Christie Ridgway - The Love Shack

“Well, Gage Lowell seemed very attentive yesterday. I saw him with you in your yard.”

“You were the one he was paying attention to. He told me he thinks you’re cute.” And then she’d warned him off with a rabid intensity that made her squirm a little, remembering it.

“I hate that word,” Polly said, suddenly looking as if she’d swallowed something sour. “Cute. I think it’s preventing me from having a fulfilling love life.”

“I thought it was the word perky that was to blame. At least that’s what you told me last week.”

“I’ve rethought that. I’m a kindergarten teacher. Perky is part of the job description, so I can’t wish it away.”

The barista was back. He placed Skye’s drink in front of her but was called over to attend another customer before he could strike up more conversation. She blew out a relieved breath that disturbed the froth of foam layered over her drink like coastal fog. “We both know your biggest stumbling block to a fulfilling love life is Teague.” Though she’d yet to admit to it, her best friend had it bad for a man who considered Polly his best friend, too.

The other woman’s scowl made it clear she wouldn’t be confessing today, either, even as a telltale flush crawled up her face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, then pinned Skye with a stare. “What’s yours?”

She blinked. “My biggest stumbling block? Uh...how about that I’m not seeking a fulfilling love life?”

“Well, you’re not seeking an unfulfilling one, either,” Polly grumbled. “Why is that? You haven’t been out with anyone since giving Dalton the boot, and that was months ago.”

“He’s been calling again,” Skye confessed, sidestepping the subject. “What makes a man unable to take no for an answer?”

“Maybe you just haven’t found the right man to ask the question. I get that you don’t want Dalton in your life. But what if some other guy—say some other guy named Gage Lowell who insisted on having that dance the other night—came on to you and—”

“Gage would never come on to me.” That wasn’t what had happened this morning at the tide pools, was it? They’d been side by side, gazing into the water. and then they’d been gazing into each other’s eyes.

She’d experienced another spurt of that hot, anxious panic that made her skin burn and her heart beat too hard in her chest. Flustered, she’d had the strange idea that he was about to kiss her and something low, somewhere below her belly button, had clenched—more panic, she supposed. And even as she struggled to stay calm and dignified, her nerves had sent her staggering back.

Foolish Skye.

This whole conversation was foolish. “Do we only have men to talk about?” she asked Polly. “I feel as if I’m at a seventh-grade slumber party.”

“Did I put your bra in the freezer?” her friend demanded. “Have we divvied up which member of the latest boy band will take which of us to the prom?”

“Ah.” Skye smiled, reminiscing. “I always wanted the devilish-looking one. All the rest of the girls went for the blond or the lead that looked like he should be class president.”

“What band are we talking about?” Polly asked, lifting her cup for a sip.

Skye did the same. “It doesn’t matter. They’re all made up of one of each type. And my favorite was always the guy who looked like trouble.”

Polly slid her a sly glance. “He might not be in a band, but Gage looks like trouble to me.”

“Why do you keep bringing him up? He is the most commitment-averse man I know. He doesn’t stay in one place long enough to have two-night stands.”

“You don’t have to have a relationship with him. My God. It’s summer. He’s here for a few weeks. Have a fling.”

A fling with Gage Lowell? Skye felt herself flush, thinking of his tall body, his wide chest, the intense turquoise-blue of his eyes. He’d held her hand, his fingers lean and sure, and now she thought of them working at buttons, undoing clasps, baring skin. That spot below her navel clenched again, just as it had by the tide pools.

“Think about it,” Polly continued. “It’s been so long since you’ve had sex.”

Gage. Sex. Skye pushed her latte away, not wanting to add caffeine to her already jittering insides and that low-belly clenching. How she wished Polly had not brought it up, not put those images in her head, not made her think about all she couldn’t have.

With anyone.

* * *

“I’M REALLY HERE,” Gage said as he sat on Captain Crow’s deck beside his twin, watching the daily 5:00 p.m. ritual. A man in board shorts stood at the base of a ten-foot pole poked in the sand. He blew a long blast on a football-sized conch shell. Then it was the raising of the flag—a blue rectangle of cloth printed with the internationally recognized shape of a martini glass.

Lifting his beer, Gage toasted the fluttering scrap of fabric. “To cocktail hour.” Then he clacked his bottle against Griffin’s. “Dogs bark but the caravan moves on.”

Griffin ignored that bit of Arabic wisdom and narrowed his gaze at his brother. “You don’t have a camera.”

“As usual, your powers of observation are staggering. No wonder you won that big hairy prize for your reporting.”

“Why don’t you have a camera?” his brother persisted, paying no attention to the teasing.

Gage shrugged. He couldn’t explain to himself his disinterest in having near what for years had been an extension of his own body.

“Something’s wrong,” Griffin said flatly. “Damn it, I knew something was wrong. I’ve known it for weeks.”

Gage took a slow swallow of beer. “Where’s your evidence? I’m here, I’m whole—”

“You’re without a camera—”

“I don’t have one with me all the time.”

“Yes, you do, unless you’re having sex. And that’s only because you told me it inhibits naked women. They worry they might become the subject of your camera’s eye.”

“And I don’t want to waste my time with inhibited women, that’s true. Life’s too short.” He took another swig of his beer, enjoying the warm air, the cool breeze off the ocean, the happy, drinking people around them.

Griffin stayed silent, but Gage could feel his considering stare. “And why are you just sitting there—no drumming fingers, no fidgety knees?” his twin finally asked. “I’ve never seen you sit this still your whole life.”

“Maybe I’ve learned some patience.” Cramped quarters and no way out of them could affect a man. When his brother made a scoffing sound, he pointed his bottle at him. “You’ve changed, too. Good God, you’re engaged.”

Griffin narrowed his eyes. “You’re avoiding my questions.”

“Ask one that makes some sense.”

“Why Crescent Cove?”

Gage blinked. He hadn’t seen that coming. “You’re getting married here at the end of the month.”

“You didn’t know that when you booked No. 9 as Fenton Hardy.”

“Does it really matter?” The notion had been seeded by Griffin, he supposed, when his brother had told him he’d decided to take three months at the cove to write his war memoir. But Gage had to admit that there’d been something else—someone else cementing the deal.

Even before his two weeks in hell, he’d had this itch to visit Skye-with-the-unnecessary-e. He smiled, thinking about her.

Across the table from him, Griffin groaned. “All right, who is she?”

“Who is who?”

“You’re thinking about some girl. You’re thinking about boning some girl.”

Gage frowned. “Don’t say it like that.”

“That’s how you always say it.”

“You want me to talk that way about you making love with your Jane?”