Moment in Time, book 1 of the Summer House Series

Chapter Two

Copyright 2015 Lisa Mondello (All Rights Reserved)

Chapter Two

Jenna

We drove along the coastal road for a few minutes in silence. I focus my attention on all the mansions on the beach that are partially hidden by scrub pines and shrubs. I wanted to see them. They were so unlike the modest house I live in outside of Boston.

Bobby has put on a pair of dark shades that shield his blue eyes from me. Every once in a while he glances in my direction and then turns away before I could tell if it was me he was looking at or something else out on the road.

"Do you live in one of these?" I finally ask.

The surprised look on his face as he glances at me is laughable. Then he chuckles. "Me? Not even on a good day. You can't touch this real estate."

"So where do you live?"

"Right now my address is the Wayside Inn in Sconset. After this summer, who knows?"

"A drifter."

He shook his head. "On leave from the military. I go where they send me."

The limp took on a new meaning.

"I'm supposed to be working at the Wayside Inn this summer."

"I know. My aunt looks forward to this every summer."

"She does?"

"Yeah. No kids. Never married. So she treats the Summer House girls like her own."

He laughs as he looks at me and it dawns on me that I'm making a face.

"What?"

"Don't worry," he says with a shake of his head. "She only gets into my business. She'll stay out of yours. Mostly. She rents out the five beach houses on the island that she got when my uncle died. He's the one who had money. Now it's all hers."

"And she has no kids to spend it on."

He chuckles. "Exactly. She manages the Wayside Inn, which she owns and then she rents out the other houses on the island. It keeps her busy. She only rents out to girls."

"Really? Why?"

"She rented The Cliffs House out to college guys a few years back and they wrecked the place. She spent the whole winter repairing the mess. So now it's only girls. Some of them come back every summer, so they're like family to her. She's not going to be a house mother, if you're afraid of that."

Relief washes over me and I look out the window at the mansions again so Bobby won't see. "I've spent too long having people hovering over me."

"I get it."

"Do you?"

"Yeah. I had to join the military to get away from that."

I laugh, wondering if he's serious. "That's a bit extreme."

But Bobby isn't laughing. "Yeah," he says quietly, keeping his eyes on the road ahead.

"So Beverly is your aunt, huh?"

"That's right."

"Do your parents live on the island, too?"

"No, they're back in Stockbridge."

"So you're homegrown Massachusetts?"

"Something like that. But I haven't spent a whole lot of time here...until recently. Where do you call home?"