Bungalow Nights(19)

She clutched at him, her ragged breathing loud in the night, even over the shush, shush, shush of the incoming waves. But then he heard something else.

Footsteps on the wooden stairs.

His head shot up and he glanced back. Addy’s curly blond hair came into view. Dammit.

He looked back at Layla. “Sweetheart, I—”

But she was already stepping away, her stunned gaze on his face, her palms covering her red cheeks. “Uh-oh,” she said.

It almost made him smile. Uh-oh was right. He was pretty sure he’d lost his chance to have that straightforward conversation he’d planned to stymie all this.

Which meant he had a problem. And, he remembered, it got worse.

Because as far as his family was concerned, he also had a girlfriend.





CHAPTER SEVEN



THE SOUND OF BAXTER’S whistling warned Addy of his approach. In the small room designated as the Sunrise Pictures archives, she froze, torn between wanting to run to her purse for lipstick and a hairbrush and wanting to just...run.

She didn’t want him back in her life.

Not that he’d ever left it, if she was honest with herself. For years, he’d been her comfort crush, something she’d turned to like she’d turned to cookies and potato chips from the age of five until eighteen. Lonely? Bask in the memory of being in Baxter’s arms. Low? Call up the memory of the effervescence flooding her bloodstream as he swung her onto the dance floor. Who knew Baxter Smith could two-step? But he had, and he’d deftly taught her the rudiments, as well, shuffling the two of them through and around the other couples as the country band played “Like We Never Loved At All.”

The same Faith Hill/Tim McGraw tune Baxter was whistling now as he stepped into Addy’s workspace. The sound cut off as she turned to face him.

Her heart stuttered. Oh, wow. He was a gorgeous specimen of a man. Most of the males in her world were hungry-looking grad students, with hair barbered by their mothers or their girlfriends and clothes that came straight from laundry baskets that were filled straight from dryers, without any folding in between. Baxter had left the jacket to his suit behind, but his dark olive slacks were pressed and his white shirt starched. The leather of his dress shoes and matching belt gleamed.

By contrast, Addy felt nearly naked in her nylon running shorts, tank top and lightweight hiking boots. She wasn’t taller than five foot two, but it seemed there was an awful lot of bare skin between her ankles and the tops of her thighs.

Baxter appeared to be studying every inch.

She cleared her throat and his gaze took a lazy path upward. When his blue eyes met hers, he smiled. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Her heart fluttered again. Oh, she was in such big trouble! She knew better than to like something too much—say, donuts or ice cream—and that applied to Baxter, as well. While he might be fine in the abstract, in the flesh there was the danger that she might find him addictive.

And wallflowers-by-nature like Addy March would only be heartbroken by hoping for something real and lasting with ideal men like Baxter Smith.

With that thought pinned tightly to her mental bulletin board, she returned to stuffing her backpack with supplies for her planned hike, including a couple of water bottles and a sandwich bag half-filled with raw almonds. “If you’re looking for Vance, last I saw him he was in the kitchen at the beach house.”

“I’m not after Vance.”

Then what was he after? She wanted to scream the question, but she wasn’t a nineteen-year-old who’d never been kissed anymore. Self-respect demanded she maintain a hold on her dignity. So she faced him again and lifted inquiring brows, feigning a cool indifference. “Oh? Then—”

“You know why I’m here, Addy.” He leaned against the doorjamb, his hands in his pockets, a faint smile on his impossibly handsome face. “You know exactly what I want.”

Oh, yeah, she knew. He’d tried going there yesterday. For whatever reason, he didn’t want to let that...that interlude between them go unacknowledged. Why? Did it not count as a bedpost notch if she pretended it never happened? She frowned at him, wishing his ego wasn’t demanding she speak her secrets aloud.

You were a wonderful first lover.

My girlhood dreams all came true that night.

I’ve never forgotten a moment of it.

Those were the truths she held close to her heart. But she was keeping them there, unvoiced. They were hers, and no one else’s.

