by Kait Nolan
"Yes ma'am!" He laughed and saluted. "Finally, all her wishes come true."
"I think a few of mine have too," Caroline said. "Something about a formal event and a dance floor just seems to make things happen for us."
"What do you say, Caramel Girl, do you want to dance? Maybe we can kiss on purpose this time."
She pretended to think about it for a moment, but turned to him with a mischievous look.
"You know, I'd love to, but I think I'm in the mood for something else..."
"What do you need, beautiful?" He leaned in closer to brush her lips with his.
Caroline let out a breathless giggle against his mouth. "How about a coffee run?"
THE END
A Note From Jessica
I hope you enjoyed this first glimpse into my brand new Geeked Out series! If you enjoyed it, I’d love it if you’d leave a review. They’re super important! Be on the lookout for the first full-length novel, Drawn To Your Heart, which chronicles the satisfying fall of Caroline’s boss, Max. Better yet, sign up for my newsletter so you don’t miss it!
About Jessica
Jessica Fox is a journalist by day and a romance writer by night, specializing in funny, sexy stories with a unique voice and memorable characters. She has loved words all her life, parlaying that passion into a career in marketing and journalism, writing for industry magazines, and working as an arts critic for notable publications. She has also served as a fiction editor for literary magazines and small presses.
She lives in Texas, where she is owned by two cats and shares a house full of never-ending DIY projects with her husband. In her spare time, Jessica enjoys binge watching superhero television shows, reading comic books, playing video games, writing and performing music, and trying to be as much like Peggy Carter as possible. You can catch up with her at her website: http://jessicafoxbooks.com, on Twitter @jessicafoxbooks, on Facebook http://facebook.com/jessicafoxbooks, on Tumblr http://jessicafoxbooks.tumblr.com, or Instagram (where you can totally check out the cats who own her) @jessicafoxbooks.
Dream Home
A Lost Beach Novella
By Lisa Kröger
Heat Level: 1 Flame
Written and published by Lisa Kröger
Copyright 2016 Lisa Kröger
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The following is a work of fiction. All people, places, and events are purely products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is entirely coincidental.
License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. The ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Chapter One
Night was not for sleep. At best, Evie Bowen was able to get a few quiet moments of rest. At worst, nightmares plagued her, hiding in every dark corner of her room. She stared at the cracked ceiling of her bedroom, mentally adding it to the list of things that needed to be fixed in the antebellum plantation house. Outside, bright hiccups of heat lightening made the sky glow bright orange for a hot second and then fade into the Mississippi Gulf Coast night.
She was covered in only a thin sheet, but it clung to her sweat-sheened skin, making the summer heat somehow worse. Peeling the sheet off, Evie stood and walked to one of the windows. After wrestling with it, the sash let loose with a screech, and she stuck her head out into the night, hoping for a breeze. When she found none, she resigned herself to the fact that sleep wasn’t happening and went to the kitchen for a drink of water.
Sitting in the artificial glow of the kitchen light, the house looked even duller and emptier than it did in full daylight. Everything needed updating. Tree roots had taken hold of the plumbing, termites had devoured part of the parlor and the side porch, and the electricity was old, flickering in and out at the slightest breeze.
This house was what her mother had called a “money pit.”
“Watch that old movie with Tom Hanks,” she’d told Evie when her daughter first told her about buying the place. “Watch that movie, and see if you still want a place like that. It’ll ruin your marriage. Life isn’t an HGTV show. There is no one to rescue you when you get in over your head.”
Evie considered pointing out the irony that her mother had warned her that life wasn’t like a television show while telling her to watch a Hollywood movie for advice, all in the same breath.
Her mother had been right, she supposed. Life happened, and HGTV wasn’t always there with friendly, white-toothed hosts offering to fix the messes. Everyone had expected her to sell the place when Henry died. But she couldn’t. This house was Henry. It was all she had left of her husband.
The empty bed upstairs was too much to bear tonight. Putting on a fresh pot of coffee, she waited for morning to come.
~*~
Evie poured black liquid into the cup in her sister’s outstretched hand. Anne had come early that morning—claiming she was there for a visit, though she was most likely her mother’s spy.
“Isn’t caffeine strictly verboten?” Evie asked.
Anne rubbed her swollen belly. “The doctor said that one or two cups of coffee in the morning is just fine. Makes her kick like crazy, though,” she said, taking a few sips and looking around the room as if searching for another topic of conversation. “Well, the kitchen gets some nice morning light.”
Evie poured herself another cup and leaned against the counter. “I almost believed you when you said that,” she laughed.
“No,” Anne said. “I really do mean it. I admire you for what you’re doing here. Any other woman would have put this place right back up on the market, you know—if she were in your situation.”
Evie sighed and put the nearly full cup of coffee in the sink. “Mom doesn’t think so.”
“Oh, honey,” her sister said, “yes, she does. She just worries about you. I worry about you.”
