Page 28 of The Beach Trap

“In all seriousness,” he says, “the one good thing about this gig is that the owners are rarely here. Don’t waste your time or energy giving A-plus effort for people who won’t notice or appreciate it. Learn to do C-minus work and you’ll be a lot happier.”

After that cynical statement, delivered in a sardonic tone that rubs me wrong for some reason, he settles back into his lounge chair and takes a long swallow of his beer. Noah reminds me of the guys Granddad used to hire for seasonal construction work. Easygoing but a smidge lazy, they’d put in the bare minimum to get a paycheck for a few weeks or months before drifting somewhere else.

Granddad wasn’t like that, and I’m not either—the O’Neills have always taken pride in a little thing called work ethic. Noah has a point, though; if I’m going to give an A-plus effort, I want it to be on the renovations I’m planning, not cleaning up after spoiled millionaires. From now on, I tell myself, the bulk of my efforts will go toward that goal.

I turn my attention to the list of supplies in my notebook: painter’s tape, paintbrushes and rollers, primer, sandpaper. Noah continues tossing the ball, and Max chases after it and returns. The breeze ruffles my hair, and the waves lap lazily against the shore.

I sketch out the floor plan of the beach house, trying to imagine how it might look with the wall between the kitchen and dining room removed. I’m so absorbed that I hardly notice when Noah appears next to me. I look up, startled, and he settles beside me on the sand, folding his long legs under him.

He hands me a beer, condensation dripping from the bottle. “Here—got you a cold one. You deserve it after this week.” He nods toward the house behind us. “I took a peek inside. The place looks great.”

I gasp in mock surprise. “Is Noah Jameson beingniceto me? I thought you were only nice to creatures with four legs and a drooling problem.”

“I amoccasionallynice to human beings,” he says, and I’m pretty sure he’s grinning at me again from under that beard. “What are you working on?”

I show him the notebook. “This is my real reason for being here this summer. I inherited a beach house from a distant family member, but it’s a total pile of crap. I’m going to fix it up over the summer and sell it.”

It sounds so simple when I say it like that. Just fix it up and sell it, no big deal. But the knot in my stomach reminds me that itisa big deal—not just the work I’m doing on the house, but all that stuff in my past that I’ve spent the past fifteen years trying to forget about. Keep the emotion out of it, I remind myself.

“So why are you here, then?” he asks. “Staying in the housekeeper’s quarters when you have a beach house down the road?”

I hesitate, not wanting to go into my life story with this guy I barely know. “It’s... complicated,” I say.

He nods and takes a sip of his beer. “I understand complicated.”

As he says that, all the joking and sarcasm in his tone fade away. His eyes look tired and, dare I say, sad. I’m tempted to ask what his story is—he’s obviously down on his luck to end up working here—but then I remind myself that I wouldn’t want him prying into my life, so I shouldn’t pry into his.

“I’m going to spend every other week at my beach house, fixing it up,” I tell him. It’s weird to say the words “my beach house,” but I like how they feel on my tongue. “I’m going to start with the kitchen and work my way through the place.”

“If you need help, let me know,” Noah says.

Ah. So that’s why he’s asking about this. He’s angling for ajob. “Sorry—I’m doing this on a shoestring budget and I can’t afford to hire anyone.”

“No, I didn’t—” He clears his throat. For the first time, he looks uncomfortable. “There’s not enough work to keep me busy here full-time—as you so kindly pointed out. I’d be happy to help out.”

“I might take you up on that,” I say, still surprised he’s being nice. “The sooner I get this renovation done, the sooner I can get out of here and on with my life.”

Noah gives a slow nod, his gaze fixed over the horizon. “I can drink to that,” he says, lifting his beer. “To getting on with life.”

I clink my bottle against his, and we sit like that, silent and pensive, watching the sun go down.

CHAPTER NINE

KAT

It’s been four days since I got to the beach house, and I’ve barely stepped foot on the sand. Hopefully there will be plenty of time for that later—as in many, many years later if everything works out the way I want it to. The way I need it to.

My first call after my mom was to get Wi-Fi installed because internet is like air, and it would’ve been impossible to get anything else done without it. The second those beautiful signal lines appeared on my laptop I started reaching out to people in my network, crowdsourcing advice and connections.

In the past forty-eight hours, I’ve spoken with so many estate lawyers and real estate agents and financial advisers that it feels like I’m at some god-awful speed-dating event for business school grads. I probably would’ve had more success if it was a date I’d been after.

While everyone I talked with had sympathy for my situation—I spoke in vague terms whenever possible—their answers were all the same: there are no loopholes, and contesting the will would be a losing battle that might end up costing me four timesthe amount my dad left me. In every single one of their professional opinions, my best and only bet is to buy Blake out.

Which is why I’m sitting in a freezing cold air-conditioned office, sharing my sob story with Steve Everett, the mortgage broker CoCo recommended. For some reason—maybe because he has kind eyes and doesn’t know me or my family—I find myself telling him everything.

“So now I need to buy Blake out so I can keep the house that’s been in my family for generations,” I say, finishing.

Steve nods and my heart lifts with hope that he’ll be the knight on a white horse I so desperately need—handing me a loan that will be enough to send Blake on her merry way.

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