ROOM...BUT NOT BORED

by Dawn Atkins

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  ROOM … BUT NOT BORED

  Dawn Atkins

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  Contents:

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

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  Chapter 1

  ^»

  In heels and a business suit, with two monstrous suitcases in her sweaty grip and her computer bag slung over her shoulder, Ariel Adams stood on the stone stairs that led down to the beach cottage she'd just acquired. She blinked against the silver flash of California sun on gentle waves and wondered what she'd done to deserve this hell.

  Okay, so most people would consider the rippling ocean and white-sand beach where a man juggled driftwood for a rapt retriever and seagulls dipped and cried, to be picturesque and enticing—perfect for sunset strolls, refreshing swims and building sand castles. But Ariel Adams was not most people.

  To her, the beach was too … beachy. A giant cat box with a shifty surface tough to walk on and a fishy smell. The beach meant grit and mildew and sea salt that scoured, stained and bleached everything.

  No, Ariel did not like the beach. And now she had to live there. Her left eyelid twitched from exhaustion. Terminally jet-lagged after the flight from London, all she wanted was to sleep for a week. But she couldn't afford that luxury. She had to figure out how to start her solo consulting business two years earlier than she'd planned. She sagged against the rusted guardrail, demoralized, until she repeated her mother's motto in her head: Keep on keeping on.

  Job one of keeping on was to cross this beach without ruining the high-dollar silk panty hose she'd bought in honor of her new life in London—the life her partner Trudy had thrown out the window. The twenty-seventh-floor office window of their client Paul Foster to be precise. That high up, the windows didn't even open.

  Paul and I are in love, Trudy had breathed, airy as a romance heroine, as if that were enough to explain how a perfectly sensible woman—Ariel's mentor in this very male business—had turned into a doe-eyed fool.

  Ariel had reasoned with her. Give it six months. Be certain your feelings will last. But no. Two days of harangues hadn't cleared one iota of the sentimental glaze from Trudy's face. Paul was taking a world tour of his holdings before he retired and Trudy was going with him. When love comes, you accept it, wherever it may lead, Trudy had said in that feminine trill she'd adopted. Had her hormones gone wonky? Had she been hypnotized? Slipped a cog? What?

  This was not the plan. And planning was king at Business Advantage, Trudy's company, into which she'd invited Ariel six months ago. They'd met when Trudy had been hired to assist with a business consolidation and Ariel had been working in-house for one of the merging companies. Trudy had been so impressed by Ariel's talent that when Paul Foster retained Business Advantage to go to London to help the Foster Corporation make a strategic shift, Trudy had asked Ariel to become her partner in the firm—to help with the project and beyond.

  That had suited Ariel just fine. Her plan had been to work with Trudy for two years—or until she felt ready to be on her own. But that plan was all gone. Trashed by Trudy. For love.

  Foster had gone weird, too. Falling in love had made him decide to sell the company and live life to the fullest. Double blech. In his defense, he'd also had a cancer scare—a misdiagnosis, as it turned out—that had made him reassess his values. Ariel was all for businessmen reassessing their values—but to advance their businesses, not abandon them.

  She'd so looked forward to the London experience. It was the opportunity of a lifetime to be instrumental in a highly visible corporate evolution, and meant a huge leg up for her business reputation. It would give her cachet, to be elegant about it. Not to mention international contacts. And London itself had been amazing.

  But now, only three weeks into the adventure, she'd had to catch a flight back to L.A. to start her business with just a name, Trudy's file of stale leads and her own bravado.

  Before Ariel left, Trudy had given her what was left of Business Advantage, which wasn't much, since Trudy and she had finished with their U.S. clients before the London move.

  And now Ariel was on her own. With a sigh, she descended the sand-scrubbed steps to the beach house in Playa Linda, where she would live until she was financially able to move somewhere more appropriate.

  Trudy had felt so guilty about abandoning Ariel, she'd practically given her the cottage, asking a ridiculous price, payable over time, that Ariel couldn't afford to pass up. Even though living there would be like camping, the property was a prize piece of real estate. Lots of people thought beach living was nirvana.

