Sunsets at Seaside

by Addison Cole

  “She’s fast asleep. She caught us last summer, and Jenna told her we were cleaning up around the pool or something,” Amy explained. “Then the dingdong asked her if she wanted to go skinny-dipping.”

  “Well, you left the cookie dough wrappers down here, remember?” Jenna swam over to the side of the pool. “Speaking of cookie dough…”

  “I don’t have any,” Amy whispered.

  “Me, either.” Bella swam to Jenna’s side. “Some person under five foot tall ate all of mine.”

  “I was having a meltdown.” Jenna feigned a frown.

  “Why?” Jessica asked.

  “Petey reorganized my rocks on the deck. It totally threw me off.”

  Amy mouthed OCD to Jessica.

  “I have cookie dough. Jamie and I bought some to make cookies for the barbecue but then forgot.” She let go of the noodle and kicked her feet to stay afloat.

  “Want me to go get it?”

  “Yes!” the others whispered.

  Jessica laughed and swam to the shallow end of the pool. Eating cookie dough after midnight, swimming in a pool naked…She never would have imagined herself doing these things. Ever. And now she couldn’t imagine ever not doing them, with these friends. She climbed from the pool and Bella whistled.

  “Hottie on deck,” Bella said quietly.

  “Yeah, right.” Jessica wrapped her towel around herself, slipped on her flip-flops, and hurried toward the gate. “I’ll be right back.”

  She passed Tony’s cottage and ran across the gravel road, then took the steps to the apartment as quietly as she could. Inside, the apartment smelled like Jamie. She turned to close the door as quietly as she could.

  “Hey, babe.”

  “Ack!” She spun around and found Jamie sitting on the couch in his boxer briefs. “Holy cow, you scared me.”

  He arched a brow and smiled. “Because robbers often address you as babe?”

  She sat beside him in her towel. “No, because you’re supposed to be asleep.”

  “So you can play naked without me? I like to play naked with you.” He tugged teasingly at her towel.

  She turned away with a soft laugh. “I need to get the cookie dough.”

  He arched a brow.

  “We’re chunky-dunking.”

  “There’s nothing chunky about your sweet little body.” He nuzzled against her neck.

  “You feel good.” Goose bumps raced up her arms. “That’s not fair.”

  “Why?” he whispered against her ear.

  “Because they’re waiting for me, and…oh, I love when you kiss my neck.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Wait. Stop.” She pressed her hands to his chest and pushed him away. “This is bad, bad, bad. What kind of a friend am I if I promise to bring them cookie dough and fall into bed with you instead? They need cookie dough.”

  Jamie sat back. “Blown off for cookie dough. That’s a new low.”

  She pressed her lips to his. “I promise to make it up to you after we’re done.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” He drew her into an embrace. “That’s not really why I was out here.”

  “Oh. Why were you?”

  “Because I thought you were coming in for the night, and I wanted to surprise you with something.”

  “What is it?”

  “Don’t you have cookie dough to deliver?” His lips curved into a teasing smile, and he pulled her into his lap. “Are we still having dinner with your parents when we get back to Boston?”

  “Yes, Monday night. Why?” Her father had been overwhelmingly happy for them, while her mother had said she was happy, with no change in the inflection of her voice. She’d followed that statement with a question about how their relationship would impact Jessica’s career. Her mother’s reaction had been a harder pill to swallow than she’d anticipated, but Jessica had drawn upon the advice she’d given Jamie about not blaming Mark for his wanting to protect him. She’d taken that advice and bitten her tongue.

  “Remember the day we met?”

  “Of course. How could I forget? You walked up to the deck and stole my heart with your smile.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Before that.”

  “When I pegged you with my phone?” She rubbed his head. “I’m so sorry about that…sort of. If I hadn’t, we’d never have met.”

  He smiled. “Right. Totally worth it.”

  He reached behind him and handed her a clear glass box. She peered inside. It was hard to see in the dark apartment, but there was no mistaking the shape of the baseball, or Mickey Mantle’s autograph colored in with red Magic Marker.

  “Jamie,” she whispered. She squinted, turned the glass in her hands so she could see each side. “How on earth…?”

