Auburn stepped inside Bob’s Tavern and surveyed the scene. The left side was packed full of families on vacation—moms with bad sunburns, kids enjoying a rarely-allowed soda, dads relaxed and expansive. The right side was peopled with regulars, and that was where she went: to the bar, where she grabbed two stools and greeted the bartender.
“Hey, Ulysses.” Ulysses, a sixty-something ex-hippie with a long, gray ponytail, had been working at Bob’s as long as Auburn could remember.
“Hey, kiddo. I heard about Carl. What’s the latest?”
Auburn bit her lip at the mention of her beloved boss and surrogate dad. “He’s doing great. I visited him at the hospital this afternoon, and he looks so much better. He’ll be back to work at Beachcrest in no time.”
“It was a heart attack?”
“A mild one. A warning, they said. He needs to make some changes—better diet, more exercise, less stress—you know the drill.”
“You tell him that when he feels better he should come by my Monday night Centering with Cannabis group at The Weed Garden. Best way to de-stress, and now one hundred percent legal.”
“Um, will do,” Auburn said, hiding a smile. Down-to-earth and relatively strait-laced Carl was not going to take Ulysses up on that invitation any time soon, she knew.
“You holding down the fort at the inn while he’s recovering?”
She nodded.
“He’s lucky to have you. If this had happened six months ago, you woulda still been in New York.”
“I know. I’m glad I’m not still in New York. For all the reasons.”
“We’re glad you’re back, too, kiddo,” Ulysses said.
Two arms wrapped around Auburn from behind and she turned into her sister’s hug. She pressed her face into Chiara’s hair, breathing in her comforting apple-cinnamon smell. She would never take Chiara—or pretty much anything in Tierney Bay—for granted again. Even months after returning home, it still freaked her out to think that she’d come so close to giving it all up.
“Hey, sis,” Chiara murmured, releasing Auburn. “Hey, U,” she greeted the bartender, who smiled at her and went back to drying glasses. Turning to Auburn, she said, “How’s Carl doing?”
“Much, much better. He’ll be out in a couple of days. They think in time for July 4th festivities.”
“Thank God,” Chiara said. “I’m so glad.” She touched her sister’s cheek affectionately, then said, “Hey, I gotta run to the restroom. Will you order a drink for me?”
Auburn nodded. “What do you want?”
“Dunno. What are you having?”
“Peach on the Beach.”
Chiara grinned. “Not ‘sex on the beach?’”
“What is this sex of which you speak?”
“Oh, no, no. That is tragic. We’ve gotta change that, hon.”
Auburn scrunched her nose. “Not sure I’m there yet.”
Chiara regarded her for a long moment, then shook her head. “Well. Order me one, too. And while I’m gone, check out the hottie at the end of the bar. He could put the sex back in your beach. Or peach.”
Auburn rolled her eyes at her sister, but once Chiara was gone, she snuck a peek. Her sister hadn’t been exaggerating. He was tall, dark, and handsome; broad shouldered; and wearing one hell of an expensive suit. Auburn should know—she’d been all-but-married to a Wall Street hedge fund manager. The guy at the end of the bar knew how to wear a suit, too—he had both the body and the attitude for it. Auburn’s girl parts gave a little involuntary shiver. Not for you, she reminded them. We’ve sworn off guys like that. Permanently.
Also, who the hell wore a suit in a beach town bar?
She stole one more glance and admired the way the linen hugged him. Custom-tailored to emphasize the power in those shoulders.
Her attention was yanked away by the sound of breaking glass—a tray being dropped. Auburn knew that sound well from years of waiting tables and it was the worst. She swung off her stool and went to help.
She didn’t know the middle-aged waitress crouched in the midst of broken china and glasses, but she could identify with her forlorn expression. She squatted and the waitress flashed her a panicky expression. “It’s only my third night.”
“Don’t stress, hon.” Auburn centered the tray between them and began restacking intact plates and gathering the biggest shards. “I know it sucks. But Johann’s super nice. He won’t get mad.”
