USA TODAY bestselling author Christie Ridgway introduces a sizzling new series set in Crescent Cove, California, where the magic of summer can last forever…

When Jane Pearson arrives at Griffin Lowell’s beach house, she expects a brooding loner. After all, his agent hired her to help the reclusive war journalist write his stalled memoir. Instead, Jane finds a tanned, ocean-blue-eyed man in a Hawaiian shirt, hosting a beach party and surrounded by beauties. Faster than he can untie a bikini top, Griffin lets Jane know he doesn’t want her. But she desperately needs this job and digs her toes in the sand.

Griffin intends to spend the coming weeks at Beach House No. 9 taking refuge from his painful memories—and from the primly sexy Jane, who wants to bare his soul. But warm nights, moonlit walks and sultry kisses just may unlock both their guarded hearts….

Praise for USA TODAY bestselling author

CHRISTIE RIDGWAY

“Kick off your shoes and escape to endless summer. This is romance at its best.”

—Emily March, New York Times bestselling author of Nightingale Way, on Bungalow Nights

“Sexy and addictive—Ridgway will keep you up all night!”

—New York Times bestselling author Susan Andersen on Beach House No. 9

“Ridgway’s feel-good read, with its perfectly integrated, extremely hot, and well-crafted love scenes, is contemporary romance at its best.”

—Booklist on Can’t Hurry Love (starred review)

“Sexy, sassy, funny, and cool, this effervescent sizzler nicely launches Ridgway’s new series and is a perfect pick-me-up for a summer’s day.”

—Library Journal on Crush on You

“Pure romance, delightfully warm and funny.”

—New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Crusie

“Christie Ridgway writes with the perfect combination of humor and heart. This funny, sexy story is as fresh and breezy as its Southern California setting. An irresistible read!”

—New York Times bestselling author Susan Wiggs on How to Knit a Wild Bikini

“Christie Ridgway is delightful.”

—New York Times bestselling author Rachel Gibson

Dear Reader,

This California girl invites you to a very special California place…your own cottage, right on the sand, where the Pacific Ocean races forward to give your bare feet its cool kiss. The keys to Beach House No. 9 are at your fingertips. Turn the page and you’re in!

Some years ago, the title Beach House No. 9 popped into my head. Busy with other projects, I scribbled it on a piece of paper and pinned it to my office bulletin board. And there it was, waiting for me, after I took a jaunt up the coast and found a very special cove that became the inspiration for the Crescent Cove in my back-to-back-to-back trilogy. Yep, the next two books in the series, Bungalow Nights and The Love Shack, are coming right up—and offer more No. 9 magic. The romances are sexy and fun, but I expect a tear or two may be shed…making the happy-ever-afters all the sweeter.

In this book, heroine Jane Pearson is everything I love in a woman—she’s talented and she’s no pushover, not even for a gorgeous man with a chip on his shoulder. Griffin Lowell tells himself she’s all wrong for him…enjoy watching him find out how right she really is.

Here comes the sun!

Christie

Beach House No. 9

Christie Ridgway

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Acknowledgments

I sold my very first book to Harlequin

and it’s with great pleasure that I continue our association. Many thanks to Margaret Marbury,

who showed such enthusiasm for the idea and

made it happen. Another round of the same to

my editor, Margo Lipschultz, who has taken the time

to get to know me and my books and

who has made this trilogy so, so much better.

Last, I must raise my glass to Harlequin’s

art department. The beautiful covers for this series perfectly capture the enchantment of Crescent Cove.

To the brothers in my life:

my own, my husband and his brother, my two sons.

I’ve seen what’s underneath those all-guy exteriors—deep family bonds and strong yet tender hearts

that are reflected by every hero in my stories.

Contents

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

At last we are in it up to our necks, and everything is changed, even your outlook on life.

—Ernie Pyle, Pulitzer Prize–winning war correspondent

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.

—Zora Neale Hurston, 20th century author

CHAPTER ONE

THE SALT AIR, Jane Pearson realized, was hampering the success of her impending mission. First, it made her normally normal hair fuzzy. Not such a big deal, she supposed as she picked her way downhill, taking the narrow track of crushed shells that led from the coastal road to the picturesque cottages of Crescent Cove, but it was also wilting the white linen dress she wore.

At home, the garment had seemed perfect I-mean-business wear for a June late afternoon. It had short cap sleeves and a collar she’d buttoned tight to the neck, but the swing hemline no longer moved crisply about her knees, instead clinging damply to her thighs. By the time she reached Beach House No. 9, she feared she wouldn’t appear the no-nonsense professional. Kleenex ghost might be a better comparison, the kind that kids made at Halloween—this one spritzed with water and topped with frizzy blondish tendrils.

No matter, she thought. Her determination remained firm. Despite the state of her attire, she wouldn’t soften when facing the man she was here to confront. Griffin Lowell had been ignoring her calls—all eleven of them!—and she wasn’t willing to wait any longer for a response. According to his literary agent, the writer was way behind on his memoir. Jane had been hired to cure his critical case of deadline denial and then help shape the pages she prodded him to produce. It was time to get started.

He needed her.

You need him too, Jane, a little voice in her head added.

She ignored the unwelcome reminder and focused instead on her surroundings. Crescent Cove wasn’t a hardship to visit. It was actually an amazing find in this Southern California county notable for the recently built, oh-so-alike housing developments and shopping malls that sprouted like beige-stuccoed fungi along the Pacific Coast Highway. About those red terra-cotta tile roofs…didn’t anyone realize that too much of a good thing made a bad thing?

By contrast, this beach colony was straight from another time. The fifty or so unconventional bungalows and colorful cottages were prime examples of beach vernacular architectural design—she’d read that—and snuggled the bluffs along a two-mile stretch of sand. Each appeared as cheery and appealing as the bougainvillea that grew like weeds around them in colors ranging from pale salmon to the brightest scarlet. The prevailing sound at the cove was the rhythmic shush of the waves, as the growl of tires on the highway above was screened by a stand of tall eucalyptus. Their medicinal tang mingled with the scents of seaweed, sand and ocean.

A black Labrador in a tie-dyed kerchief ambled toward her, and she smiled at him. Jane loved dogs, though she’d never actually owned one. Growing up, her famed scientist of a father had claimed that pets would distract children from the rigor of their studies. And these days, her hours were too unpredictable to allow for a pet.

“Hello,” she called out to the canine, wiggling her fingers in his direction. His moseying pace didn’t check, however, and he turned down an alley that snaked between two rows of houses. Well. Just another male wrapped up in his own pursuits.

Continuing forward, she approached No. 9 from the rear, where more crushed shells led to a double garage, its door painted a seafoam-green. A handful of beach cruiser bicycles leaned against the dark brown shingled siding. Six cars were parked nearby, half of them luxury sedans, half in dubious running condition, all with two or more surfboards strapped on top, bright-striped beach towels sandwiched between them.

Did Griffin Lowell have houseguests? The thought made Jane pause while she was still fifty feet from the back door. Surely not. His agent had told her the man in question had gone completely hermit, ignoring phone calls, texts and emails—even from friends and family. Jane knew all too well how effectively he’d snubbed her.

“Before he went incommunicado, I spoke to him about getting some assistance with the book,” Frank, the agent, had said. “He agreed. So light a firecracker under him, will you, Jane?”

Of course she would. She was excellent at her job, and after the disaster of her last assignment, it was imperative she prove that again.

Her short-heeled pumps had slender ankle straps and cutouts like eyelets scattered across the toe cap. She watched them carefully as she navigated another fifteen feet on the unsteady shell surface before pausing a second time. Taking in some deep breaths, she tried smoothing down her wisping-every-which-way hair and palm-ironing the damp fabric of her dress. The stakes had her a little tense.

Not to mention that there was the whole recluse thing to consider. Griffin had spent a year embedded with American troops in Afghanistan. He’d seen things, experienced things—hence the memoir—that without a doubt had impacted him. Was he right now sitting alone, staring out to sea, brooding over the nature of God and man? She felt her uneasiness tick up another notch as she imagined that scene, and then herself interrupting his silent solitude.

But you’ve been given a second chance, Jane, and you can’t afford to balk.

With that mantra echoing in her head, she made it to the mat lying outside the front door. It looked like a Jolly Roger, and beneath the skull and crossbones was written: Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here.

Another woman might add that warning to the eleven disregarded phone calls, her jittering nerves, plus the limp state of her clothing and then decide to tackle the author another day. Jane, however, lifted her chin as well as her fist, prepared to rap on the door.

It swung open before her knuckles met wood. A guy in bare feet, yellow board shorts and bleached blond curls stared down at her. From inside came the unmistakable sound of a party. Rap music, raised voices, the shattering of a beer bottle followed by curses worthy of a sailor. Two women passed behind the beach boy, wearing near-identical denim miniskirts and mini bikini tops too, their long highlighted locks straightened to shiny perfection. They clutched tropical-colored drinks complete with umbrellas and didn’t spare a glance for Jane with her fuzzy hair and drooping dress. In the distance, she heard a masculine voice say, “I’m drunk. Smashed. Pissed.” Another someone yelled, “Hey, Brittany, how ’bout you and me get naked?”

Oh, the man she was after was so not a hermit.

“Griffin?” she said, eyeing the surfer dude.

“Nah, I’m Ted. You want him?”

“Yes.” She wasn’t sure if she was happy or sad that Beach Boy wasn’t the man she was after. “Is he available?” As in, not inebriated and not getting bare with Brittany.

“For you? Sure.” He gestured with his thumb over his shoulder. “Inside. Can’t miss him.”

As she scooted past, the dude yelled, “Hey, Griffin! Guess who the liquor store sent out to deliver the chips and booze? Some little thing from librarian school!”

Ignoring her annoyance at the comment, she took in her surroundings. A party was definitely going on at Griffin’s. Twenty or so people milled about a rectangular living room that had a whitewashed brick fireplace on the wall opposite sliding glass doors leading to an ocean-view deck. There, more people were gathered. The rap song gave way to something by Jimmy Buffett as she moved through the crowd, wondering how she “couldn’t miss” the reporter. He worked for magazines, so she’d never seen him on television. The black-and-white photo her preliminary research had uncovered depicted a scruffy figure wearing a combat helmet, flak jacket and dusty sunglasses.

The music blasting from the speakers hiccuped, and the Jimmy Buffett song started again from the top just as she reached those rear doors. Her gaze shifted right, drawn to a twirling mobile hanging in the corner that was made from driftwood and worn, mismatched flip-flops suspended with fishing line. Beneath that piece of “art” was where she found him. She didn’t know how she knew, but she’d bet a hundred-dollar bill she didn’t have to spare that she’d located Griffin Lowell.

In fatigue-green cargo shorts and an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt, he was tipped back in a distressed-leather recliner, a buxom bikini babe perched on each of its arms. A red bandanna covered his head like a biker’s do-rag—or probably a pirate’s, because there was a gold earring in one ear and a patch over each eye. A lean, tan hand was curved around a beer bottle resting on his taut belly. He appeared to be sleeping. Perhaps meditating, if buccaneers did such a thing.

She took a breath. “Griffin? Griffin Lowell?”

His free hand slid toward his crotch. She yanked her gaze away, but then realized he was merely reaching for his front pocket. “How much do I owe you?” he rumbled. “You didn’t forget the tequila, did you?”

“And the diet cherry cola,” one of the bikinis added. “I can’t drink tequila without diet cherry cola.”

He grimaced but repeated her anyway. “And the diet cherry cola.”

Jane just stared at him, shaking her head. It was hard to get a read on the man, what with his hair covered in fabric and his face obscured by those ridiculous eye patches. Peering more closely at them, she could see the black rubber was embossed with, once again, the Jolly Roger skull and bones. “I didn’t bring anything at all,” Jane said, her voice rising a little as Buffett made way for a band she didn’t know. “But, Griffin Lowell, you still owe me.”

After a second’s hesitation, the chair jumped upright, dislodging the girls. Griffin held out his beer and one of the bikinis took it, leaving him free to strip away his pirate paraphernalia: earring, bandanna, eye patch one and eye patch two. For the first time, she got a real look at him.

Oh, Jane thought, swallowing. Shiver me timbers.

He was undeniably attractive, with a lean face as tan as his hand, its bones stark and masculine. There was a grit of black stubble on his cheeks and chin, and his head hair was only a half inch or so longer. A soldier’s style, she supposed. But the eyes that studied her beneath his dark brows were a startling aqua-blue that both observed and assessed with a spotlight intensity. Reporter’s eyes.

They seemed cold at first, but as his gaze roamed lower, to her mouth, then to the too-tight collar that suddenly seemed to choke off her airway and on to her clingy dress and now-rubbery knees, the skin he visually explored began to heat, inch by inch. It was like those beacon fires of old, used to signal an enemy’s approach. A kindling at one location spurred the lighting of the next and so on and so on until everyone—or in this case, every nerve—was on alert. And then Jane recalled that pirates had used such fires too, but as false navigational beacons that lured ships to dangerous waters where they would run aground or even sink.

She should have been chilled by the thought, but instead another wave of heat tumbled over her body. In reaction, she could actually feel her hair lifting away from her scalp and twisting itself into curls she’d never had before.

Willing herself not to touch them, she cleared her throat and spoke with authority. “You haven’t been taking my calls, so I’ve come here to discuss your book.”

At her words, his gaze immediately shuttered, and he shoved back into a reclined position. “I’m not interested.” He held out his hand for his beer and drained it in one long draw.

Jane didn’t let his closed eyes deter her even as annoyance ignited at his clear—and yes, rude—dismissal. “You signed a contract to write a memoir,” she reminded him crisply, then forced herself to soften her tone. “But you don’t have to do it alone. That’s why I’m here—for you.”

When his eyes popped open at that, she even managed a friendly smile. His gaze started running down her body again, causing her lips to flatten and her insides to squirm so her outside wouldn’t. As his eyes resettled on her mouth, she bit her bottom lip to hold back the odd little whimper that was slinking up her throat. It was as unusual as the sudden impulse she felt to turn tail and run.

You can’t afford to balk, Jane.

That little voice acted like a bucket of ice water. “You have pages due soon,” she told Griffin, steady again. “I’ve been hired to help you meet your obligation.”

He cocked his head at her, clearly unenthused.

She continued anyway. “To that end, I’m ready to provide you everything you need.” And in her experience, sometimes that meant applying a swift kick to the seat of an author’s pants, an option that was sounding better and better by the moment. “Whatever you need.”

“Yeah?” One of those black brows lifted, and his voice drawled. “The only things I need, honey-pie, are a couple of shots of tequila, another six-pack of beer and a night of sweaty sex.”

The second brow lifted to the level of the first. “You game?”

