An enemy who was about to fork over five thousand dollars cash.
I shook my head. Christ, he was actually going to give me a thousand dollars a night to stay in a shitty motel room.
I scrambled to grab the keys for our three best rooms so I could check them out to see which one I wanted to give him. Halfway down the walkway toward the first room, though, I hesitated. I was supposed to be making him suffer, right? Which would mean giving him one of our crappiest rooms.
But that idea didn’t sit well with me either.
After all, the Sea Sprite was like a second home to me. Despite the leaking toilet and dated shag carpeting, I was proud of the place. James already thought ill of the inn; I hated the thought of confirming his assumptions.
Besides, if I could somehow make him see the beauty and history of the place, maybe there was a shred of human decency somewhere in him that would allow him to see what he was asking us to give up with this development deal.
In the end, I chose my favorite room because I couldn’t help myself. We called it the Turret Room, but it wasn’t anywhere close to being an actual turret. It was simply the room on the end of the building that had an extra set of windows facing the water as well as a metal spiral staircase just off the sliding patio doors that led to a private rooftop area with two lounge chairs and an endless view of the ocean.
Thankfully it was empty and clean. I double-checked everything and gave the toilet a test flush to make sure it didn’t explode like the one earlier today. Everything seemed to be in order. The framed black-and-white photo of the same view from this room in 1968 hung in its usual spot over the little table and chairs off to the side of the bed. I traced a finger over it and remembered my grandmother’s story about my father opening the back of the camera and ruining an entire roll of film she’d already taken the color photos with. Instead of splurging on another roll of color film, she used a black-and-white roll to retake all of the same photos of the inn for the scrapbook they kept in the lobby.
This photo had always been her favorite. She’d described the pinks and purples of the sunset in such detail, I wondered why she’d even needed a photo of it in the first place. But now I was relieved to have it, just as I was happy to have every scrap of memory from those years when my father was little and he and my uncles had given my grandparents a run for their money.
The photos and memories were all I had left other than these walls and this beautiful property at the edge of Gannet Bay.
I closed the room back up and returned to the reception desk in the lobby to tell Karlie which room to give James when he got back. Normally I took night duty, but I’d been swapping with Karlie to try and take some of the load off now that she was getting closer to her due date. At the Sea Sprite, she could lie down and snooze on the sofa in the lobby unless a guest needed something. It was much easier on her than working on her feet at the bar.
“A what?” Karlie was asking someone when I walked in.
The man was visibly flustered. I recognized him as the Boston photographer staying here for a week to capture a big family wedding taking place on our famous event lawn by the bluff.
“A h-horse statue?” he stammered, blushing behind his big dark-framed glasses. “I know it’s a weird request, but Mrs. Lovejoy specifically asked—”
I cut in. “Mrs. Lovejoy is a pain in the ass.”
Karlie grinned at me before turning back to the photographer. “He’s right. The Lovejoy family has been coming here for decades for their family photos. They own that big yellow house down the beach, but for some reason the shore in front of their house is where all the seaweed gathers. It drives her crazy they can’t take Larissa’s wedding photos there.”
The guy looked nervously back and forth between Karlie and me. “Okay, but like… will she be mad if I can’t come up with a horse statue…?”
The woman in question must have done a number on this man’s self-confidence because I’d seen him earlier bossing everyone around while they took some photos under a tree. Either that, or my cousin made him nervous for some reason.
I stepped around Karlie and reached into an old red bookcase full of trinkets and mementos guests had gifted us over the years. “Here,” I said, handing him a ceramic donkey painted garishly with Get your ass back to the Cape real soon! “Give her this and tell her it’s the best you can do.”
He huffed out a laugh and seemed to relax. “Will do.” He blinked back at Karlie before turning in a circle like he’d forgotten where the exit was. “Um, thanks… yeah… I’ll… see you all later. Tomorrow probably. Of course. And, thanks…” He spun around in one more circle before pointing a finger gun at the door. “Ha. Right there. Yep. Right there is the doorway. So… I’ll just…” He stopped and took a breath before turning back to Karlie. “Good night, Karlie. Sleep well.”
“Good night, Brantley. Good luck with the Lovejoys.” She waved and gave him a sweet, genuine smile which stopped me in my tracks for a beat.
He blushed crimson red. “You can call me Brant.” And then he damn near concussed himself lurching toward the door and out into the late afternoon.
As soon as he was gone, I lifted an eyebrow at Karlie, and we both burst out laughing.
“Does he know you’re single?” I asked after calming down.
She shot me a look. “As if he’d want a big fat pregger anyway.”
“First of all, you’re gorgeous. Secondly, he looks like he’d be willing to carry that pregnancy for you, so yeah, I’m thinking he’d be okay with it.”
Karlie busied herself straightening other items on the red bookcase to cover the spot I’d emptied with the donkey removal. “I met him this morning, Sawyer. There wasn’t really a chance to tell him about the lying asshole formerly known as my boyfriend and never to be known as this kid’s father. Also, a million months pregnant isn’t really the time to get my flirt on. It’s more like the time to get my hemorrhoid cream on.”
I groaned, grabbing the keys to the room I’d arranged for James. “TMI. On that note, I’m out of here. Make sure James gets this room, okay?”
“Who’s James?” she asked, reaching for the keys.
“That lawyer. The one trying to buy the Sea Sprite.” I turned to follow the photographer’s path to the door. “You saw him at Bee Tee Dub last night.”
Her silence was deafening. I turned back to glance at her and noticed her rubbing her hands together and muttering something under her breath that sounded a bit like, “Oh, this is gonna be good.”
I took a deep breath and headed to work without another word.
7
James
While the bed wasn’t the most comfortable thing in the world, I’d still managed to crash hard after a long run on the beach just before sunset. I’d picked up a big premade salad and a few other essentials from the small supermarket in McBride and made use of the little cube-shaped fridge in my room. It reminded me of the beer fridge my roommate had in college, and it would have smelled just as bad if it hadn’t been for the overwhelming scent of bleach instead.
I could tell Sawyer and whoever else worked with him tried hard to keep the property as clean and presentable as possible, but it was clearly a losing battle. I wondered what Sawyer really wanted to do with his life. Surely he hadn’t grown up daydreaming about running an old musty motel and slinging pints at his uncle’s bar.