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  The big badass is afraid of the dinky little cop? “You’re not going to make me push it too, are you?”

  He licked his lips, tempted yet hesitant. After another glance at the diner, he jogged toward the hood, then pushed the car out of the way. Seeing no need to saturate her clothes with more rainwater, Kelly drove away, wondering how long she’d last in Churchston.

  Chapter 3

  “It’s not as bad as it looks.” Randy’s greeting was more of an excuse when Kelly met him at the apartment the next morning.

  “I could only hope.” She let Eddie out of the car and set her hands at her hips as she examined her future residence. It was a little drive from town, past the vintage streetlights and pointless boutique shops. A sad-looking two-story house was turned into twin townhouse apartments. And it was uglier than hell. Even in the early dawning sun. She hesitated to know what it could look like in full daylight. “Never judge a book by its cover, right?”

  “It’s a solid structure.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Rent can be due the first of the month.” He stepped up on the porch and Kelly gave a discerning eye at the yard. It was out in the country. Lakefront. There was a remote feel to the place and she couldn’t argue the solitude. The only other building in sight was an older stone house behind them, tucked close to the woods. Instead of the isolation reminding her of Friday the 13th, she cherished it in the form of what could be peace and quiet.

  Randy gave her a hopeful smile and opened the door. The hallway was narrow and there was a door to the left and a door to the right. Right it was.

  “Clay’s on the left. It’s a bit empty in here.” Empty was an understatement. There were no divisions to rooms. No furniture. Nothing.

  At least it didn’t smell like mold or BO.

  “You don’t say.” Kelly stepped in to look closer. There was a small bathroom. Small kitchen. Potential? “What about the storage space out back?”

  “Locked. Nothing out there. Guy who lived here before was going to turn it into a studio but, uh, it’s locked now.

  Kelly nodded slowly. “No problem about my dog?”

  Randy shook his head.

  She held out her hand. The place didn’t emit a warm welcoming sense of homecoming, but her need to hurry compelled her to take the place in the manner of, why not?

  “Where do I sign? I’ve got to meet Burns at the kayak hut in ten minutes. Without checking with me, the dumbass next door told him I’d start today.”

  Kelly was reluctant to consider working in a kayak hut a career because it was too damn close to minimum wage, and because she had no idea how long she was going to stay in Churchston. Nonetheless, she intended to diligently put her best effort forward. Not much would be needed. It was bound to be mindless busywork and would give her the time to reflect what she might want to really do with her life, because she felt no more destined to deliver food and rent out kayaks than she had been to be a nurse.

  If nothing else, it would give her distance from Atlanta to properly accept and move on from her failures—as a spouse and a nurse.

  Gingerly sipping coffee as she walked across the sand to Burns’ kayak hut, she appreciated the sleeping beach, much more picturesque with a beautiful sunrise, the sand devoid of pasty bodies with skin the sun should never see. It was nothing more than a ten-by-ten shed. With the wooden and bamboo trim, Burns had probably been trying for a Beach Boy’s theme but seemed to have settled for tiki. His little hut was positioned conveniently next to the small lazy river where the boats could float further into Churchston and out towards the woods.

  Main Street had been developed with the beach as the central point. The mechanic garage where Clay worked was practically across the street from the kayak hut. From her vantage point, she could see almost all of the town. With a hint of claustrophobia, it reminded her of a snow globe, and she was partially glad she had taken the apartment out of town.

  No one was in the hut when she stepped in. The beach was hardly populated and she wondered if her new boss had forgotten to come in to show her the ropes.

  “Hello?” Perfect. I wake up early and he doesn’t?

  “Huh?” A teenager poked his head through the door to the hut.

  Kelly sipped and checked out the kid. He couldn’t be more than a teen with the acne rampant on his cheeks, but he had a boyish cuteness nonetheless.

  “Might you know where Roger Burns is?”

  He blushed then shook the bangs off his forehead. “Oh. You’re the new girl.”

  Girl? She had at least ten years on him. “Kelly Newland.” She offered her hand to make it a complete introduction and he blushed. Such a skittish little guy, like Harry Potter minus the glasses.