* * *

JANE DIDN’T HAVE TIME to respond with more than a sputter before someone shouted Griffin’s name and he was gone, leaving her alone with the empty recliner and the bikinis. “Finally,” one said. “I’ll bet it’s the diet cherry cola.” She wandered off, presumably to check.

The second bikini smiled at Jane, who managed to smile back. “Nice, uh, party. A special occasion?”

The sleek-haired woman shrugged. “It’s Tuesday?”

“Actually,” Jane said, “it’s Wednesday.”

“Oh.” The bikini rubbed a spot between her brows. “I’ve lost track. Finals week, you know.”

Was testing required for the technicians at tanning salons? “You’re a student?”

“Graduate work. Marine biology.” Then she cracked up. “You should see your face! I’m kidding. I’m in beauty school.”

The young woman didn’t need to take classes for that, Jane thought. She was striking in that wide-mouthed, big-breasted way of women who were soap-opera actresses or models in Maxim magazine. “You visit Griffin often?”

“It’s Party Central, y’know? My girlfriend’s boyfriend surfs with him, so we’ve all been hanging out here. He doesn’t seem to mind.”

Which seemed to also verify he wasn’t hard at work on his manuscript. Figuring he’d had enough time to take care of the liquor delivery, Jane excused herself and went in search of him again. It took a few minutes to determine he wasn’t in the galley-style kitchen, any of the bedrooms, the bathrooms or even the garage that housed another gathering of partiers clustered around a table set up for beer pong. On her second search, she discovered that somehow he’d gotten past her and was now stretched out on a lounge in a corner of the deck, his eyes closed once again. His fingers were curled around a fresh bottle of beer.

He might as well have been alone.

Jane didn’t let that deter her. Instead, she dragged a molded plastic chair to his side and plunked herself onto its seat, tucking her wild hair behind her ears. Not a single male muscle twitched.

With a huff, she sent him a pointed look, but that didn’t appear to pierce the bubble he’d erected around himself either. Though she supposed waiting him out would give her the upper hand, she didn’t have that kind of patience. His deadline was at stake. Her reputation.

She huffed again. “Griffin.”

Only his lips moved. “Honey-pie.”

Her back teeth ground together. “Look, I’m here because you told your agent you were interested in someone helping you with your manuscript. That’s what I do.”

When Griffin didn’t respond, she raised her voice. “I’m a book doctor,” she said. “My name is Jane.”

That prodded him a little. His eyes opened a slit. They closed again as one corner of his mouth ticked up. “Of course it is.”

She ignored his amused tone. It wasn’t an unusual reaction, after all. She looked like a Jane. Her brother Byron—as serious and renowned a scientist as their father—had the wild and dramatic appearance corresponding to his literary namesake. Her other overachieving brother, Phillip Marlowe Pearson, could pass for a hard-boiled detective, though as a medical researcher he was much more interested in running DNA tests than running down criminals. Just like them, her name matched her exterior. Her dishwater-blond hair, her pleasant but unremarkable features, her plain gray eyes all said—in a restrained, ladylike hush—Jane.

If her mother hadn’t died when she was still an infant, Jane might have asked her why she hadn’t made a more exotic choice for her only daughter’s given name. Would she have looked different if she’d been called Daisy or Delilah?

However, Jane had an inkling that Griffin Lowell would be attempting to ignore her even if she looked like Scheherazade. And the one who had stories to tell was the man on her left. “About your book…” she started.

“I can’t talk about that at the moment,” he said.

“Why? You don’t look busy.”

His lashes remained resting on his cheeks. “I have guests.”

“Who have found their diet cherry cola,” she pointed out, inexplicably annoyed as she glimpsed that particular woman at the other end of the deck. When she bent over to brush some sand off her calf, her bountiful chest nearly escaped its triangular fabric confines.

“She doesn’t look like she needs to watch her weight, though, does she?” Eyes wide open now, he was looking in the same direction as Jane.

“I wouldn’t care to opine,” she said.

He snorted. “You even sound like a governess.”

She smiled at him. Thinly. “All the better to get the job done.”

“Yeah?” The picture of nonchalance, he folded his arms over his chest and crossed his legs at the ankle. “I think your luck would improve if you’d loosen up a little. Why don’t you go inside and track down a swimsuit. Pour yourself a drink. Then we’ll talk.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, willing, for the moment, to play along. “And you’ll be right here when I return? I have your word on that?”

His gaze slid off to the side. “Let’s make an appointment for next week.”

As if. After meeting him and seeing the setup he had here, she was only more determined not to allow him another inch of wiggle room. His agent was right. The man was in serious denial. “You’ve got to get to work immediately, Griffin, or you won’t make your deadline. The first half of the book is due at the end of the month.”

He ignored that, his gaze fastened on the label of the bottle in his hand. “Book doctor, huh? You know your way around vocabulary and grammar?”

“Yes, though I do more than—”

“So you really know your stuff?” he asked. “Can you spell humulus lupulus? Do you have a familiarity with Saccharomyces uvarum?”

She held on to her patience. “Unless you’re writing a treatise on beer, specifically lagers, I don’t think either of those terms will come up.”

He paused as if vaguely surprised, then he gave a slight shake of his head. “Fine. Let’s talk serial commas, then. Please state your views on their usage.”

Really, the man could make a woman start to consider serial murder—beginning with him. “The serial comma, also known as the Oxford or Harvard comma, refers to the punctuation mark used before the final item in a list of three or more. It’s the standard in American English—”

“According to who?” He bristled.

“Whom,” she corrected. “And it’s according to The Chicago Manual of Style.”

“But—”

“Though that’s for nonjournalistic writing,” she went on, ignoring his interruption. “I’m aware reporters like yourself follow the AP Stylebook, which recommends leaving out the comma before a coordinating conjunction.”

He was silent at that.

She waited a beat. “Did I pass the test?”

“Look.” He sounded exasperated. “I just want to be left alone.”

She gazed around her, taking in the half-dressed beautiful beach people who were drinking his booze and crowding his deck as the sun slid toward the horizon. “Your need for solitude would be a bit more convincing if you weren’t surrounded by a crowd. If your guests didn’t call your place Party Central.”

Something flashed in his eyes. “That’s none of your business.”

Oops. Though clashes between herself and a stalled client were to be expected, downright hostility was not her friend. Jane scooched her chair closer, twisting it to face him. “Griffin…” she said and, like a good governess with a recalcitrant charge, put out a placating hand to touch his leg.

Weird happened when fingers met shin. An electric spark snapped, a tingle shot up her arm, their gazes collided, veered away, crashed again. As yet another glow of heat radiated across her skin, she was paralyzed, still touching him, still staring at him. Confused, she couldn’t seem to pull away. Members of the opposite sex didn’t produce such strong physical reactions in her. She was above all that, she’d always assumed, her interest more in a man’s mind than in his…manliness.

“Griff!” someone said in the distance, then became more insistent. “Griff!”

“What?” He didn’t move. Their stares didn’t waver.

“Sammy says he’s going to jump,” the voice answered.

“Fine,” Griffin responded without emotion. “Tell him to watch the rocks.”

“He says he’s going for the record. He says he’s going to beat you.”

Griffin jerked. The movement broke Jane’s paralysis, and she snatched her hand from his leg. His head swung around to address the man who was standing right beside them. “What did you say?”

It was Beach Boy from the front door. Ted. He pointed to the bluff at the south end of the cove. Even from here, Jane could see a handful of men scrambling along a path up its side. “Sammy says he’s taking off from a spot five feet above your last leap.”

Griffin glanced over his shoulder. “Sammy’s drunk.”

Beach Boy’s curls bounced when he nodded. “It’s why he’s talking trash. But I think he means it. I think he’s going to outdo you this time.”

“Outdo me? Like hell he will.” Griffin was already standing. Then he gripped the railing of the deck and swung himself over and onto the sand below. “Get your camera ready,” he advised the other man as he stripped off his shirt and ran toward the outcropping.

Jane realized she’d spent too much time with English majors and MFAs. They preferred Frisbee golf and strolls through farmers’ markets. They didn’t splash through surf that rose to their knees and then ascend a steep hillside, the muscles in their backs shifting and their strong arms flexing as they reached for each handhold.

They didn’t shout something indistinct and then hurl themselves off a jutting boulder into the roiling ocean.

Several of Griffin’s party guests did just that, from various heights. Jane found herself holding her breath as each man launched himself into space. Her initial reaction could mostly be summed up by “Why?” but after the first couple of men made it back to shore, she could admit there was a certain…exuberance in the activity.

Ultimately there were only two men left on the bluff. One, she guessed, was the drunken Sammy. The other was Griffin. They stood beside each other, the wind tugging at the legs of their shorts.

“Griff should talk him out of it,” one of the partygoers lining the deck railing said. They all wore dark glasses or had their hands up to shade their eyes from the lowering sun. “He’ll have the record if he takes off from there, but Sammy’s just pickled enough not to realize that height means he has to jump farther outward into deeper water.”

But if Griffin tried to talk sense into the other man, it apparently didn’t work. Those on the deck gasped in unison as Sammy bounded from the rock. The others followed his descent, but Jane kept her gaze on their host, who instantly scrambled even higher.

“Is Griffin trying to get a better look at his friend?” she asked Beach Boy, who was still beside her.

“No,” the dude said on a sigh, as Griffin stopped at a sharp nose of stone. “He’s upping the ante. Nobody’s ever attempted a jump from that height. It could be…” He didn’t finish, but the expression on his face did it for him.

It could be dangerous.

Appalled, Jane closed her eyes, squeezing them tight. Though she’d been concerned about her latest author’s uncooperative attitude and then his penchant for crowded beer bashes, she’d remained confident in her ability to help him mold his memoir. She’d been taught long ago that failure was not an option, after all. But clearly the task of aiding Griffin Lowell was going to be more complicated than mentioning deadlines and being available with red pen in hand.

This man was more than a stalled writer. Clearly he was also an impulsive risk taker with an overblown competitive streak.

Or a full-fledged death wish.

CHAPTER TWO

THE TV WAS DRONING at a dull level when Griffin woke up, just as it did every morning. Without opening his eyes, he fumbled for the remote and edged the volume higher. It didn’t register whether the broadcast was news or cartoons or something in between, because it didn’t matter—the noise was only necessary to block out the voices in his head. He wasn’t schizophrenic, he was just hyper-memoried. They had the tendency to play in the background of his brain unless he supplanted them with the sound of twenty-four-hour news or hard-driving music or an alcohol-infused social gathering.

Being Party Central had its benefits.

And another man besides himself was reaping them, he realized as he made his way toward the kitchen a few minutes later. One of his surfing buddies, Ted, was sacked out on the living room floor, a beach towel thrown over him. In his hand, he clutched a bikini top.

Griffin didn’t see a sign of the bottoms or the female body that the D-cups belonged to. He shrugged and prodded the guy’s shoulder with his flip-flop. “Hey.”

Ted batted at the annoyance, thwapping the bikini strings against Griffin’s ankle. “It’s not a school day, Mom,” he murmured.

Though Griffin could hear the television from here, Ted’s mutter sucked him straight to a sandbag-and-timber hooch in a remote northern valley of Afghanistan. Soldiers slept within inches of each other, and someone was always talking in their sleep. To their mom.

Or to their demons.

With a sharp shake of his head, he dislodged the thought and then jostled Ted again. “Kid.” The surfer was in the same age range as the nineteen-to-twenty-seven-year-olds with whom Griffin had spent his embedded year. Those young men had grown up fast. Griffin, at thirty-one, sometimes felt as if he was twice that after those three-hundred-sixty-five days.

“Kid,” he said again. “Get up. Stretch out on the couch. Better yet, take a bed in one of the guest rooms.”

Ted blinked and slowly rolled to a sitting position. He looked down at his naked chest, the beach towel and then the half a bathing suit tangled around his fingers. “Did I get lucky last night?”

“Don’t know.”

The other man lifted the fabric he held and stretched it between both hands. “I was dreaming about that librarian.”

That librarian? Griffin tried not to scowl. Ted could only mean the small stubborn woman who’d arrived uninvited to the party. She was the only bookish female around last night. He’d done his best to ignore her, but she wasn’t easy to avoid, damn her pretty eyes. Jesus, now she had Griffin’s surf buddy thinking about her in his sleep!

“You called her ‘Mom,’” he told Ted.

“Nah. That was my second dream. In my first, you take her with you off the cliff, and her clothes sorta melt to nothing on the way down.”

“Huh.” Griffin tried imagining it, but all he could picture was her mouth flapping at him. The mouth was pretty too, soft-looking. Tender. But it flapped all the same. You signed a contract. You’ve got to get to work.

Ted looked from the bikini to Griffin. “Which reminds me. I took some good shots of your jump. And also of you pulling Sammy to shore. I think he drank as much seawater as beer last night.”

“He puked up both.” Griffin felt guilty about it. He shouldn’t have let the guy take that leap. He’d tried reasoning with him, but he’d recognized the mulish light in his eyes. Griffin had never managed to talk his twin, Gage, out of anything when he looked like that. And Erica had worn that same intractable expression the last time they’d spoken.

A warm furry body bumped against his knee, and he reached down to pet his dog, Private. “You need to go out?” he asked the black Lab. “Okay, I’ll let you take a turn in the garden before breakfast. But for God’s sake, stay off Old Man Monroe’s property. The last time you did your business there he threatened me with citizen’s arrest.”

Private didn’t seem worried about their cantankerous neighbor or his owner’s fate, but just ambled through the back door, his craggy teeth in an anticipatory smile. As Griffin swung the paneled wood shut, a small blue espadrille placed itself in harm’s way.

The canvas, embroidered with multicolored flowers, was attached to the librarian.

Governess.

Jane.

He’d been so sure he’d gotten rid of her yesterday. After all, she’d been gone when he got back from his jump. “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked, using his body to block the opening.

Her answer was to slip a venti-sized cup through the narrow gap, from a coffee place that was a twenty-minute car ride away. Crescent Cove’s isolated location meant you had to commute for your four-buck fix of fancy Seattle caffeine.

“I thought you might like this.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. Her jeans were rolled at the ankle, and she wore a pale blue oxford shirt that seemed to leach the gray from her big eyes. They were as silvery as the morning overcast and looked a little spooky with her dark lashes surrounding them. Her mouth wasn’t scary, though. A rose-petal pink, it had the puffy, swollen look of one that had been kissed all night long.

That was what was so arresting about her, he decided. It had caught his attention the day before too. Though she walked around all buttoned up, there was that contradiction of the making-out kind of mouth.

It gave him this insane urge to check her for hickeys.

Jane sent him a bright smile. “You look like a caramel macchiato kind of man to me,” she said. Then added, “With extra whip.”

“Goodbye.” He didn’t give a damn about her toes.

