Page 53 of Return to Rosewood Beach

She felt her heart lift up with joy as her next customer approached. It was an elderly woman with short white hair, and Alexis immediately knew just what she wanted to do to make the woman feel more beautiful. She smiled, anticipating how happy the woman was going to feel, and then she was struck with a realization.

I might not be in L.A. living the life I thought I would be, she thought,but my life has led me to being here, getting to do this in this moment. It’s wonderful.

She felt an almost bubbly kind of joy pass through her, and she told herself that she was done being idle. Whatever happened next, she was going to find something to work toward. She was going to move forward in her life with goals, and things to do.

She had almost finished giving the woman a makeover when she heard someone call out to her.

“Hey, sis!” Julia approached her booth, grinning. “How’s it going here?”

“Amazingly.” Alexis gestured to her current patron. “This beautiful woman here is my seventeenth customer. Doesn’t she look amazing?”

The elderly woman laughed, looking pleased.

“Fantastic! You look beautiful, ma’am.”

“Oh, tut,” said the woman, laughing.

Alexis proclaimed the elderly woman all set, and she went on her way, looking thrilled. Julia lingered to talk to her sister, since for the first time that day, Alexis didn’t have a customer in line for the makeover booth.

Julia’s cheeks were flushed, and she looked starry-eyed with excitement. “We’ve already raised so much money from the auction items. Things are really going great.”

Alexis reached over and squeezed her sister’s hand, feeling a surge of relief. She’d believed that the fundraiser was going to work out, but it was nice to see that belief come true.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Cooper talking to a couple of people at Dean’s car repair booth. She turned back to Julia and saw that her sister was watching Cooper with a troubled expression on her face.

“You don’t seem to be spending much time with Cooper today,” Alexis said gently. “I thought you’d be practically glued to his arm, since Callie is here watching over Macey and he’s free to be totally distracted by you.”

Julia shrugged, but the gesture looked forced. “He’s working on the fundraiser. He’s busy talking to people.”

Alexis gave her a look. “You can’t fool me, missy. That’s not really the reason.”

Julia smiled a little at her sister’s perceptiveness and sighed. “I think—” Her voice was soft. “I think I might have assumed too quickly that we could mesh our very different lifestyles together.”

Alexis shook her head. “Don’t give up yet. There’s still so much to discover about each other. You don’t know that it isn’t going to work out. Besides,” she added, glancing over at Cooper again and noticing that he was looking at her sister with a decidedly puppy-like expression, “it seems like Cooper is still very much interested in working things out. You shouldn’t give up if he thinks things could work out between you two. Maybe they could.”

She thought to herself with a pang of sadness that she wished that Grayson were trying harder to make things work out between the two of them, instead of being so silent and seemingly disinterested.

Julia smiled sadly, also glancing at Cooper for a moment. “Maybe you’re right. But I don’t know. I guess we’ll just have to see.” She lingered for a moment longer, as if she was lost in thought. Then she sighed. “Well, I better keep moving here. There’s lots to be done.”

“See you around.” Alexis smiled and waved as Julia went off into the crowd. She noticed that her sister didn’t head toward where Cooper was standing.

She sat quietly for a moment and then decided to stand up and stretch. She still didn’t have anyone coming up to her booth for a makeover, so she thought to herself that she might walk over to where they were selling lemonade and cookies and get herself some refreshments.

As she was stepping away from her booth, her phone began to ring. Assuming it was one of her family members calling with a request or an update about the fundraiser, she pulled her cell phone from her pocket and was about to answer it when she read the name on the screen. It was Grayson.

Her heart did a somersault and she quickly answered the call.

“Hey, Grayson.”

Her tongue felt heavy, and she realized that her heart was beating faster. She stepped away from the busyness of the fundraiser, heading toward a quiet patch of trees.

“Hey, sweetheart. I’m just checking in to say hello. I haven’t heard from you in a while.”

She blinked in surprise. She’d been trying so hard to not think about Grayson, feeling so perturbed over her fears that he was being unfaithful, that she hadn’t texted him regularly like she used to. She hadn’t meant to neglect to text him, it had happened by accident, but she never would have expected him to notice and call her about it.

“Oh, I’ve been so busy out here. We’re having a fundraiser for the pub today. A big event in the middle of town, at the park. We’ve been planning it for days.”

“A fundraiser?” He sounded surprised, and she wondered if he was taken back by the fact that she hadn’t just asked him for the money. Her heart ached, wishing that things felt that easy between them.

---