Read, Write, Love (Love in Bloom: The Remingtons, Book 5) Contemporary Romance

by Melissa Foster

  “Are you a nurse?” He rolled up his torn sleeve again.

  “Doctor, actually,” she said with pride. She wondered if seeing her helping him stirred the memory of when he stood up for her all those years ago. By the look in his eyes, she doubted it. He had that first-meeting look, the one that read, I wonder if I have a shot, rather than the look of, You’re that girl everyone said was a slut.

  He nodded, and his eyes turned serious. “Well, thank you, Dr. Daisy Honey. I appreciate the care and attention you’ve given to my flesh.”

  He said my flesh with a sensual and evocative tone that tripped her up. She opened her mouth to respond and no words came.

  Margie returned to the counter. “Can I get you something, Luke?”

  Thankful for the distraction, Daisy pushed the first aid kit across the counter, then gathered her things. “Thanks, Margie.”

  “I’d love coffee and two eggs over easy with toast,” Luke said.

  Daisy felt his eyes on her as she struggled to handle the cake, bag, and coffee again.

  “Coming right up, sugar.” Margie disappeared into the kitchen, and Daisy headed for the door.

  He touched her arm and batted his long, dark lashes. “You’re just going to dress my wound and leave? I feel so cheap.”

  Despite herself, she had to laugh. “That was actually kind of cute.”

  He narrowed his eyes, and it about stole her breath. “Cute? Not at all what I was going for.”

  Then you hit your mark, because it wasn’t cute that’s making my pulse race.

  He held the door open for her. “I hope to see you around Daisy, honey.”

  “Tetanus isn’t fun. You should get the shot.” She forced her legs to carry her away from his heated gaze.

  LUKE THOUGHT ABOUT Daisy as he sat in a booth drinking coffee and waiting for his sister to arrive. Luke bought hay from Daisy’s father, and he’d known David Honey’s daughter was coming back into town for a few weeks, but he’d never have connect the Daisy Honey he met today, with her entrancing blue eyes and way-too-sexy body, with the white-blond girl who used to walk through the halls of school with her head down, trying desperately to be invisible. Daisy’s eyes were sharper and wiser than they’d been all those years ago, and there was something else about this new, grown-up Daisy that had captivated him. When she touched him, the air between them sizzled. She’d done everything possible to keep him from seeing that she’d felt it too, and for some strange reason, that intrigued him.

  He was still thinking about her when Emily slapped an armful of drawings and folders down on the table.

  “You are such a pain. I can’t believe after I asked you a dozen times if you were sure you wanted the bed and bath separate, and I begged you—begged you—not to do it that way, that now you want to change it.” She tossed her straight dark hair over her shoulder and straightened her white silk blouse and black pencil skirt before sitting down. Emily was an architect and owned a design build company. She was also becoming an expert in the field of sustainable energy. “This would have been much easier if you’d listened to me at the beginning—but…” She narrowed her eyes and pointed a finger at him. “Then again, if you had listened to me, I could have built you a passive house, and you could have saved seventy percent on your energy bills—”

  “Okay, okay. I get it. Sit down and chill.” Emily was fourteen months older than Luke, and at the moment she was giving him the same narrow-eyed, knitted-brow stare he’d seen too many times growing up. “Maybe you should skip the coffee this morning.”

  “Ha-ha.” She flagged down Margie and ordered coffee. Black. Emily had always been feisty, and Luke supposed she had to be, growing up with five brothers. “So, are we just modifying the bed and bath in the apartment above the barn, or did you decide to move the kitchen to the other side of the apartment as well?”

  He knew moving the plumbing and the framing was going to be a pain in the ass for Emily and her staff. He’d never ask another builder to move the plumbing; he’d have left it as it was originally designed. But just as Emily had no issue calling him at three a.m. to discuss a dream she’d had or to show up unannounced with a bottle of wine when she needed to vent with someone she trusted, he knew she probably had expected his changes and was relieved he’d made them before the walls were erected.

  She ran her eyes down his arm. “Hey, what happened?”

  Margie brought Emily her coffee as Wes walked into the diner. “And then there were three.”

