Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 83368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
Even though she was on a tight schedule, she allowed herself to pause as she pulled out of her driveway to absorb the sense of sanctuary that her little house always gave her. Apart from a pretty wooden archway entwined with fragrant white clematis, it was unremarkable from the outside—just a simple cabin from the late 1930s with a modernized interior. But to her, it was a little piece of paradise.
When she’d been riding the high of big-time prize money from surfing, Erin, her very sensible sister, had advised her to be smart and use the money to buy a house. At the time, it hadn’t been at the top of Mila’s shopping list, but Erin, in her quiet way, had persisted. They’d started looking just for fun, and then one day, this house had come on the market. It was called Mermaid’s Hideaway, and even before they’d stepped inside, the two sisters had looked at each other and known—this was The One. If only it were that easy with men.
The cabin was brown with red trim, unassuming and quiet, tucked as it was behind a wooden fence. It boasted a mature garden, as the real estate listing had said, and from the very back of her garden, she could see the ocean. That had been absolutely critical to her when she’d come up with her list of must-haves for her own home. She didn’t need to be right on the ocean—she couldn’t have afforded waterfront anyway—but she absolutely had to be able to glimpse the water and be close enough to walk to the beach with a surfboard. The house checked those boxes, or she wouldn’t have looked at it.
So she didn’t mind that Mermaid’s Hideaway wasn’t a grand home, with its two bedrooms, one bathroom, and less than a thousand square feet. She wouldn’t have wanted the trouble of looking after a bigger home anyway. Life was too short for dusting and vacuuming. It had been built by craftsmen almost a hundred years ago and boasted scarred hardwood floors and rustic wooden walls that she’d never change—they were too charming. The centerpiece of the living room was a big fireplace with a copper hood. The kitchen had a stained-glass window and wooden cupboards that she thought might be original to the house, but a previous owner had done the best kind of renovation by keeping the charm of the old while adding the convenience of the new. Stainless-steel appliances, and top-end ones at that, and a modern stone countertop made her little kitchen a pleasure to cook in. Not that she was the world’s greatest cook, but she could throw together a decent meal if she had to. Her mother had made sure of that.
Skylights let in more light, and she’d painted her bedroom the softest possible shade of blue. The ceiling rose up to a peak, and from her bedroom window over the garden, she could glimpse the sea. She liked to think that it was the first thing she saw every morning when she got out of bed and the last thing she saw at night. It left her with an incredible sense of peace.
She sometimes thought that it was buying her own house that had planted the seed of interest in a real estate career. Dan Ferguson had been the listing agent—he owned his own real estate firm—when she’d bought her place. He was a jovial man in his fifties who worked hard but also enjoyed life, and she’d liked him immediately. She’d pestered him with questions, not only first-time-buyer questions, but also hey-I’m-interested-in-real-estate questions, and he’d cheerfully answered them all. So, when she’d finished licking her wounds and accepted that her surfing career was in fact over, she’d gone to Dan and asked him to train her. It hadn’t been an instantaneous decision, of course, but she’d gotten there. So far, her career change was working out. Of course, she missed those moments of competition when she crushed it and walked away with a trophy, but she could still surf, and now she could give others the pleasure of learning how, and that was more rewarding than she ever could have imagined. Also, she’d turned out to be pretty good at real estate sales and made a very tidy living.
With a last glance at herself in the rear view mirror and a final check of her watch, she pulled out of her driveway and drove to the real estate office in town.
She greeted the receptionist who manned the phones all weekend, but found that she was the only agent in the office. Her colleagues were either out showing houses or taking a rare Saturday off.
She settled at her desk and fired up her computer. She was pretty good at keeping the list of the current inventory in the area—and even a little beyond it—in her head, but she hoped there was something she’d overlooked, the kind of house that would be perfect for Herschel Greenfield. Concentrating, she sifted through every single listing, carefully combing through the ones in Carmel Heights, but she simply couldn’t imagine Herschel in any of them. Funny how she had this clear image of what he needed—even though they’d only just met. It was more than a professional instinct, but something running deeper. Still, she’d have to show him a few options to get the ball rolling, as he wanted to move quickly.