Content that he’d finally settled, she went down to the car. She searched her phone for the nearest grocery store and found one called Publix just across the causeway that had brought her to Hideaway Bay.
She tapped the arrow to start navigation and headed off to buy supplies. It was good to have a task to focus on. Even something as mundane as getting groceries. For however long that took, maybe she could forget that her life was probably never going to be the same again.
ChapterThree
Publix turned out to be a nicer grocery store than she’d been expecting. It was no Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods, but it had a great selection and beautiful produce.
She shopped carefully. Produce would only last so long, so as tempting as it was to go overboard, there was no point in buying too much food that would spoil before she could eat it. The realization that she’d be forced to shop again sooner than she’d hoped made her roll her eyes at her own plans. But there was no other option if she wanted fresh fruits and vegetables.
She focused on salad ingredients and some fruit before checking out the bakery. There were plenty of tempting offerings, including a cranberry walnut breakfast bread that looked like the perfect thing to have with coffee in the morning.
She filled her cart judiciously and still ended up with it nearly overflowing. Archie’s preferred brand of dog food was available fortunately. She got the biggest bag and put it on the bottom of her cart. She also got him some of the refrigerated wet food he liked.
Her final run was through the dairy department, where she stocked up on eggs, butter, yogurt, and cottage cheese.
The cart was so full and so heavy, she had to lean into it to get it moving again. She made her way to the registers and happily found an open lane. She went to it and started unloading her cart onto the conveyer. She grabbed a few of the cloth shopping bags they had for sale and added them to her purchases.
While she was unloading, her gaze skimmed the magazines and gossipy newspapers on sale in the checkout aisle.
Star Newshad a photo of her, just a small one, thankfully, in the upper lefthand corner with a headline under it that read, “Mystery woman breaks Ford’s heart.”
She frowned at the image and went back to her groceries. Maybe that’s all it would amount to. One small photo. One sort of true headline. She could live with that. She hoped.
But seeing that photo made her feel like a spotlight had suddenly flared to life over her head. She quickly got the rest of her groceries out of the cart and onto the belt. Once they were bagged and back in her cart, she put her sunglasses back on, and stuck her credit card in the reader. As soon as the machine beeped, she grabbed her cart, and headed for the exit.
She was almost there when the bag boy ran after her. “Ma’am. Ma’am!”
She took a deep breath. Had he recognized her? “Yes?”
“Your dog food. Under the cart. We forgot to ring it up.”
She exhaled. “Oh. Sorry about that. I forgot it was under there.”
“I can take care of this at one of the self-checkout stations. Won’t take a minute. Right this way.”
She followed him, paid, and was on her way once again. Loading the car took some time, but it gave her a moment to calm down. She’d overreacted, that was all. No one out here cared who she’d been involved with. This wasn’t L.A., where everyone lived like they were under a microscope.
Still, she was ready to get back to Hideaway Bay. Back to seclusion and safety.
At the end of the causeway, she turned left into the entrance of Hideaway Bay. This time at the guard shack, she didn’t have to show ID or her paperwork proving her ownership of the house. She’d done that when she’d first arrived. Now she had a small disc affixed to her windshield that alerted the guard on duty that she belonged.
The gate lifted as she drove forward onto Queen Palm Way, the main road that serviced all of Hideaway Bay. It made a giant loop that ran past the clubhouse, community center, and tennis courts down to one end of the development then back up to the guard shack.
Hideaway Bay was an odd name, she thought as she drove through. There was no bay. But maybe whoever had developed the place liked the rhyme.
The lots were large and the driveways long, since the houses were set away from the road to be closer to the water. She passed the entrance to the marina. Each property was shielded on the sides by thick swathes of palms, evergreens, and live oaks to give the owners as much privacy as possible. Some people had thinned them out a little, but no one had taken them down completely.
She approved. She had no plans to change anything about the landscaping at the house. Maintaining it would be hard enough. She turned down the drive. The landscaping around the house wasn’t in need of any maintenance, however. That meant someone had been keeping it up. Or was that one of the perks of living in Hideaway Bay?
She doubted that. It might be one of the perks of inheriting a house from Arlington Marsh, though. Along with the house, she’d received a notification that an account had been set up to pay for the utilities and taxes on the house for the next five years.
Maybe Arlington had included the groundskeeping in that? She’d have to look through the paperwork, something she’d yet to do, to find out if it was part of the deal.
She parked so that she was backed in to make unloading easier, then began the arduous task of hauling everything into the house. She used the elevator again, taking a small load at first so she could check on Archie.
He was still asleep in his bed, but woke when she came into the bedroom, giving her a little wag of his tail.
“Hi, baby. I’m home. Everything good?” Seemed so. “I have to get the rest of the groceries in, then we’ll hang out, okay?”
