Free Beach Lane by Sherryl Woods Page A

insisted stubbornly.
    Susie knew better than to push too hard right now, no matter how badly she wanted to. As she’d told him earlier, she sensed they were at a turning point, but with Mack’s career in turmoil, he wasn’t ready to make another life-altering decision. She had to respect that.
    “Okay, then, let’s figure out what comes next for you,” she said briskly, letting the rest go for now. They’d get back to it. She made a promise to herself to be sure of that.
    He paused in his agitated pacing and stared at her. “You sound as if we can do that between now and your next appointment,” Mack said, sounding vaguely disgruntled. “It’s not going to be that easy. Right now I’m thinking I might have to put out feelers, see what else is out there and then move to wherever I can find a job opening.”
    Susie didn’t even attempt to hide her stunned reaction. “You’d leave Chesapeake Shores?” she asked in dismay.
    He nodded, though he looked almost as miserable as she was feeling. “I might not have a choice.”
    “No,” she said flatly, determined not to have things end between them before they’d even gotten started. And if Mack left now, they would surely end. Distance, especially with their undefined relationship, would kill whatever chance they had.
    “That’s not going to happen,” she added even more emphatically. “You love it here as much as I do. Granted your experiences growing up in Chesapeake Shores were far different from mine, but this is your home, Mack.”
    “Susie, it’s not that simple,” he argued. “Good jobs in journalism don’t grow on trees, especially not these days. Haven’t you been warning me about that for months now? I was the one who was an idiot. I thought my column was so successful, I’d be immune from cutbacks. Instead, it made me the perfect target. Even if I could find another newspaper job, the salary probably won’t be what I was getting in Baltimore.”
    “Then create your own,” she blurted. “Your own job, I mean.”
    Mack blinked at the suggestion. “Excuse me?”
    “You heard me. Create a job for yourself.”
    “Did you have something specific in mind?” he asked, sitting back down, his expression curious.
    This was exactly why he should have talked to her the minute he was fired, she thought. Mack plodded through lists of pros and cons. She was quicker and much more creative, especially, it seemed, when it came to holding on to someone she didn’t want leaving her world.
    Thinking on her feet, she said, “You could blog about sports on a national scale. That’s the big trend these days, isn’t it? Everything’s going on the internet. You have the experience and reputation. You’d have a built-in following.”
    Though he looked intrigued, he shook his head. “I don’t see how it could bring in much money.”
    “Build up a subscriber base, paid or unpaid,” she said, thinking off the top of her head. This might not be her usual area of expertise, but since Mack was in journalism, she’d been paying attention to the field recently. “The point would be to get hits. You get enough hits, you can find advertisers. Who knows, maybe you’d even be picked up by newspapers in syndication or something. I don’t know. It just seems like it could work. The internet is the future, isn’t it?”
    “So my boss told me as he was kicking me out the door,” Mack said wryly. “Any other ideas?”
    Her expression turned thoughtful. “Well, speaking as someone who wants to get real estate listings in front of a targeted local audience, what about starting a weekly newspaper right here? I know that seems counterintuitive, since newspapers are dying, but I think the local ones will continue to be in demand, if only as a vehicle for advertising.”
    “I’m a sports columnist, not a publisher,” Mack argued. “Or even an editor. I haven’t had to worry about getting a paper out on time since college.”
    “Have you forgotten everything you