My Sunset Love Affair with the Billionaire CEO novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Harbor Light

A quiet mechanic fixes the stalled shuttle with her bobby pin, and the first photo her ex sends from her own kitchen arrives before the phones are locked away.

The shuttle van left the church lot at four o'clock with seventeen strangers and me.

Renata said I was replacing a woman who had dropped out that morning with a bad hip.

I sat in the back row with my duffel bag on my knees and my mother's sewing machine strapped into the seat beside me.

The shore road to Harbor Light ran along the water through a long stretch of birches.

The sun was nearly down when the van began to shudder.

Then it coughed twice and rolled to a stop in the gravel.

Steam rose out of the hood.

The driver, a boy of about twenty, said "Oh no" in a voice that made everyone sit up.

A man in the second row stood and ducked his head under the roof.

"Pop the hood," he said.

He was big in the shoulders and gray at the temples, in a plain flannel shirt with the sleeves already rolled.

He had the sort of hands that had been cut many times and healed crooked.

He walked around to the front and looked at the engine for about four seconds.

"Coolant hose came off the fitting," he said. "The clamp snapped in half."

"Is that bad?" said the driver.

"It's bad if you don't have a clamp."

"I don't have a clamp."

"I figured."

I climbed down and went to stand beside him with my arms folded.

"I have a flashlight," I said, "and a sewing kit."

He glanced at me with a very flat expression.

"A sewing kit."

"Waxed upholstery thread. It's what I use on coats."

He looked at the hose, and then at the thread in my palm, and one corner of his mouth moved.

"Hold the light," he said.

I held the light.

He pushed the hose back onto the fitting with his thumbs and told me to wind the thread around it as tight as I could.

I wound it twenty times and he pulled each turn flat with the back of a fingernail.

"You do this a lot?" he asked.

"Forty years of hems," I said. "I don't leave slack."

"Neither do I. You can tell, can't you."

"I can tell you're showing off."

"A little."

He tied the end in a knot I could not have faulted, and then he stood back and wiped his hands on his jeans.

"That's a better clamp than the one it came with," he said.

"Tell the van that."

"I'm Ray," he said. "Ray Cooper."

"Lorna Quist."

He had a big warm hand, dry and hard across the palm, and he held mine one second longer than a handshake needed.

I let him.

The van started on the first try, and the whole shuttle clapped.

"Who's the mechanic?" called a woman in a pink cardigan. "I want him on my team."

Harbor Light Lodge stood on a rock bluff above the bay, built of logs and glass.

Strings of white bulbs ran down the long pier to the water.

There were cameras on tripods at every door.

Renata met us on the porch with a clipboard and a headset and a wide smile that did not move her eyes.

"Welcome to Sunset Hearts," she said. "Phones go in the basket."

She held out a wicker basket with eighteen numbered tags.

"You'll get one supervised call a week and nothing else. This is about the people in front of you."

Everyone groaned and dropped their phones in.

I dug mine from my coat last.

It buzzed in my hand while my thumb was over the basket.

A text from Dale.

Just a picture, no words.

I opened it because I could not help myself.

His new wife stood in my kitchen in my yellow apron, the one with the cherries on the pocket.

She stood at my stove with a spoon, smiling at the camera.

Under the picture was a line of text.

Sleep tight, Lor. The stove works great.

I dropped my phone in the basket and shut the lid.

"Everything all right?" said Renata, who had been watching me read it.

"It's lovely," I said. "Where do I sleep?"

The firepit scene was shot at nine o'clock with a camera on a boom.

We sat on log benches in a ring while Renata walked around asking each of us why we had come.

The woman in pink said she was looking for a man with a boat.

Ray said, "I fix things," and left it at that, and the women laughed.

When Renata got to me, she crouched in front of my bench with her microphone.

"Lorna," she said. "The viewers want to know. What's your net worth?"

The fire popped.

Eighteen faces turned toward me and so did a lens.

"Nine hundred and forty dollars," I said, "and a sewing machine."

A man on the far bench whistled low.

"Lorna lost her home this morning," Renata said, gently, for the camera. "Isn't that right?"

I looked straight into the lens.

"It was a good home," I said. "I'd like it back."

Across the fire, Ray had stopped smiling.

He was watching me with a look I could not read.

When the shoot ended, he passed behind my bench on his way to the cabins.

"Everyone else lied about something tonight," he said, without stopping. "You told the truth with a camera on you."

Then he was gone into the dark, and I stood there with my face hot and my hands cold.

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