Beach House No. 9

He paused as if vaguely surprised, then he gave a slight shake of his head. “Fine. Let’s talk serial commas, then. Please state your views on their usage.”

Really, the man could make a woman start to consider serial murder—beginning with him. “The serial comma, also known as the Oxford or Harvard comma, refers to the punctuation mark used before the final item in a list of three or more. It’s the standard in American English—”

“According to who?” He bristled.

“Whom,” she corrected. “And it’s according to The Chicago Manual of Style.”

“But—”

“Though that’s for nonjournalistic writing,” she went on, ignoring his interruption. “I’m aware reporters like yourself follow the AP Stylebook, which recommends leaving out the comma before a coordinating conjunction.”

He was silent at that.

She waited a beat. “Did I pass the test?”

“Look.” He sounded exasperated. “I just want to be left alone.”

She gazed around her, taking in the half-dressed beautiful beach people who were drinking his booze and crowding his deck as the sun slid toward the horizon. “Your need for solitude would be a bit more convincing if you weren’t surrounded by a crowd. If your guests didn’t call your place Party Central.”

Something flashed in his eyes. “That’s none of your business.”

Oops. Though clashes between herself and a stalled client were to be expected, downright hostility was not her friend. Jane scooched her chair closer, twisting it to face him. “Griffin…” she said and, like a good governess with a recalcitrant charge, put out a placating hand to touch his leg.

Weird happened when fingers met shin. An electric spark snapped, a tingle shot up her arm, their gazes collided, veered away, crashed again. As yet another glow of heat radiated across her skin, she was paralyzed, still touching him, still staring at him. Confused, she couldn’t seem to pull away. Members of the opposite sex didn’t produce such strong physical reactions in her. She was above all that, she’d always assumed, her interest more in a man’s mind than in his…manliness.

“Griff!” someone said in the distance, then became more insistent. “Griff!”

“What?” He didn’t move. Their stares didn’t waver.

“Sammy says he’s going to jump,” the voice answered.

“Fine,” Griffin responded without emotion. “Tell him to watch the rocks.”

“He says he’s going for the record. He says he’s going to beat you.”

Griffin jerked. The movement broke Jane’s paralysis, and she snatched her hand from his leg. His head swung around to address the man who was standing right beside them. “What did you say?”

It was Beach Boy from the front door. Ted. He pointed to the bluff at the south end of the cove. Even from here, Jane could see a handful of men scrambling along a path up its side. “Sammy says he’s taking off from a spot five feet above your last leap.”

Griffin glanced over his shoulder. “Sammy’s drunk.”

Beach Boy’s curls bounced when he nodded. “It’s why he’s talking trash. But I think he means it. I think he’s going to outdo you this time.”

“Outdo me? Like hell he will.” Griffin was already standing. Then he gripped the railing of the deck and swung himself over and onto the sand below. “Get your camera ready,” he advised the other man as he stripped off his shirt and ran toward the outcropping.

Jane realized she’d spent too much time with English majors and MFAs. They preferred Frisbee golf and strolls through farmers’ markets. They didn’t splash through surf that rose to their knees and then ascend a steep hillside, the muscles in their backs shifting and their strong arms flexing as they reached for each handhold.

They didn’t shout something indistinct and then hurl themselves off a jutting boulder into the roiling ocean.

Several of Griffin’s party guests did just that, from various heights. Jane found herself holding her breath as each man launched himself into space. Her initial reaction could mostly be summed up by “Why?” but after the first couple of men made it back to shore, she could admit there was a certain…exuberance in the activity.

Ultimately there were only two men left on the bluff. One, she guessed, was the drunken Sammy. The other was Griffin. They stood beside each other, the wind tugging at the legs of their shorts.

“Griff should talk him out of it,” one of the partygoers lining the deck railing said. They all wore dark glasses or had their hands up to shade their eyes from the lowering sun. “He’ll have the record if he takes off from there, but Sammy’s just pickled enough not to realize that height means he has to jump farther outward into deeper water.”

But if Griffin tried to talk sense into the other man, it apparently didn’t work. Those on the deck gasped in unison as Sammy bounded from the rock. The others followed his descent, but Jane kept her gaze on their host, who instantly scrambled even higher.

