Seaside Hearts (Love in Bloom: Seaside Summers, Book 2) Contemporary Romance (24 page)

Jamie stepped inside. “Hi. I wanted to thank your fiancée for Thong Thursday.”

Caden shook his head. “She did it, huh?”

“Hell, yes, she did it, and…” Jamie looked out the window at the
big house
where Jessica was renting. The house was owned by Theresa Ottoline, the property manager for Seaside. The apartment Jessica rented had a separate entrance on the second floor.

“Did you see the new tenant? Jessica Ayers?” He whistled. “Hotter than hell.”

“I saw her sitting on her deck the other night when I pulled in, but I haven’t met her. Bella’s over at Amy’s with the girls.”

Evan, Caden’s mini-me teenage son, walked out of his bedroom. Evan was almost seventeen, and this year he’d cropped his chestnut hair short, like his father’s. Over the year he’d grown to six two. His square jaw and cleft chin, also like Caden’s, had lost all but the faintest trace of the boy he’d been two years earlier.

“Dude. You went running without me?” Evan, Caden, and their other buddy, Kurt Remington, whose fiancée, Leanna Bray, owned the cottage behind Bella and Caden, sometimes ran with Jamie in the mornings.

“Sorry, Ev. Vera wanted to get a jump on the day, so I went early.”

“That’s okay.” Evan glanced out the window in the kitchen and looked down by the pool, where Jessica was spreading a towel out on a lounge chair. “I was gonna go for a run, but if it’s Thong Thursday, I think I’ll go for a swim instead, then head over to TGG for the afternoon.” Evan had worked with Jamie for one summer, learning how to program computers, and he’d been working part-time at TGG, The Geeky Guys, ever since.

Jamie set a narrow-eyed stare on Evan.

“What?” Evan laughed.

“Behave,” Jamie said, before walking out the door and across the gravel road to Amy’s cottage.
Christ, now I’m jealous of a kid?

He glanced at the pool, tempted to put on his own suit and head down for a gawk and a swim. Instead, he headed across the gravel road to Amy Maples’s cottage.

“Hi, Jamie. Just in time for coffee.” Amy handed him a mug over the railing of her deck.

“Thanks.”

Jenna Ward, a big-busted brunette, and Bella, a tall, mouthy blonde, followed Amy out of her cottage. They wore sundresses over their bathing suits, their typical Cape attire. The Seaside cottages had been in their families for years, and Jamie had grown up spending summers with the girls and Leanna Bray, who owned the cottage beside Vera’s, and Tony Black, who owned the cottage on the other side of Leanna’s.

“Come on up here, big boy.” Bella waved him onto the deck and pulled out a chair.

“I owe you big-time, Bella.” He sat beside her and set his coffee on the glass table.

“Most people do,” she teased.

“I know I do.” Jenna had recently gotten engaged to Pete Lacroux, a local boat craftsman, who also handled maintenance for Seaside—and had been the object of Jenna’s secret crush for years. Bella and Amy had secretly broken things in Jenna’s cottage for several summers without Jenna knowing, to ensure that she and Pete would have reasons to be thrown together.

“Thong Thursday?” Jamie shook his head. “You are a goddess, Bella.”

She patted her thick blond hair. “Thank you for noticing.”

“Leanna is going to be so mad at you for doing that,” Jenna said. “She doesn’t think our men need to see butt floss on any of us.” Leanna ran a jam-making business out of Kurt’s bay-side property.

Bella swatted the air. “She’s staying at their bay house for a few days. She’ll miss it completely.” The lower Cape was a narrow peninsula that sprawled between Cape Cod Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. The cottages were located between the two bodies of water, and both Kurt and Pete owned property on the bay. Caden and Bella had a house on a street around the corner from the bay, and all three couples spent most of their summers at Seaside and the rest of the year at their other homes.

Luscious Leanna’s Sweet Treats had really taken off in the last two years, and since her business was run from a cottage on their bay property, she was spending more and more time there.

