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First Bella Books Edition 2015

eBook released 2015

Editor: Medora MacDougall

Cover Designer: Judith Fellows

ISBN: 978-1-59493-450-6

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Other Bella Books by Gerri Hill

Angel Fire

Artist’s Dream

At Seventeen

Behind the Pine Curtain

The Cottage

Coyote Sky

Dawn of Change

Devil’s Rock

Gulf Breeze

Hell’s Highway

Hunter’s Way

In the Name of the Father

Keepers of the Cave

The Killing Room

Love Waits

The Midnight Moon

No Strings

One Summer Night

Partners

The Rainbow Cedar

The Scorpion

Sierra City

Snow Falls

Storms

The Target

Weeping Walls



About the Author

Gerri Hill has twenty-seven published works, including the 2013 GCLS winner Snow Falls, 2011 and 2012 GCLS winners Devil’s Rock and Hell’s Highway, and the 2009 GCLS winner Partners, the last book in the popular Hunter Series, as well as the 2012 Lambda finalist Storms. Hill’s love of nature and of being outdoors usually makes its way into her stories as her characters often find themselves in beautiful natural settings. When she isn’t writing, Gerri and her longtime partner, Diane, keep busy at their log cabin in East Texas tending to their two vegetable gardens, orchard and five acres of piney woods. They share their lives with two Australian shepherds and an assortment of furry felines.



Chapter One

Jordan Sims drove slowly, her gaze drawn again and again to the bay, its bluish green water shimmering in the bright morning sunlight. She should have come out here earlier in the week, but she wanted to at least wait until the funeral…wait until her brother was laid to rest before invading his beach house.

Oh, sure, it was still her parents’ old weekend place, and her grandparents’ house before that. But Matt had made the small house on the bay his own once her parents had stopped spending time there. Of course, she hadn’t been around then. She’d already left home, escaping to college and then to Chicago.

And she hadn’t been back. Not really. In the last fifteen years, she could count on one hand the number of times she’d been back to Rockport. A few days at Christmas, mostly. And once, her mother had talked her into a week over Thanksgiving. God, that had been endless.

Yet here she was, taking a leave of absence from her job, intending to stay on the Texas coast “as long as you need me,” as she’d told her parents. The restaurant, they could handle. Matt didn’t have a hand in it. But the store? No, that was Matt’s baby. He’d turned their little souvenir shop into a thriving business. All because of Fat Larry.

She shook her head but smiled nonetheless. The pudgy pelican had become a fixture in Rockport. Everyone knew Fat Larry. In fact, if you asked directions along Austin Street, Fat Larry was the landmark the locals used.

“Go two blocks past Fat Larry. Can’t miss it.”

“If you get to Fat Larry, you’ve gone too far.”

Fat Larry was a ten-foot-tall plastic pelican—purple, no less—with a bright green T-shirt advertising the store—Sims’ Treasures. Of course, all the locals referred to the store as Fat Larry’s. Her brother, with not a single hour of college credit to his name, had a knack for marketing. And it all started with Fat Larry. The shop was the go-to place for Rockport and Texas Gulf Coast souvenirs. Matt liked to have fun and he was a natural in the store with customers. On any given day, he’d start tossing Fat Larry T-shirts out. They cost next to nothing to produce and offered legions of free advertising.

But a single-car accident on a stormy April night had taken her brother’s life, leaving the store—and Fat Larry—in a state of disarray. Since his death, the store had been left to run on its own, with the part-time employees filling in where they could. Matt didn’t have full-time workers any longer, not since Marge Nguyen had married and moved to Corpus. Her father had gone there a couple of times to make sure they weren’t “stealing us blind.” But they had the restaurant to run. They couldn’t—and didn’t have the drive to—run the store too.

“So, Jordan, let’s quit our job and close up the condo,” she murmured.

To say she’d had second—and third, fourth and fifth—thoughts about her decision would be an understatement. Who quit a six-figure job to come back home to run a souvenir shop?

Not quit, she reminded herself. Leave of absence. Two or three months…four at the most, she’d told her boss. She’d have her laptop. If something came up that her assistant couldn’t handle, she could take care of it remotely. Because with Matt gone, her parents had no one to turn to. They could always sell the store, but as her father had said, it brought in as much money as the restaurant did. It would be crazy to sell it. Her father was at least thinking of the future. Her mother, not so much. She was still in a state of shock over Matt’s sudden death. Jordan couldn’t blame her. Matt was her baby, Matt was the one who stayed at home, Matt was the one who went into the family business.

She pushed her thoughts away, knowing it was her choice to leave home, her choice to stay away as much as she did. It was her choice to make a new life in the big city, far, far away from the small coastal town of Rockport, Texas.

