We take the empty buckets inside the hut and stack them against the back wall.

“Let’s get back to the more important matter at hand. What in the fuck are you going to do about Lucy? You know your window of opportunity is about ready to slam shut, right? As we speak, she is on another date with Sphincter. Sorry, I mean Stanford. I heard from Ellie that it’s a romantic picnic on the beach,” he informs me.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath, trying not to picture Lucy and Stanfuck snuggled together on a blanket in the sand.

“I’m trying to do this the right way. I don’t want to invade her space or piss her off. Right now, I just want her to know that I’m back and I’m not going anywhere.”

“I think it’s high time you ‘invade her space’,” Bobby tells me, complete with air quotes. “Stan the Man is not about to back down. There’s talk that he wants to buy Butler House from her and she’s not really in a position to say no to him. He wants to partner with her and turn it into a resort, complete with a waterpark and spa. If they go into business together, you’ll never be able to get close to her.”

“What the hell do you mean she’s not in a position to say no to him? Why in the fuck would she ever sell the inn? It’s been in her family for three generations and she loves that place,” I tell him, my anger on her behalf starting to grow.

The nerve of that ass fuck thinking he can come in here and buy Lucy’s business right out from under her.

“Dude, the inn hardly makes any money. She’s barely scraping by as it is, and with a place as old as that, there’s always shit going wrong that she needs to fix. She’s not going to be able to afford that place for too many more seasons before the bank takes it over. It’s a fucking money pit,” Bobby explains.

The inn has never turned much of a profit for as long as I’ve known Lucy, but it was always more than enough to cover her expenses and give her something to live on. Aside from that, she got half of everything I owned in the divorce. I would have given her every single penny I had, but the courts wouldn’t let me. She should have plenty of money to do whatever she wants to the inn. What did she do with the money I sent her? Does she hate me so much that she refused to use it, even to make repairs to the place she loves? I’m angry and irritated, assuming that she never used the money just because it came from me. It was hers, all of it was hers to do with as she wanted. Why the hell didn’t she use it? She could keep the inn in her family and avoid having to sell it to ANYONE, but especially that fucker who clearly has another agenda aside from getting in her pants.

“Well, would you look at that? A pretty lady all alone on the beach,” Bobby tells me, nodding his head over my shoulder.

Turning around, I see Lucy off in the distance, sitting on a blanket, staring out at the ocean.

Telling Bobby I’ll talk to him later, I head in her direction. I watch as she leans back on her hands and turns her face up to the sun, her long hair cascading down behind her and brushing the blanket she’s sitting on. She’s so fucking beautiful it takes my breath away. I don’t know where fuck face went and why she’s sitting here all alone and I don’t care. All I care about is getting close to her again.

I walk up in front of her, stopping when I’m blocking the sun from her face. Her eyes blink open and she looks up at me, a scowl taking over her face.

“Nice to see you again, too,” I say with a laugh. “Mind if I sit down?”

I point to the blanket and she hesitates. I decide to plop down next to her anyway and deal with the consequences later. I sit close enough that her thigh presses against mine and her shoulder rubs against my arm. She scoots away with a huff and I keep my laughter to myself.

“Where’s Sanford and Son? I thought you two had a date?”

She glares at me and shakes her head. “Is anything in this town private? And stop calling him names, it’s juvenile.”

“Did you really just ask if anything in this town is private? Are you new here?” I ask with a chuckle.

A laugh bursts out of her mouth and she finally smiles at me. Fuck the sun shining down on us right now, this is a thousand times better.

“Yeah, you’re right, silly me. Welcome to Fisher’s Island, where everything is everyone’s business and if you didn’t already know that, you haven’t been talking to the right people,” she says with another laugh.

After a few quiet seconds she answers my initial question. “Stanford got called away to a meeting. We were already finished with lunch, so it’s fine.”

Fucking Sand-In-My-Crack-Ford. Who the hell leaves someone like Lucy in the middle of a date to go to a stupid meeting? I think back to all the times I left her over the years and it makes me feel like an asshole.

“So, how’s the inn?” I ask nonchalantly.

She looks away from me to stare out at the ocean again. “It’s fine, you know, the usual.”

That’s not really what I wanted to hear, so I try again.

“Everything good? You know, moneywise and shit?”

She purses her lips and looks back at me again.

“It’s fine,” she says through clenched teeth.

“I just…you know if you need any help, you can always ask, right? That place was as much a part of my life as it was yours for a lot of years. I care about it and I don’t want to see anything happen to it.”

She laughs cynically, shaking her head back and forth. “You are a real piece of work, you know that? You don’t care about Butler House, so stop trying to feed me that bullshit. You hated everything that place represented and you hated that you were stuck here with me taking care of it. Give it a rest, Fisher.”