Beach Daddy Read online

  I laughed. “I can understand that. I’ve never been one for the city, either. I need the ocean close by.”

  “It’s a healing thing,” she said, looking out the window.

  “Yeah,” I replied, not knowing if healing was how I would describe it anymore. “So, all of this looks fantastic. Why don’t we go in and you can meet my daughter Bella, see how you two get along?”

  “That sounds perfect,” she said, putting her things in a neat stack on the table and standing up.

  We walked down the hall and stopped at the doorway to the playroom. We both peeked around the corner and watched as Bella pranced around the room, wearing her dress-up shoes and talking to the stuffed animals she had set up like students in a classroom. I watched as a warm smile moved across Lacey’s lips, and she leaned against the doorframe, crossing her arms and listening. Lacey gave me a good feeling, and I was hoping that the next few minutes would cement my decision to have her stay here and tutor Bella.

  “Bella,” I said gently. “I want you to meet Miss Lacey. She is a teacher.”

  “A teacher?” Bella turned around smiling. “I am teaching my bears right now!”

  “I see that,” Lacey said, smiling and walking into the room. “You are doing such an excellent job. What are you teaching them?”

  “Science,” Bella said so matter-of-factly that I could help but chuckle.

  “Science is my favorite subject,” Lacey said.

  “Mine too,” Bella replied. “I watch all the science and space shows on Netflix with Daddy.”

  “You do? That’s what a big girl does! Are you a big girl?”

  “Daddy says I think I’m bigger than I really am,” she said proudly, not understanding the statement.

  Lacey laughed and glanced over at me before kneeling down on the floor and listening to Bella talk all about space and what she learned on television. I could see the bond between them immediately develop. It was the first time I had seen Bella with any woman other than my wife, which brought a bit of a pain in my chest, but I was happy to see my daughter so comfortable. I knew instantly that Lacey was the girl for the job, and I even thought about the fact that she may lend more than just studies to our little household. It felt good to have a woman figure in the house again, better than I actually thought it ever would. It was something that Bella desperately needed and something my mom tried to provide, but she couldn’t be there every single day.

  “Why are you here?” Bella looked at Lacey.

  “Well,” Lacey said, looking up at me. “I might be coming to see you and teach you each day, if your daddy likes me enough.”

  “I like her,” Bella said with big eyes looking at me.

  “Do you?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Bella said, nodding.

  “I do too,” I replied. “Lacey, we would love to have you be Bella’s tutor if you are comfortable with it.”

  “That would be fantastic,” she said excitedly.

  “Could you start tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow would be perfect.” She smiled, looking back at Bella. “We could start with our ABCs.”

  “I know most of them,” she said, pointing at the letters on the wall.

  “Well, that’s great,” Lacey replied. “And I will help you know all of them.”

  “Daddy,” Bella said, walking over to me and tugging on my shirt.

  “Yes, sweetheart,” I replied, kneeling down in front of her.

  “Can Bella stay and have dinner with us?” she asked. “I promise I’ll eat all my carrots.”

  “That would be lovely.” I chuckled. “But remember, we already have plans with Grandma Betty tonight.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, turning to Lacey. “One day, you will meet Grandma Betty, and you will love her. She is the best grandma in the whole world.”

  Lacey giggled. “I would love to meet her one day. But I am going to get out of the way so that you can get ready to see Grandma Betty. I will be back tomorrow, and we can learn some fun stuff, okay?”

  “Okay.” Bella smiled, leaning forward and hugging Lacey.

  It melted my heart to see Bella talk to Lacey so quickly, and I knew I had made the right choice. Lacey and I walked back out into the living room to gather her things and finalize everything. I grabbed my cup of coffee from the counter and turned back around, forcing my eyes to stay on her face and not go roaming farther south like they were trying desperately to do.

  “So, I was thinking of having you here from eleven to one or two in the afternoon, if that is good for you,” I said. “Unless you have more than one job, and then we can work around things.”

  She smiled. “No, you are my only one. And that sounds perfect to me! I can actually incorporate lunch into my lessons with her, so she is learning the entire time we are together. I will draw up some preliminary instruction outlines for you, and we can change them as we go, depending on where Bella is and where we want her to be when she starts school.”

  “That sounds perfect,” I replied, walking with her to the door. “Thank you, it’s really refreshing to have someone around Bella that understands children.”

  “I’m just glad we are such a perfect fit,” she said, smiling up at me.

  “Me too,” I replied, locked in her gaze. “So I’ll see you tomorrow at eleven?”

  “Sounds great, and you have fun with Grandma Betty,” she said, laughing as she walked to her car.

  I shut the door and smiled, feeling more than good about Lacey. I walked into the kitchen, poured the rest of my coffee down the drain, and put the cup into the dishwasher. Bella was singing in the other room, and I walked over, watching her from the door again. She was so sweet and carefree all the time, just like her mother was with that beautiful brown hair. Her face, though, was a spitting image of me, green eyes and everything.