“Wait, wait, wait,” she cried, but her words turned muffled as he closed the door firmly between them.

“I would have taken that caramel macchiato,” Ted complained, drifting into the kitchen.

Griffin ignored the insistent knocking on the back door. “You don’t know this sort of woman like I do, Ted.” His instincts were on red alert, had been since he’d slipped off his eye patches to find her in his place. That silvery gaze had seemed to look right through him. He didn’t appreciate being that open. “You take her coffee, she takes your soul.”

“I don’t know. She looks harmless to me.”

“Her looks…” Griffin let the thought die off. He wasn’t going to get into Jane’s looks with Ted, who’d been dreaming of her naked. Griffin couldn’t really imagine there was anything interesting under those clothes she wore. He wouldn’t imagine there was anything interesting under there. She had the mouth, and the demands that came from it were all the reason he needed to pretend she didn’t exist.

She’d stopped knocking.

The relief he felt at that had him almost smiling at Ted. He clapped his hands together. “What are we going to do today?” The other man was a part-time county lifeguard. His leftover hours seemed to revolve around surfing and partying, both of which made him the perfect companion in Griffin’s eyes.

Ted’s expression turned troubled. “I don’t know, Griff. Maybe I should take off.”

“What? Why?”

“You’d probably like some privacy.”

It wasn’t exactly panic that shot through him at that last word, but it was close enough to make Griffin’s voice tight. “I would hate some privacy. What’s going on?”

Ted shifted one shoulder. “The librarian. You’re supposed to be writing, she said.”

“The librarian doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” Glancing over his shoulder, he checked the view out the window. She wasn’t there. The tightness around his throat eased. “I don’t owe anyone anything,” he lied.

Ted’s hands were worrying the scarlet bikini top. “Yeah? But still…there’s something about what she said….”

“There’s something about her!” Griffin interrupted, glancing over his shoulder again. “You’re dreaming she’s naked, her mouth is annoying the hell out of me, and—” He broke off as the woman in question came into sight through his window.

“—she’s stealing my dog.”

He stalked closer to the glass. Sure enough, she had threaded what looked like a belt through Private’s kerchief-collar. Though he couldn’t hear her words, it was clear she was coaxing the dog to follow her. He rapped on the glass with his knuckles.

“Hey!” he yelled, cranking open the window. “Leave my pet alone. Besides being a party crasher, are you a dognapper too?”

She froze, those lips of hers turning down in a frown. She looked from Griffin to the animal, then back to Griffin again. Her eyes narrowed.

“Hell,” he muttered, knowing what was coming next. He’d just given her the damn idea himself.

Jane put her free hand on her hip. “Come out and get him.”

“You don’t want me to do that.” He assumed his fiercest expression, the one that had caused a gunman to hesitate a crucial second at a Taliban-manned checkpoint, thus saving Griffin’s life.

Jane, however, merely tapped a toe. “Is that supposed to be a threat? Are you going to come out here and just do-nothing me to death? You can’t meet a deadline, let alone mete out some kind of punishment.”

Rage burned in Griffin’s belly. “Ted,” he said, with a jerk of his head. “Go out there and get Private.”

“No way. I’m afraid of the dog.”

Griffin shot his friend a look. Ted let Private share sandwiches with him, alternating bites. “Bullshit.”

“Okay. I’m afraid of her.”

Jane apparently heard the exchange because she was laughing. “You’re not the only one,” she called out.

Griffin saw red again. He strode to the back door and threw it open. Then he advanced on the governess, determined to get back his dog and get her on her way, never to return.

“Stealing’s pretty low, lady,” he said in a menacing voice. “You think it’s okay to purloin man’s best friend? Abscond with an innocent animal?”

She laughed again. “Purloin. Abscond. You’re good with synonyms, at least. Maybe there’s hope after all that you can meet your authorial commitment.”

This close he could smell her. It was a sweet, feminine scent, and it almost dizzied him as he made to snatch the impromptu leash from her hand.

“Don’t touch her!” a cranky elderly voice snapped.

“What?” Griffin glanced over to see Old Man Monroe approaching, his beetled brows and stabbing cane making clear he was on another of his tirades. “What’s got you riled now?”

“I won’t allow you to hurt that young lady.”

Hurt her? He had never wanted to hurt a woman in his life, which was probably how the thing with Erica had gotten so out of hand. He hadn’t even wanted to wound her with the truth. “I’m not touching the young lady. What’s she to you anyway?”

Old Man Monroe, who had likely been bad-tempered for all ninety-four years he’d been on the planet, looked at Griffin with undisguised dislike. It didn’t bother him a lick. It had been the man’s attitude toward both Griffin and his brother every vacation since they’d begun running around the cove on their own as kids.

“She saved me from calling county animal control. Your mangy mutt was in my garden again. Wouldn’t budge an inch, even though I was throwing my old GI boots at him.”

“Couldn’t hit the side of a barn,” Jane murmured under her breath, “but I thought I should get your pup out of there anyway.”

“Would have cost you three hundred bucks to spring him from the shelter,” Old Man Monroe said.

“Or you could just have picked up the phone instead of your army boots and called me. You know the number.”

Monroe continued as if Griffin hadn’t said a word. “So you owe the young lady.”

Jane shot him a triumphant smile. “Haven’t I been saying just that?”

Ignoring them both, Griffin detached Private from the improvised leash and then began walking the dog back toward the house.

“Don’t you have something to say to her?” his curmudgeonly neighbor demanded.

“Yes,” Jane echoed. “Don’t you have something to say to me?”

“Sure,” Griffin answered, not looking back. “Go away. And don’t think you can traipse into my house again. I’m putting everyone at Party Central on notice. Nobody looking like a governess or a librarian is welcome at Beach House No. 9.”

* * *

JUST LIKE THE dognapping, Griffin had given Jane the idea himself. Nobody looking like a governess or a librarian is welcome at Beach House No. 9.

She was determined to get inside the place again. Beyond that? Her plan went hazy there. But she figured if she could make her way into Party Central once more, then he would understand she wasn’t letting him off the hook. Her fortitude might be the prod that would get him sitting down to start those pages.

Unlike this morning, this time she approached the house from the front. It meant trudging through the sand in a pair of strappy wedge sandals, but she plowed forward, passing other cottages and winding around happy beachgoers. Though the month of June often meant coastal overcast in the late afternoons, the Crescent Cove sky was a brilliant blue as the sun sank toward the horizon. The long sweatshirt she wore over her party outfit made her too hot, and she paused in front of the small bungalow numbered “8” in order to slide down the zipper.

A slender woman was tapping a For Rent sign into the ice plant growing beside the front porch steps. Unlike Jane, she must have been immune to the sun, for over her capri jeans she wore a fisherman’s knit sweater that reached her knees. Turning, she let out a frightened bleat. Her hand clutched at her chest. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t see you standing there.”

“I should apologize,” Jane said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

The woman pushed her long dark hair away from her forehead. “Not your fault, really. I startle easily.” Her gaze took in Jane’s outfit, her high shoes, the hair that she’d salt-air-armored with a palmful of styling product and her flat iron set on High. “Visiting Beach House No. 9?”

“Ha!” Jane said, smiling. “I look like I’ll fit right in, do I?”

“Um, yeah. Are you a friend of Griffin’s?”

“Sort of. I’m Jane Pearson.”

“I’ve known Griffin all my life. I’ve always lived at the cove, and the Lowells summered here every year.” She gave a shy smile. “I’m Skye Alexander. Nowadays I manage the rental properties in the area.”

“Nice to meet you.” Jane’s gaze lingered on the For Rent sign as she filed away the thought that Skye might be a helpful resource regarding Griffin.

Skye glanced over her shoulder. “No. 8 had a leaky roof, among other things, that kept it unavailable for a while. Griffin actually wanted it, but he had to take the place next door.”

They both turned to look at Beach House No. 9. A kite attached to a fishing pole was whipping above the second-floor balcony. People were crowded on the first-floor deck, and Jane could make out a Beach Boys tune that changed to something from the Beastie Boys. A nubile female in a string bikini and nothing else climbed onto a table and began gyrating, to the hoots and applause of the rest.

“Has the makings of a rowdy one tonight,” Skye said.

Jane sent her a weak smile. “I can’t wait.”

The short trek to the front door of Party Central gave her time for second thoughts. Not that she was necessarily afraid of a little hedonistic celebrating—she had a friend or two who might say she was past due for some of that—but she wasn’t exactly comfortable with the idea or with her costume.

It wasn’t Jane-the-governess wear. Of course, that was entirely the point, but still, she shivered as she let the sweatshirt slide from her shoulders on her approach to the front door. Her exposed skin prickled as the ocean breeze tickled her flesh. Taking a page from the bikini girls of the day before, she’d put on her own suit. The black two-piece had appeared fairly modest in the Macy’s dressing room, and she’d snapped on a mid-thigh-length black jean skirt over the bottoms as well. But the deep plunge of the halter top and the hip-hugging waistband of the skirt left a lot of bare flesh revealed. Her wedge shoes made her legs feel miles longer—which was good until she realized that meant miles more nakedness too.

She thought about swamping herself in the fleece sweatshirt again. She considered turning around and coming up with another plan for a different day. Then she remembered Ian Stone and how he’d trampled her pride and her reputation. Her inner resolve stiffened. With a deep breath, she knocked on the front door.

As she’d hoped, it wasn’t Griffin who opened it. If yesterday was any indication, he was tucked in some secluded corner. The guy on the other side of the threshold wasn’t familiar to her, though he was dressed in the common male uniform of board shorts and a tan. His smile was white, and a dark blue tattoo over one pumped pec showed the silhouette of a surfer carrying his board under his arm.

“Babe!” he said, as if they were old friends. His warm palm cupped her shoulder to draw her inside. “You need a beverage!”

It was that easy. She figured the layers of mascara she’d applied had done their part, as well as the raspberry gloss she’d pinkied onto her mouth. Once she had an umbrella drink in her hand, Jane decided she could introduce herself as something more exotic with an entirely straight face. Jana. Janelle. Jezebel.

As she walked across the deck, a man grabbed her wrist, and dragged her near to dance to an old B-52s tune. He put his hands at her waist and she used the shuffling circle they made to search for Griffin. If she spotted him, she wasn’t sure what she’d do. Wave? Stick out her tongue? But both seemed childish when all she wanted was to remind him of his obligations, one professional to another.

She glanced down at her naked skin and skimpy outfit with another wave of misgiving. Perhaps this had been a bad idea after all. The urge to cover up had her edging away from her dance partner. His fingers tightened on her waist.

“Where you going?” he asked.

“To get my sweatshirt.” She made a vague gesture toward the front door where she’d left the thing on a bench.

“And hide away all that creamy skin?” the guy protested, leaning close to her ear. “That would just be so…wrong.”

Her smile was halfhearted. “Yeah, well, I’m a little chilled.” Please, please don’t offer to warm me up.

He took her hand and started boogying across the deck. “Okay. Where’d you leave it?”

“At the entrance.” Gratified that he hadn’t followed with the obvious line, she let him lead her through the crowd. Even with her wedge heels, her lack of height meant she didn’t see much more than the shoulders, chests and backs of the male guests. If there was one thing she could say about the surfer crowd, their upper bodies were very well developed.

When her dance partner finally stopped, she stuttered her steps to prevent her nose from ramming into his spine. He spun around and pressed her against a nearby wall. Jane realized he’d drawn her into a small side room that held a washer, a dryer and a wooden contraption draped with a handful of beach towels.

“This isn’t the entrance,” she pointed out. “That’s where I left my sweatshirt.”

He smiled at her. “Let me be the one to warm you up.”

Oh, damn. “You just had to go there,” she muttered. Then she raised her voice. “No, thanks.”

“Please,” her dance partner wheedled. He was a nice-looking guy, and for a second Jane considered it. She hadn’t been kissed since the Ian disaster and she was all Jezebel-ed up, wasn’t she? Why not take a little walk on the wild side?

Someone strolled by the open door, and the man called out. “Jer! Come in here and convince this pretty little thing that I can rock her world.”

“Jer” paused, stretching muscular arms to grip the doorjamb on either side. Jane’s pulse tripped, then started accelerating. The new guy was big enough to block a lot of the light. The room’s walls started to contract—in her mind anyway.

The second man’s smile seemed sinister. “Ricky’s good, but I’m better. You want to take a turn with me, pretty lady?”

She swallowed. “I don’t want to take a turn with anyone. Excuse me.” But Ricky still had hold of her wrist.

“She’s with me, Jer.”

“Aaah, she’ll share, won’t you…?”

“Jane,” she said, in her most quelling tone. To heck with Jana, Janelle or Jezebel. Her real name had turned men off before. Like Griffin. “I’m Jane, and I want to go now.”

“Me Tarzan,” Jer said, thumping his chest, and then moved into the small room. “Want to make Boy with me, baby?”

She was never wearing a bathing suit again. Or wedge heels. Or so much mascara—though with her gold-tipped lashes, she couldn’t give it up entirely.

“Get out of my way,” she said, yanking her wrist free of Ricky to give him a push. When he stumbled away, she was left with Jer between her and the exit. Though she told herself she wasn’t in any real danger, her heart was pounding against her breastbone, and her blood was running ice-cold under her suddenly hot skin. “I’m leaving now.”

“Ah, babe—” Jer started, and then he was yanked backward, into the narrow hall. “Hey!”

Griffin Lowell pushed the man farther down the passage, then took his place in the doorway. Another pair of shorts hung on his hips and a wedge of bare chest showed between the sides of his half-buttoned shirt, which was decorated with pineapples and busty, half-naked hula girls. His whiskers were grittier than they’d been that morning and only called attention to his—frowning—mouth. “What’s going on?”

Ricky moved closer to Jane and slid a proprietary arm around her. “Have you met the new girl?”

Griffin’s turquoise eyes slid toward her. Her exposed flesh prickled all over again, and her blood turned as hot as the surface of her skin. Was that a hint of appreciation in his eyes? “She’s my girl,” he said with a straight face.

“Nice try.” Ricky laughed. “You haven’t had a woman in the three months you’ve been living here.”

“I’ve been waiting for this one.”

Ricky frowned now. “Well, you can’t have her. I saw her first. Squatter’s rights and all that.”

Squatter’s rights? She sent the guy a baleful look. Now that Griffin stood two feet away, her sense of impending danger had evaporated.

“Let go of the lady, Rick.”

“I won’t.” He yanked Jane close to his side, and when she struggled to escape his grip, he wrapped an arm around her front too. “Just because you want her doesn’t mean you get to have her.”

“But she wants me right back,” Griffin said, his eyes glittering. “Don’t you, honey-pie?”