  And at least she had a home. Before the move, she'd given up her tidy apartment, contoured precisely to her habits, and put her belongings in storage along with their office equipment.

  Five steps down, Ariel's heel skidded on grit and she tilted to the side, banging her elbow on the rail.

  A guy with a surfboard caught her arm from behind. "You okay, ma'am?"

  Ma'am? She was only twenty-nine, darn it, no ma'am. She could be this guy's date, not his mother. It was how she was dressed, she was certain. Her dark tailored suit, high-necked blouse and efficiently bunned hair made her seem as out-of-place as a Victorian matron in a strip club. "I'm fine," she snapped, and the guy trotted on without a backward glance.

  Ariel finished the steps and started across the sand, stepping carefully so as not to grind sand into her delicate stockings. The cottage was nestled into a low hill, with a basement garage accessible from the narrow street. If Ariel'd had the garage door opener, she could have entered that way and avoided the beach altogether, but some things couldn't be helped.

  With each wobbly step, her sleep-deprived mind churned out more bad thoughts. What if she didn't get clients right away? She was good, she knew. She'd saved an entire division during the consolidation she and Trudy had worked on together, and the clients she'd handled for the six months she'd been part of Business Advantage had been very happy. The baby clothes boutique had doubled its profits, thanks to her, and her diversification plan had saved a computer parts manufacturer from a painful downsizing.

  Handling the clients was no problem. What stopped her heart was the idea of selling herself to them in the first place. That had been Trudy's specialty. Trudy knew promotion. She knew how to coax and cajole. In that regard, Ariel was lost at sea. A critical liability when starting a business from scratch. What if she starved? No way. She was a survivor and a worker, just like her mother. Ariel's father had died when she was just three, but her mother hadn't moped a minute. She'd gotten two jobs—at a laundry and a diner—and always made ends meet.

  It sounded grim, but her mother was never discouraged. Adams women kept on keeping on. Ariel had spent many happy hours playing dolls under the diner tables. The waitresses talked to her in their rough, practical way—barking at her to get out from underfoot during the busy times, joining her to act out a quick Barbie and Ken date during the lulls. And to this day, the smell of laundry soap cheered her.

  She would survive, all right, Ariel thought, marching forward in the thick sand. If worse came to worst, she'd get a job at a temp service or take some contract work—rare, of course—with another business planner. This was just a setback. Sweat poured down her sides under her expensive suit. That meant a dry cleaning bill. She tried to think cool thoughts as she lunged forward, lugging the bags that wouldn't roll on the soft sand. Almost there, almost there.

  Then, she was there—Trudy's beach getaway, now her very own. Small, faded and shabby, it looked as if a good wind could topple it. She'd remembered it as more attractive that one weekend she'd spent with Trudy here laying out the plans for their partnership. Her spirits flagged for a second.

 
; Quaint and cozy … with rustic charm. That's how she would describe it in the real estate ad she intended to place as soon as she was flush enough to move out. You'll look back on this and laugh, she told herself, closing her eyes for a quick visualization…

  She and her husband walking among the roses in front of their ranch-style home in Thousand Oaks. His warm voice in her ear: Remember when you were a desperate newbie in a ramshackle hut cold-calling clients to afford food?

  She would tip her face up to his—of course he'd be much taller—gaze into his dark eyes and give a tinkling laugh. Maybe not tinkling. Trudy's laugh had tinkled. A gentle laugh then.

  Look at you now, her dear husband would continue. You've hired an associate so you have more time to spend with me, your adoring husband. Shall we swim?

