Angel Beach (Summer Romance Collection)

  “Mom had that picture of Reeve on the television where he was sitting in front of the shop and the scoop had just fallen off his cone.” I licked icing off my lip. “Hey, how did these get here? Did you guys wait in line?”

  “Hell no,” Matt said. “Someone left them on the front door step. Maybe it was that hot chick who hates us.” He dropped the last piece of roll on the counter. “Maybe she poisoned them or something.”

  I took another bite. “If she did, we’d deserve it.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Reeve said. “I’m hitting the waves. If I see the bakery wench, I’ll be sure to thank her before I run my board over her skinny ass.” He walked outside, picked up his board, and headed out to the beach.

  “One time, Dad and I won a cool plastic dragon at the arcade.” Matt was still back at Charlie’s Ice Cream Palace.

  I finished my roll and pathetically checked the box in case Echo had written a note on it. There was nothing. Maybe they’d had extras and everyone on the road got a box. That sounded stupid even in my head. The line for their shop stretched down the entire block. They would never have that many extras. I was reading too much into it, and I had to stop before I drove myself crazy or actually convinced myself that she cared. When my mind was doing crazy shit, I knew there was only one place for me-- the water.

  Sometimes it amazed me how much time we spent sitting out in the water on our boards. My shoulders stung from sunlight and salt as Reeve and I sat, silently waiting for a decent wave. In the distance, I heard skateboards scraping the cement walkway.

  “There’s your friend,” Reeve said motioning with his head toward the sand. We hadn’t spoken two words to each other since we’d paddled out.

  I looked in the direction of the skateboarders. Echo was riding a board behind the two guys she’d been skimboarding with earlier in the week. Her long legs stretched out forever below the hem of her shorts, and her light brown hair swirled around her shoulders as she raced down the walkway. She looked in our direction for a moment as she passed by.

  “She’s not that hot,” Reeve grumbled.

  “Yeah, right, keep telling yourself that. Maybe you’ll actually believe it.” Then my mind drifted back to the night before when she’d knocked the wind out of me by telling to me to get lost, and I remembered the marks on her arms. “You tried to hit on her last night, didn’t you?”

  Reeve started pushing farther away from me. “Like I’d ever hit on that.”

  “You did and she told you to go to hell.”

  Reeve ignored me a minute then laughed. “The way you went after Courtney last night, she must have told you the same thing.”

  His words rang painfully true. She hated me as much as she hated my brother. “Yeah, she told me to go to hell too, but I’m warning you, Reeve, don’t you ever touch her again.”

  The harsh glare of the sun was no match for the harsh glare Reeve shot me across the water. “How about you stop telling me what I can and can’t do . . . little brother.”

  “You can do whatever the hell you want, jump off a cliff for all I care. Just don’t ever lay a hand on her again.”

  Reeve faced the beach for a minute then glanced behind him at the incoming swell. He looked my direction. “I don’t want anything to do with her, just like she doesn’t want anything to do with you. So it looks like you won’t be laying a hand on her either.” He dropped down onto his board and took off on the wave.

  Reeve and I surfed in the same patch of ocean for two more hours without speaking one word to each other. My final ride ended in a pretty ugly wipeout, and my face scraped the ocean floor before I managed to surface again. I felt a warm trickle of blood rolling down the side of my face, and I decided I’d had enough.

  Reeve had done his best to destroy my mood again mostly because what he’d said was true. Echo wanted nothing to do with me, and I would never be able to get close enough to touch her . . . or kiss her.

  I reached the boardwalk just as Echo and her two skateboarding buddies had returned. I stopped to let them pass. She rolled past and glanced up at me then jumped off her board. Her friends looked back but she waved them on. “I’ll catch up in a second.” She picked up her board and walked over to me.

  Her hazel eyes stood out in her tanned face.

  “Are you all right? You’re bleeding,” she said.

