SEASIDE ROMANCE 01: Special Delivery Read online

  Special Delivery: A Seaside Romance by Gayle Roper

  In memory of the guy who stole my heart years ago in Seaside.

  Chapter One

  The doorbell rang at the same moment Kelli Parson's cell phone played its tune.

  Muttering under her breath about bad timing, she dropped her canvas bag of school supplies on the kitchen table and pushed the excited Charlie aside, no easy feat considering the dog's size.

  "I love you too," she assured the animal. "Go away. I have to answer the door."

  After throwing her an expression of hurt—he was oh-so-good at the guilt thing—he wandered to the beam of light still streaming in the window and collapsed.

  Kelli pulled her phone from her pocket. The readout said Nance, and Kelli's stomach clenched.

  "Hey, sis," Kelli said as she hurried to the front door. She tripped over Charlie's huge paws as he stretched, taking up the whole living room floor just as he took up the whole bed. He started each night in a compact curl, at least as compact as a Great Dane could be. By morning, Kelli was hanging onto the mattress with barely a sliver to call her own. On the floor, Charlie sprawled from the first flop.

  "Don't let me get in your way," she told him as she grabbed the arm of the chair to keep from falling. He answered with a gentle snore.

  "I won't," said her sister's voice on the phone.

  She spoke into the mouthpiece. "He's got narcolepsy." She hurried through the living room.

  "Awful disease," Nance said, "especially if it strikes while you're driving. And who? A man? Tell me it's a man."

  "It's the dog, and thank heavens he doesn't drive." Kelli pulled open the front door and found a UPS man in his brown uniform.

  "The dog." Nance blew a ladylike strawberry. "How sad is that. But he's not why I called. I want to know why you aren't coming home for Thanksgiving." Nance's words were only slightly slurred.

  "You have to sign for this." The UPS man shoved his electronic signature pad and stylus at Kelli. In his other hand, he held out a package the size of a shoebox neatly wrapped in brown paper and sealed with Scotch tape.

  "J.D. is going to deep fry our turkey." J.D. was Nance's latest live-in. "He's got one of those big cooker things to use in the backyard."

  Kelli tucked her phone between her ear and shoulder. "Great, Nance." She took the signature pad and stylus, ignoring the package due to the inconvenient lack of that third hand. She scribbled Kelli Parsons and hoped a handwriting expert never had to use the signature to prove her identity. "I'm glad for you."

  "It'll be such fun." Nance was practically singing.

  "Thanks." The UPS man took the things she thrust at him and pushed the package at her again.

  She took it, smiling vaguely at him. As she pushed the door shut, she tried to remember what she had ordered that required a signature. Christmas was only a month away, and she did most of her shopping online. The problem was she would have sent any Christmas presents directly to Nance's house.

  Not remembering what she'd ordered made this package like a surprise. She tuned out Nance, who was describing the process of frying a turkey, and looked at the return address. Viola, Davis and Keating, Attorneys at Law, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

  Attorneys at Law? Why were lawyers from Philadelphia mailing her a package? Her mind jumped to all the heroines in the novels she loved, single lonely young women like her who got unexpected letters and packages. She grinned. Maybe she had a previously unknown Great Uncle Barnaby who'd died and left her his vast fortune. Or a distant maiden aunt named Calliope who willed her a crumbling mansion on the Cornish coast. She stifled an unladylike snort. She should be so lucky. And anyway, she'd never come up with the money to fly to England to claim the inheritance and meet the dashing yet brooding hero who came with it.

  "Can you believe it?" Nance shrieked in her ear.

  Uh-oh. She'd missed part of the conversation. Time to improvise. "No. How very terrible."

  There was a moment of startled silence. "What?"

  Yikes. Wrong answer. "I meant wonderful, Nance. How wonderful." She flipped the package over, looking for clues. If there was no money or property involved and if her typical good fortune held true, someone had filed suit, and she was about to lose everything she owned—which wasn't all that much, but still, it was hers, and she wanted to keep it.

