The Love Shack

Chapter FIVE


POLLY WAS PUTTING SCISSORS to brown paper bag when Teague White breezed through her open front door. He stopped short, taking in the stack of bags, the scraps of paper scattered at her feet, the tagboard pattern and pencil that lay on the coffee table in front of the love seat where she sat. “What’s up?” he asked.

My pulse rate. But, accustomed to hiding her physical reaction to him, Polly aimed a casual smile at his shoulder—she had to avoid looking too hard at the beautiful face above it. The stark, masculine bones framed by layers of short hair the same color as his almost-black eyes had the power to rock her world. She cleared her throat to answer his question. “I’m making Australian bush hats.”

“Huh,” he said. “Brown bags stand up to the harsh conditions?”

She went wooden as he approached, preparing for his usual kiss on the cheek. He hadn’t shaved and his whiskers prickled her skin, little needles of sensation that pierced her heart as if it were a pincushion. Pressing her knees together, she kept her gaze averted from him as he lifted the pile of cut pieces on the cushion beside her and took its place.

“Polly?”

Intent on not noticing how close he sat, how she could feel his body heat reaching across the few inches between them, she’d missed his question. “Uh, what?”

“I asked again about the bush hats, sweetheart.”

“Oh.” A little laugh burst from her lips. It did not sound nervous. After all this time, it was ridiculous to be nervous around Teague. Their years of friendship had inured her to him by now. “They’re for my class, as you should be able to guess.”

“I’m always surprised at what you kindergarten teachers can do with scissors and paper. Not to mention yarn. I remember the finger-weave belts the kids made last year.”

She felt a dimple dig into her cheek as she smiled, gratified he’d remembered. “Those came out pretty well, I admit.”

One of his long legs crossed over the other. “You’re harshing on my midsummer buzz, though, by prepping for September so soon.”

“I hate to break the news. It’s no longer midsummer. In three weeks I’ll be back in the classroom.”

“Then we’d better make the most out of the time we have left.”

Polly’s scissors paused, midcut. No, there wasn’t going to be any “we” about the next weeks. There shouldn’t be. There wouldn’t be.

She’d made that decision after her coffee with Skye. Her best friend’s words had slapped her like a palm to the face. “We both know your biggest stumbling block to a fulfilling love life is Teague.” How had she guessed? It was Skye who also called her “Very Private Polly.” If her feelings for Teague were wearing through her usual deep reserve, then she was in trouble.

He reached over now, tugging on the end of her ponytail. “You okay?”

“I’m good. I’m always good.”

“Then let’s make you gooder and finalize our August calendar. We’ll make it one to remember.”

“Gooder?”

He grinned. “Hey, I’m just a dumb firefighter.”

She glanced away from that flash of white teeth. He wasn’t dumb. It was her, who had never managed to shut him out of her life. For four and a half years she’d wanted him, wanted him to see her as more than a friend, and even when their physical relationship never went beyond ponytail tugs and busses on the cheek, she hadn’t been able to stifle the yearning in her heart.

Maybe it was because they’d slept together on the first night they’d met, she mused. Just slept. They’d both attended a New Year’s Eve party at Skye’s place, here at the cove. Teague was her childhood friend. Polly had met her in an Asian poetry class in college. The end-of-year celebration had gone on way past midnight and everyone had been invited to crash rather than risk driving home. Accustomed to a much earlier bedtime, Polly had gratefully found her way at 3:00 a.m. to a dark bedroom and an empty pillow.

In the morning, she’d opened her eyes to discover herself sharing a bed with the most handsome man she’d ever seen. Staring into his dark eyes, she’d started in alarm, drawing back so far she’d almost rolled off the mattress. The stranger had rough-whispered, “Easy,” and Polly, who was never easy when it came to men, had found herself settling back.

That had always been the strange dichotomy of her reaction to him. He made her pulse jitter at the same time that he calmed her innate wariness. It was a seductive contradiction, and after that morning when together they’d made breakfast for all the other overnighters, they’d become close friends.

