By five, she was in the kitchen and opening a bottle of wine. Dinner hovered at the back of her mind, but she hadn’t decided on anything in particular. If she got lazy, she could take the one-mile walk up the beach to Captain Crow’s, a restaurant/bar situated at the north end of the cove. It had an expansive parking lot on the Pacific Coast Highway and was a popular spot year-round, thanks to an open-air deck that sat right on the sand. During inclement weather, plastic screens were unrolled to protect diners from the elements without obscuring the sights or sounds of the pounding surf.
Meg was holding up her glass, appreciating the glow of the garnet-colored merlot, when she heard a rap on the front door. A little surprised, she set down the drink and headed for the entry. With her hand on the knob, she paused, remembering her younger sister’s anxious expression when she’d warned Meg about locking up and staying safe. It niggled her now, just as it had then. Skye hadn’t seemed her usual buoyant self. She’d been dressed in what appeared to be their father’s castoffs, her hair bound in a tight braid, her face devoid of makeup. Yes, she’d been preparing for a six-hour drive, but still…
Another rap sounded against wood.
“Who’s there?” Meg asked.
She heard the jingle of a dog collar first, then Caleb McCall’s deep voice, identifying himself. Without anyone to witness, she didn’t bother suppressing the little shiver of awareness that wiggled down her spine. How had he found her? she wondered. Rex again, she supposed, pulling open the door.
Caleb was still in T-shirt and jeans. Still exuding that masculine confidence. “Sorry to bother you,” he said.
“What’s the problem?” She reached out to Bitzer, smiling when he licked her fingers.
“You should do that more often,” Bitzer’s owner said abruptly.
Meg blinked. “Do…?”
“Smile. You have a great smile.”
The compliment made her girlishly flustered. Which was ridiculous. She was twenty-nine and though she’d lost a lover long ago, there’d been men in her life since. Compliments. Even sex on occasion. But something about this man made her feel flushed and breathless and fidgety. “Uh, thanks,” she said, hoping her voice didn’t squeak. “Did you need something?”
“Sorry, yes. The oven doesn’t seem to work…or I’m not skilled enough to figure out how it should.”
“Hmm, I don’t think lack of skill is a problem you often encounter,” she murmured, then felt her face go hotter. Good God, that sounded like flirting!
He grinned at her. “All the same.”
The cottage he’d rented was just a hundred yards from her childhood home. When he unlocked the door, she smelled a touch of the citrus-scented cleaning products they used. And something else. Already there was a masculine spiciness in the air. Another clutch of awareness fisted in her belly. She pretended it wasn’t there.
In the kitchen, more good scents. Tomato sauce. Garlic. She saw a casserole on the stove and evidence of prep work on the cutting board, including a knife and strips of glossy, plum-colored skin. “You cook?”
He grimaced. “Learning. I think I make a decent eggplant parmesan, though,” he added, nodding at the dish.
“Smells like it,” Meg said, then turned the dials of the stove. No preheat light came on. She pulled open the door and there wasn’t a hint of warmth. With a little sigh, she played with the dials again, trying different combinations: Bake, Broil, Roast. Nothing woke up the uncooperative oven.
Frowning, she glanced at him over her shoulder. “Can you ‘fridge that food? I’m sure I can get this fixed tomorrow. For tonight, we’ll pick up your dinner tab at Captain Crow’s, or anywhere else you’d like to eat. Just bring me the receipt tomorrow and I’ll reimburse you.”
“What were you planning for dinner?”
“Me?”
His smile was charming. “I could bring the casserole to your kitchen. Use your oven. Feed us both.”
Bitzer pushed his nose into her hand as if he thought it a good idea as well. “I don’t…uh…” More girlish flutters in her midsection embarrassed her.
“I could use a critique of my recipe,” Caleb said. “You’d be my first.”
Her eyebrows rose.
“To eat my home cooking,” he clarified, a laugh sparking glints in his dark eyes.
It was the laughter that got to her. Meh Meg needed a little more of that in her life, especially now. Especially at Crescent Cove. Caleb could be the distraction she needed.
