Gypsy Beach (3 page)

She spun and unloaded the groceries she’d
picked up in town after a restorative cup of coffee and slice of
cherry pie from Montgomery’s.

With no conscious decision to do so, Sienna
began to hum an old Gypsy hymn her Nana sang daily in that very
kitchen. She chopped the onions and peppers on her grandmother’s
old cutting board that she’d unpacked and washed. The rhythmic
chopping eased her shoulders, and before she knew it her body began
to sway to her own song as she threw the vegetables into the hot
skillet and tossed them with oregano, garlic and basil, just like
Nana had taught her. The delectable scent infused the air.
Replacing her own tune, Sienna turned on the radio and danced and
swayed her way through the preparations.
Stay where the music
moves you, Sienna.
She smiled as her grandmother’s voice echoed
in the song.

A half hour later she fell onto the sofa,
still covered in a furniture blanket, and brought the pasta and
spices to her lips. The taste and heavenly aroma of the dish
brought on another round of memories of all that Gypsy Beach had
been and all that she’d lost when she’d watched her grandmother’s
ashes be spread in the Atlantic, just before the storm had robbed
her of proper time to say good-bye.

With a resolute nod of her head, she decided
that after dinner she’d visit the sea that had been her life and
her own death. She wasn’t certain she would ever recover from the
loss of her beloved Nana.
Or Ryan never coming back.

Whoa! Where did that come from? And why did
she keep thinking of him? He was long gone. A memory. A good
memory, she allowed herself to admit. She would always love Ryan.
He hadn’t loved her, obviously, and as Nana would say, what was
meant to be would be. She and Ryan clearly were never meant to
be.

Ryan threw himself down on his parents’ old
sofa with the Coke he’d picked up from Bay Merchants. He’d debated
dinner at Montgomery’s, but he hadn’t quite worked up the courage
to make his presence known in town just yet. Rumors of what had
happened to his family had certainly made their way to Gypsy Beach,
and he just wasn’t certain he was ready to face them. It killed him
to think that he might somehow have disappointed a group of people
that had helped raise him, even if it had been his father’s
doing.

With a slight headshake as his only defense,
the disaster that had been the last ten years began to play in slow
motion in his mind. That stupid Senior English class he had no
hopes of passing in high school.

“You are not going back to Gypsy Beach by
yourself this summer, young man. You’re going to summer school to
make certain that you pass that English class so you can take your
proper place at UGA just like your Daddy has arranged for you. And
Sienna was fine for a summer fling, but you’re not giving up
college and the life that is waiting for you because of someone
like her. Her grandmother was a Gypsy of all things, Ryan McNamara!
I have no idea what you were thinking getting involved with her in
the first place!”

The icy vindictiveness of this mother’s
lecture sliced through him like a frozen dagger once again. Not
walking out of his parent’s mansion, figuring out some way to get
back to Gypsy Beach, and telling his father and UGA that they could
go fuck themselves had been the first of a litany of mistakes that
he could never undo.

He’d been escorted by his parents to the
University that fall. They were still wary of his decision making
skills.
Humph! That’s rich!
The realization infuriated him
all over again. He’d drown himself in copious amounts of cheap
liquor, sorority girls, and football games, only to wake up more
depressed with each passing day. Unfortunately, the days may’ve
been passing, but he wasn’t. High school had been impossible; how
the hell had his old man thought he’d survive college?

His mother, and her insistence that she knew
best, landed him squarely at the door to Kappa house. His mother’s
sorority should’ve had him running for higher ground at the first
utterance of the words, “A good friend of your father’s just phoned
us. His little girl, Alexa, just rushed Kappa, and we’ve arranged
for you to show her around campus this Friday.”

Vomit and regret singed his throat. He
swallowed half of the fizzy Coke he now held trying to quell the
fire of anguish that consumed him. God, how could he have been so
fucking stupid? They were all in on it: Alexa, her parents, his
parents, everyone but him. They all thought they knew just what
needed to happen in his life.

