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The lift doors opened, and I stepped out onto the brightly colored youth floor. Breathing deeply, I inhaled the scent of books. I had always loved the library while growing up and the smell of the place…it filled me with a sense of welcome. It was my real home. My happy place. Nowhere else on earth smelled quite like it. I loved bringing the same joy to little kids every day while they regarded their storybooks as treasures to hug to their chests.
“That isn’t possible,” Hadrian blustered, pulling me from my idyllic thoughts and back to reality where he was a pain in my rear and my life had just been tossed into a jumble.
To tell the truth, in many ways, he was like the overprotective older brother I’d never had. In other ways, he was a controlling jerk. I wasn’t sure if that was a boss thing, since I’d worked at the library since I was sixteen, working my way up to my current position. A couple years older than me, he’d done the same. But he’d always been bossy, even when he wasn’t my superior as he was now.
“Why not? I know it’s short notice but Bea is still looking for more hours until school starts again.”
“She can’t do what you do.”
I crossed my arms and almost dropped my envelope. I clutched it harder under my arm and turned to glare at him. “Anything I do that she can’t will wait a week. My back-to-school and fall book orders are turned in. They won’t be delivered yet. All my paperwork is up-to-date. She can cover the area.”
Having said my bit, I continued over to the circular desk toward the center of the floor.
“She can’t,” he reiterated.
I turned to him, suddenly realizing if Hadrian had his way, I wouldn’t meet my family. They’d probably think I wasn’t interested in knowing them, and that couldn’t be farther from untrue. Iwantedto know them with all my heart.
This was a job. One that could be replaced. They were family. Even if I didn’t know them.
“Are you sure about this?” I asked, opening my desk drawer.
He smiled, clearly believing he’d won. “Yes.”
“Okay then,” I answered, and pulled my purse and lunch bag from where I’d stowed them. I picked up my emptyI like big booksmug off the desktop along with my notebook where I scrawled book ideas for when I started writing someday. I shoved them along with the envelope into my cavernous tote bag. “Good luck. You should trust Bea more. I quit.”
“What!” he yelled in a very un-library-voice. He grabbed my arm as I passed. “You can’t quit!”
I shook off his grasp, shocked by how much lighter I felt—terrified but lighter—now that I’d done something crazy. But maybe, it wasn’t crazy. Maybe, it was just right.
“I can. I did. Good luck, Hadrian. If you change your mind, I’ll be back in town in a week and a half.”
“I won’t. You can’t do this,” he snarled.
“Can. Did,” I repeated. And this time, I kept walking.
* * * *
I’d thought Michigan in August was unbearably humid and hot. Sizzle Beach was…sizzling. I’d question why my older sister had chosen to have the wedding here, but apparently, had I not been kidnapped, or whatever had happened, I would have been raised here. Therefore, this wasn’t a destination wedding. My immediate family lived in this little tourist town.
Lugging my rolling suitcase, I walked into the blessed cool of the Dolphin Inn. Though they lived on the island of Sizzle Beach, my family had booked rooms at a glitzier place further south on the shore. I supposed it was so they could be close by to socialize with any guests who came in town. This hotel was more in my price range, though. Especially, now that I was jobless. Homeless, too, since I’d packed most of my apartment into a storage pod over the past five days. A bunch of things were in the back of my crossover, though.
I’d driven down to Sizzle Beach from Michigan. The fifteen hour trip had been exhausting but so worth it. The drive had been beautiful. This city—and city seemed like an overstatement—was one of Georgia’s barrier islands, east of Savannah, and this hotel was located right on the beach, one of about ten resort lodgings edging the ocean.
The wheels of my suitcase squeaked quietly while I crossed the turquoise-and-white tiles to the desk. Adjacent to it, a plush seating area with matching blue couches and chairs and pure white tables invited one to sit and stare out over the Atlantic.
In the distance, the beach buzzed with people, and a lifeguard stand overlooked the area. A tanned, dark-haired man in red trunks raced into the water with a red flotation device clutched in his hand. Mesmerized, I froze, unable to take my eyes off him.
A strange flutter stirred in my belly, the muscles sucking in while I watched him dive into the water. When he reemerged like Poseidon rising from the sea, a young child under his arm, the tableau back-dropped by the cerulean blue sky, my breath caught. My stare wouldn’t budge from his wide pecs or his bulging biceps and thigh muscles. His belly was flat though his abs were ripped from whatever his fitness routine was.
He looked like adventure. And even if I never met him, in particular,hewas the reason I’d come to Sizzle Beach. Yes, I anxiously anticipated my reunion with my family, but that lifeguard represented all the excitement I’d craved since before I’d even known it was excitement that had been absent from my entire life.
Chapter Three
~ Tarek bin Ghazi al-Darwish ~
My toes curled in the sand that was so different from the sands of the desert back home. No… Not back home. This was home. Sizzle Beach was home to me now. Not the land where I’d been raised, where my brother was sheik to our community.
Where my brother disagreed with me telling him he was being led around by his dick.