  “Hey, Margie.” Wes slid into the booth beside Emily. Each of the Bradens were blessed with thick dark hair, though Emily’s was straight and shiny, Luke’s was coarse and wavy, and Wes’s was a shade lighter and he kept it cropped much shorter than his brothers’. His cargo shorts and tank top were streaked with dirt, as was his forehead.

  “Hey, sugar. I’ll bring your usual over in just a sec.” With her hand on her hip, she looked Wes over and shook her head. “Were you out on the trails already today?”

  Wes raised his hand. “Guilty as charged. Checking out new trails. Tough life, but someone has to do it.” Wes ran a dude ranch and spent his time teaching well-paying clients how to rope and run cattle, ride horses, skeet shoot, and fish. He also took them on overnight pioneering adventures. Wes eyed Luke and Emily, then the pile of drawings on the table. “Did I miss anything?”

  “What are you doing here?” Luke had recently helped Wes on a pioneering trip with a group of clients. He’d wound up going head-to-head with one of them and was arrested for assault. Even though the charges against Luke had been dropped, Luke was still dealing with what it said about him. He’d been thinking of nothing but ever since.

  “Em said she was meeting you for breakfast.” Wes shrugged. “I was hungry.”

  “I was just asking Luke what happened to his arm.” Emily arched a finely manicured brow.

  Luke shrugged. “It’s nothing. I cut it on a fence, but I did just run into Daisy Honey, who cleaned it up for me. You guys remember her?” He thought of the way she’d ripped the tape from his arm and her snarky comment. She was feisty, and he liked it.

  “Isn’t she the girl who had that horrible rep about sleeping around in high school?” Emily drank her coffee and opened one of her folders. “God, I felt so bad for her.” Trusty was like any other small town, where gossip spread faster than weeds.

  “Hot little blond number?” Wes asked.

  “Not anymore. I mean, hot yes, but she dyed her hair darker. I guess she got tired of dealing with all the crap, and just for the record, I don’t think those rumors were true.” Luke could relate to dealing with crap, and a memory was snaking its way into his mind. He couldn’t quite grasp it, but he had the distinct feeling that it had something to do with Daisy.

  “I see that look in your eye, Luke. Careful. You’re the last thing a woman dodging a prickly past needs.” Wes held his gaze a beat too long. One of his key employees, Ray Mulligan, had quit a few weeks earlier, leaving Wes and his business partner, Chip, to lead every group that came to the ranch. Wes had been snappy and short-tempered ever since.

  Luke was all too aware of his own reputation, and the arrest didn’t help much. He wasn’t big on lasting relationships. Or rather, he didn’t connect well on deeper levels with people. Give him a horse and he could practically tell what they were thinking, but people? Women? Whole different ball game. It was only recently that he’d begun to wonder why that was.

  “Dude, what’s that supposed to mean?” Luke held his brother’s gaze. Having been raised by their mother after their father, Buddy Walsh, took off with a dime-store clerk from another town while their mother was still pregnant with Luke, all of his siblings were protective of one another. Luke was the same, and usually their fierce family loyalty served them well, but at times like this, the last thing he needed was to be judged by Wes.

  “She’s had enough of a bad rep. She doesn’t need yours following her around.”

  “Shit, Wes. You know damn well that arrest
wasn’t my fault. You saw what went down.” The muscles in his jaw twitched.

  “I wasn’t talking about the arrest.”

  Emily slid a folder across the table to Luke; then she unfurled a set of architectural drawings, her eyes darting between them. “Can we not play Neanderthal today? Please? I have client meetings to attend to.”

  Margie brought Luke and Wes their breakfasts, and Emily slid the drawings to the side. “There you are, boys. Em? You want anything else?”

  “No, thanks, Margie. I’m good.” Emily watched Luke skim the file. “Want me to explain it?”

  Luke set the file down. “Nope. I just want you to do it. I don’t need to decipher the details. I want the bathroom and bedroom attached. It was shortsighted of me not to do that in the first place. I just didn’t like the idea of there not being a guest bath.”

  Wes shook his head.