  Then they would walk arm-in-arm to their Olympic-sized pool with the dramatic black surface and bricked rim and swim slow laps, looking into each other's eyes. Oh, and their golden retriever would run along the pool's edge as they swam…

  Much better. Ariel sighed and opened her eyes, rejuvenated by her vision of the glorious future she'd push herself to, no matter what. Now to get started. Except she hadn't slept in thirty-six hours and she was so tired…

  Keep moving, she told herself fiercely. You snooze, you lose. She marched up the stairs to the porch, her fingers burning from holding the suitcases, which clunked up each step. Sweaty and breathing heavily, she extracted Trudy's key from her purse and put it in the lock, only to have the door yanked away from her from the inside. She stumbled two steps forward and into a man, connecting with his warm, solid, naked chest.

  He gripped her arms, steadying her, holding on a few seconds longer than necessary while he studied her. His fingers were strong and reassuring, his eyes a Brad Pitt smoky blue.

  "Well, hel-lo," he said, propping her back onto her heels.

  Unbalanced by the surprise—and the man—she'd only managed, "Hello," before a black-and-white bear of a dog rushed past them from inside the cottage. On its heels was a young boy wearing a green baseball cap, who paused to slap the man on his muscular shoulder and yell, "You're it!" before racing down the stairs and across the beach after the dog.

  "Time out!" the man shouted to him, then lowered his gaze to Ariel's. "Sorry. Jake Renner." He lifted her limp hand and helped her shake his, his eyes full of laughter at her shock.

  "Ariel Adams," she said faintly.

  "Can I help you?" He was a little taller than she was and blond, with a deep tan on a muscular body that was pretty much on full display except for baggy Hawaiian-print swim trunks. He was way too relaxed for someone who'd been caught squatting in Trudy's empty beach house.

  "Is this Trudy Walters's place?" Maybe she'd arrived at the wrong ramshackle cottage. She could only hope.

  Something trilled sharply. For a second, in her exhaustion, she feared it was her brain warning it was about to blow. But it was just her cell phone, good for only two more days before service expired.

  Jake Renner leaned against the doorjamb and watched her fumble for her phone.

  "What?" she said irritably into it before she'd actually activated it. Pushing the button, she said, "Hello?"

  "Ariel?" The faint voice belonged to her love-crazed ex-partner.

  "Thank God, Trudy. I'm at the beach house, and, you won't believe this, but—"

  "There's a man there. I know," Trudy said. "I didn't get the chance to tell you. I hired him before we left for London to paint and do some fix-up so I could sell the cottage."

  Ariel glanced at Jake—his hair was beautifully sun-streaked—then turned to the side to make the conversation more private. "I wish you'd said something."

  "I'm saying it now. And there's one more thing…" Uh-oh. "He might be living there. As part of the deal, I told him he could stay until he finishes."

  "You told him he could live here?" Her voice squeaked. She shot Jake a wan smile.

  "It's good to have someone keep an eye on things. This was killing two birds with one stone."

  "You should have warned me."

  "I was a little distracted, I guess. And you took off so fast… Jake's a nice guy—completely trustworthy. He's done work for my neighbor, watched her kids while she did errands. Very sweet. I talked to him several times."

  "But he's going to live here?" Ariel whispered through gritted teeth. "With me?" Again, she tried to smile at Jake.

  "There are two bedrooms, Ariel. And he's not going to attack you or anything … unless you want that." Then her voice went low. "If I'd had the time, let me tell you … wowsa."

  Wowsa? So un-Trudy-like. "Why are you telling me this?" she said, exasperated, hoping the cell phone hadn't leaked Trudy's words to her eavesdropper.

  "Love is all around, Ariel. Stop and smell the roses."

  Smell the roses? All Ariel could smell were dead fish and seaweed … and maybe a faint coconut scent coming off Jake Renner's gleaming body. "I'll get back to you on that," she said, her saccharine smile going sour. Her partner—who had yanked herself up by the straps of her own Aerosoles and, by the way, had once declared relationships speed bumps on the road to success—was now spouting Zen bumper stickers from her outpost in the Twilight Zone.

  "I mean it," Trudy insisted. "Rethink your life. I've started doing watercolors again."

  Ariel held her tongue.

  "I'm sure you can work something out with Jake. He's very easygoing."

