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The day became a whirlwind of shopping, baking, cleaning, and fluffing pillows in anticipation of her guests. By the time four o’clock rolled around, Franny was ready to crawl into her own bed and sleep until morning. She heated up a cup of cold coffee and peeked out the back kitchen window. She’d heard the lawnmower running earlier, along with the weed wacker, but she hadn’t seen anything of Heath since lunchtime. Of course, he didn’t have to answer to her, and he probably thought she was off her rocker after their awkward conversation that morning. Still, she liked knowing he was out there, broad-chested and strong-armed. Made her feel a little less alone.
The doorbell chimed, and she set her cup on the sideboard and hurried to the front door.
“Hullo there!” A ruddy-faced man stood on the porch with a giant suitcase in each hand. “Little tricky to find you out here.” He nodded at the sign at the foot of the driveway. “Must-a blown over.”
Franny frowned. Drat. She’d heard some wind around midnight, but she hadn’t thought to check for damage in the morning. Of course, she’d been more than a little distracted by a shirtless Heath answering his door. “I’m sorry. I didn’t even see that.” She made a mental note to ask Heath to secure the post more securely into the sandy ground. “Come in. And you’re the...”
“Warnamakers. From Boston. I’m Donny. This is my wife Ida, and our boys Jacob and Thomas are bringing in the rest of our bags.”
You’re only staying until Sunday afternoon, right? she wanted to ask as she looked at all their luggage. “You’re up on the third floor,” she said as she took the key from the strong box in her antique desk. “The Lighthouse Suite. It has a beautiful view of the bay.”
“And two rooms, right?” Ida asked, out of breath. Two teenage boys dragged their feet across the floor, obviously less than thrilled to be there. They each wore an enormous backpack and wheeled a suitcase behind them. In their free hands, they held a cell phone. All Franny could see was the tops of their heads. Ida lowered her voice. “I need a separate room from those two,” she confided to Franny.
“Yes, there are two rooms, a shared bath, and a sitting room,” Franny said. She started up the stairs. “It’s a little bit of a climb, though.”
“There’s no elevator?” one of the boys asked.
“I’m afraid not,” Franny said as she stopped on the first landing. “This house is over one hundred years old.”
Poor Ida Warnamaker, a good thirty or forty pounds overweight, dropped her own bags to the ground. “I have a bum knee. I can’t bring these up with me. Maybe one of the boys can come back down for them.”
“I’ll carry them for you.”
The deep male voice made every head in the room turn. Franny hadn’t even heard Heath open the back door, but there he stood, freshly showered and shaved, wearing a black t-shirt and jeans and a smile. He lifted the bags as if they weighed nothing at all. Ida turned bright red. The boys straightened and stuck their cell phones into their back pockets.
“I’m Heath,” he said as he climbed the stairs. It was a narrow space, typical of a hundred-year-old Victorian house, and his shoulder brushed Franny’s as he passed. “I’m renting a place out back.” He flashed a smile that made her cheeks warm. “And I help out with the heavy stuff once in a while.”
“Oh, well, that’s...” Ida tittered.
Franny waited until they met up on the second landing before whispering, “You didn’t have to do that.” She didn’t want him to think she was adding bellboy services to his list of household duties. Neither did she want him to leave. This close, she could feel his body heat and smell the Ivory soap she’d put in the bathroom of the rental yesterday afternoon. A sudden image of him using it, sliding the small white bar across his chest and down his stomach, made her knees wobble.
“I know I didn’t.” Deep blue eyes met hers. “You all looked like you had your hands full. Lead the way.”
“...and breakfast is served from seven-thirty to nine,” Franny finished a few minutes after they all finally arrived upstairs. “You can eat in the formal dining room off the parlor, or take it outside to the picnic table if the weather’s nice.”
“I think the picnic table could use sanding and a coat of paint,” Heath said under his breath. “Didn’t know you used it for breakfast. I can try and get to it tomorrow.”
Franny twisted her hands together and nodded. Well, the Warnamakers would have to make do, the way all her former guests had. Ida and Donny had crowded into the sitting room and were oohing and aahing over the view. The boys sat on one of the beds, hunched over their phones, thumbs flying. “Do you need anything else right now?” Franny called, but Donny waved a hand and shook his head.
“Well, that’s one down, four to go,” she said as they descended. Heath walked ahead of her, which gave her a few moments to admire his strong, tall back and the careful way he placed his feet on each step. His military-style haircut, tight and short on his neck, revealed smooth tanned skin and another tattoo. She was about to ask how many he had, and what they all meant, when her toe caught the edge of one riser. Her arms pin-wheeled as she tried to stop herself, but the forward motion carried her straight into him.
“Oof!” Oh sugar no. I did not just –
Oh. My. Her palms flattened against the hard planes of muscle in his back, and she went dizzy for the second time that day.
“Whoa, there.” He turned and wrapped two strong palms around her elbows. “You okay?”
She nodded. “Sorry. I’m not usually that clumsy.”
One corner of his mouth quirked up. “No worries.” He took her hand and helped her down the final two steps. At the bottom they stopped, for a breath, maybe longer. Franny blew her hair from her forehead as she looked up at him. Intense dark blue eyes. A half-smile that lingered on his lips.
The doorbell chimed, and she jumped. Heath dropped her hand, and the moment vanished. He glanced at the door, where two tall silhouettes waited outside. “Want me to stick around?”
Franny’s hand tingled from where he’d touched it, and she had to take a moment to draw a full breath. “You don’t have to. Every other reservation is for a couple, except for one single woman. They shouldn’t have nearly as much baggage as the Warnamakers.”
Heath hesitated and then gave a short nod. “All right. You take care, then. Think I’ll head downtown.”
