Beatrice Callahan loves lists. Sometimes she even makes a to-do list of things she’s already done, just to go check, check, check and feel accomplished. So it’s easy to understand why, when her divorce is finally final and her ex is all moved out, Bea takes a cool, close look at her life…and makes a list.It’s not exactly a bucket list.
It’s a love list.
Bea loves the outdoors, so she puts visit 10 National Parks on the list.
She loves animals, and on goes get a puppy.
She loves the beach, and she adds take a dream vacation to the list, and decides to do that one first. After all she’s been through and all she’s lost, she needs time to relax, rest, and reset.
On the first day she arrives in Hilton Head Island, she meets Grant Turner, the man whose house she’s renting for her fabulous beach vacation. He’s just there to make sure she settles in properly and has enough towels.
But when Bea asks for recommendations around the island, Grant quickly becomes her tour guide and then a friend and then…more than friends.
Bea turns to her lists when things get confusing and her love list morphs once again… Can she add fall in love at age 45 to the list and check it off?
The front door opened as she stood from the couch. Grant poked his head into the house. “Bea? Oh, there you are.”
“Come in,” she said.
He did, his frown appearing and deepening as he did. “You’re right. The air’s off in here.”
“Yeah.” She ran her hands through her hair, getting a momentary shock over its length. The style was still so new, she’d forgotten she didn’t have any hair to push back. Having Grant in the house brought a new kind of electricity she didn’t quite know how to hold. One couldn’t contain such a strong current anyway, but Bea really wanted to try.
Let him handle the air conditioner first, she told herself as he went through the house and out the back door. She followed him at a safe distance, still getting plenty of musky, male notes of his cologne.
Bea honestly felt like a twenty-year-old meeting the man of her dreams for the first time. The racing pulse, the nervousness in her chest that reached up and clouded her thoughts. Her life had been a whirlwind of fun when she’d first started dating Nort. New places, different friends, a world of possibilities opening before her.
She felt the exact same way now, after a couple of decades of normalcy, with predictable—code for boring—days, generic conversations, and stale kisses. Her children had brought a new challenge every single day, but her romantic relationship had chilled quietly on the back shelf while the kids grew and then moved on.
She hadn’t realized Nort had done the same, and she wondered as she watched Grant kneel in front of the air compressor at the back of the house if anything would’ve been different if she had paid attention to how unromantic their relationship had become.
Maybe he wouldn’t have cheated on you with his secretary, she thought. The oldest situation in all the books and movies she’d watched her whole life had happened to her. She’d never given any thought to how the women in those fictional stories must’ve felt—until she had to deal with the crushing reality herself.
And crush it did. Hopes, dreams, plans, lists.
But she had a new list now, and while she’d only been on Hilton Head Island for just over a day, she felt wildly behind in accomplishing the items her friends had starred for her.
Visit the beach and listen to the ocean.
Fly a kite you don’t think you can control.
She’d listened to the ocean this morning, and the waves whispered things like, Choose to be happy, and Let yourself breathe again.
Not only that, but she sure had felt like she could fall in love again that morning, with the sunshine bathing her and her thoughts rumbling around how to text Grant and get another meal with him.
Cassandra Haslam loves plans. Lunch plans, wedding plans, and floor plans—they all bring her joy. In fact, she's had her entire life planned out—career, marriage, and family—since age ten. She's smart, hard-working, and a real go-getter, and everything has fallen into place so far.When her youngest graduates three months later, making her an empty-nester as well as a widow, Cass decides it's time to make a new plan for herself.
It's not a back-up plan.
It's a paradise plan.
With one of her best friends now living in Hilton Head, Cass makes a move and purchases a piece of waterfront property on the island. It's the perfect place to build her paradisiacal life and her new self as she designs and constructs a beautiful beach house.
But when she injures herself—not in the plan, by the way—she meets general-contractor-turned-doctor Harrison Tate. He helps her out of a jammed thumb, a sprained ankle, and a bruised ego.
Lauren Keller understands strategies. She adores them and never enters a marketing meeting without Strategy A, B, and C tucked away in the back of her mind. She's one of the top executives at her firm...until it all comes crashing down with the news that her boss has been stealing money from their clients for almost a decade.She needs a new strategy, and she decides she can map everything out from the beaches of Hilton Head.
It's not an exit strategy.
It's a seaside strategy.
Relax more. Worry less. Find out what she really wants in her life.
While trying to do that, all with the ocean breeze and her friends for support, Lauren meets Blake Williams. The man is movie-star gorgeous, witty, and looking for someone to help him run his successful financial planning business on the island.
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I love the cover, it sounds like a good book.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a good read.
ReplyDeletenice cover
ReplyDelete