Sweet Nothings: A Bethany Beach Romance Read online

  I sat up in bed, stretched and yawned, and my feet hit the cool wood floor of the bedroom before I quick-stepped over to the bathroom and got myself together for the day. It didn’t take long for me to get ready anymore, especially since working in a bakery meant you didn’t have to dress up or even always look your best if you worked in the kitchen all day. A quick shower, a brush of my teeth, and pulling my hair back into a ponytail is all I needed to do before I got dressed for the day.

  After I let Alice run around in the backyard for a few minutes so she could do her business, I got her back inside, and she promptly parked herself in the bay window at the front of the house so she could watch the action outside while I was gone for the day.

  “See you later, Alice,” I told her, and gave her a kiss on her head before walking out the door.

  It was already gearing up to be a sweltering day at the beach, which can be both good and bad for business. People came into the bakery all day long to take advantage of the cool air conditioning we offer, giving them a break from the hot sun right on the beach, but we got more people who wanted to use the bathroom instead of buying anything. It was days like this that made me glad that we closed by 3 PM.

  I took a quick look at my car, an old 2003 Ford pick-up I have had for far too long but didn’t want to give up and decided it was better to leave it at home today and take my scooter out of the garage instead. Parking down at the beach was hell on the weekends, and the scooter allowed me to get around better. I could tuck into a cool, small parking spot right near the bakery.

  I pulled the scooter out and pushed my ponytail inside the helmet. The scooter jumped to life as I turned the key, and the headlight flickered on so I could get on my way to the bakery. The bakery on the boardwalk was a short walk from my house, not more than a mile or so, but by the time I was done for the day I was too tired, and it was usually much too hot for me to want to walk back home.

  There was no traffic out and about early in the morning, other than the fishermen looking to get out to the beach as the sun came up to get their day started. I made a quick right turn up Pelican Drive and found my parking spot, tucked under the boardwalk and away from prying eyes. I opened the small storage area under the seat and pulled my lock out to secure things tightly. I’ve had scooters stolen twice over the years because I was lax or too trusting, and with so many people milling about our little town in the summer, there were too many nowadays that you couldn’t seem to trust.

  I took ten steps on the gravel and sand before I reached the staircase that led me up to the boardwalk and right behind the bakery. I unlocked the door and heard the familiar buzz of the alarm that let me know I was the first to arrive, as usual. I quickly shut off the alarm, flipped on the kitchen lights, and grabbed my apron to get things started for the day.

  I tried to get as much prep work completed as I could before my sisters showed up to help with everything. When I opened Sand & Sprinkles four years ago, it was just my sister Jodie and me working the whole place. I did all the baking myself while Jodie worked the front and we struggled with everything for a while before we finally caught on with both the tourists and the locals. Once we were stable and successful, my youngest sister Alex starting working with us part-time, and then I was finally able to convince my mother to join in and work in the shop so Jodie could help me in the back.

  I spent my time getting all the dough prepared and rested and then started using the dough we had prepped yesterday to get everything going. We learned along the way what sells well, what doesn’t, and what locals want compared to what the tourists snatch up early in the morning. This time of year, we go heavier on the donuts, muffins, croissants, and pastries, and then we offer some dessert snacks like brownies and cookies. We also make sure to have coffee, tea, and bottles of water to keep everyone happy. I had lots of plans about how I would love to expand the place eventually, adding more seating, bigger cases, and the ability to do things like bagels and more of the cakes I love to make and decorate, but we just weren’t there yet.

  It wasn’t long before Jodie wandered in, followed shortly by Alex and my mother. In the summer months, I usually hired one or two local teens to come in and help with the front, wait on customers, stock the cases, and clean, but they didn’t get here until just before we opened at seven if they were reliable enough to get here on time. Finding good teenage help these days wasn’t always easy, and the good ones were hard to keep around if you could only offer them minimum wage or a bit more.

  “Good morning,” I said as the group wandered in. Mom and Jodie smiled at me and said hello, while Alex gave a grunt and a scowl and walked out to the storefront to get the registers going and start getting the cases ready.

  “What’s wrong with her?” I asked as I cut sections of dough out at a rapid pace to use for our jelly donuts.

  “She and Tyler had a fight last night,” Mom said as she grabbed an apron. “Typical teenage romance stuff. I went through the same thing with both of you.”

  I looked over at Jodie and laughed.

  “Both of us? You mean with Jodie. She was the one who always had all the boyfriends,” I said, moving on from the jelly donut dough to let it proof.

  “I can’t help it if the boys liked me better, Kelly,” she said as she bumped my hip with hers.

  “Turn on some music,” Jodie said to me, pointing to the speaker over on the shelf above my workstation.