“I’m sure Tony won’t complain,” Amy said with an eye roll that could have rocked the deck. Tony Black was a professional surfer and a motivational speaker, and Amy had been hot for him for about as long as Jenna had been lusting after Pete, but Tony had never made a move toward taking their relationship to the next level. Jamie didn’t get it. He’d seen Tony eyeing Amy, and Tony took care of her like she was his girlfriend. Amy was hot, smart, and obviously interested—Tony was a big, burly guy with a good head on his shoulders. They’d make a great pair.

“Speaking of Tony, I saw him leave early this morning. He’s spending the day at the ocean.” Jamie sipped his coffee.

“Good, then maybe he’ll miss the thong show, too.” Amy leaned over the table and lowered her voice. “Did you guys see the chick renting Theresa’s condo?”

“All I know is that she’s smokin’ hot and she doesn’t talk much.” Jenna was busy resituating the top of her sundress, pulled tightly across her enormous breasts.

“I don’t know what her deal is,” Bella said. “But she was yelling at her phone the other day.”

“You mean yelling on her phone,” Jenna corrected her.

“No, I mean at. She was staring at it, smacking it, and yelling at it.” Bella made a cuckoo motion with her finger beside her head.

Nothing new here from the girls. A little jealousy over the new hot chick. Jamie picked up his coffee mug. “Mind if I bring this back later? I have to get going. I’m running into Hyannis to pick up a few things. You guys need anything?”

The girls shook their heads.

“You’re willingly going to miss Thong Thursday?” Bella put her hand to his forehead. “You must be ill.”

No shit
. “One look at my ass in a thong and she’ll be chasing me around the complex. I wouldn’t want to subject you three ladies to that. It could get ugly.” He smiled with the tease.

“Ha! Yeah, right. Like you’d ever wear a thong.” Jenna threw her head back with a loud laugh. “You’re just worried about sporting a woody down by the pool.”

She had him there.

“You’ve got woodies on the brain,” Jamie said. “Are you guys coming to Vera’s concert tonight?” Vera had played the violin professionally when she was younger, and this summer a group of older Wellfleet residents had put together a string quartet and invited Vera to play. They never saw much of a crowd, but it got her out of the house and playing for an audience again, which she enjoyed.

“I wouldn’t miss Vera’s concert,” Amy said.

“Bella and I are going over together because Caden’s taking someone’s shift and Pete’s hanging with his father tonight, working on a boat. I’ll ask Sky if she wants to come, too.” Sky was Pete’s sister. She’d come to the Cape last summer to run their father’s hardware store while he was in rehab, and she’d never gone back to New York other than to pack up her things. Now sober for almost a year, their father helped Pete with his boat-refinishing business.

“Vera will be glad to hear it, and she loves Pete’s sister.” He glanced down at the pool, then headed for his cottage.

“Wanna bet who’s gonna bang the new chick? Tony or Jamie?” Jenna’s voice trailed behind him.

Jamie slowed to hear the answer.

A crack of hand on skin told him that Amy had shut Jenna up with a friendly swat.

(End of Sneak Peek)

To continue reading, be sure to pick up the next LOVE IN BLOOM release:

SEASIDE SUNSETS, Seaside Summers, Book Three

Please enjoy a preview of another
Love in Bloom
novel

L
overs at Heart

The Bradens, Book One

L
ove in Bloom Series, Book Four

M
elissa
F
oster

“Steamy sex scenes and heartfelt confessions.
A satisfying addition to the Love in Bloom series."

—Midwest Book Review

TREAT BRADEN DIDN’T usually charter planes. It wasn’t his style to flash his wealth, but tonight he needed to be anywhere but his Nassau, Bahamas, resort—and missing his commercial flight had just plain pissed him off. He owned upscale resorts all over the world, and he’d been featured on travel shows so many times that it turned his stomach to have to play those ridiculous media games. Most of the pomp and circumstance surrounding him had begun to irk him in ways that it never had before meeting Max Armstrong. It had been six months since he’d seen her standing in the lobby of his Nassau resort. Six months since his heart first thundered in a way that scared the shit out of him.

