Violet Aches for Blake (Encounter Bay)

by Emily Bruce

  “Oh honey, if you’re that unhappy, then you should come home, there’s nothing that says you have to keep on acting just because you’ve found some fame. Life is what you make it, Blake.”

  He nodded at his mother’s words. She was right of course, he could do what the hell he wanted. He never really got into modeling and acting for the money, but as it stood now he had enough cash to live comfortably for the rest of his life and then some.

  “Okay Mom, I’m moving home,” Blake said as a huge smile spread across his face. He held the phone away from his ear as his mother screeched excitedly. At least she was going to be happy about his move.

  ◆◆◆

  Blake smiled as he set another box down and caught his reflection in the huge floor to ceiling windows that ran along the vast length of his house. It was the first time in a long time he had seen himself look genuinely happy. Hot of course, but happy.

  For a while, he had been happy here, living the dream, making the transition from model to actor, and doing it well. He was now so in demand that he no longer had to audition for roles. His latest action movie, Brazen Hero, grossed over 2 billion dollars worldwide and had become the most successful action movie ever. While Blake loved every minute on set filming all of the action scenes, he had to go home every night and ice his whole body, just so he could walk the next day. He was getting too old for that shit.

  It was time to go. He was burnt out, needed a break, and was going to go out on top and return to a normal life. From there he could figure out what he wanted to do. He craved a simple life, all the way to his bones.

  At the moment, he couldn’t go anywhere without a team of girls chasing him down for selfies.

  Like, literally. Lucky he was in good shape and could outrun them. Just last week he had to dart into a dry cleaner's just to get away from a mob of about 20. Then there were the paparazzi.

  They hounded him. There was a team of at least 3 stationed outside his front gate 24/7.

  For a while, Blake loved the attention, enjoyed taking selfies with teenage girls and talking to the paparazzi, but after spending the last 10 years in Hollywood, he was done.

  There were only so many nightclub openings or glitzy parties you could attend before you saw through the whole LA scene for what it really was, which is fake.

  The women were fake and their hair, tits, noses, chins, asses, and laughter were all an illusion. They were either after a story to tell their friends, how they banged the movie star, or worse they wanted a fairytale ending with the ring, the dress, the ten-page magazine spread, the reality TV program, and all.

  The most shocking part was that the men were not far behind in the fake stakes, just as plastic and twice as bitchy as the women.

  Everyone was fake friendly and were only out to line their pockets or sell your picture to the tabloids. Yep, it was time to get the hell out of LA.

  Encounter Bay was a little coastal town in Texas on a little bay with a massive sand bar which made the ocean look turquoise. The sun heated the shallow water there, making it so warm to lie in that it felt like a tropical island, it was one of America’s best-kept secrets. Blake swore he could smell that salty sea breeze just thinking about it.

  It kicked the ass out of any of California’s famed beaches.

  He missed the relaxed lifestyle, the people of Encounter Bay, the little community they had there where everyone helped each other and they were all in each other’s business. Hell, he even missed Batty Betty. Blake chuckled to himself as he thought of the arthritic waitress who was still rocking a beehive.

  He missed the sprawling mansion backing onto the coast that was his parents’ home. Blake came from money, so he never really got into modeling and acting for the money. When he was 22, he was down at the beach one day when an older lady approached him and asked him if he’d ever considered modeling as a career. He smiled politely and taken her card, then laughed with his buddies at the thought of being a dickwad model. But he called her after the mishap with Violet happened, at that point in time he needed to get away from Encounter Bay, he needed to put distance between them. Moving to New York had been an enormous change for Blake, it was a long way from the coastal Texas town he loved so much. Being a model was easy, turn this way, smile like that. He landed major ad campaigns and even made it to a billboard on Times Square. Fame was something he hadn’t really thought about, and then all of a sudden there were women young and old throwing themselves at him. And soon Violet and Encounter Bay were a distant memory. Blake had been lured by the beautiful women and the glitzy parties, he spent the majority of his 20s traveling the world and getting it on with hot women.

  In his 20s that was the ideal lifestyle, but now that he was 35 it was time to grow up a little and decide what the hell he was doing with his life. Before the modeling, he planned on working for his father, but that dream was no longer possible because he sold his business when he realized that neither Blake nor Sophie was interested in it, and his Mom and Dad were now happily retired.

  What he did know was that he longed for a quiet life, one away from the spotlight living in his favorite sleepy Texas beach town. Where he could raise a family. Going home was always in his plans, though. At first, he was only going to stay a couple of years in New York until Violet was old enough and their 5-year age gap didn’t seem that bad. Somehow, he had gotten sidetracked into acting. He just hoped he wasn’t too late, Violet Stone was his.

  Blake felt his heart skip a beat as he thought about his Violet. He kept tabs on her over the years, filing away the bits of information he got from his mother and sister. He hadn’t seen her in person since he left all those years ago. He had been home many times, but Violet was always elusive, always managed to stay hidden. In the beginning, he had cleared his schedule to go to his mother’s parties and special family occasions in the hope that he would run into her. But she was never there and Sophie always had an excuse ready as to why she wasn’t there. He could tell it hurt Sophie that Violet was missing out on the things that were important to her. Blake couldn’t help but feel guilty, he knew he was the reason she wasn’t there. He realized that she was avoiding him, so he stopped attending his mother’s parties. He didn’t want to make Violet's life hard.

