by Serena Bell
“Let it come, Auburn. Come, baby.”
The tension drew one impossible notch more taut—nipple, belly, clit, core—and he leaned in close and kissed her again, his body blocking her from the view of the passing beach walkers, shielding his hand between her thighs and his hand under her shirt, over lace, teasing, teasing. She tipped over the edge behind the screen of his body, a scream held tight in her throat, the roar of the ocean drowning all the lesser sounds—the harsh pants of his breath in her ear, the squeak she couldn’t contain. The orgasm rolled through her like thunder, wave after wave of pleasure. His hand dropped away from her nipple just as it got too sensitive to bear, but the other one stayed snug against her sex, coaxing the last squeeze out of her inner muscles.
She held her breath while the people passed on, their voices fading.
“God, Trey, God.”
“Beach magic,” he murmured into her hair.
24
Holy shit.
He’d suspected it would be good between them. He’d known that the chemistry would be explosive. But he hadn’t been prepared for how good it would feel to make Auburn fall apart.
His dick was so hard behind the zipper of his jeans that it was taking all the self-control he had not to rock the palm of his hand against it.
Beach magic indeed.
She still had her face buried against his shirt, her body limp and relaxed in his arms. He was waiting for her to lift her face and show him the aftermath. He wanted to see her cheeks flushed with what he’d done to her. Her eyes bright and sparkling.
Instead, she pulled back from him and turned away.
Shit.
He knew that posture. Everyone knew it.
Regret.
And why was he fucking surprised? He knew this was crazy.
“Auburn.”
“Thank you. That was amazing.” Her tone was formal.
“Look at me, sweetheart. I can tell you’re freaking out.”
“I’m not freaking out. I’m … confused.”
He reached for her hand, and she let him take it. It was reassuring in his. Like she hadn’t retreated fully, not yet.
“You want to talk about it?”
“It can’t help but change things. Like it’ll influence your decision about Beachcrest in some way. In some way that’s bad for me,” she clarified.
“Give me some credit,” he said sternly. “I can separate business and sex.”
She looked away from him, out at the darkness lowering over the ocean. “Of course you can. I forgot for a second who I was dealing with.” Her voice was strained.
Damn it, he hadn’t meant—
But if he hadn’t meant that—that this was just sex—what did that mean?
“Auburn.”
“It’s just—I wasn’t supposed to do that. I made a deal with myself. That I was going to sort myself out, get my life on track, stand on my own two feet, before I let anyone in my pants.”
“I can’t imagine you not standing on your own two feet,” he said.
“Yeah, well, you didn’t see me with Patrick.”
He just couldn’t picture her getting knocked backwards. She was fierce and quick and a match for any man he’d ever met, himself included. “What did he do to you, Auburn?”
She seemed to fold in on herself, and for a moment, he didn’t think she was going to answer. Then she squared her shoulders. “I met him when I was working a weekend at The Nines in Portland. They were understaffed and one of my school friends called me and said they were paying double overtime for good people who could fill in.”
He whistled, and a fleeting smile passed over her face, then vanished. “It was fun for a couple of days, being there, but it wasn’t really my thing. Lots of entitled Silicon Vall—” She slammed her lips shut.
He laughed. “Entitled Silicon Valley assholes?”
She bit her lip and smiled sheepishly. “Let’s just say a lot of guys who thought the hotel staff lived to serve them.”
“Was Patrick one of them?” Although Patrick was a different brand of entitled. He was a New York I-banker who—Trey knew—had grown up Connecticut country-club rich. That was a whole other breed from the guys Trey encountered in the West Coast tech subculture. No better—but different.
“No. He actually called out one of his colleagues who was treating me like shit.”
Trey felt a stab of appreciation, mixed with—well, fuck it. Envy. Because his situation with Auburn up to this point hadn’t allowed him to be much of a hero. The opposite, in fact. But at least he hadn’t done anything calculated to get in her pants. The Patrick Moriarty he knew from reputation was more than capable of standing up for a woman with the sole goal of getting laid. Hell, the Patrick Moriarty he knew was entirely capable of orchestrating an incident just to give himself a chance to play the hero.
You don’t know that’s what happened, he chastised himself.
“He asked me out. Wined and dined and totally, completely snowed me. Talk about being swept off your feet. He got us reservations at exclusive restaurants no one could get into for months. Flew me to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower. Booked us an exclusive nighttime Disney World tour. We did a long weekend in Bangkok. You get the idea.”
Okay, he really didn’t like that. The idea of Patrick Moriarty pulling out all the stops to woo Auburn … Trey was still feeling the surge of intense power that went along with what they’d just done—the pleasure he’d given her, but the rest of it, too, the way she’d let him take charge, when she didn’t let him do that in any other arena. And while he had no right to feel possessive of her, at the moment he didn’t want any other man, ever, to have swept her off her feet.
“He asked me to move to New York. I agonized, but he was so persuasive.” She frowned. “I turned my back on my family. My career. I didn’t realize yet that there weren’t a million other Beachcrests out there. I thought I could find something else similar. I took a couple of jobs in New York hotels—but oh, God, I hated those jobs. Patrick kept saying maybe hospitality wasn’t for me, and I started to think he was right.”