  “Daddy,” she said, dancing. “I really like Miss Lacey.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah, I am excited to have her come teach me things,” she said, picking up her bear and twirling it around. “It’s really nice having a girl here. I like it.”

  “I’m glad you like her.” I smiled. “I like her, too. I’m going to go get ready for Grandma Betty, okay?”

  “Yep,” she said, turning back to her toys.

  I walked down the hall and to the bedroom, pausing for a moment in the hall and looking at the pictures of my wife holding Bella when she was a baby. My old business was in the background, and part of me missed working there. I owned a surf shop and gave lessons to the locals and the tourists during the summer seasons. However, like usual, as the good memories played through my mind, the bad ones crept up behind them, and I shook it all from my thoughts. I needed to stay on course, taking care of Bella and making a beautiful life for her the best way I knew how. Lacey was definitely going to be a great addition to that plan, especially for Bella.

  3

  Lacey

  After I got home from Caspian’s the night before, I checked my email and found that he had sent me some files of the things that he wanted Bella to be working on. I went through them all and turned them into a daily lesson plan to start Bella out on. Not knowing her abilities, I wasn’t sure how long it would take her to get through them, but at least it was a starting point. I would adjust things as we went along.

  When I woke up the next morning, I felt better than I had in a very long time, happy to rise to the sound of waves and not the sound of police sirens and honking horns. I took a shower and headed over to Aggie’s, the local coffee shop that I had gone to when I was a kid with my grandmother. I ate breakfast there, watching the tide move in and out from the beach, smiling as the seagulls came out, finding their breakfast as well.

  I took a coffee to go, loving their dark cranberry roast, and headed back to the house to get ready for my day. I was used to being up early after working and going to school for the last six years, wishing there were more hours in the day. I sat down at the table and flipped through my lesson plans one last tim
e. I kind of felt that they might be over-the-top for someone Bella’s age, but at the same time, I could tell Caspian was just trying to give Bella the best start to school that he could give her. If she was on a normal level like the kindergarten children I worked with in New York, these lesson plans would take us at least a month to get through, and then we could reexamine where Caspian wanted to go from there. If they seemed way too hard, I would simply sit down with him and discuss scaling them down to fit her learning level. Either way, after meeting him, I could tell he was going to be easy to work with.

  I packed up my things and double checked the house, making sure I didn’t leave anything on like my hair straightener. I headed out to my car, taking in the late morning warmth and the smell of salt and sea, the emotions of my childhood flooding back to me. I smiled this time, though, not feeling as sad about the loss of my grandparents as I had for the last several years. They were the epitome of love, and when my grandfather passed away, my grandmother followed him just a month later. It had been devastating, and I hadn’t been the same since, but there, driving over to Caspian’s with the warm sun shining on my face, I felt just a little more whole than I had the day before.

  When I arrived, I took a better look at the house and realized just how much it looked like a surfer’s getaway. It was huge, but it had this down-home charm to it that made me feel comfortable and at ease. I knocked on the door and waited, giggling to myself as Bella’s little voice echoed on the other side of the door. Caspian opened up and smiled, slightly out of breath and shaking his head.

  “I think she is excited to start classes.” He laughed. “We cleaned up the playroom for you to work out for today.”

  “Sounds perfect,” I said, walking in and stopping in the living room.

  “You don’t have to dress up here,” he said, looking at my dress clothes. “We are pretty chill around here. Feel free to wear whatever you are comfortable in.”

  “Great,” I said, smiling. “I put together the course information you sent me.”

  “Well, have fun,” he said, looking over at Bella standing excitedly in the doorway.

  “We will,” Bella shouted.

  We started the day working on the ABCs and the course work that went along with it. I was almost shocked by how intelligent Bella was, picking up on everything really fast. She already knew her alphabet through to the letter Q, and it only took about an hour for her to memorize and be able to write out the rest of it. Her hand writing was better than the kids I taught in first grade, and her knowledge of how to write upper and lowercase blew me out of the water. I had no doubt in my mind that she belonged in gifted and talented classes, but I wasn’t sure if the school she would be attending would offer those. I made myself a note to find out more about the school she was scheduled to go to in the fall. Knowing what they had to offer would help me know where to concentrate my efforts.

  I had left half of the lessons for the day in my bag, but by one in the afternoon, she had already blown through the ones I brought inside. We took a small break for Bella to play for a minute, and I walked out into the kitchen to grab the other stack of lessons. At that rate, I would need to do a whole other lesson plan when I got home, which was fine with me. As I pulled out the papers, Caspian walked back in the front door, and for a moment, the way the wind blew his hair and the sun hit his face, I could swear that I had met him somewhere before. He looked incredibly familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. It could also just be the fact that I found him incredibly handsome and wished that I knew him better than I actually did. I pushed that thought out of my mind, remembering that he was the one that was going to make staying in Blue Hill possible for me.

  “I got pizza for lunch,” he said, smiling and walking over to the table.

  “Great, we were just taking a break, so it’s the perfect time for lunch,” I said. “Can I help?”

  “Sure,” he replied. “Plates are in the cabinet to the left of the stove.”