“Is Griffin trying to get a better look at his friend?” she asked Beach Boy, who was still beside her.

“No,” the dude said on a sigh, as Griffin stopped at a sharp nose of stone. “He’s upping the ante. Nobody’s ever attempted a jump from that height. It could be…” He didn’t finish, but the expression on his face did it for him.

It could be dangerous.

Appalled, Jane closed her eyes, squeezing them tight. Though she’d been concerned about her latest author’s uncooperative attitude and then his penchant for crowded beer bashes, she’d remained confident in her ability to help him mold his memoir. She’d been taught long ago that failure was not an option, after all. But clearly the task of aiding Griffin Lowell was going to be more complicated than mentioning deadlines and being available with red pen in hand.

This man was more than a stalled writer. Clearly he was also an impulsive risk taker with an overblown competitive streak.

Or a full-fledged death wish.

CHAPTER TWO

THE TV WAS DRONING at a dull level when Griffin woke up, just as it did every morning. Without opening his eyes, he fumbled for the remote and edged the volume higher. It didn’t register whether the broadcast was news or cartoons or something in between, because it didn’t matter—the noise was only necessary to block out the voices in his head. He wasn’t schizophrenic, he was just hyper-memoried. They had the tendency to play in the background of his brain unless he supplanted them with the sound of twenty-four-hour news or hard-driving music or an alcohol-infused social gathering.

Being Party Central had its benefits.

And another man besides himself was reaping them, he realized as he made his way toward the kitchen a few minutes later. One of his surfing buddies, Ted, was sacked out on the living room floor, a beach towel thrown over him. In his hand, he clutched a bikini top.

Griffin didn’t see a sign of the bottoms or the female body that the D-cups belonged to. He shrugged and prodded the guy’s shoulder with his flip-flop. “Hey.”

Ted batted at the annoyance, thwapping the bikini strings against Griffin’s ankle. “It’s not a school day, Mom,” he murmured.

Though Griffin could hear the television from here, Ted’s mutter sucked him straight to a sandbag-and-timber hooch in a remote northern valley of Afghanistan. Soldiers slept within inches of each other, and someone was always talking in their sleep. To their mom.

Or to their demons.

With a sharp shake of his head, he dislodged the thought and then jostled Ted again. “Kid.” The surfer was in the same age range as the nineteen-to-twenty-seven-year-olds with whom Griffin had spent his embedded year. Those young men had grown up fast. Griffin, at thirty-one, sometimes felt as if he was twice that after those three-hundred-sixty-five days.

“Kid,” he said again. “Get up. Stretch out on the couch. Better yet, take a bed in one of the guest rooms.”

Ted blinked and slowly rolled to a sitting position. He looked down at his naked chest, the beach towel and then the half a bathing suit tangled around his fingers. “Did I get lucky last night?”

“Don’t know.”

The other man lifted the fabric he held and stretched it between both hands. “I was dreaming about that librarian.”

That librarian? Griffin tried not to scowl. Ted could only mean the small stubborn woman who’d arrived uninvited to the party. She was the only bookish female around last night. He’d done his best to ignore her, but she wasn’t easy to avoid, damn her pretty eyes. Jesus, now she had Griffin’s surf buddy thinking about her in his sleep!

“You called her ‘Mom,’” he told Ted.

“Nah. That was my second dream. In my first, you take her with you off the cliff, and her clothes sorta melt to nothing on the way down.”

“Huh.” Griffin tried imagining it, but all he could picture was her mouth flapping at him. The mouth was pretty too, soft-looking. Tender. But it flapped all the same. You signed a contract. You’ve got to get to work.

Ted looked from the bikini to Griffin. “Which reminds me. I took some good shots of your jump. And also of you pulling Sammy to shore. I think he drank as much seawater as beer last night.”

“He puked up both.” Griffin felt guilty about it. He shouldn’t have let the guy take that leap. He’d tried reasoning with him, but he’d recognized the mulish light in his eyes. Griffin had never managed to talk his twin, Gage, out of anything when he looked like that. And Erica had worn that same intractable expression the last time they’d spoken.

A warm furry body bumped against his knee, and he reached down to pet his dog, Private. “You need to go out?” he asked the black Lab. “Okay, I’ll let you take a turn in the garden before breakfast. But for God’s sake, stay off Old Man Monroe’s property. The last time you did your business there he threatened me with citizen’s arrest.”

