Three Little Wishes, page 1
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2024 by Debbie Mazzuca
Cover art by Debra Lill. Cover design by Daniela Medina. Cover images © Getty/Shutterstock. Cover copyright © 2024 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mason, Debbie (Novelist) author.
Title: Three little wishes / Debbie Mason.
Other titles: 3 little wishes
Description: First edition. | New York : Forever, 2024. | Series: Sunshine Bay ; 2
Identifiers: LCCN 2023054972 | ISBN 9781538725337 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781538725351 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Meteorologists—Fiction. | Aunts—Fiction. | Actresses—Fiction. | Family secrets—Fiction. | Television stations—Fiction. | LCGFT: Novels.
Classification: LCC PR9199.4.M3696 T47 2024 | DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20231204
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023054972
ISBNs: 978-1-5387-2533-7 (trade paperback), 978-1-5387-2535-1 (ebook)
E3-20240409-JV-NF-ORI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Discover More
About the Author
Also by Debbie Mason
Praise for Debbie Mason
For our adorable grandson, August Wilder.
You’re our wish come true.
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Chapter One
What was it you said last night on the evening news, Lucy? A thirty percent chance of light rain, was it?” Amos, the seventysomething fisherman in the yellow raincoat and hat shouted at Willow as she battled the gale-force winds and lashing rain on her way back to the TV station, goading her as he always did whenever her weather forecast was the least bit off.
He’d no doubt been standing in the window of Brew Bros hoping to catch a glimpse of her. The coffee shop was half a block from the station. She cupped one claw-covered hand to the side of her mouth while clamping her other claw-covered hand on the head of her lobster costume to keep the wind from ripping it off.
“The rain is light, Amos!” At least it had been when it started twenty minutes before. “It’s just that the winds are a little stronger than the satellite images indicated. Blame it on climate change,” she yelled, forcing a wide smile so he wouldn’t think she was shouting at him because he’d embarrassed her.
She was a Rosetti. She didn’t embarrass easily.
But besides Amos and the over-seventy crowd, no one in her seaside hometown took her forecasts seriously. How could they when she delivered the weather in costume? Which was one of the reasons she hadn’t complained—much—a few months earlier when her boss at Channel 5 had informed her she’d be reporting the weather as Lucy the Lobster. The Lobster Pot on Main Street must be raking it in if it could afford to advertise on Channel 5 from May through September.
She looked down at the costume clinging to her like a second skin. It was an improvement over the itsy-bitsy yellow polka-dot bikini that Don, her boss, had made her wear the previous summer.
“A little rain? It’ll take me at least three hours to bail out my boat. If I hadn’t listened to you, I would’ve put the cover on!” Amos yelled, throwing up his arms and nearly upending his to-go cup of coffee.
The violent flapping of the awning above Brew Bros’ front window drowned out Willow’s sigh. Amos had a point, and she felt a smidgen of guilt for missing the band of storms currently in a holding pattern over Sunshine Bay. She’d had a lot on her mind the night before so it was possible her calculations had been off and this wasn’t a fluke weather event.
“Tomorrow’s going to be a gorgeous, sunshiny seventy-three degrees, and I’ll come give you a hand after I wrap up the morning weather report. We’ll have your boat mopped up in no time.” Her heartfelt offer earned her a derisive lip curl. Honestly, there was no pleasing the man.
“You know, Amos, not all storms come to disrupt your life. Some come to clear your path,” she said, quoting Paulo Coelho while walking backward into the wind on the sidewalk. “Maybe the universe is trying to tell you something.”
Like that it was time for him to sell his boat. Last month, a search party had gone out at two in the morning looking for him. He’d fallen asleep on board his boat and was headed for Canada.
“Stop spouting claptrap and watch where you’re…” He trailed off, his eyes going wide.
She was about to glance over her shoulder to see what had caught his attention when her back slammed into the pole holding up the Bookworm’s awning, the action emptying a gallon of water onto her head.
Sputtering, she jumped out of the way to avoid another bucketful, only to get hit by a surf-size wave when a black Mercedes sped through a puddle on the road. Muddy water dripping off her face and her costume, she roundly cursed the entitled jerk as he whizzed by. Of course it was a man, and a tourist. Those definitely weren’t cape plates.
As she wiped her face with her forearm while the driver continued blithely along Main Street, all smug and warm and dry, a gust of wind pushed her around as if she were a blow-up punching bag.
