Chapter 24

Eugene promises to get in touch with the “most capable surveyor in the area.” I have no idea what the hallmark of an excellent surveyor might be, which is why I leave this task to him. He gets back to me just after five that evening and lets me know we have one scheduled to come in a week, which is how long the guy needs for his preliminary research.

Mr. Wallace takes this delay in stride, so I try to as well.

My days fall into a semi-predictable routine: job searching in the morning (I’m officially unemployed now), lunch with Grams, patrol and whatever comes up for Beau in the afternoon. Whatever comes up is everything from parking tickets and noise complaints (thanks, new next-door guests) to opossum removal, helping tourists, and kicking Tristan and Capri Collins—Deedee’s granddaughter—off the beach after curfew.

My job search is the most uninspiring part of my day. I’m questioning everything now. Do I even want to be in PR? Where do I want to live? What do I want the rest of my life to look like? It’s a full-on quarter-life crisis, which makes me linger in my bed longer in the mornings or, if I can’t sleep, head to the beach for a morning swim while the water is at its calmest.

Part of me can see myself here—or somewhere like here—and more than once, I catch myself wondering if I could carve out a place for myself on this island. I could be here for Grams, do something new. But I’m coming to realize just how much hurt lies behind my anger at Sunset Harbor, and I don’t know if I can allow myself to get hurt again. I’m not invincible like Grams, no matter how much I wish I could be.

Which leads me to the next problem: my electron microscope seems to be malfunctioning. My afternoons are the part of day I look forward to most. I want so badly to ask Beau about Miss Miami, but if I do, it’s akin to admitting to myself that I’m coming to care for Beau in a way I swore I never would. The thought of trying to break that to my family is enough to keep me quiet, and since he never brings her up, either, I start to wonder if maybe she’s a figment of Sunset Harbor’s overactive imagination. It would be like the island to make something out of nothing.

The surveyor comes on June 30 th —his research turned out to be much more involved than expected—and does his on-site survey. Contrary to my expectations, the result of this visit is not a definitive answer. He has to process the calculations he took, analyze the data, and draft a survey to include in his final report. His ETA for that report? At least a week.

Mr. Wallace is okay with the timeline, provided no one else is going to nudge him out as primary contender for the house.

We’ve had a few other showings, but no one as interested as Mr. Wallace—and no one has a cash offer. Though, the way things are going with this boundary issue, we’ll probably end up closing the same time we would’ve if we’d gone with a financed buyer.

A week and a half after my canceled flight home, Beau and I are on a later-than-usual patrol when a call comes to his phone from his brother.

The way his eyes shift to me tells me Grams is involved, and I hang my head until he says bye to Tristan.

“What’d she do this time?”

Beau pulls into the nearest driveway and turns the cart around. “She and Deedee commandeered a golf cart from Seaside Oasis for a little joy ride. ”

“Please tell me Deedee is driving,” I say with wide eyes.

He squeezes my thigh, making me jump. “Sure, Gemma. It’s Deedee in the driver’s seat in that friendship.” The cart roars forward, and we head out on the closest Sunset Harbor’s ever had to a high-speed chase, catching up with our Bonnie and Clyde just as they’re getting to the main square.

“Look!” I say as their cart pulls into a parking space. “She’s pulling over willingly! I’m sure this is all just a misunderstanding?”

Beau chuckles. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Totally.”

Beau blocks in their cart with his, while Deedee and Grams get out of the cart. We watch in silence as Deedee unfolds Grams’s walker. She helps Grams out, and they shuffle toward the door of Scoops Ahoy Ice Cream Parlor like there’s not a police cart with flashing lights a dozen feet away.

Beau looks at me. “You were saying?”

“Maybe their blood sugar is low,” I offer as he steps out of the cart.

I consider staying in it to avoid the inevitable conflict Grams seeing me with Beau will trigger, but I don’t want to hide from her. There’s nothing to hide, anyway. At least, nothing apart from the ever-intensifying attraction I feel for Beau Palmer.

