Beauty And The Brooding Billionaire (South Shore Billionaires 2)

“Love you, kiddo.”

Her eyes stung a little from the easy declaration. “I love you too, Jack. Thanks for not bailing on me.”

“Never. Chat soon.”

She hung up the call and sighed. The idea of having a showing in the autumn was exciting, but she was sure she wouldn’t be ready. While she was ready to work, and even enthusiastic, there was no guarantee that every single work would be ready to show. For now she wanted to create and just revel in the process again. Feel the brush in her hand, the pressure of the bristles on canvas like a beautiful, private language only she could understand. The colors and the smell of paint and turpentine, acrid and as much a scent of home to her as bread baking or apple pie. The scrape of the palette knife. The process was the essence of who she was. She didn’t care about shows or accolades. Right now feeling like herself again was all she wanted to focus on.

The rest would come. In time.

She was late getting to the lighthouse because of Jack’s call, and the wind was particularly brutal, whipping her hair out of its braid and lifting the corners of her sketch pad. She clipped them down and tried to ignore the gusts that slapped at her, instead focusing on the door of the lighthouse. It was beautifully scarred, the rusty hinges crooked but strong enough that the door didn’t droop. It looked as if it hadn’t been used in ages, maybe decades, and the battered boards seemed almost like a fingerprint of what time had wrought.

At the foot of

the door, just to the side, was a small clump of daisies, stubbornly blooming against the elements and in the rocky soil. Jessica dashed her pencil across the paper, capturing their proud, resilient heads. She smiled, and wrote along the bottom right corner, Marguerite. It was the French word for daisy, and it felt right.

“Good afternoon.”

She jumped, grateful that her soft pencil hadn’t been against paper. Bran stood just beside her and behind, his hands in his pockets. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s so windy I didn’t hear you.” She rolled her shoulders. “I’ve been admiring the daisies. Pretty stubborn to be blooming amid all this salt and rock.”

He looked over her shoulder at her sketch. “You like the door.”

“It has character. And secrets.”

To her surprise, a smile spread across his face. “Are you interested in finding out what some of those secrets are?”

“What do you mean?”

He took a key from his pocket. It was big and old, and she wondered if it would still work. “It works,” he said, as if reading her mind. “I had the building inspected before I closed the purchase. The structure is old, but it’s sturdy.”

Excitement bloomed in her chest. “Of course I want to see inside!” She gave him some side-eye. “Unless it’s overrun with mice. In which case I’m not too keen.”

“Fair enough. And I haven’t been inside either, by the way. First sign of rodents, we’re out.”

She stood up and tucked her sketch pad away. “Are you kidding? You haven’t gone in, not once? You’ve been here since...”

“February,” he supplied. “And it is damned cold here in February. Now though... I’m curious. I thought you might be, too.”

“I am. I’ve never been inside an actual lighthouse before.”

This one was small compared to many, but she was interested to see what surprises and treasures were inside. Bran went to the door and fiddled for a while, jiggling the key in the lock. “I wonder if the salt rusted the lock?” he mused, but then the key seemed to find home and turned over with a solid click.

The hinges creaked as he pushed the door open.

She followed behind, stepping into the hollow-sounding space that closed out the sound of the wind. The bottom of the lighthouse was simply a large, single room. An old army cot was against one wall, with a wool blanket heavy with dust covering the mattress. There was a table and chairs there, too, and an oil lantern—empty—sitting on the table. A space jutted out from the otherwise square base of the lighthouse, and a wood stove was in the corner, the flue vented out through the top of the addition. When Bran went to examine it, she stopped him. “Don’t,” she said quickly. “I promise I’m not usually a wimp, but I have visions of that stove either being full of mice or that birds have made a nest in there.”

He chuckled and stepped back. “I’ll explore that on my own, then.”

“Thank you.” She shuddered. She hated mice, and she also hated the thought of a bird flying out of the iron stove and getting trapped in the room.

“It’s pretty plain, isn’t it?”

She wandered over to the army cot, pushed up against the wall. What a lonely spot. “Was there ever a lighthouse keeper?”

He nodded. “The lighthouse was made defunct in the late forties, after the war. But before that there was. And one before him. Back to 1893, when the lighthouse was built. There was a house, too, but it burned in the twenties, apparently.”

She was intrigued. The light in the room was dark and gloomy, thanks to a lack of windows. A sparse amount of sunshine traveled down to the bottom level from a singular window above, along the staircase that led to the actual lamp. She went to the staircase and looked over at him. “I’m lighter. I’ll go first and make sure it’s sound.”