  "It is wonderful!" Nance was back to being as bubbly as a pot of boiling water.

  "Be careful." The warning was automatic. She had no idea what she was cautioning against, but Nance's life radar was extremely faulty. She needed warnings, and it was Kelli's job to give them, whether they were welcome or not.

  "You are such a killjoy." The polar ice cap had nothing on Nance when robbed of her euphoria.

  Kelli sighed. "Sorry." But she wasn't, not really.

  "I think you spend your life thinking of things to say to make me unhappy." Icicles dripped from Nance's words.

  If people didn't understand why she wasn't going home for the holiday, all they needed to do was listen to this erratic conversation. "I think it's wonderful J.D. will cook the turkey, and I'm sure you'll have fun."

  A noncommittal mmm echoed through space.

  "Really! Great fun!" Kelli put as much enthusiasm as she could muster behind the words.

  "Well, then, let me tell you what Dad did last week." Nance, at full rolling boil once again, began in minute detail.

  The last thing Kelli wanted to know was what their father had done. The things Nance thought were a riot, Kelli thought were tragic. Kelli looked at the package in her hand. The address read Annalise Bennington, 1121 Central Avenue, Main Floor, Seaside, NJ.

  Kelli blinked. Annalise Bennington? Who was that?

  Not her, that was for sure. No fortune. No mansion in Cornwall. On the positive side, no one was suing her, either.

  She needed to catch the UPS man fast!

  "Gotta go! Talk later! Happy turkey!" She pushed the off button in the middle of Nance's rhapsody about how J.D., wonderful man that he was, had brought drunken Daddy home and put him to bed, even tucking the covers around him. She dashed to the door and onto the porch.

  The UPS guy was running down the stairs of the house across the street, heading to his truck.

  "Hey!" She waved her package at him.

  When he didn't see or hear her, she ran down the sixteen stairs to the sidewalk. "Hey!"

  She heard him turn the engine over. She could imagine him checking the road for traffic prior to pulling out.

  "No, no, no! Wait! Stop!"

  She reached the curb just as he pulled onto the road, taking care not to bump her little car parked in front of him. She darted into the street after him, raised her hand, and banged on the side of the truck. "Stop! Stop!"

  The truck stopped, and the driver glared at her as she reached what would have been the passenger door, if UPS carried passengers instead of packages.

  "You plan to pay for any dents you made?" He raised his eyebrows above amazingly blue eyes.

  Kelli's mouth dropped open, not at the eyes, spectacular though they were, but at the remark. She couldn't prevent herself from looking at the side panel to see if she'd marred the surface. "I didn't—"

  He cut her off with a wave and a grin. "Kidding. What's wrong?"

  She took a second to give him her teacher's stare, the one she gave her students when they were rude. His grin remained in place.

  She blinked. Did she know him? But where would she know him from? She never went anywhere but school and church. Oh, and the supermarket, but he didn't look like a checkout clerk. Maybe a student's father she'd met at Back to School Night?

  She cleared her throat and held out the pac
kage. "This isn't me."

  He didn't take it. "You signed for it."

  "Yeah, I know. But it isn't me, and I don't know who it is." She itched between her shoulder blades. She hated doing anything wrong, even inadvertently. It was like she'd elected herself the one person in her family to do things right, and she took the responsibility seriously. Too seriously, if she were honest.

  He leaned across the cab and read the address on the package. "Eleven-twenty-one Central Ave, Main Floor." He glanced at the house and the large 1121 on the porch post of the Victorian.

  "Right address, wrong name," Kelli said.

  "Another apartment? It's a big house."

  She shook her head. "I'm the only one here year round. The owners are here only in the summer and some weekends—they live on the ground floor—and the other places are rented seasonally."

  She caught herself. That was way too much information to give a stranger. She felt a flutter of panic.

  Trust in the Lord with all your heart. The words sang through her. Right. She could do that. She would do that. Often it wasn't easy, but she was getting better all the time.