We have enough material to suck up the city council’s meeting time for the entire year, but I can’t bring myself to put a stop to my “work” with Beau.

Grams glances over her shoulder as we walk in the door. Her gaze flits from Beau to me, then back again, and I brace myself. “Thought I might see you here, Palmer. But I didn’t expect to see you here, Gigi.”

“Grams,” I say, “every time you pull a stunt like this, I get further in debt to the Palmers. If you wanted ice cream, you could’ve called me, and I’d have brought it to you.”

“What? In a cardboard container, half-melted?” Elaine Pruitt hands her a waffle cone with three towering scoops, and Grams licks it with relish.

“I could’ve picked you up in your own cart and brought you,” I reason.

She waves away that option, stabilizing herself with her other hand on her walker. “Where’s the fun in that?”

“I have to write you both citations,” Beau says.

“Well?” Grams snaps. “What’re you waiting for?”

His mouth twitches. “I guess I’m waiting to see if Gemma wants some ice cream. Anything look good?”

Grams growls like a mother bear. “I want that citation, Palmer! And make it snappy!”

Beau looks at me with a twinkle in his eye.

“It better be done by the time I pay,” Grams says, trying to balance as she reaches for her purse.

“I’ve got it, Grams,” I say. “You and Deedee go sign your citations.”

Beau opens the door for Grams and Deedee, and I mouth the words good luck to him.

“Would you like something, Gemma?” Elaine asks.

“Would I ever,” I say. “But not right now. Thank you. I’ll just pay for those two cones before Grams starts a fist fight with Officer Palmer.”

“Probably wise of you,” she says with a smile. “They’re on the house, though.”

I thank her and open the door, pausing at the sound of Grams’s scolding voice.

“Don’t think you’re fooling me, Palmer,” she says, standing next to Beau as he writes on his clipboard. “You won’t have my Gigi! You hear me? You Palmers think you can take whatever you want, who ever you want, no matt?—”

Deedee clears her throat loudly, her wide gaze on me and her citation in hand.

Grams’s head turns, and her mouth presses into a thin line at the sight of me. “Can I sign my citation now?” she asks Beau with annoyance.

His gaze flits to me, then he signs the bottom and hands the clipboard to Grams.

She scribbles something that can’t possibly look like Virginia Sawyer, and hands the board back.

Beau tears the slip off the pad and hands it to her. “With all due respect, Virginia…I’m not my grandpa.” He holds Grams’s gaze for a few seconds, then turns to Deedee. “Can I trust you to get the cart and Virginia back to Seaside Oasis safely? Or I could escort you if you’d prefer.”

“No, no,” Grams says. “We’ll go in peace. We got what we wanted, right, Deedee?”

Deedee hurries to finish her ice cream as she walks to the driver’s side of the golf cart they brought.

I help Grams collapse the walker down, then set it in the back of the cart.

“Don’t you trust him, Gigi,” Grams says. “Never trust a Palmer.”

“Should I come with you?” I ask, ignoring her comments. I don’t feel like I can agree with her, but anything short of that risks adding fuel to the fire. I’d hoped her recent silence on the subject of the Palmers was evidence she was moving past things, but tonight is proof I was wrong.

“Don’t baby me, Gigi,” Grams says, even as I hold her ice cream cone so she can get into the cart. My eyes flick to Beau, who’s smiling slightly, though it doesn’t make his eyes wrinkle at the sides like it usually does.

A couple minutes later, we wave to the two women as they drive off toward the retirement center.

“Sorry about that,” I say. “She’s always…intense.”

He shakes his head. “No need for sorries. She cares a lot about you. And she hates me. It’s normal for her to be upset and protective.” He bumps my shoulder with his. “Hey, how does a double scoop of ice cream sound?”

“Ugh. Amazing. I almost stole a few licks of Grams’s, but she would’ve noticed.”

“Oh, without a doubt.” He jerks his head toward the ice cream shop. “Come on.”