  Having her so near had made me forget the blood. I reached up and wiped it off with the back of my hand. “Left some skin on the sand bar.”

  Her long lashes lowered and she dropped her board to the ground. She placed her foot on it to leave.

  “Thanks for the cinnamon rolls.”

  She looked up with a smile. “That would explain what my grandmother was doing with a box of rolls this morning when she went out for her walk.”

  “Oh, well, tell her thanks.” I could not believe how disappointed I was to find that the rolls had not come from Echo.

  She nodded and was about to push off but I stepped forward and my free hand reached for hers. I hadn’t realized I was going to do it but it happened before I could even think about it. She tried to pull away for a second then relaxed. Her wrist felt small, smooth, and frail in my hand.

  She looked up at me with her incredible eyes.

  “Echo, I know you told me to get lost but I can’t. I’m stuck here in this beach house with my two asinine brothers, and yes, my conniving father sent us here and the whole thing sucks, and I’m freakin’ miserable. But knowing that I’m going to be stuck here and that I’m going to see you every day, with those legs, and those eyes, and that confident little pout of yours and knowing that I’m never going to be close to you, just makes the whole damn thing that much worse.” I stepped closer. Her mouth was just inches from mine. “Staying away from you will be nothing short of torture.”

  She looked at me a long, intense moment, and her lips moved slightly as if our proximity had drawn her into the idea of a kiss too. But she gently removed her hand and glanced down the pathway to her friends who were now several blocks down the beach. She faced me again and I still had the urge to kiss her.

  “You hooked up with a girl half an hour after I talked to you.”

  “I did. Your words blew a hole through me. I was upset. Sorry.”

  “Seems like you’re apologizing to the wrong girl.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” It took all my will to walk away. Behind me I heard her skateboard wheels scrape the cement then the sound stopped. I glanced back.

  She was looking at me. “After work, I take Riley out on the beach to play catch with his Frisbee. Maybe I’ll see you there.”

  I nodded and headed back to the house with my board all the while trying to slow my racing pulse.

  Chapter 11

  Echo

  Zach had spent the night on our couch, and he’d slept through the entire morning, waking just as Mimi put up the closed sign. He looked so bad, Mimi sent him home and gave him the day off. He texted me an hour later that his mother was sure he was catching the flu and had sent him to bed.

  I helped Mimi measure the dry ingredients in the mixing room, a job that Zach was usually in charge of. I cut open the sack of flour. “So I understand you made a special delivery this morning.”

  “Special delivery?” Mimi put on her best innocently baffled expression.

  “The rolls you dropped off for the Freely brothers.”

  “Oh, those. Yes, we had a few extra, and I didn’t think they should go to waste.”

  I put my hands on my hips. “We turned away four disappointed customers empty handed this morning.”

  Mimi continued with her task of measuring yeast into the mixing bowl. “Well, it turns out there were a few more we didn’t see.”

  I shook my head and plunged the metal scoop into the flour. A cloud of white powder floated into the air, and I fanned it away wi
th my hand. “We must have a hidden oven in the back that I don’t know about because that’s twice that a mysterious cinnamon roll has appeared out of nowhere.”

  Mimi shrugged her bony shoulders. That mystical expression appeared on her face. It was one I knew too well but one that was hard to describe because it fell somewhere between secretive and magical.

  “They’re not bad boys. They just need a little coaxing in the right direction,” Mimi said as if she was thinking aloud.

  “And I suppose your cinnamon rolls are going to help point the way.”

  “Sometimes the senses are the best way to churn up emotions for the things we miss most.” She smiled up from her mixer. “Now, if you don’t get out there and start the filling, you won’t have time to take Riley out on the beach. You don’t want to miss that.” She winked.

  She seemed to know that I might be meeting Jamison. Sometimes it was scary living with the woman.