So that’s how she found herself pouring a second glass of merlot as the delicious scent of herbs, onion and tomato sauce filled the air at the house where she’d grown up. They took the wine to the front porch and the pair of generous-size chairs that sat side-by-side. Bitzer collapsed at their feet with a happy sigh.
Meg slid a look at Caleb. His expression gave nothing away beyond a simple contentment with the moment, not unlike the dog’s. “So…what exactly brings you to the cove?” she asked, working herself up to what she knew needed to be addressed, now that they were sharing a meal. It likely wasn’t mere serendipity that brought Peter’s cousin to this particular stretch of beach.
Caleb’s long legs stretched out, then crossed at the ankle. “Needed a break. The thought of here, it sort of…came to me.”
“So you’re familiar with Crescent Cove?”
He turned his head, a rueful smile curving his lips. “I didn’t think you noticed me then.”
Then? Suddenly she recalled earlier that afternoon, when they were at No. 9 and he’d asked if she remembered him. The question hadn’t processed, rocked as she was by that moment of mistaking him for his cousin and by the sound of her former first name on his lips. “You…you were here before?”
“I was the skinny kid who came to visit my aunt, uncle and cousin a couple of weekends that summer.”
She had the vague memory of a flop of hair and baggy board shorts. “That was you?”
“I’ll take your surprise as a compliment.” He smiled again. “I grew a lot in my early 20s.”
“And now you’re…?”
“Thirty.”
Just a few months older than Meg.
They exchanged more life details then. He had spent the last four years with a cell phone app start-up, working insane hours but enjoying himself immensely. Meg realized he didn’t live far from her in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she worked for a large accounting firm that sent her out to smaller companies for independent audits.
“So you left Southern California?” Caleb asked.
“First time I’ve been back in a decade,” she said lightly, and explained about her parents relocating to Provence and her sister attending a wedding in Arizona.
Caleb slowly straightened in his chair, then shot her a considering look. “What happened here a decade ago—losing Peter—that was a tremendous blow.”
A fatal blow to Meg’s heart. Still, even now, something inside her chest gave a painful, ghostly squeeze. Resisting the urge to rub the spot, she turned her thoughts to Peter’s family. They’d lost someone vital to them as well. “Your aunt and uncle were devastated, I know.”
“They were,” Caleb agreed. “Me, too. Peter was the big brother I never had. I missed him so much that his parents gave me Bitzer.”
At the sound of his name, the dog raised his head. Caleb fondled a soft ear, his gaze on his pet. “We’ve been good company for each other, haven’t we, boy?”
Then his eyes shifted to Meg’s face. “How did you get through your grief?”
By running from that summer and from this place. But no one wanted to hear those kinds of truths. “One day at a time,” she said instead. Noting the sober look in Caleb’s eyes, she hastened to add more, not wanting him to think she was mired in the past. “It was ten years ago. Of course I’ll always feel sad about it, but I’m not pining away.”
“Good,” he said softly. “Good to know.”
“I’m not even that same person anymore.”
“Hence the Meg
.”
She nodded. “Starr still had stars in her eyes. When I left the cove, I felt like I was different, more of a down-to-earth woman than that sentimental, romantic girl.”
“Why does ‘down-to-earth’ sound like a synonym for pessimistic?”
Meg swiveled on her cushion to face him. “I’m not. I just don’t believe in fairy tales anymore.”
Before he could reply, the oven timer dinged. They got to their feet and trooped to the kitchen. Bitzer padded behind, exuding enthusiasm. “Still likes to eat, huh?” Meg asked.
“Likes to be part of the crowd. I even take him to the office.”
As they dished up the eggplant parmesan, Meg discovered that the start-up Caleb worked for was actually his start-up, and the apps his company developed were software products used by the triathlete crowd, from route analyzers to workout logs. As they sat at the kitchen table, plates accompanied by a bowl of tossed salad, the wine and a pitcher of water with a second set of glasses, she again sized up his broad shoulders and lean-muscled torso…for informational purposes only, naturally.
