Bungalow Nights (Beach House No. 9) (13 page)

And wallflowers-by-nature like Addy March would only be heartbroken by hoping for something real and lasting with ideal men like Baxter Smith.

With that thought pinned tightly to her mental bulletin board, she returned to stuffing her backpack with supplies for her planned hike, including a couple of water bottles and a sandwich bag half-filled with raw almonds. “If you’re looking for Vance, last I saw him he was in the kitchen at the beach house.”

“I’m not after Vance.”

Then what
was
he after?
She wanted to scream the question, but she wasn’t a nineteen-year-old who’d never been kissed anymore. Self-respect demanded she maintain a hold on her dignity. So she faced him again and lifted inquiring brows, feigning a cool indifference. “Oh? Then—”

“You know why I’m here, Addy.” He leaned against the doorjamb, his hands in his pockets, a faint smile on his impossibly handsome face. “You know exactly what I want.”

Oh, yeah, she knew. He’d tried going there yesterday. For whatever reason, he didn’t want to let that...that interlude between them go unacknowledged. Why? Did it not count as a bedpost notch if she pretended it never happened? She frowned at him, wishing his ego wasn’t demanding she speak her secrets aloud.

You were a wonderful first lover.

My girlhood dreams all came true that night
.

I’ve never forgotten a moment of it.

Those were the truths she held close to her heart. But she was keeping them there, unvoiced. They were hers, and no one else’s.

Striding for the door, she brushed past him. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have time for conversation,” she said.

He caught the back of her shirt, halting her forward movement. “I want to help you out, Addy. Remember? I promised that at the bar.”

At the bar, when she’d turned to him, looking for a way out of Steve’s insistent offer. Though she’d known that guy for years, his avid interest had struck her as a little creepy, and she hadn’t wanted to accept—nor had she wanted to say that to his face. Some stupid instinct had made her glance toward Baxter, and he’d immediately stepped up with a promise of his own.

“Thanks for that,” she said now, without looking at him. “You helped me out of a tight spot, but I didn’t take you at your word.”

“Of course you didn’t.”

A grim note in his voice had her glancing back at him. He let go of her shirt, and used that hand to smooth his already-smooth golden hair. “But I meant it,” he said. “I’m volunteering my services.”

She shook her head. “I appreciate it, but I’m actually just on my way out. I’m going to hike around the cove this morning, scouting out locations used in the Sunrise movies.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“You’re dressed for a board meeting, not a tramp down the beach and a scramble in the hills.”

He was already unbuttoning his cuffs. Then he loosened his tie and began stripping out of his dress shirt. As she watched his hands, the past reared up, image overlaying image. In the darkness, Baxter toeing out of his shoes. Baxter yanking his shirt over his head. Baxter’s hands at the buckle of his belt.

His delicious scent had been in the air, she remembered. It had already transferred to her skin during their heated kisses, a sophisticated sandalwood cologne that she’d breathed in while trying to steady her triple-timing heart. Her nervous trembling had seemed to shake the entire bed and her skin prickled with chill...until he’d lain on top of her, his bare chest against her now-naked breasts, his erection nudging the notch between her thighs. “Addy,” he’d groaned, the word hot against her ear.

“Addy,” Baxter said now, standing before her in his slacks and a V-necked white T. “Ready?”

She shook her head, trying to return that old memory to its usual high shelf. “You...” Her voice was so dry she had to try again. “You can’t go like that.”

“Of course I can,” he answered, his voice full of the confidence only the Baxter Smiths of the world could claim.

The kind of confidence that drew the Addy Marches of the world—and that clearly would be a waste of breath to argue against. She sighed. “C’mon, then,” she said, digging through her backpack as she led the way outside. Finding the tube of lotion, she tossed it over her shoulder to him, certain he’d make the catch.

“What’s this?”

“Sunscreen. You better use it. You look a little pasty.”

Addy didn’t pause to hear his response or stop to let him apply the stuff. However, a few moments later he tugged the backpack from her to stow the lotion. “Pasty, huh,” he said, slinging the strap over his own shoulder. “And I looked prissy just the other day.”

