Tempting Tristan

by Melissa Foster

  “Sorry,” I say, shaking my head to clear it and noticing, for the first time tonight, Wyatt’s big-ass grin. “Huge news? Cough it up already.”

  Wyatt laughs. “Finally! Cassidy and I got engaged. It’s time to celebrate.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Tristan

  LAST NIGHT’S STORM dredged up rocks, bits of driftwood, black skate egg cases, and stringy strands of seaweed, all of which I dodge as I run down the beach. Rough waves batter the shore, like thoughts of Alex have been crashing through my mind all night. I still can’t shake the feeling that he acted like he knew me. Knowing Arty’s propensity to chat, he probably does know of me. The question is, how much does he know? Dodging an inky mass of seaweed, I think about how Arty would have hunted through the stringy mess. Her frizzy hair would dance in the breeze like that of a rebellious child refusing to be tamed. She’d pull one of her thick cardigans across her frail shoulders, gaze down the beach as if it were her lover, and say, “Don’t you love the beach after a storm, when the treasures of the ocean floor are unearthed and cast ashore?”

  My mind returns to Alex, who it hasn’t strayed far from. I’ve been racking my brain, trying to remember seeing him at Arty’s funeral, but for the life of me I can’t. I wonder if he’s here to stay, or just to settle up her estate and move on. Knowing how much Arty adored him, it would sadden me if their relationship meant so little to him that he’d swoop in and sell her place, cash in on the equity, and move on.

  As I near town, more people meander along the beach, bundled up in sweaters and clutching steaming mugs to ward off the September-morning chill. Squinting against the rising sun, I see a broad figure approaching. He’s carrying a long piece of wood over his right shoulder. His sweatshirt hangs open, giving me an amazing view of his athletic physique. His face is downcast, searching the wet sand. The view of his bulging biceps straining against his sweatshirt sleeves stirs all the parts of my body I’ve been trying to ignore for the past few weeks. It’s about time to stop this ridiculous break from human touch and get back in the saddle. I slow my pace to get a better look, and he lifts his face. Alex. Our eyes catch, and a wide smile spreads across his chiseled jaw.

  I tell myself to calm the hell down, but the guy is even hotter in the light of day. He picks up his pace, closing the distance between us, and I realize he walks with a slight limp, favoring his left side.

  My goddamn heart is running like a freight train. I stop walking as he nears, and he steps in so close, I think he’s going to drop that piece of wood and grab me. Hell, yes.

  “T,” he says in that commanding tone that melts my insides.

  His eyes are even deeper blue than I remember. They are riveting, soulful and guarded at once.

  “I didn’t know you were a runner.” He flashes the crooked smile that did funny things to me last night, and yup, my stomach goes squirrely again.

  I have to clear my throat to stop myself from staring at his deliciously plump lower lip. What is it about his slanted smile that I find incredibly sexy? I fantasized all night about his mouth and his rough, commanding voice. Needing to get a grip, I push my hand through my hair and drag my eyes over the water.

  “I’m taking a break after a rough breakup, and a guy can only take so many cold showers. Running takes the edge off.”

  He laughs, and it rumbles into the air. “I hear ya.”

  His eyes rake down my body like a stroke of heat. I’m wearing only running shorts, and if he does it again, he’ll get an eyeful of the effect he has on me. I remind myself to slow the hell down, because no matter how hot the guy is, there is a good reason I’m taking a break. And falling off the wagon for a guy who’s only in town for a few days wouldn’t be the smartest decision.

  “You’re in great shape,” he says. “We should work out together sometime.”

  “Yeah, that’d be cool.” My mind’s stuck in the gutter, and despite my need for smarter decisions, I’m hoping he means something else by work out. The way he looks in his cargo pants and tight white shirt is doing nothing to help my condition.

  I glance at the driftwood on his shoulder and meet his piercing stare. “Nice wood.”

  “The storm brought in a few nice surprises.” He raises his brows, and his eyes slide down my chest again.

