Read Online Barefoot Bay: Hold On To Forever (Kindle Worlds Novella) by Maria Geraci - Free Book Online

few of the paintings. They were actually pretty good. Local beach scenes, he guessed. One of the paintings looked similar to a framed print that Abuela had in her living room back home in Miami. She’d bought it because she said the picture had reminded her of a beach near Havana, where she’d swum as a young girl.
    The shop looked empty, except for Nicki and a woman standing behind a counter.
    This probably wasn’t the place to have his talk with Mitch, but what the hell. Now that Felicity had already talked to Nicki, maybe Jack should go ahead and talk to both of them. Big brother to younger brother and his wife-to-be. It couldn’t hurt, and he needed to get things settled once and for all. It wasn’t just their future on the line. It was his future too.
    “You think Nicki will be in there for long?”
    “Probably not,” Mitch said. “But, maybe.” He sounded nervous. Up until now Mitch had been the epitome of cool and collected. It was about time his baby brother realized that in just a few days he’d be a married man.
    “Getting some wedding jitters?”
    “Huh? Oh, yeah, I guess.”
    Jack glanced inside the shop. “I should get some souvenirs for the office staff. C’mon, let’s go inside.”
    Mitch seemed reluctant, but he followed Jack inside the store. Nicki and the woman behind the counter were engaged in a lively conversation, but it broke up once they spied the two men. The woman appeared to be in her mid-fifties with chin-length blonde hair and light colored eyes. She wore long dangling earrings, and her T-shirt was splattered with paint. He immediately pegged her as the artist behind the watercolors displayed outside.
    “Jack!” Nicki startled. “What are you doing here?”
    It looked like Mitch wasn’t the only one with a sudden case of pre-wedding nerves.
    “Checking out Mimosa Key, then I saw your fiancé skulking by the door and decided to come inside.” He smiled at the woman behind the counter. “Is this your shop?”
    “It is.” She turned to Nicki. “This must be your future brother-in-law.”
    “Um, yes, as a matter of fact.”
    The woman stretched her hand out to him. “Beth Henderson. And you’re Jack Martinez. I’d recognize you anywhere.”
    He shook her hand. “From the billboards?”
    “And the commercials. It’s not often we get a celebrity in my shop.”
    He tried not to wince. The billboards he was able to block from his mind. They were everywhere and after a while they almost became part of the scenery. The commercials, however, were especially cringe-worthy. He wondered how Felicity’s firm would handle those.
    “So, how do you two know one another?” he said to Nicki.
    “We just met,” Nicki said quickly. “I was walking by and admiring the paintings and one thing led to another…”
    Beth stared at Nicki for a moment, then turned to them. “Nicki tells me she’s here to get married.” She smiled at Mitch. “Congratulations.”
    “Thank you,” Mitch said. He’d been so quiet that Jack had almost forgotten about him. It wasn’t like his baby brother to be so invisible. Normally, he and Nicki were joined at the hip like a couple of chatty magpies.
    “Are those local landscapes outside?” Jack asked Beth.
    “Mostly. A couple I painted from old photos. Do you like them? They’re for sale. I could give you a good price.”
    “Maybe.” He glanced around the little shop. There were more framed watercolors hung on the walls, but the majority of the merchandise was the typical tourist stuff. “Looks like business is slow.”
    “We get a good amount of local tourists through the Fourth of July holiday, but now everyone’s gearing back up for school. The snowbirds will be back in November, then things will pick up again.” She sighed heavily. “If I’m still around, that is.”
    Nicki bit her bottom lip. “The landlord is giving…Beth a hard time about the shop.”
    “What kind of problem are you having?” Jack asked, mainly to be polite, but