Seaside Embrace (Love in Bloom Read online

  Hunter smiled. “Yeah, I definitely want to date her. And claim her. But I’m not taking her to Undercover. I just wanted you to weigh in on the idea to see if I was off base.”

  “Trust yourself, Hunter. Even if you haven’t dated in a long time, you know how to treat a woman right. It’s who you are, man. You and me both. We know what to do; we just choose not to. We fight it.”

  “I’m pretty sure I’m done fighting it.” He turned the metal over and hammered it flat, then set it aside and picked up another piece with the tongs. “Well, we’ll see. I’m taking her to the Wicked Oyster.”

  “Wow, you’re pulling out all the stops. That place should be called Wicked Expensive.”

  “She’s worth it.” The answer came without thought and, he realized, laced with pride. He was taking Jana Garner out on a date, and that made him feel good all over. “By the way. Shaving? Turns out she totally digs it.” And it turns out that I like making her smile rather than seethe.

  Chapter Thirteen

  JANA STOOD AT her kitchen counter the next evening with her cell phone pressed to her ear while she looked over the notes she’d been jotting down since her meeting with Theresa.

  “I am so sorry I missed the breakfast when all this went down,” Sky said. “Bella said you had her get the answers you needed for the insurance company, so what happens next?”

  Jana glanced at the notebook. “I’m compiling a list of things I’ll need for the studio, and Amy called earlier. She needed the class descriptions and details about what should be on the registration forms. Jamie hooked me up with sites where I could get templates for the other legal waivers I’ll need, too. She said Jamie has the framework for the website almost done, even though we haven’t nailed down the location. Those girls, and Jamie, are incredible. They move at lightning speed. How could Jamie possibly do it that fast? All he did was ask me what I wanted on it, and I showed him a few examples.”

  “Jamie’s incredibly smart and talented. Think about it. He invented One Click, Google’s rival search engine. Who does that? The man’s a genius. A website for him is probably as easy as me tattooing a straight line.” Last year Sky had opened her own tattoo parlor, Inky Skies, in Provincetown.

  “I guess you’re right.” She flipped the page and saw where she’d scribbled, Give notice to Marco? and underlined it about fifty times. “If this really comes through, I’m not looking forward to giving my notice to Marco. He’ll shit a brick.”

  “Good. He deserves it.” Sky said. “I don’t understand why you put up with his crap anyway.”

  “Because unless I want to wait tables my whole life, I have to play the game until I figure something else out.”

  Jana closed the notebook as a knock sounded at the door, making her instantly on edge. “I gotta go.”

  “Why so fast?”

  “I have a date. I’ll call you soon. I don’t want to keep him waiting.” She blew a kiss into the phone and ended the call before Sky could ask any more questions. Sky would probably get excited if she knew she was going out on a real date with Hunter, and she didn’t want to give her false hope for something more, even though she couldn’t deny that she’d toyed with the meaning of the date all afternoon.

  Hunter had texted her once midmorning to tell her to dress up, and when she’d asked why, he’d replied, Do you have to question everything? She thought of that now as she glanced down at the dress she’d chosen. A midthigh, coral tank dress with a sheer strip along the waist and a lace overlay. Four inches of jagged-edged lace gave it a sexy hemline. She’d taken extra time to weave together a headband made of white flowers from the garden out back. She wore several shell necklaces of varying lengths and colors and a few silver bracelets on her wrist. Her sandals were flat, and she’d worn a piece of jewelry that wrapped around her middle toe and connected with beaded jewels up the center of her foot to an anklet. She felt sexy and cute, perfectly dressed for a night out. But when Hunter knocked again, her nerves came alive, making her acutely aware of exactly how different tonight was going to be.

  She inhaled deeply, hoping to calm her racing heart, and finally opened the door.