  “Let’s just say that that little boy likes Mickey Mantle’s clear signature a whole lot more than he liked the colored-in one.”

  She couldn’t believe it. She’d given up so easily, and not only had he not given up, but he’d kept it a secret this whole time.

  “I can’t believe you did this. Do you know how happy my father will be?” Her eyes welled with tears.

  “I knew how happy it would make you to give it to him.” He brushed her wet hair from her shoulder.

  “We’ll both give it to him. Thank you, Jamie. This is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.”

  “Jessica? Are you in there?” Jenna’s whisper came through the front window.

  Jessica covered her mouth with her hand, feeling guilty for taking so long and still reeling from Jamie’s thoughtful gift.

  “Of course she is,” Bella said. “Where else would she be?”

  “She probably went back to bed with Jamie,” Amy added.

  Jamie gathered her in his arms and whispered, “I’m about to do something even nicer for you and pretend I’m asleep so you can go eat cookie dough naked with the girls, when what I really want to do is put that cookie dough all over you and nibble it off.”

  He took her in his arms and crashed his mouth over hers, pressing her back to the couch.

  “I think she’s sleeping,” Jenna whispered. “I see the edge of the couch. I see her feet. I think.”

  Jamie tore his lips from hers and pressed his finger over her lips. Jessica opened her mouth and twirled her tongue around his finger, earning her a heated stare.

  “Let me see,” Bella whispered. “Those aren’t feet. Oh wait, yes, they are. Wait.”

  “It’s her and Jamie!” Jenna laughed. “Guess there’s no cookie dough for us tonight. Go, go, go.”

  As their feet scampered down the steps, Jessica pushed away from Jamie and grabbed the cookie dough, then flung open the front door and hurled it over the deck, pegging Bella in the back.

  “Ow! What the…?” Bella said. She and Jenna bent over and searched the ground, finally spotting the cookie dough.

  Jenna snagged it and waved it over her head at Jessica. “Thanks, babe!” she yelled. “Go, go, go.” She shooed Jessica back inside.

  Jessica shut the door feeling like she’d come home to the friends and the man she was meant to be with. Jamie closed the distance between them, sealing his lips over hers again.

  “Sorry,” he said against her lips. “I suck at pretending.”

  “Then don’t pretend.” She dropped her towel. “Think you can bring me more pleasure than that cookie dough would have?”

  Please enjoy a preview of the next Sweet with Heat novel

  Secrets at Seaside

  Chapter One

  “I JUST CAN’T believe that Jamie’s the first one to get married. I mean, Jamie? He never even wanted to get married.” Amy Maples was three sheets to the wind, sitting in a bar at the Ryder Resort in Boston. That was okay, she rationalized, because it was the night before her good friends Jessica Ayers and Jamie Reed’s wedding, and she and her friends were celebrating. Besides, now that Jessica and Jamie were getting married and her other three besties had gotten engaged, Amy was the only single woman of the group. Drunk was th
e only way she was going to make it through the weekend.

  “But that was before he met Jessica and she rocked his world.” Jenna leaned across the table in the dimly lit bar and grabbed Amy’s hand.

  Amy saw Jenna’s lips curve into a smile as she shifted her eyes to Tony Black, another friend they’d known forever, sitting with his arm around Amy, as per usual. Jenna raised her brows with a smile, implying something Amy knew wasn’t true. She rolled her eyes in response. Tony always sat with his arm around her, and it didn’t mean a thing, no matter how much she wished it did.

  Amy and her besties, Jenna Ward, Bella Abbascia, and Leanna Bray, had grown up spending summers together at the Seaside community in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, and to this day they continued to spend their summers there, along with Jamie and Tony. The six of them had spent eight weeks together every summer for as long as Amy could remember. Their parents had owned the Seaside cottages, which they’d passed down to them. Summers were Amy’s favorite time of year. Now that Amy’s company, Maples Logistical & Conference Consulting, was so successful, she was able to take eight weeks off while her small staff handled the workload. Amy had spent seven years building and nurturing the business, and over the last three years she had turned it into a six-figure venture with clients varying from accounting to full-on logistical consulting. She could hardly believe how her life, and her summers, had changed. Just four years ago she was working part-time during the summers at one of the local restaurants to keep a modicum of income coming in. She loved summers even more now that she didn’t have to work. Of course, her love of summers might also have something to do with being in love with the six-foot-two professional surfer and motivational speaker currently sitting beside her.