You’re the idiot that believed her when
she said she was on the pill.
He didn’t suppose he could blame
that on his father.

Somewhere in the middle of his Senior year,
when he was much more drunk than he was sober and he was using his
Daddy’s money to pay his way through, she showed up at his
apartment, declaring them engaged and herself pregnant.

In a gale-force storm of confusion his life
had been taken from him. The only thing he consciously remembered
was his father agreeing to front him the money to start his own
construction business if he’d marry Alexa, be a daddy, and
basically let his mother run his life.

Since all Ryan had ever wanted to do was help
people construct homes and businesses, places where they could
exist outside of the cold, cruel world, that glimmer of hope got
him through the disaster of their marriage.

She’d been cheating on him since Evie’s
birth. He didn’t give a damn. All he wanted was to be a good dad
and to make a success of his business. He’d somehow managed both.
As long as Alexa had more money than she could spend she kept the
bitching to a minimum and let him and Evie do as they pleased.

The fatal mistake had been never separating
his business from his father’s banking operations. Another swig of
soda joined the endless sea of regret that swam in his gut.

Two years ago, police showed up at his
office. His father had been arrested for embezzlement and all of
his businesses were very effectively the property and ownership of
the state of Georgia.

Ryan worked tirelessly to rescue his family.
He used what money he had, once his business was cleared, to pay
off the debts his father had accrued. He sold what he could, but
with every bill he paid his life burned in the fire.

Alexa was furious. The league of rich Kappa
brides no longer held her as their queen. She had no intention of
falling from grace with Ryan and his family so she had filed for
divorce and had taken what little he had left.

She viciously held Evie as some kind of sick
bargaining chip. Her newest lover was paying for a nanny that Ryan
hired. He’d forced through paperwork keeping Evie from ever being
in the presence of any of Alexa’s love interests, which is why
she’d had him arrested. Revenge was Alexa’s favorite playground
game, and she was always queen of the hill.

The fire of regret burned brightly, but once
again he used it to fuel his own determination. He was going to
make this work. His father owed him now, and no one was going to
tell him how to live one more moment of his life. He’d make it on
his own. He’d do what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it, and
Evie was the only girl that would ever hold his heart. She was all
that mattered, and he was going to raise her outside of the haughty
glares and whispered disdain that constantly roiled around them
like some kind of relentless storm. Atlanta’s rich elite could all
drive their golf carts straight to hell as far as he was
concerned.

He was going to get Evie away from that sorry
excuse she had for a mother, and he would be there for her always.
He’d tried it his dad’s way and that had been nothing short of
hell.

He was calling the shots from now on, and he
dared anyone to stand in his way. He had his hammer, his wits, his
experience, and more than a hearty dose of stubborn determination.
He was going to make this work. He wouldn’t fail at one more
thing.

Sienna pulled her half-kimono robe around her
as she stepped off of the back porch and headed towards the
beckoning waters. She wondered if she should have slipped on a
bikini top, but with a quick glance down the shoreline she relaxed.
She was all alone. She’d pulled on a pair of cut-off shorts, but
she’d always been comfortable without much on. She certainly didn’t
have much in the way of curves, and she liked the way Mother Nature
caressed her skin with a kiss from the ocean breeze. A slight smile
formed on her lips when she recalled Nadya declaring them to be the
founding members of Gypsy Beach’s itty-bitty-titty committee.

Sinking down just out of the water’s reach,
she stared out at Gypsy beach and tried to remember the lilt of her
grandmother’s intonation when she was teaching Sienna something. It
was still a few months before tourists would descend on the
oceanfront en masse. She had time to get this together and to make
some money taking care of the people that visited the
shoreline.

That was one of her favorite parts of each
summer. She loved meeting the people that came to stay at the Gypsy
Inn. Some laughed at her grandmother’s ways, but they all loved to
listen to her wisdom and to eat her food. She cared for each of
them in just the way they needed to be tended, Sienna most of
all.

