dinged with a new customer and all Lacey could do was exhale with relief. At least now she could pump her gas.
“Mornin’, Strawberry.”
The words went into her ear, down her spine, spun through her belly, and gave her knees a little push.
“Strawberry?” Charity choked.
“It is you, isn’t it?” He put two strong and solid hands on her shoulders and slowly turned her around. “Yeah, I’d recognize that hair anywhere.” He closed his eyes and sniffed. “And the scent.”
Oh, Charity ought to have a field day with that. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m addicted to gas-station coffee, so I thought I’d get us some.”
Us.
“Introduce your friend, Lacey.” Charity tapped impatiently on the counter. “As if we don’t already know who he is.”
Lacey gave him a secret eye roll and silent warning. “Clay, this is Charity Grambling and Patti Vail, sisters and owners of the Shell Gas Station and Super Mini Mart Convenince Store, also known as the Super Min. Ladies, this is Clay Walker.”
“The architect,” Patti said. “We’ve heard all about you.” She threw a smile at Lacey that gave the distinct impression that all they’d heard came right from Lacey herself.
“Mornin’, ladies.”
Charity’s gaze wandered up and down Clay’s T-shirt and jeans. “You don’t look like an architect.”
“Looks are deceiving,” he said, stepping toward the coffee station. “Man, that smells good.”
“So are you rebuilding Blue Horizon?”
He gave Lacey a questioning look.
“That’s what my grandfather called the house,” she said, even though she suspected his unspoken question was more along the lines of Am I rebuilding it?
“If you are, you better familiarize yourself with this very important piece of historical documentation.” Charity lifted the binder. “We have rules against certain-sized buildings and nothing can be, you know, gaudy.” Charity dragged out the word and wiggled her fingers. Like those talons weren’t the gaudiest things that ever came out of Beachside Beauty.
“I’m not building anything gaudy,” Clay said as he filled two large cups.
Patti stepped forward. “’Course you couldn’t build that big a place. Your land isn’t that sizable, after all. Unless you’re planning to buy Everham’s and that plot on the other side of yours.”
The Tomlinsons’. Yep, that was exactly what Lacey was planning to do. But she just gave a noncommittal shrug.
“That’d be quite a piece of land if you pulled that off,” Patti said, proving that speculation was all she needed to turn something into fact.
At the coffee machine, Clay glanced at Lacey. “How do you take your coffee?” he asked, their eyes connecting in silent communication.
“Cream and sugar.” She could kiss him for not responding to Patti. Oh, she could kiss him just for standing there like a golden, gorgeous, glorious god, too, but mostly she loved that he didn’t take the bait these two were throwing out.
“We’re just counting on our Lacey to do the right thing,” Charity said. “Seeing as she’s part of the very special family of people who built this island for the distinct reason that they wanted to avoid the hellhole of high-rises over in Naples. We want things to stay just the way they’ve always been.”
“Change is good,” Clay said, giving Lacey one of the coffees and placing a twenty-dollar bill on the counter. “Can I have some?”
Charity didn’t move. “Change isn’t good for Mimosa Key and we don’t need some big-time architects building eyesores on Barefoot Bay.”
“I’m not big-time, and I’m not building an eyesore,” he said, putting a hand on the book. “But if you’d like, I’d be happy to give you some ideas about how you could make the elevation of this little convenience store even more attractive, and then when the nice people come to stay at Lacey’s new place, they’ll all stop here on their way in and out to buy your”—he sipped the coffee and nodded approvingly—“fantastic coffee.”
Charity yanked the book away and pushed his twenty back. “The coffee’s on the house.”
“Much obliged.” He toasted her with the cup. “For the coffee and the history lesson.”
He shouldered open the door, holding it for Lacey, who walked into the sunshine and let out a long, slow breath.
Clay dipped his head and whispered in her ear as the door closed behind them, “You gonna let those two be a roadblock?”
“No.” Maybe. He didn’t know how much power they wielded on this island.
“Good.” He put his arm around her, pulling her into rock-solid muscle in a dizzyingly casual and intimate move. “Now, let’s go look at your property and see how many more people we can piss off.”
Chapter Seven
The first