But she wanted so much more.

She needed to look for it elsewhere, though, she knew that.

“I’m going to be seeing Tess a lot this month,” he said now, his dark eyes going bleak.

Polly needed to look elsewhere because of that desolate expression in Teague’s eyes. Because of Tess, the woman he loved.

“Why don’t you just avoid her?” Polly asked, acutely aware of how difficult it could be to stay away from the object of one’s affection. She was going to do it now, though. Really.

Teague sighed. “I would—do you think I want to torture myself? But there’s a lot of events leading up to Griffin and Jane’s wedding. I’ll be expected to attend, since we’ve become so close. She’ll be there, too, of course, as sister to the groom.”

Married sister to the groom. Married sister who was also happy with her husband of almost fifteen years and four kids. According to Teague, there’d been a bump in the couple’s connubial bliss earlier in the summer, which was when he’d had a brief reason to hope, but that had smoothed out now.

“I’m never going to get her, am I?” he asked, his voice low.

Polly kept her gaze on her scissors. “No, you’re never going to get her.” From what she’d been told, it wasn’t as if Tess had even led him to believe there was a chance, not really. But he’d seen the beautiful woman on the beach, remembered her from their childhood summers at Crescent Cove and fallen like a stone in the sea. It probably had something to do with the fact that she’d been the famous face of OM, a chewing gum touted to “tame a wild mind.” More than one adolescent boy had pinned Tess’s yoga-pose poster on the inside of his closet door.

Teague bent for the scraps of paper at her feet, gathering them into a ball that he squeezed between his big hands. “So...what do you want to do before school starts?”

Find another focus besides you. It wouldn’t be easy, but she figured cold turkey was the only way to go. “I’m pretty busy,” she said. “I’m not sure I can commit to anything with you.”

She could feel Teague’s frown. “All work, no play.”

“Hey,” she protested. “I’m not dull.” Though what else would you call four and a half years of pining after someone who only saw you as a buddy?

“Pol...” He waited until she looked over at him. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m good,” she said, her automatic reply. “I’m always good.”

His dark brows met over his strong, straight nose. “You’re Fort Knox, is what you are. Are you hiding something beneath that cheerleader disguise?”

Now it was her turn to frown. “You know I don’t like it when you throw that in my face. Yes, I was on the squad. But I also ran track and was secretary of the chess club.”

“What moves can the knight make?”

Shoot. Busted.

He laughed at her. “I debunked that myth on our ski trip two years ago, remember? You tried telling me then you were more than pom-poms and herky jumps.”

“I think it’s weird you even know what a herky jump is,” she muttered.

“Sweetheart, I played football. If a cheerleader had a move, all the guys on the team knew exactly what it was. Didn’t you figure that out?”

“I avoided dating football players.”

He tossed the softball-sized ball of scraps from hand to hand. “Now, this is getting interesting. You’re always so reticent about these kinds of details. If you didn’t date football players, who did you date?”

“Nobody from my high school.” Nobody in high school. Polly Weber had held secrets then, too. Confident all-American teen on the outside. On the inside, a vulnerable girl looking for validation in disastrous places. So damn needy.

And even if Polly Weber now loved a man who didn’t love her back, that didn’t make her the same as the insecure, self-destructive child she’d once been.

“...so I could use you,” Teague was saying. “It might be beneficial to you, too.”

She set her scissors in her lap. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m saying that weddings and all the attending hoopla put people in a romantic mood. Makes ’em want to pair up. You could get some potentials out of it.”

“Potential...?”

Teague shook his head. “You haven’t been listening. I’ve been laying out all the good reasons why you should go along with what I asked.”

Caught up in her memories, she’d apparently missed a chunk of conversation, because she didn’t recall him asking her anything. “Why don’t you start over?”

“You’re not afraid to date, are you?”

“What are you talking about?” She bristled. “I’m not afraid of anything.”