  I swallow, breathing harder. “So, you’re into wood?” Aw, man. My brain’s gone. I can’t even make normal conversation. Something about this guy’s rough demeanor and penetrating eyes has me tied in knots like a kid with his first hard-on.

  The sinful smile that creeps across his face is too much, and a laugh slips out. I scrub a hand over my mouth, and thankfully, he laughs, too.

  “I’m sorry.” I turn toward the water, trying to regain control of my inane laughter.

  “Why? Because you’re wondering about my affinity for wood?” He bumps me with his shoulder and it sends us both into another burst of laughter.

  “Apparently taking a break equates to acting like a fool. Can we start over?”

  He drapes his free hand over my shoulder like he’s my best buddy and says, “I kind of like this foolish T. How about we keep him around for a while?”

  Our eyes connect again, and along with searing heat I feel the stroke of friendship. I like his mix of rough and playful, and his crooked smile, and the way he’s looking at me right now. Especially the way he’s looking at me right now. As if he likes me, and not just the idea of hooking up. Although the seduction radiating off the man is enough to set the sea on fire.

  Alex

  THE STRENGTH OF the vibe between us catches me off guard. Tristan’s even hotter than I imagined, but it wasn’t his incredibly hot body or handsome face that had me giving him my number so quickly last night. It was the way he protected Charley. There are three things I hold in high regard: family, loyalty, and strength. Okay, four. Knowing when to use that strength is important, too. The restraint in his eyes last night told me how hard it was for him to keep from having a talk with the bearded guy before Charley went out with him. But he drew the line, allowing Charley to be the strong woman she obviously needed to be. After two tours in Afghanistan, I know a thing or two about when to let people fight their own battles and when to step in. Tristan seemed to respect that line, too, even with my grandmother, who could be as headstrong as me.

  I drop my arm from Tristan’s shoulder, adjust the driftwood I’m carrying, and try to figure out a way to spend more time with him.

  “I wasn’t going to call,” he confesses.

  So much for my hopes of spending more time together. Not knowing how to respond, I mumble, “No?”

  He shakes his head. “No. Then Army said you were Arlene’s grandson.”

  An icy shiver ripples through my chest at the word army, and I wonder if he’s got the whole scoop on me. “Army?”

  “Sorry. Wyatt Armstrong. That’s his nickname. He doesn’t use it much, but sometimes it still slips out. He said he knew you.”

  It was a chickenshit move last night to leave before Wyatt came out of the back room and roped me into a conversation, but I didn’t want to talk about my grandmother. And around here that’s where conversations seemed to lead. I’ve yet to meet a person who knew my grandmother and didn’t share stories that nearly wrecked me. I’m pretty sure a guy with tears in his eyes wouldn’t be a turn-on for a big guy like Tristan.

  “Yeah. We met a while back when I was here on leave. Nice guy.” I want to lead the conversation away from my grandmother, but I have a feeling there will be no deterring Tristan if that’s where he’s headed.

  “He is. I’ve known him forever.”

  Lucky Wyatt.

  “He got engaged last night. He was there to celebrate.” Tristan gazes down the beach, and I remember he was out for a run. My mind spirals back to the years when I could run without pain, when carrying sixty-plus pounds of equipment and trekking for miles was all in a day’s work. That was before the incident that nearly cost me my life—and kept me from my grandmother’s f
uneral. Now I have a torso riddled with scars, painful memories so thickly encased in guilt nothing can touch them, and a mangled leg. Aren’t I a catch?

  “Hey, I don’t want to hold you up,” I lie. He’s the only person I’ve actually wanted to talk to for months. My grandmother spoke of him often, and I’m curious to know if he saw her at the end, and if so, if she said anything that I should know about. But at the same time, I’m afraid of what I might hear.

  He cracks a warm smile, and his gaze moves over me. I’m not even sure if he realizes he’s checking me out because the look in his eyes is more like he’s thinking than turned on. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad, and shift my stance. The ridiculous idea that he can somehow see my injured leg through my pants sneaks into my mind, and my chest tightens again.