  “We just got here. Dad’s talking to Stella.” He nodded toward the door. Roger, it seemed, was the balding man, stomping his foot and waving his hands, apparently arguing with a thirty-something woman at the yet-to-be-opened lemonade stand.

  She turned back to the kid and found his gaze glued to her chest. Caught, he blushed even redder.

  “Too old for you, kid.” She gave him a deadpan stare. “Got a name?”

  “Uh, everyone calls me Junior.”

  Junior-sized, she was sure. “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

  “I stay home with Dad. Home school.” He did the hair sweep head jerk again. In the distance, Stella hollered about scriptures and virgins.

  “What’s with the crazy lady?”

  Junior sighed and leaned against the door to the hut. “She wanted to know if he hired Sandra back this year for the busy season. She was trampy. Dad doesn’t like trampy girls, but he needed someone to run the hut. Stella likes to think she’s a virgin. Holier-than-thou.”

  She blinked. “Who’s Sandra?”

  “Sandra ran the hut last summer. She moved out of town for a job. Does every winter. Lot of the girls your age do. Daisy gets too cool and leaves. Jaycee comes and goes to spend time. The guys take gigs in the winter in the city.”

  “How would you know if crazy lady’s a virgin?”

  If he blushed any more his cheeks would have turned maroon. “I don’t know Stella’s not a virgin. Everyone does. Common knowledge. She had a baby last year and claimed it was divine conception.”

  Kelly gave a discerning eye to Junior. She hadn’t met him or his dad in her adventures as Alan’s deliverer. Neither had she experienced the pleasure of the aforementioned women. Junior seemed wise in his small world but she imagined his kind of gossip was girly for a teen dude. Then again, what else is there for small-town folks to do than small talk and gossip?

  “So how does this work?”

  Junior sat on an upturned cooler which had seen better days, and Kelly took the bar stool. “You open the hut in the morning, get the kayaks in the river, and tie ‘em up to the dock. You stay at the counter and run the register. Once it gets warmer out, I’ll probably close the hut at night. Or you would. Dad doesn’t like me working a lot when I have to study.”

  Kelly frowned. He kept shaking his head, the bangs toss. Either cut the damn hair or get screened for Tourette’s. “Where do they get off at downriver?”

  “Our house. It’s about three miles out of town.”

  “I pick them up?”

  “We all do. Well, I do. Or Dad. He runs an online baseball card-trading site. You call when customers are coming our way. If Dad’s busy, I’ll stand out there to help them, or he will. Most times it’s me. Then I drive them back here to the beach.”

  “People, or you bring the boats, too?” She had seen a dilapidated truck with a trailer and a van parked behind the hut.

  He shrugged. “Sometimes we wait until there are enough boats to load the whole trailer and rack on the truck, and then run them back them all in one trip. Sometimes I’ll bring it, sometimes you’ll pick it up and I’ll take the hut. Like, I’ll bring the van back with the people while you drive the truck out to our house for the boats. We all kind of move around. It can get boring in her
e sometimes.”

  Easy enough. The kid must be pretty smart if he could juggle school and kayaks. He exhibited another damn bangs jerk and Kelly bit her cheek. She sipped her coffee to avoid the awkward silence.

  “So are you venturing on to college somewhere, or does everyone kind of stay imprisoned here?” she asked.

  He raised his brow. “Uh, someday I want a scholarship for MUSC.”

  She couldn’t hold back the scoff. “Pre-med?”

  He nodded and she studied him. Ironic. Damn adolescent was more confident in his life choices than she was.

  “How the hell can you want to do that?” She crossed her arms, morbidly curious at his choice.

  “I want to help people.”

  “What about the ones you can’t? What about the ones who won’t make it?”

  He cocked his head and crossed his arms. “Well, we’ve all got to die someday, right?”

  She almost smiled. Kid already had a steadier mindset than she ever had in the medical world. He was lucky.

  Another hair flip. She cringed.

  “Are you depressed or something?” he said.