She turned onto Bayside, the street that would take her to the little one-lane road called Pelican Drive. Oak trees would swallow up the view of Copano Bay, she knew, so she kept her gaze on the water as long as she could. She slowed, then turned to the right, surprised at how familiar the road was to her. It had been six years since she’d been out here. Most of the lots were bigger, the houses older, than the ones nearer Rockport on Aransas Bay to the south. When she was a kid, she was jealous of those living there, with their fancy boats that could be in the Gulf in a matter of minutes. But by the time she was in high school, she was thankful their little beach house was hidden back here in the oaks. No tourists, no traffic and no close neighbors. It was like they had the bay to themselves on those long summer days.

She slowed again as the road ended in a large cul-de-sac lined with ancient oaks. She looked up to where the old sign that her grandfather had chiseled out many, many years ago still hung. Pelican’s Landing, the name her grandmother had given the beach house when they’d first built it. The sign was badly in need of a paint job and she noticed that the chain had come loose on one side, causing it to hang crooked. But what was perched on top of the sign made her laugh. A mini version of Fat Larry, T-shirt and all, pointed down the narrow driveway. She was still smiling as she took the twisting drive that skirted the large trees, and she noted that for as much as Matt loved the beach house, yard work obviously wasn’t high on his priority list. The shrubs needed trimming and the grass needed to be mowed. The bougainvillea at the edge of the carport was blooming nicely though.

She pulled into the empty carport and shut off the engine of her rental car. She paused only a moment before getting out. Again, a sense that she was invading Matt’s space hit her and she shook it away. If she was going to stay in Rockport for the next few months, she would stay out here, not with her parents. She was used to living alone and so were they.

But instead of going inside the house, she was drawn to the bay. She took the sidewalk down to the pier. It looked neglected as well and she took a tentative step on it, feeling it shift beneath her. She walked out on it anyway, her gaze traveling across the water, the gentle waves slapping the pier as the breeze and high tide rolled the bay. It was a pleasant spring day, the sky nearly cloudless. Of course, she was back in Texas. May was sometimes considered more summer than spring. Even early May, like today.

She took a deep breath, the smell of the salty air bringing back memories of her childhood. She remembered running down this very pier, her bare feet pounding on the boards as she took flight at the end, splashing into the water with the carefree attitude that only a child can possess. She was four years older than Matt, but he tried to keep up with her. She taught him to swim right here in the bay too. As they got older, Jet Skis replaced swimming and they would race out into the open water where the causeway crossed over, dodging shrimp boats and fishermen alike.

She smiled as she remembered all the fun they’d had. But by the time she was a junior in high school, things changed. She changed. Because she had a secret she dared not tell a soul, not even her brother.

She was gay. And scared to death.

So she slowly withdrew from Matt, from her parents. She focused solely on her schoolwork, vowing to graduate with honors and secure enough scholarships to take her away from Rockport and go to where no one knew her. Where no one would judge her if her secret got out. By the time she was a senior, only a few friends remained. Matt was not one of them.

She went to California, thinking she would be safe there. And she was. College was fun and she met many like-minded people. She no longer had to keep her secret to herself. Yet she hadn’t counted on her parents finding out, on Matt finding out. When they did, she withdrew even more. She couldn’t stand seeing her mother’s tears. It took her nearly fifteen years to realize they still loved her, that they’d always loved her.

But by then, she was entrenched in her job, her long hours at work having paid off. She’d moved up to the executive level, her salary finally equaling her stress level. Well…almost.

She sighed and turned around, heading back toward the house. Oh, she loved her job. She really did. It was fast-paced and never dull. While she no longer worked seventy-hour weeks, she still put in at least sixty hours. That, of course, left little time for a personal life. No doubt that was why it had been so easy to leave there. There was no one who would miss her.

She walked up the stairs to the deck, pausing to glance back at the water once more before fishing the key from her pocket. Matt’s key. She squeezed it tightly in her hand for a guilty second, then unlocked the door.

She stared at the mess in a moment of shock. If she didn’t know how lacking Matt’s housekeeping skills were, she would have thought the place had been ransacked. She absently picked up the newspapers lying around and piled them up on the coffee table. Flip-flops were on the floor beside the sofa and a towel was on the back of the recliner. She shook her head as she picked up the towel, taking it with her.

She took one look into the kitchen and quickly turned away. God only knew how long the dirty dishes had been piled up in the sink. Thoughts of cleaning the house on her own vanished. She would definitely hire a cleaning crew. And perhaps a yard crew too.

She made her way into the master bedroom. Jeans were tossed on the floor and she picked them up too, folding them neatly before placing them on the unmade bed. She didn’t bother going into his bathroom. She could envision the mess without having to see it. Instead, she went to the double doors that opened up onto the side deck shaded by a large oak tree. She went to the railing, glancing once at the neighbor’s place, then turning her attention to the bay. Memories streamed through her mind, some flashing quickly, others lingering. This was her grandparents’ little piece of heaven, and she and Matt had spent many a lazy summer day here…making memories.