  “Then you are Arty’s grandson?”

  Was. I grit my teeth. The sound of the waves crashing against the shore compete with my grandmother’s voice from our last visit. I hear Bruce in those waves. I think he’s still here. She spoke of my grandfather often. She’d turned to me with a spark of rebellion in her eyes and said, Maybe neither of us will ever leave. I sense her so strongly in the bungalow, I’m pretty sure she’s still hanging around, making sure I came to Harborside as she’d encouraged me to. Or more likely, making sure I’m okay.

  “Yes,” I finally answer.

  He runs his hand through his thick dark hair. It’s been so long since I’ve touched another man, my hands itch with the desire to do the same. I can see he’s packing some heat in those shorts, and he’s shredded from neck to ankle. Gripping the wood tighter, I force myself to turn away before I start sporting wood.

  “I’ve run enough for this morning,” he says. “Mind if I hang with you for a while?”

  Mind? I’d like him to hang out in my bed. “Not at all. That’d be cool.”

  “You can tell me about your need to show off your big wood,” he teases. “Making up for a deficit?”

  The comment stings, but I know he doesn’t mean it the way I’m thinking.

  “Hardly,” I assure him.

  We walk for a while, making small talk and picking up a few choice pieces of driftwood. Tristan takes them from me, freeing up my hand.

  “Just like to have your hands on wood, then?”

  Tristan arches a brow. “Look who’s talking.”

  I laugh under my breath. “I’m good with my hands.” Want to see just how good?

  “Somehow I don’t doubt that.” He nudges me up the beach as a wave rolls in at our feet.

  We both lean down to pick up a piece of wood at the same time, and the air between us sizzles and pops. We hesitate, as if the world is suddenly standing still, waiting for one of us to make a move. I wave my hand for him to pick it up. My mind’s busy imagining how well our bodies would fit together. Knowing that’s not going to happen anytime soon, I push those thoughts down deep and continue walking.

  “I make furniture from driftwood, metal, glass.”

  “Do you have a workshop?” he asks.

  I look up the beach at my grandmother’s bungalow. Even though I didn’t grow up here, and I’ve visited only a few times while on leave from the army, it feels like home. Anywhere my grandparents lived feels like home. Lord knows my mother never settled down in any one place long enough to create a real home for us.

  “I’m hoping to use my grandmother’s studio at some point.” When I get the guts to clean it out. My mother cleaned out the bedroom when she came for the funeral, but she left the contents of the kitchen and studio, assuming I’d want them. My heart aches every time I think about going into the room where my grandmother poured her soul into her artwork.

  “So you’re not just here to settle her estate and then move on?” There’s a hopeful lilt to his voice.

  “In a sense, coming here is my way of moving on.”

  “From?”

  I shrug as a breeze sweeps off the ocean, and I quicken my pace, hoping to outrun the question.

  “Skeletons?”

  “Something like that,” I admit.

  “Your grandmother spoke very highly of you, so they can’t be that bad.”

  I mull over my response, walking in silence toward the house.

  “Sorry. I don’t mean to pry,” Tristan apologizes. “I really liked Arty, and I know you were important to her. If you want someone to talk to, I’m here.”

  “Thanks, T. I appreciate it.” We walk up the rocky steps and lay the wood we’re carrying in a pile in front of the house.

  Tristan wipes his hands on his shorts and squints against the sun as he takes in the view. “I miss her, you know? She loved walking the beach after a storm.”

  “Yeah, she used to write to me about it.”

  “She’s the only person I’ve ever met who actually found sea glass. People talk about it, but I’d never seen anyone lucky enough to find any. She found pieces often, and every time, she’d hold out her hand—” He holds out his hand and says, “You know how little her hands were.”

  “Yeah,” I manage, remembering holding her hand as a boy, when her hand could contain mine, and our last visit, when I noticed how frail her hands had become. “Her hands should have been dry from all the sculpting she did, but they weren’t. They were soft as butter.”

