Under The Boardwalk

Everyone’s counting on him

With the sudden death of his father, Jack Hamilton finds himself running the family amusement park, Starlight Point. His first job? Balance the books, and that means raising the rent for vendors like baker Augusta Murphy.

Gus won’t accept the new contract...not without a fight. She rallies the other vendors and sets out to negotiate with Jack. At least, she tries. How do you play hardball with a man who’s charming and kind and still grieving? Gus needs to figure it out fast, because the closer she gets to Jack, the more she risks losing everything.

Fifteen seconds went by. Or twenty. It was hard to keep track.

Her feelings were like the cotton candy they sold in bags on the midway. Delicious but delicate. They would melt away in a second.

She released him and stepped back, pushing him away with light fingers.

“What are you doing, Jack?”

“Unless I’m dreaming, that was a hug. And it was the best part of my day.”

“We can’t,” she said.

“We were.”

She held her hand up in a stop-the-car gesture. “This was a mistake. It’s late. We’re both giddy and tired.”

“Didn’t feel like a mistake to me,” Jack said.

“Hugging the boss is a mistake for me. Tomorrow morning you’re the man who owns all this and I’m just a vendor for the summer.”

“So?”

She cocked her head to the side and raised an eyebrow. “Maybe you didn’t notice, but vendors aren’t exactly in the first-class cabins on your ship.”

Dear Reader,

Thank you for picking up Under the Boardwalk. I hope you enjoy it! This book is dear to my heart because I love amusement parks, the sound of a carousel and summer love. During four summers back in college, I worked at an amusement park just like Starlight Point. While there, I grew up, had fun, indulged my crazy passion for roller coasters and met the love of my life. I still live near the park that inspired Starlight Point, and my husband and I enjoy going there with our children. I’m happy they love roller coasters, too!

I hope reading this book evokes a happy memory of sunshine, carousels and cake. I plan to bring you more stories from Starlight Point in the near future. In the meantime, please visit me at amiedenman.com, find me on Twitter, @amiedenman, or email me at author@amiedenman.com.

Happy reading,

Amie Denman

Under the Boardwalk

Amie Denman

AMIE DENMAN lives in a small town in her native Ohio with her husband and sons. She is the author of seven published contemporary romances—all of which take place by the water. Reading books was her favorite escape as a child, and growing up four houses away from the community library encouraged her addiction. When she’s not reading or writing, she enjoys gardening, biking and going for walks with her husband. The helpless victim of a lifetime of curiosity, she’s been known to chase fire trucks on her bicycle just to see what’s going on. Amie believes that everything is fun: especially roller coasters, wedding cake and falling in love. You can find Amie on Twitter, @amiedenman.

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To my sons, Joseph and David, who love sunshine and roller coasters as much as I do.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

GUS BACKED HER van down the narrow kitchen driveway at Bay Pavilion Banquet Hall. She was blocking an older SUV parked illegally along the waterfront, but she didn’t have time to feel guilty about it. The wedding reception was two hours away, just enough time to stack the cake and pipe it to perfection.

She pulled on her apron, an embroidered cake with a glossy bride and groom covering the top half. Two small bells stitched to the upper straps jingled when she walked.

The early-evening sun slanted off her van’s elaborate paint job. Every square inch was pink. Aunt Augusta’s Bakery swirled in gold metallic lettering across an ornate wedding cake. When she’d pulled in with the new van a few weeks ago, her employees had raised their eyebrows and clamped their mouths shut. All except her aunt Augusta. She had snapped a picture with her cell phone and beamed it to her entire list of contacts.

Gus loaded three round cakes on a steel cart, propped open the double side doors to the reception room with her foot and rolled through. When she hurried back for the other two layers, a long shadow darkened the blacktop on the other side of the open van door.

“Cake coming through,” she called out. “Make way or suffer the consequences.”

