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  Building Home

  An Eastern Shore Romance

  Dee Ernst

  Copyright © 2018 by Dee Ernst

  All rights reserved.

  All the characters in this book are the product of an overactive imagination. Any resemblance to a real person, living or dead, is a tremendous coincidence.

  To find more of Dee’s books, go to

  www.deeernst.com

  Comments? Questions? An uncontrollable desire to just chat? You can reach me at

  [email protected]

  ISBN - 9780998506876

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Also by Dee Ernst

  Chapter One

  I’d never been much of a risk taker.

  I was a good girl in high school. I dated a nice, quiet boy, a few years older than I, who invariably apologized after we had sex because I didn’t scream out loud when I had an orgasm. It wasn’t his fault, because, although I never told him, I never really had an orgasm, despite all his efforts. He was such a great guy that I didn’t want to disappoint him. Maybe if I had offered a suggestion or two, or maybe even moved his hand to the right spot, things would have worked out differently. But like I said, I didn’t take risks, and I was not going to seem pushy or sexually aggressive because he might break up with me, and then where would I be?

  That was my life. My whole life. Lots of things happened between then and now, but…

  Now I stood, gazing at my cell phone at pictures of a rather dilapidated house that my old college roommate was trying to talk me into.

  Buy it, she said.

  It’s a great investment, she said.

  It’s right on Main Street in Cape Edwards, and you can walk to all the bars and restaurants, as well as the beach, she said.

  You could open a real estate office right in town.

  Or do something completely different.

  Or take the money from your mom’s estate and just be a lady of leisure.

  You could start your life all over.

  Begin a new second act.

  And you’ve been here before and you always say you love it. And do you remember all the hot men?

  I didn’t, actually. And to be honest, hot men were not a priority. Over a year ago I’d broken up with Daniel, my boyfriend of eleven years, to care for my mother. I discovered that my life hummed along just fine without him in it. Based on that, I pretty much decided that if being unattached for the rest of my natural life was going to be a thing, it was not going to be the end of the world.

  I flipped through the pictures again. It was a cute little house, just two bedrooms, with a wide front porch. Inside, walls were sagging and the kitchen was impossible. There wasn’t a picture of the bathroom, which I knew was not a very good sign. But it was all workable. Even the sad looking little backyard had great potential, with some pavers and a few potted plants. I could have a dog.

  I’d never had a dog before. My first husband was a cat person, Daniel had been allergic, and I had spent most of the past two years spending all my nonworking hours caring for my mother, who was slowly wasting away from cancer, which left no time to devote to a pet. Or to Daniel, come to that.

  I’d been selling houses in Rehoboth, Delaware for almost twenty-five years, and I was good at it. But I had never owned my own home. When I married Martin, my ex-husband, I moved into his condo right from my parents’ house. After the divorce, I went back to Mom’s. Then, I moved in with Daniel. Then, I moved back in with Mom after she got sick.

  Finally, my own house.

  Right on Main Street.

  Close to bars and restaurants.

  With all those hot men…

  Why the hell not?

  I thought about it for almost a month, during which time I settled my mother’s estate and tried to find a way to live comfortably in her house.

  I couldn’t. It would always be her house, not mine.

  I finally did the work and realized how much it was worth.

  Holy crap.

  I looked at those pictures again. It was selling for dirt-cheap because the interior needed so much work, like a brand new kitchen and bathroom, paint…a major rehab job. Terri, in her original text, had mentioned something about the perfect guys to help with the renovation, and how we could flip the property and become HGTV stars.

  Terri got carried away with some of her ideas, but if she already knew who would help with the renovation…

  Sold! I texted her.

  Terri’s return text was a series of emoji. Then, of course, she called.

  “Oh, Chris, this is going to be so much fun! You can stay with me and we can walk to the job site every day.”

  “Terri,” I warned her, “you have somebody to do the renovations, right?”

  “Yes. The McCann brothers. Steve McCann and I have, if I can brag just a little, a certain chemistry. I know that once he and I start working together, things will really start to take off. He’s a bit younger than I am, but that’s fine. What’s a five-year difference at our age?”

  “So…you want me to buy this house so you can hit on some guy?”

  “Of course not. I want you to buy this house because every time you’ve come down here, you’ve had a great time.”

  That was true.

  “And you’ve had a rough couple of years with your mom. You’ve lived in the same place your whole life, Chris, and could use a change of scenery.”

  That was also true.

  “Change is good for the soul. Don’t you feel like you need to shake things up? Now is your chance.”

  I sighed. “You’re right. Let’s do this. I guess I can drive down there for the sale, but I have to close the office up here, and that’s going to take a while. Can you buy this for me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Okay then. I’ll send you a power of attorney, wire you the cash, and we can get going.”

  She squealed. Fifty-year-old women should not squeal, but that’s Terri for you.

  “Oh, Chris, I am so excited. And you know what the best part is?”

  I was smiling over the phone. “That you and I will be able to walk to each other’s houses every day?”

