Beach House Beginnings Read Free Page A

thought it a good idea as well. “I don’t…uh…” More girlish flutters in her midsection embarrassed her.
    “I could use a critique of my recipe,” Caleb said. “You’d be my first.”
    Her eyebrows rose.
    “To eat my home cooking,” he clarified, a laugh sparking glints in his dark eyes.
    It was the laughter that got to her. Meh Meg needed a little more of that in her life, especially now. Especially at Crescent Cove. Caleb could be the distraction she needed.
    So that’s how she found herself pouring a second glass of merlot as the delicious scent of herbs, onion and tomato sauce filled the air at the house where she’d grown up. They took the wine to the front porch and the pair of generous-size chairs that sat side-by-side. Bitzer collapsed at their feet with a happy sigh.
    Meg slid a look at Caleb. His expression gave nothing away beyond a simple contentment with the moment, not unlike the dog’s. “So…what exactly brings you to the cove?” she asked, working herself up to what she knew needed to be addressed, now that they were sharing a meal. It likely wasn’t mere serendipity that brought Peter’s cousin to this particular stretch of beach.
    Caleb’s long legs stretched out, then crossed at the ankle. “Needed a break. The thought of here, it sort of…came to me.”
    “So you’re familiar with Crescent Cove?”
    He turned his head, a rueful smile curving his lips. “I didn’t think you noticed me then.”
    Then? Suddenly she recalled earlier that afternoon, when they were at No. 9 and he’d asked if she remembered him. The question hadn’t processed, rocked as she was by that moment of mistaking him for his cousin and by the sound of her former first name on his lips. “You…you were here before?”
    “I was the skinny kid who came to visit my aunt, uncle and cousin a couple of weekends that summer.”
    She had the vague memory of a flop of hair and baggy board shorts. “That was you?”
    “I’ll take your surprise as a compliment.” He smiled again. “I grew a lot in my early 20s.”
    “And now you’re…?”
    “Thirty.”
    Just a few months older than Meg.
    They exchanged more life details then. He had spent the last four years with a cell phone app start-up, working insane hours but enjoying himself immensely. Meg realized he didn’t live far from her in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she worked for a large accounting firm that sent her out to smaller companies for independent audits.
    “So you left Southern California?” Caleb asked.
    “First time I’ve been back in a decade,” she said lightly, and explained about her parents relocating to Provence and her sister attending a wedding in Arizona.
    Caleb slowly straightened in his chair, then shot her a considering look. “What happened here a decade ago—losing Peter—that was a tremendous blow.”
    A fatal blow to Meg’s heart. Still, even now, something inside her chest gave a painful, ghostly squeeze. Resisting the urge to rub the spot, she turned her thoughts to Peter’s family. They’d lost someone vital to them as well. “Your aunt and uncle were devastated, I know.”
    “They were,” Caleb agreed. “Me, too. Peter was the big brother I never had. I missed him so much that his parents gave me Bitzer.”
    At the sound of his name, the dog raised his head. Caleb fondled a soft ear, his gaze on his pet. “We’ve been good company for each other, haven’t we, boy?”
    Then his eyes shifted to Meg’s face. “How did you get through your grief?”
    By running from that summer and from this place. But no one wanted to hear those kinds of truths. “One day at a time,” she said instead. Noting the sober look in Caleb’s eyes, she hastened to add more, not wanting him to think she was mired in the past. “It was ten years ago. Of course I’ll always feel sad about it, but I’m not pining away.”
    “Good,” he said softly. “Good to know.”
    “I’m not even that same person