  Kelly raised her brows. Depressed was a strong label. Commercials for drugs and cartoon animations of frowning people who couldn’t get out of bed or eat food played in her mind. Eddie made her smile and she loved candy, so by her diagnosis, no, she wasn’t clinically depressed. She might not be a morning person but she was always eager to start the day. Problem was, she didn’t know what the hell to do once she got out of bed. Restless, perhaps, but they didn’t make fix-all remedies for it.

  “Who the hell knows,” she muttered bitterly. How’s that for some pathetic downward social comparison?

  “Dad said you’re from Atlanta.”

  She nodded.

  “Why’d you move here?”

  “I honestly have no fucking clue.” She gave him a polite smile.

  The wrinkles of his forehead held her obligated to explain.

  “Just signed my divorce papers. I headed to Myrtle Beach, but I kind of stopped here.”

  “Clay said you were a nurse.”

  “ER.”

  “Man, that’s so cool. Why’d you leave?”

  Kelly licked her lips. “A patient died on me. I can’t say it wasn’t my fault. His daughter threatened to kill me because I didn’t save him. The LPN who administered the drug that killed him…” She paused. “She hung herself the same night.”

  Junior swallowed.

  “Let’s say I wasn’t fit for the job.”

  “Okay…” By the creases on his forehead, he didn’t seem convinced.

  Stella hollered an unkind farewell as Roger headed for them.

  “Damn women.” Roger’s mutter announced his entrance into the hut. “Oh, hey. You came.”

  “Hired me, didn’t you?” Kelly ignored his sexist remark. Like he was a real prize as an almighty male.

  He gave her a once-over with doubt written on his scowling face. “You ain’t going to give me any trouble are you?”

  “I’m a perfect angel.”

  “Hey, Dad, can I take the truck to see Allison later? We won’t be busy today.”

  Roger shook his head at Junior. “No. She’s in school.” He straightened the pile of brochures on the counter.

  “Nut uh. President’s Day. They’re off.”

  Roger’s sigh seemed painful, as though he was pronouncing the woes of parenthood. “Alright. I don’t care. Go get the disinfectant out of the truck first. Put it out on the dock. Kathy can wash off the life jackets since we’re not busy yet.” He turned to Kelly and clapped once as his son left. “He tell you how it works ‘round here?”

  She nodded. “Kelly, not Kathy.”

  “Right. Sorry. I gotta hire a young face every season, I can’t keep track anymore. I’m pretty laid-back. Not like it’s a difficult job anyhow. Oh, watch out for the gators.” He demonstrated the register and how to fill out the liability forms. “You got a boyfriend in town here? You with Clay?”

  She crossed her arms. “No.” She narrowed her eyes. “And this is your business because…?”

  “Well, he’s the one who told me to expect you this morning. I assumed you were one of his girls.”

  She opened her mouth, but he rambled on.

  “I came down here one afternoon checking on the register and saw Sandra fucking some man behind the counter. Didn’t know the stool could take the weight.”

  Kelly shot to her feet and raised her hands up like a surgeon gloving up. Alrighty then. Note to self: disinfect wood hut. “Lovely.”

  Roger shook his head. “I got my boy coming down here. He’s a good boy. Smart. Doing the best I can since his mom left when he was two. It’s the last thing I need for him to see. I thank God he’s smarter than the next, but they don’t need to be doing nasty sort of stuff in my hut. On the beach at all!”

  “How old is Junior?” Kelly spied hand sanitizer and squirted some on her palms.

  “Sixteen.”

  “None of my business, but he probably—”

  “Don’t want to hear it.” Roger shook his head. “Yesterday he was a little boy. Now he’s got a girlfriend. I’ve always hired a seasonal hand. Getting harder to find a trustworthy help. Year before, I hired the governor’s daughter. Or stepdaughter. I don’t know. Alice or something. Caught her making out with some black chick.”

  Kelly raised her brows. Her new boss didn’t like promiscuous women and he was racist? My, my, no mystery Churchston was sheltered.

  “No wonder Stella’s flipping out. Young crowd’s always rowdy on the beach.” He gave her another once-over. “You look alright, though.”

  ‘Alright’ as in she wasn’t good-looking enough to warrant sex in the hut, or alright as in she wasn’t a tramp?