  Hunter’s eyes widened, and he made no attempt to hide his visual inspection as his eyes moved to her painted lips, lingering for a moment before moving to her breasts, then hovering again at the flash of skin at her waist. His eyes trailed down her legs, all the way to her toes. When he finally met her gaze again, she saw his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed, as if it were hard for him to find his voice, which made her feel sexy, and even more nervous.

  “Hi,” she said as he reached for her hand.

  “Hi. You look…” He laced his fingers with hers, and with his other hand he lifted a lock of her hair, which she’d worn loose and tousled. The appreciation in his eyes was all the proof she needed that she’d made the right choice for everything.

  “Incredibly sexy,” he finally said. “And those flowers in your hair? Jesus...” He lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles.

  The sweetness of that kiss made her cheeks flush.

  “You look really handsome, too.” Hunter in jeans was enough to make her head spin, but Hunter in a pair of dark slacks, loafers, and a black button-down shirt could melt her panties right off.

  He slid a hand around her waist and leaned in for a kiss. It wasn’t anything like the hungry kisses they usually shared. This kiss was tender and soft and held the promise of more. And by more, she didn’t think it was a promise of anything sexual. No, this kiss, coupled with the way he was holding her hand and keeping his body a safe distance from hers, told her that this was a promise of something important. Her emotions whirled around her, delighting and scaring her at once.

  Jana was so nervous on the way to the restaurant that she had to use the old calming technique she hadn’t used since she taught her very first dance class when she was nineteen. She closed her eyes and imagined the song “Let Me Down Easy” by Billy Currington. It was her go-to song for calming down when she was nervous, and now, as she sang the lyrics in her head, lyrics that were clearly not about dance but about love, she opened her eyes and stole a glance at Hunter, who reached for her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze, careening her nerves to life again.

  Twenty minutes later they were seated at a corner table at the Wicked Oyster restaurant.

  “You didn’t have to take me someplace so expensive, Hunter. I would have been happy at Mac’s or PJ’s.” The Wicked Oyster was probably the most expensive restaurant in Wellfleet.

  Hunter was seated across from her, and before responding, he got up and moved to the seat beside her, making her feel even more special, and nervous again. He reached for her hand and laced their fingers together.

  “I wanted to take you someplace we could talk. I know you love to dance, so I thought we could hit someplace else afterward. Your choice. This way I have you all to myself, without distractions, at least for a little while.”

  This type of attention was so different from what she was used to with Hunter that for a moment she couldn’t respond. Luckily, the waitress came over to take their drink order. Her eyes lingered a moment too long on Hunter, whose eyes never left Jana. The waitress appeared to be in her late twenties, with creamy white skin that made her blue eyes pop and shoulder-length black hair. She was breathtakingly beautiful.

  Hunter ordered their drinks, glancing only momentarily at the waitress.

  When she walked away, Jana said, “She was gorgeous.”

  “I didn’t notice.” Hunter opened the menu and handed it to Jana.

  Jana had the urge to roll her eyes and call him on laying it on too thick, but she bit her tongue, realizing that she’d looked at the waitress longer than he had. Everything about Hunter was different tonight. His shoulders weren’t raised with tension, and his facial features weren’t tight.

  He was still holding her hand, and as he lifted his eyes, he caught her staring and smiled. “What?”

  She lowered
her eyes, suddenly feeling nervous again.

  “What is it? You were looking at me funny.”

  “It’s just…I don’t know what to make of this.” Honesty came easy with Hunter, even if she felt funny admitting the truth to him.

  His brows knitted. “Our date?”

  “Our date. You. This. Being here with you.” She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “You’re different tonight. Like, totally different.”

  Worry snuck into his eyes. “I’m trying not to be my typical asshole self.”

  “Oh my God, Hunter. You’re not an asshole.” Is that what he thought she thought of him?

  “Yeah, I can be.” He tried to pull his hand from hers, but she held on tight.

  “Maybe we both can, but I don’t think of you as one.” She crooked her finger, and he leaned in closer, eyes on their hands. “To be honest, I like the person you are.” She waited for him to lift his eyes, then said, “A lot.”

