Seaside Dreams (Love in Bloom: Seaside Summers, Book One)

by Melissa Foster

  “I get it, okay? I just…God, it’s just so hard to see her struggling with her looks, and honestly, you know I adore her, but she’s sort of making a fool of herself. It’s been two years since the divorce. She just needs to get over it and move on. I do feel bad because I had to take a firm stand and tell her that I wasn’t going to come home until after the summer.”

  “Why do you feel bad? That’s what you do every summer.” Amy eyed one of the construction workers, a water bottle held above his mouth, a stream of wetness disappearing down his throat. “Holy hotness.” She fanned herself with her napkin.

  Jenna watched the guy wipe his mouth with his heavily muscled forearm. “Yeah, but she wanted me to come home to hang out with her a few times.” The sexy waiter brought Jenna her drink.

  “Thank you, doll.” She watched his fine ass as he walked away.

  “Doll?” Amy giggled.

  “See?” Jenna bonked her forehead on the table. “That’s her word. Doll? Who says that? You have to help me. She’ll ruin me, and I swear if I spend one more summer lusting after Pete, then I’ll be empty on all accounts. My mother will hate me, my hoo-ha will be lonely, and I’ll use words like doll. Jesus, do us all a favor and shoot me now.”

  “Yeah, well, about that whole Pete thing?” Leanna nodded toward the crosswalk, where Pete Lacroux was crossing the road carrying the cutest damn puppy.

  Holy mother of God, he is fine. I want to be that puppy. Those construction workers couldn’t hold a candle to Pete, and Jenna’s body was proof as her pulse quickened and her mouth went dry. His shoulders were twice as broad as those of the boys on the pavement, his waist was trim and—holy hell—he shifted the pup to the side, giving Jenna a clear view of the pronounced muscles that blazed a path south from his abs and disappeared into his snug jeans. Those damn muscles turned her mind to mush. Yup. She’d gone as dumb as a doorknob.

  “Breathe, Jenna,” Amy whispered. “You are so not over him.”

  Jenna couldn’t tear her eyes from him. Years of lust and anticipation brewed deep in her belly. Just one more summer? One more try?

  No. No. I can’t do this anymore. “The man’s one big tease. I’m moving on.” She forced herself to tear her eyes away from him and guzzle her drink.

  And then it happened.

  She felt his presence behind her before he ever said a word. Jenna, the woman who could talk to anyone, anytime, had spent years fumbling for words and making atrocious attempts at flirting with the six-foot-two, dark-haired, mysterious specimen that was Peter Lacroux, but despite catching a few heated glances from him, she remained in the friend zone.

  Regardless of how her body reacted to him, she didn’t need to beg for a man she could barely talk to, or follow after him like that adorable puppy snuggled against his powerful chest.

  She was totally, utterly, done with him.

  Maybe.

  PETE EYED THE women from the Seaside cottage community, or the Seaside girls, as he’d come to refer to them, on his way across the street. They hadn’t spotted him watching them as they ogled the young construction workers from the patio of the Bookstore Restaurant. Pete had done the community and pool maintenance for the cottages at Seaside for about six years. He was a boat restorer by trade, but when he’d begun working at Seaside, his career hadn’t yet taken off. By the time word got around that he was an exceptional craftsman, he was too loyal of a man to stop doing the maintenance work. Besides, the girls were fun, and he’d become friends with the guys in the community, Tony Black, a professional surfer and motivational speaker, and Jamie Reed, who’d developed OneClick, a search engine second only to Google. And then there was Jenna Ward, the buxom brunette with the killer ass, a cackle of a laugh, and the most intense, alluring blue eyes he’d ever seen.

  Fucking Jenna.