Striding for the door, she brushed past him. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have time for conversation,” she said.

He caught the back of her shirt, halting her forward movement. “I want to help you out, Addy. Remember? I promised that at the bar.”

At the bar, when she’d turned to him, looking for a way out of Steve’s insistent offer. Though she’d known that guy for years, his avid interest had struck her as a little creepy, and she hadn’t wanted to accept—nor had she wanted to say that to his face. Some stupid instinct had made her glance toward Baxter, and he’d immediately stepped up with a promise of his own.

“Thanks for that,” she said now, without looking at him. “You helped me out of a tight spot, but I didn’t take you at your word.”

“Of course you didn’t.”

A grim note in his voice had her glancing back at him. He let go of her shirt, and used that hand to smooth his already-smooth golden hair. “But I meant it,” he said. “I’m volunteering my services.”

She shook her head. “I appreciate it, but I’m actually just on my way out. I’m going to hike around the cove this morning, scouting out locations used in the Sunrise movies.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“You’re dressed for a board meeting, not a tramp down the beach and a scramble in the hills.”

He was already unbuttoning his cuffs. Then he loosened his tie and began stripping out of his dress shirt. As she watched his hands, the past reared up, image overlaying image. In the darkness, Baxter toeing out of his shoes. Baxter yanking his shirt over his head. Baxter’s hands at the buckle of his belt.

His delicious scent had been in the air, she remembered. It had already transferred to her skin during their heated kisses, a sophisticated sandalwood cologne that she’d breathed in while trying to steady her triple-timing heart. Her nervous trembling had seemed to shake the entire bed and her skin prickled with chill...until he’d lain on top of her, his bare chest against her now-naked breasts, his erection nudging the notch between her thighs. “Addy,” he’d groaned, the word hot against her ear.

“Addy,” Baxter said now, standing before her in his slacks and a V-necked white T. “Ready?”

She shook her head, trying to return that old memory to its usual high shelf. “You...” Her voice was so dry she had to try again. “You can’t go like that.”

“Of course I can,” he answered, his voice full of the confidence only the Baxter Smiths of the world could claim.

The kind of confidence that drew the Addy Marches of the world—and that clearly would be a waste of breath to argue against. She sighed. “C’mon, then,” she said, digging through her backpack as she led the way outside. Finding the tube of lotion, she tossed it over her shoulder to him, certain he’d make the catch.

“What’s this?”

“Sunscreen. You better use it. You look a little pasty.”

Addy didn’t pause to hear his response or stop to let him apply the stuff. However, a few moments later he tugged the backpack from her to stow the lotion. “Pasty, huh,” he said, slinging the strap over his own shoulder. “And I looked prissy just the other day.”

She didn’t glance at him as she took a path along the lower edge of the bluff. He wasn’t pasty or prissy, of course, but wallflowers developed a defensive edge. They didn’t always let it show—mostly never—but when their backs were too tight to the wall... Now Addy felt as if her shoulder blades were jammed against thick plaster.

Trying to ignore the sensation as well as the man who brought it on, she focused on her original plan. Her first stopping place was a short ten-minute walk. Once she found the vantage point she sought, she paused to enjoy the view. They were halfway up a footpath on the hillside that rose behind the beach. The surrounding grasses were knee-length and well on their way to going from spring-green to September-blond.

“I’ll take the backpack now,” she told Baxter. As she unzipped the largest compartment, she noticed the sand sprinkling the tops of his loafers. Their slick soles had slid on the path’s silty dirt. Pulling free her camera, she glanced up at him. “Really, Baxter, go back. You don’t have the right equipment.”

“Oh, I think you know I do,” he said.

The ocean breeze cooled her suddenly hot cheeks. Instead of responding to that, she dropped the backpack and brought the viewfinder to her eye. With flicks of her finger, she took a shot of the stretch of ocean to the west, another of the cliff at the south of the cove and then a northward view that included that tangle of tropical vegetation planted a century before.