“
There’s magic in these sands, Sienna
Rosa, old gypsy magic. You can hear it when the little children
laugh and giggle, when the lovers kiss, when the ocean rises, and
when the moonlight dances to its music on the water. Just listen,
baby girl. It is there.
”

Dragging her hand through the sands, Sienna
no longer believed in Gypsy magic. She wasn’t certain she ever had.
What she had believed in was love. She knew she didn’t have it back
at her home with her mother and stepfather. She knew it lived
inside the Inn with her grandmother. At one time, she’d believed
love was magic and that was what might’ve been hidden in the Gypsy
shoreline. Perhaps that‘s what her grandmother had been trying to
get her to see and hear.

She stood and brushed the sand from her
hands. She watched the moonlight dance on the water for several
long minutes while she contemplated if she even believed in love
anymore. Her grandmother was gone, and there was certainly no one
available to love Sienna except herself.

Not certain what had driven him to the
shoreline, Ryan let the waters wash over his feet as he walked. He
headed north automatically. He thought he saw a light on at the old
Gypsy Inn, but that was probably just another memory. Turning, he
stared up at the moonlight and wondered if his little girl was in
bed yet. He’d already called and told her a story as he did every
night, but maybe Alexa would let him talk to her again.

He pulled his cell phone from his pocket. He
just needed to tell her how much he missed her, wish her sweet
dreams, and remind her that he loved her so much. He needed her to
know that he wanted to be there with her so badly his entire body
ached. He needed her to understand that he never wanted to leave
her.

“Hey, Evie, baby, it’s Daddy! I miss
you!”

“Hi, Daddy! Are you still at the beach?” Her
exuberance effectively shattered what little remained of his
heart.

Sienna sipped her
coffee, with lots of sugar and no cream, and tried to come up with
some kind of plan. Construction wasn’t really something she had any
experience with. She could certainly sew new curtains and recover
some of the furniture that she wanted to keep. She wasn’t afraid of
hard work. She just wasn’t certain where to begin on the house
itself. The idea of hiring someone to help her was very appealing,
and she did have the loan to restore The Inn, but she had no idea
who she could trust. Maybe Mac would know. Mac and Molly Montgomery
knew everything as far as she could tell, at least about Gypsy
Beach.

That thought brought a smile to her lips as
she drew another sip of the delectable coffee. Her grandmother
always made coffee on the stove with a percolator, and Sienna had
been an addict since she was twelve. There was nothing like a fresh
pot from Nana’s enamel percolator. She decided right then and there
to give up the paper cups with cardboard sleeves that had seen her
through the last five years while she’d driven her van from Norfolk
to L.A. and back again in some kind of desperate quest to locate
what she’d had all along at Gypsy Beach. She should have moved back
after high school, but at that time, she couldn’t stand to be
there.

Nana had understood and told her to take her
trip and to find herself. She’d quoted the wanderers’ oath more
times that Sienna cared to recall. Not everyone that wanders may
have been lost, but she was.

Well, she was back right where she belonged
and she was going to make this work. She loved the beach, the town,
the people, and she loved her Inn more than anything else. Downing
the last sip of her coffee, Sienna tried to bolster her resolve.
She needed a shower, but hadn’t been able to figure out how to
magically make hot water work in the house. Something akin to
liquid ice was all that fell from any of the faucets.

With a screeching squeal, she flung off her
sweatpants and forced herself to leap into the polar vortex that
was her new shower. The frigid water bit at her olive skin and
turned her lips blue, but she forged onward.

She needed to talk to the Montgomerys — if
she survived the icy plunge.

Up before the sunrise, Ryan tried to mentally
prepare for his day. He knew owners were heading back into town to
collect on insurance money and try to get their homes and
businesses ready for the upcoming season. There were even investors
looking to build a new hotel a little further down Gypsy Beach. The
township was working to keep its eclectic charm, but tourism was
the source of the money, and everyone understood that.