Beau orders orange creamsicle, while I go for the mint brownie again. Elaine insists it’s on the house, so I slip a twenty into the tip jar when she’s not watching. But Beau is.

“Shall we take our spoils to enjoy at the beach?” he asks as we get back in his police cart.

I narrow my eyes at him. “Are you trying to trick me into doing midnight beach cleanup again?”

He puts his hands up. “No cleanup tonight. I promise.”

“Good,” I say. But the truth is, I wouldn’t mind even if we did do cleanup there. That’s why I know I have a real and growing problem: I don’t mind wading through strangers’ trash when I’m with Beau. That’s a very scary place to find yourself.

Beau drives us to the beach one-handed, and I keep my eyes on the road instead of watching him lick his ice cream. “Any word from the surveyor?” He glances at me.

“I wish. He says it’ll be at least a week before we see the report.”

Beau grimaces sympathetically.

“You know,” I say, “you could just sign a document stating the property boundary runs even with the fence, but that the dock is on Sawyer land…”

He chuckles. “But it doesn’t and it’s not.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“And you say this based on what evidence? I’d love to see it, because it would make my life a whole lot easier if we could find anything at all about it. ”

“I don’t have any physical evidence per se ,” he admits as he parks in the lot in front of the beach. “But I’m pretty confident.”

“Of course you are,” I say. “You’ve been fed a steady diet of Palmer lies since you were a babe. But you’ll see the truth soon enough. Assuming we ever get that report.”

We leave our shoes at the golf cart and walk in the dark, cones in hand, to where the waves are breaking. The sand under my feet is silky soft, and whenever the waves press up against my toes, it’s pleasantly warm.

“Summer nights on Sunset Harbor are pretty hard to beat,” Beau says, as if he knows what I’m thinking.

“Better than Miami?” I ask, trying to casually work at my ice cream.

There’s a pause before he answers. “Better than Miami.” There’s something about the way he talks whenever Miami’s brought up. It’s like…reluctance, and that realization on my part revives the specter of Miss Miami. Deedee did say he was secretive about her.

“Do you miss it there?” I won’t ask my burning question directly—especially not after how much I’ve lamented the gossip on the island to Beau—but I can’t help opening up the door for him to step through. I reserve the right to push him through if I get impatient, though.

He hesitates again before answering. “I don’t miss the city.”

Relief washes over me like the water at my feet.

“It’s the people I miss,” he says. “Well, a couple in particular.” He smiles slightly to himself, and jealousy flares inside me like a bonfire doused with gasoline.

A bigger wave crashes, bringing the water to my ankles and wetting the bottom of my pants.

“Should’ve chosen this side,” Beau says, displaying the dry hem of his uniform pants since he’s farther away from the water .

“Yeah?” As soon as the next wave comes up, I kick water at him. It splashes his uniform and the little ice cream he has left.

He stares at the ice cream, then at me.

“Now it’s salted orange cream,” I say, my heart beating quickly. I’ve poked the bear.

His gaze stays fixed on me as he reaches a hand over slowly. I watch its progress warily, and my brows pull together as it migrates not toward my ice cream but toward…my butt?

Like lightning, Beau snatches the phone out of my back pocket and tosses it behind him in the sand.

“What are—” I cut myself off as he tosses his phone after mine, because I think I know where this is going.

I start running, but I don’t get more than ten feet before he’s got me by the waist, and giggles such as I’ve never heard start coming out of my mouth. I push his hand away, and just when I’ve got escape at my fingertips, both of his arms wrap around my stomach. He lifts me up until my feet are well above the water, then pulls us backward toward the waves. I kick my feet and try to pry his hands from my waist, but the man has the strength of an ox. His balance, however, starts to suffer the deeper we get.

“Beauregarde Palmer!” I yell. “Don’t even think about fal?—”

My next words are swallowed as we disappear into the waves. Beau’s still got one arm around me as we emerge.

“You,” I say, gasping for breath as I wipe water from my eyes, “are the worst.”