Willow wondered what else life had in store for her. The wind picking her up and hurling her onto the roof of a car? The poles holding up the awning coming loose and stabbing her in the heart?
All right, so she was being dramatic. But in her defense, if she had any luck at all these days, it was bad luck. Case in point, two weeks earlier, her landlord had informed her his son was moving back to town and Willow had a month to find somewhere else to live. Right, because finding a place to rent mid-July in a beach town was so easy. Don’t even get her started on affordability.
Everything in and around Sunshine Bay was rented until at least September. Everything except her aunt Eva’s place, which was located within spitting distance of her mother’s and grandmother’s apartments. It was also within spitting distance of La Dolce Vita, her family’s restaurant, where Willow was currently waitressing part-time in order to cover her monthly expenses. She was as close to broke as she’d ever been, and that wasn’t going to change if the rumor at work was true.
After the death of the founding family’s matriarch and company CEO fifteen months earlier, Bennett Broadcasting Group had begun divesting its assets, of which Channel 5 was one. Except that according to gossip, Bennett Broadcasting wasn’t selling the TV station in Sunshine Bay, they were closing it.
Willow stomped along the sidewalk, cursing Bennett Broadcasting Group’s acting CEO, Noah Elliot, entitled tourists with no respect for pedestrians, and the gale-force winds and teeming rain.
“You’ve got the face of an angel and the mouth of a fisherman, Lucy!” Amos shouted after her with what sounded like an admiring chuckle.
She waved goodbye as the wind buffeted her from one side of the sidewalk to the other. Amos was right. She had been spouting a pile of crap. Storms weren’t a good thing. They didn’t clear a path. They wre
The objective was to convince Bennett’s acting CEO that they had a viable business plan to increase Channel 5’s viewership exponentially as well as its advertising dollars, and Willow’s idea for Good Morning, Sunshine! was how they’d do it. Surely then Noah Elliot would see the value of selling the station instead of closing it.
But Willow was getting ahead of herself. Her aunt might not even agree to appear on the morning show. After all, she hadn’t spoken to Camilla directly. Her aunt’s agent had finally gotten back to her with a number, and she’d spoken to Camilla’s assistant earlier that morning, explaining that she had something urgent to discuss with her aunt.
If Willow thought her life had sucked these past few weeks, it was nothing compared to how badly it would suck when her family found out she was inviting Camilla to Sunshine Bay. In Willow’s twenty-eight trips around the sun, it was the most disloyal thing she’d ever done. She was selling out her family for a chance at making her dreams come true.
But it wasn’t just about her and her dreams. It was about everyone she worked with at Channel 5. They were her family too, and they needed the inaugural episode of Good Morning, Sunshine! to wow Noah Elliot when he met with Don in two weeks’ time.
Willow’s aunt wasn’t exactly an A-list celebrity but she’d had the dubious honor of spending the better part of the year on the front pages of the tabloids. She was also a hometown girl, even if she hadn’t set foot in Sunshine Bay for the past two decades, which would make her appearance on the morning show even more of a draw.
Willow’s boss had agreed. It was just a happy coincidence that hosting a show like Good Morning, Sunshine! was Willow’s dream job and Don had promised her a seat at the table. If they could change Noah Elliot’s mind about closing the station. They had to change his mind.
She waited for her internal defense of why she’d had no choice but to call her aunt to relieve the guilt she felt at betraying her family. Instead, the mistress of guilt, her grandmother, Carmen Rosetti, popped into her head, listing everything the family had ever done for Willow while demanding to know what they’d done to deserve her betrayal.
Willow sighed. No one did guilt like an Italian grandma, even if she was only in Willow’s imagination.
But all thoughts about the eventual showdown with her family vanished the moment she spotted a familiar black Mercedes idling in the parking lot next to the station.
Her antennae bobbing in front of her face, Willow ran into the lot, unable to avoid a pond-size puddle. Water seeped into her clawed feet, and she looked longingly at the station. Right about now, she’d kill for dry clothes, a cup of hot coffee, and the doughnut her friend and camerawoman had promised her. Ha! It was going to take a lot more than a coffee and a doughnut for her to forgive Naomi for making her walk back to the station.
Willow marched to the Mercedes, ignoring the thought that her anger at the inconsiderate driver might be a tad over the top. The occupants of the luxury vehicle needed to know the speed limit on Main Street was not fifty miles per hour before they once again ventured onto the roads, putting innocent pedestrians’ lives at risk.
