Table of Contents
Praise Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Heritage Businesses CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3 CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER 6 CHAPTER 7 CHAPTER 8 CHAPTER 9 CHAPTER 10 CHAPTER 11 CHAPTER 12 CHAPTER 13 CHAPTER 14 CHAPTER 15 CHAPTER 16 CHAPTER 17 CHAPTER 18 CHAPTER 19 CHAPTER 20 CHAPTER 21 CHAPTER 22 CHAPTER 23 CHAPTER 24 CHAPTER 25 CHAPTER 26 CHAPTER 27 CHAPTER 28 CHAPTER 29 CHAPTER 30 CHAPTER 31 CHAPTER 32 CHAPTER 33 CHAPTER 34 CHAPTER 35 CHAPTER 36 CHAPTER 37 CHAPTER 38 Acknowledgments Teaser chapter
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2020 by Sherry Harris
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First Kensington Books Mass Market Paperback Printing: August 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2303-1
ISBN-13: 978-1-4967-2305-5 (ebook)
ISBN-10: 1-4967-2305-8 (ebook)
To Bob
For making life an adventure no matter where we live
and
To Clare
The angel on my shoulder
Heritage Businesses
Sea Glass—owner, Vivi Jo Slidell
Briny Pirate—owner, Wade Thomas
Redneck Rollercoaster—owner, Ralph Harrison
Russo’s Grocery Store—owner, Fred Russo
Hickle Glass-Bottom Boat—owners, Edith Hickle,
Leah Hickle, Oscar Hickle
Emerald Cove Fishing Charters—owner, Jed Farwell
CHAPTER 1
Remember the big moment in The Wizard of Oz movie when Dorothy says, “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore?” Boy, could I relate. Only a twister hadn’t brought me here; a promise had. This wasn’t the Emerald City, but the Emerald Coast of Florida. Ruby slippers wouldn’t get me home to Chicago. And neither would my red, vintage Volkswagen Beetle, if anyone believed the story I’d spread around. Nothing like lying to people you’d just met. But it couldn’t be helped. Really, it couldn’t.
The truth was, as a twenty-eight-year-old children’s librarian, I never imagined I’d end up working in a beach bar in Emerald Cove, Florida. In the week I’d been here I’d already learned toddlers and drunk people weren’t that different. Both were unsteady on their feet, prone to temper tantrums one minute and sloppy hugs the next, and they liked to take naps wherever they happened to be. Go figure. But knowing that wasn’t helping me right now. I was currently giving the side-eye to one of the regulars.
“Joaquín, why the heck is Elwell wearing that armadillo on his head?” I asked in a low voice. Elwell Pugh sat at the end of the bar, his back to the beach, nursing a beer in his wrinkled hands. I had known life would be different in the Panhandle of Florida, but armadillo shells on people’s heads?—that was a real conversation starter.
“It’s not like it’s alive, Chloe,” Joaquín Diaz answered, as if that made sense of a man wearing a hollowed-out armadillo shell as a hat. Joaquín raised two perfectly manicured eyebrows at me.
What? Maybe it was some kind of lodge thing down here. My uncle had been a member of a lodge in Chicago complete with funny fez hats, parades, and clowns riding miniature motorcycles. But he usually didn’t sit in bars in his hat—at least not alone.
Elwell sported the deep tan of a Florida native. A few faded tattoos sprinkled his arms. His gray hair, cropped short, and grizzled face made him look unhappy—maybe he was. I’d met Elwell when I started working at the