With her bare skin, bathing suit, straight hair and several coats of mascara, she hadn’t been entirely sure he’d recognized her. The “honey-pie” made clear that he definitely had, and she wasn’t too proud to accept help. She answered him in as sweet a voice as possible. “Of course I want you, chili-dog.”

His gaze zeroed in on her face. “Chili-dog.”

“I just love our little names for each other.” She reached out a hand toward him.

Ricky was frowning. “I’m not buying any of this,” he said, his attitude bordering on belligerent.

Griffin’s fingers closed over hers. A zing of heat flamed up her arm and that sense of impending danger returned tenfold. Uh-oh. Maybe playing along with him had been the riskier choice. “Then believe this,” he said.

A quick jerk had her free of the other man and pressed against Griffin’s hard chest. Then his mouth slammed onto Jane’s.

CHAPTER THREE

“SHUT THE PARTY down early last night, eh?” Old Man Monroe called to Griffin as he monitored Private’s morning sniff-and-pee. The front of the nonagenarian’s upslope property bordered the side yard of Beach House No. 9.

Griffin grunted in response. He’d shut down Party Central for good. The crabby coot currently frowning at him might have managed to do that himself by complaining about the nightly noise, but without his hearing aids he was apparently stone-deaf. When he saw the crowd gather at Griffin’s, he said he just removed the “fiendish devices” and turned on the History Channel’s closed captions.

What had prompted Griffin to kick everyone out the night before hadn’t been concern over his neighbor. He’d been furious that— No, there’d been no fury about it. He’d been ice-cold when he’d cut the music and ejected the partygoers from the premises, starting with that bastard Rick. The man had mumbled something—an apology, an excuse?—but Griffin had shoved him so hard down the porch steps that he’d landed on his dumb ass. After that he’d been smart enough to scramble to his feet and run.

Griffin had done a lot of shoving last night.

Guilt rushed into his gut at the memory, and he pinched the bridge of his nose to refocus his thoughts. Jane had exited as fast as Rick—though staying on her feet—and that was good. He wouldn’t be bothered by her again.

He wouldn’t be bothered by anyone, for that matter. After last night he’d made it clear he wasn’t into playing the happy host any longer. The act hadn’t worked for shit anyway. He’d have to find some other distraction to keep the events of the embedded year from invading his mind.

“So what’s the word on your brother?” Monroe asked now. “Is he in a safe place?”

Worry sucked as a diversion, Griffin discovered. Private must have sensed the emotion, because the dog whined, then rushed to his owner’s side, butting his leg. Griffin slid his palm along the warm crown of the animal’s head and then caressed his butter-soft ears. It made his breath come a little easier.

“Gage is in his element.” Smack-dab in the danger zone, snapping photos with his camera. But he’d know if Gage was threatened, he reassured himself. The twin connection had always been strong. Still, it was only shallow comfort. Griffin knew firsthand that safety in war-torn places was a moment-to-moment thing.

“Is he—”

“I don’t want to talk about him, old man,” Griffin said. It was unkind, but, hell, he didn’t owe Rex Monroe politeness. Their neighbor had more than once ratted out him and Gage to their mother, including the first time he’d spied them climbing from their bedroom window after lights-out. As seventh-graders, they’d been busted with girls about to enter high school.

He shot Monroe a dark look. “Were s’mores with a couple of older chicks on the beach against the law?” he groused. “I was planning on getting some hands-on education that night.”

The old man’s laugh was rusty. “You forget the two of you juvenile delinquents had toilet-papered my car earlier that day.”

Oh, yeah. He had forgotten. He and Gage had gravitated to trouble that summer and every other. Those annual months at the cove had offered a freedom they didn’t have in their suburban life and were likely the seed from which had grown their need for adventure.

Maybe that sense of freedom was what had drawn Griffin back. After a year of teetering on the brink of death, maybe here he could figure out how he was supposed to go on.

Private’s nose jerked out of a patch of weedy grass. His body quivered for a moment, and then he bounded off with a short, happy bark. Griffin groaned. The dog loved company almost as much as chow time, which was saying a lot for a Lab. Probably some former guest was dropping by, one who hadn’t yet gotten word that his doors were now locked. No more midmorning margaritas, afternoon beers, late-night lambada contests.

He headed for his back door. “Be your usual rude self, will you, Rex, and whoever that is—get rid of ’em.”

The old codger squinted, peering over Griffin’s head. “If it was one of your usual ruffian playmates, I’d be happy to.”

Oh, hell, Griffin thought.

“But this is that nice young woman again.”

Who was probably after an apology. On a sigh, he turned.

As he’d suspected, it was the governess, in her animal-rescuer guise, her fingers looped around Private’s collar. Today she was back in Jane-wear, shell-studded flip-flops, knee-length orange shorts, an oversize T-shirt that proclaimed “Reading Is Sexy,” and her hair curling every which way. His pet gazed on her with tongue-lolling devotion. “Did you lose your dog again?” she asked.

He’d lost his mind, kissing her last night. She’d shown up uninvited again, which was hardly a surprise. He’d already guessed the woman didn’t like taking no for an answer. What had surprised him was the way she’d dressed, all beach-sweetie with skin showing, hair straight, some nice—yet not overblown—cleavage. If it had been a disguise, it was a piss-poor one. From his perch on the deck railing he’d noticed her immediately and kept his gaze on her, following behind when she’d been pulled off the dance floor.

No matter what she wore, she still had those eerie, see-through eyes. They scared him a little, just like mirrors did these days. And then there was The Mouth. That primmed-up, puffy-lipped mouth that always looked as if someone had been sucking on it before he got there.

As effing Rick had been about to do.

Though the other man was more talk than action, meaning Jane could have handled him herself, Griffin had still gone territorial. Seeing the jerk move in on her, he’d thought, Damn it, I’m tasting her first! and then he’d been doing that. Tasting her.

What had come across his tongue had been berries, rum, surprise and…heat. Shit. All that heat.

And didn’t he know that the last thing he needed to add to the mess of his inner life was high temperatures. Or a woman.

Galvanized to get her out of his world—for good this time—he stomped toward her, taking control of his dog and the situation. “I suppose you want to hear me say I’m sorry.”

She ignored him to peer around his shoulder. “I thought your name rang a bell when we introduced ourselves yesterday morning, Mr. Monroe. It came to me later. You are the Rex Monroe, yes? The famous reporter?”

Without looking, Griffin could feel the cantankerous antique behind him preening. “Well, young lady, I don’t know about famous…”

Griffin rolled his eyes. “Don’t get him started.”

“It’s an honor to meet you, sir,” Jane continued, still ignoring Griffin. “I devoured a compendium of 1940s war journalism about ten years ago. I enjoyed your pieces so much.”

“Why, you must have been just a baby,” Monroe said, sounding pleased.

Jane smiled. “I was a bookworm from birth.”

“You bug the hell out of me, anyway,” Griffin muttered.

She’d never smiled at him like that. She’d worn a clearly fake one upon their introduction two days before. Last night, after he’d wrenched his mouth from hers, he’d shoved her off and spun away—not knowing if he’d left her spitting fire or beaming with pleasure.

Yeah, he’d pushed her away. And yeah, he supposed she hadn’t been too pleased with either that or the way he’d taken it upon himself to lock their lips first. Hers had been as soft as they looked, pillowy like he’d imagined, and they’d opened on the smallest of gasps when he swiped across the seam with his impatient tongue.

Once inside, he’d stroked deep for her flavor, not acting with his usual finesse. He’d just claimed every centimeter of that wet heat as lust had shuddered across his skin in waves. What had he been thinking? She was a pest.

She was governess Jane, the librarian look-alike.

Certainly she was here to slap him.

Resigned to it, he turned his face to the side and tapped his cheek with the hand not gripping Private. “Go ahead. Hit me.”

She took a step back, blinking. “What are you talking about? I don’t want to hit you.”

“You should seize the opportunity,” Old Man Monroe advised.

“Can it, you decrepit coot,” Griffin called over his shoulder.

Jane blinked again. “Don’t you know who you’re talking to? This man won major awards for his war reporting. A Pulitzer. He’s one of the best of the best.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Greatest generation and all that. It doesn’t change the fact that he’s been a pain in my ass since I was seven years old.”

“A mutual sentiment,” his neighbor put in.

“Surely it’s time for your daily dose of The Golden Girls,” Griffin said, turning his head to glare at the grizzled grouch. “Or maybe you need a nap, old man?”

“If I take one, then that’s my prerogative. I’m retired from deadlines, unlike yourself. Don’t be lazy.”

“Lazy?” His temper yanked its chain like a mad dog glimpsing the mailman. “I spent a year without running water or electricity. A year with flies and firefights and my own filth. A bullet went through my helmet when I was lying on my bunk, and it was hooked on a nail fourteen inches from my own damn skull.”

“So sit your keister down and write about it.”

“I did, though I suppose you’re too senile to read the words. I gave the magazine that sponsored the embed assignment an article every month.”

“But now you have the time, the space and the security to analyze the events. Put them in context. Describe how they’ve changed you. Sex and booze aren’t going to take the experiences out of your head, boy.”

Boy? Most days Griffin felt a thousand years old. And not that he’d confess to Monroe or anyone else, but booze had fallen off his “Might Work” list. As for sex…that drive had been neutralized after what had happened to Erica. Even before then, when they were bunking with the platoon, there’d been too little alone time and too many strung-tight nerves to find a reprieve in that kind of release.

Okay, and he’d also been trying to get some distance from her.

“I’m going inside,” he said, turning toward the back door, Private close to his thigh. “Sweet dreams, Rex.”

“Griffin.”

His feet stopped moving. He’d almost convinced his brain that Jane wasn’t still standing there. Those three-hundred-plus days in Afghanistan had demonstrated the power of the mind. During his stint with the troops, on occasion he would swear he smelled hot water—and it did have a scent. Other mornings he’d woken, and before he’d opened his eyes he would hear Gage humming his favorite Lynyrd Skynyrd tune. He could feel his brother just a few feet away.

Once, after an incident like that, he’d managed to reach his twin via sat phone. He’d asked him what, if anything, he’d been singing to himself as he washed up for the day. “Free Bird.” Yeah, it had felt really, really real.

But Governess Jane was really, really real as well. So he turned to face her. “What is it? You rethinking that slap?”

Her lips were in their primmed state. “About what happened last night…you should know I don’t scare off so easily.”

She thought he’d had a motive beyond her mouth? “Clearly.”

“And if you come near me with that purpose in mind again, it won’t be your face that feels the pain.”

His brows rose. He didn’t plan on ever seeing her again, let alone kissing her, but he decided against clueing her in. And for damn sure he wasn’t going to confess that kissing her had been only about impulse, not intention. “Fine.”

She started to move off, and it was then he noticed the medium-sized piece of luggage in her hand. His hackles rose. “What do you have there?” he asked, gesturing to it.

“I believe it’s called a duffel bag?”

Goose bumps were forming along his spine. “You’re out of here, right?” Please, God, she was leaving.

“I’m out of here, but not going far,” she said smugly. “I’m moving into the vacant bungalow next door.”

* * *

IT TOOK LITTLE TIME for Jane to get situated in No. 8. It was much smaller than Griffin’s place, and she’d brought only a few items from her apartment. That was a small space too, and a long commute—even by SoCal standards—from here. She didn’t feel a particular attachment to it. Often her job had taken her away from the one-bedroom for weeks at a time when a client had wanted her closer. Of course, in this case her client wanted her anything but closer, but he’d thank her for her dedication in the end. She was sure of it.

The idea had come to Jane as she’d picked her way past the empty cottage after leaving the party—after that kiss. If Griffin was pulling out all the stops to chase her off, her solution was to place herself even more underfoot. Following this morning’s first cup of coffee, she’d found Skye Alexander’s phone number and made the arrangements.

The only flaw was how distracting Jane found the endless view of ocean and the ever-changing play of waves against sand. If Rex Monroe hadn’t stopped by with a leather-bound volume of plastic-sheathed pages, she might have succumbed to temptation and spent the afternoon concerning herself with nothing more than the freckles a sunbath might bring out on her nose.

Now, though, she laid Rex’s book on the small dining table situated between the galley kitchen and postage-stamp living room. To the right of the album, she set her sweating glass of iced tea. Her pulse picked up as she drew out a chair. She had a feeling she’d find the key to achieving Griffin’s cooperation here.

A knock sounded on the front door. With a pat and a promise for the book, she turned toward the entry. It was the property manager, Skye, on the other side of the threshold. Today the brunette had her hair in a tight French braid, revealing the fine bones of her slender face. She didn’t wear a stitch of makeup and was dressed in baggy chinos and a T-shirt. A sweater-vest that must have been the discard of a male relative concealed more of her shape.

She held up a red glass plate piled with cookies and covered by plastic wrap. “I thought you might enjoy these. Are you settling in okay?”

Jane gestured her inside and led her toward the small couch and adjacent easy chair that sat across from a small fireplace. “I should be bringing you treats. Thank you so much for giving me the oh-so-reasonable rental rate.”

Shrugging, Skye perched on a cushion. “We’re doing each other a favor. Most vacationers have already secured their places for the season, not to mention the lousy economy that’s affecting bookings…plus, I like it when I know a little something about who’s living here. It makes the cove feel…safer.”

Safer? “It’s like something out of a fairy tale,” Jane said. “The cove seems almost magical.”

Skye slid the cookies onto the narrow coffee table in front of her. “It definitely felt that way when we were kids. We ran around like a tribe of lost boys and girls in Neverland.”

“That’s right. You said you grew up with the Lowells.”

“Every summer.” She hesitated. “That’s why when you said you wanted to keep an eye on Griff, it added another good reason to let you have No. 8.”

Uh-oh. Did that mean Skye had a special interest in him herself? A romantic interest? Maybe she saw another woman as some kind of threat and wanted a catbird seat on what she imagined might take place between Jane and the man next door. “I, um, there’s nothing between…” She shut down thoughts of that kiss the night before. “My business here is just that—purely business.”

Skye’s expression blanked, and then she laughed a little. “There’s nothing between me and Griffin either, if that’s what you’re thinking. His twin brother, Gage…”

Twin brother? Good Lord, there were two of them? The other woman’s rising blush told her even more. “Oh, it’s him you’re involved with,” Jane said.

“No.” Skye gave a violent shake of her head. “Not that either. Never that. It’s just that we…that Gage and I correspond. He’s a photojournalist on assignment in the Middle East, and he worries about his brother.”

Maybe it was the voracious reader in her, but Jane thought there might be a story in the “not that either” that was going on between the brunette and Gage Lowell. Her curiosity was piqued. “Would you like a glass of iced tea while we chat?”

“No, thanks.” Skye jumped to her feet. “I won’t take up much of your time. I just wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood.”

