“I think that one’s perfect! And do you want to know what else I think?”
“Of course.”
“I have a gut feeling that you’re going to become familiar with that beach house and the man who lives in it…”
Kendall and her gut feelings. Her intuition, although at times mysterious, was also very reliable. And just to make sure, Olivia had to ask. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, c’mon—he’s gorgeous, he’s single, and he’s totally into you!”
“He is not—he’s Ty’s best friend. He’s just trying to be polite. And besides… how do you know who Grant’s ‘into’?”
Kendall shot Olivia a hollow look. “Need I remind you again? Gossip circulates quickly on this island.”
“Oh yeah, I almost forgot…”
“Okay, I think this is the last box”, Ty announced as he carefully stepped down from the ladder.
Olivia sat on the cool concrete floor of the carport with her legs tucked underneath her. She’d already opened the first box of Halloween decorations and was nostalgically sifting through them when Ty knelt down beside her.
“I can’t believe you kept this all these years”, she said as she clutched the homemade Halloween trivet she’d constructed in her Home Economics class in the seventh grade. It’d been fabricated from orange and black ceramic beads and Popsicle sticks. She’d been so proud of her creation then and had given it to Ty as a gift. But seeing it now through her adult eyes, she realized how pathetic it actually looked.
“Of course, I kept it.”
“Ty, it’s the ugliest darn trivet I’ve ever seen! You mean to tell me that you still put this out on the counter every year?” she asked in disbelief.
“Every year.”
“That couldn’t have made Cameron very happy…” She watched as he wiped his hand down the front of his face. He was hurting and she wished more than ever that she could absorb the pain he was experiencing so that he wouldn’t have to endure it.
He let out a sigh and then met his little sister’s gaze. “No—she wasn’t fond of the trivet…”
“Or me”, Olivia added. “I want you to know that me being gone all this time had nothing to do with you… It’s no secret that Cameron and I didn’t like each other very well, but I saw how happy she made you. And I figured your happiness was long overdue.”
“Liv, I’m so very sorry.”
“Sorry? For what? You have absolutely nothing to feel sorry for”, she assured him.
“Yeah, I do. Cameron made you feel as though this was no longer your home—”
“That’s right—Cameron—not you.”
“Yeah, but I let her…”
Olivia wrapped her arms around her brother and gave him a squeeze. “It’s okay—that’s behind us now. This is a new beginning—for both of us.”
“I’m so glad you’re here”, he mumbled as he hugged her back.
“Me, too”, she said before pulling away. “Enough of this emotional mushy stuff—we’ve got some Halloween decoratin’ to do…”
An unexpected cold front had arrived earlier in the day, causing temperatures on the island to plummet into the mid-fifties upon nightfall. Grant parked his truck along the street in front of Ty’s house. He’d chosen to dress as a 1920’s gangster this year, sporting a black and white striped suit and black fedora. He emerged from his truck with a toy Tommy-gun in hand and then headed inside.
He was greeted by a grinning Ty, decked out in a flight suit and aviator glasses; looking like “Iceman” from the movie Top Gun. “Well, this gives a whole new meaning to ‘wing man’, doesn’t it?”
“Nice monkey suit, asshole”, Ty responded.
Grant stepped inside and placed his beer in the refrigerator before taking inventory of all the various costumes in the room. Eddie was dressed as a pirate, complete with an eye patch and fake parrot attached to one of his shoulders. Jimmy Phillips and his wife, Lana, were dressed as a tough-looking biker and biker-babe, and Randall Burns was dressed as the blue guy from Avatar. He was amazed by the crowd’s creativity, but there was one person in particular that impressed him most.
Olivia.
She was standing on the patio by the stainless steel, outdoor heater in a skimpy little referee costume, hair down in large, voluminous curls like a Texas beauty queen. Her snug referee ensemble clung to her mouth-watering curves, the hem falling mid-thigh, revealing the sexiest pair of legs he’d ever seen. She wore black stiletto boots that rose midway up her lower legs and a pair of black and white tube socks that settled just below her knees. Unable to resist, he opened the French doors and ambled toward her.