  “No, I meant, beside that. Steve McCann has an older brother. His name is Mike, and he has a beard, and he’s closer to our age, and I know the two of you would be perfect together.” She clicked off the phone before I could yell WTF?

  As a point of information, I eventually married that nice, quiet high school boy, and I eventually had an orgasm. But not with him.

  Cape Edwards was a quiet little town on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, just north of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, and Terri lived in a condo right on Main Street, conveniently over a wine and cheese shop. She was the postmistress at the Eastville, VA post office, which suited her very well because she loved gossip. She wasn’t mean-spirited or even all that nosy. She had a real interest in people, all sorts of people. When we were in college, and hung out in bars, she could get total strangers who had originally intended to try for a quickie to tell her their entire life story instead. She did not have a mean bone in her body, had a warm, generous heart and a deep, loving soul, and we had been friends for over thirty years.

  Which is why I trusted her.

  I also knew her well enough to detect even the tiniest sliver of BS. So when she told me things, I knew what to accept and what to push aside for further evaluation.

  My mother had died just after the new year. It took a few
months to find a buyer for Mom’s house and negotiate the sale of my interest in the real estate office to my partners. I felt I had rid myself of all the baggage, emotional and actual. I felt free and supremely confident. Terri had found me the perfect house, it was in an almost perfect little town, and I was starting a grand adventure. I packed my car, attached a little U-Haul trailer for my books and mementos, and drove south.

  The last time I’d been in Cape Edwards, almost two years ago, I’d gotten very drunk. It wasn’t my fault. I had just found out that my mother had pancreatic cancer, and the prognosis was not good. Terri Coburn, who had held my hand many times while we were college juniors and seniors at the University of Delaware, took me to a place called Sam’s on Main, where the bartender, upon hearing my sad story, started poring shots of tequila. Quite honestly, I don’t remember him stopping. Tequila, by the way, was not my usual drink. In fact, I’d never had a usual drink. But tequila tasted just about right that night, and I do remember ending up on the beach in the middle of the night, naked, encouraging the other women who had followed me to take their clothes off as well and dive in.

  It was a big night for me. As a person usually so cautious I normally wouldn’t be found on the beach without three cover-ups and a striped umbrella to hide under, being naked was a real departure. As I also remember, the tide was so far out that I almost got lost trying to find actual water, prompting Terri, who had remained clothed, to trick me into turning back to shore with the promise of jerk chicken wings.

  But something changed in me that night. I realized that I had spent my entire life doing the “right” thing: playing it safe and making sure I hadn’t stepped on anyone’s toes. And my mother was going to die, and all that good behavior wasn’t going to make a bit of difference. Which is why, after she’d gone, I made a decision to try to live my life differently—take the chance, do the unexpected, step out in a different direction. Buying a house, sight unseen, was a big first step. But now I found myself reining in a little. All that courage and bravado seemed to shrink back as I left the place I’d called home for most of my life and headed south.

  As I remembered, summers were hot on the Delmarva Peninsula, but at least Cape Edwards had a bit of a breeze. I drove down State Road 31 until it curved west toward the Chesapeake Bay. I’d been down this road before. I’d been visiting Terri in Cape Edwards since we were in college together, and she invited me to spend a week at the house her family rented every year. This was familiar territory to me, and I slowed down as I came to where I thought my new house was, just at the beginning of Main Street.

  There it was, looking forlorn and unhappy with its unkempt yard and sagging porch. On one side of it was a neat little bungalow, surrounded by a white picket fence. On the other side was a vacant lot, one of several on this end of town, with a stand of four or five pines trees and patches of weeds growing in the dense shade. And across the street…that had been an empty lot as well, where, for years, old railroad freight cars had sat rusting. Now it was a bustling construction site, the foundation laid for what looked to be four or five separate retail spaces. I slowed to get a closer look. What was going on across the street from my new house? At least I thought it was better than rusting junk, which I was sure was home to critters I didn’t care to think about.

  I drove farther down Main Street, and the small houses gave way to brick-front shops and restaurants. Cape Edwards hadn’t gotten sleek and modern. There were no high-rises or fancy waterfront hotels. It was still quaint and small and charming. I turned into the alleyway that ran behind all the shops. Terri had a single parking spot right behind her apartment but also rented space in a neighbor’s yard on the opposite side of the alley. She usually kept her golf cart there but told me I could pull in and use the space. I did, got out and stretched, feeling the breeze, smelling the salt air. This, I knew, was going to be just what I needed. A fresh start.

  Terri given me the code to the back door lock, so I sent her a quick text that I’d arrived. I got a heart emoji back from her as I let myself in and up, one flight, to her apartment.

  She threw open the door and wrapped both arms around me, picking me up off the ground and swirling me around. I’m barely five foot zilch, and she had at least six inches on me, not to mention twenty or thirty pounds. Not heavy at all, just very well rounded, with breasts that entered a room a full minute before the rest of her body.

