Buck's Landing (A New England Seacoast Romance)

Copyright © 2012 Cameron D. Garriepy

Bannerwing Books

All rights reserved.

Cover design and photography

Copyright © 2012 Cameron D. Garriepy

Additional images used with permission.

All rights reserved.

Print Edition:

ISBN: 0615689777

ISBN-13: 978-0615689777

All persons represented in this book are fictional. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

Bannerwing Books

http://bannerwingbooks.com

This book is respectfully dedicated to the residents of Hampton Beach, NH.

Please forgive me any liberties I have taken, and know that this story is written with the greatest affection for the beach, the boardwalk, and the community which makes Hampton so very special to my family.

This book was made possible through the incredible generosity of a very special group of investors:

Judith G. Zamore

Elizabeth & Gary Brown ~ Rebecca DiJulia

Amy Lipke ~ Heather Sanborn

Nichole Beaudry ~ Roxane Bock

Kirsten Piccini

Veronique Corddin

John Batzer ~ Nancy Campbell

Elizabeth Goeke ~ Ari Gottlieb

Lex Marburger ~ Erin Margolin

Renee McKinley ~ Katherine O’Grady

Lori O’Hara ~ Frank Wildermann

Angela Amman ~ Phoebe Chase

Alta Dantzler ~ Marian Kent

Victoria Kirichok ~ Tara L. Lagana

Kelly Sajonia ~ Heather Young

Kath Galasso ~ Kate Sluiter

My family, especially my wonderful husband and son, for putting up with my devotion to writing—especially when inspiration struck on our summer vacation!

The friends and readers, near and far, who’ve supported me over the last few years. I write for myself. I publish for you.

The enigmatic K, who is always right.

Mandy and Angela, for hours of critique. I hope I’ve done you proud.

Roxanne, my editrix extraordinaire, thank you for whipping the manuscript into shape with a professional eye.

My dear Write on Edge colleagues, I love you like sisters (yeah, you, too, John!).

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Buck’s

Landing

ONE

Whoever was pounding on the door had better have their affairs in order, Sofia thought as she pushed herself up off the sofa, because she was going to murder them with her bare hands. With a grimace at the empty bottle of pinot noir on the coffee table, she cursed herself for drinking too much the night before, pressing her knuckles against her sleep-crusted eyes. Hadn’t she fled this coastal New England beach town to escape her father’s drinking? She scraped her mane of dark brown curls into a hasty knot, wondering what the hell else a lone woman was expected to do in Hampton Beach when she wasn’t one of the vacationing hordes.

A glance at the clock told her she’d overslept. The mini-golf course at Buck’s Landing would be open by now, and she should be getting the Snack Bar ready.

She opened the door to Amy, her assistant manager. The co-ed’s perky ponytail and crisp uniform polo shirt practically sparkled in the July sun.

“I’m sorry, Sofia.” Amy glanced down from Sofia’s third story landing at the Astroturf greens, where a small crowd had gathered around the cement “tree” on the twelfth hole. “There’s a kitten stuck up the tree, and I can’t get him down.”

“Of course.” With a sigh, Sofia slid her feet into the sensible sport sandals she wore to work, and followed Amy down the stairs to the waiting cat. She praised herself for falling asleep in a tank top and soft cotton pants. At least she was decent enough to rescue stray kittens from fake cement trees.

The sun glittered off the crushed stone paths that wound through the course, sparkled on the blue-gray sea washing ashore across the street at the state beach. Heat was already pooling on the sidewalk, the boardwalk, and the road between. Sofia squinted, wishing for sunglasses, and did her best to ignore the faint throbbing at her temple.

A six-foot ladder proved enough to get her into the tree, and the little scrap of fur came to her easily. Sofia had never had a cat, but as this kitten’s body went soft in her hands, she wondered briefly why not.

“Aren’t you a pretty…well, now what are you?” She raised the tiny cat up and inspected its underside. “A pretty boy.” He cocked his head to one side, and Sofia chuckled. She tucked the purring feline under her arm and backed down the ladder. “Amy, can you stash the ladder on your way back to the window? I’m going to find a place for this guy to stay until I find his owner.”

“Sure.”

Sofia envied the college girl’s boundless energy. She hadn’t remembered having that much buoyant charm at twenty-two. All she remembered about being a college kid was planning her summers off from UNH so that she could be home as little as possible. The summer she was twenty-two, she’d worked her third consecutive summer at a girls’ camp in the White Mountains, blessing them for providing room and board. She’d stashed her paychecks away, saving for the precious future, intent on escaping her father’s grief and its companion, Canadian whiskey. She had planned to get out of New England, alone.