Olivia met his astonished gaze and smiled, throwing up her hands in front of her as though she were surrendering. “Don’t shoot”, she uttered as he approached.
His eyes journeyed down the length of her body and then stalled at her cleavage. “I don’t know—you don’t look so innocent right now…”
Olivia cocked her head sideways and cleared her throat, distracting his attention away from her breasts. “Watch it, Womack—you just might find yourself with a penalty.”
Sexual innuendos, one of his favorite games. Grant flashed a wicked grin. “Oh yeah? Which one would that be?”
“Unsportsman-like conduct”, she responded playfully. Olivia swept her gaze down Grant this time, pausing when she reached the large bulge in his pants. “I like your Tommy-gun. It’s so… big.”
Holy shit. “Who’s on the verge of a penalty now?”
Olivia took a step closer and rose onto her toes so that her mouth was inches from his ear. “I’m just the ref; I call ‘em like I see ‘em”, she whispered before she walked away.
“She’s somethin’ else, isn’t she?” Randall asked as he joined Grant on the patio.
Grant took a pull from his beer, eyeing Olivia until she disappeared inside. “Yeah… How well do you know her?”
“Olivia?” Randall asked. “We grew up together. She was a year younger than me, but she was still one of my closest friends. Would’ve given anything to be more than friends, though.”
“Had a secret crush, did ya?”
Randall chuckled softly as he tucked his hands under his arms. “Me and half the town’s teenage male population! But she didn’t really date much back then…”
“Why not?” Grant asked as he crossed his arms over his chest, turning his attention to the electric-blue man standing beside him.
Randall shrugged his shoulders. “Partly because she was too busy causing a ruckus to be tied down in a relationship. And partly because every guy on the island knew her free-spirit couldn’t be tamed…”
The party was a big success. It was late—or early the following morning—before the crowd had thinned. Kendall had been talking to Ty on the couch when he’d placed the back of his head against the sleek red leather and closed his eyes. She thought he was just resting them for a moment, but when he began to snore she realized he’d passed out. “Um, Olivia?” she called out to the kitchen.
“Yeah?”
“Ty’s out cold.”
“What?” Olivia moved from behind the counter and walked into the living room. Ty’s glasses were crooked and his mouth was slightly parted. Olivia gave him a firm nudge, which only made him snore louder. “Poor guy—he probably hasn’t had a decent night of sleep since Cameron left a couple of months ago…”
“Bitch”, Kendall murmured.
“Yeah, my thoughts exactly.”
Grant returned from the restroom and watched as the nurse and the referee huddled around Ty, observing him sleep. He quietly crept up behind them and when he was inches away from Olivia’s ear, he came to a halt. “Am I missing something?” he asked as the girls leapt from the couch in a startled panic.
“Don’t do that!” Olivia exclaimed, reaching for her chest to sooth her racing heartbeat. “You nearly scared my britches off!”
Grant raised an eyebrow. “Well, in that case—let me try again.”
Kendall
looked at Grant and then back at Olivia. There was so much sexual tension in the room it nearly smothered her. “Okaaay—I think this is my cue to go.” She reached for her purse lying on the glass sofa table and fumbled around for her keys. “Great party, by the way.”
Without tearing his eyes from the sexy referee in front of him, Grant inquired about her ability to drive and after Kendall reiterated that she was perfectly fine, she stepped out into the cool night and closed the door behind her.
“And then there were two”, he said as he looked into Olivia’s emerald eyes.
“Well, actually three if you count the unconscious aviator lying on the couch. You think maybe we could carry him to his bed?” she asked.
“I think we can manage.”