She didn’t glance at him as she took a path along the lower edge of the bluff. He wasn’t pasty or prissy, of course, but wallflowers developed a defensive edge. They didn’t always let it show—mostly never—but when their backs were too tight to the wall... Now Addy felt as if her shoulder blades were jammed against thick plaster.

Trying to ignore the sensation as well as the man who brought it on, she focused on her original plan. Her first stopping place was a short ten-minute walk. Once she found the vantage point she sought, she paused to enjoy the view. They were halfway up a footpath on the hillside that rose behind the beach. The surrounding grasses were knee-length and well on their way to going from spring-green to September-blond.

“I’ll take the backpack now,” she told Baxter. As she unzipped the largest compartment, she noticed the sand sprinkling the tops of his loafers. Their slick soles had slid on the path’s silty dirt. Pulling free her camera, she glanced up at him. “Really, Baxter, go back. You don’t have the right equipment.”

“Oh, I think you know I do,” he said.

The ocean breeze cooled her suddenly hot cheeks. Instead of responding to that, she dropped the backpack and brought the viewfinder to her eye. With flicks of her finger, she took a shot of the stretch of ocean to the west, another of the cliff at the south of the cove and then a northward view that included that tangle of tropical vegetation planted a century before.

“What are you doing?” Baxter asked.

“Seeing if I can match some establishing shots to those in the Sunrise Pictures iconic movies. The first filmed here at the cove told the story of two strangers washed up on a deserted island. They landed on the beach with the detritus of a shipwreck and had to find a way to survive...as well as fight a fierce attraction, of course.” She smiled as she focused the camera on a stretch of sand that she thought was the exact location where dashing Roger and innocent beauty Odelle had built their encampment.

When she drew the camera away, she saw that Baxter was staring at her again. Embarrassed by his scrutiny, she hitched the pack over her shoulder and set off once more, trying to pretend he wasn’t dogging her footsteps. It didn’t help, however. At each stop Baxter inquired about her purpose. So she ended up telling him the storylines of
The Courageous Castaways, Penelope and the Pirate
and
Sweet Safari
.

“For that one, they managed to truck in an actual elephant. When it wasn’t being used in a scene, they tethered it to a stake driven into the sand on the beach.”

“That must have been quite a sight,” Baxter said, rubbing the sweating side of one of the water bottles she’d brought over his forehead.

She tried not to stare as he unscrewed the top and chugged the liquid. But from the corner of her eye she watched his throat move with each swallow. “It
was
quite a sight, especially for some hapless men out for a pleasure sail from Newport Harbor one afternoon. Apparently they’d been drinking and lost track of time...and they thought possibly longitude and latitude as well when they spied the pachyderm nestled among the banana plants and palm trees.”

“Did they put in for land to discover the truth for themselves?”

She nodded. “So the story goes. They were quite relieved to find themselves still in California and then thrilled to meet the famous film star Edith Essex.”

“Skye’s ancestor.”

“A great talent,” Addy said, as she turned back the way they’d come. She had enough photos for today.

On the return trip, she found herself telling Baxter more about one of the silent film era’s most notable actresses. “Edith left a hardscrabble life with her family in Arizona and headed for Hollywood when she was still in her teens. Though she had ambition, she didn’t consider herself particularly attractive, but on-screen...on-screen she glowed. She eventually married Max Sunstrum, the head of Sunrise.”

“You’ve seen all her movies?” Baxter asked, keeping pace behind her.

Addy nodded. “I like imagining how much fun she had in her acting career. I’ll bet through childhood she’d escaped the reality of a large family and little food by fantasizing she was someone else, someplace else. Then finally here she was, in this beautiful location, playing characters who found adventure, battled villains and won the love of worthy men.”

Baxter held a door open for her and she blinked, realizing they’d made it back to the archives room and that she’d been chattering about Sunrise Pictures and Edith Essex the entire time. “Well,” she said, feeling Awkward Addy all over again as she crossed the floor and dropped her backpack on the table, “I guess you learned more about Crescent Cove’s silent movies than you ever wanted to.”

He shut the door, enclosing them in the small space. “I enjoyed all of it,” he said. “Were you like Edith as a kid? Did you get lost in your imagination?”