“C’mon,” Teague scoffed. “What about heights? Movies with ax murderers? You know you have that thing against clowns.”

“Everybody has a thing against clowns.”

“True. But my point is, you’ve been on a man hiatus for...what? How long has it been?”

“I have men in my life.”

“They’re between five and six years old, Polly. That doesn’t count.”

“And there’s you,” she heard herself blurt out.

“But I don’t count, either.” He waggled his eyebrows. “I’m talking men who want to...” His words died away, and a strange expression overtook his face.

“Men who want to what?”

“To do things to you that I suddenly realize make me extremely uncomfortable to picture in my mind,” he finished, frowning.

“Oh.” Funny, now Teague couldn’t look at her. “I’m not averse to that kind of man.” It’s what she told herself she needed. A new guy. A focus other than Teague.

He was squeezing the ball of scrap paper. “So agreeing to be my plus-one will be perfect for both of us.”

“What?”

“Is there cotton wool in your ears? I explained it to you. There’re all these wedding things coming up. I need a date.”

“Ask somebody else.”

“Somebody else might think I’m interested. But you’re aware that I’m still hung up on...”

“Tess.”

“Yeah. I’m going to be around her all the time. I need you nearby to stop me from looking like an idiot.”

The idiot was Polly, her resolve already eroding. I need you.

“You can meet some new people, maybe find your Mr. Right.”

Attending social events with Teague at her side? How would that help her goal of walking into kindergarten class come September without the wrong man firmly dug into her heart?

“Please, Pol,” he said. Then his eyes sharpened, and he lifted his hand to her face, using his thumb to rub at a spot between her brows. “No, never mind.”

His hand dropped, but she caught his wrist without thinking. It was hard, strong, and her fingertips could barely meet her thumb. “Teague...”

“I made you frown. I wouldn’t ask you to do anything that made you unhappy.”

His skin was warm against her palm. She should release him, but it felt so good to even have this small piece of him. Her pulse thudded in her throat and she felt a dizzying lack of air. Shutting him out of her life, she suddenly realized, wasn’t going to shovel him out of her heart.

That was going to require a more proactive effort.

And being his plus-one for the next month would give her a chance to track her progress. She could establish a mental grade book like the paper one she kept for her kids, where she marked the date they could tie their shoelaces and recognize the letters of the alphabet.

She’d work toward not jumping at the sound of his voice.

Not longing for his clean, citrus scent in her lungs.

Getting through one night without an erotic dream of his whiskered cheek against her breasts.

* * *

THE PLACE WHERE SKYE felt safest at the cove was not her house—where she’d grown up—but the small property management office that was no more than one room and a door that led to an attached half bath. She’d spent a lot of time in the office during the past few months, surrounded by four walls and the sound of the surf outside. Sometimes she brought her dinner there, as she had tonight, and ate a sandwich and drank a soda while sitting at her desk.

The darkness started to deepen and she lit the bookkeeper’s lamp at her elbow, then got up to move around the room, turning on another light sitting on the small table by the leather recliner that had been her father’s favorite, then the overhead fixture in the bathroom. The drapes covering the two windows were already drawn. They featured a thick, insulated lining as protection against the sun, and she supposed that from the outside the little building would appear empty.

Uninteresting.

Nothing to see here.

Nobody inside to bother. To terrify.

Skye moved about the room again, surveying different items, touching them, as if they were good luck charms. First there was the movie poster from The Egyptian, the last picture made at Sunrise Studios by her great-great-grandparents, Max Sunstrum and Edith Essex. She’d been the actress and he’d been the director-producer of a quiver-full of popular movies that had been filmed at the cove into the late 1920s. Why Max had shut down the studio had been a mystery until last month when film student Addy had found a letter from Edith to her husband. Exhausted by the Hollywood gossip and innuendo, she had requested that they retire from the business. Rumor still persisted, however. Edith had been given a magnificent, maybe priceless piece of jewelry by one of her leading men. It was said to be hidden somewhere at the cove, though no one had caught a glimmer of it in over eighty-five years.

