Книга - Just Married!: Kiss the Bridesmaid / Best Man Says I Do

Just Married!: Kiss the Bridesmaid / Best Man Says I Do
Cara Colter

Shirley Jump


A wedding invitation has just arrived…KISS THE BRIDESMAID Cara Colter Reluctant bridesmaid Samantha Hall has no interest in donning a pretty dress – she’s used to hiding her curves behind boyish clothes. But Sam’s caught the eye of the most eligible bachelor at the wedding! Ethan Ballard is in the market for a bride – just for a day.BEST MAN SAYS I DO Shirley Jump Born to political royalty, Colton St John knows his path is clear before him – until Vivian Reilly, the town’s original wild child, comes home for the wedding season. Vivian left on a Harley five years earlier, and he’s determined to find out why she ran away…







Reader favorite Cara Colterand New York Times bestselling authorShirley Jump bring you

JUST MARRIED!

Wedding bells are ringing in St John’s Coveand we’re about to see love blossomingfor the bridesmaid and the best man!

Praise for Cara Colter:

‘Cara Colter’s HIS MISTLETOE BRIDE

has everything: wonderful characters,

humor and emotional depth.’

—RT Book Reviews

Praise for Shirley Jump:

‘Shirley Jump always succeeds in getting the plot,

the characters, the settings and the emotions right.’

—Cataromance.com





JUST MARRIED!

Kiss the Bridesmaid


By




Cara Colter


and




Best Man Says I Do


By




Shirley Jump









MILLS & BOON®

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk/)





Kiss the Bridesmaid


By



Cara Colter


Dear Reader

I love summer. I love the lemonade, the barbecues, the July fireworks. I love swimming in ice-cold water on simmering hot days, and I love sitting in a comfy chair in the shade with a good book.



No matter what time of year you are reading this story, I hope it gives you that summertime feeling. A feeling of life being fun, and simple, and filled with delightful surprises.



To me, that is the magic of a romance novel. It can transport you, immerse you in a different world, take you from a cold place to the place of endless summer that each of us holds in our hearts. Journey with me now, from wherever you are, to the season of summer and the season of love.



With warmest wishes



Cara Colter


With thanks to Shirley Jump for all her great ideas,

and for sharing her Cape Cod summers.




CHAPTER ONE


“LADIES, if you would gather by the chocolate fountain, Mrs. Charles Weston is about to throw her bouquet.” Colton St. John had been best man at the wedding of two of his oldest friends, and now he was acting as the master of ceremonies.

The town had been founded by his forefathers, and leadership came easily to him. At twenty-eight, the dark-haired, blue-eyed Colton would have been a more likely movie star than a law school graduate and the youngest mayor St. John’s Cove had ever elected.

Not that Samantha Hall, bridesmaid, was admiring the confidence and finesse of her dear friend, Colton, at the moment.

It’s nearly over, she told herself as she slid toward the exit of the St. John’s Cove Yacht Club. It was hard to be unobtrusive in the bridesmaid’s gown that Amanda—make that Mrs. Charles Weston—had chosen. Amanda had glowingly described the color as fuchsia, but it wasn’t. The dress was the exact shade of pink Sam’s current stray rescued dog, Waldo, had thrown up after eating the Jell-O salad Sam had made for Amanda’s bridal shower earlier in the week.

As if the color wasn’t hideous enough, Sam considered the dress just a little too everything for a wedding. Between hitching up the hem so she wouldn’t trip over it, pulling the tiny spaghetti straps back on her shoulders every time they slipped down, and tugging at the plunging V-line of the bodice, the dress had felt like a full-time job since she had first put it on nearly twelve hours ago. Even her three older brothers, who usually teased

unmercifully when she put on “girl” clothes, had gone silent when she had come out to the car and they’d seen the dress for the first time.

“I thought you said it looked like dog puke,” her oldest brother, Mitch, had said, holding open the door of his ancient station wagon for her. She was driving with her brothers to the wedding because she couldn’t manage the clutch of her Land Rover in the three-inch heels, plus was afraid of splitting the hind end out of the dress getting in and out of her higher vehicle.

And then Mitch had done the oddest thing. He’d kissed her cheek and said, almost sadly, “When did you go and grow up, Sam?”

Since she’d been living in her own apartment above the business she had founded here in St. John’s Cove after graduating from high school seven years ago, his comment had been insulting rather than endearing.

Trust a man! Show a little too much cleavage, pile your hair on top of your head and put on a bit of makeup, and you were all grown-up.

Her brothers’ reaction had foreshadowed an uncomfortable evening. Guys she had spent her whole life in this small Cape Cod hamlet with—boating and swimming and fishing—had been sending her sidelong looks as if she’d gone and grown a second head.

Thankfully most of them were too scared of her brothers to do anything about it except gawk.

Though there was one man—he’d been introduced in the reception line on the steps of St. Michael’s Church as Amanda’s cousin, Ethan Ballard—who hadn’t been able to take his eyes off of her through the whole evening.

He was gorgeous, too. Tall, lean, broad-shouldered. Dark. Dark eyes, dark hair.

Sam killed the intrigue he made her feel.

He’d asked her to dance four times, but she’d said no. Even his voice gave her the shivers, deep and measured.

The truth was she didn’t know how to dance, and wasn’t going to make a fool of herself by trying for the first time in the heels. The truth was, Ethan was asking the illusion to dance. If he’d seen her in her normal duds—rolled-up jeans, sneakers, a faded shirt that advertised her pet store and supply business, Groom to Grow, he would have never looked that interested.

Of course, there was always the possibility one of the local guys had dared him to show interest in her, or offered him twenty bucks to dance with her.

Knowing that any man in St. John’s Cove who went near Samantha Hall was going to have to run the gauntlet of her brothers.

Sam glanced over to where Ethan was standing, one shoulder braced against the wall, his tie undone, his crisp white shirt open against the end-of-June early-summer heat in the reception room. He was nursing a drink and still looking at her.

And he didn’t look like a fool, either. Ethan Ballard radiated the confidence, wealth and poise one would expect from a businessman from Boston.

He raised his glass to her, took a long, slow sip without taking his eyes from her. Now how could that possibly seem suggestive, make her insides melt into hot liquid?

How about because she hadn’t had a date in over a year? And that date had been with a sumpie—she and her friends’ pet name for summer people—because the locals were afraid to ask her out. And with good reason. After one drink, her brother Mitch had shown up at the Clam Digger, glowering and flexing muscles earned from plying his strength and guts against the waters of the Atlantic to make his living as a lobsterman.

To the local male population, she was Sam, not Samantha. She could outrun, outsail and outswim most of them—it was a well-known fact no one had beaten her in a race to the buoys since she was sixteen. But even if the local young men weren’t totally intimidated by that, nobody wanted to deal with the Hall brothers, Mitch, Jake and Bryce, when it came to their little sister.

Which was okay with her. Fairy tales had finished for her family when her mom and dad had been killed in a boating accident when she was twelve. Mitch, newly married, had stepped up to the plate and taken in his siblings, but his wife, Karina, had not bargained for a ready-made family of two rowdy teenage brothers, and a twelve-year-old girl swimming in pain. Karina, Sam’s one chance for a bit of feminine influence, had jumped ship.

Her brothers had raised her so she could fight but not put on makeup, handle a fishing rod but not wear heels, arm wrestle but not dance. They’d given her an earful about what men really wanted.

Plus, all three of her brothers had taken Karina’s abandonment personally and were commitment phobic, and so was she.