“Take care. And thanks again.” Franny watched him go. Gosh, it felt awfully nice having a man around the Hideaway to help out. Of course, Finn and Lucas had been helping her out for years, but she thought of them as brothers, since she’d known them both since grade school. Heath Garrick, she most definitely did not think of as any kind of relation. She pressed her hand against her leg and willed the tingles to stay as long as they could.
###
HEATH SAT IN THE RECLINER and watched darkness fall. He’d spent most of the afternoon driving around Lindsey Point, exploring the hills and the roads that looped up and over them before coming back down to kiss the water. This area was beautiful, especially in the height of summer, with the trees in full bloom and the ocean calm and clear. A long, winding road ran along the Connecticut coast for a hundred miles or so, linking the towns of Bluffet Edge, Lindsey Point, and Carroll’s Corners. The summer before he left for basic training, he’d borrowed his buddy’s motorcycle and ridden the length of it as often as he could. Beth was pregnant by then, and the riding had been a peaceful distraction for him, a sort of meditation to figure things out.
They’d had two weeks together after Chloe was born, then he’d gone to basic training, and then he’d deployed. By the time he came back fourteen months later, everything had changed.
Now he rested his head against the chair and listened to an owl hoot somewhere close by. A short distance away, the Hideaway blazed with light, and he wondered how much Franny paid in gas and electric. Then he wondered how much she charged for the rooms. Sure seemed like a lot of work, running a place like this. All the cooking and cleaning and preparing, only to do it again a few days later? He was surprised she didn’t have someone helping her out. He shook his head as figures moved back and forth on all three floors of the house. And then there was the socializing part, being nice to people even if they drove you crazy or complained or left big messes behind them.
“I could never do it,” he said aloud. He stood and rolled his head from side to side, listening to his neck pop. Restless, he walked from the living room to the bathroom, the bedroom, and back again. He pulled open the fridge. Probably oughta go shopping at some point. Franny had stocked it with some bottled water and juice, but he obviously couldn’t live on that. Something cracked outside, and he slammed the fridge door shut. All senses on high alert, he crept to the window and pulled back the curtain. A trespasser? A car backfiring? The owl hooted again, and he could hear laughter coming from the Hideaway. Nothing else. He dropped the curtain back into place and told his pulse to slow down.
Heath checked his watch. Eight-thirty. Nowhere near close enough to the time he usually fell into bed and fooled himself into thinking he’d sleep. He turned on the television and flipped through the channels. He’d stopped for a burger in town, but now the greasy beef and fries roiled in his stomach. He turned the television off again and walked outside.
The heat of the day had subsided only a little. He walked toward the road, not sure where he was going, only knowing he couldn’t stay confined inside. The beach was probably safe enough to walk at night. He walked down the driveway, jammed with cars, and then stopped.
“Goddamn, that’s beautiful.” His gaze fastened on the near-full moon rising in the sky. It hung over the water just behind the lighthouse.
“It is, isn’t it?”
He jumped at the voice, shoulders tense as he spun around. His pulse went from average to overdrive so fast he felt the blood skip in his wrists. One hand tightened into a fist almost before he’d realized it.
Franny stood a few feet away with a trash bag in one hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
He took a deep breath and loosed his fingers. Get a grip, Garrick. You’re a damn basket case. “My fault. I get a little paranoid sometimes. Let me take that for you.”
She shook her head and carried it to the dumpster herself. “When I said you could live here in exchange for doing a few things, I didn’t mean you had to be on call every day and night.” She lowered the top of the dumpster and brushed her hands on her jeans. The moonlight fell across her face, and as usual, she wore no makeup, and her hair stood out in crazy directions.
“I don’t mind helping,” he said. “Gives me something to do.” Truly, that was what ate away at him, the goddamn feeling of uselessness. In the Army, as a Sergeant First Class, he’d had a job to do. Everyone did. You knew your place, your responsibility, who you answered to and who answered to you. His gaze returned to the moon. Here, he didn’t have any of that. He had no idea what to do with his days. Nothing meant anything.
Franny walked over to stand beside him. “It must be awfully hard coming home,” she said, as if she’d read his mind. “And not being active duty anymore. I can’t imagine. Like culture shock.”
He watched the moonlight move over the sand. “It is.”
“Would you like something to drink?” she asked after a minute. “I have a couple beers inside. Or whiskey, if that’s more your taste.”
“Thanks, but I don’t drink. I used to. But I’m kind of fucked up now. I stay away from it, for the most part.” He ran one palm over his head. “Sorry for the language.”
To his surprise, she laid a hand on his shoulder. “You don’t have to apologize. I’ve heard about every word in the English language and then some. Besides,” she added, “I can imagine being over there, seeing the things you’ve seen, would fuck a person up.”
The words sounded so out of place coming from her mouth, Heath almost laughed. Then a different sensation moved over him, an odd sort of attraction, and he stuffed his hands into his pockets. She looked up at him, eyes wide and honest, her lips parted the tiniest bit.
I could kiss her.
He’d considered it earlier that day, when she tumbled down the stairs and he caught her. He wondered how she’d taste. Like vanilla or chocolate or whatever she’d been baking that afternoon? Like beer or whiskey? Or something else altogether?
“I should probably go back inside,” Franny said after a moment.
He cleared his throat and nodded. Had she read his mind? Or had she felt the same strange current of attraction rip through the air between them? “Have a good night.”
Crazy, he told himself as he turned in the opposite direction and headed for the beach. Franny wasn’t like any woman he’d ever been with before – and he’d been with plenty, too many to count. Besides, why the hell was he thinking about kissing anyone at all? The only thing kissing would lead to was raw, silent sex that would be over before they both knew it. No emotion. No connection. He had nothing left to give anyone when it came to that. He’d shuttered up his heart long ago. He wouldn’t even know where to find it now.