Ocean Beach Read Online Free

Pale pink walls with white icing trim framed banks of arched windows. Bell towers topped a multiangled barrel-tile roof and jutted up into the cloudless sky. Her massive façade stood in beautiful contrast to the deep blue-green of the Gulf of Mexico and the bay it bled into.
    Avery’s satisfied gaze skimmed from the house to the shiny new “For Sale” sign that dangled over the low garden wall. She knew and loved every inch of Bella Flora, had touched almost every part of the grande dame with her own hands.
    A truck pulled up to the curb and Chase Hardin, the contractor who’d been a part of both renovations—before and after Hurricane Charlene had damaged so much of the tiny beach community of Pass-a-Grille—and become their partner in the process, joined her.
    “I know,” he said. “We all need for her to sell, but it’s hard to think of someone else living in her.”
    He smiled, which was a far cry from the way he’d looked at her when they’d first been forced to work together. Then he’d treated her like the Vanna White of the do-it-yourself set instead of the professional she was, and fought her for control of the job. Now his smile caused a jumble of reactions, all of them complicated. “But then I’m not expecting anything to happen all that quickly,” he said. “Even without the economy, summer is the absolute worst time to sell expensive Florida real estate.”
    It wasn’t the best time to renovate it either. But none of them could turn down the opportunity that
Do Over
presented.
    The worry she’d been tamping down reared its nasty little head. Part of the reason for their success in bringingBella Flora back to life lay in the fact that walking away had not been an option. Renovating an unknown house for television could be a dicey thing, and she knew firsthand what could happen when there was a network to answer to.
    Avery’s gaze moved to her car, which sat on the bricked driveway. The Mini Cooper’s convertible top was down. Suitcases and baggage, almost none of it hers, teetered on the backseat and spilled between the front seats.
    High heels tapped their way down the brick drive and she looked up to see Deirdre Morgan, Avery’s former mother, interior designer to the stars, and unwelcome hitchhiker walking toward them with a large overnight case in her arms.
    At sixty-one, Deirdre looked a decade younger. Her makeup was expertly applied and her blond bob had been wrapped in a designer scarf that would no doubt blow artfully behind her as they made their way south. Her chest, like the one she’d bequeathed to Avery, was too large for her frame, but the pale blue silk blouse that she’d tucked into white linen pants was cut for camouflage and her jeweled high-heeled sandals made her almost tall enough to counterbalance the weight.
    She looked, Avery thought in irritation, as if she were planning to board a cruise ship, not shoehorn herself into an overstuffed compact for a bugs-in-the-teeth drive across Florida’s Alligator Alley.
    A whiff of Deirdre’s gardenia perfume assaulted Avery’s nose and once again Avery wondered why Deirdre had really come back into her life and how long she planned to stay.
    “It should be a pretty drive down to Miami,” Chase said conversationally.
    This might have been true if Avery had been makingthe trip down to South Beach without Deirdre and her possessions. And if the network hadn’t gotten all wonky, refusing to tell them so much as the address of the house they’d be working on until they got to town.
    She watched Deirdre contemplate the car and the makeup case, but made no move to help her figure it out. Avery was already half afraid the trunk would pop open on the highway and shoot Deirdre’s possessions into the Everglades like a geyser spewing oil.
    “Don’t even think about it,” she said to Deirdre. “I had to sit on that trunk to get it closed. The only way you’re bringing that case is if you intend to hold it on your lap all the