Most of the time. Occasionally Sam felt this odd little tug of wistfulness. She felt it when she watched couples walk hand in hand along the beach at sunset, she felt it when old Mr. and Mrs. Nelson came into her shop, their teasing affection for one another reminding Sam of her mom and dad.

And Sam had felt it with surprising strength when Charlie and Amanda had exchanged their vows earlier at St. Michael’s, Amanda glowing, and Charlie choking up on emotion.

Sam’s own eyes had teared up, and she was so unaccustomed to that, she didn’t have a tissue, and so unaccustomed to mascara that she didn’t know crying in it would have unfortunate consequences.

And she had reacted like that even though she personally felt that if there were ever two people who should not have gotten married, it was Charlie and Amanda!

The pair were part of a tight-knit group of six friends, Colton St. John, Vivian Reilly and Sam’s brother Bryce, who had been hanging out together since grade school. Sam was the youngest of the group—she had started as a tagalong with Bryce. Amanda and Charlie had been dating on and off since they were fourteen, their relationship punctuated with frequent drama, constant squabbling, and hundreds of breakups and makeups.

Ah. Sam’s hand connected with the steel bar of the exit door of the reception hall. She pushed, caught a whiff of the fresh June breeze coming in off the bay. Freedom. On an impulse, she turned and wagged her fingers at Ethan Ballard, goodbye.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Vivian Reilly said. Vivian, also a charter member of the Group of Six, was the other bridesmaid, and she caught Sam’s arm just as she was halfway out the door.

“How come the dress doesn’t look like dog puke on you?” Sam asked, wishing she could take back that impulsive wag of the fingers.

The color of the dress should have clashed with Vivian’s incredible red hair, but, of course, it didn’t. Vivian looked leggy and beautiful, but then Vivian could wear a grain sack and make it look sexy. If anything, the dress was slightly more demure than Vivian’s usual style.

“It mustn’t look all that bad on you, either,” Vivian said with a laugh. “Check out that man staring at you. I’m getting heat stroke from it. He’s glorious. Ethan something? Amanda’s cousin?”

Ethan Ballard. Sam remembered his name perfectly, not to mention the touch of his hand in that reception line. Lingering. Sam slid Amanda’s cousin another look, and looked away, though not before her heart tumbled in her chest, and she felt the tug of something a lot stronger than the wistfulness she felt when she looked at old Mr. And Mrs. Nelson picking out a new collar for their badly spoiled Pom, Duffy.

Ethan Ballard was glorious. And no doubt just as superficial as every other guy in the world, including her brothers. She did not kid herself that the good-looking cousin would have given her a second look if her hair was pulled back into its usual nononsense ponytail, her eyes were not smudged with the plum shadow that Vivian and Amanda insisted made them look greener, and her chest wasn’t falling out of the embarrassingly low-cut dress.

The door clicked shut again, and Sam, resigned, tugged at the dress. She glanced up to see Ethan Ballard watching, an amused smile playing at the handsome, firm line of his wide mouth.

There was that hot rush again, so she stuck her nose in the air so he wouldn’t ever guess.

“Come on,” Vivian said, steering Sam back toward the gaggle of giggling single girls and women waiting for the traditional throwing of the bouquet. “Be a sport.”

Amanda was standing at the front of the room now, still glowing, a queen looking benevolently at her subjects. No doubt she was kidding herself that this was the best day of her life, Sam thought cynically.

As soon as Vivian let go of her arm, Sam moved way up to the front of the gathering of hopefuls. She’d played ball with the bride, and Amanda had a strong throwing arm. As long as she didn’t do the I’m-cute-and-helpless routine, that bouquet should sail right over Sam’s head and hit old Mable Saunders in the back row.

Sixty and never married.

Which will probably be me someday, Sam thought, and given that she was cynical about the institution of marriage she was not sure why the thought made her feel more wistful—and gloomy—than before.

The truth was the whole day had made her feel gloomy, not just because she didn’t hold out much hope for Amanda and Charlie—why would they be the one out of two couples who succeeded when they hadn’t ever managed to go more than three days in their whole relationship without a squabble—but because Sam didn’t like change.

Her five friends were the unchangeable anchor in her life. Vivian, Amanda, Charles, Colton and Sam’s brother Bryce had all hung out together for as long as she could remember. Oh, some of them moved, went to college, came back, but the ties remained unbreakable. The constancy of family and friendships were what made life in the small Cape Cod community idyllic for its three thousand permanent residents.

This was the biggest change they had experienced. A wedding. Sam didn’t like it. She didn’t like it one bit.

Though she had to admit Amanda did look beautiful in her wedding dress, beaming at them all from the front of the room.

The dress, considering the sudden haste to get married, was like something out of a fairy tale, a princess design of a tight-fitting beaded bodice and full floor-length skirt with about sixty-two crinolines underneath it.

Amanda’s eyes met hers, full of mischief, so Sam was relieved when someone suggested Amanda turn around with her back to them all, so she couldn’t choose who to toss the bouquet to. As soon as Amanda did turn around, Sam shuffled positions, moving closer to the burbling chocolate fountain, still close to the front, gambling on Amanda’s good arm.

What she couldn’t have gambled on was this: Amanda threw the bouquet over her shoulder with all her might. It arched up and up and up toward the ceiling.

Those who really were eager to catch the thing moved back in anticipation of where it would fall back to earth.

But the bouquet hit an exposed beam, and instead of completing its arc, it fell straight down like a duck shot out of the sky.

It was going to land right in the middle of the chocolate fountain.

Unless someone intervened.

For an uncharitable moment, Sam swore it was not going to be her.

But she caught a glimpse of the horrified look on Amanda’s face and wondered in that split second if it wasn’t some kind of bad luck for the bouquet not to be caught, to land smack dab in the middle of a pool of burbling chocolate.

Amanda and Charlie were going to need all the luck they could get.

Reluctantly Sam reached out an arm, and the bouquet fell into her hand as if it had been destined to find her.

A cheer went up, though she could hear the lusty challenge of Mitch.

“Anyone who thinks they’re going to marry my sister is going to have to arm wrestle me first.”

Sam smiled, with so many teeth she felt like a dog snarling, waved the bouquet and headed for the exit.

So that’s my future wife, Ethan Ballard thought, watching the bridesmaid head out the exit onto the stone veranda that faced the sea. He bet she was going to hurl that bouquet right off of there, too. He hadn’t missed her thwarted attempt at escape earlier, or the way she had looked during the dinner and the toasts. Cynical. Uncomfortable. Bored.

The least romantic woman in the room. Perfect.

He’d been pretty sure she was the one from the moment he’d laid eyes on her. Despite the sexy outfit, and the abundance of rich chocolate upswept hair, he could tell by the sunburn and freckles that she was the wholesome, outdoorsy type that he imagined the Finkles would love.

She’d be perfect for the task he had in mind. When he’d held her hand a little too long in the reception line she’d yanked it away and given him a dirty look with those sea-mist eyes of hers.

Ditto for his offers to dance with her. Though Ethan felt faintly stung—who didn’t want to dance with him—it boded well for his plan.

Samantha Hall was the girl least likely to appreciate his offer of marriage. Least likely to want anything else once the assignment was over.

And he only needed a wife for one day.