After the gangster and referee tucked the drunken aviator into bed, they cleared the kitchen and patio of empty cups and beer bottles, essentially erasing any evidence that a party had taken place there hours earlier. The temperature felt as though it had dropped a few more degrees as Grant and Olivia sauntered back onto the patio for one last drink. They huddled around the outdoor heater, sitting on a lounge chair next to one another as though it were a bench. The pool light had a red cover fastened to it, creating an illusion of bloody water, and various fake body parts floated randomly along the surface.
“I missed this”, Olivia said as she gestured toward the pool. “Ty always decorated the entire house for Halloween every year when I was growin’ up. We didn’t have a pool then, but he always had a lot of creativity.”
“He’s a good guy.”
“Yeah”, Olivia sighed. “He sure is…”
“He has a lot of decorations and quite an imagination, too”, Grant shared as he pointed to a plastic foot floating by.
“Well, we accumulated a lot of this over the years. When I first came to live with him, the only decoration he owned was a ceramic pumpkin candy dish that mom had given him. When my parents were alive, they decorated the house from top to bottom with spooky decorations and since Halloween was my favorite time of year, Ty made sure we kept the tradition goin’.”
“So, Halloween was your favorite holiday?”
“Uh-huh—still is”, she offered.
Grant turned his body slightly to face her. “Why?”
Olivia shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know—I guess it’s because it’s the only night out of the year that you can put on a costume and transform into someone else. You can pretend, for one night, to lead a completely different life… And I have no idea why I just told you that!” She confessed as she emerged from her trance.
Olivia turned and met his intense gaze. “Don’t”, she demanded.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t look at me like that!”
Clearly amused, Grant revealed a charming smile. “How am I looking at you?”
“Like… like you think I’m completely crazy or somethin’.”
He couldn’t take it any longer. Without hesitation, he reached behind her head and cupped the back of her neck, gently caressing her jaw with his thumb. “I wasn’t thinking you were crazy… I was thinking about what it’d be like to kiss you.”
“Oh”, she whispered.
Grant licked his suddenly dry lips and then leaned forward. He pressed his mouth against her soft, warm lips, giving her an opportunity to pull away if she was having second thoughts.
She didn’t.
Instead her lips parted, inviting him for a taste. One slick stroke of her sweet tongue and he was gone. He angled his head to deepen the kiss and heard the sweetest moan escape from the back of her throat.
Olivia clenched his light brown hair in her hands, wanting to feel closer to him—suddenly needing to be closer. Every nerve-ending was on alert, her skin hypersensitive to his gentle touch. His hands grazed down her back, sending shivers down her spine and spreading warmth across her body like a sultry New Orleans summer day.
“I should probably go”, he whispered against her mouth. He didn’t want to though, damn it. What he really wanted to do was strip her out of her referee ensemble and rack up a slew of penalties. He wanted to play dirty; he wanted to make a touchdown…
Olivia tilted her head to the side, giving him better access to the sensitive spot on her neck just below her ear. “Yeah, you should”, she uttered breathlessly.
She gasped when his mouth grazed the ticklish area just below her ear. She could feel the warmth of his breath on her delicate skin and when he began spreading open-mouth kisses along her jaw, her eyes rolled back into her head.
Every moan of pleasure, every quickened breath aroused him. He felt as though he was being engulfed by lust-saturated quicksand; his body fighting to stay in control, every subtle movement threatening to consume him. He knew if he didn’t regain his self-control now, the kissing would escalate. And that couldn’t happen.
She was Ty’s little sister—his very beautiful, sexy, irresistible little sister.
Game over.
Reluctantly, Grant tore his mouth away and stood up. “I’m sorry”, he said before walking away. He adjusted the growing bulge in his pants and made a mental note to grab an icepack from the freezer on his way out to soothe the severe case of blue balls he was going to have by the time he drove the five blocks to his beach house.
Olivia ran the tip of her fingers over her tingling lips, still wet and swollen from his kiss. She observed him as he disappeared inside the house, leaving her alone on the lounge chair they’d shared, aroused, with a mixture of emotions. She was surprised by how easily she’d lost control.
Yeah, she really needed to watch that next time.
