Christie Ridgway - The Love Shack

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.