“Thank you,” the waitress whispered. She grabbed a napkin and began scooping up the spilled food. “And thanks for helping me clean up.”
Auburn smiled. “No problem.”
Once the tray was reloaded, the waitress thanked Auburn again, and she headed back to her seat at the bar.
“Nice of you,” Ulysses said, wiping down her spot.
Auburn blushed. “I just know how it feels.”
“Yeah. Well, not everyone would do that.” He set a Bob’s cardboard coaster on the counter. “What can I get you?”
“Peach on the Beach. Two, actually. One for me, one for Kee.”
“On me,” a voice pronounced behind her.
She turned to find the hottie. Up close, he smelled unbelievably good—and familiar. Expensive, male, and hyper-competent. Did they put that in a bottle? Apparently so. Plus, she had a love-hate relationship with his bossy self-confidence. Her body loved it and her brain hated it. For good reason, she reminded herself. Been there, done that, have the scars.
“It’s the twenty-first century, dude,” she said. “I think what you meant is, ‘Can I buy that drink for you?’”
His slate-gray eyes met hers. “No. I meant, ‘The drinks are on me.’”
Really? The size of the balls on this one. She should have guessed. No one looked that good in a suit without being an arrogant prick. Or maybe that was just her post-Patrick trauma talking.
She could feel Ulysses eyeing them both. The glass thunked down harder than usual on the bar’s surface. Ulysses didn’t approve of the guy’s presumptuousness any more than she did.
“Seriously? Who are you?” she demanded.
“Trey Xavier. And you are?” His voice was smooth, low, and gorgeous. If it were a drink, she’d order that any day of the week. Plus the purr of it had drawn her eyes to his mouth, which was surprisingly full and soft-looking, considering the rest of him seemed to have been chipped out of a mountain.
But she was done with men who thought they knew what was best for her. What she wanted.
So why were her uncooperative girl parts celebrating him? They’d obviously already forgotten the lesson of Patrick.
Those gray eyes. They were intense. Like, he wouldn’t take them off her face. He had that alpha male stillness in his features that told her he’d wait forever without filling the empty space with words. And, oh, my God, he was going to devour her with that slate gaze in the meantime. It had been more than six months since she’d had sex with anything other than her favorite toys, and this guy was all sex.
And, oh, he was waiting for her to say something. Right. Her name. What was that again?
She was seven-eighths of the way to remembering and three-quarters of the way to agreeing to whatever he proposed next. Her girl parts knew it and began partying their approval. Getting ready to soak up the whole sensory experience of him, the feel of that stubble on his jaw, which had to be the perfect contrast with the heat and softness of his mouth; the way his scent would concentrate where—
Something clicked in the depths of her brain, and she realized why he smelled so familiar. And the spell broke, just like that. Cracked liked one of those plates the waitress had dropped moments earlier.
“Your cologne costs a thousand dollars a bottle.” The words popped out, truth served up cold.
His eyes opened slightly wider. Barely a flinch, but enough to let her know she’d surprised him.
“Asshole ex,” she explained. “He wears that stuff. And here’s the thing. My ex wasn’t the kind of experience I want to repeat. Maybe you guys have nothing more in common than arrogant come-ons and a penchant for suits that cost more than my car, but I really can’t chance it. I’m leaving this bar with my sister. Who’s standing right behind you, if you wouldn’t mind stepping aside to make room for her—?”
His expression hardly changed. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a leather case and withdrew a business card that he set on the bar beside her freshly poured drink. “I’m staying at Cape House tonight,” he murmured. The card was beautiful and obviously expensive. Linen cream. Deeply embossed gold text. For all she knew it was gold.
Something shifted in her low belly. Damn you, girl parts and your taste for alpha men and expensive things.
She left the card where it was on the bar.
“That’s my brother’s hotel.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Rumor has it the French toast is world class.”
She shrugged. That French toast recipe was hers, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of saying so.
“I bet it would taste even better with you sitting across the table from me.” He gave a small nod. “You know where to find me.” He turned and strode away.
