Coming Home to Seashell Harbor (Seashell Harbor #1) - Miranda Liasson Page 0,1
Chaudhry’s dog this morning and fell and broke her hip. She’s going to be fine and the dog is fine. Except she’ll need to go to the rehab hospital for a few weeks because the break is a little complicated but she should do just fine.” He glanced at his watch. “Her surgery’s at five.”
“I could’ve caught an Uber—”
“She insisted we come and get you,” her mom said. “We’re going to head right back to the hospital.”
Hadley’s heart sank. It was an hour-and-forty-minute drive back to Seashell Harbor. And Gran was alone while Hadley and her parents were here.
“Paul’s with her, but he has to work at four,” her mom said, reading her mind. Paul Farmer was Pooch Palace’s next-door neighbor and ran the local ice-cream shop, Scoops. Gran and he were great friends. “She even wrote you a note.” Her mom pulled a bright yellow pack of sticky notes out of her purse.
Hadley instantly recoiled, then caught herself. She still despised sticky notes after all these years, ever since her high school boyfriend had broken up with her on one, serving up her first big heartbreak. Silly, she knew. But to this day, her hatred of sticky notes was still fierce, extending to all colors of the rainbow.
Gran’s practical, no-nonsense tone rang out loud and clear:
Hadley had to peel that note off to get to the rest of the message:
Gran was an optimist if, one, she believed she was going to be hungry for a milkshake post-op, and two, she made it sound as though Hadley had done the dumping when the whole world knew that wasn’t true. She’d just pocketed the note when the airport police pulled up and signaled to her dad to move his car or else, thank you very much. Her mom hooked her arm through Hadley’s elbow and whisked her to the back seat.
For the next hour-plus, Hadley had no choice but to sit back and watch the familiar sights of her home state. The Garden State Parkway ran right along the ocean, displaying the picture-perfect summer day, the sun hitting the water and scattering it into a thousand diamond sparkles. It was the kind of day for heading down to the beach with a book and a folding chair and sticking your toes in the sand, your cares blowing away like the puffy little clouds that sailed by.
She’d envisioned coming home as a vacation: her grandmother spoiling her with all her favorite foods, taking her window-shopping along Petunia Street. Having lunch together at one of the cute outdoor restaurants with an ocean view, lounging at the beach in front of Gran’s little oceanfront bungalow, and reading good books, her most strenuous activity of each day being the reapplication of sunblock.
But now all that seemed self-indulgent.
She’d hoped, too, for a chance to reassess her life. When she’d moved to LA five years ago to handle PR for an animal rights agency, she’d dreamed of making a difference. But then she’d gotten an offer for a “better” job in celebrity PR, with so much more pay and a certain amount of…prestige.
The work had been fun, exciting, and glamorous…at first. The parties! The stars! And, of course, that was where she’d met Cooper Hemsley III at a post–award show interview junket. He’d approached her and she’d almost had a heart attack and swooned on the spot, instantly smitten with his charisma and charm.
And everyone back home had been so proud—her family, the neighbors. Nearly everyone, that is, except her grandmother, who’d never cared for Cooper. While Hadley had enjoyed the money and the perks of her new job, handling damage control for celebrities with too much time and money on their hands was a far cry from her passion to make the world a better place.
At last, Seashell Harbor’s beloved downtown came into view, as comfortable as a favorite sweater. Hadley took in the seaside park, the quaint Petunia Street shops with their overflowing baskets and pots of flowers, the Pooch Palace sign that said WE TREAT YOUR PET LIKE ROYALTY, the massive white banner flapping indolently in the sea breeze that read WELCOME HOME, CAM!—
Wait, what? Better rewind that one. Hadley blinked and confirmed that, yes, the banner was real. Seashell Harbor’s famous—or rather infamous—gridiron hero was back? She closed her eyes, but she still saw a billowy white sheet with CAM in bold black letters burning into her brain. At one time, Tony Cammareri had loomed as large as that obnoxious, flapping banner in