Living for Today: Sunrise Beach, #3

By Charlotte Golding

Stella Britton continues to build a new life for her and her teenage daughter in the cozy beach town she's come to love. Her gallery is thriving and she's making friends, but the secret of her past hangs heavy over her head.

And the past just won't let her go. Her ex keeps sending letters that yank her back into the terrible events that ruined the life she'd thought was near perfect. Her daughter has a budding relationship with a boy she knows nothing about. There's so much uncertainty in spite of the good she's found in Sunset Beach.

When her friend's brother asks her out on a date, she just can't find the courage to say yes. He's handsome and confident and most women would be over the moon that he showed interest. Stella isn't ready, especially with the other worries on her mind.

Juggling the past, present, and future is a struggle Stella isn't handling well. Maybe a new start isn't all it's cracked up to be. Can Stella can find the courage to confront her ex and the issues from the past? Will she finally accept that her daughter has a right to grow up? If so, she just might be able to grab the future she deserves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sweet River Publishing
• Release date: May 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201249137

Book preview

Living for Today

Sunrise Beach - Book 3

Charlotte Golding

Chapter One

Stella looked out over the ocean, her feet close enough to the water that waves were washing over her sandals, and watched as the light from the rising sun danced on the tops of the waves. Normally, she liked to use these early morning hours to paint. It seemed like there was never any time for that anymore, between teaching her art classes, maintaining the studio and making sales, and spending time with Felicia and Kelsey. Something more important was always vying for her attention, so her solution had been to begin waking up even earlier to paint before her morning jog. If she were being completely honest with herself, she was jogging less often than she used to, but normally, it was because the spirit moved her with her art, and she got wrapped up in a project. She tried not to feel too guilty about days like that, reassuring herself that painting was just as important as exercising.

This morning, however, she wasn't doing either. She'd gone up to the studio with a scene in mind, wanting to paint her umbrella where she rested it near the coatrack on the floor, but she hadn't felt inspired. Despite laying out all her paints and preparing her canvas, inspiration just wasn't flowing, and she knew better than to push it. When she forced herself to paint when she wasn't feeling creative, she always hated the outcome and usually ended up scrapping the painting entirely, sometimes even going so far as to question her art skills in general.

Rather than painting or jogging, Stella decided to take a relaxing walk on the beach. She figured that if anything could bring her creativity back, it would be that. She loved the beach in the morning. The way the light sparkled on top of the water was gorgeous, and it always made her fall back in love with Sunrise Beach when she began to feel irritated about the weather or started to miss her old life. Usually, when she took walks like these, she was able to figure out what was creating her art block. Sometimes it was missing what she'd had, others it was lingering emotions of guilt or anger, and sometimes it was something as simple as a fight with Kelsey or a rude customer.

Unfortunately, today, she was having no such luck. Stella racked her brain to try to come up with what might be causing the block, but nothing came to mind. In every sense, things were going perfectly, better than they had been in a long, long time. She was getting along with Kelsey, who often brought friends around to the house now. Her paintings were still selling at a steady rate, sometimes even to people who had come in from surrounding cities just to see her art. That, she knew, she owed to her website, which meant that really, she owed the kids who had helped her create it.

This is an intervention, Ms. Britton, one of Kelsey's friends, Dani, had told her after class one day, reaching into her backpack. Stella has been confused.

An intervention about what?

Your website, Dani laughed. It's so outdated, and it looks like it was made by someone middle-aged.

Stella chuckled. Well, it was.

But it shouldn't look like it! Together, they had sat down and overhauled the entire thing. Dani had showed her a few YouTube videos about HTML and other website building tips, and within two hours, her site looked completely different. She had to admit, it was better. Now, it was full of working links and pictures of her art and contact information about her classes. She'd seen an uptick in traffic to the site after that, and had even gotten a few additional students to enroll.

All in all, she couldn't think of a single thing she had to complain about. Everything was going well for her, so why was she still feeling blocked?

Stella? a voice called from behind her, and she spun around. Suddenly feeling embarrassed about standing there with her shoes soaking in the ocean, she saw that the man talking to her was Graham, Felicia's brother.

