Beach House No. 9

by Christie Ridgway

  “Yeah?” Griffin said, scornful. “Well, I can beat that because—”

  From the direction of No. 9’s back door came the sound of a throat clearing. “Pardon me for interrupting this illuminating pissing contest,” Jane said.

  The crank ignored her intrusion. “I have two words for you, Griffin: trench foot.”

  “I…” He wouldn’t have let the other man have the last word, except he glanced over and was distracted by the sight of her. She was wearing rhinestone-studded sandals, jeans cut off at the knees and a loose sleeveless top, the hem of which fluttered in the breeze. The wind caught her wavy hair too, setting the sandy tendrils dancing around her face. “You’re sunburned,” he said. Pink color splashed her nose, cheeks, the tops of her shoulders. Her mouth looked redder too.

  That mouth. Every time he looked at the damn thing he got a jolt.

  It pursed at him now, signaling she was in a mood. “That’s what happens when I spend the day entertaining kids on the beach. Make that two days.”

  He knew he should feel both guilt and gratitude. But instead he was riveted by the duffel bag in her hand and the soft-sided laptop case that was slung across her chest. She was leaving. From the moment she’d first arrived on the scene that had been his goal—getting rid of her. So this outcome shouldn’t surprise him. And Tess or no Tess, it shouldn’t bother him in the least either.

  He remembered the delicate frame of those shoulders under his hands. Their telltale tremor. Her rosebud mouth parting under his lips in surprise. Her taste heating him up. All that was leaving the cove.

  Good. He didn’t need the complication…didn’t want the connection.

  Pinning him with her gaze, she dropped the duffel and placed her hand on her hip. “I should have made something clear two days ago.”

  “Made what clear?” Her skin had been silky under his hands. That he couldn’t forget.

  “I’m not a babysitter. Nor am I an ‘assistant,’ in the way you spoke of me to your sister,” she said.

  Now guilt did manage to give him a poke. “You said you’d do anything I needed,” he reminded her, hating his defensive tone.

  She just stared at him, her clear eyes managing to send out a burn.

  Oh, yeah, in a mood. He shuffled his feet, shoved his hands into his pockets, tried not to think how cute she looked with that pink nose and silvery glare. She’d kill him if he said that now.

  Now that she was leaving.

  He took a breath. “Hey, I am sorry about that, Jane. I was an ass.” She threw him a Gee, that wasn’t so bad sort of look. “I understand you’re a professional.”

  “Thank you.”

  He thought he could add even more to that, now that she was saying her goodbyes. “As a matter of fact, I picked up the phone when Frank called this morning. He was singing your praises.”

  “That’s nice to hear. We go back a ways.”

  “Yeah. Well, I’m sure he’s not wrong.”

  A smile bloomed on her face. “So, an actual vote of confidence from you, chili-dog? Even better.”

  He’d miss being chili-dog, just a little. The unexpected pang of sentiment convinced him to give her a bit more. “Frank is sending some packages. I said I’d accept them. A laptop, printer, other supplies. I’m actually planning to set up an office.” Not that he was going to do anything inside it, but he figured Jane would take the information as the friendly farewell gift it was. A sign of truce between two former combatants.

  Except she wasn’t looking at him with gratification. “You don’t have a laptop here? No computer whatsoever?”

  “Uh…”

  She was glaring again. “I thought Ted was wrong, you know. I thought you must have something to write on over here or else you wouldn’t have told your sister you needed privacy two days ago because you’d be working.”

  Oh, shit.

  “While you were over here basking in slothful solitude, I was out there—” she jerked a thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the sand “—for two solid days building sand castles with your nephews, who might be adorable, but are definitely exhausting.”

  Old Man Monroe cackled. “You’re in the doghouse, boy.”

  Jane gathered up the bag at her feet, then spun on her flashy sandals, heading back inside his house. The last he’d ever see of her, Griffin thought, was her cute ass. Not a bad way to go, but he didn’t like the idea of her going away—forever—mad. “No goodbye?”

  Her feet halted. She glanced over her shoulder. “Why? I’ll be back in a minute. I’m just going to put my things in one of the guest rooms.”