He’d tried to ignore her, but it seemed that everywhere Treat went, she was destined to appear. Treat wasn’t a Neanderthal. He knew he had no claim on her. Hell, he hadn’t even given her any indication that he was attracted to her. But that hadn’t stopped his blood from boiling when he’d seen her with Justin Barr, one of his employees, and it hadn’t stopped him from acting like a prick when he’d seen her the next morning standing in front of the elevators at his resort, wearing the same clothes she’d had on the night before.

Meeting Max had sent his heart and mind into a wind tunnel of regret. He was thirty-seven, and it was high time that he settled into life and cast away the fears he’d carried around his whole life due to his mother’s untimely death and his father’s grief.
I’ll fall in love and she’ll be stolen away. I’ll be as heartbroken as Dad.

If he’d had to look at the lobby of the Nassau resort for one more second, he might have torn the place down. As the plane landed, Treat knew that getting away from resorts altogether and spending a weekend with his father at his ranch was just what he needed. Being with his family would center him, and Hal Braden had always been a calming influence on Treat. After his mother passed away, it was his father who pulled him and his five siblings through those tumultuous years. His father had constantly pounded a strong work ethic and sense of loyalty into his and his four brothers’ heads, and that had enabled them all to be successful in their careers. His younger sister, Savannah, however, was the most ruthless businessperson of them all. The thought of his gorgeous, albeit cutthroat, sister brought a smile to his lips. He’d have to remember to call her while he was in town.

WESTON, COLORADO WAS a small ranch town with dusty streets, too many cowboy hats, and a main drag that had been built to replicate the Wild West. It was everything Treat remembered as he sat in his rental Lexus SUV on Main Street. The traffic he was stuck in was not at all typical, and it wasn’t until he crawled around the next curve and saw the balloons and banners above the road announcing the twenty-second annual Indie Film Festival that he realized what weekend it was.
Damn
. He had forgotten about the festival.

His cell phone rang, and he picked it up while he waited for the line of cars to turn off the main road toward the festival grounds.

“I can’t believe you didn’t call me before you came out.”

Savannah
. “Hi, honey. I miss you, too.”

“You big oaf.” She laughed. Savannah was a ballbusting entertainment attorney, but to Treat, she’d always be his baby sister. “I’m at the festival with a client. When will you get in?”

“I’m here now. I’m on Main.” He hadn’t moved an inch in five minutes.

“Yeah? Come to the festival and see me. I’ll call Dad and let him know. I’ll wait for you at the rear entrance.”

Even though his sister had issued an order rather than posed a request, Treat smiled. All he really wanted to do was to reach his father’s five-hundred-acre ranch just outside of town, but Treat knew that if he didn’t see Savannah right away, she’d be disappointed; and disappointing his siblings was something he strived not to do. His father’s words rang through his mind.
Family knows no boundaries
.

“You sure you can get away?” he asked, knowing there was nothing that would stop Savannah from making time for him.

“Who are you kidding? For you? Hell yes. Come in the back gate. I’ll wait there.”

“I’ll be there as soon as traffic allows. Hey, don’t forget to call Dad.” The thought of his father waiting for him worried Treat. After he ended the call with Savannah and waited through two more unbearably long traffic lights, he picked up his cell and called his father, just in case. He didn’t like to cause his father undue worry.

“Hey there, son.”

Hal’s slow, deep drawl tugged at Treat’s heart. God, he’d missed his father. “Dad, I’m here, but I’m gonna stop at the festival first, if you don’t mind.”

“Yup. Savannah called. Treat, spend some time with her. She misses you.”

His father was always looking out for them, and it warmed his heart to hear that things hadn’t changed. “See you soon, Dad.”

MAX ARMSTRONG DONNED her most comfortable jeans and her usual festival T-shirt on opening day. Her boss—and owner of the Indie Film Festival—Chaz Crew had created so much buzz over the past few years that they were expecting a crowd of more than forty thousand attendees during the two-day festival. The festival grounds covered one hundred acres a few blocks from Main Street and boasted five new theaters. Also on the grounds were restaurants, gift shops, and a high-class hotel. Hotels in neighboring towns were booked a full year in advance of the festival. 