Graham, she greeted, hey.

He pointed to her feet, wearing an amused expression. What are you up to? Isn't it a little early for a swim?

She laughed. I'm not swimming. Just... thinking, I guess.

As he began to walk, she moved with him, both of them heading up the beach. He moved closer to her, close enough to hold her hand, but made no move to do so. It would have been inappropriate, anyway, and she scolded herself for even having the thought enter her mind.

Graham frowned at her. Oh, yeah? What are you thinking about?

She shook her head. I'm not even sure, really. Just a lot on my mind, I think. He nodded.

Yeah, I get that. Suddenly and without Stella even having to ask, they were on a walk together. If he'd asked her to do this, she probably would have declined, fearing that the formality of taking a walk with Felicia's brother might make its way back to her best friend and be misconstrued as the date that she wanted so badly to set the two of them up on. Stella wasn't ready for that. She was nowhere near being open to dating again, not after the divorce. Graham was nice, and he was certainly handsome. In another life, she might have been interested, but right now, it just wasn't feasible.

Felicia tells me you've got a daughter, right? he asked, and Stella nodded. I do. Her name is Kelsey.

How old?

Almost nineteen. She's in her first year of college here at the community college.

He smiled. That's good. College is fun. Does she know what she wants to study?

Stella smiled. She's always been an analytical type. I'm not sure if she knows for sure what she'll do specifically, but it'll definitely be something in the math or science field.

He whistled. So she's smart, huh?

More than I could even say. It gets her into her fair share of trouble, but she's a good kid.

They say those are the best years of your life, but I'm not so sure about that. I think my four years at Uni were mostly just papers, studying, and staying out way too late. I'm still repaying my sleep debt.

Stella laughed. Yeah, that seems to be her experience, too. She's always been so hard on herself about grades, so she's always studying. If she's not valedictorian by the time she gets her degree, I'm going to be shocked. She paused, watching their footprints in the sand be erased by the waves. Do you have any kids?

Me? No, I don't. Never married, but I've always liked them. I'm always the resident babysitter for friends back in England. There are friends whose kids I see more than their parents.

Stella laughed. Oh, that brings back memories. When Kelsey was a baby, my ex's mother said the same thing, that she only ever saw him if he were there to drop off the baby.

Ex? he asked, and she shrugged. I'm sorry. How long have you been separated?

A little over three years, now. It's all right. It wasn't a good situation, and it's for the best.

He nodded. Well, it seems as though you've got a great attitude about it. If there's ever anything you need, you know, a man's touch for, you can give me a call. I'm not often in the States, though.

Stella snorted. A man's touch? she asked. What, like fixing my car?

Oh, no, nothing like that. I'm rubbish with cars. I don't even have a license. Much rarer to do in England, you know. Most of us take public transport.

I've always wanted to go to the UK, she admitted. We traveled a lot, but London was the one city I'd always wanted to visit that we never got around to.

Never been to London! he exclaimed, placing one hand over his heart in faux horror. Well, I'm sure my sister will change that. She doesn't visit terribly much, anymore, but if you told her you've never been, she'd have you on an airplane tomorrow morning. I wish I were joking.

Stella chuckled again, amazed at just how easy it was for Graham to make her laugh. It had been a while since she'd gone back and forth with someone like this, and it was nice. He was interesting, and she found that the more he talked about himself, the more she wanted to know.

Felicia told me that you were the first one to move to America, and that she followed, she said. Is that true?

Sure is. I was eager to spread my wings and leave the nest.

Really? Why's that?

Nothing serious, he shrugged. We had a wonderful home life, supportive and loving. I'm still very close with our mum, especially since our father passed away. I call her every day.

Stella felt her heart warm so aggressively, she was sure that the warmth spread across her cheeks. That's so sweet.

I think she gets lonely, though she'll never admit it. Plus, I worry about her, living alone. Anything can happen. Maybe I'm neurotic, but I worry. If I don't hear from her for a few days, I start to think the worst.