  His jaw dropped. The coot started cackling again.

  “Now that you’ll have a computer, you’re ready to work, Griffin. And since you claim you have confidence in my ability to do my job, it will be much easier for us with me living over here.”

  “But…but…” Jesus. He couldn’t think. Living here? “What, uh, what about Tess and the kids?”

  “They’ll have more room next door without me underfoot.” She started walking again, then took another look back. “Oh, and they’ll be coming over tonight for dinner.”

  The coot’s cackling only got louder.

  Jane smiled at him. “Why don’t you join us, Mr. Monroe? Griffin will be barbecuing.”

  And the day had started out so happy, Griffin thought, when his reeling brain finally settled. But she’d once again upended him, and he was no longer confident he had the skills to either wait her out or keep her out.

  Damn. The enemy had infiltrated, putting the heart of the camp at risk.

  * * *

  FROM HER PLACE beneath the shade of a tropical umbrella, Tess Quincy made a bargain with herself. Twenty more minutes. That’s how much longer she’d wait for her husband to meet her as she’d requested. She’d specified “lunchtime” and “on the beach” in her text to his phone, and had—wrongly—assumed he’d show up just minutes after noon. That had been two hours ago. If he didn’t appear before the big hand touched the six on her wristwatch—worn in an effort to teach Duncan and Oliver about analog time—she’d retreat back to her cottage. Waiting a second more than that would only be another blow to her ego. It had taken enough hits.

  Closing her eyes, she settled more deeply into the old-fashioned beach chair she’d found in a closet at No. 8. A tripod of light wood strung with striped canvas, it didn’t lift her rear end off the sand, but it supported her back at the perfect angle for magazine-reading. As a girl, she’d spent hours just like this, paging through People and Us Weekly, imagining herself as one of the SoCal celebrities so often pictured on the glossy pages.

  Nowadays, if she had time for any reading, it was for her moms’ book group. They read about tiger mothers and free-range mothers and mothers who managed to start up sexy small businesses. Tess wondered now if she should have been studying up on husbands and wives or how to survive a failed marriage.

  A breeze blew her hair across her face. As she fingered it behind her ear, she became aware of someone’s gaze on her. At the weight of it, her heart stuttered, then kicked into a rapid beat. Him? Swallowing hard, she lifted her lashes and glanced right.

  Her pulse decelerated like a motorboat brought to a sudden halt. It was a stranger who stared at her from his place eight feet away on the sand. A stranger staring at her, she realized now, with a look of blatant interest. Her heart gave another—though milder—kick. And she didn’t look away.

  Before this week, Tess Quincy, mother of four and wife of more than thirteen years, would have ignored the man. But Tess Quincy, woman with a shambles—or was that a sham?—of a marriage, found herself unwilling to pretend she didn’t notice his speculative—and yes, admiring—gaze.

  So sue her, it felt good.

  The man appeared to be around thirty, which made him a little younger than Tess, and his faint smile topped lean muscles and knee-length swim trunks in bright green. “It is you, isn’t it?”

  For a moment she was speechless, then words
spilled easily from her own now-smiling lips. “It depends on who you think I am.” With a little thrill, she registered the flirtatious note in her voice and wasn’t ashamed of it. It had been months since she’d been noticed as a woman.

  “The gum,” he said, certain enough now that he strolled closer to her. “Brand name, OM. The green tea gum. You’re her.”

  You’re her. Another man had said those words to her once. She glanced down at the sleeping child beside her and fussed with the fish-patterned towel covering his napping body. The man who’d said those words originally had hardly looked at her since the precious ten-month-old was born.

  The stranger came yet closer and took to one knee, holding out a hand. “Teague White.”

  She didn’t linger on the handshake, but her smile stayed in place. “Tess Quincy. I was Tess Lowell when I made those commercials.”

  “After all these years, they still play.”