He couldn’t help it; he made a strangled sound of dissent.
“I know,” she said wearily. “I started taking other jobs here and there, but nothing worked out. And by then Patrick was saying, ‘You don’t need to work, Auburn. I want to take care of you. And eventually I got worn down.
“And it wasn’t just that. We lived in his New York apartment. He had people to do everything—cooking, cleaning, shopping—so there wasn’t much I could do to be useful. We almost never socialized. He said he wanted to protect me from the media and how catty people were in his social circles, and that sounded good to me. That wouldn’t have been my scene. But I didn’t realize how small my world was getting.”
“I did a bunch of volunteer work, but he was always saying he thought people were taking advantage of my good nature. He was very loving but also very possessive, so if I spent time with people other than him, it made him jealous. So—”
She closed her eyes.
“So I stopped. I stopped visiting my siblings because it made him so unhappy for me to leave for four or five days at a time, and he was always too busy with work to fly to the West Coast. You see where this is going, don’t you?”
He nodded. His stomach was knotted up from the effort of not cursing out Patrick Moriarty.
“Chiara had tried to tell me from the beginning that he was bad news, and toward the end, she stepped it up, until—I stopped calling her or taking her calls. Because it felt like I had to choose between Chiara’s view of things and Patrick’s, and I couldn’t believe that Patrick, who loved me so much, would—”
She made a small choking sound, and he reached for her, but she pulled away. “Chiara came to New York. She tried to basically do an intervention. Point out to me what had happened, what I’d given up, what I’d become. And I told her to get the hell out, to go away and not come back.”
Her shoulders were shaking, but her v
oice was still steady. Strong.
“It happened so slowly. That’s my only defense. My world got smaller and smaller and smaller until he filled the whole thing, and I didn’t notice because he never hurt me. He wasn’t emotionally abusive. He was so careful, so subtle, the way he controlled me. He never even really gaslit me. Not until near the end, when I finally admitted I was unhappy and he made it all about me. About how I didn’t know how to be happy or how to see the good in things. He said I’d always let Chiara control me and that she was still trying to manipulate me because she was jealous of my relationship with him. And a lot of other bullshit. He played me like a violin.”
“But you left him. In the end.”
She took a deep breath. “I did. It was Beachcrest that saved me, to be perfectly honest. Carl called me. He said he’d fired yet another crappy manager and that the job was open. He knew it was longer than a long shot …”
Tears were running down her face, and his fingers ached with the need to wipe them away. He knew he wasn’t the one who’d made her cry—but it still hurt like a mofo.
“I wouldn’t have come home for Chiara. Or any of my siblings. Or Carl, even. But something about Beachcrest needing me gave me the courage to take a really hard look at where I was and how different it was from where I’d meant to be. I hated what I saw. I finally saw what Chiara saw, and heard what she’d been trying to tell me. I can’t even explain why. Maybe I was just ready. But what I know is, Beachcrest brought me home.”
The truth of what Patrick had done to Auburn made his stomach hurt. He’d hidden her away from the world and systematically taken away all the things that mattered to her. Auburn thrived on people, glowed with the joy she got out of them. If she’d been his, instead of Patrick’s, he would have wanted to watch her meet someone new every day. Not kept her locked up like some kind of exotic bird in a—
In a gilded cage.
His thought train screeched to a stop like a needle skidding on a record. Was he really any better than Patrick? Hadn’t he done almost exactly that to Karina? Wasn’t he still trying to do it to Brynn and Carl?
“So you see,” she said. “I lost myself in that relationship. I lost track of who I was, what I needed. And that’s why I vowed to figure out all those things first, before—” She sighed. “Look. That—” she gestured to encompass what had just passed between them. “—was amazing. I want to do it again. I want to do it again right fucking now. And I want you to get yours.” She gave him a sexy smirk that breathed new life into his dick, which had just calmed down. “But—with Patrick, I didn’t know what I was getting into. I didn’t see how the sex was all caught up with money and power. In this situation? I already know it. And I’d be an idiot—” She took a deep breath. “This can’t happen again.”
He wanted to cry out that it didn’t have to be that way. That he wasn’t Patrick.
But he could also hear Karina’s voice in his head. I’ve tried, Karina had said. I’ve tried so hard. To make you see me. To make you listen. To make you understand what I need. But it’s all about money to you. It’s all about work. You’re like King Midas. Everything you touch turns to gold, including all the people you’re supposed to love.
He shook his head, to ward it off. Brush it away.
Karina was right. Auburn was right.
He was about money. He was about this sale. He was about saving his business. There was no other way out. And he couldn’t have both.
Slowly, grudgingly, he nodded. “You’re right.”
“Shit,” she said, and for a second he thought she was referring to the substance they’d just landed themselves in, until she yanked her phone out of her pocket and peered at it. “One of the guests is having a crisis and Luz needs backup, so I have to get back. Help me put the fire out?”
It took him a moment to realize she meant the literal blaze in front of them. They smothered it with water and stones, and he helped her wheel the cart back up to the inn.