Mounted on the opposite wall from the movie advertisement was one of Skye’s mother’s plein air paintings—its “on location” style popular with the artists who flocked to the cove. She stood before it now, admiring how her mother had captured the sand, surf and a stretch of the cottages in impressionistic strokes the colors of summer. Way in the distance, at the far end of the beach depicted on the canvas, two children labored over a sand castle. You almost had to squint to see them, but Skye knew the boy was black-haired and sturdy, while the girl was more birdlike, with long brown tresses waving down her back. It was Skye and Gage.

Turning away from her mother’s work, she went to the bookshelf where her collection of sand dollars sat in a glass candy jar. “‘I’d be rich if I had a penny for every dollar you girls brought home,’” she murmured, repeating her father’s favorite phrase. She and her sister had never tired of finding them, believing they were the currency of the merfolk.

It had been a childhood perfect for such fancies, living at the cove. There was the bustle and excitement of summer, energized by the families moving in and out of the cottages, not to mention the day visitors who came to play at the sand and water. In the off-season, the surrounding beach houses most often stood empty, but the minds of Skye and her sister did not. They’d exercised their imaginations no matter how tranquil the cove became.

Which likely only added to the disquiet she’d experience at this summer’s end. Her ancestors had made movies, she and her sister had made up a thousand stories and this winter she could see herself conjuring up a bogeyman around every corner.

She’d have to leave to save her sanity. Then the other Alexanders, who loved the cove but had left it behind, would tell her it was time to place their property on the market. Even if they wanted to hold on to it for a few more years, that wouldn’t make it easier on Skye, who would be miles away.

If she couldn’t live here, it was no longer home.

Sighing, she returned to the chair behind the desk. In a minute or two she’d go back to her cottage, set all the locks, hang the cowbell on the doors designed to warn her of an intruder. Then she’d settle in for another night of fitful sleep. Until then...

She pulled open the right bottom drawer. Behind a stack of files was an old wooden box that had washed up onshore when she was a child. It was of some sort of resilient wood—it hadn’t warped from its bath in the salt water—and it used to hold a little girl’s treasures: a baby doll the size of her thumb, the shell of a turtle, a book of funny rhymes Rex Monroe had once given her. A packet of letters had been added to the contents.

As she reached for the container, her cell phone chimed. Skye started, cursed her jumpiness, then picked up the device. It was a text message, and the number wasn’t familiar to her. When she tapped to open it, a photograph appeared on the screen.

An open ibuprofen bottle, a ginger ale can tipped on its side and a washcloth folded into a compress.

It could only come from one person, the man she hadn’t seen since he’d walked her home last night.

She texted back: Ouch.

And Gage responded, Ur talking to me?





Feeling sorry for u.





May not deserve ur pity, but will take it. & I apologize.





Smiling a little, she stared at the cryptic sentiments. After last night, she’d wondered—worried—how their first encounter would go after the incendiary exchange at her front door.

No apology necessary, she typed. Wasn’t sure u’d even remember.

She’d hoped he’d forget, actually, because then she wouldn’t have to explain her reaction to what he’d said. He’d been teasing her, of course, and hadn’t been subtle about it, but his words had poked at her all the same. On my honor, I’d make you come twice before entering you.

She was aware she’d gone big-eyed and still, stunned to her marrow.

Gage texted back, U looked as if I’d promised rats to eat ur entrails.

Making a face, she moved her thumbs over the keyboard. Game of Thrones reference?





U betcha, baby.





He’d called her that last night, in a raspy, masculine tone. “Baby. I swear I’d do right by you, baby.” A shiver worked its way down her back and she stared at the screen, mesmerized by the memory. He’d been teasing and sexually frustrated and none of it was really aimed at her personally, but part of her, somewhere deep beneath the layers of clothes and nerves and nightmares, responded to him on a purely female, physical level. Maybe she should be glad about that, she thought.