  Her shoulders lifted, expressing her own surprise over it. She’d filmed them at eighteen, and they’d hit the small screen as she turned nineteen, a long-legged girl in belly-baring yoga pants and a tiny tank, leading a class in meditation. The cause of the ad campaign’s sustained popularity wasn’t clear. It could have been her nubile teenage body, the gleam of mischief in her eyes when she told the camera that “OM will tame a wild mind,” or, more likely, the continued heavy airplay. Frequency plus reach had meant success for both OM and Tess. She still sank residuals into her kids’ college funds.

  If she and David divorced, she supposed she’d be using those checks to help support herself.

  Teague White’s appreciative expression took some of the sting out of the thought. “You look exactly the same.”

  “I’ve had four kids since then.”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head.

  She felt her dimples dig deep in her cheeks. “Yes.” Maybe that last pregnancy hadn’t completely taken her out of the realm of attractiveness, after all. She plugged the Pilates DVD into the player twice a week and ran with Russ in the jogging stroller every other day. Night and morning, she brushed, she flossed, she glossed what she could gloss and she moisturized the rest.

  Yet her husband, David, didn’t look at her the way this stranger did. Her husband, David, barely looked at her at all anymore. This unknown man recognized that eighteen-year-old girl in the wifely shell, and he seemed pretty pleased about it. She cocked her head, the moves not so hard to remember now. “What is it you do, Teague?”

  “I’m with the fire department,” he said.

  “Doing…?” Not that she couldn’t guess.

  A grin popped out, as if he couldn’t hold it back. “I’m a firefighter.”

  She figured then that he got his own share of appreciative glances with all those manly muscles and the studly occupation. “Day off?”

  He nodded. “We wanted surf and sand. You’re an added bonus.”

  It was heady stuff, the attention of an attractive member of the opposite sex. She had plenty of close encounters with males in her daily life, but mostly they wanted to wipe their noses on the tails of her shirt or use her limbs for climbing like a jungle gym at the park.

  Down the beach, someone yelled the handsome stranger’s name. Both he and Tess looked toward the surf, where a handful of equally muscled men were tossing around a football. They gestured to him and one threw the ball, a perfect spiral that landed at Teague’s feet. With a show of reluctance, he picked it up, then clambered to a stand. “You going to be here awhile?”

  “I…” If she agreed, she could tell herself she wasn’t staying put for David. She could pretend to herself that she was instead waiting for the handsome stranger to return and make her feel desirable again. “Maybe.”

  His grin flashed on. “And later this week? My friends and I have some time off. We’ll be here again.”

  “I…I have those four kids.” Her palm caressed the tuft of Russ’s dark hair that was the only part of him visible beneath the towel.

  “So? I like kids. And I have a wild mind that maybe only you can tame.”

  That little thrill buzzed through her veins again. Still… “Four kids and a husband.”

  She liked him more for not losing the smile. “Lucky guy. Unlucky me.” Tossing the football up and down in one hand, he walked backward, his gaze still on her face. “Does that mean you won’t run away with me? We could go to Arizona.”

  “I thought people ran away to Tahiti,” she said, laughing.

  “The kids’ll like the Grand Canyon. Train ride’s not to be missed.”

  Sudden tears pricked the corners of Tess’s eyes. Embarrassed, she glanced away. How sad was that? Choked up because a man pretended interest in her and her children. David had a lot to answer for. She waved a hand, acknowledging the faux offer.

  “Tess?” he called out, prompting her to look at him again. He’d almost reached his pals. “I always had a crush on you.”

  Faking another laugh, she waved a second time and watched him rejoin the other firefighters. “‘I always had a crush on you,’” she murmured, hearing the wistfulness in her voice.

  “He did.”

  Tess’s head whipped around. Skye Alexander dropped to the sand beside her. “You remember him, don’t you?”

  “‘Him’?” She glanced down the beach and then back to Skye. “Should I?”

  “Teague White. He used to tag along with your brothers every summer.”

  Teague White. It didn’t ring any bells…then a memory surfaced. Little scrawny kid, around her brothers’ age but a head shorter than them. “They called him Tee-Wee. Tee-Wee White.” She put her hand over her mouth as a giggle bubbled up and turned her head to stare at the young stud now leaping into the surf. “That’s Tee-Wee White?”

  “Things change. People change.”

