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“Won’t be long now,” Zach said. “We can always get a cab from town up to the house.” Billy’s master plan was to moor at the harbor, stock up on groceries at Cloud Bay, and then sail the rest of the way around the island to where the Blacklight guys had all bought land and built houses after the album they’d recorded on the island had turned into their first multi-platinum all those years ago. Why, when Cloud Bay’s stores were perfectly happy to deliver—after all, the island wasn’t that big—Zach wasn’t sure. Maybe Billy just wanted to show off his new boat.
“I might take you up on that,” Eli said as the yacht bounced again. He braced himself with his right hand; the left was bandaged halfway up his arm. It was supposed to be in a sling but Eli kept slipping it free, claiming his shoulder ached.
The boat jolted a third time. This time, water sprayed over the side of the yacht, half-drenching them both.
“Dad, I’d prefer to arrive un-drowned,” Eli called up to Billy.
“You’re not going to melt, princess,” Billy yelled back.
Zach grinned. It was mid-May and the California weather was warm enough that getting wet didn’t bother him much. And he was starting to realize just how much he’d missed Eli’s company. Zach had spent a big chunk of the last three years touring with his band, Fringe Dweller. The relentless schedule didn’t leave a lot of time for friends and family. Or hadn’t until two weeks ago when their lead singer, Ryder Lange, had suddenly announced he was taking a year off to “find himself”—whatever the fuck that meant. In Ryder’s case, it wasn’t code for going to rehab, as it often was for other musicians. But Zach hadn’t been able to get the reason out of him and neither had anyone else in the band. They’d played the last two shows on the tour they’d been finishing in a stew of seething resentment and then they’d gone their separate ways.
Fucking Ryder. Always a drama queen. Zach had joined Fringe Dweller as a fill-in guitarist. He’d stuck. But Ryder and he had never truly become friends. Probably because Ryder belonged to the “I’m the lead singer and I run the band” school of musicians. They worked well together and stayed out of each other’s way the rest of the time. But pulling this crap was just not cool. Not when it looked like they were finally building to something bigger.
Not cool at all.
And now, thanks to Ryder, he was back on Lansing.
Home sweet freakin’ home indeed.
Holy crap, Zach Harper. Leah Santelli stared out the window of The Last Crumb, where she was waiting in line for a sugar fix and her second coffee of the morning.
Then she stepped a little closer to the glass so she could watch as the man who wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near Lansing kept walking down Main Street toward the bakery.
Double holy crap.
It was definitely Zach. It wasn’t as though you could mistake the guy. At least, she couldn’t. She doubted any other woman with working eyeballs could either.
Zach Harper.
One long tall streak of trouble. Too talented and too hot for his own good. His hair was longer, falling around his face, and he wore sunglasses, hiding the amazing gray-green eyes he shared with his sisters, courtesy of their father Grey, but there was no mistaking that loose-hipped stride. Or those shoulders. Or the three guitars tattooed on his right forearm.
“Born to prowl.” She’d heard one of her mom’s friends call Zach that once at a party. And maybe she’d been mostly basing that off her assessment of Grey, who was born to do many things, prowling definitely among them, and had perfected his rock-god persona many years earlier—but she had been right. Like father, like son, maybe.
Zach kind of glided across the earth, moving like a cat who knew he was king of the jungle, and not much caring about those left stumbling around in his wake when he left.
Once upon a time, Leah had been one of those left behind.
But not any more.
She rubbed the spot on her finger where the missing weight of her recently discarded wedding ring still bugged her. She’d moved on from Zach Harper. Turned out she hadn’t exactly chosen the perfect man to do it with but that wasn’t anybody’s fault. Her marriage to Joey Nelson had kind of faded away, ending not with screaming fights and tears but with Joey announcing that he wasn’t happy, that he’d met someone else, and with Leah realizing that she felt more relieved than any other emotion when he did so.
So they’d divorced. And she’d finally pitched her wedding ring and her engagement ring into the sea one night six months ago after she and Faith had been drinking champagne and she’d been cursing men—even the friendliest of divorces came with some pain after all. She hadn’t thought she’d miss them.
But she did.
Every now and then she’d look down at that finger and wonder how she’d screwed things up. Twenty-eight years old and one marriage down. Not exactly her life plan.
Zach and Eli—God, Eli as well—were almost at the bakery now. Eli had his left arm in a sling and was limping in a walking boot, looking too thin. Right. He’d crashed his motorcycle. Faith had told her he’d banged himself up pretty good. But he was laughing at something Zach said, and Zach was grinning—dammit, that smile should be outlawed. And dammit, she was staring and they’d be able to see her any second. She ducked back out of sight, heart pounding.
Dealing with Zach took some prep time. She hadn’t seen Faith’s brother very often since Grey Harper had died. Zach hadn’t been back to Lansing much over the last six or so years. But the few times he had come home, she’d learned that she needed to steel her defenses when it came to him.
Because he was still funny and charming and well, to be honest, smoking hot, but none of those things had been appropriate to think about when she’d been married to Joey. And now she wasn’t married to Joey and they still weren’t appropriate to think about. Because Zach Harper was born to prowl and born to leave and she wasn’t going to let him wreck her a second time.
What she was going to do was call his sister and find out what the heck he was doing here and why the hell Faith hadn’t told her he was coming.
But not here in the middle of Stella’s bakery with six other people ready to listen in on the conversation.
She’d grown up in Cloud Bay and yet there were still times when small-town life annoyed the crap out of her. Mostly when it involved everyone knowing your business.
