Page 12 of A Breeze Over Rosewood Beach (Rosewood Beach #9)

CHAPTER NINE

Jacob picked up a box of his favorite screws and tucked it into the basket he was carrying. Turner’s Hardware offered a wide variety of nails and screws of all different sizes, but he knew exactly what brand he wanted, and he knew the length that he needed to install drywall.

Things are going great, he thought cheerfully. I don’t know where Hazel and I are getting all this energy from, but I’m certainly not complaining. It’s wonderful to feel like we’re making so much progress on the house.

Hazel and Jacob had been working long hours renovating their home, on the weekends and in the afternoons after they finished working their jobs for the day.

It had helped greatly that not many people in Rosewood Beach had been having emergencies with their plumbing or electricity.

Jacob often had to work late at someone’s house, fixing something that needed to be repaired immediately because of a safety issue or because the thing needing repair was vital to the family’s home life, such as a refrigerator or a furnace.

Thankfully, however, most of his work during the past few weeks had been simple, short projects that he could easily schedule in the morning and early afternoon.

That left him plenty of time in the second half of his days to work with his beautiful girlfriend on renovating their home.

He grabbed a second box of screws, this time in a slightly shorter length.

If there was one thing he’d learned over the years, it was that you could never have too many tools.

Well, you could have more tools than would fit in your storage area—and his small office and storage space was full to the bursting with tools.

Now that he and Hazel had the house, however, he had a whole basement to fill with extra supplies.

He would still keep most of his frequently-used tools in his office in the center of town, but it was nice to know that he could buy a new tool here and there without wondering where on earth he was going to put it.

He was making his way toward the front of the hardware store when he saw Cedric rearranging a display of potted herbs.

“Cedric!” he said cheerfully, stepping toward his friend and mentor.

“Jacob.” Cedric turned to him with a grin. “Back for more, I see? Are you running into any trouble with the renovations?”

“No, just the usual trouble like running low on the screws we need for the drywall. Hey, has that light fixture that we ordered come in yet?”

“Oh, no, I’m sorry I meant to tell you, but it slipped my mind.” Cedric shook his head. “It got backordered. I’m sure it won’t be too long before it’s back in stock, but I know you both wanted to install it right away.”

“That is disappointing.” Jacob held back a sigh. He and Hazel had ordered a beautiful rustic chandelier to go in their dining room, and they’d both been looking forward to installing it. “Thanks, Cedric. I’ll let Hazel know.”

“You two working on the house today?”

Jacob smiled and gestured to his dirty work clothes. “Yup, I’m dressed for the occasion and everything.”

Cedric shook his head with a chuckle. “Jacob, you always look like that.”

Jacob laughed. “Fair enough.”

He said goodbye to his friend and made his way to the front of the store to make his purchase.

After that, he stepped back outside into the cold winter air and clambered inside his truck.

It was a particularly chilly day, and he was looking forward to being inside his warm new house with Hazel.

Even though it didn’t have any furniture in it yet besides a couple of camping chairs they sat in whenever they needed a break, it felt cozy to him.

He drove to the house and parked in the driveway. He could hear faint music playing, and he knew that Hazel must be inside the house working on something. Their new home seemed like a sure place to find her these days. He smiled and hopped out of the truck, taking the screws with him.

“Honey, I’m home!” he bellowed playfully as he stepped inside the front door.

“Jacob!” Hazel called out joyfully. She looked up with a radiant smile from where she was painting the living room walls a creamy mint green. At the moment, she was sitting on the floor, carefully painting next to the molding. “Come over here and kiss me, I don’t want to get up yet.”

He smiled and went over to her and gave her a big kiss. “The walls look great.”

“Don’t they?” She looked around the room with delight.

“It’s going to be so wonderful in here, I can already see it.

I feel so impatient to get everything done, especially that chandelier.

Now that I know it’s coming, the dining room just doesn’t look right without it.

I can’t wait to see it in there—I just know it’s going to complete the look of the whole room. ”

“Ah.” Jacob sat down next to her on the floor. “About that. I’m afraid I’ve got bad news. I talked to Cedric at the hardware store and he said that the light got backordered.”