Asshole! And yet, her body reacted contrarily to her brain, because he looked every bit as good going as coming. Those suit pants. That ass.
But holy shit, the nerve! Who had that kind of nerve? Could you buy that in a bottle for a thousand dollars?
“Um, wow?” Chiara said, reclaiming her seat. “He was—kind of like a work of art?”
“If by that you mean look but don’t touch, then yes.”
Chiara frowned.
“He just invited me to his hotel room. An invitation that apparently included breakfast.”
“He—what? And you said no? Do you get propositioned by hot guys so often you can just turn them down?”
“I’m on hiatus.”
“Not every guy in a suit is Patrick.”
Auburn winced. Chiara knew better than anyone how thoroughly her experience with her controlling ex had messed with her head. “Pretty sure this one is cut from the same cloth. I just don’t want to go there. I let Patrick take so much away from me, and I—I almost let him take more.” She reached for her sister’s hand, and Chiara’s expression said she knew Auburn was talking about their own relationship.
“Yes, but now you’re back. You have me, you have Levi and Mason and Hannah”—their other siblings—“you have Carl and Beachcrest.”
It was a neat little litany of the things Auburn loved, the things she’d almost left behind when she’d gone to New York with Patrick.
“Well, that’s exactly it,” Auburn said mournfully. “I don’t have Beachcrest. When Carl retires, assuming I can get the money to buy it from him, yeah, I will. But in the meantime, I don’t even have a plan for how I’m going to get that money.” That hadn’t been part of Chiara’s list: lost time. The two years she’d wasted with Patrick in New York, which she could never get back. “So, yeah,” she finished. “Until I get some of those pieces in place and feel a little more sure of myself and established here, I don’t want to let another man into the picture.”
“Okay, I totally get that,” Chiara said. “But I’m not so much talking about the picture as the bedroom for a little stress release. I’m just saying that sometimes having sex with someone else, even if it’s meaningless, is a good way to get an ex out of your head.”
Patrick wasn’t still in her head, was he? “Says the woman who has done that several times with no success.”
Chiara’s cheeks pinked.
Well, shit. She hadn’t meant to be a bitch about it. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair.”
Chiara sighed. “No. But it was completely true.”
“Jax and Patrick are two totally different guys.”
“Who both turned out to be assholes in the end.”
The sisters both exhaled at the same time, then laughed, then hugged.
“Let’s just say for a moment that you’re right,” Auburn said, “and I need to get back on the horse, sex-wise, which is an expression that only women who had their first orgasms riding at twelve should really ever use. If that were true, it still wouldn’t be that guy.” She inclined her head to indicate him. “He’s a Patrick clone. You don’t get over one rich asshole by fucking another.”
Chiara’s eyebrow rose. “Patrick’s problem isn’t that he’s rich. It’s that he’s controlling.”
“You mean, the kind of guy who would buy you a drink without asking whether you wanted one and then assume you wanted to know where he was staying?”
“Touché,” Chiara said. “But my point holds. Some get-over-Patrick sex wouldn’t kill you.”
Auburn went to take a drink and discovered that she’d already emptied her glass. She was feeling it, too, a light buzz all over her body. Which was the only reason she peeked down the bar one more time.
Slate gray eyes met hers, and one eyebrow went up. She looked away quickly, but not before her body had time to weigh in. Yes.
“Not him,” Auburn said. “I just—can’t.”
Her sister put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “Okay. Not him.”
Auburn hugged her sister, hard.
As Chiara pulled back, she smoothed Auburn’s hair away from her face. “I’m so glad you’re back.”
“Me too. Have I thanked you lately for rescuing me?”
“Yes,” Chiara said. “But I didn’t rescue you. You rescued yourself. And don’t you forget it.” She raised her glass and they toasted. “Love you, sis.”
“Right back atcha, Ulysses,” she called across the bar. “We’ll both have another Peach on the Beach, please.”
She turned to Chiara and winked. “On me.”