Tomorrow. Combining his cousin Amanda’s wedding with business, Ethan was in Cape Cod looking at real estate. He’d seen a promising property on the Main Street of St. John’s Cove this morning, but what he really wanted was an old family cottage up the coast, between St. John’s and Stone Harbor. He’d been drooling over the Internet pictures of Annie’s Retreat for over a week, and had an appointment to see it tomorrow.

Then his lawyer had called. He’d done his homework, as always. The current owners, the Finkles, had turned down a lot of offers on the place. They knew exactly what they wanted, and it wasn’t to sell to a businessman who would see their property as an investment, who would see the development potential in that rare amount of oceanfront.

The Finkles would be more amenable to an offer made by Mr. and Mrs. Ballard, who wanted to raise a dozen children on the place.

Trying not to whistle at his good fortune in finding the perfect Mrs. Ballard so quickly, Ethan headed out the door after her. Job one was to find out if she knew the Finkles. If she did, he wouldn’t proceed.

Samantha Hall was in the shadows, on the wide deck behind the exit door, standing so still that for a moment he didn’t see her. And when he did he was struck by her loveliness, her slender figure silhouetted by moonlight, her face lifted to the breeze.

She was looking out at the sailboats and yachts bobbing in their moorings, something faintly wistful in her expression.

Very romantic.

She turned, startled when she heard him come out, turned away instantly. He almost laughed out loud when she pulled at the front of her dress, again. The dress fit her graceful lines perfectly and showed off her slender curves to mouthwatering advantage.

But for some reason he found her discomfort with it far more delightful than the dress itself.

“Gorgeous night,” he said conversationally.

“Hmm.” Noncommittal. Suspicious.

“Lucky catch on the bouquet.”

“I guess that depends what you think lucky is.”

“Isn’t the one who catches it the next one to get married?” he asked.

“There’s a disclaimer clause if you’re just saving the bouquet from a disastrous dip in chocolate.”

Ethan laughed, and not just because it was the perfect answer for a man with a mission like his.

“What did you do with the bouquet?” he asked.

Her eyes slid guiltily to the left and he saw the bridal bouquet had been shoved in a planter, the elegant lilies bright white against red geraniums.

“I’m Ethan Ballard,” he said, extending his hand.

“We met in the reception line,” she said, pretending she didn’t see it.

The music started inside. He wondered if he should ask her to dance, again, and was surprised that he wanted to dance with her. But on the other hand, there was no sense romancing her. His marriage proposal wasn’t about romance, and he didn’t want her to think it was.

Job one, he reminded himself, surprised at how hard it was to get down to business with her scent tickling at his nostrils.

“Do you know a family named the Finkles, over Stone Harbor way?” he asked.

Her brow scrunched in momentary concentration. “No,” she said. “I can’t say I do.” Then, with a touch of defensiveness, “My world is pretty small. You’re looking at it.” And she nodded her chin toward the sea and then the barely visible lights of town.

“I’m looking for a wife,” he said, always the businessman, cutting to the chase, even while he kept his tone light, and even while he was aware of being not completely professional. A renegade part of him was looking forward to getting to know her a tiny bit better.

She shot him a look. “Goodie for you.”

Despite the fact this was all a business venture for him, he was a little taken aback at her lack of interest in him. That was not the reaction he got from women at all. Obviously she had no idea who he was, and he found that in itself refreshing.

What would it be like to get to know another human being who didn’t know you were heir to a fortune, a millionaire businessman in your own right and a retired major league baseball player?

“You caught the bouquet, it seemed fortuitous. I have a proposition for you,” he said carefully.

“Propose away,” she said, but he realized when she tucked a wayward strand of her glossy dark hair behind her ear that she was not as cavalier about his attention as she wanted him to believe.

For the first time, he felt a moment’s hesitation. Maybe she wasn’t right for this job, after all; there was something sweetly vulnerable under all that not very veiled cynicism.

At that moment the side door exploded open. His cousin, Amanda, came bursting out, the skirt of her bridal confection caught in her hands, tears streaming down her face. She raced down the stairs with amazing swiftness given that her outfit was not exactly designed for a one-hundred-yard dash. She was at the bottom of the stairs before the door exploded open again, and Charlie came out it.

“Mandy, honey, come on. Don’t be like this.”

“Don’t you Mandy, honey, me!” she yelled, rounding on him. “How could you?”

Ethan was pretty sure that neither of them had even noticed that he and Samantha were in the shadows behind the door. Samantha had gone still as a statue, and he did the same.

And then the bride turned around, tore past the pier, up a set of stairs on the other side of it and into the parking lot. Charlie gained on her and caught her; a furious discussion ensued that Ethan felt grateful he could not hear.

The discussion resulted in Amanda climbing behind the wheel of her bright yellow sports car convertible, revving the engine and leaving Charlie in a splatter of gravel.

Ethan turned to see how his bridesmaid reacted to the drama. She was leaning on the railing, her small chin on her hands, a knowing little smile playing sadly on her lips as she gave her head a cynical shake.

His doubt of a moment earlier was erased. She was perfect.

“Will you marry me?” he asked.

“Why not?” she answered, then smirked at his startled expression. “We have at least as good a chance as them.”

And then she looped her arm through his and dragged him back through the door, he suspected so that Charlie, who was coming back up the steps, shoulders drooping, would remain unaware that the horrible little wedding-night drama had had witnesses.

Ethan was struck by how the sensitivity of the gesture, the loyalty to her friends, did not match the cynicism she was trying to display.

She could have saved herself the effort, though. Back inside it was evident the bride and groom had had many witnesses to their first argument as a married couple.

“About my proposal,” Ethan told her, taking her elbow and looking down at her, “I’ll make it worth your while.”

She smiled sweetly at him. “Believe me, it already is.”

And that’s when he saw a mountain of a man moving toward him, a scowl on his face that could mean nothing but trouble.




CHAPTER TWO


“YOUR boyfriend?” Ethan asked Samantha.

“Worse,” she told him, still smiling sweetly at him. “My brother.” She reached up and brushed her lips on his, he presumed to make sure he was really in trouble.

But the kiss took them both by surprise. He could tell by the way her eyes widened, and he felt a thrilled shock at the delicacy of those lips touching his, too.

But she backed away rapidly, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “And that will teach you to take twenty bucks to pretend you’re interested in me. Oh, hi, Mitch, this is Ethan. He just asked me to marry him.”

Then she wagged her fingers at him and disappeared into the throng of people milling about discussing the tiff between the bride and groom.

Her lips, Ethan thought, faintly dazed, had tasted of strawberries and sea air.

He watched her go, troubled not so much by the impending arrival of her brother, as by the fact she thought someone would have to pay him to show interest in her, and that she thought, even on the shortness of their acquaintance, that he would be such a person.

Of course, he was trying to buy a bride, not exactly a character reference.

The man stopped in front of him and folded hamsized hands over a chest so wide it was stretching the buttons on his dress shirt.

“I’ve got a question for you,” Mitch said menacingly.

In a split second an amazing number of possibilities raced through Ethan’s mind. What were you doing outside with my sister? What are your intentions? Why are you kissing someone you just met? You asked my sister to marry you? None of the answers Ethan came up with boded well for him.

He braced himself . Ethan did not consider himself a fighter, but he wasn’t one to back down, either.

“You really are Ethan Ballard, aren’t you?”

The question was so different than what he was bracing himself for that Ethan just nodded warily.

“I gotta know why you left the Sox. One season. No injury. Great rookie year. I gotta know.”

Despite the menace, Ethan felt himself relax. He could tell Samantha’s brother was one of those hardworking, honest men that these communities, once all fishing villages, were famous for producing.