The town council had lowered the speed limit on Main Street to twenty-five miles an hour in early June. Motorists going over the new limit wouldn’t start being ticketed until the end of summer. Something that Willow had no intention of sharing with this particular speed demon.
She spied the Mercedes’s license plate and rolled her eyes. A New Yorker, figured. She couldn’t make out much more than a shadowy torso through the fogged-up windows but she heard a deep, muffled voice that seemed to confirm her initial impression that the driver was a man. Since she couldn’t make out another occupant, she assumed he was on the phone.
She rapped lightly on the fogged glass. The shadow moved, and her gaze narrowed. Did he just turn his back on her? If he thought she’d let his dangerous driving go unchecked, he had another thing coming. He was a menace on the road. He had to be stopped, or at the very least schooled on proper driving etiquette. She also expected an apology—a genuine, heartfelt apology. Some groveling wouldn’t be out of place.
As she lifted her hand to knock on the window again, a gust of wind shoved her into the car, causing her lobster claw to slam onto the glass. The shadow jerked away as though she’d terrified him. Then, just as quickly, he went back to carrying on his conversation on the phone as if she weren’t there. Of all the nerve.
“I can see you in there, and I’m not going anywhere so you might as well lower the window.”
It went down a few inches. Dark, long-lashed eyes under inky brows stared at her. “Yes?” he drawled, his voice smooth and deep. It was the kind of drawl that insinuated she was wasting his precious time.
Well, too bad for him. “Are you aware that you were going fifty in a twenty-five?”
“I’m sorry, are you a crosswalk monitor? Traffic control?”
“Do I look like a crosswalk monitor or traffic control?” She gave her head a disbelieving shake at his condescending tone, the water flying off her antennae unintentionally hitting him in the eyes. She pressed her lips together. It took a moment before she was able to say, without a gurgle of laughter in her voice, “Sorry. I have no control over my antennae.”
He raised an arrogant eyebrow, holding her gaze as he brought a starched white handkerchief to his face. Wiping the water droplets away, he ignored her apology, responding instead to the question she’d asked in a tone as superior as the look in his eyes.
“No. You don’t look like a crosswalk monitor or traffic control, which is why I asked. Because unless you are, I have no idea why it’s any concern of yours. But I assure you, I wasn’t driving over the fifty-mile-an-hour speed limit.” His voice was as dry as the desert.
“Ha!” She pointed her lobster claw at him, and he jerked back. “The speed limit is twenty-five miles an hour.”
“No, it’s—” His window went up.
“Seriously?” She rapped on the glass.
He held up a finger while typing on his phone.
She had no idea who this guy thought he was and raised her hand to knock on the window again, only he suddenly lowered it and her lobster claw clunked him on the forehead instead of the glass.
She winced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to smack you.”
Rubbing his now-damp forehead with his handkerchief, he drawled, “You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you.”
He was as bad as Amos. Her apology had been heartfelt. “No. But if you apologize for nearly drowning me when you drove through the puddle like you were an extra in Fast & Furious, I’ll consider forgiving you.”
She wasn’t sure, but she thought there might be a hint of amusement lurking behind his dark eyes. Then he angled his head and, in his smooth, superior voice, said, “I didn’t think it was possible to drown a lobster.”
Huh. She hadn’t expected him to have a sense of humor. Unwilling to give him the satisfaction of seeing her smile or hearing her laugh, she once again cleared the amusement from her voice. “Don’t give up your day job.”
“What makes you think I’m not a stand-up comedian?”
“You’re not funny.”
“Or perhaps you don’t have a sense of humor.” He reached for his ringing phone. “Except the fact you don’t mind walking around in public dressed as a giant lobster suggests that you do. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to take this call.” The window began going up as he greeted the person on the other end.
“I most certainly do mind,” she said, sticking her lobster claw through the window to keep it from closing. She winced. She’d unintentionally punched him again, this time in his ear.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. But you owe me an apology, and I’m not leaving until I get one.”
His shoulders—which she couldn’t help but notice filled out his navy suit jacket very nicely—rose, and he blew out what could only be described as a thoroughly ticked-off breath.
“I’ll be with you in a moment,” he said to whoever was on the other end, and then he looked at her and, in that patronizing tone that made her grit her teeth, said, “I’m sorry that my car sprayed you while you were standing too close to the curb in a torrential downpour.”