  I synced my phone up to the speaker and started to stream some music through, choosing something lively that would get us moving well this early in the morning. As Jodie and I began to dance around and sing as we worked, Mom just shook her head and went out to the storefront, chasing Alex back into the kitchen with us.

  “Alex, can you put the trays of turnovers in the oven?” I yelled over to her.

  Alex picked up the trays one by one and slid them into the oven before finally slamming the door shut.

  “Hey!” I scolded. “Careful with that! Don’t take your anger with Tyler out on my equipment.”

  “Sorry,” she said. Alex came over to where I was standing and started to cut out some of the cake donuts for me.

  “What happened last night?” I asked. Jodie stopped her dancing and putting pastries together to listen as well.

  “Tyler’s a dick is what happened,” Alex said as she slammed the donut cutter into a piece of dough, rattling the table.

  “What did he do this time?” Jodie asked. Jodie took away the tray of donuts before Alex punched a hole through the tray.

  “We were supposed to go out last night for dinner and then hang out at the beach. Instead, he calls me and says he and his buddies were going over by the end of the boardwalk to watch them move stuff into that big house they finished building. Really? You’d rather watch a bunch of guys moving furniture and equipment than be with me? I told him to go to hell and hung up on him. He never even bothered to try to call me or text me back. I am so done with him.”

  After Alex finished raging over Tyler, Jodie and I just looked at each other and smiled. Alex had been like this with her on-again, off-again boyfriend all through this year of school and into the summer. We both figured within two days they would be back together again.

  “Someone’s finally moving into that monster house, huh?” Jodie said as she pushed a tray of pastries into another of the ovens. “Whoever bought that place must be loaded.”

  “I heard it was some billionaire from New York,” Mom said as she walked into the kitchen, handing us each a cup of coffee that she had just made.

  “Edgar Wilson and his sons did some of the woodworking inside the place. They say he spent almost nine million dollars just to have the place built. It even has a swimming pool that goes inside and outside.”

  I took a sip of my coffee and looked over at Mom.

  “Who buys a house at the beach and gets a swimming pool? He’ll probably spend three days a year here, complain about the town and everything in it, and then try to sell the place. It’s the
same story with all these rich folks that come down here thinking they own the town and are owed something because they have lots of money. What a waste.”

  Mom, Jodie, and Alex all looked at me, surprised I had so much to say about it.

  “Wow, what got into you?” Jodie asked.

  “I’m just tired of people like that coming in and disrupting our town. I get they bring some money in with taxes and jobs to build the house, but I hate their attitudes. You see it when they come in here,” I said waving my arm around. “They get all bent out of shape because we don’t have their half-caf soy latte with sugar substitute, or the selection of donuts they want when they come in ten minutes before we close and complain that we are just small-town hicks. I can’t wait for summer to be over sometimes.”

  “Summer brings in most of our customers though, Kelly, “Jodie answered. “We kind of have to put up with them if we want to stay in business. Besides, not every rich guy is going to be like Trevor Dawkins was.”

  “I told you, no one mentions his name around here,” I answered curtly.

  I knew Jodie was right, but I didn’t have to like it. When the summer was over, our town went back to a beach town with about two thousand residents. During the summer, with the beaches filled and every hotel and beach house rented, they were tens of thousands of people in the area for months. While most of the customers that came in were nice and friendly, I still had a chip on my shoulder about the others who felt they were entitled to everything and the kitchen sink and at as low a price as possible.

  “Angela told me Derek was there last night with Tyler and the other guys,” Alex chimed in. “Derek said they were bringing in all kinds of expensive looking stuff. It looks like whoever it is plans on doing a lot of entertaining.”

  “Man, I would love to get a look inside that place,” Jodie said.

  “They have their own gated entrance and private beach access. The town closed off Neptune Path and gave it to the owner. Everyone has to go a block down now if they want to get to the beach,” Mom told us.

  “See!” I yelled. “That’s what I mean. Why is it okay for everyone else to be inconvenienced so some rich guy can sit out on his patio without seeing anyone else? It’s not fair.”

  I blew a strand of hair that was on my face in a huff and wiped my floured hands on my apron. I looked over and watched Jodie take some items out of one of the ovens to cool. The warm smell of cinnamon raced through the air as the oven door opened.

  “Hey, Jodie,” I said to her. “I have an idea. How about you make up one of your gift baskets with some of our stuff, and we bring it over to that house after work today? Then we can see the house and just how pretentious the owner is and what they are all about.”

  “Wow, you really have your panties in a twist over this house,” Jodie said to me. “Sure, I can make something up. I’ll put a few things aside as the day goes along to put in there and make it look pretty, a nice welcome to the neighborhood basket. But what if they don’t even let us in the gate?”

