Beach House Beginnings

“I was the skinny kid who came to visit my aunt, uncle and cousin a couple of weekends that summer.”

She had the vague memory of a flop of hair and baggy board shorts. “That was you?”

“I’ll take your surprise as a compliment.” He smiled again. “I grew a lot in my early 20s.”

“And now you’re…?”

“Thirty.”

Just a few months older than Meg.

They exchanged more life details then. He had spent the last four years with a cell phone app start-up, working insane hours but enjoying himself immensely. Meg realized he didn’t live far from her in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she worked for a large accounting firm that sent her out to smaller companies for independent audits.

“So you left Southern California?” Caleb asked.

“First time I’ve been back in a decade,” she said lightly, and explained about her parents relocating to Provence and her sister attending a wedding in Arizona.

Caleb slowly straightened in his chair, then shot her a considering look. “What happened here a decade ago—losing Peter—that was a tremendous blow.”

A fatal blow to Meg’s heart. Still, even now, something inside her chest gave a painful, ghostly squeeze. Resisting the urge to rub the spot, she turned her thoughts to Peter’s family. They’d lost someone vital to them as well. “Your aunt and uncle were devastated, I know.”

“They were,” Caleb agreed. “Me, too. Peter was the big brother I never had. I missed him so much that his parents gave me Bitzer.”

At the sound of his name, the dog raised his head. Caleb fondled a soft ear, his gaze on his pet. “We’ve been good company for each other, haven’t we, boy?”

Then his eyes shifted to Meg’s face. “How did you get through your grief?”

By running from that summer and from this place. But no one wanted to hear those kinds of truths. “One day at a time,” she said instead. Noting the sober look in Caleb’s eyes, she hastened to add more, not wanting him to think she was mired in the past. “It was ten years ago. Of course I’ll always feel sad about it, but I’m not pining away.”

“Good,” he said softly. “Good to know.”

“I’m not even that same person anymore.”

“Hence the Meg.”

She nodded. “Starr still had stars in her eyes. When I left the cove, I felt like I was different, more of a down-to-earth woman than that sentimental, romantic girl.”

“Why does ‘down-to-earth’ sound like a synonym for pessimistic?”

Meg swiveled on her cushion to face him. “I’m not. I just don’t believe in fairy tales anymore.”

Before he could reply, the oven timer dinged. They got to their feet and trooped to the kitchen. Bitzer padded behind, exuding enthusiasm. “Still likes to eat, huh?” Meg asked.

“Likes to be part of the crowd. I even take him to the office.”

As they dished up the eggplant parmesan, Meg discovered that the start-up Caleb worked for was actually his start-up, and the apps his company developed were software products used by the triathlete crowd, from route analyzers to workout logs. As they sat at the kitchen table, plates accompanied by a bowl of tossed salad, the wine and a pitcher of water with a second set of glasses, she again sized up his broad shoulders and lean-muscled torso…for informational purposes only, naturally.

Ignoring the little heated pulse of reaction she experienced just looking at him, she picked up her fork. “Triathlons, huh? I take it that’s your competition of choice.”

He glanced up from his serving of casserole. “I’ve cut back, actually,” he said. “I’m trying for a…tamer lifestyle, I’d guess you’d say.”

Tamer? A man like this, self-made, self-possessed, flat-out sexy, didn’t have a tame bone in his body. Not even his pinkie was domesticated. Not even his little toe.

He laughed. “You look like you don’t believe me.”

“I don’t believe you.”

He laughed again, and at that moment, they both reached for the pitcher of water. Their fingers tangled somewhere above the handle. And for a woman who no longer believed in magic, there had to be something else to account for the hot thrill that rushed like pinpricks up the tender inner flesh of her arm. Biology? Chemistry? A reason both logical and objective, likely involving pheromones as well as adrenaline, because two conflicting compulsions were at war inside her: to get closer to Caleb, and to run very far away from him.