  If only it were reciprocated. She tipped back her glass and took another swig of her get-over-Tony drink.

  “Petey, can you please get me another drink?” Jenna batted her lashes at her fiancé, Pete Lacroux. She and Pete had gotten engaged last year. Pete was a boat craftsman and he also handled the pool maintenance at Seaside. Pete nuzzled against her neck, and Amy slid her eyes away. Maybe if Sky, Pete’s sister, were there, she’d feel a little better. Sky wasn’t currently dating anyone either, but Sky had to work, so Amy was on her own.

  Bella and her fiancé, Caden Grant, were whispering nose to nose, Leanna was sitting on Kurt’s lap with her forehead touching his, and Jamie and Jessica were looking at each other like they couldn’t wait to tear each other’s clothes off. Amy stole a glance at Tony, and her heart did a little dance. Delicious and painful memories from the summer before college tried to edge into her mind. As she’d done for the past fourteen years, she pushed them down deep as Tony leaned in close.

  She loved how he smelled, like citrus and spice with an undertone of masculinity and sophistication. She knew he wore Dolce & Gabbana’s The One. She kept a bottle of The One beside her bed at home in Boston, and every once in a while, in the dead of winter or on the cusp of spring, when months stretched like eons before she’d see Tony again, she’d spray the cologne on her pillow so she could smell him as she drifted off to sleep. It never smelled quite as good as Tony himself. Then again, Tony could be covered in sweat after a five-mile run, or laden with sea salt after a day of surfing, and he’d still smell like heaven on legs. Since they were just friends, and it looked like there was no chance of them becoming more, she relied on her fantasies to keep her warm. When she was alone in bed at night, she held on to the image of Tony wearing only his board shorts, his broad shoulders and muscular chest glistening wet, muscles primed from the surf, and those delicious abs blazing a path to his—

  Tony pressed his hand to her shoulder and pulled her against him, bringing her mind back to the present.

  “Time for ice water?” he asked just above a whisper.

  So much for her fantasy. She was always the good girl who did the right thing, the only exception being occasionally having an extra drink or two when she was with her Seaside friends. At least that’s what she led everyone to believe. Only she and Tony knew that wasn’t the only exception—and she made sure that was a taboo subject between them. He wouldn’t dare bring it up. She might not survive if he did. She sobered a little with the memory and shifted it back into the it-never-happened place she buried deep inside her. Her secret was lonely in that hollow place, being the only one kept under lock and key.

  She met Tony’s denim-blue eyes and felt a familiar rush of anticipation in her belly. Maybe tonight she wouldn’t be the good girl.

  “Um, actually, I think I want another drink.”

  Tony arched a brow in that sexy way that made his eyes look even more intense. He pressed his cheek to hers and whispered, “Ames, you can’t show up for the wedding tomorrow with a hangover.”

  No, she certainly couldn’t. But she’d like him to stay right where he was for a while longer, thank you very much. Since she had a life-changing job offer in hand—a dream job worthy of closing down the business she’d spent seven years building and keeping only a handful of clients—she and her girlfriends had decided it was time for Amy to take a chance and lay her feelings on the line with Tony. She picked up her glass and ran her finger around the rim, hoping she looked sexy doing it. Then she sucked that finger into her mouth, feeling a little silly.

  I suck at this whole seduction thing.

  “I’m a big girl, Tony. I think I know what I can handle.” And I don’t want to handle my liquor tonight. I have plans. Big plans.

  Tony rose to his feet with a perturbed look on his face and rubbed his stubbly jaw. “You sure?”

  “Mm-hm.” Even as she said it, she considered saying, Water’s good. Just get me water. She watched him walk up to the bar. At heart, Amy was a good girl. Her courage faltered and she tried to hang on to a shred of it. She needed to know if there was even the slightest chance that she and Tony might end up together. The problem was, she wasn’t a seductress. She didn’t even know where to begin. That was Jenna’s forte, with her hourglass figure and sassy personality. Even Bella, who was as brash as she was loving, had pulled off being seductive with Caden. The sexy-kitten pictures on Amy’s pajamas were more seductive than she was.