  “If they don’t, then we’ll know what a jerk the guy is and let everyone in town know it, too,” I said with a smug smile.

  I went back to work with relish, working on some more dough and looking forward to proving myself right about our new, wealthy neighbor.

  3

  Damian

  By the time we arrived in Bethany Beach, it was 5 AM, and the town was quiet. There were signs of the sun getting ready to rise, and you could see some of the early morning joggers and fishermen making their way out towards the beach and the boardwalk to start their day before it got too hot out there. Riding through town in a limo at 5 AM turned the few heads that were out and about, and I am sure people were wondering just who we were and where we were going.

  Shannon had been sound asleep for hours, curled up on the bench seat opposite me. I had put a blanket on her so that she wouldn’t get too cold from the frosty chill of the air conditioning in the car. I had tried to get some sleep, but I have always had trouble sleeping in the car and just couldn’t get comfortable. Besides, my mind raced with thoughts about the business, the new house, and a thousand other things. Even though I had sworn to make this trip a relaxing one, following through on that might prove to be more difficult than I wanted to believe.

  I started to feel anxious the closer and closer we got to where I knew the house was. I had come down to the site several times over the months since I bought the property and was having the house built, but I had yet to see the finished product with all the furnishings and everything inside. I had left the design work up to the interior design company I had hired, and they had spent many hours with me going over every painstaking detail of each room to make sure everything was just how I wanted it. To be honest, a lot of that stuff I cared very little about, like the color of the throw pillows on the couch, what plates were available in the kitchen and minute things like that. There were some extras I had insisted on that I wanted to make sure were there that may have seemed a bit outrageous to some people but would make it into the home I always wanted to have for myself.

  I had several apartments in different parts of the country that I could stay at when I wanted to, but none of them ever really seemed like a home to me. They were just places I would visit, much like the different hotel rooms I stayed at when I traveled. The place in New York probably came closest to feeling like a home, but even then, I spent so much time working that it just became a place for me to catch a few hours of sleep before going back to work. I never entertained anyone there, had friends over to watch a game or brought a date there.

  This house would be my home, the space that was truly mine to do what I wanted when I wanted. The location worked well since it wasn’t too far from the New York office or from Washington, where I did a lot of business with the government. Sure it would be busy with tourists during the summer months, but for the rest of the year, it would be a quieter place where I could enjoy life without the pressures that usually surrounded me.

  We finally pulled down the private road where the house was located, slowly making our way closer to the front gate. I could hear the tires crunching over the sand and shells and lowered the partition that James had put up between himself and us so that we could sleep while he listened to music on the ride down. A wrought iron gate surrounded on both sides by carved beige stone walls marked the driveway. The car came to a stop by the gate, and James then pressed a button on the remote he had in the car to swing the gates open. The limo slowly made its way down towards the house, coming to a stop just under the carport near the front of the house but not quite to the garage area.

  “Here we are,” James announced as he put the car in park and shut it off. I took off my seatbelt and reached over to give Shannon a gentle nudge to wake her. Her eyes slowly fluttered open as she gazed up at me.

  “Good morning, sunshine,” I said to her with a smile.

  “Are we finally here?” Shannon asked grumpily as she wiped the sleep from her eyes and sat up.

  “Try not to sound too excited about it,” I answered her as I opened the car door, anxious to get out and stretch my legs.

  As soon as I stepped out of the car, I was hit by the heavy warmth of the air and the wonderful smell of the ocean. I heard the waves crashing out towards the back of the house, bringing a smile to my face.

  Shannon finally climbed out of the car and her face twisted up right away.

  “Oh god, it’s hot here. Let’s get inside to the air conditioning,” she said as she rushed past me to the front door.

  I looked over at James, who just shrugged as he grabbed some bags out of the trunk.

  “Damian, come on,” Shannon yelled back to me. She stood by the front door, frantically turning the door handle to open the door.

  “What is your rush?” I said as I walked up the steps to reach the front door.

  “I’m hot, I’m tired, I’m cranky, and I have to pee,” she said to me. “Where’s the key?”

  “It us
es a passcode,” I replied. I took out my smartphone, opened the app that had the door code built into it, and held it up to the sensor for the door.

  “Are you kidding me with this stuff?” she said in a huff.

  “It’s more secure,” I said as we heard the door unlock. Shannon quickly turned the handle and rushed inside, only to hear the beeping of the alarm system.

  “Now what?”

  “It’s the house alarm. Hold on, I’ll shut it off,” I said, walking over to the alarm pad.

  “Screw it,” she said to me as she kept walking down the hall. “I can’t wait anymore. If the police show up, you can explain to them I couldn’t hold it any longer.”