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A car sat in the driveway, which was nothing more than a strip of dirt with some quaint grass growing between tire tracks.And dirt itself was a stretch, as sand got blown up off the beach and settled along the edges of lawns and in driveways though this neighborhood sat off the waterfront.
Grant gave the obvious rental car a cursory glance, then looked up toward the front door.His heart stopped before his feet did.
The purse on the front seat sported cow print.
“No…” dripped from his lips.The wind kicked up, and Grant subconsciously wiped his hands down the front of his shirt, where only thirty minutes ago, he’d smeared half-blended bananas and raspberries into his bright blue button-down while everyone else tended to the customer who’d been hit with an equally large glob of the smoothie once the blender bottle had broken.
The woman who’d been semi-rude to him at The Mad Mango.Or maybe he’d been semi-rude to her.“It wasn’t your smoothie shop that malfunctioned,” he told himself, his feet somehow growing brain cells of their own and taking him up the steps to that pretty periwinkle door.He’d painted it himself, alongside his daughter, last spring.
This cottage, the front door included, had weathered the last twelve months well, which was more than Grant could say for himself.His ex had gotten a job in Pittsburg, and he hadn’t seen Shelby, his thirteen-year-old, in nine months now.
“She’s coming for the summer,” he told himself, and that cheered him enough to lift his hand and knock on the door.
“Coming!”a woman called from inside, and Grant realized a heartbeat too late that he still held his cup from The Mad Mango.He’d gone home first to change, then to the grocery store, then back to the smoothie shop to deliver the dadgum raspberries.Cara had his Rainbow Over Troubled Water smoothie ready to go, and now he stood here.
He lifted the straw to his lips and took a suck right as the door opened.Sure enough, the gorgeous woman with the pixie blonde hair—with a hint of pink still in it?—stood there.“Well.”She leaned one hip into the doorjamb and cocked the opposite eyebrow.
He needed another slurp of his smoothie then, because his mouth had just gone dry as a bone in a desert.Her eyes pierced him, and for some reason, he didn’t mind the stabbing sensation of his pulse as it shot through his veins.
“You must be Cass,” he said, adopting his charming rental manager persona.He could frown and vent to himself later.He could, and he would.
“No,” she said, and that made Grant’s eyebrows fly toward the rooftop.
“No?”
“I’m Beatrice,” she said.“My friend Cass made the reservation for me.”
Grant nodded, not really caring because the next ten days were paid for.“Okay,” he said.“I’m Grant Turner, the rental manager.”He held up the grocery sack with ice cream and soda pop.“Cass requested this.”
Beatrice slid her eyes from his to the bag, all of the tightness in her shoulders, eyebrows, mouth, and arms going limp.“Is that ice cream?”
“Mint chocolate chip,” he said with a grin he hoped could rival Oliver’s.He knew it couldn’t, and he knew his friend had already interacted with this woman.Single beach respite.
Was Beatrice single?
“And it’s pretty hot out—” Grant cut off when he realized Beatrice had tears spilling from her eyes.He once again froze, but his brain kept firing at him.He’d been about to say he should get the ice cream into the freezer, because the heat had already started to melt it.
He didn’t normally walk into his rentals without being invited, but with Beatrice still weeping in the doorway, he eased past her and said, “I’m just going to put this in the freezer, okay?”
She didn’t protest—didn’t respond at all—and Grant put some distance between them to give her some privacy.He didn’t want any distance anywhere else between them, and he shook the thoughts from his head with surprise.
He hadn’t been attracted to anyone in years, and he’d only dated casually since his divorce four years ago.Maybe the smoothie shop malfunction had rattled him more than he knew.Maybe a piece of the broken blender bottle had hit him in the head.Maybe he did need to get outside more often and hire an assistant to help him with all the rental paperwork.
He put the ice cream in the freezer and the soda in the fridge, closing that door at the same time Beatrice closed the one to the cottage, sealing him inside with her.Wadding up the plastic bag and with his pulse running a marathon through his whole body, he turned to face her.
