He continued painting. “Says the girl who sleeps with her doors wide open for all to see. How do you know you don’t have a neighbor who watches you at night?”
“Because I own hundreds of acres. I have no neighbors.”
He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “You know what I mean. It’s not safe. You need a watch dog. You could have all sorts of creatures in this place. Raccoons, squirrels. You’re lucky a bear hasn’t found you for breakfast.”
“Who am I? Goldilocks?”
“I bet Goldilocks closes her doors.”
“What is with you? You’re not my father.”
He dipped the paintbrush, his jaw rigid again. “How’d you end up out here all alone, anyway?”
“I assumed Hal or Josh filled you in on my life.” Charlotte didn’t mind talking about her personal life, but obviously Beau minded talking about his, and that gave her an idea. “What was that all about yesterday?”
“You really do need to get out more if you don’t recognize a kiss as a kiss.”
“Ha. Ha. Not that.” She wanted to talk about the kiss, but not yet. “What happened at the chicken coop? You froze.”
“I didn’t freeze,” he said tightly.
“You definitely froze.” She leaned against the wall, watching his muscles flex as he carefully painted the trim, his jaw working double time. She’d hit a nerve. “I’ll share if you share,” she said hopefully.
He waggled his brows. “Like Show and Tell?”
“Sort of. I’ll reveal some of my story if you share some of yours. Deal?”
He didn’t respond, but she had a feeling he was thinking about it, so she pressed on. “I came here to grieve after losing my grandfather. He was the last of my family members, and I’ve been here ever since.”
He stopped painting and looked at her empathetically. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know that. I knew you inherited the inn, but I didn’t realize you had no family.”
“It’s okay. I have friends. Well, besides Cutter, most of them don’t live around here. But I have my LWW sisters. We’re scattered all over now, but we’re still close.”
“What is that? Some sort of sorority?”
“Sort of. It’s a group of friends from college. We all loved to write, so we rented a house together. One night after too many shots we decided it wasn’t cool that sororities had names and we didn’t. We each had dreams of writing professionally in one form or another, and we were pretty sure we wouldn’t want to call ourselves the Bad Bitches Who Write when we were sixty years old, so we went with Ladies Who Write. Three of my friends founded LWW Enterprises. You might have heard of them. They do films, publishing, real estate, and a bunch of other things. I’m published under their erotic romance imprint.” And no, she didn’t get any special favors by being an LWW girl. Her editor was not pleased with her at the moment, due to her missing her first deadline.
“You realized your dream. That’s cool, and impressive.”
“Well, haven’t you?” She took a bite of her protein bar, watching his face grow serious again. Josh and Hal Braden had told her that he was incredibly successful, and they’d warned her that it might take a while before he’d have time to come out and do the repairs on the inn. She’d been so grateful that they were making arrangements for the repairs to be tended to, she hadn’t minded the delay. Although she had been curious about why they’d suggested Beau do the work when he lived so far away.
“Sure.”
She groaned. “Come on, Beau! Give me more than that. Why did you agree to come out here? It’s a heck of a long trip just to do some handyman work.”
“Because my relatives asked me to. I travel a lot, and I like it that way.” He climbed down, picked up the paint can, and moved the ladder farther down the wall.
“Why?”
“Because the world is too big to hole up in one place forever.” He climbed the ladder and began painting again.
“Don’t you ever want a family of your own?”
He scoffed. “Do you? I might travel a lot, but your life seems even more solitary than mine.”
“I did, once upon a time,” she admitted, and his eyes softened. “I grew up with parents who were madly in love. My father was always hugging and kissing my mom, whispering things. I used to want to know all their secrets, because whatever he whispered always made her happy. And my grandparents were the same way. But I lost my grandmother when I was twelve. I lost my parents when I was a senior in high school, and then it was just me and my grandfather. So, yes. I used to dream of finding Mr. Right and having a beautiful family. But then I started dating in college, and it wasn’t anything like what I imagined. Everyone said it would get better, but the college-dating realm just sucked for me. Guys didn’t want to connect. They wanted to fuck.”
