Sarah lay in bed, waiting for the alarm to go off. She hadn’t slept a wink since Luke had come crashing through her bedroom door two hours ago. Well, his bedroom door if you wanted to get technical about it. She sighed and rolled out of his bed and quickly got dressed. If she couldn’t sleep, she might as well get to work early.
What was he doing here? Mimi had assured her that Luke hadn’t been to the beach house in over a year, and whenever he did come to visit he always let his mother and sister know well in advance so they could stock his refrigerator. Why didn’t he know that they’d rented out his beach house for the summer? Apparently, the entire family suffered from a serious case of miscommunication.
She washed her face and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. He’d called her Goldilocks, which was kind of funny. Except in the story, Goldilocks ended up running away from the cottage and into the forest where she was possibly eaten by rabid wolves. So, yeah, not so funny after all. Despite the lease, she was in a sticky situation. One that wouldn’t get resolved until she and Papa Bear could sit down and talk this through like rational adults.
She tiptoed through the living room, grabbed her backpack, and stole a glance at him. He appeared to be sound asleep, but she still felt a little guilty. She’d taken a few naps on that couch and it had been perfectly comfortable, but she was probably almost a foot shorter and about a hundred pounds lighter than him. His big feet stuck out from beneath the flimsy blanket he’d tried to wrap around his body and his head was flung back at an awkward angle. When he woke up from his sleep of the semi-dead, he was going to have one heck of a neck spasm.
She locked the front door behind her and took off in the little beat-up Honda she’d driven for the past ten years. When a mutual friend had called to say that local café owner, Frida Hampton, was looking for someone reliable to manage her coffee shop for the summer, Sarah had immediately said yes. She was between jobs and a summer spent working on the beach seemed like a dream come true. Especially after she’d found out she could live in the cute little clapboard house directly on the gulf.
But what if the lease wasn’t valid? He was the owner of the house, and if he didn’t want to honor a lease he wasn’t aware of, could he kick her out? She didn’t think so, but then, what did she know? Plus, there was the fact that she was paying next to nothing for rent. What if he insisted she pay him what the house was really worth?
Backing her car out of the driveway, she let out a long overdue sigh. She should have known the whole thing was too good to be true. Now that Mr. Hot Stuff had returned, he’d probably demand she vacate the premises as soon as possible. She’d been working at The Bistro for almost a month now, with another five weeks to go before Frida and Ed returned from their European trip. Maybe she could find a cheap little efficiency in Panama City. It wouldn’t be on the water, not with the kind of rent she could afford, and the thirty-minute drive would be inconvenient, but it might be her only choice.
She drove through the quiet streets of town and parked her car in the usual spot behind the café. Frida and Ed lived in an apartment above the restaurant. Originally, the plan was that Sarah would stay in the apartment, but then they’d decided that their trip was the perfect time to remodel, and Frida’s good friend Mimi had offered up her brother’s house as an alternative.
Maybe Sarah could still stay in the apartment. All she needed was a little space to lay down an inflatable mattress. Tom Donalan, the construction manager in charge of the renovation, was always here at eight am sharp to check on the previous day’s work before he went on to his other projects. She’d run the idea by him.
She used her master key to open the back door that led directly into the kitchen. It was four in the morning, but The Bistro by the Beach, Whispering Bay’s premier coffee house, opened at exactly six am. There were scones and bagels to bake, coffee beans to grind, oranges to squeeze into juice. All of which was second nature to her. She’d worked at cafés and bakeries since she was sixteen.
After graduating high school she’d tried college, but it hadn’t been for her, so she’d gone to work for one of the big cruise lines, but after a few years she’d grown restless and taken over the management of a small coffee house in Gulf Shores, Alabama. One day soon, she hoped to be just like Frida and open her own business. A business on wheels, that is. She was only five thousand dollars away from buying a slightly used, but still in good condition food truck. The truck’s current owner, a former employer of Sarah, had promised to hold it for her until fall. If she could just work out the rest of this summer living on the cheap, she could do it.
Sarah was chopping up mangos to go into the fresh fruit cups when Allie Donalan came in through the kitchen door. She was newly married to Tom and part owner of the Whispering Bay Gazette, the local paper, but she still worked at The Bistro a few mornings a week to help out Frida and make extra money.
“My God, it’s not even six and it’s already sweltering outside.” Allie hung up her bag and quickly changed into the bright blue T-shirt with The Bistro’s distinctive Got Coffee? logo stitched on the front. She was tall with long, dark hair and bright brown eyes. Her brother, Zeke Grant, was the local chief of police. His wife, Mimi, was Luke’s sister, which meant Allie and Luke were related through marriage.
Sarah was dying to ask Allie what she knew about Luke. Why had he come home without telling his family? And not that it was any of her business, but when were he and the beautiful brunette in the pictures getting hitched? But if Luke hadn’t told anyone he was back in town, then it wasn’t Sarah’s place to rat him out.
Allie took in all the fresh bagels and chopped up fruit on the counter. “You’ve been busy.”
“I got here a little earlier than usual.”
“Couldn’t sleep?”
“Something like that.”
Lucy McGuffin—a bubbly twenty-something, recent culinary school graduate, and the café’s full-time barista—arrived and soon the place w
as hopping with regulars. Sarah picked up a freshly brewed pot of coffee and strolled through the dining room offering refills and greeting customers.
Frida had explained to her before taking the job that having a cup of coffee and a muffin at The Bistro was more than just a quick breakfast for the locals. The Bistro was a place for the townspeople to see each other and be seen. And more importantly, to exchange information, aka gossip.
It had only taken Sarah a couple of days to discover that Frida was right. The customers were more like family. Whispering Bay was charming and quaint, a small beach town comprised of quirky townspeople who loved to stick their noses in everyone else’s business, but who, deep down, all cared about one another. The Bistro was home to the Mom’s Day Out morning breakfast group and the place where the local Rotary Club met for coffee on Thursdays. And, of course, to the Gray Flamingos, a senior citizen activist group, and also where the Bunco Babes (Frida and Mimi’s Bunco group) sometimes gathered to play.
After just a few weeks, Sarah had gotten to know the regulars pretty well, and she would miss most of them when it was time for her to move on.
This morning, several of the Gray Flamingos sat at their regular table overlooking the gulf. Betty Jean Collins watched her approach and put her cup out. “When is Frida coming back?” she asked.
“Good morning to you, too, Betty Jean,” Sarah answered as sweetly as possible. Betty Jean was one of the rare regulars Sarah wouldn’t miss.
The seventy-year-old-something retiree from Boston made a grumpy noise under her breath. “Your coffee is too weak.”
“You told me yesterday my coffee was too strong.”
Gus Pappas, the owner of Pappas and Son Plumbing and a total sweetheart, winked at her. “And here I was just about to say that your coffee was just right.”
Sarah smiled at him. “What are the Gray Flamingos up to this morning?”
Viola Pantini, a widow as well as current president of the group and Gus’s girlfriend, said, “Well, you know after last month’s big drama, Whispering Bay needs a new city manager and I’m happy to say that one has just been hired.”