  The UPS man glanced at his watch, looking hurried rather than threatening. "Previous tenant? Summer renter?"

  "I met the previous tenant. Hank. And summer renters don't stay long enough to have mail forwarded."

  "If you're sure you're not Annalise Bennington." He held out a hand for the package.

  Perversely she held it close. "What happens when I give it to you?" Why did she think she should know him?

  He studied her a moment, and she wondered if he saw the cranberry and turkey gravy stains that made her outfit distinctive, and also made the thought of having an original Pilgrim Thanksgiving meal for twenty-two first graders again next year iffy.

  "I return it to the depot." He spoke as if she were one of her slower students. "Then UPS returns it to the sender."

  "The senders are lawyers."

  "Trust me. UPS sends things back to lawyers too."

  Ha-ha. "But what if it's important?"

  "Most things from lawyers are."

  "But Annalise might need to see what it says right away. What if she's inherited a fortune or a mansion or something?"

  His beautiful blue eyes narrowed. Why was it some guy got Bradley Cooper eyes while she got plain old brown?

  "Then the lawyers will search for her, I'm sure," he said.

  "You don't know that."

  He nodded. "You're right, I don't. But if they're honorable folks and decent lawyers, I'm sure they take the need to contact Annalise seriously."

  "The Internet!" Kelli almost danced as the idea blazed across her mind. "I bet we can find her there. You can find everybody there."

  "We can't do anything," the UPS man said. "But I can see the package is returned."

  "What if I don't want to return it? What if I want to find Annalise?" It would be something fun and exciting and interesting to do over Thanksgiving break, something to occupy her while everyone else was at family dinners and football games. It'd keep her from sitting on the couch all melancholy and poor-me-ish while Charlie tried to climb into her lap to comfort her.

  She hugged the package. "I'll give you a call if I want you to come back."

  With a little wave, she left him and his bemused expression and ran back up the stairs. She felt better than she had all week, listening to students and fellow teachers talk about their Thanksgiving plans.

  "What are your plans, Kelli?" someone always asked.

  She had her answer ready. "Big turkey dinner with all the fixings. Lots of leftovers. Lots of ball games." And she'd force a smile. No one needed to know that the turkey dinner was a frozen one, the leftovers were bitter memories, and the ball games largely unwatched.

  She danced across the apartment to Charlie who sat with his leash in his mouth. She held the package for him to see. He examined it carefully, for edibility no doubt. A few good sniffs, and he shook his massive head and sneezed. He walked to the door and looked at her.

  "Right." She pulled her coat back on. "But look! Now I have something to do over Thanksgiving vacation, Charlie, just like everybody else. And I met the best looking guy. Well, sort of met. But he was definitely good looking." And she had seen him somewhere, she was sure of it.

  Charlie rolled his big head her way, then looked pointedly at the door.

  "I know. And you're such a good boy to be so patient." She took the slightly soggy lead from his mouth and clipped it to his collar, the one trick he hadn't yet learned, though she wouldn't be surprised if one day he figured it out. He was her smart boy, her protector.

  How sad that the only male she trusted was a dog.

  Chapter Two

  Dane Cavanaugh stood outside 1121 Central Avenue and stared at the light streaming from the apartment that occupied half the main floor. The huge shore house was dark in the ground floor apartments, the third floor rooms, and the other half of the main floor. The woman who was not Annalise was the only one living here over the winter, and she'd been foolish enough to tell him. For all she knew, he could be a serial killer who worked part time for UPS. Not that he was, but he could have been.

  It was almost six o'clock, full dark, and tomorrow was Thanksgiving. The slightly nuts but utterly adorable woman who lived here had not gone home to family for the holiday like everyone else, unless the lights inside were merely deterrents to house breakers. Maybe at eleven o'clock, timers would click them all off. And maybe not.

  He went up the stairs to the big porch and looked through the half-glass door into the entry. The apartment opening off the little foyer on the left side would be hers. He tried the screen door and wasn't surprised to find it locked. No doubt the front door was locked too. He rang the doorbell with no expectations, just a vague hope.

