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He shucked off his shoes and stripped off his socks leaving them at the row of lopsided palm trees that formed a natural demarcation between beach and land Or as left of them anyway

Crescent Cove’s beloved pal curve of beach, was looking equally devastated Whole trees had been ripped out by the roots, plucked clean froround and thrown around as if they’d beenon the path or beach wherever they’d been hurled

It would take a lot of years to build it back to its forlory

The hot sun beat down on Luke’s neck, a far cry froed out of his jacket too He undid his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves on his business shirt He turned his phone to silent and slipped it in his back pocket He didn’t want to be disturbed when he spoke to her and he’d already had three urgent texts from the office

Taking a deep, fortifying breath, he stepped onto the beach and headed towards the wo in the powdery sand

Claudia stared at the wreck before her, a sense of helplessness and despair overwhel her She should have known that only a cyclone nae

She refused to give into the harsh burn of tears scalding her eye sockets

She would not cry

Crying was for wimps and she was not a wi her beloved family resort and just because it lay in a shaive into a fit of girly histrionics

She held tight to the comfort of her clipboard They would recover from this They had to

But how? a little voice asked so away in tienerators that had filled the air for days now The sa every time she stood on the beach and was confronted by the true horror of the destruction of the only home she’d ever known

Well, there was the inal structure—for a start Even now its white stucco façade glea sun like a beacon a somehow miraculously survived Mother Nature’s fury with only e

How, Claudia had no idea

How had the dinosaur—or White Elephant as Luke had coined it—alows, hest ever cyclone specifications, had perished?