by Jill Shalvis
She knew what that expressionless facade meant. It meant he’d been deeply affected by whatever he’d seen.
She watched him go. Correction, she watched his leanly muscled bod move effortlessly in faded-to-buttery-soft Levi’s that so lovingly cupped his…assets.
And then she was flanked by the girls in the office.
“He’s so damn hot,” Dani whispered. “I mean, he just oozes testosterone and badassness, you know?”
The other office helper, Shelly, hummed her agreement. “Just like his brothers.”
Sophie divided a look between them. “There’s a pack of them?”
“The Kincaids,” Dani said. “That one’s Jacob, the missing Kincaid brother. He’s back.”
Shelly nodded. “Hud looked pissed off about it too.”
“They’re twins,” Dani explained to Sophie’s blank look. “I’m pretty sure they haven’t spoken in years. Not even when Jacob called or came into town to visit his mom.”
“Wonder if Jacob’s seen the new mural at the resort yet,” Shelly mused. “It’s got all the Kincaid siblings on it, including him, which has gotta be weird, coming into town and seeing yourself painted on the side of a building.”
“Yeah,” Dani said dryly. “’Cuz that’s what he’s worried about. Not that he hasn’t seen his twin or his other siblings in years, but what he looks like painted on a wall.”
“Hey, you’ve seen that wall. You know how good he looks.”
Sophie was flummoxed. She knew of the Kincaids; everyone in town did. They ran the ski resort up the road. She’d temped in the business office there for two days last week, answering phones, and she’d seen all of them several times. Gray was the oldest, then Aidan, Hudson, and Kenna.
And now that she thought of it, Hudson and her Lake Patrol Guy—Jacob—had looked alike, very much so. But Jacob was broader and more built, and his hair was military short—a direct contrast to the several-days-old scruff on his jaw. But more than anything, what set the twins apart was the air of danger and authority Jacob emitted.
Not that Hud was a pussycat by any means. As a cop and head of ski patrol at the resort, he was tough in his own right, but Jacob was a whole new level of badassery and testosterone.
“Those brothers are hot,” Dani said. “And now that the resort has leased North Beach for the summer to host events, there’s going to be hot guys everywhere—better than any online dating app out there.”
Which meant that Sophie should put the boat up for sale. North Beach’s campground was where she’d been showering, but once summer got into swing with these events and Kincaids everywhere, including Lake Patrol Jacob, it’d be too crowded for her to be able to lie low. And if she sold the boat, she could go anywhere. Except…
She didn’t want to go anywhere. She loved Cedar Ridge.
“You okay, Sophie?” Shelly asked. “You’ve been looking a little green lately.”
No, she wasn’t okay. She was mad at the entire male population, thank you very much, not that she was about to admit such a weakness. Or her secret shame—Lucas had closed her accounts, forced her from her apartment, and as a result, the once-upon-a-time enviably chic, had-her-shit-together Sophie Marren had sunk just about as low as she could get.
So low that all her married friends had—politely, mind you—ditched her for Lucas. And just today she’d been dumped by her book club. On Facebook.
Humiliating.
But she’d made a choice not to care what others thought of her, including Lucas. And yet another choice, she decided on the spot, would be to fix her life. She didn’t need a knight in shining armor. Especially not one with dark, melting eyes who made her feel far more than she wanted to feel.
“Sophie?” Shelly asked, sharing a worried look with Dani.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “I’m fine. I just need caffeine.”
But caffeine didn’t help.
Late that afternoon, Sophie walked to the marina and stared at The Lucas where she’d left it. “I hate you,” she told it.
The kid standing in the booth at the marina gate about twenty feet away started laughing. “Lady, you don’t know your boat very well. The Lucas is awesome.”
“You think?”
“Well, sure,” he said. “She rides real sweet. Or that’s what your husband always says when he gets on it with—” He slammed his mouth shut and flushed a beet red. “I, uh…” He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and stared at it with desperation, like he was hoping it’d ring.
Sophie just shook her head and headed down the dock.
“Hey, wait! You forgot to pay your day fees,” the kid called after her. “Twenty bucks.”
Dammit. She strode over to him, shoved her hand in her purse, and pulled out her wallet. It took her a moment to scrounge it all up, but she slapped the money on the booth’s counter between them.
“Remember you have to be moored by sundown or risk a fine,” he said.
“I remember.” She climbed onto the bane of her existence, kicked off her heels, sank to a vinyl bench, and closed her eyes.
And then jerked them open when the wake from another boat came along and jostled her. Before she could start to feel sick again, she moved to the wheel, started up the boat, and pulled out of the marina.