Jane trailed the other woman to the front door. Skye paused there, the doorknob in her hand. Then she turned, her pretty face serious. “Don’t forget that in fairy tales…well, there’s almost always a wolf or a dragon waiting to capture the fair maiden.”

A chill skittered down Jane’s spine as the property manager slipped out. She had to shake herself to get rid of the dark mood that tried settling over her. With a look toward the sunny vista out the windows, she headed back to her seat and the album waiting there.

She’d just settled onto the chair when another knock sounded. This time, she heard a curious scrabble against the door as she pulled it open. Private, the black Lab, widened the space with his muscular shoulders. Curly-haired Ted, fingers wrapped around the dog’s kerchief, was yanked inside behind the eager canine.

The dog swiped her fingers with a wet tongue before heading straight for the red plate of cookies on the table beside the couch. He sat, staring at them.

“Sorry,” Ted said. “I’m on pet patrol, and he must have smelled those as we came by. He has a nose on him you wouldn’t believe.”

The man looked at the treats with the same hopeful expression as the animal he was tending. Jane laughed. “I take it you both like oatmeal raisin?”

“If it’s a baked good, I think we both like just about anything,” Ted confessed.

Jane found a paper napkin, then removed the clear wrap from the plate. “Would you like some iced tea with that?” she asked.

Ted fed the dog a cookie before helping himself to one. “I’m good, thanks,” he said, between bites.

Jane watched him split a second treat with the dog. “Are the festivities at Party Central beginning early? I got the impression No. 9 didn’t start rocking and rolling until late afternoon.”

Ted shook his head. Swallowed. “Ah, nope. Last night, Griffin declared the parties are over, over there.”

“Oh.” She slid her hand along Private’s fur as the dog leaned against her legs. “I must have missed that announcement.”

“It was after you left. He went on a tear and had everyone out in less than thirty minutes. Paid for a bunch of cabs to take home those people too drunk to drive themselves.”

What, had kissing Jane put him out of a celebratory mood? “Does he ever have a good time at those parties he throws?”

Ted shrugged. “Truth? Since he moved to the cove, I don’t think Griffin has had any good times at all.”

But he’d changed up the circumstances, Jane mused. Without the diversion of booze and bikinis, maybe he was ready to settle down to work. Optimism made her hungry, she realized, and the cookies looked so good. She grabbed one and, as she felt the hard press of Private’s body, broke off a hefty piece for him.

Ted watched the dog gobble it down. “We should probably keep the canine treat-sharing sorta secret, okay? Our furry buddy here eats that low-cal kibble, and Griffin’s always after me when I feed him scraps.”

“Oops.” She made a face. “He won’t hear it from me.”

“As a matter of fact,” Ted continued, “you won’t tell Griff we visited at all, will you? We’re under strict instructions to avoid No. 8, but Private isn’t so good with orders.”

Jane sighed. So much for optimism. “I suppose that means I shouldn’t expect Griffin to start cooperating with me anytime soon.”

The surfer shrugged, his expression sympathetic. “Well, he did close down Party Central.”

Hope lightened her mood a little. “Does he look like he’s buckling down to work? You know, sitting at a table with a laptop or a pad and pen?”

Ted ran his hand over his hair. “He’s in a chair. Like you said, at a table.”

Ha! Jane felt herself smiling. “That’s good! That’s very good.”

“But there’s no computer. And I haven’t seen a scrap of paper or a writing implement anywhere in the house.”

Jane considered this. “Do you suppose he’s working it out in his head? Making mental plans, might you say?”

“He’s got his iPod blasting so loud that I don’t believe he can hear himself think,” Ted replied. “And he’s playing cards. Hand after hand of solitaire.”

Man and dog left soon after that, and their visit made Jane dispirited enough that she ate two more cookies—pessimism apparently made her hungry too—while staring morosely into the distance. First it was the warning of wolves and dragons, she thought as she munched. Next it was news of a recluse firmly ensconced in his cave. This did have the feel of a fairy tale.

She took up the glass plate and set it beside Rex’s album on the dining table. Then the front door reverberated with yet another round of knocking, and she turned to trudge toward it. “What now?” she muttered, as she pulled it open. “A troll?”

Griffin narrowed his eyes at her. “My mood is a lot uglier than that.”

She stepped back to avoid the brush of his body as he barged inside. Though she realized she should welcome him onto her turf, there was a disturbing aura about him. He moved into the small living area, his wide shoulders and simmering temper making the room feel a lot smaller and a lot…hotter.

A memory from the night before burst in her head. His hard hands gripping her bare shoulders. The sandpaper feel of the whiskers edging his lips. The thrust of his tongue, the clack of his teeth against hers, the almost violent edge to the unexpected kiss.

Her stomach muscles had contracted, and though she’d been quaking beneath his touch, she’d opened her mouth wider, succumbing to the insistent demand of his. Beneath her bikini top, her nipples had stiffened, and she’d pressed closer to ease the ache.

When his fingers had tightened on her skin, she’d thought his touch might be tattooed there forever, and her only regret was all the other places he’d yet to make contact.

Then in a move as aggressive as the kiss itself, he’d put her away from him. She’d staggered back, dazed, her gaze on his stiff back as he’d stalked off.

It had taken two hours and a cup of black coffee to realize he’d been using sex to scare her away. Well, not exactly sex…okay, it was exactly sex. A kiss, she realized now, a kiss from Griffin, could be as intimate as any full body connection she’d had with another man. Her nerve endings were still smoking from it.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Griffin barked.

She felt a blush rise up her neck. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He rolled his eyes, then stalked farther into the room and threw himself down on the couch. “What will it take to get you out of here? You’re making me nuts. I can feel you all the way at No. 9.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Lust couldn’t travel that far, could it? A governess’s lust surely didn’t have that kind of power. One spoke Jane’s name in a hush, and heretofore her sexual desires had been fairly muted as well. “It’s just your guilt talking.”

He rocketed to his feet. “You deserved that damn kiss, walking around with all that skin, and especially with that…that…” His vague gesture seemed to indicate her hair.

She put a hand to it. “I can’t help that it’s fuzzy,” she said in a defensive tone. “And anti-frizz serum makes it sticky.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I don’t know.” It was true. With him in this small room, the air crackled with an energy that was messing with her brain synapses. “I thought you were complaining about my hair.”

“It’s not your hair.” He glared at her. “It’s your mouth. Can’t you do something about that?”

She put her hand over her lips, embarrassed all over again. Ian had once commented on it as well. “A former boyfriend called it a silent-movie-star mouth,” she heard herself confess. At the time, she’d pictured photos of famous actresses of the era with their waiflike features and bow-shaped lips and been uncertain what to think.

“God knows I want to tie you to some railroad tracks,” Griffin muttered.

She imagined his hands on her, winding rope around her wrists and ankles, and another flare of heat shot over her skin. Her palms were sweating, and she buried them in her pockets. Oh, Jane, she told herself, looking away from his tight jaw and angry eyes, we’re definitely not in the library stacks anymore.

“This is ridiculous.” He was muttering again, and now he began to pace about the room. “There’s got to be some way for me to get out of this.”

Thoughts of bondage fled. Jane was here so Griffin wouldn’t get out of this! If he ducked his obligations, she’d lose her chance to recoup her reputation. Worse, some might misconstrue his failure as a result of something she’d done. If she left Crescent Cove without seeing Griffin through to his deadline, her good standing would be further harmed. Irretrievably, maybe. No doubt Ian Stone would be the first to proclaim that she’d left yet another author in the lurch.

Alarm refocused her mind on important matters, and she crossed to the album that Rex Monroe had delivered to her. “Griffin’s tear sheets from Afghanistan,” he’d told her, meaning copies of every article published during his embedded year. She’d been eager to read through the pages, figuring that by familiarizing herself with what he’d written she’d be better able to help shape his memoir.

“The only way to get out of this,” she told Griffin in a firm voice, “is by getting to your contractual obligation. By telling this story.” With that, she flipped open the volume.

On Our Way, the first magazine article’s headline read. Beneath it was a photo of Griffin, clean-shaven, smiling, his arm around an exotic-looking, dark-haired, dark-eyed woman. The caption identified her as Erica Mendoza.

“On our way,” Jane repeated. Puzzled, she looked up.

Griffin’s gaze swept over the photograph, then settled back on her. “You didn’t do your homework like a good governess should, did you, Jane?”

“Uh… Maybe not.” His agent had phoned, and she’d leaped at the opportunity, then rushed to Crescent Cove once she’d realized Griffin wouldn’t take her calls. She touched a fingertip to the lovely face so close to his in the picture. “Who’s this?”

“The original book deal was supposed to be like the articles themselves,” he answered. “A ‘he said, she said’–style account of our embedded year.”

“He said, she said,” Jane repeated. “Our embedded year.”

“Right,” Griffin agreed, his voice impassive. “Our embedded year. He said, she said.”

She waited, watched him take a breath.

“But now…” Griffin said. “She’s dead.”

CHAPTER FOUR

GRIFFIN WATCHED Jane rock back on her heels as shock settled on her face. Such an expressive face it was, those big eyes wide, her soft lips parting on a sudden breath. She had a baby’s skin, fair and fine-pored, molding the delicate bones of her cheeks and the clean edges of her jaw. Despite her bluster, her fragility didn’t stand a chance against him.

Hell, he bet he’d have her running by nightfall.

“What happened?” she asked.

“That story you’re so eager for me to write, honey-pie?” Griffin gestured at the album of collected magazine pieces, though he avoided glancing at the photo of Erica. “I better warn you, it’s got blood and gore.”

Jane flinched. For a second he thought he might have scared her off with just that, but then she drew out one of the dining chairs and took a seat. A cool cucumber once again. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”

A sudden urge to bolt cramped his gut, but he rode out the impulse. This was one of two memories of that year he didn’t have to stave off with rock ’n’ roll blasting through a pair of earbuds or the monotone chatter of news from his big-screen TV. While an auto’s backfire could have him crouching to protect himself from small-arms fire, or the cry of a seagull take him straight to the nights when the monkeys shrieked from the craggy mountains surrounding the base in Afghanistan, thoughts of Erica raised a wall between him and the rest of the world.

“We each had a different sponsoring magazine, both owned by the same publishing company,” he said, moving back so he could lean against the nearby wall. “The newsweekly was paying my way. Erica was the first embedded war journalist on assignment for what’s generally considered a women’s fashion publication.”

Jane glanced at the collection of tear sheets. “Brave lady.”

“Dogged.” He didn’t want to examine too closely right now what, exactly, she’d been so determined to accomplish, so he pushed the question away. “It’s a man’s world out there. Every ten or fourteen days, we rotated to a slightly larger base for a chance at a hot meal and water to wash with, but the rest of the time it was MREs and our own sweat. The guys pissed into PVC pipes stuck in the ground.”

Griffin eyed Jane, trying to picture her among the soldiers in his platoon. Erica had been bold and bawdy, coping with the almost-adolescent sexual bravado of the young men by telling jokes so dirty they could almost make him cringe. Jane, on the other hand… She’d probably faint dead away.

As if reading his mind, the blonde straightened in her chair, her eyebrows drawn together and down. “Don’t stop on my account. Three summers in a row my dad hauled my brothers and me out to the Arizona desert while he conducted fieldwork studying an elusive reptile. One of my first jobs in this business? I assisted a man ghostwriting the autobiography of a notorious metal band’s lead singer. To get ‘color,’ I rode with them on their reunion tour bus for a month. I might look sheltered, but I assure you that’s not the case.”

Her annoyance bemused him. “What elusive reptile was that?”

She didn’t blink. “The Black-and-Green Spotted Hootswaggle.”

“You made that up.”

Her little movement might well have been a flounce. “So? I’ve forgotten its real name. My father always says I have no head for science.”

Yet she’d survived those arid summers and then four weeks with the kind of band infamous for debauchery. “Did you, uh, date any of those band members?”

“Well, I did make sure I had all my shots up to date before the tour—you know, rabies, distemper, smallpox and the like—but no, tempted as I was by scrawny men wearing leather pants and hair extensions.”

She made him smile. Not only was she funny with her dry way of delivery, but for some reason it pleased him to know some ancient lecher with a groupie list a mile long hadn’t touched the baby skin, kissed the tender mouth.

That mouth that was part silent star, part very bad girl.

“But we’ve gotten off the subject,” Jane continued.

Damn it, she made him do that too, Griffin realized. He was supposed to be sending her on her way, not smiling at her.

The governess gestured at the tear sheets again. “We were talking about Erica.”

In his mind’s eye he saw the women who had populated their remote outpost. It wasn’t the single real one he pictured, however. Instead he saw their other female companions—the naked centerfolds taped to the plywood walls, their humongous breasts and big white smiles fly-speckled, their expressions creepily come-hither as their paper selves watched over the boys ever ready to risk their lives. One young man had a morning ritual of kissing the paper nipples for luck.

“Erica…” Jane prompted again.

He ran his hand over the back of his neck. “A patrol was going out to search the valley for weapon hoards and ratlines—foot trails that are enemy supply routes. The night before I’d been on the same kind of mission myself.”

“But this time was different?” Jane asked.

“There’d been radio chatter.” He looked down at his feet, aware of his own blank tone. Glad that he felt just that way inside. “That day, she shouldn’t have gone with them.”

“Did someone try to talk her out of it?”

“Sure.” He’d thought he’d convinced her not to go, too tired to recognize the set expression on her face and the determined light in her eyes. When she’d left, he’d been sleeping, dosed up on the pills they all swallowed down to find a few hours of relief from the high temperatures and the tension. Until he woke up and found her note tucked between his fingers, he hadn’t known what she’d been planning. “She didn’t listen.”

Erica had only heard what she wanted to hear. About the wisdom of going out that day. About what was going on between her and Griffin.

Jane picked up a cookie from the glass plate in front of her, then put it back down. “What happened?”

“Ambush. Particulars are a little sketchy, as everyone was busy trying to stay alive. They took fire and jumped off the trail. But when they realized she wasn’t with them, they headed back, at their own considerable risk. They found her sitting down, holding her arm. She’d been hit in an artery. Bled out in a matter of minutes.”

Jane pushed the platter of cookies farther from the table edge. “Oh.” Her voice was tight, as if there was a hand around her throat. “That’s terrible.”

Griffin gazed off into the distance. “This one kid, Randolph, he put her body over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Her blood stained his vest from his shoulders to his waist. It was the first thing I noticed when he returned. That, and the way tears had turned the dirt on his face to mud.”

Griffin had been sitting against a wall of sandbags, idly watching another guy squeeze cheese onto a granola bar, razzing the man about how the combo made him sick to his stomach. They’d been laughing.

Then Randolph had been standing there. Without a word, Griffin had known. He’d gotten to his feet, then stumbled toward the spot where they’d placed Erica. “I saw her,” he told Jane now. “The dirt in her hair, the stiffening wetness of her sleeve where the blood was already drying, the dusty laces of her boots. One had come undone, and as I stood there, Randolph knelt down and retied it for her.”