  He watched her eyes shift to him as he neared the restaurant. Other than his craftsman skills, reading women was Pete’s next best finely honed ability—or so he thought. He could tell when a woman was into him, or when she was toying with the idea of being into him, but Jenna Ward? Jenna confused the hell out of him. She was confident and funny, smart, and too fucking cute for her own good when she was around her friends. Just watching Jenna sent fire through his veins, but when it came to Pete, Jenna lost all that gumption, and she turned into a…Hell, he didn’t know what happened to her. She grew quiet and tentative when she was near him. Pete liked confident women. A lily to look at and a tigress in the bedroom. His mouth quirked up at the thought. He wasn’t a Neanderthal. He respected women, but he also knew what he liked. He wanted to devour and be devoured—and with Jenna, who swallowed her confidence around him, he feared his sexual appetite would scare her off. Besides, with his alcoholic father to care for, he didn’t have time for a relationship.

  Jenna turned away as he stepped behind her. Her hair was longer this summer, framing her face in rich chocolate waves that fell past her shoulders. Pete preferred long hair. There was nothing like the feeling of burying his hands in a woman’s hair and giving it a gentle tug when she was just about to come apart beneath him.

  He held Joey, the female golden retriever he’d rescued a few weeks earlier, in one arm, placed his other hand on the back of Jenna’s chair, and inhaled deeply. Jenna smelled like no other woman he’d ever known, a tantalizing combination of sweet and spicy. Her scent, and the view of her cleavage from above, pushed all of his sexual buttons, despite her tentative nature around him. But he had no endgame with Jenna Ward. No matter how much he wanted to explore the white-hot attraction he felt toward her, he respected Jenna and treasured her friendship too much to take her for a test ride.

  “Hello, ladies.”

  “Aww. Can I hold her?” Amy jumped to her feet and took the puppy from his hands. Joey covered her face with kisses.

  “She’s a little shy,” Pete teased. He’d found the pup in a duffel bag by a dumpster behind Mac’s Seafood, down at the Wellfleet Pier. The poor thing was hungry and scared, but other than that, she wasn’t too bad off. The first night Pete had her, the pup had slept curled up against Pete’s chest, and they’d been constant companions ever since.

  “Yeah, real shy. How’s she doing?” Leanna asked.

  “She’s great. She sticks to me like glue.” He shrugged. “I was just coming over to get her a bowl of fresh water, maybe a hamburger.”

  “Hamburger?” Leanna wrinkled her thinly manicured brow. “How about puppy food?”

  “Puppies love burgers.” Chicks were so weird with their rules about proper foods. He glanced down at Jenna, whose eyes were locked on the table. She usually went ape shit over puppies, and he wondered what was up with her cool demeanor.

  “Want to join us for a drink?” Bella slid a slanty-eyed look in Jenna’s direction.

  He felt Jenna bristle at the offer. He should probably walk away and give her some breathing room. She obviously wasn’t herself today. He was just about to leave when Amy grabbed his arm and pulled him down to the chair beside Jenna. Great. Now Jenna had a death stare locked on Amy. Pete was beginning to take her standoffishness personally.

  “Sit for a while. I want to play with Joey anyway.” When Amy met Jenna’s heated stare, she rolled her eyes and kissed Joey’s head.

  “How’s the boat coming along?” Leanna Bray was a quirky woman, too. Her cottage had always been a mess before she met her fiancé, Kurt Remington. Every time Pete had gone by to fix a broken cabinet or a faucet, she’d had laundry piles everywhere, and sticky goo from her jam making seemed to cover every surface, including herself. Almost all of her clothing had conspicuous stains in various shades of red, purple, and orange. Kurt was as neat and organized as Jenna. He’d taken over the laundry and didn’t seem to mind picking up after Leanna. In any case, her place was much more organized these days.

  “She’s coming along.” Pete had been refinishing a custom-built 1966 thirty-four-foot gaff-rigged wooden schooner for the past two summers. Working with his hands was not only his passion, but
it was also cathartic. He’d spent the last two years pouring the guilt over his father’s drinking into refitting the boat.

  “What will you do with it when you’re done?” Amy Maples looked like the girl next door, with her sandy blond hair and big green eyes, and acted like a mother hen, always worrying about her friends.