Whether there were twenty or fifty thousand attendees, Max was ready. She was nothing if not efficient and supremely organized. She’d been organizing the festival sponsors and logistics for almost eight years, and there was nothing that could throw her off her game. At least that’s what Max always thought—until six months earlier, when she’d met Treat Braden at Chaz’s wedding.

Max had worked with Scarlet, Treat’s assistant, for months via telephone calls and e-mails, coordinating logistics for the double wedding he’d hosted at his Nassau resort for Chaz and Kaylie, and Treat’s cousin, Blake Carter, and his new wife Danica—Kaylie’s sister. She’d come to know Scarlet so well that Scarlet now recognized her by voice. But she hadn’t been prepared for meeting the six-foot-six darkly handsome god that was Treat Braden, with his seductive voice, and the way every inch of him screamed of adrenaline-pumping, heart-fluttering masculinity. He’d knocked her so far off-kilter that she’d lost her ability to speak, along with her mental faculties.

Now her stomach clenched just thinking about the way he took her hand in his and kissed the back of it with those warm, sensuous lips, or the way he’d looked at her as though she were the only woman in the room and then, in the next breath, had arrogantly blown her off. Who was he to judge her personal activities? Sure, she’d been in the same clothes she’d worn the night before, and yes, she’d been out on a date with one of his employees, but she was a single woman. She had every right to do whatever she wanted to do with whomever she wanted—without judgment.
Why do I care what he thinks anyway?
That awful look he gave her was in such stark contrast to the impeccable manners that he’d otherwise exuded; holding doors, thinking of the needs of her and his other guests before himself, taking extra steps to ensure that every little detail of his cousin’s wedding had been taken care of. Before that look, he’d paid full attention to every word she’d spoken, and the way his eyes trailed her every move did not go unnoticed. Her pulse sped up just thinking about it. Max couldn’t let those things sway her resolve. She’d been mistreated, demeaned, and judged by a previous boyfriend, and she swore she’d never go down that road again—not even for too-sexy-for-his-own-good Treat Braden. She’d tried to avoid him after that interaction, though she’d been far from successful. After Nassau, she’d walked away and never looked back. Well, maybe a few times, in the darkness of her bedroom, when it was only her and her sexual fantasies.

She’d learned her lesson. Max forced herself to fall right back into doing what she did best: focus on her work. And it had paid off. This year’s festival would be a huge success.

It was warmer than it should be in Weston that afternoon, with temps in the mid-sixties. She was glad she didn’t need her parka, as she had during other festivals where the weather had taken on a freakish Arctic chill. The afternoon films ran without a hitch, and so far, the celebrity speakers had made their appearances without any wardrobe malfunctions—a trick of the trade for gaining media exposure. Max ran a tight ship, and she was quick to nix any wayward thoughts that celebs might conjure up.

Max spoke into her earpiece as she drove over toward the rear gate. “Heading to the rear gate now. I’ll check on Dean.”

The ruckus between the celeb’s entourage and the media was already creating a shit-storm of confusion. Photographers surrounded Connor Dean’s limousine and the two accompanying SUVs. She should have known this might happen. Dean was a local celebrity actor turned millionaire, whose reputation had exploded since they’d booked him eight months earlier. She’d been wrong to think the Hulk-like security guards could manage a little drama. As she neared the scene, she rolled down her window and surveyed the ensuing nightmare. Shouts and threats were tossed around like candy to children, and no one was making any headway.
What on earth is that woman doing with her body halfway out of the limo?

Max parked right in front of the first SUV, threw open her door, and stepped from the car. She’d hoped to create a long enough pause to get the crowd’s attention, and when that didn’t work, she moved to Plan B.
What is that woman in the limo shouting—legal jargon?
Max groaned as she climbed onto the roof of her car and raised her hands in the air. With a quick flip of a switch on the control panel on her belt, she flicked on the intercom mounted above the gate.

TREAT PULLED UP to the back gate behind a mass of media surrounding a number of cars. He rolled down his window and was met with too many shouts to decipher. It was obvious that no one was going anywhere anytime soon. He pulled into the parking lot outside the fence and decided he’d run in, say hello to Savannah, and tell her he’d catch up with her later at their father’s ranch. The last thing he needed was to deal with this type of headache.