“Did you call me Beauregarde?” he asks, water dripping into his grin. Oh, to be a man and emerge from an unexpected dip in the water looking like a tall glass of water instead of wet-dog-meets-emo-kid-who-slept-in-her-makeup.

“You deserved it,” I say, holding on to him as a wave pushes against us.

“You started it,” he says, his gaze fixed on me in a way that makes it extra hard to catch my breath .

“You provoked me.”

“We can argue like this all night, GG.”

“Or…” I use the force of the next wave to jump up, putting my hands on Beau’s head, and pushing down as hard as I can. I might as well push down on an anvil. But after a couple seconds, Beau surrenders, letting himself collapse under my pressure. Knowing I’ll be going down with him, I push away, but he grabs my legs, pulling them around him, and we go under together.

When we emerge, his hands are gripping the underside of my thighs, and my ankles are crossed behind him.

“You’re here,” he says, looking up at me.

“Yeah,” I say on a laugh, because I don’t get why he’s pointing out the obvious. But something about the way he says it sends my heart into a tailspin.

He blinks to avoid the saltwater dripping into his eyes. He could just let me down and free his hands up, but I use the base of my palms to wipe the water on his forehead to the side. He watches me while I do it, and once I’m done, I let my arms lower to rest on his shoulders.

His gaze stays fixed on me. “The other night. When I asked you why I couldn’t kiss you…you said it was because you were leaving. But you didn’t leave. You’re here.”

Another wave pushes against us, but he keeps us steady, and my eyes flit to his lips. I can almost remember what they taste like. Almost.

I’d really like another shot at them.

My gaze creeps back to his eyes watching me. Our faces are so much closer now—I must’ve unintentionally done it while I was staring at his mouth. Can it be considered unintentional when every thought going through my head is about kissing him?

The pull to him is even stronger this near, and my lips slowly and instinctively migrate toward his .

I can sense his lips even though I can’t feel him, and the press of his fingers into my thighs tightens. I close my eyes.

“But you also hate me,” he whispers, his breath sweet from the ice cream.

I swallow and nod, hardly able to hear him over my lips begging me to close the final gap.

His grip on my thighs loosens, and slowly, he lowers me until my feet touch the sand and my eyes open.

He steps back, and it’s clear: there will be no kiss. Because I hate Beau.

I want to hate him. So, so much. But I don’t. Not even a little.

“What happened to our ice cream cones?” he asks casually as if the last two minutes never happened.

“No idea,” I say, trying to brush it off as easily as he does.

That’s Beau, though. He’s all about fun. Nothing fazes him. He seems to thoroughly enjoy his job because of it, but I have to wonder, is anything a big deal to him?

We trudge back toward the beach, and I push my straightened hand along the surface of the water to send a wall of it toward him. See? I can be breezy about things. This is all just good fun. Nothing Grams would disapprove of. Or at least not too much.

When we make it to shore, Beau unbuttons his uniform shirt. “This thing weighs a metric ton when it’s wet.” He peels it off, and my gaze darts to the way his forearm muscles feather as he wrings it out. I’m jealous, once again, that he can take off items of clothing and squeeze the water out. If I did that, I’d end up with a ticket for public indecency, just like Grams.

He grabs the bottom of his tank and bunches it up, then squeezes out the water, and my eyes fix on the spot a few inches left of his bellybutton. It’s that same spot I noticed the day he came home from surfing .

He notes my focus, and I feel the need to explain. “Is that a birthmark?”

He tugs his tank down to cover it. “Just a scar. You wanna head home to dry off?”

He’s definitely changing the subject. It hurts a little—and makes me glad we’ve kept things more platonic since the kiss the night of the citizen’s arrest. If he won’t talk about a simple scar with me, it’s a lot more believable he’d be hiding other things. Like Miss Miami.

“I think I have some ice cream in my freezer,” he says. “I owe you half a scoop.”

“And a cone. Don’t forget that. It’s the best part.”

He chuckles and scours the sand until he finds our phones. “Guess that means we’re stopping at the store.”