  The clock seemed to tick excruciatingly slow, and the butter did not seem to want to melt in the hot pan. And somewhere between measuring the brown sugar and stirring in the cinnamon, it occurred to me that Jamison might not even show. He proved last night that he was a player, just like his brothers, and I had no idea why I’d let him know that I’d be on the beach later. I guess it was because he’d looked truly hurt that I’d given him the brush off.

  I put a lid on the final container of filling and ran upstairs to shower off the sticky coating.

  Riley was already on the back stoop with his toy. His tail swished from side to side as I opened up the back screen door.

  With the exception of Mr. Moore and his metal detector and a patch of resting gulls, the beach was deserted. No sign of Jamison either. I pushed down the feeling of disappointment. There was no way I was going to allow myself to be upset if he didn’t show. After all, I’d told him to leave me alone, and a guy like Jamison would have girls coming at him from every direction. He was a Freely, and I was completely better off without knowing him. Which is, of course, why my heart did a complete somersault when his tall figure appeared along the water’s edge.

  A white t-shirt hugged the muscles of his chest and arms, and his black hair stood up in every direction. His hands were stuck deep in his jean pockets until Riley noticed him and raced toward him with the Frisbee. He plucked it from my dog’s jaws and threw it.

  I walked up to him. “Just so you know, Riley does not allow just anybody to throw that for him.”

  Riley raced right back to Jamison, who wasted no time in throwing it again. “Cool dog.” His pale eyes flickered in the sunlight as he watched Riley race over the sand to catch his toy.

  “There are some tide pools at the end of this strip,” I pointed toward the rock jetty at the end of the beach. “Do you want to take a walk?”

  “Definitely.” Riley came up and nudged his hand with the toy, and Jamison threw it again.

  “Sorry, he’s kind of persistent when it comes to playing catch.”

  Jamison smiled. “I don’t mind. We used to have a dog when I was younger. He was really my mom’s dog, but he was cool too, like Riley, only tennis balls were his drug of choice. And he didn’t have a huge beach to chase it, just a small backyard.”

  Apparently I could not hide the surprise in my face.

  “I know, shocking, isn’t it? Thomas Freely’s family living in a small hovel with an even smaller backyard sounds impossible. But we did.” He stared off at the ocean for a moment as if he’d been carried back to a childhood memory then he turned back to me. “I think we were happier in that crappy little house. I know that sounds strange.”

  “Not strange to someone who lives in a tiny house and is perfectly content.”

  “Yeah, but you have all this.” He held out his thick arms.

  “Believe me, I’m not complaining at all. I love Angel Beach. It’s my home.”

  He didn’t say anything for a second and stopped to throw Riley’s Frisbee. “I don’t blame you for not wanting to leave here. I wouldn’t want to leave either. I have nothing to do with my dad, you know? He’s a ruthless business man, and I’m not proud of that.”

  Someone up near the houses whistled. “Hey, Coco!” It was Mike. I waved back to him.

  “Isn’t that one of the guys you were skateboarding with earlier?” Jamison asked.

  “Yep, that’s Mike.”

  “Are you two--”

  “Together?” He looked worried, and I had to hold back a smile. I paused just to annoy him. “No, I’m not dating Mike.”

  He stopped. “I’m an idiot. I never asked if you were seeing someone. Wait, don’t tell me. If it’s yes then just stab a stake through my heart. It will be less painful.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him. “You are dramatic for a guy who looks like he probably has a thousand girls’ phone numbers in his cell phone.”

  He laughed. “The stake thing-- too much?”

  “A bit.”

  “You’re right. But you still haven’t answered me.” Riley dropped the toy in front of him, and he picked it up and threw it.

  “I’m not with anyone right now,” I said. “But if Channing Tatum happens to stroll by, then you’re on your own.”

  “Seriously? That guy with the ears?”

  “Oh yeah,” I nodded, “ears and all.”

  “Well, then I’ll just have to hope he doesn’t step foot on Angel Beach.” The water rolled up over our feet and drew back as quickly as it came. “And I don’t have a thousand numbers in my cell phone list . . . a couple of hundred maybe but not a thousand.”