“Not all guys,” he said, eyes trained on her.
“Well, the ones I went out with.”
“So you gave up and became the girl who lives alone at the inn?”
She mulled over his question as she finished her protein bar. “When I came out here to grieve, I started writing. It wasn’t a plan to stay here forever. It just happened.” She pulled the Twix from her front pocket.
“Protein bars and Twix? It’s a wonder how you make it through the day.”
“A girl’s gotta have her chocolate fix.” She broke it in two and held half out for him. “You should try it. I bet it makes you smile.”
“Chocolate fix,” he said under his breath, and smiled.
That grin gave him a whole different look: rugged and mischievous instead of rugged and stern. She liked it.
“Thanks, shortcake.” His fingers brushed over hers as he took the candy, lingering long enough for their eyes to connect, sparks to ignite, and for his expression to turn tense again.
As they ate the candy, she asked, “What about you?”
“I eat real food,” he said, dodging the question.
“I’m going to get this out of you one way or another, so you might as well just give me something. Make it up if you have to. Just stop backstory blocking me.”
He began painting again, the amusement she’d earned lingering on his very kissable lips.
“Beau! You are so frustrating.”
“You’re kind of cute when you’re frustrated. I’m thinking about being even more frustrating.”
She rolled her eyes. “Kind of? You sure kissed me like I was more than kind of anything.”
“Damn, girl. You’re either on a mission or not interested. There is no in between with you, is there?”
“I don’t even know what that means. Stop changing the subject. What kind of guy were you in college?”
His serious expression returned. “Not the kind that you went out with.”
Interesting. She stared up at him, waiting for more, but he had the strong, silent thing down pat. “So…?”
“I had a girlfriend through college. And now I don’t. Okay?” The pain in his voice was inescapable.
Her heartstrings got a firm tug with that confession. Beau had to be at least thirty years old, and he was still pining for a college girlfriend? She wondered if the breakup was recent. “So, you loved and lost, and now you’re not the dating kind?”
He finished painting the trim without answering, and she worried he might shut down completely. When he climbed down the ladder, she got a good look at his face, and the sadness she saw made her stomach hurt.
“Beau, I’m sorry—”
“Don’t be,” he interrupted. “You nailed it. I loved and lost, and I’m definitely not the dating kind.”
Chapter Six
BEAU WAS RELIEVED when Charlotte stopped her inquisition and went back to writing, but when she returned to her office, she took the energy in the room with her. The music felt flat and eventually became white noise to the ghosts in his head. For the first time in years he actually wanted to connect with a woman beyond satisfying a sexual urge. That rattled him. It should have scared the hell out of hi
m, but Charlotte was captivating in a complicated way, which for some strange reason made her even more fascinating. She had opened up to him, and he felt bad about shutting her down. As he worked through the afternoon, he couldn’t stop thinking about the way she’d said he backstory blocked her. Backstory blocked? She really did live in a writer’s world. Avoidance was his go-to tactic, but that wasn’t the man he wanted to be around her. He didn’t know why, and he didn’t really care about the reasons. All he knew was that it felt wrong to cast darkness over her bright light, and he wanted to fix it.
He finished up for the day, stripped as the shower heated up, then stepped beneath the warm spray. His chin fell to his chest, and he let the warm water loosen the muscles in his back and neck. He heard the faint ringing of his cell phone in the bedroom. Zev had texted him earlier with the message, Hey, bro. Jilly’s worried about us. When will they back off? Zev had been with Beau at the bar the night Tory was killed. Two days later Zev had broken up with his long-time girlfriend, Carly Dylan, who also happened to be Tory’s best friend. He’d quit college and had taken off for the start of what he claimed was an adventurous lifestyle, chasing one treasure after the next. Beau knew better. Even though Beau spent months at a time in Pleasant Hill, he was never there this time of year. They were both running from that night. But ghosts were tricky. They hovered in the eyes of the living and the hearts of the guilty.
The bathroom door opened, jerking him from his thoughts.
“Oh my God, tell me about it,” Charlotte said.