Ethan had his stock answer to the question he had just been asked, but he surprised himself by not giving it. In a low voice he said, “I wanted to be liked and respected for who I was, not for what I did.”

A memory, painful, squeezed behind his eyes, of Bethany saying, her voice shrill with disbelief, You did what? And that had been the end of their engagement, just as his father had predicted.

Samantha’s brother regarded him thoughtfully for a moment, made up his mind, clapped him, hard, on the shoulder. “Come on. I’ll get you a beer and you can meet my brothers.”

“About that marriage proposal—”

The big man’s eyes sought his sister and found her. He watched her for a moment and then sighed.

“Don’t worry. I know she was just kiddin’ around, probably kissed you to get me mad, as if I could get mad at Ethan Ballard. Nobody’s gonna marry my little sister.”

“Why’s that?” Ethan asked, and he felt troubled again. Samantha Hall was beautiful. And had plenty of personality and spunk. Why would it seem so impossible that someone—obviously not a complete stranger who had just met her, but someone—would want to marry her?

“They’d have to come through me first,” Mitch said, and then, “And even if they didn’t, she’d have to find someone who is more a man than she is. My fault. I raised her. Don’t be fooled by present appearances. That girl is as tough as nails.”

But it seemed to Ethan what Samantha Hall needed was not someone who was more a man than her at all. It was someone who saw the woman in her. And who could clearly see she was not tough as nails. He thought of the softness of her lips on his and the vulnerability he had glimpsed in her eyes when he had joined her outside. And he wondered just what he was getting himself into, and why he felt so committed to it.

Sam couldn’t believe it. A complete stranger had asked her to marry him. She knew Ethan Ballard was kidding—or up to something—but her heart had still gone crazy when he had said the words! Having been raised by brothers, Sam knew better than to let her surprise or intrigue show. There was nothing a man liked better than catching a woman off guard to get the upper hand!

She was annoyed to see her brothers liked him. She watched from across the room as they gathered around him, as if he was a long-lost Hall, clapping him on the shoulder and offering him a beer. Ethan Ballard had wormed his way into their fold effortlessly.

Well, she thought, that’s a perfect end to a perfect day. Her feet hurt, she was tired of the dress and she felt sick for Charlie and Amanda. Fighting on a wedding night had to be at least as bad for luck as the bouquet not getting caught. Sam had just postponed the inevitable by making her heroic save.

Still, her work here was done. Much as she would have liked to know what that proposal was really about, she didn’t want Ethan Ballard to think she cared! No, better to leave him thinking she shrugged off marriage proposals from strangers as if they were a daily occurrence!

Sam made her way to the front door and finally managed to get away. Outside, she kicked off her heels and went around the parking lot toward the yacht club private beach that bordered it, the shortest route back to the small hamlet of St. John’s Cove.

“Hey!”

Samantha turned and saw Ethan Ballard coming toward her, even his immense confidence no match for the sand. If she ran, he’d never catch her. But then he might guess he made her feel afraid in some way she didn’t quite understand.

Not afraid of him. But afraid of herself.

She thought of the way his lips had felt when she had playfully brushed them with hers, and she turned and kept walking.

He caught up to her anyway.

“I see you survived my brothers.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“They usually run a better defense,” she said. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t from the exertion of walking through the sand.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

A different girl might have said, Midnight swim, skinny-dipping, but she couldn’t. She didn’t quite know what to make of his attention. She was enjoying it, and hating the fact she was enjoying it. “Home.”

“I’ll walk you.”

No one ever walked her anywhere. She was not seen as the fragile type; in fact her bravery was legend. She was the first one to swim in the ocean every year, she had been the first one out of the plane when the guys had talked her into skydiving. When they were fourteen and had played chicken with lit cigarettes, she had always won. She was known to be a daredevil in her little sailboat, an old Cape Dory Typhoon named the Hall Way.

Sam was a little taken aback that she liked his chivalry. So she said, with a touch of churlishness, “I can look after myself.”

“I’ll walk you home, anyway.”

There was nothing argumentative in his tone. Or bossy. He was just stating a fact. He was walking her home, whether she liked it or not.

And she certainly didn’t want him to know that she did like that feeling of being treated as fragile and feminine.

“Suit yourself.”

He stopped after a moment, slid off his shoes and socks. Since she was stuck with him anyway, she waited, admiring the way he looked in the moonlight, silver beams tangling in the darkness of his hair, his now bare feet curling into the sensuousness of the sand.

He straightened, shoes in hand, and she saw the moonlight made his dark eyes glint with silver shadows, too.

She started walking again, and he walked beside her.

“Do you want to talk about the proposal?”

A renegade thought blasted through her of what it would be like to actually be married to a man like him. To taste those lips whenever you wanted, to feel his easy strength as part of your life.

Maybe that’s why Amanda and Charlie had rushed to get married even when the odds were against them, pulled toward that soft feeling of not being alone anymore.

“I already said I’d marry you,” she said, her careless tone hiding both her curiosity and the vulnerability those thoughts made her feel. “My brothers, strangely enough, liked you. What’s to discuss?”

He laughed, and she didn’t feel like he was laughing at her, but truly enjoying her. It would be easy to come to love that sensation. Of being seen. And appreciated.

“Setting a date?” he kidded.

“Oh. I guess there’s that. How about tomorrow?” She reminded herself most of his appreciation was thanks to the costume: the dress and the hair and the makeup.

“I’m free, and by happy coincidence that’s when I need a wife. Just for the day. Want to play with me?”

The awful thing was she did want to play with him, desperately. But what she considered playing—a day of sailing or swimming—was probably not what he considered playing. At all. His next words confirmed that.

“I’m a real estate investor. I buy higher end properties that have gone to seed, fix them up and flip them.”

Oh, he played with money.

“I thought the market was gone,” she said. She thought of the real estate sign hanging in front of her own rented premises, and thanked the wedding for its one small blessing.

She hadn’t thought of that all day.

Because ever since the sign had gone up, she’d been getting stomachaches. Her business relied on its prime Main Street, St. John’s, location, the summer people coming in and buying grooming supplies, the cute little doggy outfits she stocked, the good-grade dog foods, the amazing and unusual pet accessories that she spent her spare time seeking out. But she knew she’d been getting an incredible deal on the rent, which included her storefront and the apartment above it. A new owner meant one of two things, neither of them good. She would be paying higher rent, or she would get evicted.

“I’m in a position where I can buy and hold if I have to,” he said with easy self-assurance, “though the market is never really gone for the kind of clients who buy my properties.”

“Oh,” she said. He dealt with the old rich, like the St. John family who had founded this town.

“One of my scouts called in a property down the coastline from here a few miles, a little closer to Stone Harbor than here. It’s ideal—beachfront, a couple of acres, an old house that needs to be torn down or extensively remodeled, I’m not sure which yet.”

The private beach they were walking down intersected with a boardwalk. Sam leaned over to put on her shoes to protect her feet from splinters on the weathered old boardwalk. When she raised up one foot, she took an awkward step sideways in the sand.

She felt a thrilled shock when Ethan reached out quickly to steady her, his one hand red-hot on her naked shoulder, his other caressing as he took her remaining shoe from where she was dangling it from its strap in her hand. He slid it onto her foot, his palm cupping the arch for a suspended second before sliding away.

He stepped away from her, acted as if nothing had happened as he sat down and put on his own socks and shoes.

