Free Castaway Cove by Joann Ross Page B

upcoming sand castle and kite festivals on the beach as the weather warmed up.
    Although Annie enjoyed the dinner, by the time she got home to her dark house on Castaway Cove, which she’d painted a cheerful sunshine yellow the first month she’d moved in, a tinge of the all-too-familiar blues had settled over her shoulders.
    She’d been telling the truth when she said she wasn’t ready to jump back into the dating pool. Partly because she couldn’t see how she could fit in the time for a relationship between all of her professional and volunteer commitments. And partly because one of the problems with small towns was that the pool of single, available men was limited. Sedona might have gone out with the only vampire in Shelter Bay, but none of the men who’d hit on Annie since her arrival had her wanting to let them into her life.
    Nor, she’d discovered, was she the kind of woman to settle for booty calls or friends with benefits.
    After being abandoned shortly after birth in an anonymous drive-by dumping at a Eugene hospital, she’d spent the first eighteen years of her life in transient family relationships, and although she knew that many would think her hopelessly old-fashioned, what she wanted was the kind of happily-ever-after marriage that Charlie had shared with his beloved Annie. That Sofia De Luca, another friend of Adèle’s, who ran Lavender Hill Farm, had reportedly shared with her husband. And that Adèle herself and her husband, Bernard, continued to share.
    “Dream on,” she murmured, as she scooped up the cat who’d jumped off the couch, not so much to greet her as to allow itself to be petted.
    Pirate, named for his black eye patch and the fact that he’d supposedly been found feral on this very cove where Annie’s house was located, where seamen from ships reportedly taken by Sir Francis Drake had waded ashore, personified feline independence. Which was one of the things she loved about him.
    Dogs admittedly had their appeal, including unqualified love for their owners, but with some cats, like Pirate, you had to work to gain their respect. And affection.
    She had a good life. Correction: a
great
life. Friends, a business she loved, volunteer work that made her feel as if she was contributing to her adopted town, and an oversized cat who occasionally would even deign to purr his approval.
    But that didn’t mean that sometimes she wasn’t lonely. And more often, with so many of her friends settling down, more than a little wistful that she might never achieve the family she’d spent her entire childhood and teenage years dreaming of.
    Although she’d fallen in love with the Victorian four-bedroom, two-bath cottage the moment she’d seen it, it was admittedly more space than one person—and one cranky cat—needed.
    She’d turned one of the extra bedrooms into a craft room, but when she’d first seen the dream nursery Kara and Sax Douchett had created for their newborn, she couldn’t deny having felt a momentary, unwanted twinge of envy. As honestly happy as she was for her friend, that didn’t stop Annie from occasionally imagining those empty rooms filled with her own children. Playing, laughing, loving.
    Bygones.
    As much as she enjoyed her independence and the life she’d created for herself here in Shelter Bay, as she poured a glass of wine, lit a fire, and settled down to try to find something on her DVR, it crossed Annie’s mind that sometimes Saturday nights really sucked.

10
    Macflat-out hated Saturday nights. The only two things worse, he decided, as he pulled into the KBAY radio station parking lot, were Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve, when the bar to have the best time ever was raised so high, you’d need a pole to vault over it.
    Apparently his was a minority opinion, because everyone at Bon Temps, where he’d stopped in for a late supper after putting Emma to bed, had seemed to be having themselves a high old time. Sax Douchett had brought in an Alabama