  Ariel shot a glance at him. Easygoing and hard-bodied. He exuded that lazily confident air that most women went for. She got a little internal zing herself. Biology was undeniable, she guessed, no matter how inconvenient.

  "Look at it this way," Trudy continued. "If you don't like the paint colors or tile I chose, you can change them—on my dime. If you want, add a few things while he's available."

  "I can't afford anything more. I don't want anything more. I … oh, hell, this is just too much to think about."

  "You'll do great, Ariel. Soliciting clients is not that hard. Your work speaks for itself."

  Not if she couldn't speak for her work.

  "Start with my leads, use my software and call me if you need a consult. If I'm anywhere I can be reached by phone, of course." She gave that laugh again. More a trill than a tinkle, now that Ariel thought about it. "Seriously. You have everything you need to be successful."

  Everything except clients. "I appreciate your faith in me," Ariel said. "I'll talk to you soon."

  "Bye-ee."

  Bye-ee? What had the twit on the other end of the line done with levelheaded Trudy? Was she wrapped in duct tape in a trunk somewhere? Ariel clicked off, thrust the phone back in her purse, and looked up at the nearly naked man wearing a bemused expression.

  "So I guess you're the house painter," she said, trying to smile.

  He bowed. "And the framer and the carpenter and the plasterer and, possibly, the electrician, judging from the shorts we're getting in the bathroom."

  "Shorts in the bathroom?" she repeated weakly. Her already fuzzy brain throbbed with this new quandary. She didn't deal well with change. Someone had definitely moved her cheese. "I need to sit down," she said, bending to grab her suitcase handles, intending to head inside.

  Jake took the bags from her, hefting them as though they weighed nothing, and held the door. She moved inside, sand grinding in her shoes, anxiety burning in her stomach. She caught more of Jake's scent as she passed—warm sunshine, sweet musk and coconut—pleasant in a beachy kind of way.

  She looked around the tiny living room and her heart sank. There wasn't even a place to sit. Drop cloths covered what few pieces of furniture fit in the small space. Pieces of Sheetrock were propped against a canvas-covered lump—the sofa. Boards lay on the floor along with boxes of nails, tools, masking tape and a few cans of paint. More drop cloths covered two side chairs and the cocktail table.

  There were two fancy bicycles leaning on one wall—one disassembled—and a colorful, battered surfboard braced against the ha
lf wall that led to the kitchen.

  Jake set down her bags, shoved some of the sofa's canvas away, and motioned gallantly for her to sit in the space he'd cleared. She dropped there with an unladylike plunk.

  "Better?" he said.

  "A little."

  Jake lowered himself onto a drop-cloth-covered chair very close to her, the muscles of his legs and chest rolling with his movement. How she managed to fixate on his body at a time like this was beyond her. It must be raw exhaustion. Like a hypnosis subject transfixed by a shiny object, she couldn't take her eyes off him. You're getting sleepier and sleepier … warmer and warmer … more and more aroused…

  "Things are a little confusing," she said, trying to clear her head. "Trudy sold me this house while we were in London and now…"

  "And now I'm fixing it up for you. No problemo." He had the bluest eyes and an expressive mouth—very broad, like it spent most of its time smiling.

  "Yes, problemo," she corrected. "I have to live here, you see. And work here. And—"

  "Not to worry. I'm a great roommate."

  "I'm sure you are, but, I don't really want a roommate." Or a construction site. Jake obviously wasn't one of those craftsmen who prided themselves on working neatly. Supplies were scattered from one end of the room to the other. God knows what the rest of the house looked like.

  "I don't either, but I'm flexible." He shrugged. "You can have the master bedroom, since it's your house."

  She stared at him. "As I just said, I would prefer the place to myself."

  He looked at her, blinked, smiled.

  "I'm a business consultant," she explained. It was difficult work that requires concentration, quiet and order and—at the minimum—a room for an office. She surveyed the living room and it looked the way her life felt—confused and chaotic. Despair welled up. She rested her elbows on her knees and held her head in her hands.

  "You're freaked right now," Jake said softly. "Give it a few days and see how it works out."