Beau pulled open the shower door wide enough to stick his head out, shocked to see her holding up her finger, indicating she needed a minute, as she listened to whoever was on the other end of his cell phone.
“I know.” She wrote her name on the steam in the mirror as she said, “He’s a little serious, but I’ll break him of that. How’s Aiyla?”
Aiyla was Beau’s cousin Ty’s wife. They’d both competed in the Mad Prix last year, and shortly after, Aiyla had been diagnosed with bone cancer and had undergone a partial leg amputation. Beau had renovated a house for them in Peaceful Harbor, where they now lived. But none of that explained why the sexy brunette was talking on his phone in his bathroom.
Charlotte listened for another second and drew a heart around her name on the mirror. “Good. Hug her for me. Hold on a sec. I’ll give you to Beau.”
She lowered the phone and said, “I found the key to the handcuffs! They were in my bathroom medicine cabinet. I have no idea how they got there, but at least they’re off your headboard.” She lifted the hem of her shirt, showing him the handcuffs hanging from a belt loop on her cutoffs. “Your phone rang when I was unhooking them, and I saw Ty’s name. I hope you don’t mind that I answered it.”
“Don’t any of the locks in this place work?” he asked as he took the phone.
Her eyes swept over the shower doors. “Oh, are you shy? Sorry. But don’t worry. I can’t really see anything through the frosted doors. Just a general outline.” She tilted her head and squinted. “Um, maybe shapes, too.”
“Jesus, shortcake. Get out of here before I pull your pretty little ass in here with me.”
She hollered as she left the bathroom, “Hear that, Ty? He’s already loosening up!”
“Shortcake?” Ty said as Beau put the phone to his ear.
“Bro, that woman is nuts. Like the good kind that you can’t ignore,” he said into the phone, and noticed he was smiling again. “She either makes me grit my teeth or smile. There is no middle ground.”
“Let me get this straight. You’ve been there for what? A day or two, and you’ve already got her handcuffed to your bed?”
“No. She had a…Hell, Ty, you know her.” Ty and Aiyla had spent time with Charlotte at last year’s awards ceremony. “Why didn’t you warn me about her sex dolls and her inability to lock doors? The woman has no sense of security, and I swear when she’s not writing, her mind moves in ten directions at once.”
“That’s Char. She’s a trip.”
“She’s a trip, all right. Did you know she was alone up here? That she has no family at all?”
“Yeah, I know,” Ty said compassionately. “I’m glad you’re there with her for a little while. Will you be around for the awards ceremony?”
“I’ll be here. I leave the following Thursday. Listen, I’m in the shower…”
“So I heard.” Ty chuckled. “I also heard that you were planning on taking the offer for that reality show in L.A. I’m going to miss you, man. I was just calling to see if you could recommend someone to build a garage with a darkroom above it for us.”
He’d really like to be the one to do the work, but that would take time he didn’t have. “Sure. I’ll hook you up with one of my buddies.”
“Great. One more favor. Aiyla is flying out to meet me at the finish line. If you—”
“Say no more. I’ll watch out for her. How’s she getting here from the airport? You know I’d be happy to pick her up. Just give me a time and flight number.”
“It’s okay. She’s thinking about connecting with a few of the other supporters and coming in as a group. She wanted to come out earlier, but my wife’s calendar is busier than the president’s. I’d really appreciate it if you could be there when she arrives at the inn, to make sure she’s okay.”
“You’ve got it, buddy.” Beau knew how much Ty worried about her, despite the fact that Aiyla was one hell of a strong woman. After learning Charlotte was truly alone, Beau put her right up there at the top of the list of strong women he knew. “Listen, I’ve got to get out of this shower and buy some damn locks.”
“Why? Afraid you don’t measure up to a blow-up doll?”
Beau chuckled. “Catch you later, asshole.”
As he toweled off, he saw Charlotte’s name written in the steam on the mirror, and just like that he was grinning again. He shouldn’t be. He should be bothered that she’d come into his room unannounced, answered his phone, and pranced right into the bathroom. But that was Charlotte, and for whatever reason, he wanted to discover even more of her quirks.
