The Sweetheart Secret Read Online Free PDF Page A

a husband, she had zero chance at the loan. And without the loan, she had zero chance at fulfilling Aunt Clara’s wish. There was too much at stake to let that happen.
    When she’d applied for the loan, Daisy had had no idea she was still married to Colt, or still connected via credit reports. It had taken her a good thirty seconds to process the words from the banker.
    Your husband.
    Her potential financial anchor, too. Assuming, that was, that she could convince him to cosign for the loan. Considering the way she’d burst into his office today, she hadn’t exactly won him over with honey. She needed to try again, but in a calm, collected manner. Or something close to that, considering nothing about Daisy Barton had ever been calm or collected. Either way, before she disturbed that particular hornet’s nest again, Daisy decided to see firsthand what she was getting herself into.
    Daisy left her car keys on the scarred, rickety wood laminate nightstand—that Toyota was on its last breath as it was—and changed into comfortable flats, then headed outside. The warm sun hit her like a wave, and she turned her face to greet it. She closed her eyes, and thought if heaven had a temperature, this was it.
    She started walking, inhaling the sweet salty tang of the ocean air, marveling at the palm trees and bright flowering shrubs that lined the streets, the way everything was so green and bright and pretty. For the first time in a long time, Daisy was filled with hope. Hope that things could be truly different—that
she
would be truly different.
    Oh, how she had missed this place.
    Daisy hadn’t been back to Rescue Bay in more than a dozen years. Her one stay here—that wonderful, crazy, amazing summer she’d spent at the inn—had been the best summer of Daisy’s life. For a little while, her world had been perfect, normal, and she’d thought—
    No,
prayed
, that it would last.
    Then Willow had pulled up in her beat-up Lincoln to uproot Daisy like a dandelion hiding among the roses. Daisy had never returned to the Hideaway. The following summer, Uncle Lou had died and Aunt Clara had moved back to Jacksonville. The Hideaway had withered away, managed from afar by a woman who couldn’t face carrying on the business without her husband.
    Despite all the time that had passed, Daisy still remembered the route to the inn. Her feet took the same streets, made the same turns. Even though the landscape had changed, populated with more houses and more businesses, the route felt as familiar as her own hand.
    She rounded the corner onto Gulfview Boulevard. The Gulf of Mexico spread before her in all its glistening blue glory, enticing, warm, gently whooshing in and out against the sandy beach. To her left lay the boardwalk that made up most of the touristy area of Rescue Bay. An ice cream shop, bakery, coffee shop, and T-shirt store sat in squat, sherbert-colored buildings, their doors propped open to catch the ocean breeze.
    Daisy turned right, passing a long line of tall palm trees, their fronds swaying like lazy hula dancers in the breeze. Around the next curve in the road lay the Hideaway Inn. Daisy stopped walking, tugged her phone out of her pocket, then dialed a number she knew as well as her own. A moment later, the connection was answered. “I’m almost to the inn. And I wanted to share the moment I saw it again with you, even though you’re not, well, technically here.”
    Emma let out a long sigh. “We’ve had this discussion, Dase.”
    â€œCome on, don’t you miss the place, just a little?”
    â€œNo.” Emma bit off the word, succinct and cold. There’d been a time when Emma had loved the Hideaway as much as Daisy. Then something had changed, something Emma wouldn’t talk about, a dark shadow she kept behind closed doors, and she’d never returned. Daisy had thought about coming to the Hideaway over the years, but knew