She expected to see a catering staffer as she folded the door shut and swung around the side of the van. Instead, a tall man wearing a half wet-suit stood there dripping onto the asphalt. He clutched an oar as if he were preparing to vanquish the mighty pink van.

Gus looked him over from head to toe. Dark brown hair shoved back from his face. Deep brown eyes. High forehead. An amazing four inches taller than her five foot eleven. Slim, athletic build. Huge ticked-off frown.

She stopped the cart, stepped in front of it and grabbed a rubber spatula from her apron pocket. Holding the cooking utensil in front of her, she spread her feet and locked eyes with the wet-suit man.

His lips twitched and his shoulders relaxed.

“I’m pretty good with this spatula,” Gus said, her small grin matching his. “You should save yourself and run while you have the chance.”

“I’m thinking,” he said.

“About putting down the oar and holding those kitchen doors for me?”

“Nope. About the last time I ran away from a woman wielding a spoon.”

“It’s not a spoon,” she said, twirling the spatula in a figure eight.

“My mother’s was,” he said, stepping back a few inches but still clutching his oar. “A wooden spoon. And she was looking to teach me a lesson with it.”

“Cooking lesson?”

He laughed. “I wish. My mother can’t cook. It was more of a manners lesson. I’d made fun of my grandmother’s ugly couch, and my mother made sure I couldn’t sit on it for a week.”

“I like your mother already,” Gus said, “and I’m sure you have excellent manners as a result of her instruction.” She tucked the spatula back in her pocket, and the movement made the wedding bells on her apron jingle. “Does this mean you plan to hold the doors for me?”

He eyed the cake painted on the side of the van and then his gaze swung to the cart behind her.

“Does it come with free cake?”

“Sorry. This one’s for the bride and groom.”

“Will helping make you get your van out of my way faster?”

“Am I in your way?”

“You’re taking up the whole driveway,” he said. “I’d like to load my kayak and get out of here before sundown.”

“I might have a wooden spoon in the van,” she said.

He exhaled loudly. “Fine. I’ll get the doors.”

Gus rolled the cart behind the man in the wet suit. Attractive, she thought. Nice hint of a smile. But he appeared to be on a mission.

She was on a tight schedule, too. The wedding reception was now one hour and forty-five minutes away. If everything went as planned, she’d be fine. But handsome strangers were not part of the plan.

Inside, she placed the largest round layer in the center of the cake table, which was decorated with a pristine tablecloth and a gleaming silver knife. She picked up the next layer, carefully turning it so the design would match the bottom layer, and eased it onto the anchor cake. Stacking a wedding cake was in her blood, a skill she’d inherited from her aunt Augusta and hoped to build a business on. If only running a business were as easy as running a perfect line of piped frosting.

Several servers dressed in classic black and white milled around fussing with tablecloths. They placed silverware on other tables in the elegant reception room and glanced pointedly at her, eyeing the space she was taking up with her cart and cake tools. Apparently everyone was in a hurry.

“Do you plan to stand there and watch me?” she asked the stranger. She wondered if he was hoping for a handout. Maybe he’d never seen Martha Stewart on TV and was enthralled watching Gus create a wedding cake.

“I’m waiting for you to move your van.” He rolled his shoulders and stretched.

Oh. So much for enthralled.

“It’ll be a minute. I have to get the three top layers off the side table. The servers want to set that table and they don’t like waiting.”

“Neither do I,” he said.

Gus picked up the middle cake, its small pink flowers arranged in a crosshatch design. She held it over the layer below as she gauged the perfect placement.

“If you don’t want to be inconvenienced, you should be more careful where you park,” she said. “You’re stopped in the access road for the kitchen.”

“No one ever complained before.”

Gus took her eyes off the cake and gave him a tight smile. She was trying to practice restraint. He was attractive but appeared uncomfortable, his wet suit making a funny contrast with the formal linens. He resembled an oak tree accidentally planted among fussy flowering shrubs.