Ignoring the little heated pulse of reaction she experienced just looking at him, she picked up her fork. “Triathlons, huh? I take it that’s your competition of choice.”
He glanced up from his serving of casserole. “I’ve cut back, actually,” he said. “I’m trying for a…tamer lifestyle, I’d guess you’d say.”
Tamer? A man like this, self-made, self-possessed, flat-out sexy, didn’t have a tame bone in his body. Not even his pinkie was domesticated. Not even his little toe.
He laughed. “You look like you don’t believe me.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He laughed again, and at that moment, they both reached for the pitcher of water. Their fingers tangled somewhere above the handle. And for a woman who no longer believed in magic, there had to be something else to account for the hot thrill that rushed like pinpricks up the tender inner flesh of her arm. Biology? Chemistry? A reason both logical and objective, likely involving pheromones as well as adrenaline, because two conflicting compulsions were at war inside her: to get closer to Caleb, and to run very far away from him.
Really, she should have paid more attention in her science classes, she decided, because she’d feel better with a solid explanation for why her skin felt hot, why her blood ran itchy through her veins, why her nerves were speed-dialing messages to random parts of her body.
Her belly tensed.
Her toes curled.
Her fingers clutched at his.
“Meg.” His quiet voice made her shift her gaze from their joined hands to his eyes. There was heat in them, and a curious kind of humor, too. “Are you seeing someone?” he asked.
The question gave her the impetus to slide her fingers from his. “No.” She watched him fill her water glass, then his, without spilling a drop. If the pitcher had been in her hand, it would have wavered all over the place. “I had a man in my life a while back, but he wanted marriage and that’s not for me.”
“Really?” Caleb asked, one brow rising.
“Really,” she said, finding his skeptical tone irritating. All women—even those approaching the supposedly dreaded 3-0—weren’t focused on white lace and promises. So she tossed her hair over her shoulder and said the first flippant thing that came into her head. “I’m more into short-term, for-the-physical-release-only affairs.”
Then she thought of how that sounded. Tackiness aside, some might construe it as an invitation. Her fingers tightened on her fork. “I mean, I…”
She had the distinct impression he was laughing again, though his mouth was closed as he chewed a bite of the eggplant dish. He swallowed, wiped his lips with his napkin, then gave her an encouraging smile. “You mean…?”
“I don’t know what I mean,” she mumbled, once again feeling out of her depth. It was infuriating, really, this nervous, edgy feeling. Meg never felt nervous in that way. Men didn’t put her on edge.
“It’s okay,” Caleb said, his gaze shifting to his plate. “I’m a little unsteady myself.”
She didn’t press for clarification of that, though she didn’t believe for a second that he was anything less than rock-solid. He appeared cucumber-cool as he continued calmly with his meal, eliciting more information from her—that she belonged to a book group that read nonfiction only; her favorite recent film was an award-winning documentary about the Great Depression—and offering up some additional details about himself—he had two nieces that he took to Disneyland by himself every year; his favorite movie was the latest blockbuster adaptation of a best-selling fantasy series.
Even as he laughed when she admitted she’d once sabotaged the book group’s secret ballot process so they didn’t pick as their next read the best-selling, but looked-long-and-boring biography of an obscure former president, and she laughed at the recounting of his determined quest to hunt down the Magic Kingdom’s Cinderella to obtain for his nieces a coveted photo—”I began to think the princess was like the fabled but elusive unicorn”—that edgy, breathless feeling did not abate.
It was sexual awareness, of course. Sexual tension.
An exhausting state of being, truth be told. By the time she stretched foil across the cooled, leftover casserole so he could return with it to his cottage, she felt as if she’d spent the last couple of hours on the narrow ledge of a high building. During heavy winds.
Yes, he was a charming companion in many respects, but she was glad the evening was coming to an end as she walked him to the door. Bitzer pressed against Meg’s knees as she stood in the entryway with his master. She patted his warm head in goodbye, then gave in to impulse and knelt down beside him to place a kiss on his soft doggy cheek.
Rising, she met Caleb’s smiling eyes. He held the casserole dish in one hand and gestured toward Bitzer with the other. “Do I get one of those, too?” he asked.
