Page 23 of A Beach House Beginning

Jenna hurried up the steps to her apartment and closed the door behind her. Theo plopped down immediately, as if their trek out to the garden had completely sapped him of all energy.

She could only hope.

“You had better sleep all night now,” she said sternly. “I don’t feel like going out there at 2:00 a.m.”

The puppy yawned, stretched and closed his eyes, right at her feet.

“Nope.” She scooped him up. “You need to sleep in your crate.”

She set him in the large crate the shelter had suggested. Theo seemed completely comfortable in the space. He immediately curled up on the soft blankets she had folded into the corner.

She could only hope she would sleep as well, but something told her she might be up for a while, remembering that conversation with Wes.

Had she really blurted out that she believed in ghosts?

The encounter played back through her mind, and she suddenly realized something that had been haunting the edges of her subconscious since he moved in.

Wes Calhoun was lonely.

She did not know why she had that impression, but she was suddenly convinced of it. He had come out of the house with a glower she wasn’t even sure he was aware of. Nor did she think he realized how that glower had lifted when he spotted her and Theo.

Poor man. He had moved to Cannon Beach to be closer to his daughter and likely knew few people except those he worked with and his ex-wife and her new husband.

She understood where he was coming from. She had certainly felt alone when she first moved to town, though she had had Rosa, her dear friend from college.

Rosa had convinced her to come here in an effort to escape the numbing terror she had lived with for months because of Aaron Barker.

She thought she had fled far enough away so that she and Addie would be safe here in Cannon Beach. Aaron had no idea one of her dearest friends lived here. She knew she hadn’t mentioned Rosa during any of their three dates, before she broke things off when his obsessive control began to manifest itself.

She had been wrong about being safe here in Oregon.

By a cruel twist of fate, an accident, really, he had discovered where she had fled and had followed her here, with horrifying consequences.

She pushed the darkness away. She could not let him intrude further in her life. She had already given him far more than he deserved. He was gone now. She was safe, at least physically.

She had attended counseling after Aaron had ultimately been arrested. She had worked through much of her trauma from the long months of relentless anxiety. She had come far, especially if she could chat with a big, dangerous man in a moonlit garden beside the sea.

She hadn’t been completely comfortable, but she suspected that might have to do with her growing awareness of him as more than simply her neighbor.

The man seemed in dire need of a friend, someone he could turn to when the nights seemed long and empty.

She wasn’t sure she could be that person, nor could she completely understand why she suddenly wanted to try.

Chapter Five

Why, oh why, did she always end up having to carry her groceries into the apartment during a fierce downpour?

Was she a victim of poor planning or merely fickle weather?

When she had set off for the grocery store that Saturday morning after dropping Addie off at a birthday party, the sun had been shining and the birds had been singing. Yes, she knew a storm lurked on the horizon. She couldn’t miss those dark clouds gathering offshore. But she hadn’t expected it to hit so quickly or with such ferocious fury.

Now she sat in her car in the driveway of Brambleberry House, waiting for the weather to cooperate and the rain to slow at least enough that she could carry a few bags inside without becoming completely drenched.

She also had to let out Theo, whom she had left in his crate inside her apartment.

She had just about decided to run for it anyway when a sudden knock on her window startled her. She gasped at the unexpected sound and momentary fear pulsed through her as she saw the large, hulking shape of a man standing outside the door.

He shouted something she couldn’t quite hear over the noise of the storm. Lightning flashed nearby, followed almost immediately by thunder. So close!

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