She’d implied to Jacob that she would be mooring at his place tonight, but hell if she really would. It took her an hour to find a stretch of beach that looked quiet. She knew she could get a ticket, but it was late enough that she hoped Jacob Kincaid had already made his patrol.
Days went by but Sophie was able to ward off further motion sickness with a prescription patch she wore on her neck. She also somehow managed to get to work and moor the boat secretively every night.
It was killing her. The constant moving around, the feeling like a thief in the night.
She’d spent the last two days working at a high-end interior designer shop that catered to the rich and wealthy second-home owners in the area. She was exhausted when, after being on her feet and running around for ten hours, she boarded the boat where she’d left it at the day dock at the campgrounds on the south side.
She levered the throttle and let the sun and wind hit her face, and for a moment, just a single beat of a moment, she enjoyed herself. But eventually reality sank in. She needed to find a place before nightfall. She’d used up all her secret spots and after half an hour ended up at the cabin where everything had started. It took her a few minutes to tie the boat properly, but a lot less time than it used to.
She was out of options and had nowhere else to go, no one to turn to—at least no one she was willing to turn to.
She could leave town entirely. She knew this. She could sell the boat and go. But it wasn’t Cedar Ridge making her unhappy. In fact, she loved it here. She wouldn’t let Lucas take this town from her. He’d taken enough, and she was over it.
Besides, where would she go? Back to Dallas? Brooklyn, her sister, was a few years older than Sophie. She had her life together and didn’t need the hassle of a baby sister whose life was in the toilet. Her parents were in Dallas, too, but she couldn’t go there.
It wasn’t until she’d left for college at age eighteen with two hundred bucks in her pocket and an ancient VW that she’d realized there was nothing normal about a father who, on good days, would sit like a zombie on the couch with a month-old beard, unshowered because he was too “tired of living” to get it together to help his daughter with her math homework—even though once upon a time he’d been a brilliant physicist. And on bad days…She closed her eyes at the memory of having to shut all the shades in the house and keep the lights off, not making a single sound for sometimes forty-eight hours or more at a time, not even the creaking of the wood floors beneath her feet, because her dad’s migraines had been so bad.
No, she was satisfied with the semiannual visits she made to put in her time, to help out however she could. But more than that and she was afraid she’d end up like her dad and forget how to be ha
ppy, afraid she’d return to that shell of herself.
She was over doing that, for anyone.
The sun had begun to sink behind the mountain peaks now, casting the water in a brilliant glow, making it glitter like a bed of diamonds. In a single heartbeat the air shifted from warm to chilly, and she shivered.
She hadn’t been able to get the heater below deck going, not once. And since she wasn’t at the campground, her shower would be short, have the water pressure of an eye dropper, and be holy-shit icy cold. But she’d been saving something that would cheer her up.
She went to the tiny galley and grabbed the bottle of Glenlivet she’d found hidden on her first night out here. It’d been shoved way in the back of a cabinet, forgotten, though the moment she’d seen it, she’d known what it was.
The Scotch that Lucas had purchased on the same day he’d bought the boat and kept on board to show off to his guests. She’d asked him once why he never drank it, and he’d barked out a laugh.
“It’s special,” he’d said mysteriously. “I’m saving it for something special.”
She had no idea what that something special might’ve been, but she suspected divorcing her had been high on the list of options.
Good thing the last laugh was on him. “Finders keepers,” she murmured, and grabbed it, along with the small can of paint she’d purchased at the hardware store on the walk home.
Knowing it would be cold on deck, she searched for her jacket but couldn’t find it. Then she remembered she’d had it in her car—the one Lucas had taken back.
Shrugging, she pulled her fuzzy, thick pink bathrobe on right over the sundress she’d worn to work and headed up to the deck.
She went out to the dock and eyed the words on the hull—The Lucas.
Who named their boat after themselves? Asswads with egos bigger than their dicks, that’s who.
She opened the can and very carefully made an adjustment. The Lucas became…The Little Lucas.
She stood on the dock and eyeballed it with a pleased smile. Better. Much better.
She’d just finished with another extra swirl and was feeling righteous when someone with very long legs crouched at her side.
She looked up, and her gaze collided with Jacob of the dark sunglasses and darker smile. He stood there in a white long-sleeved Henley and an unbelievably fine-fitting pair of faded jeans. “You I’m not speaking to,” she said.
He didn’t appear in the least bit bothered by this. “The Little Lucas,” he read. “I like it. How have you been?”