The stranger planted one end of his oar on the carpet and leaned on it. Gus lowered the fourth layer into place. She had to focus on the wedding cake that would bring over a thousand bucks into her shop’s cash drawer. A drawer that barely had change for a fifty.

“If you give me your keys, I’ll move your van myself,” he offered.

Gus stepped back to survey the cake. She grabbed a chair from a nearby table and stepped onto it to look down at the four layers she’d stacked so far.

“Are you kidding?” she asked. “How do I know you don’t plan to steal it?”

His half laugh turned into a cough. “No risk of that. It’s too...”

“What?”

“You know,” he said, gesturing as though he could catch the appropriate words.

“Too pretty?” she asked. “Too large? Too powerful for you to handle?”

He cracked his knuckles. “Lady, I’m cold and tired. I’d like to get home.”

Gus stepped down from the chair and faced him. “Keys are in the van.”

He shot her an unreadable look. Without a word, he turned and strode through the door.

Gus placed the top layer and piped neat borders around the bottoms of each circle, meshing the layers together and bringing the whole cake into focus. Small spring flowers dotted the snowy landscape of white icing and piped designs. Pink rosebuds, yellow daffodils and purple sweet peas trailed over the sides. Perfect for a wedding on the first weekend of May. She dug a camera out of her plastic toolbox and took careful pictures from several angles. It would make a nice addition to her catalog of cakes. Maybe even a portrait for the wall of her bakery.

She rolled her aching shoulders and realized she was mimicking the tall stranger with the wet suit. He was probably long gone by now. She just hoped he hadn’t decided her new van—although pink—was nicer than his old SUV. Just her luck, he was on the highway right now with his kayak bumping around in the back of her bakery truck.

When she left the kitchen, the first thing she noticed was her pink van glowing in the early-evening light. It was parked in almost the same location. But the other vehicle was not. The owner had managed to extricate the ugly brown-and-tan SUV, and it now sat at the top of the access road.

Blocking her van.

The tall man leaned on an old wooden railing along the bay. His trim frame was silhouetted against the sunset and the lights of the amusement park across the water.

Gus stowed her cake tools and slammed the back doors of the van, hoping the noise would inspire the kayaker to leave. She wanted to unload the van, clean her pastry bags and get to bed before midnight for the first time this week. Gus took off her apron and tossed it on the passenger seat near a small box of cookies. Her shop was testing new recipes for sugar cookies, and she’d brought home three different kinds for the weekend.

She took a second look at the white bakery box on the front seat. One corner was open.

She scrutinized the contents.

Cookies were definitely missing.

* * *

JACK TRIED TO think of something clever to say as the owner of the pink van approached. There was no good reason for hanging around. He’d pulled off his wet suit and slipped into worn jeans and an old Starlight Point sweatshirt. The ragged gray shirt had a stretched-out collar and frayed cuffs. The skyline of the amusement park was barely visible after dozens of washings. But it was his favorite sweatshirt, and he felt more comfortable in his own skin when he had it on.

She stopped and leaned on the rail next to him. Without the pink apron, her graceful curves caught his attention and his breath. She was unusually tall, probably just shy of six feet. And although his world was definitely upside down these days, he was sure of one thing. He’d never seen her before.

She looked him right in the eye, a quizzical grin lifting the corners of her mouth.

“Are you Aunt Augusta?” he finally asked.

Probably a few years younger than he was, she wasn’t anything like his matronly aunts he saw twice a year at family parties. Her long brown hair was pulled back, revealing her whole face. Fair skin, delicately arched eyebrows. Her eyes were shadowed by the late-afternoon sun behind her, but he remembered their color. Green.

“Which one did you eat?” she asked.

“Which one what?”

“Don’t deny it. You’ve got cookie crumbs on your face.”

“The carousel horse.”

“Ah,” she said. “That’s a good design. Only three colors, but the Florentine pattern on the saddle really makes it.”