“If you’re so worried, then maybe stop sending me those baby invitations.” Evie glanced to the fridge where a pink invitation for a couple’s baby shower was stuck to the door with a watermelon magnet. “How many does that make? Three? You really need more monogrammed onesies?”
Anne stuck out her tongue. “A baby girl can never have enough of those. But if it worries you to come alone...” Anne let her voice trail off, looking at her older sister expectantly.
“There’s nothing wrong with me,” Evie said. “I don’t need my baby sister worrying about me.” I do enough of that for myself. But Evie didn’t add that. She didn’t need her sister to worry about anything else, not with the baby so close to arriving. Anne didn’t need to know exactly how much money Evie had sunk into this hellhole of a house, or about the letter that had arrived just yesterday.
Anne hefted herself out of the chair. “Don’t get so defensive. I didn’t mean to imply anything. I’m only saying that surely there’s a good looking single handyman for hire somewhere around this town, and you can hire him, maybe bring him a lemonade when he gets hot. Invite him over for a home-cooked meal sometime. See where things go from there.” She pulled her phone from her purse and started typing and pushing her finger expertly across the screen. “I saw on Facebook someone had posted a recipe for ‘Engagement Chicken’.”
“What the hell is ‘Engagement Chicken’?” Evie asked. Then she held up her hand. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.” She began to wash her cup, once, twice, three times, just so she didn’t have to look at her sister.
“It really works, I swear,” Anne said. “One of my friends had been with her boyfriend for five years, and he just wouldn’t commit to her. Then she made this chicken. And he proposed the very n
ext week. Something about the chicken made him see her as more than just a girlfriend. You know, she really seemed like a wife who could cook and take care of him.”
“He sounds like a real catch,” Evie said, her voice flat, still scrubbing at an invisible spot on the mug.
“At least she has someone. You’re getting to an age where there won’t be any men left. At least no good ones. They’ll all be divorced with kids. Or worse. They’ll be perpetual bachelors. Single for too long. You can’t afford to be picky, Evelyn. Not at your age.”
Evie spun around, soapy water flying from her wet hands. “I’m hardly a spinster, I’m only thirty.”
“Thirty-one,” her sister corrected.
“Next month,” Evie said. She sat down at the table, wiping her hands on her jeans. “And that doesn’t exactly make me a spinster.”
“It doesn’t exactly make you young, either,” Anne shot back. Her face softened. “Look, Ev, I don’t want to be mean. I really don’t. I love you. But there are some things you can’t wait on.” She rubbed her pregnant belly again. “Did you know at thirty-five, they mark you as ‘advanced maternal age’?”
Evie looked down at her hands, picking under her fingernails. They looked ragged, bitten to the quick.
“Just think about it,” Anne said, reaching for her purse and hanging it from her shoulder. “You can’t hole yourself up in here forever. Henry wouldn’t have wanted that.”
Evie nodded, still not looking up at her sister.
“I’ve got to go,” Anne said, shifting her purse to the other shoulder. She waited for a moment, looking at her sister. “I love you.”
“Me, too,” Evie said and watched her go.
Just as Anne got to the door, she turned around. “Don’t forget,” she said. “We’ve got dinner at Mom’s this weekend. And she said that Mrs. Smith’s son is in town visiting from Oxford. He’s a doctor. Might stop by.”
Evie groaned, and Anne blew her a kiss.
“See you there,” Anne said, leaving her sister alone in the mess of her crumbling kitchen.
~*~
Everything was packed up for the day, and the workers had finally gone home. Evie’s body wanted nothing more than to relax, but her mind wouldn’t let her settle down. She enjoyed the noise the workers made, how it filled the house with life during the day, but she didn’t want them around, either. She didn’t want to hold the burden of conversation.
She walked through the house, surveying the work that had been completed. Most of it had been done outside, replacing wood siding that had rotted in the decades of hot and humid Mississippi summers. Some of the plumbing had to be replaced due to tree roots that had forced their way under the house. Nothing exciting, not the kind of big reveal that HGTV would show, but necessary work all the same.
The crew her contractor brought in was always polite to her, almost to a fault, making her feel like a guest in the house, but at least they were clean. The tools were always neatly put away for the day. The ladder tucked away by the stairs, the electrical cords coiled carefully and pushed out of her foot path. She tapped an orange extension cord with her toe, pushing it flush to the wall as she walked back to the kitchen.
She opened the fridge, stared inside, and closed it without getting anything out of it. A stray mug, a dried coffee ring in the bottom, was sitting on the countertop, leftover from the morning. She moved it to the sink without washing it. A thick layer of white dust had settled over everything in the kitchen from the drywall work. She wiped her hand across the counter, inspecting the powder left on her palm.
The house was beginning to take shape. She could see new life here. Henry would be proud of her. His vision of the house was finally becoming reality. Her heart clenched at the thought. One day, the house would be finished. She hoped she would be ready when it was. Her sister hadn’t been wrong. It was time for Evie to come back to life, too. She just wasn’t quite sure how to do that.