  “What?” He knew damn well what Wes was thinking. His brother was a planner. He mulled over every detail of his life, which was a good thing in his profession, and he thought Luke was impetuous, that he didn’t think things through. The truth was, Luke was a pantser—hard and fast. He ran from planning too far ahead or in too much detail like a rebellious teenager. Most of the time, his gut instincts were right, but sometimes, where they might have been right at the time, after thinking things through, he realized that the next idea he had was better.

  In Luke’s eyes, those changes would have come after his decision was made even if he’d planned things out first, like Wes did. That thought process was so far from Wes’s that they often butted heads.

  “Don’t you want to go over the specifications?” Wes asked.

  “Hell no. What I want is to get home and check on my new foal. I trust Emily’s judgment, and she knows my budget. She’s banging out a few walls, moving some plumbing around.”

  “Hey. Nice to know you value my job so much, you ass.” Emily took a piece of toast from his plate and bit it, then smirked at him. “It’s a one-bedroom apartment for a ranch hand. Why on earth would it need a guest bath? If you’d only listened…”

  “Sorry, Em. You know I value what you do, and yeah, maybe I should have listened.” Luke shoveled his food into his mouth and lifted his chin in Wes’s direction. “Don’t you have a playdate?”

  “Yeah,” Wes said with a sly grin. “With a petite little brunette and a set of books.”

  “Clarissa?” Emily pointed at Wes. “I knew you two would hook up.”

  “She’s my bookkeeper, not my girlfriend, and we’ve never hooked up.” He put his arm around Emily with a sigh. “If you put as much energy into your own love life as you do mine, then maybe you wouldn’t be alone.”

  “I’m not alone. I’m dating.” She scrunched her nose. “Sort of. I think. Ugh. Do you have any idea how hard it is to date in this town?”

  Luke and Wes both laughed, deep, loud, knowing laughs.

  “Right. I guess you do, but it’s easier for guys. You guys have dated half the women in Trusty and it just makes the women you haven’t dated want you more. It’s not like that for girls.”

  “It sure as hell better not be,” Luke said. He might be her younger brother, but he’d learned from the best four older brothers a guy could have how to protect his sister. Part of protecting her meant making sure she didn’t put herself in a position to become the talk of the town. That was better suited for the men in the Braden family—or at least it had been. Luke had changed. He’d always been restless, and that included being unable to settle down with just one woman, but since buying the ranch two years ago, that restless itch had calmed, and he’d become far more focused. He liked working with his hands, being around animals, and not being told what to do. The ranch was a perfect fit, and he was finally ready to make changes in his personal life, too. He wanted to be with one woman, a woman who would understand him, love him for who he was—his inability to plan and all. Someone who valued family, loved animals, and wasn’t looking for something more than he could give. But that took opening himself in ways he didn’t even understand himself, and he had no clue how to go about any of it.

  Wes finished his food and locked his eyes on Luke. “I’ve got to run. Bro, just tread carefully with Daisy, that’s all. You know what she’s been through.”

  Twenty minutes later Luke climbed onto his Harley and headed back toward his ranch, thinking about Daisy and what she’d gone through in high school. Maybe they weren’t so different after all.

  (End of Sneak Peek)

  To continue reading, be sure to pick up the next

  LOVE IN BLOOM release:

  TAKEN BY LOVE, The Bradens

  Love in Bloom series, Book Fifteen

  Please enjoy a preview of the next

  Love in Bloom novel

  Seaside Dreams

  Seaside Summers, Book One

  Love in Bloom Series

  Melissa Foster

  Chapter One

  BELLA ABBASCIA STRUGGLED to keep her grip on a ceramic toilet as she crossed the gravel road in Seaside, the community where she spent her summers. It was one o’clock in the morning, and Bella had a prank in store for Theresa Ottoline, a straitlaced Seaside resident and the elected property manager for the community. Bella and two of her besties, Amy Maples and Jenna Ward, had polished off two bottles of Middle Sister wine while they waited for the other cottage owners to turn in for the night. Now, dressed in their nighties and a bit tipsy, they struggled to keep their grip on a toilet that Bella had spent two days painting bright blue, planting flowers in, and adorning with seashells. They were carrying the toilet to Theresa’s driveway to break rule number fourteen of the Community Homeowners Association Guidelines: No tacky displays allowed in the front of the cottages.