  “I think that was her hand lotion. Lovely Lilac. She used to get it delivered from a woman named Roxie Dalton in Sweetwater, New York. She bought it by the case.”

  “How do you know that?” It’s a strange feeling to realize he knew things about my grandmother that I didn’t.

  He shrugs. “She had a hard time reaching Roxie, so I got online and ordered it for her. Sorry, I got off track. I wanted to tell you about the sea glass. She’d find these pieces, and she’d get this look of disbelief, and she’d say, ‘In eighty-plus years, do you know I’ve only found nineteen pieces of sea glass? Until today. This is number twenty.’ She told me that every time she found a piece, and the number changed with every telling. Sometimes it was eleven, other times it was twenty-four.” He laughs, and it’s as easy and comfortable as the rest of his demeanor.

  For a beat we both gaze out over the water, the memory filling the silence. I want to hear more about my grandmother and their friendship. I want to thank Tristan for looking after her. But the ache of missing her is too raw, so I do what I do best and repress those thoughts.

  He turns toward the house. “Do you have anything you’ve made here? I’d love to see them.”

  “Seriously? I mean, don’t feel obligated.”

  “Obligated to see furniture? I’m nice, but not that nice.”

  “Why do I have a feeling that’s not true?” I pull open the creaky wooden door of my grandmother’s bungalow. Technically it’s mine now, but I’ll always think of it as hers. Tristan follows me in, his eyes moving swiftly over a string of mismatched lights hanging from the exposed-beam cathedral ceilings. Sunlight shimmers through the windows onto the painted concrete floor. I know he’s been inside before, but I wonder what he thinks of the cold stone bleeding through the painted concrete walls and the mismatched furniture. My grandmother bought the place back in ’83 and refused to let me paint it. She said she liked that it looked as though it had been battered by the sea.

  I wave toward the wooden table by the windows and at the glass-top coffee table. “I made both of those.”

  I wonder if he feels my grandmother’s presence as I do. If he does, he keeps it to himself as he crouches by the coffee table and touches the driftwood standing on end beneath the glass.

  “There are twenty-two pieces of wood,” I explain. “My grandmother and I collected them together one summer. I wanted to give the impression—”

  “Of fluidity?” he asks, rising to his feet.

  “Yeah. Not many people see that.”

  He glances around the room and walks over to the shelves I made for her when I was on leave two years ago. Two thick branches form a V. I cut holes in three slabs of driftwood, slid them over the
branches, and secured them in place with twine, giving the shelves a rustic feel to match her bungalow.

  He raises his brows. “This yours?”

  I nod and cross my arms over my chest. “Hers, but yeah. I made it.”

  “These are really cool.” He moves to the windows and picks up a picture frame I made when I was twenty, a few months before I joined the army. My grandparents moved here six months after my grandfather retired. He was a stubborn old man, and he never cared for doctors. His cancer had gone undetected for too long, and he passed away four months later.

  Anger and sadness well in the pit of my stomach.

  Tristan waves the frame in my direction. “Yours?”

  I nod, and he sets it back down.

  “She has this mirror in the bathroom. The frame is—”

  “Made from thick pieces of driftwood and shells. Also mine. For years I made furniture and accessories and stuck them in storage. I’ve got a lot of my equipment stored, too. I’m opening a retail store as soon as I can find the right space.”

  “Wow, you really are planning to stick around.”

  “I hope to. This is home now.” It feels good to say home and know that if I ever leave, it’ll be my decision, not the army’s or my nomad mother’s.

  “There are some vacant properties right in town. A lot of retailers can’t make ends meet over the winter, so they take seasonal leases.”

  “I know it’s tough to keep a business going in a resort town, but furniture isn’t seasonal. I’ve got friends on Cape Cod and in Maryland who have bought a few of my pieces, and once the store is up and running, they’re going to help me spread the word. I’m pretty confident that once I get my shit together, I can make it work.”

  “That’s great. I know the area like the back of my hand. If you want someone who doesn’t have a financial stake in your finding a place to go with you when you look at properties, I’d be happy to give you the inside scoop on locations.”