“Oh!” Hazel’s shoulders slumped and she was clearly deflated by the news. A moment later she brightened, however. “That’s okay. We can keep browsing their website. Maybe there’s an even better one we can pick out.”

Jacob chuckled. “I don’t know. It took us a while to find that one. Do you really think we’re going to find another light fixture that’s even better?”

“Please?” She pretended to make a sad puppy face at him. “We can order a pizza when I’m done here and have a picnic on the floor using that old quilt I keep in my car. Sam is at Willow’s tonight, so we can do whatever we want to for hours.”

“And the thing we want to do most is look at light fixtures, huh?”

“Yes.” She clasped her paint-covered hands in a dramatically pleading gesture.

He laughed and kissed her head. “Okay. I do actually like that idea. I love looking at anything that might become part of our house. And I hate the idea of waiting until that chandelier is back in stock too.”

“Perfect.” She grinned at him. “Just let me put these painting supplies away and get the brushes and rollers washed off, and then I’m all yours.”

“I’ll order the pizzas,” Jacob said, suddenly feeling extremely hungry.

He loved the idea of getting to have a picnic with Hazel in their house.

He couldn’t wait for the days when they were eating every meal there together, and it was really their home, instead of just a building they were trying to turn into a home. “Meat lovers for me, Hawaiian for you?”

“Actually, tonight I think I’m feeling a barbeque chicken with red onions,” Hazel said, her tone almost dreamy as she stared into space. “Yup, convinced myself. I’ll take that, please.”

“You got it.” He pecked her cheek and stepped to the side to call the pizza place.

A few minutes later, their pizza order was all set and they were cleaning off the paintbrushes and rollers together.

Hazel protested and said that she should do it herself since she was already wearing painting clothes, but Jacob pointed out how dirty his work clothes already were.

Soon the brushes and rollers were clean and drying and their pizza had arrived. Jacob ran out to Hazel’s car to get the quilt she’d mentioned, and they spread it out on the floor in front of one of the old radiators, where it was nice and warm.

“This is cozy,” Jacob said, sitting down crossed-legged next to Hazel. “Oh, shoot, we should have asked them for paper plates—we don’t have any dishes here yet.”

Hazel picked up a slice of pizza with a grin. “I don’t need a plate. The cardboard box is my plate, because I am definitely eating this entire pizza tonight.”

“That hungry, huh?”

“Mm-hm,” she said happily through a gooey, cheesy bite of pizza.

They set Hazel’s laptop on the floor and lay down side by side in front of it, eating pizza as they browsed the website.

“So many options,” Jacob said, shaking his head.

“And this is just the one company,” Hazel pointed out. “We could try another one too.”

“Nope, too overwhelming.”

Chuckling, they kept looking. Jacob jotted down the information of all the light fixtures they both really liked in a small notebook that he always kept in his pocket.

After about an hour, they’d eaten most of their pizzas and were starting to get stiff from lying on the floor for so long.

“What do you say we move this party back to your house, where there are couches?” Jacob asked, sitting up and rolling his shoulders back a few times.

“Sounds great.” Hazel laughed and rolled over so that it was easier for her to sit up. “I guess I’m not going to eat this whole pizza after all.”

“Hey, the fridge is plugged in.”

Hazel wrinkled her nose. “But it hasn’t been cleaned.”

“Honey, the pizza will be in the boxes.”

Hazel kept her nose wrinkled. “Mm, no thanks. We could just set it outside.” She laughed. “Frozen pizza.”

“Frozen pizza that will send signals to all of the local wildlife that we put out free food. I love raccoons, but only from a distance.”

She chuckled. “Okay, don’t worry I’m only kidding. Let’s take the pizza home and we can heat it up later as a snack.”

“I won’t say no to that.” He grinned and kissed her.

They drove separately to Hazel’s house, since they both had their cars, and soon they were snuggled up together on the couch with mugs of hot cocoa, back on the light fixture website.

“What about this one?” Hazel said, squinting at a picture as she considered it.