Private didn’t seem worried about their cantankerous neighbor or his owner’s fate, but just ambled through the back door, his craggy teeth in an anticipatory smile. As Griffin swung the paneled wood shut, a small blue espadrille placed itself in harm’s way.

The canvas, embroidered with multicolored flowers, was attached to the librarian.

Governess.

Jane.

He’d been so sure he’d gotten rid of her yesterday. After all, she’d been gone when he got back from his jump. “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked, using his body to block the opening.

Her answer was to slip a venti-sized cup through the narrow gap, from a coffee place that was a twenty-minute car ride away. Crescent Cove’s isolated location meant you had to commute for your four-buck fix of fancy Seattle caffeine.

“I thought you might like this.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. Her jeans were rolled at the ankle, and she wore a pale blue oxford shirt that seemed to leach the gray from her big eyes. They were as silvery as the morning overcast and looked a little spooky with her dark lashes surrounding them. Her mouth wasn’t scary, though. A rose-petal pink, it had the puffy, swollen look of one that had been kissed all night long.

That was what was so arresting about her, he decided. It had caught his attention the day before too. Though she walked around all buttoned up, there was that contradiction of the making-out kind of mouth.

It gave him this insane urge to check her for hickeys.

Jane sent him a bright smile. “You look like a caramel macchiato kind of man to me,” she said. Then added, “With extra whip.”

“Goodbye.” He didn’t give a damn about her toes.

“Wait, wait, wait,” she cried, but her words turned muffled as he closed the door firmly between them.

“I would have taken that caramel macchiato,” Ted complained, drifting into the kitchen.

Griffin ignored the insistent knocking on the back door. “You don’t know this sort of woman like I do, Ted.” His instincts were on red alert, had been since he’d slipped off his eye patches to find her in his place. That silvery gaze had seemed to look right through him. He didn’t appreciate being that open. “You take her coffee, she takes your soul.”

“I don’t know. She looks harmless to me.”

“Her looks…” Griffin let the thought die off. He wasn’t going to get into Jane’s looks with Ted, who’d been dreaming of her naked. Griffin couldn’t really imagine there was anything interesting under those clothes she wore. He wouldn’t imagine there was anything interesting under there. She had the mouth, and the demands that came from it were all the reason he needed to pretend she didn’t exist.

She’d stopped knocking.

The relief he felt at that had him almost smiling at Ted. He clapped his hands together. “What are we going to do today?” The other man was a part-time county lifeguard. His leftover hours seemed to revolve around surfing and partying, both of which made him the perfect companion in Griffin’s eyes.

Ted’s expression turned troubled. “I don’t know, Griff. Maybe I should take off.”

“What? Why?”

“You’d probably like some privacy.”

It wasn’t exactly panic that shot through him at that last word, but it was close enough to make Griffin’s voice tight. “I would hate some privacy. What’s going on?”

Ted shifted one shoulder. “The librarian. You’re supposed to be writing, she said.”

“The librarian doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” Glancing over his shoulder, he checked the view out the window. She wasn’t there. The tightness around his throat eased. “I don’t owe anyone anything,” he lied.

Ted’s hands were worrying the scarlet bikini top. “Yeah? But still…there’s something about what she said….”

“There’s something about her!” Griffin interrupted, glancing over his shoulder again. “You’re dreaming she’s naked, her mouth is annoying the hell out of me, and—” He broke off as the woman in question came into sight through his window.

“—she’s stealing my dog.”

He stalked closer to the glass. Sure enough, she had threaded what looked like a belt through Private’s kerchief-collar. Though he couldn’t hear her words, it was clear she was coaxing the dog to follow her. He rapped on the glass with his knuckles.

“Hey!” he yelled, cranking open the window. “Leave my pet alone. Besides being a party crasher, are you a dognapper too?”

She froze, those lips of hers turning down in a frown. She looked from Griffin to the animal, then back to Griffin again. Her eyes narrowed.

“Hell,” he muttered, knowing what was coming next. He’d just given her the damn idea himself.

Jane put her free hand on her hip. “Come out and get him.”