  “So you aren’t working for Alan, anymore?” he asked.

  “He said he’d work around my shifts here.”

  He nodded, then jerked a thumb at her ball cap. “Braves ain’t going to make it, city girl.”

  She flipped him off and he grinned.

  Chapter 4

  On her first day of manning the hut, it didn’t take Kelly long to appreciate the father-and-son duo’s business. It was laid back. Totally opposite of nursing. Before he left her alone in the hut, Roger had explained business would pick up when the tourist season bloomed into full swing. In the meantime, she was at liberty to read, bounce a ball off the wall, people watch, ponder—as long as customers got boats when they wanted.

  Truthfully, she enjoyed Junior’s company when he wasn’t staring at her ass or boobs. Even his adolescent ogles were tolerable. Although they worked on a beach, she wasn’t wearing the bathing suit to advertise her assets—not that she believed she had many to begin with. She had decided to interpret Roger’s assessment of being ‘alright’ as one of trustworthiness, and his approval had to stand for something. In the sandy land of plastically-enhanced women in thongs and itty-bitty bikinis, eyes were surely roving elsewhere before they bothered with her.

  In the lull of brooding over her marital and career failures, Kelly didn’t stop her absent-minded rhythm of tossing the ball against the wall as people passed on the beach. As Junior had prophesized, more and more Churchston natives returned to the beach town as the warm weather approached. Peering out onto the public beach from the hut, Kelly discovered a wide variety of faces she hadn’t met on her deliveries for Alan.

  At the open bay of the garage across the street, she watched as Clay worked his magic on what had to be an underage vacationer. Then she returned her gaze to the sidewalk and saw him. The beach-running guy. Kelly frowned at him, matching his expression.

  Since the first day she had set foot in town, she had seen this guy running on the beach. It had to be the arrogant tow-truck operator. Same hoodie, same cap. Every day, he’d run on the beach. He was hauling. Like a locomotive machine, not a vacation jog, but seriously speeding. And every time she caught the blur of him in the background, she had the same impress
ion. Angry. Strong. Big. Fiery. Can you say bad-boy?

  She didn’t know his name and didn’t think it mattered. He never smiled, his lean angles tanned and stuck in a scowl or an indifferent mask of nothing. Like a robot. She’d seen him walking down Main. In and out of the bar. At the town’s sole gas station. Once he was behind her in line at the grocery store. He would drive by on his Harley or in a battered truck. She was grateful to never have delivered to him before.

  They never met eyes and Kelly believed he was a man who kept to himself. Angry at the world and antisocial the rest of the time. She wouldn’t want to be on his bad side, which, of course, had to be always since he never seemed happy. It was irritating how she couldn’t resist looking at him.

  “Something catch your eye out there?”

  Kelly jerked up from her slumped position over the counter and smiled at Clay. He had his mechanic jeans on and no shirt. Eye-candy for the womenfolk. With a smug grin and a grease-stained sack in his hand, he sauntered to the hut and hopped onto the counter.

  “Lunch break?” Kelly asked.

  “Coming to see my new roomie.”

  “There’s a wall between us. That makes us neighbors. Who’s the hulk who always runs on the beach?” She sat up straight and Clay settled in to eat, leaning his powerful arms on the counter.

  He dismissed her question with a wave. “Eh, the local drunk. He’s an asshole. How come you don’t stay with me instead of renting your own place?”

  She smiled. “You don’t really want me, Clay. I told you when you introduced yourself at the hotel the first night. Not interested.”

  “Give me one good reason why not.” He took his sunglasses off and peered closely at her with a mischievous grin.

  “Because then we couldn’t be friends.”

  “Sure we could.”

  Kelly stared at him. Casual sex did happen, but she felt no heat around him. Perplexing. The Channing Tatum lookalike in front of her was like a humping bunny. Humping bunny with the determination of the Energizer Bunny. Not her goal. But if she didn’t want a sinfully sexy man like Clay, was she really as frigid as John always told her? Her self-esteem crawled a little lower. She shook her head as he bit into his burger.