But those tears stinging her eyes didn’t feel like gladness. They felt like loss. No matter what was stirring deep inside, there was too much ice and fear between it and any man.

She’d never be able to get close to one in that way again.

Her phone pinged again. Skye?





Here.





R u ok?





Sure! The exclamation point was added for emphasis. To cover up any awkwardness he might pick up between them. She wanted him to think she was normal. Like the sanctuary of this little building, the friendship she had with Gage was another thing that made her feel secure. Normal, even.

Her damage had to remain hidden from him.

C u 2morrow? she typed.





C u then.





Her phone went quiet and, letting out a sigh, she slumped back in her chair. If these were her last weeks at the cove, then she wanted to enjoy them as best she could with the pen pal who would be on his way again soon. She’d hide her weakness, her unruly responses and anything else that might reveal too much.

On another sigh, she let her head rest against the seat cushion and wrapped her fingers around her phone. It felt warm to the touch, and she tightened her hold on what seemed like a tangible connection between herself and Gage. Maybe it was dangerous to want to hold even such a small piece of him. After all, she knew he wasn’t going to stay. But then she didn’t have what it took to follow up on the ache she had for him, anyway.

What if he’d arrived last summer? she wondered.

But he hadn’t, and perhaps that was a boon. Perhaps this poignant pain served to underscore how futile it would be to care for a man who would never settle in one place. With one woman.

Maybe she dozed. She must have, because she was suddenly alert, heart galloping in her ears. The phone had fallen from her lax fingers to the desk. Was that what had woken her?

Her breaths were unsteady and loud in the room. Outside the office, the ocean spoke shh shh shh, and she struggled to heed its warning. Something was tickling at her primal brain and she carefully moved her head to look about.

All seemed normal, these four walls still her safest haven.

It was just her skittery nerves, she told herself. Keep it together. Breathe through the anxiety. Don’t be such a ridiculous goose.

It was still summer and she couldn’t afford to let the fear get the best of her so soon.

Then a new noise came from outside. It was a scraping sound. Maybe metal against wood? Like someone prying at the locked door.

Someone was trying to get in!

Her brain screeched the words in her head, and her flesh went cold. Rigor mortis seized her muscles as her gaze glued to the entrance. There was no inward sign of tampering, but that noise came again.

Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.

This time, she lurched out of the chair. Her half-paralyzed body moved with clumsy jerks as she Frankenstein’d toward the bathroom. She could lock herself inside there, she thought in urgent panic. There was a hook and an eyebolt—

—that wouldn’t stop anyone.

She knew it wouldn’t stop him.

Frozen again in fear, Skye stood in the middle of the office as horror dried her mouth and seized her lungs. That other night, she’d managed one scream before his hand had been there, fleshy and foul with bitter sweat, and then he’d gagged her with a kitchen towel. Later, she’d realized she could have yelled until she was hoarse and it wouldn’t have mattered. It had been off-season and there was no one near enough to hear her over the ceaseless surf.

Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.

The sounds grated against her hypervigilant nerves. Skye’s skin twitched and she stared down at her feet. Move, she commanded them. Move!

Move where? a dull voice in her head countered, resigned to what she’d been dreading all these months. He’ll just find you. He’ll just touch you again. He promised he’d finish what he started.

And then she thought of the last man who had touched her. It wasn’t him, that disgusting bastard with his stinking sweat. It had been Gage, dancing with her at Captain Crow’s, making her feel like a normal woman for the first time in a very long while.

Gage. Gage!

She found herself by her desk, unaware of how she’d made it there. Snatching up the phone, she fumbled with the buttons. The screen lit, and then she managed to tap Call. His voice sounded in her ear.

Relief and fear made her head spin. “I’m at the office,” she choked out. “I need you.”

“What?” he said. “Skye?”

She swallowed, and then revealed everything she’d vowed to keep from him. “I don’t feel safe. Help me.”