“Uh…” Oh, why not? that voice inside her asked. It was impulse again, or perhaps curiosity that brought Meg up on her toes. What woman wouldn’t want to get a little closer to such a perfect specimen of male-in-his-prime?
She leaned in, prepared to buss his lean cheek.
His large hand speared through the mass of hair at the back of her head, bringing her mouth to his. He didn’t go for a simple peck, or a gentle lips-to-lips brush, either. This was a full-on, fiery kiss, his mouth firm on hers, his tongue sliding inside without hesitation.
A sound came from low in her throat—surprise, appreciation, wonder—and she clutched at his shoulders. Her body flushed hot and she moved closer to his as if pressure could assuage the sudden ache between her legs and the tender heaviness of her breasts.
Caleb’s kiss continued until her head dropped back. Murmuring something, he slid his mouth along her cheek and down her neck. Goose bumps broke out on that thin skin and then shivered down her spine. The sensation jolted her back to reality and she took a hasty step away, staring at him as she inhaled great gulps of air.
Caleb stared back, then he shook his head, a rueful smile curving his lips. “Wow. I didn’t expect it to be quite all that.”
Meg, part-embarrassed, part-pleased, felt her face heat. Now there was a distinct throbbing between her thighs and her nipples were so tight they almost stung. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Say we can try that again,” Caleb answered, then wrapped his free hand around her upper arm to pull her close again.
She went willingly, her mouth already parted, eager for his tongue, his taste. Why not this? she thought, her mind going woozy as he licked her bottom lip. Maybe one of those quick, physical releases she’d claimed were her thing was in order. A reward for doing her sister a good turn.
Caleb’s tongue slid against hers and she moaned. Yes, yes. A casual fling. Nothing worrisome, because didn’t he look just like a casual kind of man?
Moving nearer, she accidentally jostled the hand that held the casserole and felt him stiffen. “Oh, no,” she cried, shifting back. “
Did it burn you?” She could see the splash of tomato sauce on his shirt, where he’d held the dish against his side.
“No, it just surprised me,” he said, looking down at himself, his expression sheepish. “I completely forgot about the eggplant parmesan.”
She took it out of his hand and hurried toward the kitchen. “Take off the shirt and I’ll run it under cold water. Maybe it won’t stain.”
“It’s an old shirt,” he protested, trailing her.
“Take it off, anyway,” she said, letting her smile bloom, because she knew he couldn’t see it. Her blood was still thrumming in her veins and with his chest bare, she’d be one step closer to the possibility of a doesn’t-have-to-mean-anything hookup with a beautiful, casual man.
Lucky Meg, she told herself. Though she wasn’t usually so impetuous, being with Caleb just felt right. And, after all, didn’t she deserve some good fortune?
Setting the dish on the counter, she whirled around. Oh, yes. Caleb had his T-shirt in hand, leaving for her appreciation a wealth of tanned skin and muscled chest.
In the middle of which was a clearly new, very serious-looking, four-inch scar.
Chapter Two
Caleb McCall didn’t waste time anymore. Actually, he’d never been much of a time-waster, but now he was a definite time-appreciater. As he walked southward along the beach of Crescent Cove, that’s what he did—appreciate. The fresh, fog-laden air was almost intoxicating. Not that he needed a buzz; he’d had one since kissing Starr—Meg—the night before.
Yeah, a buzz and a hard-on, he thought, grimacing. It wasn’t his most comfortable night, but he’d had worse, and he held hope that last night’s frustration was a temporary circumstance. Though he figured she’d need some persuading to explore this…this situation between them.
He couldn’t blame her for being gun-shy. Losing Peter had affected them all in ways big and small. His cousin had been open-minded and bighearted, the kind of person who had friends of all kinds, from tech geeks to varsity jocks. It was Peter who had given confidence to his scrawny younger cousin, encouraging Caleb’s interests in both sports and computers that had come together in the successful business he’d now built. But upon hearing the news of Peter’s death, for a long time Caleb had felt as if nothing could go right with the world again.
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