea of a good time. Alexa had
stooped to an all new low when she’d called to demand that Ryan
return to the home she’d kicked him out of to get Evie.

He’d known she was up to something, but he
was more than willing to race back to Buckhead just to see his Evie
Grace. Three hours later, police had knocked on the doors to his
parents’ pool house, his new abode, to arrest him for child
abduction.

Alexa was a real piece of work. She always
had been. It still made Ryan sick whenever he recalled the
circumstances of the marriage that he’d tried desperately to make
work. It had all been for Evie. Everything he did was for Evie, and
all he wanted in this fucked up world was custody of his precious
baby girl.

“Are you’re sure you’ll be able to find
steady work in that beach town you’re so determined to return to?”
John had been skeptical from the beginning, but Ryan knew he could
make this work.

“The whole town was badly damaged in the
storms last fall. They’re set to re-do every structure. They want
to save the town and make Gypsy Beach the new small-town tourist
locale. Investors are coughing up money left and right. I may suck
at most everything else, but I can sure as hell build anything
anyone wants. I’ll make this work, and if you ever get off your ass
and get anything done, when I get full-custody of Evie I’m gonna
raise her there. I don’t want her growing up in Atlanta, and I sure
as hell don’t want to be there anymore.”

“Ryan, I know that’s what you want, all
right? It’s just not very likely that Alexa is going to give away
her biggest bargaining chip. I feel certain that fourteen years of
child support probably makes her salivate.”

“Let’s be real, John. Making me so miserable
I no longer want to live and milking me for every penny I ever hope
to make is how she gets off. My little girl will not be raised by
that bitch.”

“She’s got the latest papers, Ry. You agreed
to sign away the mansion, her Mercedes, and all of that jewelry
she’s amassed, along with a ridiculous amount of alimony. Who
knows? She might walk away. It’s still a few weeks before the
hearing. I’ll keep talking to her. God knows she doesn’t want Evie;
she just doesn’t want you to have her. But before I can get any
judge to consider taking custody away from the mother, you’ve got
to be making money and have your own residence. They’re going to
need to see that you have some place, that’s not your parent’s pool
house, to raise Evie. And do nothing Alexa can use to cast any
shade on your character. No more boozing, no more smoking, nothing.
Don’t even stay out past ten. You become a priest, and I’ll see if
I can’t get you your little girl.”

“Well, fit me for my collar. I’ll do
anything, John. You know that. She means the world to me. I haven’t
had a drink in years, not since Evie Grace was born. Give me a
little credit.”

“Yeah, well let’s both work on the credit
giving. I’m working my ass off. I’m doing the best I can.”

“I know, and thank you.” Ryan ended the call
and tossed his cell in the passenger side of the ancient Ford
Ranger that he’d bought for a few thousand dollars at auction when
Alexa had his custom Suburban seized.

He couldn’t imagine what he could feel
slamming against his rib cage. He’d left his heart back in that
stone-cold bitch’s house where he’d been forced to leave his little
girl.

An hour past the North Carolina state line,
he slowed the truck and tried to study the small town of Gypsy
Beach. Swallowing down the past seemed futile, but he attempted to
see the battered buildings as a contractor and not as the man that
had let his parents take away everything that had ever been good in
his life.

God, he could still see her, still feel her
sweet breath on his skin that was starved for her touch. His chest
was hollow. If Ryan were being perfectly honest, he would admit
that he hadn’t left his heart back in Atlanta with Evie; no, he’d
gone on completely heartless for the last ten years. Ever since
that morning, he’d woken up with Sienna Cooper tucked up in his
arms and had been stupid enough to help her sneak back into her
grandmother’s Inn and then had turned and walked away.

Driving on instinct alone, since he couldn’t
really see anything before him, in the present tense anyway, it
startled Ryan when he shifted the truck into park and stared up at
his parents’ old beach house. He rubbed his temples and reminded
himself that his baby girl was counting on him before he slid out
of the truck and headed inside what had once been quite a house.
Just like everything else, it now only held the remains of what had
once been life. A crypt of memories, promises, a future, and hope
that no one could ever access again. Everything had all washed away
with the tides.

He shook one of the long sturdy wooden poles
that held up one of the upper decks. It gave far too much for his
liking, and Ryan stared up at the footings of the deck, trying to
determine how much longer it would remain attached to the house.
Giving it at least another six weeks, he allowed himself to enter
his new home.

The smell of the beach house at the beginning
of each summer always took him back. His family had been happy
there; well, happier there than they ever were anywhere else.

A tinge of mildew and musty sea air assaulted
his senses. He moved to open a few more sliding doors and windows
in an effort to rid his nasal passages of breathy memories.

He tried to shake the visual assault of her
from every location in the house. They’d made out on that couch all
summer long. She would hop up on the kitchen counter with that
sassy smirk and the fire in those hazel eyes that he swore held the
mysteries of the entire universe.

No one had stayed at the house for any length
of time in the last ten years. He or his father would send men out
to check on it occasionally. John had brought a few girls out there
for long weekends, but the Gypsy Beach house had been left as a
mausoleum of memories, a tribute to a life that might have been if
everything hadn’t gone so horribly wrong.

Having no luck ordering the recollections of
the last ten years away, Ryan gave in. He took the stairs in a slow
death march and traipsed to the bedroom where he’d spent every
summer from the age of ten to seventeen.

Squeezing his eyes closed to dam back the
tears, he could still see her beautiful body splayed out under his.
She’d been nervous. She’d been downright terrified, but she stared
into his eyes with such belief in him the feeling had been utterly
intoxicating.

God, he’d tried to be so gentle, but the
absolute magnetic force between them had him pushing himself into
her long before he’d properly readied her. He’d been a
seventeen-year-old idiot. Bitter regret ate him alive as he turned
and threw his bags into a different bedroom. He may have been a
miserable asshole, but he was a little tired of his own self-abuse.
Sleeping in the same bed where he’d held the one woman he could
ever have seen himself with for an eternity was masochistic as
hell, and that was not his thing.

He stomped back down the stairs, relieved
that the interior of the house wasn’t quite as bad as he’d
expected. It was dated and the decks and siding would all have to
be replaced, but it was livable, and he could turn it into a great
house for himself and Evie. That was what mattered anyway.

It was late afternoon, and he needed to get
some groceries. Bright and early tomorrow morning, he’d head to
Montgomery’s and find out who was looking to hire a contractor.
He’d work day and night until he’d earned back some of what he’d
willingly given away, until he had enough to take care of his baby
girl.

*****

“Yay!” Sienna bounced on her toes when she
finally got the oven to light. She was careful not to be too
abusive to the hardwoods since her boot had gone through the front
porch. Successes had been few and far between that day.

She needed more help with the Inn than she
would’ve allowed herself to believe since she was saving every
penny she could to get her Grandmother’s house out of probate.

This was where she belonged. This was what
she wanted to do, and her mother and her stepfather and everyone
else that thought she was insane could just take their thoughts and
walk right off the pier. She was going to make this a success just
like Nana had. Sienna helped her grandmother run the Inn every
summer. She knew how to do this, and dammit, no one was going to
stop her now.