How could he possibly not have felt that current that leaped in the air between them when he touched her foot? His touch had been astoundingly sexy, more so than when she had touched his lips earlier. She felt scorched; he appeared cool and composed.

Which meant even considering his proposal would be engaging in a form of lunacy she couldn’t afford!

She didn’t wait for him to finish with his shoes, but went up the rickety stairs in front of him, though she soon realized putting back on her own shoes had been a mistake, the heels finding every crack between the boards to slide down between. She was with one of the most elegant, composed, handsome men she had ever met, and she felt like she was in the starring role of March of the Penguins.

On the seaside of the boardwalk she was passing a scattering of small shingle-sided beachfront homes and cottages. Ethan caught up to her.

She slipped up the first side street of St. John’s Cove, where it met the boardwalk, and now less wobbly on the paved walkway, marched up the hill past the old saltbox fishing cottages, one of which she had grown up in and where her brother Mitch still lived. The lobster traps in the front yard were real, not for decoration. He must have brought them home to repair them.

The side street emptied onto the town square, and she crossed the deserted park at the center of the square and went past the statue of Colton’s great-grandfather. His great-grandfather looked amazingly like Colton—tall, handsome, powerful—but he had a stuffy look on his face that she had never seen on Colton’s. The walkway that bisected the park led straight to Main Street, St. John’s Cove.

The colorful awnings over the buildings had been all rolled up, the tables and umbrellas in front of the Clam Digger put away for the night. The streetlights, modeled after old gaslights, threw golden light over the wonderful old buildings, Colonial saltboxes, shingle-sided, some weathered gray, some stained rich brown.

All the window, door, corner and roof trim was painted white, and old hinged store signs hung from wrought-iron arms above the doors. Each store had bright flower planters in front, spilling over with abundant colorful waves of cascading petunias.

St. John’s Cove Main Street was picturesque and delightful—bookstores, antique shops, art galleries and cafés, the bank anchoring one end of the street, the post office the other.

And right in the middle of that was her store, Groom to Grow.

With the Building for Sale sign, that she had managed not to think about for nearly twelve whole hours, swinging gently in front of it. And if that wasn’t bad enough, she could see the nose of Amanda’s yellow convertible parked at a bad angle beside the staircase that ran up the side of her building to her apartment above the storefront.

Well, where else was Amanda going to go? She had given up her own apartment in anticipation of spending the rest of her life with Charlie, starting tonight.

“Well, this is home.”

“This is your business?”

She turned at the surprised note in his voice. “Yes. I live in the apartment above it.”

He put his hands in his pockets, rocked back on his heels. “That’s a strange coincidence. I looked at it today.”

“To buy it?” she asked, not succeeding at keeping the waver of fear out of her voice. So far, because of the economy, there had been very little interest in the building.

He shrugged, watching her closely. “I’d only pick it up if I bought the other property, as well. The price is reasonable, probably because the building needs a lot of work. Cape Cod is always a good investment.”

“Oh.” She tried to sound unconcerned, but knew she failed miserably. “What would you do with it, if you bought it?”

“Probably do some much needed maintenance on it, and then rent it out. Just think,” he teased, “I could be your landlord.”

“I doubt that. The rent is a song right now. Once the roof didn’t leak and the hot water tap actually dispensed hot water, it would probably be a different story. I can’t pay any higher. Once the building sells, I’ll probably be looking for a new home. I was counting my lucky stars that there hasn’t been much interest in it since it went on the market.”

She wished she hadn’t admitted that. The Hall family was notorious for keeping their business to themselves, but she knew Ethan had registered the slight waver in her voice. She pointed her chin proudly to make up for it.

She wished she could afford to buy the building, but she couldn’t. Her brothers would probably help her if she asked them, but she knew the lobster business was a tough one. The Hall brothers had invested in a new vessel recently, and she hated to think of putting more stress on their finances.

Her future, and the future of Groom to Grow, were clearly up in the air.

“Hmm,” Ethan said easily, teasingly, “maybe I’ve found just the lure to get you to agree to be my wife.”

As if he wasn’t lure enough, damn him!

She wasn’t in the mood to kid about Groom to Grow and her future. She had parlayed her love of animals into this business and if it wasn’t exactly what she had planned for her life, at least it allowed her to live in the town she loved, surrounded by the people she cared about.

“Tell me the details of your proposal,” she said reluctantly.

“When my lawyer made some initial inquiries about the property for sale up the coast, the couple informed him they were interviewing potential buyers. They’re old people. They have a sentimental attachment to the place. They want to see another family in there. They’ve been interviewing buyers and turning them down for two years.”

“That’s kind of sweet, isn’t it?”

He groaned. “Sweet? It’s sentimental hogwash. What does that have to do with business?

“They could sell it to what they think is the perfect family, and that family could turn around and sell it in a year or two, disillusioned with life at Cape Cod.”

He was being very convincing, and she knew that happened all the time. The sumpies were fickle in their love of Cape Cod.

They came and bought cottages and properties here during those perfect months of summer. Then they discovered they hated the commute. Or that outfitting and running two households was not very relaxing. That there were really only two or three true months of summer to enjoy their expensive real estate. Spring and fall were generally cold and blustery; winter in St. John’s Cove was not for the faint of heart.

“So,” Sam said uneasily, “you want me to pretend to be your wife for one day. To go dupe those old people out of their property.”

He didn’t just play with money—he played with people.

“I don’t see it like that,” he said evenly. “It’s business. It’s unrealistic of them to think they’re going to control what happens to the property after they sell it.”

He was right in a pragmatic way. If she could be as businesslike as he was maybe the future of Groom to Grow wouldn’t be so uncertain. She made a decent living at what she did, she loved it and it allowed her to stay in St. John’s Cove. But it had never taken off to the point where she could sock away enough money to buy her own property.

“I said I’d make it worth your while.”

So, here was the truth about him. She should have known it the first time she had looked into those devil-dark eyes. Ethan Ballard was Lucifer, about to hold out the one temptation she couldn’t refuse, the future of Groom to Grow. Though her eyes slid to his lips when she thought that, and she realized he might have two temptations she would have trouble walking away from.

“If the deal goes the way I want it to, I’ll buy this building, and you can rent the space from me. I’ll guarantee you the same terms you have now for at least a year, since you’d be putting up with some noisy and inconvenient repairs.”

Sam, of all people, knew life didn’t have guarantees, but a reprieve from that For Sale sign almost made her weak in the knees.

“You want that place badly,” she said, trying not to act as shocked as she felt.

“Maybe. The initial assessments look very promising.”

“Enough for you to throw in a building?” she asked cynically.

He shrugged. “So, I end up with the beachfront house and some of St. John’s Cove Main Street. The price on this building was very fair. Sounds win-win to me.”

“And if the deal doesn’t go the way you want?”

“How could it not?” he said smoothly. “With you as my wife?”

In other words, if she played the role well, things would go exactly as he wanted them to. She had a feeling things in Ethan Ballard’s life went his way.

“If, despite my best efforts to play your devoted wife, they don’t sell you their property?” she pressed. “What then?”

“The deal is off. I’d be heading up a development team to work on the other property—carpenters, plumbers, electricians, roofers—so it would be no big deal to send them over to do some work on this building while we’re here. But it wouldn’t make good business sense to send them in for this building alone. I’m hands-on. If I can’t be here to supervise, I’m not doing it.”

“Oh.”

