Leanna looked toward her booth, where a group of women were perusing her products. Carey hadn’t moved from his laid-back perch. What’s another few bucks?
Thinking of Pepper and the way he’d taken off into the ocean, she snagged his leash and sat on the ground with him while the kids petted him. This is what life is about. Living in the moment was something Leanna was very good at, and this moment filled her with joy—but joy didn’t pay the bills. Leanna had a trust fund, passed down from her great-grandfather, but other than dipping into it to pay for college, she’d made a decision a few years earlier not to touch that money if she could help it. She wanted to find something that made her feel whole and fulfilled, and if she relied on her trust fund, she’d never experience enough on her own to fill that need. She lived simply, and even though she’d begun worrying about if she’d ever find a fulfilling career, she liked knowing that if or when she did, she’d have found it on her own, and she hadn’t simply sat back and used her great-grandfather’s hard-earned money.
After the children had played for a few more minutes, Leanna returned to take down her booth for the afternoon. Carey finished taking down his display and loading up his 1979 Dodge van. He smacked the door of his rust-orange-colored van, as he did every day. Good luck, you know?
“If you had a van like mine, you wouldn’t need luck.” Leanna glanced at her hand-painted 1968 Volkswagen Bus, which her father had given her as a college graduation gift. She wiped sweat from her forehead with her forearm, then placed the last insulated container of jam into the back of the van.
Carey leaned against his van. He was easy on the eyes, six feet of lean muscle, with angular features, full lips, and green eyes.
“Maybe you’re right. Your happy mobile doesn’t break down like my van does. Wanna hit the beach?” he asked.
She looked at Pepper sprawled out in the back of the van and debated going with Carey. They had fun hanging out together. Carey was nice and he was definitely hot, but Leanna wasn’t attracted to him as anything more than a friend. That had surprised her at first, given their close proximity the last two months and the good times they’d shared, but when she looked at him, she saw a nice guy. A friend. And it stopped there. Now her mind drifted to Kurt—in his Calvin Klein briefs—and a shiver ran up her spine, sending a tingling to the parts of her that hadn’t felt anything for months. She had more important things on her mind than finding a man, but she was still female.
“Can’t today. I’ve got a few things to do, but thanks anyway.”
She told herself she owed Kurt a thank-you basket. That was her story, and she was sticking to it.
THE SUN BEAT down on Kurt’s bare back as his fingers danced over the keyboard. He was in the zone. The killer was a breath away from his unsuspecting victim. Kurt’s heart slammed against his chest; sweat dripped from his torso and beaded his forehead. His hand perspired with every determined keystroke. This was what he lived for. The moment he became so engrossed in his writing that he was right there with both the victim and the villain, holding his breath in the space in between.
He heard tires in the driveway and blinked the noise away, hoping whoever it was had lost their way and was just turning around. He went back to the villain, who closed his eyes as he caught the victim’s scent, spurring on his deviant desires.
Knocking drew his focus toward the cottage.
“Darn it,” he muttered and turned back to his writing.
The knocking continued. Kurt clenched his teeth and continued hammering out the scene that played in his mind like a movie.
“Hello?”
Kurt’s fingers froze. Leanna. The thought of her in his arms, her wet body pressed against his chest, sent a wave of heat through him. He stared at his laptop, calculating his writing time. He’d written five thousand words and hoped for another three thousand before the day’s end. Once Leanna started talking, he’d have no hope of writing a word. She talked more than his fictional victims when pleading for their lives.
And for some unknown reason, she intrigued him. He wanted to hear what she had to say.
He heard scratching on the deck stairs, and then Pepper was clawing his bare legs and barking at his feet.
Oh, come on.
He shoved away from the table and, ignoring Pepper, descended the stairs and went toward the front of the house. He stopped cold at the sight of a rainbow-colored Volkswagen Bus. A colorful starburst surrounded a spare tire hooked to the front of the old van. He took a step around the gaudy, hand-painted vehicle. Yellow flowers covered half of the side, running from front to back, and a gigantic blue dragonfly covered the driver’s door. An ocean scene of fish, red mushrooms, and bikini-clad women covered the center of the van. A half-moon with a face, of course, covered the rear panel, and the expanded top of the van was painted blue with white clouds and stars.
She was not only messy, but a hippie to boot?
He looked down at Pepper, panting beside him.
“Hey there.” Leanna came around the side of the house with a basket under one lean, tanned arm and flashed a smile that nearly knocked him off his feet. “I brought you something.”
“Hi,” was all he could manage. Her body glistened with sweat, making her light blue tank top stick to her stomach and chest. She wore another pair of cutoffs, and when she bent over to pet Pepper, she flashed a curve of bronze skin where her butt met her thighs. Kurt swallowed hard.
She popped back up and handed him the basket. Her eyes took a slow roll down his body.
Kurt arched a brow, amused by the once-over, but apparently, she didn’t realize she’d done it, or hadn’t cared that he’d noticed, because she never missed a beat.
“I wanted to say thank you. I was kinda rude last night, pushing you out of the cottage and all, but I’m not a total jerk. I hope I’m not interrupting anything.” She didn’t give him time to answer, as she followed the slate path toward the back of the house. “You were on the deck?”
He couldn’t do much more than watch and follow. Leanna befuddled him. No one befuddled Kurt Remington. He was unflappable. Or at least he’d always thought he was.
“Oh, gosh, you were working.” She leaned over his computer screen.
Kurt closed the laptop. “Writing.”
Her eyes grew serious. “You don’t like people to read as you write? No worries. I get that, I guess. In case you want to change something? You don’t want that person to know you changed what you’d written?”
What? No. Or at least I don’t think that’s why I do it. Holy cow. Now she had him questioning his writing practices in ways he never had.
“I have beta readers and editors who read my work before publication.”
She flopped down on a chair with another stomach-rattling smile. “What’s a beta reader?”
Distracted by Leanna and by her dog, who had made himself at home on Kurt’s chair, he answered cryptically. “A beta reader. Test reader before publication.” He glared at Pepper and pointed to the deck. “Off.”
Pepper jumped down.