Back Roads & Hat Check Read online

  She pointed to the other side of the road and walked toward the cruiser. As she passed by, she noticed the scrap of metal hung underneath the front bumper and raised her eyebrows.

  “Did you have an accident on the way?”

  “Something like that, ma’am,” Chesney tried to brush off the story casually, “A bit of a tangle with an ice cream truck.”

  As soon as he’d said the words, he wished he could take them back.

  “Oh gosh, that reminds me of the ice cream truck we used to have in Louisville when I was a little girl,” she was off again, “It was round and had a tent on top and the man would stand in the middle. I used to sit out by the end of the driveway with a nickel – can you believe it was only a nickel back then – and wait on the ice cream man for hours!”

  She laughed and kept telling her story, but Chesney’s attention had shifted to the two bare feet sticking out of the scruffy brush.

  He couldn’t help hearing more lyrics in his head:

  Somethin’ somethin’ somethin’ life goes on

  long after the somethin’ somethin’ somethin’ of living is gone.

  3

  Another Hat Trick

  __________________________

  Karah Campobello, whose mother couldn’t decide between the names Kelly and Sarah for her firstborn daughter and simply combined them, had just finished reading page one of her new beach novel – Ocean Blue Murder by Carrie R. Hughes, when she heard the commotion a few docks north of her. Her head was a little fuzzy from a Drunken Jack’s hangover, but she was suddenly alert with the prospect of something exciting happening today.

  She was alone in a hammock and guessed the man she spotted hadn’t noticed her lying there. It was something she was used to – not being noticed – but her sophomore year of college was going to change all of that, she was sure of it.

  Her dad had just bought her a glittering silver Land Rover that perfectly matched her Ray Ban Wayfarers. Surely the guys at Auburn would notice her cruising the campus in her sexy new ride… if she went back.

  She had come to Pawleys claiming to be in for the week on Spring Break visiting her cousin, Laura-Kate. But back in Auburn, her grades had been slipping and her performance on the volleyball team had been less than stellar. The partying life of a sorority debutante was taking its toll on her and as a result, both her academic and athletic scholarships were in danger of going away.

  With school having been paid for (or so he thought), her dad had taken the money out of her college fund and bought the new Land Rover; a wonderful and terrible surprise. Karah was now in what she’d call a pickle! Without that money, her dad wouldn’t be able to send her back… but God that Land Rover was a nice ride. Oh, well, I’ll figure that out before next semester, she thought.

  She laid the open paperback book on her stomach and watched the man a few docks away.

  He was a good-looking guy, maybe forty, a little lanky, in decent shape. His ruddy tan was the kind she’d seen on fisherman and construction workers. Jet-black hair, almost shoulder length crept out from underneath what looked like an LSU baseball cap. His hair matched his jet-black exquisitely manicured beard. He had sunglasses on, but she thought he surely must have blue eyes… piercing, navy blue eyes like the last scream of the ocean before a storm her beach novel might call them. She grabbed her phone to snap a pic for Instagram: #springbreak #vaca #bestever.

  Karah watched intently as the scene with the boat played out. Man picks up cowboy hat out of boat, exchanges it for his own cap. Eww, bugs, she thinks but continues to watch. Man pushes boat away from dock, but then leaps into water for no apparent reason (she hadn’t seen his rod and reel fall in) and proceeds to splash and gargle his way downstream doing… a butterfly stroke? The noise… and the man, continued to move closer, splashing crazily down the creek.

  Goosebumps formed on her sun-warm skin as she watched. This was way more exhilarating than her novel. She bit her lip as the man finally stopped swimming and stood up. He rubbed his knee and peered down into the water… looking for something she guessed. His gaze was disappointed and never moved in her direction though now they were only ten or fifteen feet apart from each other.

  He eased back down in the water and she straightened to snap a photo with her phone. At exactly that moment a streak of silver flew toward him from behind.

  She gasped, but soon realized the boat had caught up with him. Thankfully, it hadn’t appeared to hit him hard enough to do much real damage. Even sprawled out in the creek she could see he was more handsome at this distance than she had realized. This vaca is going to be amazing, she thought. She added the hashtags to her Instagram photo: #hottie #headboat #ouch.

  She almost giggled out loud when he sent the loose boat downstream, waving it off like a… well, kinda like a stray dog. He was muttering to himself as he limped out of the water and hiked back toward his own dock. The cowboy hat did suit him much better, she thought to herself.

  Sitting up she watched as the boat he’d been wrestling with drifted past. She considered swimming out after it and hauling it back up to the man. I found your boat, she would say batting her eyelashes furiously. But no, she had just washed her hair and didn’t want to get it wet. Besides, he hadn’t seemed too concerned about the drifting boat anyway.

  Putting her book aside, the first page now splotched and smeared with the sweat and suntan oil from her stomach, she rose from the hammock and stretched. She thought about pulling on her gorgeous new Trina Turk cover-up pants over her bikini; it was early yet, but the summer heat was starting to creep up in the rusty, red Coca-Cola thermometer hanging on one of the gazebo posts nearby so she left the pants folded on the hammock.

  She looked back upstream and watched as the mysterious – and crazy hot – stranger limped into a beach house a few homes up from her rental. She sat down on the edge of her dock and dipped her feet into the cool water. She pulled her hair out of its ponytail and ran her fingers through it.

  She would eventually have to knock on his door, of course, but she needed some excuse, a ruse to explain why she’d come calling.

  “Come on, Karah,” she kicked her legs slowly in the water and spoke to her reflection, “what’s it gonna be?”

  Can I borrow a cup of sugar? No… that was too obvious. She needed a hook, something he would remember. So, I see you’re a fisherman. Can you teach me to fish? Ugh, that was awful.

  As she pondered this something brushed against her leg. She jerked her feet out of the water, expecting to see a fish or a snake… maybe even a jellyfish. But no, it was a small lump-shaped thing, dark and purple in color. She leaned over to study it and when she was sure it wasn’t alive, she reached down and picked it out of the water with two fingers.

  The object quickly shed the water and she flipped it over. A smile crept onto her face.

  “Sorry to bother you,” she said recognizing the LSU logo,” but I found your hat.”

  She grabbed her book and her pants and rushed inside grinning with excitement. She felt like she was in a beach novel!

  Shower, gonna need a shower.

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