“You don’t want me to do that.” He assumed his fiercest expression, the one that had caused a gunman to hesitate a crucial second at a Taliban-manned checkpoint, thus saving Griffin’s life.

Jane, however, merely tapped a toe. “Is that supposed to be a threat? Are you going to come out here and just do-nothing me to death? You can’t meet a deadline, let alone mete out some kind of punishment.”

Rage burned in Griffin’s belly. “Ted,” he said, with a jerk of his head. “Go out there and get Private.”

“No way. I’m afraid of the dog.”

Griffin shot his friend a look. Ted let Private share sandwiches with him, alternating bites. “Bullshit.”

“Okay. I’m afraid of her.”

Jane apparently heard the exchange because she was laughing. “You’re not the only one,” she called out.

Griffin saw red again. He strode to the back door and threw it open. Then he advanced on the governess, determined to get back his dog and get her on her way, never to return.

“Stealing’s pretty low, lady,” he said in a menacing voice. “You think it’s okay to purloin man’s best friend? Abscond with an innocent animal?”

She laughed again. “Purloin. Abscond. You’re good with synonyms, at least. Maybe there’s hope after all that you can meet your authorial commitment.”

This close he could smell her. It was a sweet, feminine scent, and it almost dizzied him as he made to snatch the impromptu leash from her hand.

“Don’t touch her!” a cranky elderly voice snapped.

“What?” Griffin glanced over to see Old Man Monroe approaching, his beetled brows and stabbing cane making clear he was on another of his tirades. “What’s got you riled now?”

“I won’t allow you to hurt that young lady.”

Hurt her? He had never wanted to hurt a woman in his life, which was probably how the thing with Erica had gotten so out of hand. He hadn’t even wanted to wound her with the truth. “I’m not touching the young lady. What’s she to you anyway?”

Old Man Monroe, who had likely been bad-tempered for all ninety-four years he’d been on the planet, looked at Griffin with undisguised dislike. It didn’t bother him a lick. It had been the man’s attitude toward both Griffin and his brother every vacation since they’d begun running around the cove on their own as kids.

“She saved me from calling county animal control. Your mangy mutt was in my garden again. Wouldn’t budge an inch, even though I was throwing my old GI boots at him.”

“Couldn’t hit the side of a barn,” Jane murmured under her breath, “but I thought I should get your pup out of there anyway.”

“Would have cost you three hundred bucks to spring him from the shelter,” Old Man Monroe said.

“Or you could just have picked up the phone instead of your army boots and called me. You know the number.”

Monroe continued as if Griffin hadn’t said a word. “So you owe the young lady.”

Jane shot him a triumphant smile. “Haven’t I been saying just that?”

Ignoring them both, Griffin detached Private from the improvised leash and then began walking the dog back toward the house.

“Don’t you have something to say to her?” his curmudgeonly neighbor demanded.

“Yes,” Jane echoed. “Don’t you have something to say to me?”

“Sure,” Griffin answered, not looking back. “Go away. And don’t think you can traipse into my house again. I’m putting everyone at Party Central on notice. Nobody looking like a governess or a librarian is welcome at Beach House No. 9.”

* * *

JUST LIKE THE dognapping, Griffin had given Jane the idea himself. Nobody looking like a governess or a librarian is welcome at Beach House No. 9.

She was determined to get inside the place again. Beyond that? Her plan went hazy there. But she figured if she could make her way into Party Central once more, then he would understand she wasn’t letting him off the hook. Her fortitude might be the prod that would get him sitting down to start those pages.

Unlike this morning, this time she approached the house from the front. It meant trudging through the sand in a pair of strappy wedge sandals, but she plowed forward, passing other cottages and winding around happy beachgoers. Though the month of June often meant coastal overcast in the late afternoons, the Crescent Cove sky was a brilliant blue as the sun sank toward the horizon. The long sweatshirt she wore over her party outfit made her too hot, and she paused in front of the small bungalow numbered “8” in order to slide down the zipper.

A slender woman was tapping a For Rent sign into the ice plant growing beside the front porch steps. Unlike Jane, she must have been immune to the sun, for over her capri jeans she wore a fisherman’s knit sweater that reached her knees. Turning, she let out a frightened bleat. Her hand clutched at her chest. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t see you standing there.”