CHARLOTTE OPENED ANOTHER Twix bar as she typed a text to her friend and LWW sister Aubrey Stewart. I think I just committed a man faux pas. She pressed send and opened another candy bar. Aubrey lived in Port Hudson, New York, Charlotte’s hometown, and she ran the media division of LWW Enterprises, the company she’d founded with two of their LWW sisters, Presley Cabot and Libby Warren. Presley headed up the publishing department, and Libby ran the philanthropic efforts of what had become a multimillion-dollar empire. Charlotte loved all of her LWW sisters, of which there were many, but she was closest to Aubrey.
As usual, Aubrey responded right away, and Charlotte read her message. With…? I’m assuming the man with the enormous ladder? Don’t worry. Men don’t notice mistakes.
She had told Aubrey about using Beau for writing inspiration, but she hadn’t yet told her about their steamy kisses. Her stomach tumbled as she typed her reply. I walked in when he was taking a shower. I wasn’t thinking! I was on the phone (his phone) with his cousin and just walked right in. She sent the text, then quickly sent another that said, GINORMOUS DISTRACTION.
Her phone rang two seconds later, and Aubrey’s name appeared on the screen.
“Hey,” Charlotte said in a hushed whisper.
“How ginormous? Are we talking garden-snake variety or python?”
“Like, all-I-can-think-about ginormous. It could have just looked that way because of the frosted shower doors, but…” She bit into the Twix bar.
“Where’s the faux pas? Seeing his distraction? And why were you on his phone and not in the shower with him?”
“Oh my God. Slow down with the shower-with-him thing. I know his cousin and saw his name on the phone, so I picked it up. But focus, Aubrey, please! How am I going to look at him without thinking about that?”
“First, why are you whispering? You live in a mansion and he’d have to be right there to hear you. And second
, I swear we should have forced you to have a sex life in college.”
“Just tell me what to do because I have another problem I need advice on.”
“Okay, for the python issue, just pretend he’s one of your characters. You think about fictional men’s body parts every day. Tell yourself he’s not real.”
“Um…I sort of can’t do that.”
Aubrey squealed. “Did my sweet sister screw the hot contractor? I’m so proud of you!”
“No! We kissed.” She stole a glance at the door.
“Okay, good. That’s a start.”
“Aubrey!”
Aubrey laughed. “I can’t help it. I don’t want you to get hurt, but if you both want to fool around and you agree that it’s only temporary, then why not have some fun? As long as you can keep your heart out of it, that is.” She paused and then said, “Actually, maybe that’s not a great idea. Beyond research for your books and writing fiction, you have no hands-on experience with casual sex.”
Charlotte’s heart took a nosedive. She didn’t want casual sex. Was that all it would be?
“Anyway, this is not a big deal. When you look at him, think of the kiss, not the cock.”
“Kiss, not cock. Got it. That might work.” She repeated it in her head. Kiss, not cock, kiss, not cock.
“I bet you’ll get a great scene out of this. Talk about inspiration.”
“You have no idea how great. I have an incredible scene, but I still have one thing to work out.” She wanted to get a sense of what it felt like to have someone Beau’s size lying on top of her, and while the dolls usually gave her enough of an idea to play with, this time they fell short. In more ways than one.
“Is that your other issue?”
“No. I just…I think I like him, and you know real men never measure up to the fictional men I create. Even if we did get together, he’d eventually be jealous of my writing schedule. It’s a recipe for disaster.”
“Uh-huh. How long are you going to live behind that farce?”
“Experience tells me it’s not a farce.”
“Limited experience, which really qualifies as more of a whiff of experience and shouldn’t be the basis for anything real. I swear I’m going to send Becca down there to teach you a thing or two.” Becca Nunnally, Aubrey’s ever-efficient assistant, who also handled Charlotte’s fan email and social media, was a fellow Boyer University graduate and a walking sexpot with a fierce attitude. From what Aubrey told Charlotte, beautiful, perky-boobed Becca turned down almost every guy who asked her out, but the ones she did go out with, she never saw twice.
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