returning to the office he had driven around town to give himself time to get his thoughts back on track and to ponder what there was about Vashti Alcindor that captivated him. She was a good-looking woman, but he’d been in the presence of good-looking women before and none had ever gotten a reaction from him like she had.
The story Trudy had told him about how the townsfolk had mistreated her just for getting pregnant had pulled at him because he knew how it felt to have people you cared about let you down. Like the Connors who’d taken him in at twelve, only to return him to social services a year later. He had liked them and their two children. He’d thought he had finally found a home. But then when money started missing from Mrs. Connor’s purse he had immediately become the guilty person. No one thought to question their oldest teenage son who Sawyer had known had a drug problem. But then he knew that episode with the Connors wasn’t why he was attracted to Vashti Alcindor. The attraction began before he’d heard the story. He clearly remembered picking up on it when he’d issued her that ticket yesterday.
He was sitting at his desk and grabbing a stack of papers to go through when his cell phone rang. He recognized the number and smiled. Leesa was calling. Leesa Reddick was an old friend from the days they’d served in the Marines together. She hadn’t reenlisted after she got married and he and Leesa had lost touch. They had reconnected when he’d discovered through mutual military friends that she was living in New Orleans with her thirteen-year-old son. She had relocated there from Cincinnati after her husband, Todd, had gotten killed in a car accident three years earlier.
Leesa was a wonderful person and someone he called a good friend...as well as an occasional lover for the past year. Leesa was the first and only woman he’d slept with since losing Johanna and he’d been her first after Todd’s death. They had a lot in common. Both ex-marines. He was a widower and she a widow. More importantly, neither of them planned to ever fall in love again and marry. What they shared was nothing more than what they referred to as RS, recreational sex. They were good friends who were convenient lovers for each other whenever the need for sexual fulfilment became overpowering for either of them.
They had their own private getaway, a beautiful hotel in the New Orleans French Quarter. He’d never invited her to his home in the cove and she’d never invited him to hers. They preferred things that way. And because they both had kids, they’d never spent the night away from home. A few hours together during daytime were all they wanted and they didn’t feel the need to become enmeshed in each other’s lives. He liked the arrangement and so did she, with the understanding that in the interim if either of them met someone, they could end things with no hard feelings.
He clicked on his cell phone. “How are you doing, Leesa?”
“I’ll be better once I see you. We’re still on for Friday?”
“We sure are.” They preferred meeting when their kids were in school. Stealing away during the summer months would be difficult.
“Just name the time,” he said, forcing an image of Vashti Alcindor to the back of his mind.
“How about noon? We can order room service.”
He nodded. “I like that idea.”
“Great! I’ll see you then.”
After clicking off the phone he smiled thinking how his relationship with Leesa, although mostly sexual in nature, had helped him through those teenage woes with his daughter. Whenever he and Jade had a major disagreement it was Leesa who would help guide him through how the young female mind worked.
Likewise, Leesa claimed he helped her as well. When her son, Nelson, had been going through what seemed to be the beginning of the unmanageable teen years, Sawyer had been there to offer her advice on how to not only cope but to rein him in so he wouldn’t be lost to her forever.
He glanced at his watch. He had a few hours before leaving for the zoning board meeting and there were a lot of items he needed to clear off his desk before then. Rolling up his sleeves he began working.
* * *
VASHTI TURNED THE little red Corvette onto Buccaneer Lane, the tree-lined street that led to Shelby by the Sea. Moments later she pulled into the long driveway of the large historic mansion with the well-manicured lawn that sat on the gulf. Years ago, as a registered nurse, her aunt Shelby had been the caretaker of the mansion’s owner, Hawthorn Barlowe.
Vashti didn’t remember Mr. Barlowe but others in the community did. She recalled the stories of everyone saying he was a mean, crabby and wealthy old man who didn’t get along with anyone. Especially his neighbors who bordered his property, the Lacroixes. Evidently her aunt was able to break through the old man’s meanness because when he died with no living relatives, he had bequeathed the mansion and all the land surrounding it to Aunt Shelby.
Her aunt decided to make the twenty-guestroom mansion, built in 1905, into a bed-and-breakfast and named it Shelby by the Sea. Vashti was told that within a year the inn had become so popular, newlyweds would come from all over the country to spend their honeymoon there and married couples checked in to reignite the flame in their marriage. Vashti brought the car to a stop and as she stared at the huge structure she swallowed her misgivings and was surprised she had any at all. But then how could she not? She had considered this place more her home than her parents’ house.
Vashti had talked to her aunt often and hadn’t known how run-down Shelby by the Sea had gotten until Bryce had told her. The inn had been close to shutting down and her aunt had only a bare-bones staff with few reservations. Whenever she asked, her aunt would tell her all was going well, but after Aunt Shelby’s sudden death of a heart attack and Vashti’d gotten Bryce to put the inn up for sale had she only found out the truth.
Shelby by the Sea, which had once been one of the premier places in the cove, had fallen in more despair than Vashti had known. After Bryce checked the books it was discovered over the past couple of years there had been fewer and fewer reservations. Why? How? And why hadn’t her aunt told her?
Vashti had used her aunt’s life insurance money to give the few employees left, some of whom had been with her aunt for years, a severance package. She’d felt it had been the decent thing to do. According to Bryce, the majority of the people had found other employment elsewhere in town.
In the past her aunt had depended on word of mouth advertising of the inn’s reputation to build and retain business. She had a feeling her aunt had never embraced the social media age or the idea of brand ambassadors with the use of a marketing firm.
Even with the obvious needed repairs, the inn was more impressive than she remembered. It was massive, stately and beautiful. It held so much of Catalina Cove’s history since it had been in the Barlowe family for generations. Some claimed Mr. Barlowe’s great-great-grandfather had been one of Jean LaFitte’s right-hand men and LaFitte had awarded the man the land the mansion sat on for his loyalty.
Vashti couldn’t imagine anyone tearing it down to build anything else here and in a way she understood the town for trying to block it from happening. A part of her knew her aunt would probably not want it to happen either.
She quickly pushed that thought from her mind. The structure no longer belonged to her aunt. It was hers to do whatever she wanted with and she wanted to sell it. Even if she entertained the thought of keeping it, she didn’t have the money it would take to bring the inn back to the grandiose place it had once been. Besides, her life was in New York now. Convincing the zoning board to remove their restrictions was her top priority and what the buyer decided to do with it was no concern of hers. But still...
She remembered the good times she used to have here. Shelby by the Sea had once been her lifeline. When she and her parents hadn’t seen eye to eye during her pregnancy, it had been her home. Aunt Shelby had always been her champion. Someone who’d understood her when her parents had not. And this inn had given her an escape when she had needed it most.
And she’d never forget that the property adjacent to the inn was where her child had been conceived. At sixteen she was convinced she was in love and the thought of sneaking around behind her parents’ backs seemed like no