  Over the years, he had heard that she’d been with a few different guys, but they never worked out. Sophie would occasionally post photos of the two of them on social media and those images seemed to spur on his desire for her. She was a stunning 17-year-old when Blake left and now she was more beautiful then he could have thought possible. She had curves to die for, her emerald eyes still showed her every emotion, and then there was her smile. There was something about those pouty pink lips that made Blake’s dick quiver.

  As far as he could tell from some social media stalking and asking his mother a few well-thought-out questions, at the moment she was still single. Blake was shocked to learn that some slow-talking cowboy hadn’t swept her off her feet.

  He really hoped she wasn’t too upset or resistant to what he had planned. Because he was coming for his weird and wonderful Violet with all guns blazing.

  And by guns he means his biceps, but you got that, right?

  Chapter 3

  Violet

  It was 6 pm and Violet had just made it through the front door of her modest two-bedroom beach shack that was nowhere near the beach. She was late because she hadn’t been able to concentrate on the new listing she was meant to have finished by today. The bombshell Sophie had laid on her at lunch had sent her into a tailspin and she couldn’t stop her heart from racing, let alone concentrate on what she was typing about.

  Thankfully, her boss Jim Jameson had been out showing houses all afternoon and she didn’t have to face his wrath about kicking the Ellises out of the pimped-out Cape Cod home early so she could hurry to meet Sophie for the emergency lunch.

  Which turned out to be the biggest emergency in, like, ever!

  Blake Wilson was coming back.

  She needed t
o sit down and consider the enormity of this situation. Walking a few steps, Violet slumped down onto the hard wooden chair that was closest to her, dropped her handbag to the floor, and rested her head on the cold table. She let out a groan as her head hit the cold wooden surface. Never, not in a million years, would she have thought Blake would come back here.

  Why would he?

  He was one of Hollywood’s hottest and most in-demand actors. Hell, if she were a hot Hollywood actor, she wouldn’t come back here. She took a couple of deep breaths and tried to calm herself down. She’d been on edge since she sprayed poor Sophie with strawberry milkshake.

  Violet fanned her cheeks, she was so hot, hot all over, and cold. Her body didn’t know if she was coming or going.

  Maybe she should go to the hospital and make sure she wasn’t having a heart attack!

  Blake freaking Wilson!

  He was the hottest guy she had ever seen up close and she wasn’t alone in her thinking. Almost all the women around here, and some of the men, lusted after him. She had kept her secret, desperate crush under wraps for the last 15 years. She tried so damned hard to stop lusting after her best friend’s big bro… but she couldn’t, because he was just so damned perfect. Well, to look at. His personality, Violet wasn’t quite sure about anymore, because she had successfully avoided him for over 13 years. But when they were all younger, Blake liked to torment her and poor Sophie. Throw in the super embarrassment of 13 years ago… and there was no way she could go near him and hold a regular conversation.

  Oh god, why??

  Why must he come back here! How was she meant to hide her crippling crush from Sophie? It was so much easier with him in LA, she could lust from afar with the rest of the world and no one was the wiser. Seeing him in the flesh after all this time was going to be hard. No, difficult! Hard conjured up too many other things… Like his rock-hard body and bulging biceps….

  Sighing, Violet sat up. Wallowing wasn’t going to change anything, she leaned over and retrieved her bag from the floor, pulled out her phone and flicked it open, and made her way over to the pale pink love seat sofa. She kicked off her shoes and sighed.

  She needed a hit.

  Just a little hit.

  Her fingers had been itching since this morning to do this, who was she kidding? It had become such an addiction that she banned herself from news alerts and only allowed herself to look at PicMe twice a day.

  Flipping through the pages on her phone, Violet made it to the last page, where she hid the PicMe app.

  She had a problem.

  She felt her heart rate spike while she waited anxiously for the app to load, she tried to ease the friction between her legs by rubbing her thighs together. She rolled her eyes at herself.

  Jesus, you’re a complete nut case!

  You should NOT be attracted to that man!

  Remember?

  Sooo many reasons!

  Looking back at her phone, she quickly typed ‘Blake Wilson’ into the search bar. She clicked on the icon for the verified Blake Wilson account and let out a sigh as she looked through the latest post.

  Violet felt a smile creep across her face as she flicked through the pictures. She stared at the one from this morning. It was a mirror shot, those were her personal favorites, especially the ones he liked to post after a shower. The bathroom was all steamy and he was standing there in the mirror wearing nothing but a teeny-tiny white towel. The amount of waxed, tanned, and wet skin on display made her blush. She liked to imagine what it would be like to have a shower with Blake, to watch the water spray over his tanned skin, the sexy muscles rippling beneath the steaming water, and to watch the soap slide its way down his hot, hot, torso.

  To rub him raw with a shower puff…

  Hot damn.