  That earned her a heart-melting smile.

  “I like this, too,” she assured him. “But you don’t have to be someone else to try to impress me.” Did that sound self-centered? Like he thought he had to impress her? She quickly added, “Not that I think you’re trying to—”

  He lifted his finger to her lips, gently silencing her. “I’m glad about all of that, but I like this. It feels good to treat you like the beautiful woman you are.”

  His eyes dropped for a moment, and when he met her gaze again, the wicked glint that she knew oh so well was back. “It feels almost as good as when we’re not on a proper date and I get to ravage you.”

  He leaned back, and she tried to remember how to breathe.

  ***

  THEY SHARED AN appetizer of steamed mussels and enjoyed their dinners and a few glasses of wine. Hunter had wanted to kiss Jana at least a hundred times as they talked, but he fought the urge, wanting this date to be different from what they usually did. But while conversation came easily with Jana, he caught himself getting lost in her smile, or the joy in her eyes as she talked about a musical she was in two summers earlier, before they’d even met.

  “I wish I could have seen you perform.” He imagined her up onstage and knew that she’d outshine everyone. If she could act and sing half as well as she danced, she’d blow anyone away.

  Hunter paid the bill, and they headed outside into the cool night air.

  “Did you know that this restaurant used to be located on Billingsgate Island?” Billingsgate Island was an island off of Cape Cod. A storm had divided the island in half in 1855, and the island had continued to erode away in the following years, until it was lost to coastal erosion in the late 1930s and early 1940s. He settled his hand on her lower back as they walked across the parking lot.

  “No, but that’s fascinating.”

  “This and many of the houses from Billingsgate were floated across the harbor to Wellfleet on rafts. Can you imagine how different everything must have looked back then? How different it was without the Internet, without cell phones, without everything at our fingertips?”

  “Without midnight FaceTime sex?”

  They both laughed. The lower Cape was less technology driven, but Wellfleet in particular was a sleepy little town that relied more on family outings than online entertainment. It was one of the things Hunter enjoyed most about the area. Although, as he gazed into Jana’s eyes, he had to admit that he loved his iPhone now more than ever.

  “I for one am very glad for technology.” He couldn’t help pulling her in tight against his side as they came to the truck.

  “Thank you for dinner, Hunter. This was so nice.” Jana put her hand on her stomach. “I’m so full, though. I don’t think I can go dancing.”

  Hunter wasn’t ready for the night to end, but he wondered if she was blowing him off. Maybe while he was falling for her one sentence at a time, she was wishing she were somewhere else. The thought killed him.

  “Do you want me to take you home?” He tried to hide his disappointment by sounding casual, but he couldn’t deny the tension in his voice.

  “No.” She wrinkled her brow. “Oh, wait. Do you want to take me home? Because if you do, then—”

  He lowered his lips to hers and kissed her with all the adoration he’d been holding back over dinner. The kiss started so differently from the firestorm they usually battled. It was a kiss of confirmation, of their two worlds colliding. He couldn’t resist deepening the kiss. She went up on her toes, hands fisted in his shirt. As he drew away to catch his breath, she tried to get nearer.

  He’d promised himself that he was not, under any circumstances, going to land in bed with Jana tonight. After talking with Grayson, he realized that he already felt possessive of Jana in ways that made it feel like she was his even though she clearly wasn’t. And by the time he’d picked her up for their date, he’d realized not only how much he wanted to make her his—but how badly he wanted to be hers. The thought should have made him run, but he’d had the opposite reaction. He wanted to try harder, to make her feel so special that she couldn’t possibly want any other man.

  Once he’d made up his mind, letting go of the tension he wore like armor had been surprisingly easy. Like he’d just been waiting for the okay from his stubborn brain to strip away the shield and bring Jana into his world.

  Now he battled the desires coursing through him, the urge to take her home and show her how much he wanted her.

  “Jana.” He touched his forehead to hers, trying to regain control. “The last thing I want is for our date to end.”