“I should apologize,” Jane said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

The woman pushed her long dark hair away from her forehead. “Not your fault, really. I startle easily.” Her gaze took in Jane’s outfit, her high shoes, the hair that she’d salt-air-armored with a palmful of styling product and her flat iron set on High. “Visiting Beach House No. 9?”

“Ha!” Jane said, smiling. “I look like I’ll fit right in, do I?”

“Um, yeah. Are you a friend of Griffin’s?”

“Sort of. I’m Jane Pearson.”

“I’ve known Griffin all my life. I’ve always lived at the cove, and the Lowells summered here every year.” She gave a shy smile. “I’m Skye Alexander. Nowadays I manage the rental properties in the area.”

“Nice to meet you.” Jane’s gaze lingered on the For Rent sign as she filed away the thought that Skye might be a helpful resource regarding Griffin.

Skye glanced over her shoulder. “No. 8 had a leaky roof, among other things, that kept it unavailable for a while. Griffin actually wanted it, but he had to take the place next door.”

They both turned to look at Beach House No. 9. A kite attached to a fishing pole was whipping above the second-floor balcony. People were crowded on the first-floor deck, and Jane could make out a Beach Boys tune that changed to something from the Beastie Boys. A nubile female in a string bikini and nothing else climbed onto a table and began gyrating, to the hoots and applause of the rest.

“Has the makings of a rowdy one tonight,” Skye said.

Jane sent her a weak smile. “I can’t wait.”

The short trek to the front door of Party Central gave her time for second thoughts. Not that she was necessarily afraid of a little hedonistic celebrating—she had a friend or two who might say she was past due for some of that—but she wasn’t exactly comfortable with the idea or with her costume.

It wasn’t Jane-the-governess wear. Of course, that was entirely the point, but still, she shivered as she let the sweatshirt slide from her shoulders on her approach to the front door. Her exposed skin prickled as the ocean breeze tickled her flesh. Taking a page from the bikini girls of the day before, she’d put on her own suit. The black two-piece had appeared fairly modest in the Macy’s dressing room, and she’d snapped on a mid-thigh-length black jean skirt over the bottoms as well. But the deep plunge of the halter top and the hip-hugging waistband of the skirt left a lot of bare flesh revealed. Her wedge shoes made her legs feel miles longer—which was good until she realized that meant miles more nakedness too.

She thought about swamping herself in the fleece sweatshirt again. She considered turning around and coming up with another plan for a different day. Then she remembered Ian Stone and how he’d trampled her pride and her reputation. Her inner resolve stiffened. With a deep breath, she knocked on the front door.

As she’d hoped, it wasn’t Griffin who opened it. If yesterday was any indication, he was tucked in some secluded corner. The guy on the other side of the threshold wasn’t familiar to her, though he was dressed in the common male uniform of board shorts and a tan. His smile was white, and a dark blue tattoo over one pumped pec showed the silhouette of a surfer carrying his board under his arm.

“Babe!” he said, as if they were old friends. His warm palm cupped her shoulder to draw her inside. “You need a beverage!”

It was that easy. She figured the layers of mascara she’d applied had done their part, as well as the raspberry gloss she’d pinkied onto her mouth. Once she had an umbrella drink in her hand, Jane decided she could introduce herself as something more exotic with an entirely straight face. Jana. Janelle. Jezebel.

As she walked across the deck, a man grabbed her wrist, and dragged her near to dance to an old B-52s tune. He put his hands at her waist and she used the shuffling circle they made to search for Griffin. If she spotted him, she wasn’t sure what she’d do. Wave? Stick out her tongue? But both seemed childish when all she wanted was to remind him of his obligations, one professional to another.

She glanced down at her naked skin and skimpy outfit with another wave of misgiving. Perhaps this had been a bad idea after all. The urge to cover up had her edging away from her dance partner. His fingers tightened on her waist.

“Where you going?” he asked.

“To get my sweatshirt.” She made a vague gesture toward the front door where she’d left the thing on a bench.

“And hide away all that creamy skin?” the guy protested, leaning close to her ear. “That would just be so…wrong.”

Her smile was halfhearted. “Yeah, well, I’m a little chilled.” Please, please don’t offer to warm me up.