She hesitated. Would he think it was weird of her?

“Don’t bother answering, I can read it on your face.” Smiling, he came closer to toy with the ends of her short hair. “Who would have thought Addison March had such a wild fantasy life under these pretty curls.”

Addy told herself she wasn’t blushing again. “I suppose that means you didn’t entertain yourself by making up stories as a kid. I knew we didn’t have anything in common.” He was Golden Boy Baxter. His real life was ideal, ordered and full of people who cared about him. She was the girl who’d spent her childhood with imaginary friends and other solo comforts.

“That can be a good thing,” Baxter said. “For example, without a woman like you I wouldn’t be improving on my pasty complexion today. I can’t remember the last time I took this much time away from my desk on a workday.”

“Really?” The Smith family owned an expansive and successful avocado ranch and, according to her mother, had their hand in other businesses, as well. “Don’t you regularly go out and, I don’t know, walk among the trees?”

He shook his head. “It’s not really necessary for me to do my job. Avocados are no different to me and my sixteen-hour workdays than if they were sponges or soap or birthday candles.”

Addy could smell that enticing sandalwood scent of his again, so she was taking shallow breaths that made her head a little woozy. “Sixteen-hour days,” she murmured. “You must enjoy your work.”

“Sure,” he agreed, and he lifted his hand to again play with the ends of her hair. “But I don’t have the passion for it that you express about the movies.”

Addy walked right into it. “What do you feel passionate about?”

Baxter’s white smile grew slowly.

She hastened to step back, but he wasn’t having that. Instead, he cupped her face between his hands. “I remember a passionate night,” he said quietly. “Have you really forgotten it?”

“I...” Her heart was in her throat, thrumming fast. She was supposed to be maintaining her dignity, she knew that, but suddenly every instinct she had was urging her to break free. Leaping back, she slammed her hip into the table. Its legs screeched against the floor, but she ignored the sound to grab up her backpack and flee for the door.

Yet when she reached it, she paused. To hell with pretending. She had to make sure that Baxter understood where things were between them. “Look,” she said without turning around. “The past is past. I know there’s no future between us.”

“Oh, good,” Baxter said.

She barreled through the door, but the rest of his remark followed her out into the narrow hall.

“Because that leaves the present wide-open.”

* * *

L
AYLA LINED UP THE CUPCAKE
ingredients on the small counter in the food truck, hoping to find inspiration for a new recipe. Getting lost in the creative process would be a welcome diversion and she’d left off her usual food prep gloves in order to touch the silky smoothness of the flour and rub the fine granules of sugar between her fingertips. The results of this baking session wouldn’t be sold to the public, so she could “play” with the food, and now she took hold of a sunny lemon. She rolled its cool skin between her palms, trying to focus. Lemon cakes with coconut icing? Strawberry lemonade topped with a clear glaze?

She moved to her laptop, thinking to locate her Ideas file, but when it came to life, her email program popped on-screen. It displayed the message she’d started typing in the middle of the night.

The door to the food truck squeaked open and Uncle Phil stepped inside. Layla clapped her laptop closed and swung back to contemplation of her ingredient row.

“Uh-oh,” Uncle Phil said.

Uh-oh
. That’s what Layla had said on the deck of Beach House No. 9 as she moved out of Vance’s arms the previous evening. And the why of those two syllables was what she’d been trying to distract herself from thinking about now. Vance had kissed her. They’d kissed.

Oh, how they had kissed.

At the memory of how quickly things had escalated, her skin flushed and felt stretched too tight. It had been no tentative experiment, no first-time fumbling to find the right fit. His lips had touched hers and she’d thrown herself into the wonder and the heat without worrying for an instant about the subsequent burn.

That, she’d done for about half the night afterward, reliving those moments.

“Let go,” Uncle Phil murmured.

Startled, she blinked, noticing he was trying to wrestle the lemon from her grasp.

“You’re going to strangle the innocent thing,” her uncle said. When she still didn’t release it, he tugged again and her fingers finally loosened. He glanced down at the rescued fruit, then cocked a brow at her, his expression half-humorous. “You know what Buddha would say.”