His brain had clicked away, cataloging each of those items and more, as if storing them for some later test. The details had seemed to fill a yawning black chasm opening up inside him—leaving no room for anything beyond those cold, bare facts. Leaving no room for any feelings. He’d gone icy inside then, and three days later become completely—perhaps permanently—frozen.

At the time, he’d thanked God.

He was still grateful.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Jane said.

Puzzled, he looked at her. His loss? It was Erica who had lost everything. But he nodded, knowing it was expected of him, knowing a man who hadn’t been rendered entirely numb would be expected to acknowledge Jane’s expression of sympathy.

“That’s the kind of story you signed up for,” he said. The librarian in her would surely back away from it, right?

“No,” she answered, calm. “That’s the story you signed up for.”

The reminder tapped at the ice inside him. Why couldn’t she leave this alone? His jaw clenched. “Jane—”

“I worked with an author who is a famed outdoor adventurer,” she said. “In his book, he related a tragedy that happened to one of his teams on a mountain climb. They’d stopped for lunch. As they finished, she stood up to reach for something—but had forgotten she’d unclipped from the safety line. Just like that, she went off the side of K2. Gone.”

Griffin pressed against the wall, his shoulders digging into the plaster. “And?” he said, wary.

“And he wrote it just like that. He put it on the page with as much emotion as if he was describing the wind catching his sandwich wrapper. I had to help him include the emotion. You’ll have to do that too.”

He didn’t have the emotion! He didn’t want the emotion!

Shaking his head, Griffin pushed away from the wall. “I don’t need your help, lady.”

“Aw.” She no longer appeared the least bit sympathetic. “And I was just getting used to honey-pie.”

Advice, mockery, he didn’t need any of it. He set his sights on the door. He only had to pass her and her flapping mouth and nosy manner and governess tone and be gone—his composure, his chilly control, still intact.

As he went by, she caught his arm. “You know I’m right,” she said, her voice steady. “And you won’t have to do it alone. I told you. I’ll do whatever you need.”

“And I told you—”

“Griffin, Erica deserves this.”

Erica. Despite his best intentions, his gaze dropped to her photo. It was not how he’d seen her last: lifeless, dirtied, bloodied. It was Erica, vitally attractive. Full of expectations.

Deserving.

As if from a distance, he saw himself wrench his arm from Jane’s hold. Then he scooped up the ruby-colored plate. In a gesture that betrayed a rage and frustration he could swear he didn’t feel, he flung the platter against the wall. Cookies flew. The plate broke, and glass shards rained like drops of blood.

He hurried out of the house, telling himself the mess he’d made was no reflection of his inner self.

* * *

AT THE OPPOSITE END of the cove from Beach House No. 9, Jane sat railside at Captain Crow’s, a restaurant/bar that was one of only two commercial establishments on the beach—the other being an adjacent gallery that sold plein air paintings and beautiful handmade boxes, frames and jewelry crafted from items of the sea. She’d poked her nose inside, taking in sun-drenched landscapes and rainbow-hued earbobs of abalone and beach glass, but her urge to admire couldn’t overshadow her certainty that the open floor plan made it a lousy place to hide.

Now Captain Crow’s, that was another matter.

It was as if Party Central had moved north by a couple miles. Pleasure-seekers peopled the open-air tables and sat elbow-to-elbow on stools pulled up to a narrow, westward-facing counter. Dressed in her usual conservative wear—cropped khakis, a thin, bottle-green button-down shirt and a straw hat settled low on her brow—Jane went unnoticed among the rhinestoned tees and short shorts, the boho skirts and macraméd halter tops. The typical California confluence of Hollywood high culture and laid-back hippie fashion. Nearly overpowering the scent of salt air were the mixed aromas of SPF 30 sunscreen, Rodeo Drive perfumes and top-shelf tequila.

She’d collected a glass of white wine from the bar and slipped onto a free stool, unsure of her next move in her goal of getting Griffin to work. The only short-term certainty was her need to steer clear of him for the moment, giving him a chance to cool off following the plate-throwing incident. Seeing her again too soon might antagonize him further, causing him to do something rash, like ordering her from the cove altogether.

As she took a sip of her straw-colored beverage, she caught a glimpse of Skye Alexander strolling through the restaurant, her roaming gaze suggesting she was looking for someone. Jane pulled her hat lower on her brow and fixed her attention on the orange orb in the blue sky, tracking its descent. She figured it was better to avoid Skye too. Jane wouldn’t put it past Griffin to send the other woman to scout her out…and then toss her from the beach colony, despite the fact that it was his own agent who had hired her. Slumping in her seat, she tried lifting her shoulders to her ears, going Quasimodo as camouflage.

But the world hadn’t gone her way in ages, so she felt the tap on her back with no surprise. Turning, she consoled herself with the knowledge that there wasn’t a free space on either side of her. That thought came too soon as well, though, because someone shouted, and the crowd around her scattered, people rushing down the steps to the sand.

Befuddled, Jane watched them gather near a flagpole at the base of the stairs to the beach. Skye perched on the freed seat next to Jane, her gaze also on the excited throng. A man wearing ragged, low-slung shorts and the ubiquitous tan lifted a conch shell to his lips. The blast of sound set the crowd cheering again, and then a blue flag slowly rose on the pole. When it reached the peak, the bystanders saluted the fluttering fabric. Jane saw it was printed with the universal symbol for martini.

“Cocktail time,” Skye explained. “Five o’clock.”

Jane’s brows lifted, taking in the beverages already in hands, including her own half-full wineglass.

“Official cocktail time at Crescent Cove. This ritual goes back to the fifties.”

“That’s when this beach was discovered?” If Jane kept the other woman talking about their surroundings, maybe she could avoid other subjects. Like Griffin. Like how he was likely in No. 8 right this moment, packing her duffel for her imminent departure. “During the wonder years of tiki parties and limbo games?”

Skye shook her head. “Before then. During Prohibition, rumrunners made it a secret drop-off point for contraband liquor. And before that, during the silent film era, my great-great-grandfather used it as a stand-in for a South Seas atoll. He had a movie company, Sunrise Studios, and trucked in all the tropical vegetation that flourishes here.”

At the mention of silent films, Jane covered her mouth, then glanced down the beach at the colorful residences spilling from the hillside to the edge of the sand. The ocean breeze shivered through the graceful fronds of the date palms shading their roofs and set the long leaves of the banana plants wagging. The creamy faces of plumeria flowers mingled with brighter splashes of hibiscus in yellow, red and pink. The bougainvillea grew everywhere something else didn’t.

She could imagine this place as an exotic backdrop to long-ago movies or as an idyllic vacation getaway. “It really does appear out of another time.”

For no more reason than that, a person would be reluctant to leave. It wasn’t hard for Jane to picture woody station wagons pulled up behind the cottages. She could see the children of the past playing in the surf, riding inflatable rubber rafts instead of the foam boogie boards the contemporary kids were dragging into the water by leashes attached at their ankles. At five o’clock some sunburned man with a crew cut would blow the conch shell, heralding another idyllic summer evening. “Magic,” she murmured.

A foolish notion that she’d always wanted to believe in. Just like love. Her father had detected the weakness in her early on, as clear to him, apparently, as her lack of aptitude in the sciences. “So silly and emotional, Jane,” he would say, shaking his head at her. “Just like your mother.”

Pushing the memory aside, she tuned back in to Skye’s conversation. The crowd had returned to their places, and Jane was forced to lean close to hear over their rowdy chatter. “The earliest houses go back to the 1920s and ’30s,” the other woman was saying. “My great-great-granddad built some of them, my great-grandfather more, but it wasn’t until my mom was pregnant with me that my parents moved here. They live in Provence now, and though I live at the cove full-time, most habitants are seasonal.” She paused. “Like the Lowells.”

Griffin. Their last moments together replayed in Jane’s head, his flattened voice describing what had happened to his colleague Erica in Afghanistan. The neutral tone to his words had been belied by the stiffness of his posture. Even now, Jane could feel the tense muscle of his forearm under her hand and the way he’d wrenched from her hold in order to heave the cookie platter against the wall. It reminded her that she owed Skye a plate…and her client an apology?

Jane didn’t think an “I’m sorry” would change his mind about her. By insisting he’d have to touch on that tragedy, she’d become the object of his wrath. She had the very bad feeling he would absolutely refuse to work with her now. On a sigh, she met Skye’s gaze. “Did Griffin send you to find me?”

“What? No.”

“Oh.” The denial eased Jane’s worry better than another swallow of wine. “Good.”

“But I was looking for you.” She hesitated. “Your name rang a bell…and then when I put it together with what you said about helping Griffin with his memoir…”

Jane’s belly tightened. How widespread was the smear on her reputation?

“I have all of Ian Stone’s novels,” Skye said.

Jane nodded, tensing further. “I’m not surprised.”

The other woman gave a little smile. “I know, I know, me and everyone else. Number one New York Times bestseller several times over. Many of them were made into movies.”

“The last five.”

“I’m one of those people who likes to reread books, poring over them from the dedication page up front to the author’s note at the back.” Skye hesitated, then the question she’d obviously been dying to ask burst out. “What was it like to work with him? Because that’s you, isn’t it? I figured it had to be when you told me you work with writers. He dedicated Sal’s Redemption, The Butterfly Place and Crossroads Corner to you, right?”

“Yes.” For three years, she’d worked almost exclusively with him. He’d been the focus of her career.

Then he’d become the focus of her life.

“So,” Skye prodded. “Will you dish? Is he as handsome as he appears on book jackets and in TV interviews?”

“Handsomer.” She sighed inwardly. Ian’s good looks didn’t reflect his inner character, but she couldn’t blame Skye for not recognizing that. Look how long it had taken Jane to figure it out. She’d wanted too much to believe.

So silly and emotional, Jane.

When it came to Ian Stone, that’s exactly what she’d been. A lesson had been learned, though. She’d been a fool for love in the past, but she would never again make the mistake of caring for a man who couldn’t love her back.

“Gorgeous, huh?” Skye leaned closer. “But then is he like so many really attractive guys? Tell me he’s the size of a pickle.”

The demand surprised a laugh out of Jane. “You want me to talk about his—” She gestured toward her lap.

“No!” Skye flushed red. “I wouldn’t talk about that. I don’t like to think about that. I meant his height. The height of his body. His whole self.”

Skye’s deep fluster struck Jane as odd, but she got another laugh out of imagining Ian’s horrified reaction to even a moment’s consideration of that particular body part in gherkin terms. Then another picture of him blossomed in her brain, her own version of Pin the Pickle on the Donkey.

Perfect, she thought, because the man was such an ass.

She couldn’t hold back a fresh burst of laughter.

“You’re in a good mood,” a voice said from behind her.

The chuckles drained away as Jane tensed again. Busted.

With a slow pivot, she turned to face Griffin. Ian Stone was handsome in a spoiled, well-tended sort of way. By contrast, Griffin looked as if he’d buzzed his hair himself and he’d nicked his chin while shaving—a couple of days before, if she was any judge of stubble. But his was a wholly masculine face, all the edges hard and those incredible turquoise eyes sharp. Her breath quickened, even though she tried pretending she was all cool control. There was no denying that something about the man had found a previously hidden chink in her, an opening that allowed his male energy to worm its way under her armor, heating her up, loosening her muscles, almost…preparing her.

The thought made her blush, and his gaze narrowed, skewering her now. She wiggled on her stool. “Um…hey.”

He nodded absently at Skye, then returned his ominous gaze to Jane. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“Oh?” Her belly fluttered, and she barely registered the finger wave Skye sent her before leaving. From the hard expression on Griffin’s face, Jane didn’t expect he’d sought her out to deliver good news. What would she do once he declined her services for good? Word would surely get back that yet another author found her unsatisfactory. She sighed, bowing to the inevitable. “What is it?”

He opened his mouth, and then his gaze shifted over her shoulder. The incredible eyes flared for a moment, narrowed again. “Shit.”

She glanced around. In the distance a woman was trudging through the sand, a baby balanced on one hip. Three other kids trailed behind her, but she didn’t look the least bit matronly, with her long legs bared by a white cotton skirt and a scarlet tank top clinging to her curves. Expensive sunglasses covered her eyes, and her dark hair was glossy and cut in a trendy fashion that had delicate pieces curving around her cheeks and jaw.

Jane turned back to Griffin and could swear he’d gone pale. “Old flame?”

“More like the devil,” he muttered, then cursed again. “You’ve got to do something for me, Jane.”

She didn’t think this was going to be about his memoir. “Like what?”

He hunkered down, so that he was semishielded by her body. “Hide me.”

Wasn’t hiding what she’d been after herself?

“I don’t think that’s going to work,” she said after a moment, her attention still on the beach. Was it bad of her to take pleasure in noting that the dark-haired beauty had homed in on the man half concealed behind her? She was waving her arm, her focus clearly settled on his face. Two of the little kids were jumping up and down as well, pointing and waving.

“The children seem to know you. Who are they?”

“The devil’s minions.” As they continued waving, he rose to his full height on a loud sigh. “There’s only one thing for it, then.”

“What’s that?”

Griffin clamped his hand around Jane’s upper arm and pulled her from her stool. “Come on.” With an arm slung across her shoulders, he urged her toward the steps leading to the sand. “This way, honey-pie.”

She struggled to keep up with his brisk stride. “Tell me what’s going on, chili-dog.”

He shot her a look, then shrugged. “Our little endearments will do the job just fine, I guess.”

“What job is that?” Jane asked warily.

“A minor bit of role-play. You can manage that for the next few minutes or so, can’t you?”

She thought of protesting. This definitely wasn’t about his memoir. She considered turning back toward the bar and cutting her losses right there and then, given the bad luck that had been dogging her lately. But another few minutes…the optimist inside her wondered what might happen during that time. If she went along with whatever he was planning, perhaps he’d be convinced that she was a handy person to have around, and they could salvage their working relationship. That’s what she needed more than anything.

“I guess,” she said.

“Great. Consider yourself hired.” He hitched her closer to his side. His body was hard and warm and solid enough to prop up her weight if she was the kind of woman inclined to lean on a man. She wasn’t. She didn’t trust them for that.

He cupped her upper arm, his palm sliding up and down in a caress she could feel through the sleeve of her cotton shirt. It made her flesh prickle, and she shivered.

Griffin’s feet halted, stopping their forward movement. Jane glanced up. He was staring at her, an odd expression on his face. His caressing hand moved over her again, and she couldn’t stop a second shiver.

“Jesus, Jane,” he murmured, stroking her once more. “Jesus.”

Her mouth was dry. “Jesus, Jane—what?”