  “Me either.”

  Her words shot straight to his heart, reminding him that taking her home was not his endgame. He had bigger hopes.

  “How about a walk?” he suggested.

  She nodded, and he reached for her hand, then thought better of it and tucked an arm around her waist, wanting to feel her close to him. He might not take her to bed, but being near Jana was becoming not only familiar, but something he craved.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “DO YOU LIKE to read?” Jana asked as they followed Main Street toward town, passing Herridge Books, which was closing for the evening. The town was reminiscent of days gone by, from the old-fashioned storefronts to the books residents read—paperback or hardback, not e-readers. The world of e-readers and smartphones belonged more to tourists than residents.

  “Yes. How about you?”

  “I do. I don’t have much time to read these days, but I love a good science fiction or fantasy novel.”

  Hunter laughed. “No way.”

  “Way. Big way, actually. I love them. Harper makes fun of me for it, because I’m a total closet Trekky, and don’t even get me started on Doctor Who.”

  “Jana Garner, I think you just made me like you a little more.” Hunter had been a Doctor Who fan forever, but he’d never met a woman who liked it.

  She leaned her head against him as they walked, and she felt so good, so right, Hunter was sure she belonged there.

  They talked about their favorite episodes and how they both kept their love of science fiction quiet, for fear of being teased. He loved discovering that they had much more in common than just great sexual chemistry.

  They passed the Wellfleet Market and the consignment shop, where a family was gathered out front eating ice cream cones.

  “Tell me about this studio you want to open. I had no idea you were even contemplating doing something like that.”

  “I wouldn’t say that I was contemplating it.” She pulled him toward the street. “Want to get ice cream?”

  He laughed as she hurried across the street with a bounce in her step. “I thought you were too full to dance.”

  “I was, but I can never pass up ice cream, especially not here, where they have my favorite flavor, Chunk O’ Funk.” They followed the stone path around to the back of the A Nice Cream Shop, where the line to order was at least ten couples deep.

  “We don’t have to wait.” Jana looked up at Hunter, and he wondered how, in
just a handful of days, she’d gone from the hot chick he wanted to fuck to the only woman he wanted to be with.

  He shrugged. “I’ve got time to wait if you do.”

  “Really?” She scrunched her nose, looking impossibly cute.

  “You’re my only plan for tonight.” He leaned in for a quick kiss. “But only if you tell me about this dance studio you want to open.”

  “It’s still a little unbelievable to me. I’m trying to come to grips with it all, so it’s hard to talk about.” She hooked her finger in the front of his pants, and he could see the excitement in her eyes, tempered by worry.

  “Do you want to try? Or would you rather not share it yet?”

  Her forehead wrinkled, and her face grew serious. He hated the idea of being locked out of something so important to her, but he wouldn’t push if she wasn’t ready.

  “It’s okay, pretty girl. Tell me about your current job. Why do you want to quit? Is that something you’re comfortable talking about?”

  She explained about her boss leaving town on what was supposed to be a short-term basis but had turned into months, and how she was forced into taking over the job of a full-time manager. Irritation tightened his chest at the thought of Jana being taken advantage of.

  The line moved quickly as she explained. After getting their cones, Hunter pulled her in close again as they walked back toward Main Street eating their ice cream.

  “Have you talked to your boss about hiring someone new to handle some of the work you’re doing?”

  She ran her tongue around her ice cream and peered up at him from behind a lock of hair that had fallen in front of her eyes. Holy hell. Did she want to take him to his knees right there and then? There was absolutely nothing sexier than Jana eating ice cream.

  She licked her lips and nodded.

  He was wrong. Jana licking ice cream from her lips was neck and neck with her tongue sliding over the mound of ice cream. He couldn’t tear his eyes away.

  “You’re killing me.” He tightened his jaw and forced himself to look away before his arousal became any more noticeable. “Warn me next time not to get you ice cream unless we’re alone.”