“Take a chance,” he said in his best charm-of-thedevil voice. “You won’t be any further behind if things don’t work out. Besides, it might be fun.”

Oh, sure. Of course it was fun to dance with the devil, but there was always a price to be paid.

“I have to think about it,” she said, deducing he was a man far too accustomed to getting his own way.

She certainly didn’t want him to see how easily she was swayed by his charm, or how much she wanted what he was offering. He didn’t have to know she was already ninety percent at yes.

Though in truth more than fifty percent of that yes was that she was reluctantly intrigued by him, even if she was uneasy about the deal.

A light turned on in her apartment.

They both turned and looked up at the lighted window. Amanda, still in her bridal gown, was pacing in front of the window.

I’m getting a stomachache, Sam noted to herself. Out loud, she said coolly, “It was nice meeting you. Thanks for walking me home.”

“I’ll drop by in the morning, around nine. I’ll pick you up right here, outside, so it’s not awkward if you decide against it. If you’re here, great, and if you’re not, I’ll assume you didn’t want to come. No problem.” He looked at her for a long moment, and she could feel herself holding her breath. He was debating kissing her! She knew it. And she didn’t know if she was relieved or regretful when he walked away!

By nine the next morning, the other ten percent had swung over to Ethan Ballard’s side. The truth was, Sam would have thrown in with Genghis Khan to get away from the intensity of emotion that had swept into her life with the runaway bride. Sam had spent most of the night trying to console her friend, who was inconsolable, but who wouldn’t tell her what horrible crime Charlie had committed this time.

Despite her cynicism about love and marriage, Sam would have done anything to make Charlie and Amanda’s relationship work, to see her friends happy. Her sense of powerlessness in the face of Amanda’s distress made her eager to escape.

Still, even though she was waiting at the curb for Ethan Ballard, Sam was determined he wasn’t going to have it all his way.

No, the girl Ethan had proposed to last night was banished. Gone was the makeup and the hair, gone was the suggestive dress.

Sam’s face was scrubbed clean, her hair loose but covered with her favorite ball cap. She was wearing an old pair of faded khakis, and a T-shirt that belonged to her brother Bryce. She had an uglier one that belonged to Mitch, but Amanda was shuffling around the apartment in it this morning since everything Amanda owned was at Charlie’s house.

Still, Sam was satisfied that she certainly would not be what anyone would picture as the wife of Mr. Ethan Ballard.

And she had the new dog, Waldo, with her, too. People dropped off strays with her, counting on her to work her magic with them and then to find them good homes. Sam had never said no to a dog who needed a place to go.

This dog was particularly sensitive to emotion, and when Amanda had become so overwrought that she was puking, he had started sympathy-puking right along with her.

Sam and the dog were actually sitting on the curb when Ethan drove up the street slowly in a gorgeous newer-model luxury car. Waldo, half Chinese pug and half mystery, was dressed in an army camo hoodie since the morning fog had not quite lifted, and the breeze coming off the ocean was sharp. Sam could not stop herself from spoiling the dogs and cats that had temporary refuge with her.

Sam saw the look on Ethan Ballard’s face when he saw her sitting by the curb with her mutt. She thought about the mission they were about to embark on and had the uncharitable hope that the dog would puke in his luxurious car.

If Ethan even stopped to pick them up! Maybe he would take one look at the real Samantha Hall and drive right on by!




CHAPTER THREE


ETHAN BALLARD drove down Main Street of St. John’s Cove, enjoying the Sunday morning quiet of it, but aware that despite his words last night—If you’re here, great, and if you’re not, I’ll assume you didn’t want to come—he hadn’t meant the no problem follow-up. For some reason, he wanted her to come with him.

And not necessarily because of the Finkles, either. Last night, after he had left Samantha Hall and walked back down the beach alone, he had thought of her comment about duping those old people out of their property, and not liked that very much.

Usually Ethan regarded business as a large chess game. He liked winning. He had turned his competitive nature to that and found it far more fulfilling and less full of pitfalls than relationships. But when had he become so focused on the win that he was willing to dupe people?

Maybe it would be just as well if Samantha didn’t show up this morning. He’d drive up the coast, present the Finkles with a very good offer, take it or leave it, no games, no duping.

So, if it would be just as well if she didn’t show up, and if he was a man who avoided the pitfalls of relationships and had made business, pragmatic and predictable, a safe harbor from emotion, then it was probably not a good thing that he felt dismayed that Samantha was not waiting for him.

A little boy in a ball cap and a scruffy dog sat on the curb. Ethan slowed, looked past them, to see if Samantha was coming down her staircase. She wasn’t, and aware of a sharp pang of disappointment, he debated going and knocking on her door.

But that hadn’t been the agreement, and if the yellow convertible was any indication, his cousin, Amanda, was still there. His brow furrowed as he thought of his young, lovely cousin starting the day yesterday so full of hope, and now being so distressed. Should he go say something to her? Or would his own discomfort with all things emotional just make everything worse?

While he mulled over his options, the little boy stood up, and the dog yapped its dislike. Ethan glanced at the pair again.

And slammed on the brakes. His eyes widened.

That was Samantha Hall? Oh, it was her all right, those wide-set gray-green eyes in the shadow of the ball cap, the delicate features, the sensuous curve of her mouth. But all those delectable curves that dress had shown off last night were disguised this morning.

Ethan leaned over and opened the door for her, surprised by how he felt. Intrigued. And he had the same feeling he’d had last night after talking to her brother. That what Samantha needed more than anything else was for someone to see right past the ball cap, and the men’s T-shirt, to the woman in her.

The woman he had tasted when his lips had brushed hers so briefly.

The woman he had touched when she had stumbled putting on her shoe, felt the pure and feminine sensuous energy of her.

“Good morning,” he said as she slid into the seat beside him. “I nearly drove by. I didn’t recognize you.”

“This is the real me,” she said defensively, settling the dog on her lap.

Is it? he wondered. Her dog glared at him and growled. She appeared to have taken more time dressing the dog than herself.

“I thought maybe that was how you felt Mrs. Ethan Ballard would look,” he said mildly, and glancing up at the apartment window asked, “Do you think I should go say something to Amanda?”

“She’s finally sleeping.”

He heard the concern in Samantha’s voice, and felt, ridiculously, as if he was the white knight riding in, not to rescue his cousin, but Samantha.

“You look a little the worse for wear this morning,” he said, checking over his shoulder as he pulled away from the curb.

“I don’t have the wardrobe to look like Mrs. Ethan Ballard,” she said proudly. “Unless I wore the dress from last night and it didn’t seem appropriate for daywear.”

“I wasn’t referring to your clothes,” he said dryly. “You just look tired.”

“Oh.”

“What do you think Mrs. Ethan Ballard’s wardrobe would look like?”

She slid him a sideways look. “I guess that depends what kind of woman you go for. I wonder. Trashy? Or classy. I’m going to guess classy.”

“Thanks,” he said dryly. “I think.”

Classy. He thought of Bethany, with her pedigree and her designer wardrobe, her tasteful jewelry, her exotic, expensive scents. Classy, but when he’d scraped the surface, challenged her, she’d been superficial as hell.

The woman beside him in her baseball cap and khakis, with her innate honesty and decency, seemed a lot more classy than Bethany. If classy meant genuine. Real. And somehow at this moment that is what it meant to him.