“It’s rustic looking, but I’m not sure it’ll go with the dark red walls we want for the dining room, since it’s got those blue accent flecks.

” The chandelier had been made to look antique, and it was a mix of white and blue paints.

“Do they have any other colors?” Jacob was starting to ask, when Hazel scrolled farther down the page.

They both froze, staring at the screen.

“Do you see that?” Hazel asked eagerly, grabbing his hand.

“Absolutely I do. That’s it. It’s perfect.”

It was a chandelier shaped like an old wagon wheel with fake candles inserted around its edges. The candles looked strikingly genuine, and it looked like the kind of chandelier that might have been found in a saloon in the wild west or an inn along the coast in the early seventeen hundreds.

“Yay!” Hazel squealed. “Perfect! I love it.”

“Let’s order it right now,” Jacob said, clicking on the chandelier and adding it to their cart. “It says it’ll be here in a couple of days.”

“Yes.” Hazel rested her head on his shoulder. “Sounds wonderful.”

“I’m home!” A cheerful shout sounded outside the house, and a moment later they heard the sound of footsteps tapping up to the front door.

Samantha burst inside, her cheeks rosy from the cold.

“Hi, guys! We made the absolute coolest snowman! He’s got a pink scarf and this old costume top hat that Stacey’s sister gave us.

You should see him! We gave him a baseball bat to hold because we thought that would be funny. ”

“Sounds awesome.” Hazel stood up and gave Samantha a bear hug. “We’ll have to drive by Willow’s house on our way to school tomorrow so we can see it.”

“You want come cocoa?” Jacob offered. “We made a big pot of it and the rest is still on the stove. You might want to reheat a mug full in the microwave though.”

“Oh, yeah thanks.” Samantha scampered over to the laptop. “What were you two giggling over?”

“We weren’t giggling!” Jacob pretended to be offended.

Samantha just grinned at him and peered more closely at the laptop screen. “Ooh, chandeliers? Wait, I thought you already bought one.”

“We did,” Hazel said with a sigh, sitting back on the couch and patting the spot next to her so Samantha would sit there.

“But then we found out that it got backordered, so who knows how long it would have taken to get here. We just picked out a new one—that one right there, with the wagon wheel and the candles?”

“Oh stop.” Samantha leaned so close to the screen that her nose almost touched it. “I love it.”

“Good!” Jacob gave Samantha a high-five. “We just ordered it. We’re going to have the coolest dining room ever.”

“I’ll say.” Samantha took the laptop from her mother as breezily as if she owned it. “But maybe we could have picked out an even better chandelier.” She started scrolling through the website’s options gleefully. “What about this one? All these big pink crystals? It’s giving Barbie. Yes queen!”

Hazel and Jacob exchanged a look over Samantha’s head and laughed. They were still confused by many of the things Samantha said, but they never ceased to be amused by her animated exclamations.

“And look at this!” Samantha crowed with laughter as she showed them a light fixture clearly meant for a kid’s room.

It was shaped like a unicorn, with a pink mane and tail and a rainbow horn.

“Can I have this for my room? Just kidding—I’ll be too old for it in about four seconds.

Yup, too old for it. Ooh, what about this? ”

“Um—” Jacob leaned forward, not sure what to make of the circular golden orb that he was seeing. It appeared to be swirls of golden flowers creating a sphere around a lightbulb.

“It’s so much, but it’s so pretty.” Hazel laughed. “I’d buy that if I was creating some kind of girly paradise room. You know, with white leather couches and soft pink pillows.”

“Barbie,” Samantha said, as if that summed everything up perfectly.

“I was thinking more modern princess,” Hazel said.

“So, Barbie.” Samantha grinned.

Jacob and Hazel chuckled. The three of them spent a few more minutes looking at the different light fixtures and laughing over the outlandish ones while they sipped their hot cocoa.

Jacob found himself watching Hazel and Samantha, and the way they chatted together like best friends. He felt a surge of love for the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with and her funny, affectionate daughter who he already felt like a father to.

I’m incredibly lucky, he thought, his heart filling with happiness. I’ve got the two best girls in the world to come home to. We’re going to have such a wonderful life together.