  She dropped me to the floor. “Are you tired? Oh, I hope not, because there’s someone really wonderful playing at the Grove, and then we’re all going out to dinner…everyone is so excited to see you again.” She beamed. “And the McCann brothers are meeting us first thing tomorrow, so you can see the house, and hear what they plan to do. They are just finishing up a house for the new doctor, Dara French, and it’s supposed to be amazing inside. I can’t wait to hear what they’re going to do to your place.”

  The Grove was a gallery on Main Street, and their Friday night ritual was free wine and cheese and something: a singer, a poet—a live performance of some kind. And I knew that Terri spent Friday nights cruising Main Street with her friends, all of whom I’d met before. They were a terrific bunch of women.

  “Can I pee? And brush my hair? And maybe change out of my sweaty clothes?”

  She waved her hand. “Of course. Give me your keys and I’ll bring up a suitcase or two.”

  I handed them over. “Just my Vera Bradley thing in the back seat, and the small suitcase.” Everything else was in my U-Haul.

  I watched her go, went to the bathroom, then was drawn, as I always was, to her front balcony. She overlooked all of Main Street, and the marina was right beyond. If you stuck your head out far enough and looked toward the west, you could even see the bay. This was my future, a new place called home, and I was suddenly struck by the enormity of what I’d done—left my whole life behind to start new. I took a deep breath of salty air for courage. I was doing the right thing. I was sure of it. I had to shake off the old me, the one who’d been afraid to take a chance. Besides, it was way too late to turn back now.

  We hit Main Street half an hour later. Terri, at breakneck speed, brought me up-to-date on all of gossip in town. There was a new doctor, a woman from Jamaica with dreadlocks and a charming accent. Sam, who had owned Sam’s on Main, died suddenly, and he had a son that no one had ever known about who had taken over the bar and moved in with Jenna, Sam’s ex-wife, who I knew was one of Terri’s friends.

  “Jenna, of course, was apoplectic,” Terri explained. “And hurt. She and Sam were friends, and for him to never tell her he had a son…well, anyway, he, that is, Craig, showed up with his three daughters and moved in! Sam had owned half the house, but Jenna always imagined that his half would go to her. I mean, why wouldn’t she?”

  “Wait—she and Sam were divorced, right?”

  “Yes, but Sam always kept his half of the house. He used to joke that when he got old and feeble he’d move back in, and Jenna would have to take care of him! I’m gonna miss Sam, he was such a hoot. Anyway—Craig moves in, and he’s a dead ringer for Sam when Sam was much younger, so of course, Jenna has all sorts of very complicated and if I may say, lustful thoughts. It’s a mess.”

  “Jenna is the redhead? The nurse? She struck me as someone who wouldn’t take something like that sitting down.”

  “Well, she was in a real corner, legally speaking. Poor Jenna.”

  “Does she still have the goats?”

  “Yes, and she’s picked up another dog since you were here last. Jenna named her Bit, because we have no idea what she might be, but probably a little bit of everything. Here we are.”

  I’d never been down here during the summer months, and Terri had always told me that the summer people tended to take over the town. By the number of people in the space, I could see she was right. The room was crowded, and everyone was dressed in summer finery: long sleeveless dresses and linen shirts, not the usual jeans-and-T-shirt crowd of off-season.

  “Let me get us some
wine,” Terri said. “Just stay here.”

  Last time I had been here, it had been in mid-May, and there weren’t any crowds. I’d lived my whole life in a beach town, and I knew what the summers were like. They were absolute hell, that’s what they were like. There was traffic and loud, obnoxious children everywhere; you couldn’t get into your favorite restaurant or bars…I hated summers. But, I told myself that Cape Edwards was much smaller. And the official season was only four months out of the year. Its attraction was the Chesapeake Bay, not the ocean. This wasn’t a place for college kids to hang out or where Millennials rented a place for the whole season. This was a summer spot where families and couples came back year after year.

  Terri practically had to wrestle her way back to me, but resourceful as she is, looked like she hadn’t spilled a drop of wine. “Jenna and Karen are over there. I’ll run interference.”

  I followed Terri, keeping my head down and my hand over the top of the wine glass, to reduce the chance of spillage.

  Jenna and Karen both had hugs. Jenna Ferris was a redhead, pale skinned, freckled and slender. Karen Helfman was older, closer to my age, with wiry hair gone completely gray, dark eyes in a tanned and wrinkled face, and a killer body. She was a yoga instructor, and every time I’d met her I thought it might be worth giving yoga a try if my body could look like hers, instead of it looking like…well, not toned and tight with arms that Tina Turner could envy. I was built more along the lines of the Pillsbury Doughgirl—softer, rounder, and definitely not toned.

  It was good to see them, and I felt grateful that I wasn’t moving to a place where I’d be a total stranger. I’d left behind friends in Rehoboth, but many had been Daniel and my friends, and after the split had drifted away. There were plenty of people there I’d known since childhood, but after Mom got sick, my life became very narrow, and I kept even my oldest friends at arms length. Now, in Cape Edwards, I had Terri and a circle of her friends that I could gradually get to know better, and hopefully some of them would become my friends as well.