He shook his head as if he was shaking off an uncomfortable thought. His fingers slid away. “Don’t look so serious,” he told her, his voice gruff.

She frowned at him. “How should I look, then?”

With a careless hand, he chucked her under the chin. The strange moment had clearly passed. “Try smiling, honey-pie. For this to succeed, you have to look and sound the part.”

“The part of what?” she asked, suspicious.

Griffin grinned down at her. His blue gaze seemed almost tender, and she felt his testosterone twisting toward her like smoke, seeking that crack in her protective shell. His hand found hers. “The part, sweet Jane, of my lover.”

CHAPTER FIVE

THEY DIDN’T GET to introductions right away. The moment she and Griffin appeared on the beach in front of the lovely brunette, the woman launched herself into his arms, causing him to let go of Jane. “You don’t know what I’ve been through!” the beauty said.

One of her young entourage was a girl who looked as if she’d just crossed into her teens. “I’m going to die of boredom here,” the teen said. “I can smell the lack of cell phone coverage.” She blinked lashes of beyond-natural length and thickness. “I’m probably going to get pregnant just for something to do.”

Though Jane was somewhat alarmed when the teen turned to peruse the beach as if seeking out potential baby daddies, no one else commented on her offhand remark. Perhaps no one else had heard it. Griffin and the woman were already walking down the beach in the direction of his cottage, she hanging on to his arm while still carrying the little guy, who looked to be nine or ten months old. One of the baby’s sandals slipped off his foot, and Jane swooped it up as she drifted behind them.

“Let’s go,” the teenager said to the remaining two. They were boys—five and six? Seven and eight?—and were poking at a clump of stinky kelp with a stick.

At the girl’s prompting, the smaller of the two ran ahead, brandishing the piece of wood, while the other threw sand at his back, yelling, “Your face looks like monkey poo!”

At that, the teenager tossed a glance at Jane. “My life,” she said in a theatrical tone.

“It seems adding an infant of your own to it would only complicate matters,” Jane pointed out. “Cute baby bump to monkey poo? A blip in time.”

Her extravagant eye-roll made Jane grin. It reminded her of—

Griffin. Good God, was the brunette his ex? This tribe his children?

“I’m Jane,” she said to the girl.

The teen slid her a sidelong look. “Of course you are.”

Griffin’s exact words! “What’s your name?”

“Rebecca.” She flung an arm in the direction of her presumed siblings. Four inches of braided string and rubber bracelets circled her wrist. “Those are my brothers, Duncan, Oliver and Russ.”

Before Jane could pry more out of her, they’d reached Beach House No. 9. The entire party assembled in the living room, the two boys dropping to the floor to wrestle, Rebecca slumping onto the couch in another dramatic move, her mother pushing her sunglasses to the top of her head and hitching the baby higher on her hip. Jane hung back, reluctant to enmesh herself until she knew more.

“Now, Tess,” Griffin said. “What’s this all about?”

Just like that, the woman burst into tears. The little one she was holding immediately followed suit.

Over the racket, Rebecca let out a gusty sigh. “Pregnant, I tell you. I’m definitely getting pregnant.”

Her mother responded by passing over the tearful little guy. Not a bad idea, Jane decided. Birth control by baby brother.

Griffin didn’t appear affected by the woman’s distress or the child’s. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Tess, what the hell are you doing here?”

“I’ve left him, Griff,” she said. “I’ve finally left my husband!”

At the outburst, he groaned, offering not an ounce of sympathy. His hands ran over his head. “Geez, Tessie. This matters to me how?”

Tess’s sobs redoubled. Jane could only hurt for the woman. Clearly she’d come to Crescent Cove without the expectation of rejection. Jane edged farther away, thinking she’d head to her own cottage.

Her movement caught Griffin’s eye, however, and in two strides he had her by the hand and was towing her toward the crier. “I can’t deal with this, Tess. And here’s why. I’ve got a new lover now.” He put his hands on Jane’s shoulders and pulled her back against his chest.

His body heat transferred to Jane and pooled low at the base of her spine. She glanced over her shoulder, and his hands tightened on her. He focused on her mouth, and she felt it like a touch, her lips warming too. The company, the room itself, seemed to drop away, leaving Griffin’s intense gaze and Jane’s unsteady heartbeat.

Then, jerking his gaze off her, he cleared his throat and pushed her forward a half step. It left inches of cooling air between them. “Meet Jane.”

The other woman sniffed, the back of her hand against her nose. She raised lovely, tear-drenched eyes to take in Jane, and then her gaze moved on to Griffin’s face. “You’ve met someone?”

The heartbreak in her voice told the story, Jane thought. And as someone who’d been supplanted by another woman in a man’s life, she didn’t want to play this scene again, even from the other side. “Look…”

Griffin’s hands found her shoulders again to squeeze a warning. “Honey-pie—”

“Chili-dog,” she said, turning to glare at him.

“Honey-pie!” The woman—Tess—cried out. “Chili-dog! You really found someone!”

“Isn’t that what you’re always telling me to do?”

“When I was married,” she started, sniffling back more tears, “it seemed like a good idea. But now that we’re heading for divorce…”

Jane couldn’t continue this way, deceiving this poor woman who’d apparently left her husband for Griffin, who in turn was exhibiting more than his usual detachment. “I’m sorry, but—”

“Jane.” An even clearer warning.

Breaking free of his hold, she turned to shoot him a look. “Listen—” But her next words got lost in a loud crash. The little boys had knocked over a small table by the window. The base of a lamp was on the ground, shattered against the hard wood. The shade lay crumpled beside it.

The baby started wailing again.

As if she’d reached the end of her rope, Tess clapped one hand over her eyes. The little boys began shoving each other anew, putting more furniture at risk. Rebecca mouthed something—likely another pregnancy threat—and jumped from the sofa to hand her smallest brother over to Griffin. As the teen stalked out of the room, he held the child at arm’s length, then turned to Jane in mute appeal.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake.” Helpless with his own children! Surely that had to be the case, that they belonged to him, because each one had his dark hair, and at least some of them his distinctive blue eyes, not to mention his ability to be appealing and get on her nerves at the very same time. She took the baby from him and jiggled the child as she grabbed the back of one little boy’s shirt. It was a winning technique, because the other automatically followed as she led him down the hall. A small guest room had a TV and remote. She held it out to the larger of the two. “I assume you’re familiar with this device?”

In a blink, it was snatched out of her hand. In two, they were seated on the bed, their eyes glued to the screen. Private, the Labrador, appeared from somewhere and wiggled his way between them on the mattress. The show they chose wasn’t a cartoon, and she could only hope it wasn’t X-rated—a distinct possibility, she figured, in this house—but, given the kids’ snarled domestic arrangement, maybe they’d seen it all before.

The baby was now snuffling against her shoulder and gnawing on his fist, so she headed into the kitchen, where she found a cracker. He pounced on it with a show of great delight. As he munched away, she returned to the living room, a box of tissues under her arm.

It appeared as if all was not resolved. Tess had collapsed on the couch cushions, her face in her hands. Griffin, the callous monster, had retreated to the glass doors, his back turned to the woman, his gaze resting on the ceaseless rumble of the surf.

Jane could only hope Rebecca wasn’t out looking for a sperm donor.

Without a word, she took a seat on the couch and passed over the tissues. Tess accepted them with a grateful glance. Then she dried her face. Once it was done, she inhaled a long deep breath and took the now-content baby onto her lap. “Thank you,” she said, hugging her small son to her. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, but I had to get that out of my system.”

Then her gaze shifted to Griffin, and she raised her voice. “I want to stay here with the kids.”

He swung around, dismay—or panic?—written all over his face. “I didn’t even invite you to stay for dinner.”

“Griff—”

“Tess. I told you I have a lover. I’m with Jane now.”

Not even for the chance to get this job and regain her reputation was she going along with a lie of this magnitude a moment longer. “I’m not his anything,” she said, ignoring the fierce frown Griffin turned on her. “Believe me.”

“Oh.” Tess looked from her to the grim-faced man in the corner. “I don’t understand.”

“Though he said that we’re together,” Jane explained, “it’s not true.”

Tess blinked, and now that Tess’s eyes were dry, Jane realized they were the same distinctive and bright turquoise as Griffin’s. “That’s fabulous news,” the other woman replied.

Jane thought it was a little odd to be happy that your ex, the father of your children, had just been lying to you, but she figured Tess’s hopes of getting Griffin back had been renewed.

“Because love’s a crock and men are beasts,” Tess continued in loud tones, and Jane could see from whom Rebecca had inherited her dramatic presence. The brunette sent a pointed look at Griffin. “Even my brother.”

Brother?

Oh. Oh.

Now feeling stupid, Jane once again glared at the man in the room.

“What?” he asked with a look of aggrieved innocence.

But Tess snagged his attention by launching into her reasons for staying at Crescent Cove. “We need a break. The kids will love it here.”

He shook his head right away. “There’s no available cottage. Ask Skye.”

Tess flapped a hand. “There’s plenty of room in Beach House No. 9.”

He definitely looked panicked now. “I need my privacy.”

“You’ve been hiding from everyone for months,” his sister responded.

“No. No, I haven’t. Old Man Monroe jaws at me every day. And, uh, I have Jane here. We, uh, have a project to do.”

Jane perked up at that. Her spine straightening, she pinned him with her gaze. “So you’re committing to working on the book now?”

“As you’ve been telling me, I have a deadline to meet.” He turned to his sister. “See? I can’t have all of you underfoot.”

“But we won’t be any trouble,” Tess said. “The kids won’t get in your way.”

Jane was no longer listening to the other woman, her mind already on the project ahead. She didn’t rub her hands together, but she wanted to. “We’ll start first thing in the morning.”

“Griffin,” Tess pleaded. “We need Crescent Cove this summer. Me and the kids. We need it for just a few weeks.”

He looked from Tess to Jane, who had no trouble giving him the out he wanted this time. “You need to finish the book, Griffin. That’s why I’m here.”

His gaze shifted back to Tess, to her, to Tess again. Jane saw a calculating light enter his eyes. Uh-oh, she thought.

“All right, sis,” he finally said. “You and the kids can stay.”

She clapped her hands, and the baby did too. “Thank you.”

“You can stay in No. 8,” Griffin clarified.

What? Jane mouthed.

Tess frowned. “No. 8?”

“Yes,” Griffin answered. “In No. 8, with my assistant Jane, here. Though I’ll be busy with my memoir, I’m sure she’ll be happy to assist you at every opportunity.”

* * *

WORN PACK OF CARDS in hand, Private padding at his side, Griffin strolled into the small backyard of Beach House No. 9. Okay, skulked was a better term, because he couldn’t deny the furtiveness of his movements. He stayed close to the side of the house and craned his neck for any sign of the occupants of No. 8. His property provided a view of a slice of the smaller house’s rear patch of scruffy grass. When he didn’t spy any rowdy relatives or rigid-spined governesses, he picked up his pace toward the nearby picnic table painted sailor-blue.

Once seated on its bench, he tucked in earbuds and thumbed on his iPod. The crashing chords and heavy backbeat of classic Metallica poured into his head as he laid out yet another of his mindless games of solitaire. This was the second day in a row he’d managed to dodge his sister, her children and the woman he’d foisted them on. Or was it, he thought, frowning, the woman onto whom he’d foisted them?

He stared down at his cards for a moment, then cursed the stupid question circling in his head. Damn it! He’d always been lousy at the picky points of grammar and had accepted that fact. But now he was thinking like Jane. Or at least about Jane. Hadn’t he been doing a pretty good job of avoiding that too?

With the heel of his palm, he bumped the side of his skull, a little signal to his psyche to move on. For the past forty-eight hours he’d been in the best mood he could remember having in months—the kind of mood a prisoner might experience upon avoiding the electric chair—and though he was still behind bars of a sort, he planned on holding on to this good humor. After all, hadn’t he managed to escape his sister, her progeny and the librarian, all in one fell swoop?

Two hands of the card game later, he saw Private jump to his four furry feet. On a groan, Griffin tugged the buds from his ears and quickly scrutinized the vicinity. He groaned again when he realized the one invading his privacy was none other than his elderly neighbor. “What do you want, you old coot?”

Though he was certain he didn’t sound the least bit welcoming, Old Man Monroe sat down on the opposite bench.

Griffin returned his gaze to his game. “My dog was right here the whole time, and don’t try saying otherwise.”

“I’m not here about the dog.”

“Yeah? Well, I’m not here to give you your daily senility check. Go home.”

“Hear from Gage? Skye said you had mail.”

At that, Griffin had to smile, even though he knew the postcard that had been delivered to the cove today—all correspondence addressed to the cottages went to Skye, who then distributed it to the residents—was more than a week old. Seeing his brother’s distinctive block lettering pleased him.

“It was one of his own photos.” For years, whenever Gage could manage it, he’d find a place that would put an image on card stock and send it across the country or across the world to Griffin. It had started as a friendly twin-to-twin taunt—photojournalist Gage bragging to his brother about the exotic places he found so thrilling. Now, when Griffin had nearly as many faraway locales and out-of-the-ordinary sights stored in his own memory banks, it was a tangible connection. Looking at an image his brother had found through his own viewfinder, touching paper that his brother had also touched, it was as if they were in the same room, at least for a brief moment.

“He’s well?” the old man asked.

“As good as he can get, in the kind of places that he goes.” Griffin thought about the child Gage had captured on that postcard, in apparent midgiggle. Dirty and thin, he’d still found something to laugh about.

Children had that gift. The thought gave him a guilty prod about his niece and nephews. Angry at himself for letting in the emotion, he slapped down a king in an empty space in the line-up.

Rex Monroe shifted, straightening out his bad leg. Griffin didn’t bother looking up. “Don’t you have a date with The Golden Girls about now?”

“My cable’s out. Entertain me.”

Instead, Griffin decided to ignore him.

“I have the patience of Job,” Rex cautioned after a few minutes had passed.

“You mean you’re a job. But not my job. Go harass somebody else.”

“Maybe I’ll find your sister, tell her you’re sitting outside with nothing to do. Looking morose.”

The threat put Griffin on his feet, startling Private, who let out a bark. He didn’t want Tess or anyone else checking on him, damn it. “I’m not morose.”

“You’re in a happy frame of mind, then?”

“Sure.” He strode to the yard’s narrow flower bed and bent over to yank at some weeds, as if he gave a shit about them. “For your information, I’m in a very happy frame of mind.”

“Huh,” the old guy said, slyness entering his voice. “Does this happiness have to do with Jane?”

Griffin grunted. Jane. She’d worn this silly hat the other day, lowered all the way to her eyebrows. For a few moments, on the deck of Captain Crow’s, he’d thought she was going to prove cooperative. She’d been close at his side as he’d approached Tess, all compliant and cuddly. That should have been the tip-off. How long could the librarian last like that? But hell, what was wrong with her, having a sudden attack of the truth?