* * *
It was still light when she walked back to Beachcrest Inn, the golden hour. The sun was setting over the Pacific, and a bank of low clouds had turned shades of pink, peach, and purple. Beachcrest was at the end of a side street, a few blocks from the main drive and the tavern where she and Chiara had spent their evening. Clad in weathered cedar shingle, the inn looked like three houses huddled together for comfort. There were eight guest rooms in the three connected buildings, and two carriage houses—also weathered shingle—held one more room each. It was unprepossessing, which was one of the things Auburn loved most about it. It was so cozy and homey. In fact, it was her home now.
She jogged up the front steps, across the wide front porch with its wicker chairs and swing, and let herself in the front door of the central building, which housed the lobby and front desk. Luz was on duty, a shawl draped over her shoulders.
“How’d it go?” Auburn asked.
“Pretty smoothly.”
“No air conditioning breakdowns? No pukers?”
Luz laughed. “Nope. Hey, did you know the group of four checking in tonight were writers?”
“Really?” Auburn said, intrigued. “No!”
“Mmm-hmm. They’re here on a retreat … to write steamy romances.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yup.”
“That’s so fun! We have to look them up and get their books. That way, I can at least live vicariously.”
“Amen,” Luz murmured. “Fictional sex is better than none.” She raised an eyebrow in Auburn’s direction. “At least you’re temporarily celibate by choice. Better than from lack of choices.”
“You never know. Maybe you’ll inspire the next romance. He checks in late at night … you’re on the desk by yourself …”
“Is that a love story or a horror movie?” Luz teased. “Anyway, you’ll get to meet them at breakfast.” She looked at her watch. “Speaking of which, it’s late! You have to be up in six hours. You should go the fuck to sleep.”
“I gotta get stuff set up for breakfast so I’m not behind in the morning.”
Luz shook her head. “I don’t know why you don’t let someone else do breakfast.”
“You know I love breakfast.”
“I know you do, babe,” Luz said, smiling. “And everything else about this place.”
Auburn headed back into the kitchen where she set about prepping everything she could in advance—squeezing the orange juice, cutting the fruit, prepping the dry ingredients for the waffle batter, setting the long dining room table and the smaller tables in the breakfast room. She surveyed the kitchen carefully to make sure she’d done all she could to make her life easier in the morning, then smiled to herself, pleased. She’d made hundreds of breakfasts at Beachcrest during the years she’d worked here—as a teenager, in college, after college—and it never failed to delight her that someone paid her to do this job.
She turned off the lights and headed to the back corner of the house, letting herself into her room with an old-fashioned metal key—not a key card, because Carl didn’t like or trust anything modern.
She and Carl both had rooms in Beachcrest. It had been part of the deal he’d made with her when she’d moved back from New York. He wanted her to do full manager duties, but he couldn’t afford the salary he thought she deserved, so he’d given her the smallest room, which also happened to be her favorite. It was a corner room with windows on two sides, and even though neither window faced the ocean, the room was flooded with light during the day and looked out over Beachcrest’s gardens. Thanks to their longtime housekeeper, Sarah, who did double duty as gardener, the gardens rioted with color all summer long.
Auburn ran her hand over the pretty quilted bedspread, shades of blues and greens, and smiled at the chocolate Sarah had left on her pillow. Sarah didn’t clean Auburn’s room—she cleaned it herself—but Sarah often left her treats.
There was nothing luxurious about her digs—the room was small, cramped, even—but she loved it more than any place she’d ever lived. And one day, when she saved the money, it would be hers for real.
She sloughed off her clothes, ran hot water in the claw foot tub, then sank down in the water. Her muscles relaxed, even as her nipples tightened at the contrast between the hot water and the cool air. Usually this was where she let her mind wander—over what had gone wrong and right in the running of Beachcrest that day, over what could go better the next. But for whatever reason, as she luxuriated in her bath, her mind kept going back to her interaction at Bob’s. Trey Xavier, disturbingly attractive in his expensive suit. And even though she knew it was the last thing she should be asking herself, she couldn’t help but wonder what she’d be doing right now if she’d let her body, and not her better judgment, steer the evening.
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