“Cool.” He looked out over the water. “You wanna grab a beer?”
No, I want to go see Kurt. She was torturing herself. Kurt hadn’t asked her out, and he’d basically kicked her out the other night. Then she’d kicked him out. Ugh. She thought about the moment on the deck when she’d thought he might kiss her, and now she wondered if she’d imagined it. Though she knew she hadn’t imagined his obvious physical arousal. It was no use. She sucked at everything having to do with men. She was too outspoken, too uninhibited, too unsettled, which was why she never tried to pick men up, and forget knowing how to show she was interested. She turned into a fumbling, klutzy nimrod when she liked a guy.
A few drinks might be just what she needed to get Kurt out of her head.
“Sure.”
After taking Pepper back to the cottage and putting away her flea market supplies, she joined Carey on the deck of the Beachcomber, overlooking the water. The Beachcomber was built at the crest of a bluff with a large covered deck that overlooked the ocean. Loud music, alcohol, and laughs were staples at the Beachcomber. Carey loved to dance as much as Leanna did. They danced, shared a burger and fries, and danced some more. They met a group of women and men who were vacationing from Canada and talked with them for an hour. By the time they headed back to their vans, Leanna was too tipsy to drive.
“Are you pretty sober?” she asked.
“I only had two beers. I’m good. But you were really putting them down. You okay?”
“Do you mind driving me home?” She leaned against his van, wishing she hadn’t had the last two drinks. She’d been trying to distract herself from thoughts of Kurt, but nothing seemed to help. She kept picturing him at the flea market, feeling the intimate touch of his finger holding hers when he handed her the jar of jam and how quickly he’d let go when she told Carey she’d go to the beach with him.
“No prob.” He opened the door and she climbed in.
They rode in silence down the main drag, and Pepper greeted them with a loud bark as they pulled into her driveway.
“That was fun. Thanks, Carey.”
He narrowed his eyes and leaned across the seat. Before she could register what he was doing, his lips were on hers in a hard kiss. When he pulled back, she was still blinking away the surprise, but his hand resting on her thigh definitely registered.
He leaned in close again, and Leanna shook herself out of her stupor and splayed her palm on his chest with a little shove. “Sorry, Carey, but I’m not really…”
“Oh come on. Really? We have a great time together.”
They did have a great time together, but she didn’t feel that type of attraction to Carey, and if she’d been at all confused before, that absolute-zero-spark-inducing kiss had proved it.
“We do have fun. I love hanging out with you, but I’m not really looking for…” She looked down at his hand on her thigh. “More.” Liar.
He sat back and put his hands up. “Hey, it’s cool. No worries. I just thought we were both on the same page with you asking me to drive you home and all.”
“I’m sorry. I really did have too much to drink.” Leanna hated making anyone unhappy, and she genuinely liked Carey as a friend, but her mind had already drifted to Kurt, and then she felt even worse. She was leaving a wake of unhappiness everywhere she went, and it was so unlike her that she sobered up quickly and stepped out of the van.
“I’m sorry, Carey. You’re great, really. I’m just…Ugh. I’m sorry.”
“Hey, no sweat. I had fun tonight.”
She watched him drive away and wondered if she should have said something else, but she’d never been good at this type of thing. She headed inside. The flea market wasn’t open tomorrow, maybe she’d sleep in and work on new recipes. No, she should get up early and have one of the girls take her to get her van before they went out for the day. With that settled, she took Pepper for a walk, then took a quick shower and climbed beneath the sheets, wishing it had been Kurt’s lips pressed against hers instead of Carey’s.
Chapter Seven
IF THERE WAS one thing Kurt was sure of, it was that he was never going to concentrate with Leanna’s bike in his garage. Not knowing that he didn’t have a chance with her. Dressed for his morning run, he pulled her bike out and looked it over. Pink. Of course. With a small basket on the front and a larger basket on the back like Miss Gulch in The Wizard of Oz.
Perfect. Just perfect.
He’d found her bike lying on the ground at the end of the beach access road, and he’d ridden back to his house in the dark the night they’d met. He glanced at his sports car, realizing he didn’t want to chance marring the leather by manhandling the bike into it, even with the top down. There was no way it would fit in the trunk without some elaborate tying down. With a loud, frustrated sigh, he put the bag of things he’d picked up for Leanna into the basket and felt a pang of longing chased by something akin to anger only not quite as harsh, directly to his heart. He stared at the bag. He couldn’t even get Leanna out of his head enough to forgo buying the things she needed. For the first time in his life—and he’d experienced a lot of firsts since meeting Leanna—he felt like the very definition of the word fool. He was sure if he Googled the word, his picture would appear, and he was powerless to do anything short of climbing on the bike and riding it the mile and a half to Leanna’s cottage.
Thankfully, there wasn’t much traffic on the back roads at seven in the morning. He could only imagine what he looked like. He was a foot too tall to be riding the bike in the first place. Add the pink color and the baskets, and he looked like he’d either stolen the stupid thing or he was more interested in men than women.
He stepped off the bike when he came to the entrance of Seaside, and instead of heading directly to Leanna’s cottage, he walked the bike around the other side of the development, where he found a gray building with LAUNDRY painted over the door and noticed that Leanna’s van wasn’t parked there. He followed the narrow gravel road around the bend, passing a large house on the left, which seemed out of place among the cozy cottages, and three more cottages on his right, before coming to a pool. He paused for a moment, trying to reconcile the postage-stamp-sized houses with the large swimming pool. There weren’t many in-ground pools on the Cape besides the ones at the motels, and it intrigued him. A pool would offer something even the ocean could not. He could jump in to cool off and not have to worry about being sticky with sea salt when he went back to writing. His eyes fell to the bike, and he pushed away the daydream and continued up the road to Leanna’s cottage.
Her driveway was empty.
I park it by the laundry room.
His chest tightened with the realization that she’d probably spent the night at Carey’s.
None of my business.
Shoot.