I don’t even have time to be shocked before she grabs her backpack from the bench, slings it over her shoulder and walks away from me without another word. I can’t help staring at her ass as she leaves and I also can’t stop the smile that takes over my face. I’m not really used to rejection when it comes to girls. Sure, my father rejected every fucking idea I’ve ever had, but girls? Never happens. All I have to do is turn on the charm and I could have any girl in this room riding my dick in a matter of seconds.

Lucy Butler is an anomaly and right now, that makes me respect her more than any fucking person on this entire island. It also makes her a thousand times more appealing. I might have to put in a little work to get close to Lucy. Oh, this is going to be so much fun.

Chapter 20

Lucy

Present Day

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about what happened in town two weeks ago. Fisher’s father’s words keep popping up in my head every time I turn around. Am I in over my head? Am I just living in a fantasy where I think I can actually make this place work and keep it forever? I’m drowning in bills and I’ve been late entirely too often on the mortgage recently. When my parents took over this place, they thought it was an affordable mortgage and it was at the time, until the repairs and the cost of upkeep multiplied month after month. The only thing saving me right now is an inn full of guests and the steady income peak season rates provides.

Flopping down on the bed in one of the guest rooms at the cottage, I stare around the room with a heavy heart. With a different lighthouse theme in every guest room, the Fisher’s Lighthouse room has always been my favorite. Decorated in several shades of blue to represent the ocean you can see from the two large windows against the main wall, it’s filled with framed photos I took over the years of the lighthouse here on the south end of the island, as well as a couple of replica sculptures I’ve collected over the years. This room feels like home. This room is home. Pushing myself up from the bed, I walk over to the window and run my hand over the two-foot tall wood carving of the lighthouse that sits on the floor in between the two windows. It’s a near perfect replica of the lighthouse that you can just barely see in the distance out the windows it sits in front of. I don’t remember where it came from, but it’s always been my favorite decoration in the house. Maybe because when I look at it, it reminds me of better times…happier times. So many good memories happened for me out at that lighthouse and all of them involve Fisher.

As I make my way out of the bedroom, I slowly walk through the rest of the inn. With eleven oversized guestrooms, it was the largest place for guest accommodations when my grandparents built it. Now that the town has grown, there are several hotels with special amenities like in-ground pools and twenty-four-hour gyms that Butler House can’t compete with. That has always been what I loved about this place, though. It’s not a copycat of every other hotel all over the world with the same décor on every floor and people shouting and running up and down the halls. When you come to Butler House, you come to relax and enjoy the peace and tranquility that only an ocean town can bring. You come for the old world-style design that takes you back to a time when life was simpler.

Butler House is a traditional, wooden, Georgian double house with a center stairway and two large rooms on either side – a sprawling sitting room and the registration area on one side, and a library with a side bar on the other. The entire back of the house on the first floor is taken up by the kitchen and dining area, as well as a small laundry room. In the tradition of Georgian double houses, there is a fireplace at either end of the house, one in the sitting room and one in the library. Most of the house still has the original floors, aside from the areas that had to be redone after the damn pipe burst upstairs last year, ruining some of the pine planking.

Making my way through the kitchen and dining area to the sliding glass door at the back of the house, I pull it open and step out onto Butler House’s most popular feature. The veranda stretches along the entire length of the back of the house and faces the ocean. It’s lined with rocking chairs, all handmade by Fisher, but I take a seat in my personal favorite, the one with lighthouses carved into the headrest. Staring out at the water, I watch as the sky around it grows darker as the sun sets.

Two guests are seated at the far end of the veranda and I smile and wave at them as they lazily rock back and forth and enjoy the view. I try not to cry as I think about this place being torn down and traded in for a modern-day resort. No one will be able to sit here to stare out at the ocean with the twinkling lights of distant ships dotting the surface. They’ll be too busy splashing in the huge waterpark that will block the view and make people forget the beauty of the place they’re staying. I thought when I moved here that it would just be a stopping point for me before I went off to college and eventually traveled the world. I wanted so much to see what the world had to offer, but I quickly realized that this place, my island, was all that I needed.

Well, that and the love of a good man.

Things changed and, while I might have lost that man along the way, at least I still had the inn. Now, I wonder if maybe I’ve been living in the past too long. I’m trying to hold on to something that will never come back to me – the popularity of an old-fashioned inn and the man who fulfilled all my hopes and dreams…until he didn’t. Maybe it’s time for me to finally let go. Staying here, being so attached to this building is keeping me rooted in the past, still wishing for things that I have no business wishing for. Staying here keeps the memories of what might have been alive and it’s preventing me from moving on.