  Pete shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll sail someplace far, far away.” He’d never leave his father, or the Cape, but there were days…

  That brought Jenna’s eyes to him. Jesus, she had the most gorgeous eyes. They weren’t sea blue or sky blue or even midnight blue. They were more of a cerulean frost, and at the moment, pointedly icy. What the hell did I do? He racked his brain, going over the last two weeks, but he hadn’t seen Jenna for more than a minute or two. He couldn’t imagine what he’d done to warrant her attitude.

  Jenna raised her eyebrows in Amy’s direction. “Time for me to go away.” She rose to her feet, bringing her red-string-bikini-clad body into full view. The tiny triangles barely covered her nipples and the bottom rode high on her hips, exposing every luscious curve.

  Pete shot a look around the patio—every male eye was locked on Jenna. Jenna wasn’t even five feet tall, but she had a better body than any long-legged model. How the hell can a woman have a body like that and not be one hundred percent confident at all times? He stifled the urge to stand between her and the ogling men.

  “Where are you going?” Bella’s eyes bounced between Pete and Jenna.

  “I’m going to do what I came here to do. There’s a construction guy with my name on him over there.” Jenna lifted her chin toward the sky, and her pigeon-toed feet carried her fine ass off the patio, across the grass, and directly toward one of the young construction workers.

  “What’s she doing?” Pete narrowed his eyes as Jenna approached a ripped construction worker. He expected Jenna to put her hands behind her back and sway from side to side like she did when she spoke to him—reminiscent of an excited girl rather than a sensual woman—adorable and confusing as hell.

  “Oh. My. God.” Bella rose to her feet, her eyes wide.

  “Nothing, Pete. She’s…Oh God.” Amy put Joey in Pete’s lap. “Take her. I um…Darn it.” Amy reached for Bella’s hand as they gawked, mesmerized by Jenna’s bold move.

  Her shoulders were drawn back, her beautiful breasts on display—proudly on display! What the hell? She put one hand on her hip, and holy hell, Pete didn’t need to see her face to feel the slow drag of her eyes down that bastard’s body in a way similar to how she usually looked at him when she thought he wasn’t looking. But then she’d go all nervous when he’d approach.

  What the fuck?

  “Holy shit. She’s going for it.” Bella sat back down, as Jenna put her finger in the waistband of the guy’s jeans and shrugged. “She’s something this summer, isn’t she?”

  Jealousy clutched Pete’s gut.

  “Yes, and this summer’s rock fixation? What’s up with pitch-black rocks? She’s never collected them before.” Amy’s voice trailed off as she watched Jenna in action.

  Pete made a mental note of the rocks Jenna was collecting this summer. He’d spent five years taking mental notes about Jenna. Every summer she collected different types of rocks—egg shaped, all white, gray, and oval. There was never any rhyme or reason that Pete could see for her rock selection, but she knew what she liked, and the ones she liked ended up all over her cottage and deck.

  Jenna’s eyes were fixated on the guy. That was the Jenna Pete had hoped would talk to him, and now…Now he was getting pretty damn pissed off.

  “Those aren’t local guys; they’re contractors,” he warned. “They probably have women in every town around here. Want me to intervene?” Jenna wasn’t his to protect. They’d never even gone out on a single date, but somewhere in his mind, despite his confusion, she was his. Summers to Pete meant six to eight weeks of seeing Jenna, and over the last two years, while his father buried his troubles in alcohol, seeing Jenna meant even more to him. But until this very second, he never realized how much he wanted her, or how much she meant to him. Joey turned her tongue on Pete’s chin. Frustrated, Pete lifted his face out of reach.

  Leanna shook her head. “God. Look at her go.”

  Look at her go? You think this is okay?

  “Pete, have you heard something bad about them? Should we worry?” Amy’s voice was laden with concern. “Bella, maybe we should…”

  Pete watched Jenna take her phone from her pocket and type something. A second later the blond guy took his phone from his back pocket and nodded.

  “She gave him her number. I can’t believe it,” Leanna said.

  “She wasn’t shitting us,” Bella said. “Damn, our girl’s getting her groove on.” She settled back in her seat and petted Joey. “Oh, Pete…tsk, tsk, tsk.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” He clenched his teeth so tight he thought they might crack.

