Free Lakeshore Chronicles [10] Candlelight Christmas by Susan Wiggs

finished unloading everything and he stuck out his hand. “Welcome to Sea Breeze. Yes, my parents named their house. I had nothing to do with it.”
    She looked around the kitchen—granite countertops, stainless-steel appliances, a view of the flat forever of the Atlantic. “It’s beautiful. Really nice of your family to have me.” She looked around the kitchen again. “Where is everyone?”
    “The beach,” he said. “We’re having a beach day.”
    “Sounds nice. I’ve never been to the beach on Thanksgiving.”
    “I just came back to get the turkey in the oven and get a jump on some of the side dishes.”
    “Oh, he cooks, too? I’m impressed.”
    “Just wait until you taste my cooking. I’m awesome in the kitchen.”
    She thought he’d be awesome in any room of the house. “Wait a minute. I need to alert the media.”
    “How’s that?”
    “I need to tell them that hell has frozen over. It’s Thanksgiving, and a man is preparing the feast all by himself.”
    “Not anymore, he’s not.” He tossed her an apron. “You’re going to help me.”
    “Fair enough. I guess.”
    “Tell you what,” he said. “Get your beach things on and you can give me a hand in the kitchen. Then we’ll head down to the beach and join the others.”
    “Sounds good.”
    He helped her with her bag and showed her to a guest room, which was airy and bright with white painted plantation shutters and bedding in tropical prints, a stack of fluffy towels in the adjoining bathroom.
    “You should find everything you need here,” he said. “My mom loves having company.”
    “This is an amazing room. Better than a five-star hotel.”
    “If you forgot anything, you’ll find stuff in the closet—extra swimsuits, robes, flip-flops, you name it. Just help yourself.” As he set her suitcase on the bamboo luggage rack and stepped out, she felt herself, for the first time in forever, feeling happy about the holiday.
    She opened her suitcase and studied the contents, feeling a scowl gathering on her forehead. She’d done a lousy job packing, having rushed home from work late the night before. Her swimsuit was old—and admittedly homely, the suit she used for masters swims at the West Village Y.
    Of the five Fitzgerald sisters, Darcy was the least stylish, a deficit she freely admitted, and one that usually didn’t bother her. The fashion sense chromosome had missed her completely. She should’ve made her sister Kitty take her shopping for this trip. Kitty was the stylish one; she would have helped Darcy pick out cute sundresses and sandals, maybe a swimsuit that didn’t look like a high school swim team practice suit.
    “Oh, that’s right,” she said with a sigh, holding up the sea-foam-colored tank suit, “this probably was my high school practice suit.” What Darcy lacked in style she’d always made up for in athletics. Since she was old enough to walk, she had played sports—swimming, snow sports, water polo, volleyball...if it involved athletics, she was happy to jump right into it.
    As she held the suit up to the light, she was appalled to see the fabric had worn through in a couple of key places, including the butt. “Great,” she muttered. “Just great.” She opened the closet and found a plain black tank suit there. It was several sizes too large, but the only other one she could find was a scandalous wisp of fabric. Some would call it a bikini. Darcy called it ridiculous. In the borrowed bikini, yellow with bows on it, she felt conspicuous, but the thing fit like a glove. An extremely skimpy glove.
    She hid beneath her cover-up—a hand-me-down from one of the sisters, several years old, frumpy but serviceable—and a pair of sandals that had seen better days. Then she ran a comb through her hair and put on a big, floppy hat, grabbed her tube of sunscreen and her sunglasses.
    “Ready for the beach,” she said, joining Logan in the kitchen. “What can I do to help?”
    He was putting fresh sprigs of