  Husbands. Marriages. Tess glanced at her watch. Two-thirty. But it would be rude to abruptly leave Skye, wouldn’t it? She could stay a few more minutes. Blowing out a breath, she forced herself to smile at the younger woman. “Mail from Gage today?”

  The property manager wore an old fishing hat on top of her dark hair, a loose, long-sleeved T-shirt and baggy cargo pants. Still, Tess detected the blush crawling up her neck and onto her cheeks. “You know I, uh, correspond with your brother?”

  “Griffin mentioned it.” Tess recalled what details she’d been given. “Something about wires crossed? He thought Griffin would be here at the cove and you wrote back that he wasn’t?”

  “Nine months ago. Since then we’ve kept in touch regularly.”

  “Nice.” Or, not nice, Tess thought, with a sudden pang. Skye wouldn’t meet her eyes now, and she had the unwelcome idea that the other woman fancied herself in love with Gage, who lived for thrills and chills. He had more hard edges—if less darkness of the soul—than Griffin, and she couldn’t imagine her daredevil sibling with this reserved, almost shy, young woman. Careful, Skye. He’ll break your heart.

  She checked the time. Two thirty-five. Her mood went gloomier. There was no sense pretending David hadn’t stood her up. Her gaze shifted to Teague White, playing in the surf. As she watched, he dived dolphin-style into an oncoming wave. God, the guy had a body, long-boned and lithe, covered with wet skin that looked like sculpted bronze sprinkled with diamonds. The sad truth was, the mother in her still worried about all that sun exposure, but the woman she was appreciated the view.

  He came up and shook his head, droplets dispersing like she wished her problems would. As if sensing her regard, he looked her way. His smile was white and maybe just the tiniest bit smug.

  Careful, Tess. He’ll break your heart.

  But of course Teague wouldn’t. That damage had already been done.

  CHAPTER SIX

  GRIFFIN PROPPED his feet on the rail at Captain Crow’s and sipped from the cardboard cup in his hand. The restaurant didn’t serve breakfast, but the prep cook made a pot of coffee in the mornings, and this morning Griffin had made friends with the prep cook. The guy h
ad left for an emergency onion run, giving Griffin privacy and a place to start the day away from the eagle eye of the little dictator.

  He still clung to his one and only plan in regards to Jane: avoid her as much as possible—and completely avoid what she wanted him to do.

  After moving in two days before, she’d kept mostly to the guest room she’d selected. Though he’d continued blasting music through his earbuds, her close proximity seemed to punch through the wall of sound. He’d felt her presence, the capable and unwavering energy she exuded, despite the beams and plaster between them. She’d brought into his house a new scent too, a light and feminine fragrance that somehow pierced the Pacific’s own salty-green perfume.

  At dinner that first night, while he’d manned the barbecue and stayed out of range of the conversation between her, his family and Old Man Monroe as much as possible, he’d still been able to chronicle the effect she had on them. She’d managed to surprise a laugh out of his sister, unearth a set of jacks to amuse his nephews, put a book in the hands of his sulking niece and send their elderly neighbor home with a smile after a short stint holding the sleeping baby.

  If he didn’t keep up his guard, damn it, he had good reason to fear she’d manage to make him start the memoir.

  He wasn’t ready.

  Closing his eyes, he swallowed another gulp of coffee. Caffeine was a necessity, because he was, as usual, sleeping like crap. That sweet Jane smell that had invaded his bungalow didn’t help any. With every breath, he was reminded of her—the soft wave of her hair, the spiky darkness of the lashes surrounding her incredible eyes, the tender mouth.

  The mouth that would keep on talking and talking and talking at him until she bent him to her will.

  No. Wasn’t going to happen, though he’d have to find some way to keep her mollified. Maybe he’d scratch a few nonsense words in a notebook or something.

  Christ! As if that would satisfy the governess. She wasn’t so gullible.

  The certainty of that had him groaning aloud. He’d blown it by allowing her to move into No. 9. Dumbfounded by how she’d outmaneuvered him, he’d stayed silent. He could change that now, of course, throw her cute ass out of his place and out of the cove, but he was canny enough to realize she could serve a convenient function for him.