“Classy it is,” he said. The next town, Stone Harbor, was past the turnoff to the Finkles, but since it was just a few minutes away on the winding coast road, and it was bigger than St. John’s Cove, a few of its Main Street stores would be open on Sunday. He pulled over in front of a boutique, Sunsational, that looked upscale and classy.

Luckily the fog was persisting so it wasn’t yet hot enough to worry about leaving the dog in the car, though he rolled all the windows partly down.

He opened the door for Samantha, aware he was enjoying this, aware that his rendezvous with the Finkles was shimmering like an oasis he might never arrive at but he didn’t mind because the journey there was proving just as interesting. Make that more interesting.

“What are we doing?” Samantha asked, eyeing the boutique.

“Making you into Mrs. Ballard. The classy version.” He grinned. “Though trashy would be more fun.”

He saw she looked wounded, and that he had insulted her by insinuating she wouldn’t make a great Mrs. Ballard just the way she was.

But he felt he saw a truth about her that she might have been missing herself: that what she was wearing now was a disguise of sorts intended to hide who she really was.

“Look,” he said, hastily, “you look fine the way you are. But if I don’t end up buying your building, you’ve given me your time for nothing. Let me do something for you. Consider it a thank-you in advance.”

Pride played across her face, but he saw the faintest wistfulness in the quick glance she cast at the door. He knew it! She had every woman’s delight in shopping!

Still, when he held open the door of the store for her and she marched by him, she was scowling.

He touched the place where her brow was knit. “Have fun!” he instructed her.

She looked at him, glanced around the store. He could clearly see she was struggling with a decision, and he was relieved when something in her relaxed.

“Okay,” she said, and gave him a small, careful smile. It occurred to him that that smile changed everything, changed far more than a dress ever could. He saw the radiance in her, and realized the sighting was precious, the part of herself, along with her femininity, that she kept hidden.

It was a treasure he felt drawn to find.

Still, her idea of fun turned out to be a menace, because she gave him the trashy version of Mrs. Ballard. She flounced out of the dressing room in a too short white leather skirt and a hot-pink halter top, flipped a dark wave of luscious hair over her naked shoulder and watched his reaction solemnly.

The truth was he was flummoxed. She looked awful. And yet his mouth went absolutely dry at the slender temptation of her perfect curves, her toned and tanned legs, the glimpse of her belly button where the top didn’t quite meet the skirt.

When he struggled for words, and all that came out was an uncertain Ah, the solemn look faded from her face and she laughed. She was kidding him, paying him back.

But when she laughed her whole face lit up and her eyes danced with mischief, and he knew he’d glimpsed the treasure he’d been looking for. The real Samantha Hall, despite the costume she had put on.

A half hour later and a half dozen more sedate outfits later, she emerged from the dressing room and twirled in front of him. The defensiveness had left her, and he was delighted at how thoroughly she was enjoying herself. From the sassiness of her pose, she knew it was the perfect outfit, and so did he.

She wore a summer skirt, of light silk, an amazing blend of seaside colors, the turquoise of the sea and the pale blue of the sky. She had paired it with casual sandals that showed the delicate lines of her feet, and he remembered the white-hot feeling of holding that tiny foot in the palm of his hand last night.

When she twirled, her loose, glossy hair fanned out and the skirt flew around her, revealing, again, those amazing legs, and hinting at her gypsy spirit. She had on a cream linen jacket, that she hadn’t done up, and under it was a camisole so simple there should be no reason that it made his mouth go as dry as the more flamboyant pink halter top she had tried on first.

“What do you think?” she asked.

He thought she was the perfect Mrs. Ballard. He thought he had dragged her in here to show her something of herself, and had seen something of himself instead. That he was vulnerable to her.

“You look perfect,” he said gruffly, and then tried to short-circuit his own vulnerability, to make her stop looking at him like that, in a way that made his heart feel like it would swoop out of his chest and land in the palms of her hands. “Let’s go dupe the Finkles.”

The happy look faded from her face, and he was sorry even though he knew it was better for both of them if they didn’t forget what this was all about.

“This is the one,” she said, suddenly cool. “Let’s go.”

He mourned the loss of the magic of the moments they had just shared, even as he knew they made things way too complicated.

At the front desk, Samantha went outside while he paid. The clerk offered to package up the old clothes for him, but he just shook his head. Even if she was mad at him, he never wanted to see her in those clothes—that particular lie—again.

She didn’t ask about her clothes when he joined her. Her eyes were challenging him to back down, to say the subterfuge had gone far enough.

But the look of disdain in her eyes was so much safer for him than the look in her eyes when she had been twirling in front of him, filled with glorious certainty of herself, that he felt more committed than ever to his plan. They’d visit the Finkles, he’d take her home. Leave her with the outfit to assuage some faint guilt he was feeling. If he did end up buying her building, he would keep it strictly business.

Though he wasn’t sure how, since he had utterly failed to keep things strictly business so far.

What if it could be real?

He didn’t even know her, he scoffed at himself. But when he looked at her, her eyes distant, her chin pointed upward with stubbornness and pride, he felt like he did know her. Or wanted to.

“What’s the plan now?” she said.

“We’ll go to the Finkles. Let’s just say we’re engaged instead of married,” he told her.

The stiff look of pride left her face and something crumpled in her eyes. “Even dressed up, I’m not good enough, am I?”

“No!” he said, stunned at her conclusion. “That’s not it at all. The problem is you are way too good for me. Duper of old people, remember?”

And then he hurriedly opened the car door and held it for her, before he gave into the temptation to take her in his arms and erase any thought she’d ever had about not being good enough, before he gave in to the temptation to kiss her until she had not a doubt left about who she really was, a woman, who deserved more than she had ever asked of the world.

He knew if he was smart, he would just pass the turnoff he was looking for and take her straight back to St. John’s Cove, cut his losses.

But now he felt he had to prove to her it was him that was unworthy, not her.

It was probably the stupidest thing he’d ever done, to continue this charade.

But looking back over the events of the last day, since he had first seen Samantha Hall standing at the altar beside his cousin, it seemed to Ethan Ballard he had not made one smart decision. Not one.

He glanced at the woman sitting with her dog slobbering all over her new silk skirt, trying to read her expression.

“Look,” he said awkwardly, “any man would be lucky to call you his wife. And that was before we went shopping.” He was a little shocked by how much he meant that, but he had failed to convince her.

He wanted to just call this whole thing off, forget the Finkles and go home to the mess-free life he took such pride in.

“Humph,” she said skeptically.

If he did call it off now, was Samantha really going to think she had failed to measure up to his standard for a wife? He sighed at how complicated this innocent little deceit had become.

Here he was smack-dab in the middle of a mess of his own making.

Samantha Hall looked straight ahead, refusing to meet his eyes, but the dog slid him a contemptuous look and growled low in its throat.

Ethan Ballard thought he had heard somewhere that dogs were excellent judges of character.

“I used to play baseball,” he said. It was a measure of his desperation that he was trying to win her respect back this way, when he hated it when people liked him for his former career. But the truth was, right about now, Ethan would take her liking any way he could get it.

He wanted that look back in her eyes, he wanted the radiance back, even though it was a very dangerous game he played.

“Didn’t we all?” she said.

“I meant professionally. I played first base for the Red Sox for a season.”

“And you are telling me this why?” Not the tiniest bit of awe in her voice.

“I’m trying to impress you,” he admitted sadly, “since I’ve managed to make such a hash of it so far.”

“Humph.”

“I’ll take that as a fail.”