“Can I help with the crisis?” he asked, when they reached the shed and she’d stowed the wheelbarrow.
She grinned at him. “As much as it would give me sick pleasure to make you wield the steam cleaner, I don’t think it’s going to improve your opinion of Beachcrest if I bring you with me. It’s the less glamorous side of the gig, I’m afraid. One of the kids just threw up.” She sighed. “Happens almost every time we have kids at a hotdog roast. They don’t know their own capacity when it comes to marshmallows.” She shrugged. “I’m used to it. You’re off the hook.”
“Thanks,” he said, laughing.
He had turned to go, when she called him back.
“Trey. Thank you. And—I’m usually all for reciprocating, it’s just—”
“No,” he said. “That was—” He didn’t know how to say what he felt. That even though things couldn’t keep going that way between them, he in no way, shape, or form could regret what had just happened. “That was for you. You owe me nothing. I’d hate it if you thought that.”
“Well. Thank you.”
He parted ways from her, went back to his room, flopped down on the bed.
And found himself, idiotically, impossibly, ridiculously, wishing he’d gone with her to help with cleanup.
Who are you, and what have you done with Trey Xavier?
It was just three days ago that everything had been so clear. That it had made perfect sense. That he had known what he needed to do and how to do it.
Cleaning up vomit was no one’s idea of a good time, that was for sure. But if he’d gone with her, he’d be with her. And he’d know exactly what he was supposed to do next.
As it was, his emotions were a mess, and he had no idea where to start with the cleanup.
25
Brynn and the boys found him setting up beach chairs for parade viewing on a stretch of Main Street sidewalk. Auburn had sent him ahead, an advance guard, to stake out the territory for Beachcrest guests.
“You’ve got a lot of explaining to do,” Brynn said.
He gave her his best innocent wide-eyed look.
“Don’t bullsh—” She shot a look toward her boys. “Don’t yank my chain. You know what I mean. Beach fire. Marshmallows. Hot dogs. And now you’re watching a parade, and you’re cheerful about it. It’s her, isn’t it? Auburn.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Boys, you see the Starbucks over there? Take this money and get yourselves a snack, okay?” Brynn handed his nephews cash and turned back to him as soon as they took off. Her too-sharp eyes scraped over him, and there was nowhere to hide. “You like her!”
That, too, was spoken in the tone of an accusation, and there was no point in denying it. He didn’t even try.
She was obviously completely delighted with this turn of events. “So that’s what the hot dog roast thing was all about. And you inviting me and the boys to watch the parade in front of Beachcrest.”
He shook his head. “No. This has nothing to do with that. Carl and I cut a deal—he’d let me sell Beachcrest if I spent a week letting her show me Beachcrest’s finer features—”
“And she turned out to be one of its finest!” Brynn burst out.
“You’re having way too much fun with this.”
“I just haven’t seen you enjoying yourself like you did last night since before Mom died,” she said.
That shut them both up for a minute—as any mention of their mother’s death did—but Brynn was irrepressible. “I couldn’t figure out why you were suddenly acting like a real human being. But it’s because you got roped into it. I knew there had to be money on the line somehow or other.”
That hurt—but since it was true enough—there was money on the line—he didn’t dispute it.
“But that doesn’t explain why you seem to be genuinely having a good time.”
“No,” he said, fighting a smile. “It doesn’t.”
She stared at him for a long time. “Well,” she said. “Well, well, well.”
/> “Don’t get too excited. It can’t happen. Believe me. I spent most of last night trying to figure it out, and—she and I? It’s just not an option.”
“Because you’re going to tear down her inn.”
She said it matter of factly, but the voice that spoke up behind him was anything but matter of fact.
“He is, the ass! He’s—Trey, you’ve turned into someone I don’t even know.”
He turned to find Carl there, a little hunch-shouldered—the surgery scars were still bothering him—but otherwise more or less himself. For better or for worse…
“I didn’t teach you to do business the way you’re doing it now. Fighting dirty with the people you care about. Selling to the highest bidder even if there’s someone else who needs it more—”
“Grandpa, you just got out of the hospital,” Brynn said. “This isn’t the time or the place—”
“I do business exactly the way you taught me to,” Trey said stiffly.
“Trey, walk away,” Brynn said.
“Bullshit,” Carl said. “I taught you that when being a good human conflicted with being a good businessperson, you should always be a good human.”
“What you forgot,” Trey said coldly, “is that when other people are depending on you, being a good businessperson is the best way to be a good human.”
Carl pinned him with eyes that despite being bloodshot and a little rheumy, were still a piercing gray. His mother’s eyes, and his own. “You think I should have helped your parents out. You think if I hadn’t thrown good money after bad so many times, I could have kept your mother from working herself to—so hard.”
Trey acknowledged the truth of that with a tight nod.
“Regardless of what you said the other day in my hospital room, Trey, I know I disappointed you. And if I have one regret in life, it’s that. You didn’t deserve to see another role model screw up on your watch. But you’re wrong about one thing. I did try to give your parents money. Your father wouldn’t take it. He was too proud and stubborn.”
He heard the whoosh of air leaving Brynn’s lungs, but he couldn’t breathe in or out.