  He was surprised when her apartment door opened and she stepped out. She flicked on the entry light and peered at the darkened porch without coming too close.

  "Who's there?"

  "Dane Cavanaugh."

  "Who?"

  "The UPS man."

  He stood as close to the door as he could, so the hall light would fall on him.

  She moved closer, squinting as she came. "What are you doing here?"

  I'm looking for a plot for my novel. Somehow he didn't think she'd buy that line, even though it was true.

  "Annalise Bennington." He couldn't believe he actually remembered the name on the package.

  The big door flew open, and there she stood, wearing baggy sweats and a disbelieving expression. All that separated them was the locked screen door, which, in his opinion, should have been replaced by a storm door. Screens should always be replaced by storm doors for winter. Incompetent landlord.

  She was a little thing. Looking down from the truck this afternoon, he hadn't realized how little. Now she was standing a step up from him, and she still only came to his nose.

  He didn't do little. Little women made him nervous, like if he hugged them, they'd break. Not that any woman he'd hugged had shattered, but still.

  She frowned. "I told you I'd call if I needed you."

  He frowned back. Little with an attitude was worse than just little. "I thought maybe I could help you find her."

  Did that sound desperate? She was looking at him as if it did. Well, he was desperate. His work-in-progress was stalled at chapter twelve because he needed a new, clever idea that hadn't been done to death and would keep the middle of his opus from sagging. Tracing an unknown person with only a name as the lead might be just the ticket to get his creative juices pumping, and watching a pretty little blonde non-law enforcement person perform this feat might free him from the frozen tundra of writer's block.

  Trouble was, she didn't want his help. He could feel the invisible barrier she threw up between them as tangibly as the doorbell he'd pushed a moment ago. Not that he blamed her. No woman should welcome a man she didn't know into her life. Stranger danger and all that. He knew he was completely trustwort
hy. His reputation was impeccable. How could he convince her of that? He should have brought letters of reference from his mother and his pastor.

  "Here," he'd say. "I just happen to have these on me."

  He smiled at the thought, and she thought he was smiling at her. She didn't like it.

  "Charlie." Her voice was a mix of suspicion and uncertainty.

  "Dane," he corrected. "Dane Cavanaugh. I live—" He started to raise his hand to point next door.

  A growl sounded, and a black Great Dane stalked into the entry.

  "Charlie." She indicated the dog and smiled insincerely.

  Although Dane had seen her walking Charlie and knew the animal wasn't vicious, he took an instinctive step back, then forced himself to stop. He loved dogs. Dogs loved him. Even his mother's highly verbal cockapoo stopped yipping when he held her.

  "Hey, Charlie." He held out a hand, proud he could do so in spite of visions of Charlie's powerful jaws closing around it. Thank goodness for the screen door.

  Charlie made another unsettling noise deep in his throat.

  "Good boy." Dane held his hand steady. "Nice boy."

  Charlie leaned against his suspicious owner's side, causing her to take a quick sidestep to keep her balance. He stretched his great head forward to sniff Dane's hand through the screen.

  "Do you come from Denmark?" Dane felt warm dog breath as Charlie investigated. "I don't."

  He glanced at . . . "What's your name? I know it's not Annalise."

  "Kelli." She was looking at him strangely. "Denmark?"

  He pointed at Charlie. "Dane." He pointed at himself. "Dane. Denmark."

  She wasn't impressed by his lame joke.

  "He's one big boy." Talk about stating the obvious, but he had to say something to win her over. He needed her. At least he was smart enough not to tell her he'd seen her walking Charlie. Then she'd be convinced he was a stalker, slam her door, and call the police.

  "Yes, he's very big. Big teeth." She said it with that sweet insincere smile.

  He tried to make his answering smile all charm. "I've gotten used to little fluffy powderpuff dogs since I babysat my mother's cockapoo last week while she and Dad went on a cruise. Maybe you saw me walking Mitzi."