“I grew up with three brothers,” she told him, and he could hear the sharp annoyance in her voice. “Every single special occasion of my entire life has been spoiled by their obsession with sports. You know where my brothers were the night I graduated from high school?”

“I’m afraid to ask.”

“In Boston.”

“Oh, boy,” he muttered. “Red Sox?”

She nodded curtly and went back to looking out the window.

It occurred to him he really had stumbled onto the perfect woman for him, a woman capable of not being impressed with what he’d done, who could look straight through that to who he really was.

Not that he’d exactly done a great job of showing her that. Maybe he’d even lost who he really was somewhere along the way, in the pursuit of ambition and success.

And maybe she was the kind of woman who could lead him back to it. If he was crazy enough to tangle with her any longer than he absolutely had to.

With relief he saw the sign he’d been looking for—Annie’s Retreat—and he pulled off the main road onto a rutted track.

The first thing that would need work, and a lot of it, was the road, he thought, and it was such a blessed relief to be able to think of that rather than the stillness of the woman beside him.

Life was just plain mean, Sam thought, getting out of the car after the long, jolting ride down a rough road. Waldo bounced out with her. He had snagged her skirt, so she had managed to look upscale for all of fifteen minutes.

Ethan, of course, looked like he was modeling for the summer issue of GQ, in dun-colored safari shorts that looked like he had taken a few minutes to press them before he left his hotel this morning. Ditto for the shirt, a short-sleeved mossy-green cotton, with a subtle Ballard Holdings embroidered in a deeper shade of green over the one buttoned pocket.

No wonder she had been downgraded to fiancée! No matter what he said, she was pretty sure it was because she didn’t fit in his world.

“Maybe we should leave him in the car,” Ethan suggested carefully, as if she was made of glass.

But she was all done being what Ethan wanted her to be, and Waldo came with her, especially if he didn’t fit into Ethan’s world and Ethan’s plans.

“The dog comes,” she said, “and if you don’t like it, or they don’t like it, tough.”

There. That was more like the real Samantha Hall, not like that woman who had stared back at her from the mirror in Sunsational, sensual, grown-up, mature, feminine.

Despite her attempts to harden her emotions, Samantha could not deny Annie’s Retreat was a place out of a dream she had, a dream that she had been able to keep a secret even from herself until she saw this place. These large properties were almost impossible to come by anymore on this coastline.

It made her remember that once upon a time she had dreamed of turning her love of all things animal into an animal refuge, where she could rescue and rehabilitate animals. Given her nonexistent budget, Groom to Grow had been more realistic, and she still ended up caring for the odd stray, like Waldo, that people brought in. But looking at this property she felt that old longing swell up in her.

The road ended in a yard surrounded by a picket fence, the white paint long since given way to the assaults of the salt air. Early-season roses were going crazy over an arbor; beyond it she could see the cottage: saltbox, weathered gray shake siding, white trim in about the same shape as the paint on the fence.

An attempt at a garden had long since gone wild, and yet it charmed anyway: daises, phlox, hollyhock, sewn among scraggly lawn, beach grass and sand.

A path of broken stones wound a crooked course to the house, where red geraniums bloomed in peeling window boxes. The path ended at an old screen door; the red storm door to the cottage was open through it. Sam could look in the door: a dark hallway burst open into a living room where a wall of salt-stained windows faced an unparalleled view of a restless, gray-capped sea.

She was here to look at a cottage out of a dream, a cottage she would never own. She was here with a man out of a dream, a man who was as unattainable for her as the cottage. No matter what he said about her being good enough and trying to impress her.

Ha-ha.

Waldo jumped up on the door, put his paws on the screen, sniffed and let out a joyous howl. A small dog came roaring down the hall, skittered on a rug, righted itself and rammed the door. She was out and after a brief sniff, the two dogs raced around the yard, obviously in the throes of love.

If only it was that easy for people, Sam thought. Though she could fall in love with the man beside her in about half a blink if she allowed herself to.

Not that she would ever be that foolish!

A tiny gnome of a woman came to the door, smiled at them from under a thick fringe of snowwhite hair. She opened the door to them, glancing at the dogs with tolerance.

Then she looked at them with disconcerting directness, her smile widened and she stuck out her hand. “Annie Finkle.”

Ethan took it, introduced himself, then hesitated before he said, “And this is my, er, fiancée, Samantha Hall.”

Samantha glanced at him. He was either a terrible liar, or after downgrading her from the wife position, didn’t even want her to be his fiancée!

She decided, evil or not, to make him pay for that. She looped her arm around his waist, ran her hand casually and possessively along his back, just as she had seen in-love couples do. The way her life was going this might be as close as she would ever get, so she was going to enjoy every minute of it.

And enjoy it even more because it made him so uncomfortable.

“Darling,” she breathed, following Annie into the living room, not letting go of her hold on him, “isn’t this the most adorable house you’ve ever seen?”

“Adorable,” he croaked, and she looked at him and enjoyed the strain she saw in his face. He tried to lift her arm away from him, but she clamped down tighter.

It was a delightful room, completely without pretension. It had dark plank flooring that had never been refinished, and a huge fireplace, the face of it soot-darkened from use. Worn, much used couches faced each other between the huge window and the fireplace. The entire room cried home.

“I love the floor coverings,” Sam said. “They’re unbelievable.”

Annie beamed at her. “I hand-paint historic patterns on oilskins. I make more of them than I can use, unfortunately. Artie would like me to open a shop, but I’m probably too old.” But even as she said it, she looked wistful. She brought herself back to the moment. “This is my favorite room in the house.”

“I love it, too,” Sam breathed. “I can just see myself sitting in that rocking chair in the winter, a fire in the hearth, watching a storm-tossed sea.” Then she realized it didn’t feel like a game, so she upped the ante to remind herself this was fantasy. “Maybe,” she cooed, “there would be a baby at my breast.”

Something darkened in his already too dark eyes. The set of his mouth looked downright grim as he looked at her. She knew she was playing way out of her league, and she didn’t mean baseball, but she stroked his back again, even though it made her stomach drop and her fingers tingle.

She should have known not to even try to get the best of him, because he leaned close to her, inhaled the scent of her hair and then blew his breath into her ear.

“Stop it,” he growled in a low tone, and then he gently nipped her ear, just to let her know if she wanted to play hardball he had plenty of experience.

The tingle Sam had been experiencing in her fingers moved to her toes. And back up again.

“Oh,” Annie said. “Babies! And you’d come in the winter?”

“If I owned this place,” Sam said, “I doubt I’d ever leave it.” No, she could see herself here as if it would be the perfect next stage of her life, not the place of change that she had feared, at all.

She could see all her friends gathering here, the Group of Six not disappearing, but expanding as they acquired mates and children, the circle growing in love and warmth. She could sense those unborn children, see them screeching and running on the beach, toasting marshmallows on bonfires at night, falling asleep in parents’ arms.

This house cast a spell on Sam that made it so easy to see her brothers, settling down at last, coming here with their wives and children, raising another generation who loved Cape Cod year-round.

This was the kind of place where friends and family gathered around the fire on deepest winter nights. Where they played rowdy card games and hysterical rounds of charades, enjoying sanctuary in the love and laughter of friends from the bitter winter storms.

Why was it, it was so easy to imagine Ethan, an outsider to that circle, as being at the very center of it? Why is it she knew that he would slide into the circle without creating a ripple, as if he had belonged there always?

Was it the place that created this sensation of belonging? A longing for things that weren’t yet, but that she could sense on the horizon?





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