“It reminds me of something.”

She glanced at his sweatshirt. “Ever been to Starlight Point?” she asked.

He coughed. “Quite a few times.” Like, every day of his life for almost twenty-seven years. He glanced across the bay. The lights were coming on at the amusement park. Starlight Point occupied the entire peninsula separating the bay from the larger lake. Although the park wouldn’t open for another two weeks, the lights on the roller coasters glittered in anticipation.

“The carousel-horse cookie is patterned after a horse on the midway carousel.”

“Nice idea,” he said.

“Thanks. I love that place.”

Everybody loved Starlight Point, Jack thought. Especially when roads got paved and taxes poured into Bayside’s city coffers from the largest tourist draw in the area.

“How about the cookie’s flavor? The frosting?” she asked.

“Loved them both. Very sweet,” he said, turning back to look at her and moving closer. “Perfect.”

“I was planning to see if the perfection would last, see how it would taste tomorrow at this time. Longevity is a serious bakery issue. Have to keep it fresh or people won’t want it.”

“Lucky for you I didn’t eat them all,” he said.

“Lucky for you I’m more flattered than angry.”

“I’m glad.”

“So,” she said. “I thought you were in a big hurry. Didn’t you have someplace to be?”

Jack propped a foot on the rail and gazed at the amusement-park lights. The lights on the rides he now owned. Two weeks ago, his father’s sudden death stunned his family. Jack’s steady orbit around his father had been brought to an agonizing halt. Every day since had sped up like a scrambler ride and Jack wished he could just get off.

He shoved away from the rail. “There’s a thousand places I need to be right now,” he said, reaching in his pocket for keys.

Maybe tonight was the night to crack open the good bottle of whiskey a friend had given him after his father’s funeral. He wanted to run for the safety of his twelve-year-old car.

“Good night,” he said abruptly. He walked straight to his SUV, got in the driver’s seat and shoved his keys in the ignition. They didn’t fit. What the heck? He flipped on the interior light. In his hand was a key attached to a pink-and-gold ceramic wedding cake.

Her door slammed. In two seconds, she’d be at his window.

“First my cookie, now my keys?” She leaned in his open window and grinned. “Next you’ll be stealing my heart.”

She grabbed her keys, spun and disappeared. He dug deep in his pocket for his own set, waited a second until he heard her engine start, then rolled over his ignition and headed home.

CHAPTER TWO

JACK HAMILTON STRIPPED off his suit jacket, rolled his sleeves and dug through the toolbox bolted to the side of the blue maintenance truck.

“Find it?” Mel Preston yelled. He was almost one hundred feet over Jack’s head, perched on the Sea Devil coaster. The navy blue track had white crests of paint at the top of each hill that looked like ocean waves. If all went well, the Sea Devil would whip and spin and make riders feel as if they were in the clutches of a leviathan. And the new ride would bring in enough ticket revenue to justify its staggering cost.

Jack, still digging through the metal box, the morning sun in his eyes, didn’t answer right away.

“It’s painted red, should have a gauge on it,” Mel shouted. He started down the narrow metal steps on the side of the track used for maintenance and emergencies.

Jack pulled tools from the box and stacked them on the tailgate.

“I’m almost at the bottom and I don’t think it’s...” Something furry brushed his fingers and then crawled over his hand. He jerked his hand out and took a wild step backward.

“Find my pet spider?” Mel asked, breathing heavily after his climb.

Jack leaned against the side of the truck and closed his eyes. He muttered something he knew his longtime friend would ignore.

Mel poured coffee from a thermos into a disposable cup. “Don’t know if it’s the same spider or the tenth generation. Forgot she’s always in there. Named her Black Velvet.” He opened a toolbox on the other side of the truck and held up a red gauge. “Here it is. Guess I told you the wrong side.”

“Numskull,” Jack said, accepting the coffee. “Can’t decide if I want to fire you or have this truck sprayed. Or both.”