She carried the kitten up to the landing outside her apartment. Below her, Hampton’s Ocean Boulevard was already awake and bustling. Salt and sand seasoned the breeze blowing in off the water. Motels, restaurants, food counters, and seaside souvenir shops lined the sidewalk of the boulevard as far as she could see before the coastline curved eastward at Rocky Bend. She smoothed out the cat’s long tail while her eye traced the farthest point where the year-round colony sat on the bluff.

Buck’s Landing sat amongst all the tourist traps, three stories high and half a block wide in every direction. Her grandfather had designed the mini-golf course on a parcel of land acquired after a fire, turning the charred remains of a boarding house into his personal dream of summer vacation family fun. Her father had run the course as a young man, bringing his new wife to live in the apartment on the third floor, turning the ground floor into an ice-cream and soda counter. It had been her mother who suggested, after Grampa Buck passed away, that they convert his second floor dwelling to apartments: weekly rentals for summer vacationers, monthly rentals for UNH students in the off-season.

While Sofia watched, the beach filled in with umbrellas and tents. Half a dozen kites flew over the boardwalk. Vacationing families were using the new bathhouse at the State Park—far better than the old one, she thought with a shudder. Kids and gulls shrieked from the high tide line, and the scent of Coppertone drifted over the piped-in music on the course. The kitten rested contentedly in the crook of her arm.

“You like it here, don’t you?” She stroked one silky, steel gray ear. “You don’t know that there’s a whole world beyond this tacky town, a whole universe outside of New England.”

The kitten’s pleasant rumble was disturbed by the buzzing in her pocket. With her free hand, she fished out her phone. “Sofia Buck.”

The tenants in 2B had clogged the toilet again. “I’ll be right down.”

Pocketing her phone, she shifted the small bundle on her arm. He blinked sleepily, stretching his skinny legs and flexing his fuzzy, half-dollar coin-sized paws.

“You’re going to have to stay here alone for a few minutes. Can you do that?” Her companion yawned.

Sofia took him inside and carried him down the short hall, past the tiny bathroom and her parents’ bedroom, to her childhood sanctuary. She focused on finding a pair of khaki shorts and a Buck’s Landing polo, her glance coasting over the photos her father had set on the dresser sometime in the years between her departure and his death. There was a kind of madness in nostalgia, and Hampton Beach was not going to be her asylum.

Her guest began to knead the bedspread, and Sofia scooped him up. The kitten squeaked in protest. “No way, little man. This is the people bed, not the cat bed.” She shut the bedroom door firmly behind her.

Plopping him down on the sofa, she headed for the utility closet. She grabbed a pair of long rubber gloves, a bucket, mop, and plunger. Giving the kitten a stern look, she said, “Be good.”

She jogged down the stairs to the second of the two rental apartments that made up the second floor. This week, a family from upstate New York had 2B. During their brief exchange on Saturday afternoon, the mother had fretted over her.

“I’m so sorry to hear about your Dad, honey. He was such a nice man. Nick and I have been renting this place since before we got married. He was part of our vacation tradition.”

Sofia had murmured the correct responses before showing them a few of the updates she’d arranged for over the past few weeks, including wireless internet. If she was going to be trapped in this place, she was at least going to be able to access the rest of the world from her laptop.

Pinning on her brightest smile, she knocked on the door. The mother opened the door. Her small child, a kindergartener named after a character from a movie—Trinity?—peered out from behind her legs.

“Hey, Sophie.” The mother pushed a mop of sweaty curls from her forehead. “We’re just heading across to the beach. Thanks for taking care of this.”

Sofia swallowed the name correction that surfaced on her tongue. “Have fun. The waves are up this morning.”

Thankfully, the toilet was only clogged with an abundance of quilted toilet paper. As she worked the plunger, she wondered what the fascination was with little kids and toilet paper rolls. Sofia cleaned up behind herself and locked the unit. She stowed the supplies back in her apartment, washed her hands, and poured herself a cup of coffee. Leaning on the counter to write up a to-do list, she ticked off her duties for the day.

The water in the fountain shared by the fourth and fifteenth holes was looking brackish, and she was running low on paper goods. Buck’s Landing wasn’t enough in the black to warrant a delivery service, which meant she’d be trucking over to Manchester for provisions and to stop at the pool supply place. And, at some point, she was going to have to call someone about the kitten.

She stood upright so quickly she nearly rapped her head on the upper cabinets. The kitten!

Her gaze flicked to the sofa, where a slight depression in her mother’s once-favorite throw pillow was the only evidence of the feline adventurer’s existence. She clicked her tongue and kissed the air in her apartment, willing the gray ball of fluff to appear from beneath some piece of furniture.