“Sit for a while. I want to play with Joey anyway.” When Amy met Jenna’s heated stare, she rolled her eyes and kissed Joey’s head.
“How’s the boat coming along?” Leanna Bray was a quirky woman, too. Her cottage had always been a mess before she met her fiancé, Kurt Remington. Every time Pete had gone by to fix a broken cabinet or a faucet, she’d had laundry piles everywhere, and sticky goo from her jam making seemed to cover every surface, including herself. Almost all of her clothing had conspicuous stains in various shades of red, purple, and orange. Kurt was as neat and organized as Jenna. He’d taken over the laundry and didn’t seem to mind picking up after Leanna. In any case, her place was much more organized these days.
“She’s coming along.” Pete had been refinishing a custom-built 1966 thirty-four-foot gaff-rigged wooden schooner for the past two summers. Working with his hands was not only his passion, but it was also cathartic. He’d spent the last two years pouring the guilt over his father’s drinking into refitting the boat.
“What will you do with it when you’re done?” Amy Maples looked like the girl next door, with her sandy blond hair and big green eyes, and acted like a mother hen, always worrying about her friends.
Pete shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll sail someplace far, far away.” He’d never leave his father, or the Cape, but there were days…
That brought Jenna’s eyes to him. She had the most gorgeous eyes. They weren’t sea blue or sky blue or even midnight blue. They were more of a cerulean frost, and at the moment, pointedly icy. What on earth did I do? He racked his brain, going over the last two weeks, but he hadn’t seen Jenna for more than a minute or two. He couldn’t imagine what he’d done to warrant her attitude.
Jenna raised her eyebrows in Amy’s direction. “Time for me to go away.” She rose to her feet, bringing her red-string-bikini-clad body into full view. The tiny triangles barely covered her and the bottom rode high on her hips, exposing every luscious curve.
Pete shot a look around the patio—every male eye was locked on Jenna. Jenna wasn’t even five feet tall, but she had a better body than any long-legged model. How the heck can a woman have a body like that and not be one hundred percent confident at all times? He stifled the urge to stand between her and the ogling men.
“Where are you going?” Bella’s eyes bounced between Pete and Jenna.
“I’m going to do what I came here to do. There’s a construction guy with my name on him over there.” Jenna lifted her chin toward the sky, and her pigeon-toed feet carried her fine body off the patio, across the grass, and directly toward one of the young construction workers.
“What’s she doing?” Pete narrowed his eyes as Jenna approached a ripped blond guy. He expected Jenna to put her hands behind her back and sway from side to side like she did when she spoke to him—reminiscent of an excited girl rather than a sensual woman—adorable and totally confusing.
“Oh. My. Gosh.” Bella rose to her feet, her eyes wide.
“Nothing, Pete. She’s…Uh-oh.” Amy put Joey in Pete’s lap. “Take her. I um…Darn it.” Amy reached for Bella’s hand as they gawked, mesmerized by Jenna’s bold move.
Her shoulders were drawn back, her beautiful breasts on display—proudly on display! What the devil? She put one hand on her hip. Pete didn’t need to see her face to feel the slow drag of her eyes down that jerk’s body in a way similar to how she usually looked at him when she thought he wasn’t looking. But then she’d go all nervous when he’d approach.
What the…?
“Holy mackerel. She’s going for it.” Bella sat back down, as Jenna put her finger in the waistband of the guy’s jeans and shrugged. “She’s something this summer, isn’t she?”
Jealousy clutched Pete’s gut.
“Yes, and this summer’s rock fixation? What’s up with pitch-black rocks? She’s never collected them before.” Amy’s voice trailed off as she watched Jenna in action.
Pete made a mental note of the rocks Jenna was collecting this summer. He’d spent five years taking mental notes about Jenna. Every summer she collected different types of rocks—egg-shaped, heart-shaped, all white, gray, and oval. There was never any rhyme or reason that Pete could see for her rock selection, but she knew what she liked, and the ones she liked ended up all over her cottage and deck.
Jenna’s eyes were fixated on the guy. That was the Jenna Pete had hoped would talk to him, and now…Now he was getting pretty pissed off.
“Those aren’t local guys; they’re contractors,” he warned. “They probably have women in every town around here. Want me to intervene?” Jenna wasn’t his to protect. They’d never even gone out on a single date, but somewhere in his mind, despite his confusion, she was his. Summers to Pete meant six to eight weeks of seeing Jenna, and over the last two years, while his father buried his troubles in alcohol, seeing Jenna meant even more to him. But until this very second, he never realized how much he wanted her, or how much she meant to him. Joey turned her tongue on Pete’s chin. Frustrated, Pete lifted his face out of reach.
Leanna shook her head. “Look at her go.”
Look at her go? You think this is okay?
“Pete, have you heard something bad about them? Should we worry?” Amy’s voice was laden with concern. “Bella, maybe we should…”
Pete watched Jenna take her phone from her pocket and type something. A second later the blond guy took his phone from his back pocket and nodded.
“She gave him her number. I can’t believe it,” Leanna said.
“She wasn’t lying to us,” Bella said. “Our girl’s getting her groove on.” She settled back in her seat and petted Joey. “Oh, Pete…tsk, tsk, tsk.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” He clenched his teeth so tight he thought they might crack.
“Nothing.” Leanna smacked Bella’s arm.
Bella set her eyes on him. “A woman like Jenna only comes around once in a lifetime.”
He was just beginning to realize how true those words were.
“Bella, don’t,” Amy warned.
Bella shrugged. “Just sayin’.”
He didn’t know what to make of the woman who was a wallflower around him and a sex kitten around a random guy in the street. Jenna sashayed back toward the table with a grin on her face. That was Pete’s cue to get out of there before he was stuck listening to Jenna going on and on about that doophus. He rose to his feet with Joey in his arms.
“Wait. Don’t leave,” Amy pleaded. “You didn’t get Joey her water.”
“I’ve got to get going.” With Joey in his arms, he headed off the patio. Jenna brushed past him without so much as a word, and it pissed him off even more. He couldn’t escape fast enough.
“Guess who’s going to the Beachcomber tonight? Oh my gosh. He’s even hotter up close.” Jenna’s voice echoed in his mind as he crossed the street to get Joey a bowl of water from Mac’s.
Like I needed to hear that crap.
Chapter Two