  Shaking her head, she rolled her eyes at herself. She had to stop fantasizing about him. She had no idea what it was about him that called to her. Blake had the same large sapphire blue eyes as Sophie and the same perfect skin. But that was about all they had in common. Sophie was fair and pale like her mother and Blake was bronze and tanned like his father. He had a phenomenal body, but what she liked the most was that damn left dimple and that cheeky smile which made his blue eyes sparkle.

  Violet tapped the screen to make the image bigger so she could roam over the finer details, like the color of the tiles in his bathroom – white – and the number of toothbrushes in the holder by the sink. Thank god there was only one.

  Violet groaned as she roamed the zoomed in image of his chest and six-pack. Surely it was photoshopped? No one had abs that… defined. Why did her stupid heart still beat wildly at the sight of him? And why did she even like him?

  Still?!

  They were not questions she wanted to answer. She had just come to accept the fact that she was an idiot who was being ridiculous to think she had a shot with Blake Wilson. Violet sighed. Scrolling down, she read the comment that went with the picture.

  “ABSolutely having a great day!”

  Oh, the jerk!

  He had always been a little on the vain side, but Hollywood must have made it worse. His ego was probably so big that he would have to go sideways through a door! Violet clicked out of the photo and then looked at the next one. He usually posted three to five pictures a day.

  The next one was a photo of the view of LA from his home with the cryptic message A view to remember.

  What in the hell did that mean?

  Violet shook her head. She really needed to stop reading into what he wrote on his stupid PicMe account. Realistically, he was probably just going to be in Encounter Bay for Sophie’s wedding, which was only 3 weeks away. She could play it cool for 3 weeks, if she stayed away from Sophie’s parents’ home and The Shoreline. She should be fine, she could do that. She could even put in more hours at work to keep her busy and her mind off Blake. Then there was Sophie’s bachelorette party in Las Vegas, so that was one weekend where she definitely wouldn’t run into him. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad. She could avoid him for a couple of weeks. She had been doing it for the last 13 years, she was an expert!

  Feeling more positive about Blake’s unexpected return to Encounter Bay, Violet made her way to the freezer. She had definitely earned some Icy Mountain ice cream therapy today. Plus, she was starving because she didn’t eat lunch. After fishing around in the freezer for some banana and chocolate, Violet let out a sigh as she wrangled a spoon out of the drawer.

  At least she could count on Icy Mountain.

  Slumping back on the pale pink love seat, Violet tucked her feet up under herself and sighed as she dug into the ice cream. She pulled out her phone and went back to snooping Blake’s PicMe. The last picture he’d posted today was one of him lounging by a pool, no top, the camera positioned so just the top half of his sleeve of tattoos made it into the photo. He was smiling and had a set of Ray-bans sunglasses on. Violet groaned.

  Okay, she had a problem.

  A huge problem.

  Admitting she had a problem was the first step to recovery. So what if she was totally and utterly in love with her best friend’s brother, who just happened to be a super-hot Hollywood actor in front of whom she had gravely embarrassed herself as a 17-year-old teenager. As long as she kept it to herself, there wasn’t really a problem.

  Right?

  Her phone dinged and she saw a message pop up from Sophie.

  You better not be sitting on your ass eating ice cream, I expect you at the spot in 20.

  Violet sighed as she got up and put the remainder of the ice cream in the freezer and trudged to her bedroom to change out of her work clothes. She rummaged around for a pair of yoga pants and an old jumper, the wind at the beach could be brutal even in summer.

  ◆◆◆

  “There she is!” Sophie said as she leaned against her little red sports car looking amazing in a pair of black workout capris and a tight pink singlet top that said, ‘I’m so glam, I sweat glitter.’ Sophie had put her hair up into a high pon
ytail and she was wearing a pair of aviator style sunglasses, she looked like she had just walked off a fitness model photoshoot.

  Ugh, She wished she could look just half as stylish.

  Violet smiled at Sophie as she made her way over to her. The sun was in her eyes and the wind had picked up, but it didn’t detract from the view behind Sophie. Encounter Bay was something else. A smile spread across her face. This would always be her happy place, the stunning turquoise waters, the gentle lapping sound of the waves against the sand. It was the prettiest place in the world and she was lucky to live here.

  Sophie gave her a confused look. “I thought you would rather die than tell me your little secret, so why are you smiling?”

  “Sophie, don’t you ever just look at the view and it makes you happy, makes you feel lucky that you live here? As long as you get to see something that pretty every day, you know everything will turn out okay.”

  Sophie turned and gazed out at the beach with Violet.

  “I guess you’re right, I forget how lucky we are to live in a place like this. Every time I look out at the ocean it makes me feel calm and makes me realize that there is a whole big world out there.”

  Violet nodded her head. She couldn’t agree more.

  After a few minutes of walking down the sand dunes onto the beach, she felt butterflies stir in her stomach as they made their way closer to the shore. The salty breeze hit Violet as they made it off the sand dunes and onto the beach.

  “Let’s get this over with,” she mumbled as she stalked past Sophie in the direction of their spot.

  “Vi! Stop being so dramatic and wait up!” Sophie called from behind her as she hurried across the fluffy white sand.