  I walked into the large open kitchen and opened the cabinet, seeing his white plates with blue waves on them. Everything in his home was exactly what I would expect to be in a sun-tinted surfer’s home. I turned back and set the plates down on the table, grabbing some napkins and setting them down next to them as Caspian situated Bella in her chair. I sat down across the table from Caspian and smiled, grabbing a piece of pineapple and ham pizza and setting it down on my plate.

  “So where did you grow up?” he asked.

  “I grew up between here and upstate New York,” I said. “My parents weren’t ever really involved in my life because of their jobs, so I spent a lot of time here with my grandma and grandpa.”

  “I’m sure they’re really glad to have you back here.” He smiled.

  “Yeah,” I said, looking down. “They both passed away about five years ago. They left me the house, so I thought it would be the perfect place to start my life after college.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said.

  “What do you do?” I asked.

  “I do consulting from home for businesses part time,” he said. “I used to own a business and am pretty lucky to be able to be home as much as I want.”

  “That is awesome.” I smiled. “Especially with that little munchkin.”

  “Like the Wizard of Oz.” Bella laughed.

  “We just watched that movie last night with Grandma Betty.” Caspian laughed.

  “You’re like Glenda the Good Witch,” Bella said, smiling. “You’re pretty like her.”

  “Aww, thank you,” I said. “And are you Dorothy?”

  “No, I’m the lion when he gets his courage,” she said assertively.

  “Yeah, you are,” Caspian said, laughing. “My brave, fierce Bella.”

  We got to know each other while we finished our lunch, and I realized that I really liked Caspian. He was a sweet person. I had seen the pictures of Bella’s mother on the wall, and Caspian constantly referred to himself as we, but she didn’t seem to be anywhere around. I was curious, but I decided that it wasn’t quite time for me to ask about her. It might be a bit too personal. Maybe after I had been there for a while, I would find out more about their home life and where she was.

  When lunch was over, I got Bella cleaned up, and we went straight into the second part of the day. Bella zoomed through every lesson that I had, nothing giving her much issue at all. She was smart, and I knew that Caspian must be really in tune with his daughter to have picked out the lessons that he did. I would have brought courses that she would have been done within an hour, so I was glad he was so involved in all of this. When we were done, I gave Bella a big hug and set her free to play. She immediately set up her bears and began her own class, and I laughed as I left the room.

  “I think you might have a future professor.” I smiled, walking out to Caspian.

  “She has been doing that since she was big enough to walk.” He laughed. “How did she do?”

  “Honestly, she is the smartest five-year-old I have ever met,” I said. “I thought these courses would take at least a month, but she finished everything today. She is well above the national requirements for kindergarten.”

  “Good,” Caspian said, not sounding surprised. “I was worried, but I feel better knowing that.”

  “Where would you like me to go from here?”

  “Let’s make it harder.” He smiled. “Let’s start teaching her what she will learn in kindergarten. It will make things a lot more enjoyable for her if she can go smoothly through the year. She will be attending the Blue Hill Prep School, and I know they are ahead of the game on their education levels.”

  “I was going to ask that next,” I said, smiling. “I’ll do some research tonight and find out what their curriculum is. If they have gifted and talented programs, we can make that our next goal after she learns the general course descriptions.”

  “That sounds perfect,” he said, following me to the door. “Thank you for a fantastic first day. I feel so much better k
nowing that Bella is above the curve.”

  “I really love working with her,” I said, turning to look at him.

  For a moment, there was a pause, and although it would normally feel awkward, staring up into his eyes felt almost familiar. We stood there for several moments, slightly lost in each other’s gaze. The wind whipped outside, breaking our eye contact, and Caspian cleared his throat, looking down and shuffling his feet.

  “Right,” I said, taking in an exaggerated breath. “So, I’ll see you tomorrow at eleven.”

  “Awesome,” he said, smiling.

  I turned and walked to the car, ignoring the fluttering in my chest and climbing inside. I couldn’t tell if the excitement I was feeling was from that gaze or from the amazing day we just had, but I knew that I really liked feeling that way. For the first time in my life, I was enjoying my work, and I couldn’t wait to get home and create some really great courses for Bella to get started on the next day. I really was starting to feel like I was coming into my own, greeting life with the enthusiasm I hadn’t felt since I started college six years before. It didn’t hurt that everything around me was beautiful and full of life and light, especially Caspian and Bella. I didn’t know what it meant, but they really had brought something to my life, something that made me curious to see how far it could go.

  4

  Caspian

  I had just gotten Bella up from her nap and finished my work for the day when Lacey pulled up in the driveway. It was amazing how since Bella was born, I got so much more work done. No more lazy days sleeping in until noon, waking up and surfing until dark. I missed those days, sure, but this kept me regular. It provided me with a routine that I had really sunk myself into since everything happened with my wife. It was good for me, and it was really good for Bella, too. I walked over to the door and opened it before Lacey had even gotten everything from her car. I walked out to help her, noticing she was pulling an entire box from her trunk. She had gone above and beyond for that day’s lessons, which made me happy.