Really, she should have paid more attention in her science classes, she decided, because she’d feel better with a solid explanation for why her skin felt hot, why her blood ran itchy through her veins, why her nerves were speed-dialing messages to random parts of her body.

Her belly tensed.

Her toes curled.

Her fingers clutched at his.

“Meg.” His quiet voice made her shift her gaze from their joined hands to his eyes. There was heat in them, and a curious kind of humor, too. “Are you seeing someone?” he asked.

The question gave her the impetus to slide her fingers from his. “No.” She watched him fill her water glass, then his, without spilling a drop. If the pitcher had been in her hand, it would have wavered all over the place. “I had a man in my life a while back, but he wanted marriage and that’s not for me.”

“Really?” Caleb asked, one brow rising.

“Really,” she said, finding his skeptical tone irritating. All women—even those approaching the supposedly dreaded 3-0—weren’t focused on white lace and promises. So she tossed her hair over her shoulder and said the first flippant thing that came into her head. “I’m more into short-term, for-the-physical-release-only affairs.”

Then she thought of how that sounded. Tackiness aside, some might construe it as an invitation. Her fingers tightened on her fork. “I mean, I…”

She had the distinct impression he was laughing again, though his mouth was closed as he chewed a bite of the eggplant dish. He swallowed, wiped his lips with his napkin, then gave her an encouraging smile. “You mean…?”

“I don’t know what I mean,” she mumbled, once again feeling out of her depth. It was infuriating, really, this nervous, edgy feeling. Meg never felt nervous in that way. Men didn’t put her on edge.

“It’s okay,” Caleb said, his gaze shifting to his plate. “I’m a little unsteady myself.”

She didn’t press for clarification of that, though she didn’t believe for a second that he was anything less than rock-solid. He appeared cucumber-cool as he continued calmly with his meal, eliciting more information from her—that she belonged to a book group that read nonfiction only; her favorite recent film was an award-winning documentary about the Great Depression—and offering up some additional details about himself—he had two nieces that he took to Disneyland by himself every year; his favorite movie was the latest blockbuster adaptation of a best-selling fantasy series.

Even as he laughed when she admitted she’d once sabotaged the book group’s secret ballot process so they didn’t pick as their next read the best-selling, but looked-long-and-boring biography of an obscure former president, and she laughed at the recounting of his determined quest to hunt down the Magic Kingdom’s Cinderella to obtain for his nieces a coveted photo—”I began to think the princess was like the fabled but elusive unicorn”—that edgy, breathless feeling did not abate.

It was sexual awareness, of course. Sexual tension.

An exhausting state of being, truth be told. By the time she stretched foil across the cooled, leftover casserole so he could return with it to his cottage, she felt as if she’d spent the last couple of hours on the narrow ledge of a high building. During heavy winds.

Yes, he was a charming companion in many respects, but she was glad the evening was coming to an end as she walked him to the door. Bitzer pressed against Meg’s knees as she stood in the entryway with his master. She patted his warm head in goodbye, then gave in to impulse and knelt down beside him to place a kiss on his soft doggy cheek.

Rising, she met Caleb’s smiling eyes. He held the casserole dish in one hand and gestured toward Bitzer with the other. “Do I get one of those, too?” he asked.

“Uh…” Oh, why not? that voice inside her asked. It was impulse again, or perhaps curiosity that brought Meg up on her toes. What woman wouldn’t want to get a little closer to such a perfect specimen of male-in-his-prime?

She leaned in, prepared to buss his lean cheek.

His large hand speared through the mass of hair at the back of her head, bringing her mouth to his. He didn’t go for a simple peck, or a gentle lips-to-lips brush, either. This was a full-on, fiery kiss, his mouth firm on hers, his tongue sliding inside without hesitation.

A sound came from low in her throat—surprise, appreciation, wonder—and she clutched at his shoulders. Her body flushed hot and she moved closer to his as if pressure could assuage the sudden ache between her legs and the tender heaviness of her breasts.

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