Next time?—Jesus, Joseph and Mary—listen to her. Their kiss had quickly ignited into a raging firestorm. And then as quickly as it’d started, he pulled away. A gentleman-like gesture?—or a quick recovery over a drunken lapse in judgment? She wondered. The answer to that question: Only time would tell…
CHAPTER 4
The sweet smell of freshly baked doughnuts saturated the air inside Olivia’s Mini Cooper, becoming increasingly more intense with every passing mile. Ty had been hounding her to come by the fire station to visit and even though it had been a while, she knew better than to arrive without treats.
Olivia hadn’t spoken to Grant since their kiss five days ago. The kiss had been… well, it had been amazing. But maybe he’d regretted it. Maybe the brave juice he’d ingested throughout the evening had altered his judgment. Maybe he’d awoke the following morning with an aching head and clarity of what he’d done.
Since the moment he’d assisted her to her feet on the beach after her jellyfish encounter, she’d wondered. Wondered what it’d be like to kiss him and now that she knew…
Kissing had always been rather trivial to her. Well, that’s not exactly true. She’d once went on a date with a fellow freelance photographer and he’d nearly choked her with his tongue—needless to say there wasn’t a second date. So maybe kissing wasn’t trivial, but it also hadn’t been pivotal either.
Until she’d kissed Grant.
Now she was beginning to think that maybe kissing wasn’t just a means to an end. Perhaps it was meant to be savored. Her kiss with Grant had been perfect: aggressive, yet not overbearing—lustful, yet not sloppy. There was no doubt about it: the man could kiss—
“Damn it”, she muttered as she came to a stop. She’d been obsessing over the kiss and had missed her turn. Olivia made an illegal U-turn along the abandoned two-lane road and headed back to the street she’d passed.
Take a deep breath and pull yourself together!
She steered her car down the long drive that led to the hidden fire station. Okay, no more driving with three dozen freshly baked doughnuts in the car. Clearly it affected her mind.
Yeah, blame it on the doughnuts…
After snagging the last parking spot in the small lot she removed her key from the ignition and inhaled a deep, calming breath. Ty was going to be happy that she’d finally made the time to visit the
station. She hated to disappoint him and besides—she was hoping to run into Grant so that she could apologize for the other night.
Alright, pep talk’s over. Time to get inside and get this visit over with.
Olivia gripped the three rectangular doughnut boxes from the passenger seat and strolled toward the open bay. It housed the island’s only fire truck and a myriad of memories from her childhood and adolescence. When she was within reach, she slowly glided her fingertips along the side of the fire truck, reminiscing about the first time she’d sat inside. She was nine and Ty had given her permission to sit behind the wheel and pretend to drive. Her feet dangled from the seat, fidgeting with excitement as he turned on the siren and coaxed her to beep the horn. She closed her eyes as she recalled the vivid memory and felt the corners of her mouth turn up in a wide grin.
Grant left the claustrophobic firehouse kitchen in search of some fresh air. He hadn’t been able to get Olivia, or the mind-blowing kiss they’d shared, out of his head all week. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t escape the image of her emerald eyes staring back into his. She was like a Picasso painting: beautiful, intriguing. Rebellious.
As soon as he’d become aware that she was Ty’s little sister, he’d told himself to back off. It didn’t matter that he was incredibly attracted to her; she was off limits to him. She’d been rambling on about how Halloween was her favorite holiday and when he’d asked why, something unexpected happened: She softened that tough-girl exterior and exposed a hint of vulnerability.
He knew the basics about her story. Her parents died when she was young and Ty had raised her. He’d asked around about her to the people on the island—nonchalantly, of course—and everyone pretty much told him the same thing: “She’s a sassy southern belle. A free-spirited beauty. An angel with devilish spontaneity. A gorgeous doll with a tough-as-nails attitude.” He figured she’d had to be. Anyone who lost their parents as unexpectedly and tragically as she had learned how to coat themselves with armor to prevent experiencing another loss.
Picture Perfect (Butler Island) Page 3
