The Cinnamon Bun Book Store (Dream Harbor, #2)(4)

Girls like Hazel Kelly were not for him. He was at least smart enough to know that.

He stepped out of the bookstore and into the heat of the day. It was the first sunny day after a wet July and the town had swung directly back into summer mode. Summer was short in New England. If you didn’t dive right in, you’d miss it entirely. Even though it was August, Main Street was still decked out from its Fourth of July celebration, with red-white-and-blue banners and flags on most stores. Summer had always been Noah’s favorite season. Summer meant the beach and endless ice cream and no school. Freedom. He’d never been good at school. Too much sitting. He’d never been good at sitting. Or staying in one place for too long. After he left home, he hadn’t stayed anywhere for more than a month or two, picking up and leaving once he got bored. But something about Dream Harbor, had him sticking around. At least for the moment.

Noah considered stopping into The Pumpkin Spice Café for an iced tea but he was exhausted and just wanted to get home and take a nap. His first tour of the day had him up at 4am and he’d spent the morning teaching a group of dude-bros from the city how to fish. Unfortunately, the bulk of Noah’s business came from guys who knew nothing about the water or boats or fish and it was his job to take them out and make them feel like they did.

In reality, Noah did most of the work, made sure fish were caught, cleaned, and packaged up to take home, while the guys got drunk in the sun. But it paid the bills and he got to be out on the water so it wasn’t a bad deal.

And it was better than taking over his family’s seafood empire up on the North Shore. His sisters were better at running it anyway – he hadn’t needed to stick around to know that would be true, even if he did still feel guilty for leaving. But that was less about the business and more about the people. He knew that too, he just didn’t feel like dealing with it yet.

Noah wasn’t cut out for running a business. Not one that big anyway. His parents had taken their small fishing business and over the years turned it into a multi-million-dollar company that supplied seafood to hundreds of restaurants across the country. After his parents retired, his older sisters took over as CEO and CFO. And Noah ran away.

He wiped the sweat from his brow as he walked, the familiar mix of guilt and shame rolling through him. There were only so many times someone could disappoint their family before it was time to cut and run, and he’d hit his quota pretty early in life.

Besides, his little fishing tours he could handle. He could schedule them and run them all on his own. And that meant there was no one to let down when the whole enterprise inevitably went under. Much simpler that way.

He made his way through town, thinking about how he should probably call his sisters and about Hazel and about how many tours he had scheduled for the rest of the week, letting his mind bounce from topic to topic as he walked, slowly letting go of the memories of his past mistakes.

By the time the house was visible, his thoughts had circled back around to Hazel and that book she had been reading and if she liked guys with boats. Because he happened to be a guy with a boat. Maybe he should ask her out after all.

Noah started his climb down the rocky shoreline. There used to be a path here from the road to the beach but it had eroded away over the years, so now to get down to the sand you had to climb over some large boulders and chunks of concrete. But Noah didn’t mind. The public beach a few miles down the road had much better access and would be packed on a day like this, but here, it was quiet.

He toed off his shoes when he made it to the sand and dug his feet in, immediately feeling calmer.

When he had landed in Dream Harbor a few years ago, Noah had lived on his boat for a while until he’d found a row of old fishermen shacks on a forgotten stretch of beach, sure that if someone fixed them up, they’d do great as short-term rental properties. He’d started doing just that to one of them, as a little side project, about a year ago, half expecting someone to show up and tell him he couldn’t. But so far no one ever had.

So now he secretly camped out here sometimes. He still stayed in the apartment above Mac’s bar most of the time, and as far as the nosy townsfolk knew that apartment was his home. Someday he’d get around to telling Mayor Kelly about his ideas and see about buying these old shacks. Maybe.

Maybe it was a stupid idea. He’d had no shortage of those in his life.

Or maybe he’d get arrested for squatting. He wasn’t really sure. But for now, he liked it here. He opened the door to the little house and stepped into the cool interior. The sea breeze that came in through the front windows kept the house comfortable even on hot days like today. They’d need better insulation if anyone wanted to stay through the winter but Noah had already patched up the roof and laid new flooring. Luckily, he’d followed his grandfather around a lot as a kid and asked endless questions. All his grandpa’s tricks and tips had finally come in handy.

The whole house was maybe 400 square feet if he was being generous, but it fit a kitchenette, a queen-size bed – and a bathroom with plumbing that was older than him and questionable, at best.

Noah tossed his new book on the bed and pulled a cold beer out of the cooler he kept in the kitchenette. Electricity was the other thing, besides the plumbing, that he hadn’t been able to fix on his own, so he was still roughing it, but it was so peaceful here he didn’t mind. The sound of crashing waves filled the house and Noah knew he’d be asleep before he even cracked open his book.