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Beatrice Turner looked up from the open notebook on the table in front of her.Her husband came through the door, laughing.Grant had an outgoing personality, and Bea often found him laughing about something, with someone.
Today was no different, as Harrison Tate, one of his good friends, came into the house behind him.The door closed, sealing out the South Carolina heat, and Bea rose from her chair.She glanced at her list, her stomach weaving itself into knot after knot.
The top item on her list said,Confirm Harrison is coming on the trip.
“Hey, sweetheart,” Grant drawled, pulling Bea into his body for a kiss.She smiled against his lips, which kept the kiss chaste as they had company.
“Hey yourself,” she said.“The meeting must’ve gone well?”
“They approved the development for rentals,” Grant said, grinning.“So yes.”
“It’s good for him,” Harrison said.
Grant released her and faced him.“It’s good for you too,” he said.“They’ll sell far faster—and people will put higher-end stuff in them—if they know they can rent them.”
“You’d think so.”Harrison sighed as he sank onto the couch separating the kitchen from the living room in the beach house Bea and Grant had bought after their wedding, almost two years ago now.“But you’d be wrong.”
“About which part?”Grant walked toward the fridge.He pulled out a couple of bottles of water and took them over to Harrison.
“They put cheap stuff in rentals.”He took the bottle of water from Grant.“Think about yours, Grant.Do you put in granite and plush rugs and all the best stuff?”
Grant sat on the couch too.“Sometimes,” he said defensively.Harrison started to laugh.“If I’m going to live in it too.”
“Sure,” he said.Harrison took a long drink of water.“If you live in it part-time.But who’s going to buy one and live in it part-time, then rent it other times?”
“Snow birds,” Grant said easily.“And they have money.”
Harrison hemmed and hawed, but he couldn’t really argue with that.Bea pulled a bowl of fruit salad out of the fridge and went to join them.“So, Harrison,” she said, handing him a fork.She exchanged a look with Grant, but she hadn’t shown him her list for the day before he’d left for his planning and zoning meeting that morning.“Do you think you’d like to join us in Florida?”
“When is that again?”Harrison asked.
“Yeah, I need to get those dates on my calendar too.”Grant tapped on his phone while Bea tried very hard not to roll her eyes.
“It’s next week,” she said.“Cass is coming in a couple of days, and we’re surprising her with the trip to the Everglades on Tuesday.”So less than a week, but she kept that part to herself.They all knew what day it was.Her stomach rolled.“I’m thinking about telling her about it instead of surprising her.She might not be ready for a surprise.”
She might not want to go at all.She’d been planning a trip to the Everglades for her and West, and Bea had given her oodles of time to be ready to go.Cass had been getting livelier and livelier in the past few months, and Bea really felt like she was ready to take this step.
In fact, it might be the last step she needed to take to truly be healed and ready to move forward.Maybe.She wasn’t sure, thus all the knots in her gut, the dry throat, and the way her eyes darted from Grant to Harrison and back.
“Oh, right.”He glanced up from his phone.“Tuesday.Yeah, I’m ready to go.”
“Should I tell her?”
Grant took a moment to consider.“I probably would, yeah.Can you change the destination if she doesn’t want to go there?”
“Yes,” Bea said.“I have alternates.”She jumped up from the coffee table where she’d perched and retrieved her notebook.“I’ve made a list of places that can take last-minute reservations for four.”
“So it’s just the four of us?”Harrison asked.
Bea looked up from her lined paper.“Yes,” she said.“Is that a problem?”
“Not for me,” Harrison said.“I don’t know Cass.I’ve never met her.”He looked over his shoulder to Bea.“Willshethink it’s a problem?Like you’re setting her up with me?”
“I’m not setting you up,” Bea said.The thought horrified her, and it would horrify Cass as well.“We’re taking a trip with our friends.”
“It kind of looks like a set up,” Grant said.