  “You’re sure she’s asleep?” Bella asked as they came to the grass in front of the cottage of their fourth bestie, Leanna Bray.

  “Yes. She turned off her lights at eleven. We should have hidden it someplace other than my backyard. It’s so far. Can we stop for a minute? This sucker is heavy.” Amy drew her thinly manicured brows together.

  “Oh, come on. Really? We only have a little ways to go.” Bella nodded toward Theresa’s driveway, which was across the road from her cottage, about a hundred feet away.

  Amy glanced at Jenna for support. Jenna nodded, and the two lowered their end to the ground, causing Bella to nearly drop hers.

  “That’s so much better.” Jenna tucked her stick-straight brown hair behind her ear and shook her arms out to her sides. “Not all of us lift weights for breakfast.”

  “Oh, please. The most exercise I get during the summer is lifting a bottle of wine,” Bella said. “Carrying around those boobs of yours is more of a workout.”

  Jenna was just under five feet tall with breasts the size of bowling balls and a tiny waist. She could have been the model for the modern-day Barbie doll, while Bella’s figure was more typical for an almost thirty-year-old woman. Although she was tall, strong, and relatively lean, she refused to give up her comfort foods, which left her a little soft in places, with a figure similar to Julia Roberts or Jennifer Lawrence.

  “I don’t carry them with my arms.” Jenna looked down at her chest and cupped a breast in each hand. “But yeah, that would be great exercise.”

  Amy rolled her eyes. Pin-thin and nearly flat chested, Amy was the most modest of the group, and in her long T-shirt and underwear, she looked like a teenager next to curvy Jenna. “We only need a sec, Bella.”

  They turned at the sound of a passionate moan coming from Leanna’s cottage.

  “She forgot to close the window again,” Jenna whispered as she tiptoed around the side of Leanna’s cottage. “Typical Leanna. I’m just going to close it.”

  Leanna had fallen in love with bestselling author Kurt Remington the previous summer, and although they had a house on the bay, they often stayed in the two-bedroom cottage so Leanna could enjoy her summer friends. The Seaside cottages in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, had been in the gir
ls’ families for years, and they had spent summers together since they were kids.

  “Wait, Jenna. Let’s get the toilet to Theresa’s first.” Bella placed her hands on her hips so they knew she meant business. Jenna stopped before she reached for the window, and Bella realized it would have been a futile effort anyway. Jenna would need a stepstool to pull that window down.

  “Oh…Kurt.” Leanna’s voice split the night air.

  Amy covered her mouth to stifle a laugh. “Fine, but let’s hurry. Poor Leanna will be mortified to find out she left the window open again.”

  “I’m the last one who wants to hear her having sex. I’m done with men, or at least with commitments, until my life is back on track.” Ever since last summer, when Leanna had met Kurt, started her own jam-making business, and moved to the Cape full-time, Bella had been thinking of making a change of her own. Leanna’s success had inspired her to finally go for it. Well, that and the fact that she’d made the mistake of dating a fellow teacher, Jay Cook. It had been months since they broke up, but they’d taught at the same Connecticut high school, and until she left for the summer, she couldn’t avoid running in to him on a daily basis. It was just the nudge she needed to take the plunge and finally quit her job and start over. New job, new life, new location. She just hadn’t told her friends yet. She’d thought she would tell them the minute she arrived at Seaside and they were all together, maybe over a bottle of wine or on the beach. But Leanna had been spending a lot of time with Kurt, and every time it was just the four of them, she hadn’t been ready to come clean. She knew they’d worry and ask questions, and she wanted to have some of the transition sorted out before answering them.

  “Bella, you can’t give up on men. Jay was just a jerk.” Amy touched her arm.

  She really needed to fill them in on the whole Jay and quitting her job thing. She was beyond over Jay, but they knew Bella to be the stable one of the group, and learning of her sudden change was a conversation that needed to be handled when they weren’t wrestling a fifty-pound toilet.