Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 85565 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85565 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
By the time I pulled open the doors to the inn’s lobby, I was whistling.
Ana Lucia, who manned the front desk when I was off, glanced up from her phone. Her eyes raked over me, and her lips pursed.
“Good morning,” I told her in a cheery voice.
She lifted a sharply plucked eyebrow in return. “You seem happy.” She sounded suspicious.
“I am.” I made my way toward the coffee carafe next to the registration desk and started pouring myself a cup. Normally Ana Lucia would shoo me away and I would give her my puppy dog eyes until she relented. It was a game we played, one in which she lectured me about taking the “fancy coffee” away from the “paying guests” and I reminded her that I bought the “fancy coffee” with my own money so the “paying guests” wouldn’t revolt and fling freeze-dried Folgers dust all over the lobby the way that one lunatic had a few years ago.
This morning she was too distracted by my cheery mood to say anything about me pilfering the coffee. “Why?”
I gave her my most winning smile. “Why not?” I nodded toward the massive picture window dominating the back room of the lobby, and the view of Gannet Bay beyond. “The sky is blue, the sun is shining, the beaches are clear, and the ocean is calm. What more could a guy want?”
Her eyes narrowed. “What are you not telling me?”
I held up my hands all innocently. “Nothing.”
“You know you got that thing with the guys this morning,” she said. Ana Lucia always called my uncles “the guys” as if they were my group of friends rather than a collection of paternal stand-ins who always thought they knew what was best for me whether I agreed with them or not.
I nodded, pilfering a donut from the tray next to the coffee. “Yep.”
“They’re all already here,” she pointed out.
“I saw,” I told her through a mouthful of crumbs. I knew they would be waiting for me, but so be it.
She frowned at me, still thrown by my good mood. “I’d expected you to coming in all grumbly and sour like you usually do when the topic of the future of the inn comes up.”
I shrugged. “You know what I decided last night? This inn is a part of the family, and it belongs in the family, not in the portfolio of some money-grubbing corporate real estate developer who doesn’t give a shit about the Gilleys or McBride.”
Her eyes gleamed. “Couldn’t agree with you more.”
I started walking backward toward the conference rooms in the wing behind the registration desk. “I don’t plan on letting some asshole lawyer from New York ruin my fucking life, excuse my language.”
She flashed me a rare grin. “Then you tell that asshole where to put it.”
“That’s my plan,” I said with a laugh, before reaching for the door to the conference room. But it was already open, and through the crack I could see from the expression on my uncle Mark’s face that he’d heard every word of what I’d just said and he wasn’t pleased. Nevertheless, I refused to let the flash of disapproval in his eyes flag my determination.
Today I planned to fight for the future of the inn, and I planned to win. After that, I planned on finding sexy James and convincing him to let me have another taste of him.
I squared my shoulders and stepped into the room. My three uncles were already there, seated on either side of a beat-up wooden table. At the head of the table, a fourth man pushed back his chair and slowly stood.
I froze. Everything inside me ground to a halt, and the stupid grin I hadn’t been able to shake all morning faltered. Because I recognized him instantly. The salt-and-pepper hair, the slightly too-long tips starting to rebel against the lingering dampness from his morning shower. The sharp cheekbones and slanted jaw. Those eyes boring into me, his expression unreadable.
Uncle Mark spoke first. “Sawyer, this is James Allen.”
An unsure smile touched the corner of James’s mouth. “The asshole lawyer from New York.”
3
James
Seeing him here in the light of day was even more jarring than I’d expected, and Sawyer’s reaction was awful. I’d hoped my joke might disarm him, relieve some of the tension so clearly roiling through him. It didn’t. If anything, it made things worse.
The grin he’d been sporting when he’d entered the room had vanished, replaced by an angry scowl. My heart hammered against my chest, wondering how I should play this. Act like we’d never met? No. The waitress at the pub had seen us together. Act surprised? I wasn’t a particularly good liar.
I opened my mouth to say something, anything, but his eyes narrowed in warning. If he’d been a cat, he would have doubled in size and hissed at me. And I could hardly blame him.