Oh god. She hadn’t drunk texted anybody last night, had she? Please don’t say she messaged Josh. Her heart galloped in her chest as she rooted around for her cellphone, unable to locate it on the mattress or the table or anywhere else she would have put it.
Then she remembered she had to surrender it as part of the divorce settlement. Company property. She was husbandless, jobless, and phoneless. Maybe that was a blessing.
As if it could read her mind, the landline phone that she never used began to ring next to her, dancing on the table as though it couldn’t believe its luck. Autumn lifted it and gingerly placed it to her ear, pausing for a moment to remember her telephone etiquette.
“Hello?” Her voice sounded like her throat was full of gravel.
“Hey, tequila girl. How’s the hangover?” Lydia’s voice was way too cheery for Autumn’s liking.
“It’s brutal. I’m never drinking again.” She turned her head too quickly and winced at the sudden shot of pain.
“I kind of like you when you’re drunk,” Lydia continued, her voice full of humor. “And when you’re single, too. Remember the karaoke bar we went to? At least five more guys asked me for your phone number. I told them you didn’t have one, so I took theirs instead. Do you want me to email them over?”
“Stop teasing me. I’m dying.” Autumn leaned her head back onto the padded leather headboard, her eyes still firmly closed. It felt better that way. Maybe she’d go back to sleep. Hopefully when she woke up this would all turn out to be a bad dream.
“I’m not teasing. You sang a fabulous version of I Will Survive. Then you told everybody you were going to spend your divorce settlement on something stupid and frivolous, just like your marriage.” Lydia laughed. “Come on, you remember that, don’t you? I can probably find a video of it. Lots of people had their phones held up.”
The worst thing was, Autumn could remember it. Or at least she was beginning to. Hazy visions of that bar danced behind her eyelids. Fleeting ones of her grabbing the microphone and how everybody laughed when she told them she was a divorcee at the age of twenty-nine, and open to offers from Mr. Right-Now.
She was definitely never drinking again.
“Anyway, that’s not why I called,” Lydia said. “I was just returning the message you left me last night. I must have been asleep when you called.”
“I left you a message?” Autumn blinked. “When?”
“Lemme check…” Lydia paused. “Okay, it looks like it was at three in the morning. You sounded so excited, but I couldn’t quite make out what you were saying. It sounded like you bought something with your name on it, but I’ve no idea what.”
That pulling at the base of her stomach turned into full blown nausea as Autumn tapped her password into her laptop. Her screensaver was replaced by a web page with a photograph of a long pleasure pier stretched into a sparkling blue ocean, complete with a big restaurant halfway down, a large boat parked at the end. Autumn scanned down, her eyes swimming as she t
ried to take in the small black print describing the pier and the small town of Angel Sands where it stood, followed by an email address for interested parties to submit a bid.
With her breath caught in her throat, Autumn pulled up her sent emails. Of course, there was one sent at three that morning. And naturally, it was to the real estate company listed on the web page, offering the full asking price and telling them she was able to pay cash and close very fast.
She’d even given them her attorney’s contact details.
“Autumn?” Lydia said. “Are you okay?”
“No,” she said, her voice thin. “Not really. I think I bought a pier in California.”
2
Griffin Lambert lifted his board out of the surf, tiny droplets of water clinging to his suit and tanned body. He shook his thick brown hair and spray launched in all directions, like a dog drying itself after a swim.
At six-five, he was taller than anybody he knew. His first teenage growth spurt had come at the tender age of thirteen and hadn’t stopped until he was almost twenty-years-old. But it wasn’t just his height that drew looks as he pitched his surf board into the sand and unzipped his neoprene half suit. It was the bulk he’d built up over years of working and surfing. The kind of muscles that the gym could never give you.
“Hey!” a voice called out.
He looked up to see Lorne Daniels approaching. The seventy-year-old man was wearing bleached cut-off denims and a lurid pink-and-orange hibiscus shirt, unbuttoned to his mid-chest.
“Hey, Lorne.” Griff smiled. “How’s it going?”
“Did you see that?” Lorne asked, nodding his head toward Paxton’s Pier. “Looks like they’ve found a chump to buy the old wreck.”
Griff turned his head to look for the sign that had been hanging from the pier for the last year or so. It hadn’t weathered well. The white paint was peeling from the wooden board, and some kids had drawn comically inaccurate pictures of male genitalia with black sharpies all over it. But Lorne was right, there was something new on there. Where the painted red letters that proclaimed the old pier was ‘For Sale’ was covered with brand sparkling new lettering.
Sold
“You know who bought it?” Griff asked, two tiny lines appearing between his brows as his gaze scanned along the old Victorian pleasure pier. Halfway along the wooden boarded walkway was the bright blue painted building housing Delmonico’s, an Italian restaurant much loved by the inhabitants of Angel Sands. It was closed up right now – but like everything else in Angel Sands, it would be bustling by lunchtime. At the end of the pier was a boat – Griff’s boat. The Ocean Explorer was a sixty foot ex-fishing boat, adapted by his father back in the ‘90s for whale watching expeditions. His dad had long since retired, and Griff bought him out, taking over as captain of the white painted vessel.