  “I stand corrected.”

  “I noticed everyone calls you Coco.” The tide was rolling in farther and we migrated up the sand to avoid the frothy water.

  “Yeah, most people call me that.”

  “I like it.”

  I raced ahead to the rocks and looked back at him. “Hurry before the next wave comes in. We have to get past this jetty.” I ran over the section of rocks that jutted out into the water. The surface had been worn smooth by constant battering from the tide. Just past it was a recess in the cliff that was not filled with water until dark. I stepped down and walked back into the small cove of tide pools. The rocks and sand were inhabited with tons of live creatures waiting for the tide to bring in fresh food or to carry them out to sea.

  Riley and Jamison jumped off the rocks just as a wave splashed over them. “Come look. There’s an entire colony of sea stars and anemones in the little pool on this rock.”

  Jamison nearly filled the recess with his broad shoulders. He crouched down to get a closer look but still seemed impossibly tall. “There’s definitely some weird looking stuff living out there in the ocean.” Riley dropped his Frisbee into the tide pool sending a few small fish from their hiding places.

  I plucked it out of the water and handed it back to the dog. “There’s no place to play fetch in here, Riley. You’ll have to wait.”

  Jamison stretched up to full height and looked up at the surrounding cliffs. “Matt would like this place. When we were little, Mom and Dad took us to this little beach shack that belonged to our neighbor. Matt would spend all day looking for crabs and sand dollars.”

  “Matt’s younger than you?”

  “Yeah. We’re only a year apart, and we used to be really close but now Reeve is his hero. I tagged along on this trip mostly to make sure Matt doesn’t kill himself in some ridiculous way. Reeve never watches out for him.”

  The steep walls and the disappearing sun cast shadows on his face making him even more handsome-- if that were possible.

  “Maybe someday he’ll discover the truth about his oldest brother,” I said.

  His lip turned up. “I don’t know. Reeve manages to fool a lot of people. I swear sometimes I catch stars in my dad’s eyes when he’s watching him.”

  He reached up and pushed a strand of
hair off my face. His fingertip trailed lightly over my cheek, and I could still feel it after he’d lowered his hand.

  “I guess you were never fooled by him though,” he said.

  “The hatred was definitely instant.” A wave splintered against the rocks we’d crossed, spraying a light mist of salt water over us.

  “I still can’t believe you walked up to him and kicked sand in his face.”

  “Don’t remind me. I thought I was going to lose a foot. Not one of my finer decisions but he made me so mad.”

  Jamison ran his fingers through his hair but it did nothing to tame it. “I know the feeling.” Water pooled around our ankles. “The tide’s coming in. We need to get past those rocks before it’s impossible.” The water pulled back, and I lead the way over the rocks, whistling to make sure that Riley followed. We’d gotten across safely, but as I jumped down from the rocks, Jamison suddenly turned around.

  “Riley!” he called as he ran back the way we’d come. Riley had gone back for his Frisbee. A strong wave plowed toward them.

  “Jamison, watch out!”

  He grabbed Riley and flew off the rocks to the tide pools and out of the way of the crashing wave. The water receded and Jamison, Riley, and the Frisbee raced back over the rocks to where I was standing. The next wave looked like a raging tsunami as it smacked against the jetty.

  Jamison watched the water churn over the smooth black stones for a minute then patted Riley’s head. “You really love that toy, Buddy.”

  He was soaking wet. His t-shirt was clinging to his chest. “Thank you for grabbing Riley off the rocks. He might have gotten pulled into the riptide.” I looked him up and down. “And might I add that if there were a guy’s wet t-shirt contest, you’d win handily.”

  He looked down at his wet shirt and then grinned up at me. “Is that right? Well, maybe we should see how you might do in one.” The gleam in his eye told me to run, and I took off with a scream. Long legs are not the least bit helpful when the guy chasing you is a giant.