  “Oh my gosh. I thought he’d never leave the table.” Jenna glanced at Caden, Kurt, and Jamie, still enthralled with their fiancées at the other end of the table. She pulled Amy across the table and whispered, “This is your night. I can feel it!” She sat back and swayed to the music in her tight green spaghetti-strap dress with a neckline cut so low Pete could probably get lost in there.

  Amy looked down at the slinky black dress the girls had put her in earlier that evening. They were always trying to tart her up. One look at you in this dress with these take-me heels and Tony’s gonna be all over you, Jenna had said while Jessica and Bella shimmied the dress down Amy’s pin-thin body. Fits like a glove. A sexy, slither-me-out-of-this glove, Leanna had added. They’d pushed her into a chair, plied her with wine, and sometime later—Amy had no idea how long, because the alcohol had not only made her body go all loose and soft, but it had turned her brain to mush—they were in the bar with the men, and with her friends’ confidence, she’d actually begun to believe that she might be able to pull off being übersexy for a night. Her mind might be foggy, but she’d caught a few words while the girls primped her into a hot, racy woman she didn’t recognize. Her friends had thrown out words like sexy, hot, take him as if they were handing out doses of confidence.

  Now she tugged at the hemline of the dress that barely covered the thong they’d also bought for her and insisted she wear. She wiggled in her seat, uncomfortable in the lacy butt floss. She should probably give up even trying and just let the new job change her life. Move to Australia, where she’d be too far for any relationship with Tony, and be done with it, but every time she looked at Tony, her stomach got all fluttery. It had done that since she was six years old, so she was pretty sure it wasn’t going to change.

  Caden, Pete, Jamie, and Kurt must have taken Jen
na’s whispers and hot stares as a cue, because they headed up to the bar, and Jessica, Bella, and Leanna scooted closer to Amy and Jenna.

  “How about you put those puppies away before the guys over at that table drool into their drinks,” Leanna said to Jenna while glaring at the three handsome, leering men sitting at the next table. They finally looked away when Bella shot them a threatening stare.

  Jenna wrestled her boobs into submission with an annoyed look on her face. She always acted annoyed about her boobs, but Amy knew it was a love-hate annoyance. Jenna wouldn’t be Jenna without her boobs always trying to break free.

  “Look at our men up there at the bar.” Bella wiggled her fingers at Caden. “Pete has his eyes on the drooling men. Kurt and Jamie are eyeing Leanna and Jessica like they’re on the menu, and Tony…”

  “Your men,” Amy corrected her. “Tony’s not mine, and he looks mad, doesn’t he?”

  “Sexually frustrated, maybe. Not mad.” Bella took a sip of her drink. “But you’ll fix that tonight. I mean, be real, Amy. Who tells a girl to behave and be careful whenever she goes out if he’s not interested? Why would he care? And not just that—he always adds that you can text him if you need him and he’ll come running. Just. Like. Always.”

  Amy couldn’t stop the exasperated sound that left her lips. “You read my texts?” That was the only way she could have known that Tony always offered to be there if she needed him.

  “Duh. Of course I did. Consider it a recon mission. I had to know what we were dealing with here from his side.” Bella had been pulling for Amy and Tony to get together as long as Amy had been in love with him, which was just about forever. She stood and dragged Amy toward the dance floor. “Come on, sweetie. Time to have some fun.”

  The other girls jumped up and followed them. Amy sensed Tony’s eyes on her before she caught sight of him watching them. It made her nervous and excited at once. The music blared with a fast beat. Amy’s head was spinning from the alcohol, and as Bella and Jenna dirty danced up and down her body, gyrating with their hands in the air, Amy tried to ignore the rush of anticipation mixing with nervous energy inside her. Leanna and Jessica danced beside them in a far less evocative fashion that was more Amy’s speed, but she could no sooner disengage from being the target of Jenna’s and Bella’s sexy dancing then she could ignore Tony as he moved to the edge of the dance floor. His eyes raked slowly down her body, making her insides twist in delight. His jaw muscles bunched as he slid his eyes around the bar and leveled the leering men at the table a few feet away with a dark stare.