Chasing Carly (Holiday Cove 3)

“Bye, Dad.” I clicked off the call and stared down at the phone in my hands.

It was going to be a long-ass summer.

The next week and a half passed in the blink of an eye, and I was on my way out of town, making the drive to the Monterey airport to collect Alesha. My dad had texted me the flight details and transferred five grand to my bank account. He said it was to cover expenses—food, extra utilities, and some extras to make sure Alesha got her weekly allowance. I knew it was my payoff—hush money—for taking Alesha off their hands for the next three months. The last two years, they’d gone to Greece for the summer. Kelli had family in the area and my dad managed to work at the Athens office of the chain of banks he was employed with as some kind of bigwig number cruncher.

I’d never even been invited.

Not that I would have accepted. A couple of years ago, I woke up from a series of bad decisions and finally got my shit together. I opened The Siren on the shores of the lovely central California town, Holiday Cove. I threw myself whole heartedly into making my little business thrive. I worked by myself since my part-timer had abandoned me when she went off to college, and I hadn’t gotten around to hiring and training another one. The long days didn’t bother me. The shop was my life.

I worked seven days a week, from six until four, and usually a couple of hours on both ends of business hours, as I indulged my control freak bent by preparing nearly everything in the shop from scratch.

As I drove up the coast, I gave myself a mental pep talk, in an effort to drown out the haunting memories of the summer before when Alesha had come to stay with me for the first time. She had just turned seventeen, making her eleven years younger than me, and had spent the majority of her life being the star of the show as Daddy’s little girl.

By the time she’d come around, I was already in junior high and hadn’t been very interested in her once the initial excitement faded over having a baby in the house. Then, I was in my senior year when our parents split up. She was only five when our mom took off with her loser boyfriend, and in the aftermath of the divorce, our dad had gone a little overboard trying to make things perfect for Alesha.

I’d taken advantage of his distraction and spent the last couple of years of high school smoking cigarettes and screwing around.

Dad’s world revolved around Alesha and he catered to her every whim right up until he met Kelli. When his attention shifted to his new girlfriend, Alesha was knocked down a peg on the totem pole, right in time for her to enter high school, and she’d reacted in a series of self-destructive behaviors. Each one was less pleasant than the one before.

I blew out a breath and shook my head. I loved my dad to pieces and didn’t even blame him for wanting to get remarried and find happiness and love after my mom’s betrayal of their marriage. Still, the way he’d done it—and the timing—sucked.

And now, I’d spend the next three months rooming with and babysitting my teenage sister—all as a result of his life choices—not mine.

“All you have to do is keep her alive and out of jail,” I reminded myself, navigating to a parking spot at the airport. “It’ll be easy peasy. No problem.”

Right.

I shoved it all to the side, silently sent out some prayer that Alesha had grown up since her last visit and got out of my Honda and started toward the front entrance of the airport. Since it was the middle of the day, the airport was fairly empty. I checked the arrivals board, confirming the flight number on my phone, and saw that everything was running smoothly. I went deeper into the airport and stopped outside the security checkpoint and took a spot by a coffee cart to wait. According to the real-time flight information on my phone, I had about twenty minutes before her flight would land.

The sweet, seductive scent of a Costa Rican blend wafted over to me. I turned toward the smell and gave the coffee cart a once over. I’d always been a caffeine junkie, but since opening my own coffee shop I’d turned into a full blown coffee snob.

The cart looked clean. A glance at the steamer wand showed no residue. And best of all there wasn’t a line. A quick cup of coffee would be the perfect distraction to keep myself from obsessing over the myriad of worst-case scenarios that were flickering through my brain. I dug my burlap and lace wallet from the depths of my favorite crossover bag, it was a handmade piece I’d found at a weekend artisan market months ago and made my way over. The barista working the coffee stand was propped against the corner, her hip resting on the cart while she scanned through her phone.