Evie walked back into the hallway, not entirely sure what had brought her there in the first place. Looking around, she mentally took inventory of everything she saw, hoping for a clue or purpose. She saw the ladder, the coils of cords. The coil-shaped space in the white dust on the floor where the orange extension cord had been. She could even make out the mark where the toe of her shoe had scraped the powder from the floor when she had moved it just moments earlier.
Her chest clenched, and she froze where she stood, afraid to move. She listened for any sound in the house, any sign of someone other than her in the house. Perhaps one of the workers had come back. Maybe he had forgotten something. Maybe she was wrong in thinking that everyone had left. Maybe someone else was in the house with her. Someone who wasn’t supposed to be here.
She thought of the letter that arrived only yesterday. She thought it had been a prank. What else was she supposed to think? It just had rambled on about the Civil War and how the house had been the spot where a Confederate soldier had died, apparently while hiding in the space under the stairs. His ticking clock had given him away. The letter asked if she had heard any odd noises. Seen anything there that wasn’t supposed to be. She’d dismissed it as a looney old neighbor or maybe a high school kid who had grown up hearing those urban legends. She didn’t have time to deal with that. But, still, why had she tossed it in the garbage so quickly? Why didn’t she call the cops right then? Maybe there was something more there, something they could have helped her with. Everyone was always saying that she didn’t ask for help when she needed. Panic rose from her gut.
She closed her eyes, listening to her ragged breathing. The house was so quiet that she could hear the thumping of her own heart, loud against her ribs. Blood rushed in her ears.
“Relax,” she said, remembering what her therapist had taught her about panic attacks. “Stop. One. Two. Three. Four.”
Before she could reach ten, she had found that her body had obeyed, her breathing slowed, her muscles relaxed.
She opened her eyes, smiling. She would be okay.
Then she heard the loud and quick thump above her head, followed by three shuffling sounds. Someone was on the second floor.
Fear paralyzed her for a moment. Then she sprinted out the front door. When she saw no work vehicles left in the drive, she pulled the phone from her pocket and dialed 911.
~*~
In fifteen minutes, a police cruiser arrived.
“Took you damn long enough,” Evie yelled. “I could’ve been murdered about ten times in the time it took you to get here.”
“Ma’am,” a man said, as he got out of the car. “I got a call about an intruder.”
Evie backed down, speaking in a more normal tone. “He must still be inside.” Since she made the call, she had been standing outside, watching the front door like a hawk. She had been too afraid to go back inside to get her car keys, and the closest neighbor was too far for a run, though that may have been a better option.
Truth was that she was second-guessing what exactly it was that she had heard in the first place. The house had been quiet, no movement, no sound, since she had made the call. The 911 operator had wanted to stay on the line but Evie had gotten so flustered in the wait that she hung up the phone. “I didn’t think it would take you so long,” she said, as she watched another man get out of the car. The two officers looked at each other, the first one nodding to the second one.
Evie watched silently as one of them went in. He walked to the door, still open from Evie’s exit, and quietly peered in, hand near his gun. He stepped in and then waved his partner over. A few minutes later, both emerged, talking to each other. One of them was smiling as he talked, the other laughing.
“Ma’am,” said the first one, “the house is secure. We didn’t find anyone inside. Whoever he is, he’s long gone.”
“But someone was there?” Evie asked, looking from one to other.
“There was no sign of forced entry,” said the second one with a look that Evie took to be a smirk.
“But the
re were things that were moved!” Evie’s ears grew hot. “I can show you the spot where it happened.”
The second man looked down and squinted at his notes. “This is an electrical cord?” Evie noticed he had something in his mouth, gum or chewing tobacco. He was rolling it around as he read over whatever he had written in his tiny little notebook.
Evie wanted to explode, but she only nodded. “An extension cord. I saw it by the staircase.”
“And you’re sure it was moved. You don’t think one of the workmen moved it? Maybe you got the time you saw it by the stairs wrong?”
“Absolutely not.” She could see by their faces that they weren’t taking this seriously. “There was a letter!”
“What kind of letter?”
“Someone said things about the house. That it had some kind of violent history. That it could be haunted.” Evie watched as the cops shared a look. “Not that I think it is haunted. Of course not. But someone is obviously trying to scare me. Someone is showing way too much interest in this house, so much so that they have now come into the home. My home.”
“Do you have the letter?”
Evie bit her lip, shook her head. “I threw it out. It’s probably halfway to the dump by now.”
“Not much we can do without proof, something to go on.”
Evie suddenly felt silly. Of course, they needed proof. And that had disappeared with the trash pick-up this morning. And even if she had the letter, what then? What would it lead to? Some bored high school students looking for a laugh? She wanted nothing more than for the officers to leave so that she could go back in her house and lie on the couch and forget any of this had happened. “You’re right,” she said. “I probably just heard a squirrel on the roof. I’m making a bigger deal out of this than it really is.”
The cop nodded. “We can send a cruiser by to check on you later, but everything checks out here.” He walked to the car, but his partner stayed behind.