“Jane bugs the crap out of me,” Griffin said, ripping a dandelion out by its roots. Its fluffy head reminded him of Jane’s fluffy hair. He liked her hair; it twisted and turned, making him want to bury his fingers in it and then… Gah! With a jerk, he tossed the stupid weed away. She was like that, rooting into his head where she didn’t belong and wasn’t wanted. Messing with his cool equilibrium.

“I guess your sister gets the credit for your good mood, then.”

“Oh, right,” Griffin said. “Like I want to get involved with her and her domestic dilemmas.”

“Looks like you won’t,” the ancient one said, his voice mild. “Since you’ve found a way to palm it all off on poor Jane.”

“What, you got a spy camera installed around here? And poor Jane, my ass. Poor Jane is actually Annoying Jane who does not follow instructions. If she’d stuck with the program and told my sister that we were…that we had a thing happening here, then Tess would have left me my privacy. She’s big on people falling in love.”

“Skye says she’s had a change of heart about that.”

Skye. So she was the codger’s source. He’d been nosy and meddlesome from the very beginning, and that hadn’t changed, even after all these years. “Did our friendly property manager drop off your monthly allotment of Metamucil today? Followed by a big dose of gossip?”

“Gossip or not, don’t you wonder what happened to Tess’s marriage?”

Private flopped onto his back on the grass beside Griffin, which required him to perform the obligatory belly rub. “Yeah, I…” he started, then heard himself. “No, I do not wonder what happened. It’s none of my business. That’s between her and her husband, Deadly Dull David, which right there probably says it all.”

“I met him at their wedding reception. He seemed very nice,” the old scold replied.

“Gage came up with the name,” Griffin mumbled. “You know Gage, he can’t imagine anyone enjoying the suburban nine-to-five.”

“People change. Grow up. Or down, as the case may be, like when they make their own sister someone else’s problem.”

Griffin threw up his hands. “Jane again! Why do you keep bringing her up?”

“I’m not the one keeping her around indefinitely. She’s a very pretty young woman. Is that why you don’t cut her loose?”

Griffin didn’t need to explain himself. And not just because the explanation wouldn’t put him in a very good light. On second thought, maybe if he disgusted his elderly neighbor he’d go home. “Think about it, old man. If I kicked Jane out of the cove, who would keep my sister out of my hair? This way, Jane is the gatekeeper. I tell her I’m working and she makes sure Tess and her tribe keep their distance.”

And it also meant he needn’t give his agent some excuse about why he’d gotten rid of her. Frank might legitimately object to that, since he was the one who’d engaged her services in the first place.

“You’ve kept your distance from Tess and her kids since you returned from overseas,” Monroe pressed. “She told Skye you’ve stayed away from them for months.”

“And Skye just had to go running to you with the news,” he said darkly. But he couldn’t deny the accusation. He looked down at his feet and then muttered the first thing that came into his head. “Russ smells like Afghanistan.”

“Eh?”

“The small one is Russ. The one still in diapers. He smells like Afghanistan, okay?” As stupid as it sounded, it was true. “It’s the baby wipes—you know those wet cloths people use to wipe a kid’s ass? That’s what we had between our too-seldom encounters with running water.” Upon his return to California, the first time he’d gotten close enough to get a whiff of his youngest nephew, he’d left Tess’s house and never been back. Being at her home, breathing in that smell, made it nauseatingly easy for him to imagine Russ—and his siblings—too soon grown. Too soon experiencing that intoxicating cocktail of danger and adrenaline that he’d sucked down with an eagerness that had both ashamed and enticed him. Those were thoughts he didn’t want in his head.

There was a moment’s silence, and he was sure he’d shut the old guy up, but then his neighbor waved a hand. “In World War Two, I once went seventy-two days without washing up. You ever get lice in your beard? Now, that’s deprivation.”

Annoyed by his dismissive tone, Griffin crossed his arms over his chest. “Let me call the waa-ambulance, old man. You know what was in the best care packages from home? Flea collars. Flea collars for dogs. We fought over ’em to wear around our necks and wind around our ankles.”

Monroe’s eyes narrowed under his beetled brows. “In my war, our meals came with fleas and we were glad for the extra protein.”

“Yeah?” Griffin said, scornful. “Well, I can beat that because—”

From the direction of No. 9’s back door came the sound of a throat clearing. “Pardon me for interrupting this illuminating pissing contest,” Jane said.

The crank ignored her intrusion. “I have two words for you, Griffin: trench foot.”

“I…” He wouldn’t have let the other man have the last word, except he glanced over and was distracted by the sight of her. She was wearing rhinestone-studded sandals, jeans cut off at the knees and a loose sleeveless top, the hem of which fluttered in the breeze. The wind caught her wavy hair too, setting the sandy tendrils dancing around her face. “You’re sunburned,” he said. Pink color splashed her nose, cheeks, the tops of her shoulders. Her mouth looked redder too.

That mouth. Every time he looked at the damn thing he got a jolt.

It pursed at him now, signaling she was in a mood. “That’s what happens when I spend the day entertaining kids on the beach. Make that two days.”

He knew he should feel both guilt and gratitude. But instead he was riveted by the duffel bag in her hand and the soft-sided laptop case that was slung across her chest. She was leaving. From the moment she’d first arrived on the scene that had been his goal—getting rid of her. So this outcome shouldn’t surprise him. And Tess or no Tess, it shouldn’t bother him in the least either.

He remembered the delicate frame of those shoulders under his hands. Their telltale tremor. Her rosebud mouth parting under his lips in surprise. Her taste heating him up. All that was leaving the cove.

Good. He didn’t need the complication…didn’t want the connection.

Pinning him with her gaze, she dropped the duffel and placed her hand on her hip. “I should have made something clear two days ago.”

“Made what clear?” Her skin had been silky under his hands. That he couldn’t forget.

“I’m not a babysitter. Nor am I an ‘assistant,’ in the way you spoke of me to your sister,” she said.

Now guilt did manage to give him a poke. “You said you’d do anything I needed,” he reminded her, hating his defensive tone.

She just stared at him, her clear eyes managing to send out a burn.

Oh, yeah, in a mood. He shuffled his feet, shoved his hands into his pockets, tried not to think how cute she looked with that pink nose and silvery glare. She’d kill him if he said that now.

Now that she was leaving.

He took a breath. “Hey, I am sorry about that, Jane. I was an ass.” She threw him a Gee, that wasn’t so bad sort of look. “I understand you’re a professional.”

“Thank you.”

He thought he could add even more to that, now that she was saying her goodbyes. “As a matter of fact, I picked up the phone when Frank called this morning. He was singing your praises.”

“That’s nice to hear. We go back a ways.”

“Yeah. Well, I’m sure he’s not wrong.”

A smile bloomed on her face. “So, an actual vote of confidence from you, chili-dog? Even better.”

He’d miss being chili-dog, just a little. The unexpected pang of sentiment convinced him to give her a bit more. “Frank is sending some packages. I said I’d accept them. A laptop, printer, other supplies. I’m actually planning to set up an office.” Not that he was going to do anything inside it, but he figured Jane would take the information as the friendly farewell gift it was. A sign of truce between two former combatants.

Except she wasn’t looking at him with gratification. “You don’t have a laptop here? No computer whatsoever?”

“Uh…”

She was glaring again. “I thought Ted was wrong, you know. I thought you must have something to write on over here or else you wouldn’t have told your sister you needed privacy two days ago because you’d be working.”

Oh, shit.

“While you were over here basking in slothful solitude, I was out there—” she jerked a thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the sand “—for two solid days building sand castles with your nephews, who might be adorable, but are definitely exhausting.”

Old Man Monroe cackled. “You’re in the doghouse, boy.”

Jane gathered up the bag at her feet, then spun on her flashy sandals, heading back inside his house. The last he’d ever see of her, Griffin thought, was her cute ass. Not a bad way to go, but he didn’t like the idea of her going away—forever—mad. “No goodbye?”

Her feet halted. She glanced over her shoulder. “Why? I’ll be back in a minute. I’m just going to put my things in one of the guest rooms.”

His jaw dropped. The coot started cackling again.

“Now that you’ll have a computer, you’re ready to work, Griffin. And since you claim you have confidence in my ability to do my job, it will be much easier for us with me living over here.”

“But…but…” Jesus. He couldn’t think. Living here? “What, uh, what about Tess and the kids?”

“They’ll have more room next door without me underfoot.” She started walking again, then took another look back. “Oh, and they’ll be coming over tonight for dinner.”

The coot’s cackling only got louder.

Jane smiled at him. “Why don’t you join us, Mr. Monroe? Griffin will be barbecuing.”

And the day had started out so happy, Griffin thought, when his reeling brain finally settled. But she’d once again upended him, and he was no longer confident he had the skills to either wait her out or keep her out.

Damn. The enemy had infiltrated, putting the heart of the camp at risk.

* * *

FROM HER PLACE beneath the shade of a tropical umbrella, Tess Quincy made a bargain with herself. Twenty more minutes. That’s how much longer she’d wait for her husband to meet her as she’d requested. She’d specified “lunchtime” and “on the beach” in her text to his phone, and had—wrongly—assumed he’d show up just minutes after noon. That had been two hours ago. If he didn’t appear before the big hand touched the six on her wristwatch—worn in an effort to teach Duncan and Oliver about analog time—she’d retreat back to her cottage. Waiting a second more than that would only be another blow to her ego. It had taken enough hits.

Closing her eyes, she settled more deeply into the old-fashioned beach chair she’d found in a closet at No. 8. A tripod of light wood strung with striped canvas, it didn’t lift her rear end off the sand, but it supported her back at the perfect angle for magazine-reading. As a girl, she’d spent hours just like this, paging through People and Us Weekly, imagining herself as one of the SoCal celebrities so often pictured on the glossy pages.

Nowadays, if she had time for any reading, it was for her moms’ book group. They read about tiger mothers and free-range mothers and mothers who managed to start up sexy small businesses. Tess wondered now if she should have been studying up on husbands and wives or how to survive a failed marriage.

A breeze blew her hair across her face. As she fingered it behind her ear, she became aware of someone’s gaze on her. At the weight of it, her heart stuttered, then kicked into a rapid beat. Him? Swallowing hard, she lifted her lashes and glanced right.

Her pulse decelerated like a motorboat brought to a sudden halt. It was a stranger who stared at her from his place eight feet away on the sand. A stranger staring at her, she realized now, with a look of blatant interest. Her heart gave another—though milder—kick. And she didn’t look away.

Before this week, Tess Quincy, mother of four and wife of more than thirteen years, would have ignored the man. But Tess Quincy, woman with a shambles—or was that a sham?—of a marriage, found herself unwilling to pretend she didn’t notice his speculative—and yes, admiring—gaze.

So sue her, it felt good.

The man appeared to be around thirty, which made him a little younger than Tess, and his faint smile topped lean muscles and knee-length swim trunks in bright green. “It is you, isn’t it?”

For a moment she was speechless, then words spilled easily from her own now-smiling lips. “It depends on who you think I am.” With a little thrill, she registered the flirtatious note in her voice and wasn’t ashamed of it. It had been months since she’d been noticed as a woman.

“The gum,” he said, certain enough now that he strolled closer to her. “Brand name, OM. The green tea gum. You’re her.”

You’re her. Another man had said those words to her once. She glanced down at the sleeping child beside her and fussed with the fish-patterned towel covering his napping body. The man who’d said those words originally had hardly looked at her since the precious ten-month-old was born.

The stranger came yet closer and took to one knee, holding out a hand. “Teague White.”

She didn’t linger on the handshake, but her smile stayed in place. “Tess Quincy. I was Tess Lowell when I made those commercials.”

“After all these years, they still play.”

Her shoulders lifted, expressing her own surprise over it. She’d filmed them at eighteen, and they’d hit the small screen as she turned nineteen, a long-legged girl in belly-baring yoga pants and a tiny tank, leading a class in meditation. The cause of the ad campaign’s sustained popularity wasn’t clear. It could have been her nubile teenage body, the gleam of mischief in her eyes when she told the camera that “OM will tame a wild mind,” or, more likely, the continued heavy airplay. Frequency plus reach had meant success for both OM and Tess. She still sank residuals into her kids’ college funds.

If she and David divorced, she supposed she’d be using those checks to help support herself.

Teague White’s appreciative expression took some of the sting out of the thought. “You look exactly the same.”

“I’ve had four kids since then.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head.

She felt her dimples dig deep in her cheeks. “Yes.” Maybe that last pregnancy hadn’t completely taken her out of the realm of attractiveness, after all. She plugged the Pilates DVD into the player twice a week and ran with Russ in the jogging stroller every other day. Night and morning, she brushed, she flossed, she glossed what she could gloss and she moisturized the rest.

Yet her husband, David, didn’t look at her the way this stranger did. Her husband, David, barely looked at her at all anymore. This unknown man recognized that eighteen-year-old girl in the wifely shell, and he seemed pretty pleased about it. She cocked her head, the moves not so hard to remember now. “What is it you do, Teague?”

“I’m with the fire department,” he said.

“Doing…?” Not that she couldn’t guess.

A grin popped out, as if he couldn’t hold it back. “I’m a firefighter.”

She figured then that he got his own share of appreciative glances with all those manly muscles and the studly occupation. “Day off?”

He nodded. “We wanted surf and sand. You’re an added bonus.”

It was heady stuff, the attention of an attractive member of the opposite sex. She had plenty of close encounters with males in her daily life, but mostly they wanted to wipe their noses on the tails of her shirt or use her limbs for climbing like a jungle gym at the park.

Down the beach, someone yelled the handsome stranger’s name. Both he and Tess looked toward the surf, where a handful of equally muscled men were tossing around a football. They gestured to him and one threw the ball, a perfect spiral that landed at Teague’s feet. With a show of reluctance, he picked it up, then clambered to a stand. “You going to be here awhile?”

“I…” If she agreed, she could tell herself she wasn’t staying put for David. She could pretend to herself that she was instead waiting for the handsome stranger to return and make her feel desirable again. “Maybe.”

His grin flashed on. “And later this week? My friends and I have some time off. We’ll be here again.”

“I…I have those four kids.” Her palm caressed the tuft of Russ’s dark hair that was the only part of him visible beneath the towel.

“So? I like kids. And I have a wild mind that maybe only you can tame.”

That little thrill buzzed through her veins again. Still… “Four kids and a husband.”

She liked him more for not losing the smile. “Lucky guy. Unlucky me.” Tossing the football up and down in one hand, he walked backward, his gaze still on her face. “Does that mean you won’t run away with me? We could go to Arizona.”

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