Not wanting to think about how his nonjudgmental smile and words warmed her. “Great.” She went to smash the bottle of Glenlivet against the hull, but he caught her wrist.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Rechristening the boat.”
“That seems like a waste of a very good twenty-five-year-old Scotch.”
She gave him a long look.
He smiled. “Right. You’re still not speaking to me. And just for curiosity’s sake, why is that again?”
“I’m into making new and improved choices for myself,” she said. “And not repeating any bad patterns is one of those new choices.”
“I’m a bad pattern?”
“The worst.”
He seemed amused by this.
“And plus, you didn’t tell me you were one of the infamous Kincaid brothers,” she said.
He shrugged. “Been away long enough that I don’t necessarily feel like one of them right now.”
This stopped her. Up until now she’d seen him as only Lake Patrol Guy, an authority figure she could happily and easily resent. Dislike.
But suddenly he was also a real man, and given that carefully blank look on his face and the hint of pain in his eyes, he was also much more. He was flesh and blood, with feelings and emotions, no matter how well hidden. It shamed her a little bit because she realized she wasn’t the only one hurting. He was just better at hiding it than she.
Proving it, he gestured to the bottle. “I can drink without speaking,” he said. “How about you?”
Sophie thought about that for a minute. “I was going to watch it dump into the water with great enthusiasm.”
He cocked his head, his eyes hooded, a slight curve to his lips. “Why?”
She decided to answer only because he wasn’t judging her, not because he had focused those warm chocolate-brown eyes on her. “It belonged to my ex-husband, and he’s the king of all the assholes in all the land.”
“A good reason,” he said agreeably. “Except for the flaw.”
“The flaw?” she asked mistrustfully.
“That bottle probably cost close to four hundred bucks.”
Shocked, she stared at him. Lucas had cut her off without a penny to her name. She’d been dodging lake patrol because she couldn’t afford a boat pass for going on two weeks now. He’d made her a criminal. “That asshole,” she finally whispered around a tight throat. But oh, hell no was she going to cry. She refused to shed a single tear over the disaster she’d let a man make of her life.
But damn. Letting out a breath, she jerked from Jacob’s hold and struggled to open the bottle. The alcohol was so going down.
Again he reached in and stilled her frantic movements. Slowly, like he was dealing with a deranged chick—which he totally was—he pried the bottle from her clutches and opened it without straining in the slightest, although the muscles in his arms moved quite enticingly. Then he offered the bottle to her.
She accepted it, lifted it in a mocking toast, took a tentative sip, and promptly choked.
Grinning, he took the bottle.
“Are you allowed to drink on duty?” she asked.
He gave her an odd look. “I’m not on duty right now.” He gestured to the cabin behind her. Now that it was becoming dark, she could see the cabin was lit up from within, looking homey and inviting. And she’d somehow missed the fact that there was a new truck parked in the driveway next to it.
“I saw you from the front porch,” he said.
“You bought the cabin?”
“Rented it.” And then he took a pull of the Scotch as well.
And didn’t choke.
She watched his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed. She stared at the stubble on his jaw and the way the corners of his eyes crinkled when he relaxed a little bit. And then there was his mouth. Pulling the bottle away from that mouth, he licked his lips, and from deep within her came a…quiver.
Not good. So. Not. Good. She already knew she couldn’t make a smart decision to save her life under the best of circumstances, of which this most definitely wasn’t.
“Something I said?” he asked wryly as she backed away.
“No.” Yes. She paused, because in truth she had no idea.
What she did know was that he churned her up, big-time—though she’d go to hell and back before admitting such a thing. “I’ve gotta go,” she said, and bolted belowdecks. She closed the door and then pressed an ear to it, listening, hoping to hear his footsteps moving off.
She heard nothing.
But then again, she hadn’t heard him coming either. For such a big guy, he’d sneaked up on her several times now, and that made her nervous, very nervous.
Lucas had been big too, and also sneaky.
And sometimes mean.
Which was why Jacob’s obvious virility was a problem. He moved like a cat. A big, sleek, lethally sexy cat…
She froze at that. She backed up the thought and ran it by herself again. A big, sleek, lethally sexy cat…? No. No, no, no, no. Jacob was not sexy, not in the slightest.
Except he was.
The truth was, Jacob was so damn sexy she couldn’t see straight for all the wanting and yearning he’d caused inside her, and that was the biggest problem of all.
Did she want to rediscover herself and reclaim her sexuality? Sure. And if that happened, great. But she didn’t want more than that. She didn’t want to get emotionally invested, or worse, fall for him
. Because falling was dangerous and made her stupid, and she’d made a conscious choice not to do either of those things ever again.