He heard Savannah’s voice and swiftly scanned the crowd.
If anyone touches her I’ll—
Savannah was standing with her body out of the limousine’s moonroof, shouting God knew what as the media peppered her client with questions. Connor Dean, Savannah’s client, was an actor who was quickly climbing the ranks of fame. Savannah had been his attorney for two years, and whenever he had a public engagement, he brought her along. It wasn’t a typical attorney-client relationship, but for all of Connor’s bravado, he’d been slandered one too many times. Savannah kept track of what was and wasn’t said at most events—by both Connor and the media.

Treat couldn’t see Connor Dean, but by the way the media swarmed the limo, he assumed Connor was inside fielding questions from behind the slightly open tinted window.

Treat leaned against the entrance to the gate, crossed one foot over the other, and watched his little sister in action. Her long auburn hair looked like fire against her narrowed, serious green eyes. She was the only one to have their mom’s coloring—and their mother’s spitfire spirit also came with the genes. He and his brothers were all dark, like their father.

Savannah glanced up and their eyes caught. Her scowl morphed into a warm smile as she scrambled onto the roof of the limo.

Treat pushed away from the fence and headed in full protective mode toward his sister. She might be mouthy, but she could be easily injured by those media animals as they pushed their way forward.

“Treat!” Savannah called.

Treat moved into the crowd, parting the media like flies. His six-foot-six frame naturally commanded more space, and one look up usually sent smaller men scrambling away. The ones who remained, he gently persuaded with a cold, domineering stare—a stare he hadn’t needed to rely upon since Savannah was a teenager, when he and his brothers had spent countless hours keeping the horny boys away from their precious sister.

Treat reached up and caught Savannah as she jumped down. He spun her around and, as he set her on her feet, his eyes landed on a woman standing on a car in front of the limousine. His breath caught in his throat.
Max
.

“OKAY, THE SHOW is over.” Max ran her eyes over the crowd as her voice boomed into the raging crowd.

“Let’s give Mr. Dean some space to continue driving through. He’ll be signing autographs and answering questions after his appearance.” Max’s gaze landed on the handsome man towering above the crowd, with a gorgeous woman in his arms and a smile on his lips. She froze as he spun the woman to the side and his face came into view.
Oh God
. Her pulse soared, and—damn it—the butterflies in her stomach that she thought she’d annihilated six months earlier roared to life with a vengeance. She stumbled backward, and one of the security guards was quick to grab her until she found her footing.

“Max! You okay?”

The security guard's voice wrenched her back to the chaos. She tore her eyes from Treat and whomever the woman was that he was holding as if she meant everything in the world to him, and she blinked away the unexpected tears that threatened her steely reserve.

“Clear a path or you’ll be removed from the premises for the rest of the festival.” Even she could hear the difference in her voice, the weakness.
Damn it
. Her eyes darted back to Treat, who was staring at her with an incredulous look on his face. Suddenly painfully aware of her jeans and T-shirt, the ponytail in her hair, and—
oh God
—how she must look like a crazy woman standing on top of the car, she clambered down to the ground as the crowd surprisingly obeyed her orders and began to dissipate. Threats of eviction usually worked.

She turned off the intercom and fumbled for her keys. Treat was heading her way. She wouldn’t be caught dead speaking to him after the way he’d blown her off six months earlier. The woman he was with now was stunning, and obviously well connected, and it was abundantly clear by the way Treat looked at her that she was exactly what he wanted.

“Max,” he called.

His smooth, deep voice was enough to send her heart aflutter. She cursed under her breath as she started the car and navigated around the crowd. She glanced in her rearview mirror, grasping the steering wheel with trembling hands. Damn him for having this effect on her. Treat stood alone in his dark suit, watching Max’s car, while his beautiful companion looked on with a confused expression on her face.

(End of Sneak Peek)

To continue reading, be sure to pick up

LOVERS AT HEART, The Bradens, Book One