Mel sat on the tailgate, swinging his feet and sipping coffee right out of the thermos.

“That’s no way to talk to your favorite employee. I might cry myself to sleep tonight.”

“How long till opening day?” Jack asked. “Twelve days?”

“Yep.” Mel shaded his eyes and glanced up. “Sea Devil should be ready to go. Just gotta get these hydraulic brakes to pass muster with the state inspectors.”

Jack nodded, looking over the coaster and saying nothing. Maintenance trucks littered the grounds at Starlight Point. The midway resembled a carnival parking lot with the food vendors moving into their stands, employees scuttling everywhere to ramp up for what had to be a profitable season. Had to be. He thought of what would happen if the family-owned park didn’t turn a sizable profit. Jack ran his hand through his hair and rubbed his tired eyes with two fingers.

“Maybe I should have saved that bottle of Jack Daniel’s to put in your coffee,” Mel suggested. He scratched a spot on his jaw and left a trail of black grease. Mel was the same age as Jack, and they’d been friends for twenty years. Mel had worked his way up from seasonal ride mechanic to head of maintenance and knew every nut and bolt on every ride. Now that the whole weight of Starlight Point rested on Jack’s shoulders, he needed Mel’s expertise and advice more than ever.

“How are your mom and sisters handling your father’s sudden passing?” Mel asked.

“About as well as any of us,” Jack said. “Can’t decide if it’s the best or worst timing in the world. Going so sudden like that, only a month before season opening.” Jack sipped his coffee. “Threw us all into a tailspin.”

Mel nodded and fiddled with the gauge in his hand.

“Then again, running our butts off to get this year going takes our minds off it,” Jack said. He leaned an arm on the side rail of the truck bed. For a few seconds, he considered confiding in his friend. If telling someone would make the situation better, he’d do it. Mel was loyal to the Hamilton family and to Starlight Point. The secret would be safe. But there was nothing Mel could do about the loans piled on loans Ford Hamilton had concealed from everyone—even his own son.

“You’ve been training to run this place your whole life,” Mel said. “Probably have a record season. Just wish your dad was alive to see it.”

Jack crumpled his empty cup and tossed it in the construction Dumpster under the new ride.

“Me, too.”

* * *

GUS MURPHY PLACED cookies in her display case and glanced out the gleaming front windows of Aunt Augusta’s Downtown Bakery. Her bakery. Starting this shop with the blessing and help of her namesake aunt had been a leap of faith. She hoped coming home to Bayside last October was the right thing to do. With everything riding on her success, forward was the only direction she could go. But it wasn’t going to be easy.

A woman with short silver hair stopped on the front sidewalk. She was pulling a red wagon carrying a medium-sized brown, white and black dog, its nose and front paws hanging over the side. The woman left the dog and the wagon outside and came through the door, setting off a cheerful jingling. She dug in her purse and pulled out several envelopes.

“Wanted to deliver these personally,” she said, smiling. “Thank-you notes for being so kind when my husband passed. The sweets you sent to the house were much appreciated. Especially by my son, who would live on cookies if he could.”

“Sounds like my kind of guy,” Gus said.

“Virginia!” Aunt Augusta came through the swinging door from the back of the bakery. She hustled around the counter, her apron a loud mix of color and frosting.

“Got some new turnovers for you to try on for size. Let’s sit by the window where you can keep an eye on Betty, just in case the old gal takes off after a bicycle.”

Gus went out front and sat next to the wagon on the sunny sidewalk. She’d hoped the wrought-iron table and chairs in front of her window would attract people in need of a coffee and pastry break. But today she was the only person taking advantage. The life of a baker meant early mornings followed by long days on her feet. She stretched her legs and rested her back against the front wall of the building whose mortgage kept her up at night. What had she been thinking? And now her brilliant idea to bolster her immediate cash flow meant she’d divide her time between her bakery and her business venture at Starlight Point.