I do the same thing with my mother-in-law, she admitted. I call her every night, too. She tries to tell me not to worry so much, but I just can’t help it.

Graham looked her in the eyes tenderly, as if he were just as impressed with her devotion to her mother figure as she was with his. It was nice to hear that he cared so much about the woman who raised him, but she knew that she had to be careful not to let admiration devolve into attraction. Her heart needed to be guarded, and the more of her boxes that he checked, the more she had to guard herself.

It seems that your lovely heart matches your lovely face, he said, and she blushed, turning away to hide her red cheeks from his view. She knew he could tell, as she caught the self-satisfied smile on his face in her peripheral vision. He was happy with himself for having made her react this way.

As they continued to chat, changing the subject to Graham’s work, Stella’s mind wandered once more, and she suddenly realized what emotion had been blocking her art before. Apprehension, she thought. She’d been seeing Graham around more often and had been really enjoying chatting with him when they crossed paths. She was pretty sure he was enjoying getting to know her, too. When they chatted, he was always playful, teasing her and flirting. Stella wasn't sure how to handle that. On the one hand, she liked the attention. She had been in a relationship since she was eighteen, and since then, she'd never been able to accept the advances of any men other than Jeff, for obvious reasons. She knew that it was silly, but she'd always felt like she was missing out on something by not being able to flirt. However, she'd always convinced herself that the trade-off was that she had a family who loved her. She didn't need a passionate, storybook romance, right? She had a husband and a child, and those filled her up more than anything else ever could.

That was what she told herself, but it didn't stop her from often wishing that things could have been different, that she might have been able to enjoy a man's advances without automatically having to shoot him down.

She'd thought that, of course, until it had happened. There were so many reasons that she couldn't make this work. For starters, he was Felicia's older brother, and if anything happened between the two of them, she knew it could put their whole friendship at risk. Then there was the fact that she certainly wasn’t ready for a new relationship. Even though it had been three years since her marriage had ended, she’d been married for almost twenty-five years. Kelsey was just starting to settle into their new life, and she couldn’t throw her this curveball.

Still, she couldn’t deny that it felt nice to have someone flirt with her, especially someone so charming and handsome. It had been a long time since anyone had looked at her like that, with fresh, new eyes that saw her as someone desirable. A wedding ring was an enormous deterrent against male advances, and she liked it that way, for the most part. While she was married, it was nice to not have to deal with predatory eyes and half-baked attempts at asking her on dates. However, it did mean that she was wildly out of practice, and when Graham said nice things to her like this, she often didn’t know what to say in return. Accepting it like a normal complement seemed awkward, but she had no idea how to flirt back. She didn’t even want to, not really. However, there was a part of her…

No. She couldn’t. Above everything else, it wouldn’t be fair to Graham to build anything more than a friendship while she was sitting on a secret that she wasn’t yet willing to share, that being the circumstances of her divorce. She couldn’t possibly tell Graham that her ex-husband had committed embezzlement, not when it would get back to Felicia. She’d seen this go south before. People she’d trusted could easily turn their backs when they found out about her past, and she wasn’t ready to lose Felicia that way.

I completely forgot, I’ve got to get the car back home. My daughter needs to get to school, and I drove up here from home. Those things weren't untrue, but what she did omit was that Kelsey caught a ride with her friends every morning and never used the family car to drive to school, since Stella often needed it through the day and they were both still saving up to be able to afford Kelsey a car of her own. Graham looked disappointed and perhaps even a little scolded, possibly fearing that his attempt at flirting had chased her off.

Ah, early morning college classes. I remember those. You’d better get going. If she’s anything like I was, she’s only waking up ten minutes before she has to leave.

Stella rolled her eyes. Yeah, that’s about right. It was nice to see you, Graham.

I’d like to see you again soon, he replied, his tone suddenly serious. Stella forced a calm smile.

Of course! I’ll text Felicia later today. Maybe the three of us can get dinner.

He nodded. Four, if your daughter wants to come. She’s more than welcome. That was refreshing, Stella thought. So he