  “Nothing.” Leanna smacked Bella’s arm.

  Bella set her eyes on him. “A woman like Jenna only comes around once in a lifetime.”

  He was just beginning to realize how true those words were.

  “Bella, don’t,” Amy warned.

  Bella shrugged. “Just sayin’.”

  He didn’t know what to make of the woman who was a wallflower around him and a sex kitten around a random dipshit in the street. Jenna sashayed back toward the table with a grin on her face. That was Pete’s cue to get the hell out of there before he was stuck listening to Jenna going on and on about that dipshit. He rose to his feet with Joey in his arms.

  “Wait. Don’t leave,” Amy pleaded. “You didn’t get Joey her water.”

  “I’ve got to get going.” With Joey in his arms, he headed off the patio. Jenna brushed past him without so much as a word, and it pissed him off even more. He couldn’t escape fast enough.

  “Guess who’s going to the Beachcomber tonight? Oh my God. He’s even hotter up close.” Jenna’s voice echoed in his mind as he crossed the street to get Joey a bowl of water from Mac’s.

  Holy Christ. Like I needed to hear that shit.

  (End of Sneak Peek)

  To continue reading, be sure to pick up the next

  LOVE IN BLOOM release:

  SEASIDE HEARTS, Seaside Summers

  Love in Bloom series

  Please enjoy the first chapter of the first

  Love in Bloom novel

  Sisters in Love

  Snow Sisters, Book One

  Love in Bloom Series

  Melissa Foster

  "A beautiful story about love and self-growth and finding that balance to happiness. Powerfully written and riveting from beginning to end."

  —National bestselling author Jane Porter

  Chapter One

  THE LINE IN the café went all the way to the door. Danica Snow wished she hadn’t taken her sister Kaylie’s phone call before getting her morning coffee. Living in an overcrowded tourist town could be a major inconvenience, but Danica loved that she could walk from her condo to her office, see a movie, have dinner, or even stop at a bookstore without ever sitting in a car. Every minute counted when you lived in Allure, Colorado, host to an odd mix of hippie and yuppie tourists in equal numbers. The ski slopes brought them in the winter, while art shows drew them in the summer. There was never a break. Every suit and Rasta child in town was standing right in front of her, waiting for their coffee or latte, and the guy ahead of her had shoulders so wide she couldn’t easily see around him. Danica tapped the toe of her efficient and comfortable Nine West heels, growing more impatient by the second.

  What on earth was taking so long? In seven minutes they’d served only one person. The tables were pushed so close to the people standing in line that she couldn’t step to the side to see. She was gridlocked. Danica leaned to the right and peered around the massive shoulder ahead of her just as the owner of that shoulder turned to look out the door. Whack! He elbowed her right in the nose, knocking Danica�
��s head back.

  Her hand flew to her bloody nose. “Ow! Geez!” She ducked in pain, covering her face and talking through her hands. “I think you broke my nose.” Each word sent pain across her nose and below her eyes.

  “I’m so sorry. Let me get you a napkin,” a deep, worried voice said.

  Two patrons rushed over and shoved napkins in her direction.

  “Are you okay?” an older woman asked.

  Tears sprang from the corners of Danica’s closed eyes. Damn it. Her entire day would now run late and she probably looked like a red-nosed, crying idiot. “This hurts so bad. Weren’t you looking where—” Danica flipped her unruly, brown hair from her face and opened her eyes. Her venom-filled glare locked on the man who had elbowed her—the most beautiful specimen of a human being she had ever seen. Oh shit. “I’m…What…?” Come on, girl. Get it together. He’s probably an egomaniac.

  “I’m so sorry.” His voice was rich and smooth, laden with concern.

  A thin blonde grabbed his arm and shoved a napkin into his hand. “Give this to her,” she said, blinking her eyelashes in a come-hither way.

  The man held the woman’s hand a beat too long. “Thanks,” he said. His eyes trailed down the blonde’s blouse.

  Really? I’m bleeding over here.