“Thank you all for coming,” he called out right as the last of the committee members hurried to take their seats. “As you all know, we’re here to make plans for this year’s Angel Day. It’s great to see so many familiar faces here.” He nodded at the collection of people sitting near the front. “And a few new ones, too.” He nodded at Lucas.
Ember leaned in to whisper in his ear. “Next up is the story about the Angel.”
Lucas bit down a grin, every child who grew up in this town knew the legend of the Angel. According to local lore, it was back in the early 1860s that Captain Paxton sailed his ship around the perilous set of rocks just north of what would become the town, and sighted the wide cove and golden beaches in front of him. So the story went, the sun came out right as he was staring at the beach, and an angel appeared before him, pointing toward the land.
Captain Paxton immediately set anchor and laid claim to the land, naming it after the angel who’d hovered in front of him that day. And ever since then, Angel Sands had celebrated Angel Day, in memory of the divine messenger that led to the town’s inception.
Of course, as they got older, the children would laugh at the story. And some of their parents would mention the large amount of rum Captain Paxton was reputed to have drunk, and yet the town still clung to the legend, making the most out of it as the tourists poured in. Whether you believed it or not, that angel was responsible for much of the wealth in the town.
“As you all know, Angel Day is very special to this town,” Frank began. “It’s the day when we remember Captain Paxton, and his encounter with the heavenly being that led to the foundation of Angel Sands.”
She nudged Lucas with her elbow, and it took everything he had not to laugh. Their eyes met again, and it felt like a kick in the stomach. A really pleasurable, soft sort of kick.
“We know what the day is for, Frank,” somebody whispered loudly.
Frank frowned and shuffled the pages of notes he had in front of him. Clearing his throat, he prepared himself to make another statement. For the next twenty minutes, he told them all about the arrangements for the day itself, and what they needed to do in the preceding three weeks. But Lucas was only half-paying attention, the rest of his concentration was on the woman sitting next to him. With the small amount of room between the rows of chairs he couldn’t help his thigh pressing against hers, and it was sending shoots of electricity up his spine.
Is this what coming home did to a guy? He had way too much time on his hands if he was having this kind of reaction to touching a woman.
What was it about her anyway? She was pretty, but he knew a lot of pretty women. Maybe it was the way she made him laugh, or the obvious care she’d shown for her student that day in the schoolyard. All he knew was that he could feel an attraction toward her he hadn’t felt in a long while, and he wasn’t sure he liked it.
He was only there for a couple of months, and then he’d be heading back to White City; back to a job that consumed all of him, back to a lifestyle that had no place for things like committees, renovations, or beautiful elementary teachers.
Best to ignore it and ride his time out; that way nobody was going to get hurt. So when Frank called the meeting to a close and Ember hurriedly said goodbye he didn’t try to stop her.
Playing with fire was dangerous, he knew that all too well. It was his job to make sure nobody got burned.
* * *
Lucas was on his third lap of the beach before he really started to relax. Six miles to finally get the tension out of his shoulders, and open up his lungs. If it had been daytime he’d have taken his board out and rode the waves, but it was way too late for that.
Surfing at night was reckless, and he wasn’t about to put anybody else in danger just to rescue his sorry ass. But a long night stretched ahead of him in his empty beach cottage – on the camp bed he’d put up in the bedroom – better to work off his excess energy with a run, at least that way he might get some sleep.
Who was he kidding? He hadn’t been able to sleep properly for weeks. It was always that frozen moment between dreaming and wakefulne
ss that caught him. That’s when his mind was free to wander, when images would appear in his head – images he’d managed to avoid all day by sheer force of will.
On his final lap, he looped around off the beach and onto the boardwalk that separated the oceanfront from the town beyond. It had been wooden once, but they’d long since concreted it over, widening it and painting a yellow dashed line down the middle to encourage cyclists and skaters, as well as tourists on foot, to stick to their side. It was empty now, save for the occasional meandering couple, and a few children giggling and laughing as their parents took them home for the night.
Only a few places were still open – the café had shut down at seven, and so had the surf shop, but there were a couple of customers still sitting outside the Heavenly Ice Cream Parlor. An old couple licking at cones, watching the sea as it danced in and out across the sand. A family squabbling over each other’s sundaes.
The last shop on the row was the Manna From Heaven bakery. He ran past it and turned the corner onto Main Street. Much wider than the boardwalk, and open to vehicles, it was lined on both sides with shops, their facades painted a myriad of pastel colors.
The first one was Books By the Beach; his mom had owned the shop since before he was born. He’d expected it to be closed up and dark, just like all the other shops around here, but instead he could see a light on inside. Frowning, he lifted his head to look through the window to check that everything was okay.
“Lucas?” His mom pushed open the door, a half-smile, half-frown on her face as she took him in. “What are you doing here?”
He was still trying to catch his breath. “I thought I’d check on the place while I was out running.”
The frown melted away from her brow. At sixty-two years old, Deenie Russell was an attractive woman. Her white hair was pulled back off her face, and though time had done its part to add the wisdom of years to her face, it was still surprisingly smooth. She claimed it was the effect of the salt air, that walking from her bungalow to the shop every day against the breeze was like a daily exfoliator for her skin.
“What are you doing here, more importantly?” Lucas asked her. “Didn’t you close at seven?”
“I’m changing the stock. It’s only a few weeks until we get busy again.” She flashed him a smile. “And your father’s been at a golf tournament, I thought I’d use my time wisely.”
Over her shoulder, Lucas could see crates of boxes, a few half-emptied but most still waiting to be opened. Some things never changed, he could remember his mom’s twice-yearly stock rotations taking place even when he was a small kid. In winter, she’d stock titles that would appeal to the locals, as well as a smattering of genre fiction and local history books that would draw the occasional tourist in. But in summer, Books By The Beach catered mainly for the visitors who flocked to the town. Full of paperbacks – the brighter the better – and coloring books to attract the children.
At first glance, people assumed that Deenie was some kind of free spirit, with her long white hair and the decorative scarves that trailed behind her wherever she went. But Lucas knew that her laid-back exterior was only part of her, she had a razor sharp business brain. She’d managed to keep this place going in spite of the competition from the out-of-town stores, and more recently the Internet.