Meet Me at the Beach (Seashell Bay) (28 page)

“Okay, I take that back,” she said. “Maybe not blank, but written in some unbreakable code. Mr. Enigma, forever wrapped in mystery.”

Yeah, and that’s the way I like it.

Ryan had never much liked folks poking into his business, and poking into other people’s business was pretty much a team sport in Seashell Bay. “Maybe I just don’t have a very interesting story to tell.”

She stared at him. “Seriously? We need to play poker sometime, dude, because that’s a big, fat lie if I’ve ever heard one.”

“Come on, Merrifield, how many times have we hung out at the Pot drinking beer and playing darts?” he said with a taunting grin. “Or danced at the festival social? Hell, it’s not like I hide out in a cave when I come back to the island.” Damn, he’d almost forgotten how much he enjoyed kidding around with her.

Morgan’s expression went serious on him in an instant, surprising him again. “In a way, you do hide, Ryan. You hardly ever talk about yourself and never about what you actually do. All anybody knows is that you were in the military for years and then you left. Trust me, we’ve spent many a long hour on the island speculating about what nefarious things Ryan Butler might be up to. Some people even think you were part of the raid on Bin Laden’s compound, and maybe what happened there made you decide to leave the army.”

That theory was completely bogus, though Ryan had been part of operations every bit as hairy as SEAL Team Six’s mission to Abbotabad. “Not even close. Besides, SEALs are navy, and I was army. Who was the wing nut that came up with that stupid idea?”

Morgan made a zipping motion across her lips. “I never reveal my sources. But if you don’t like rumors, you could try to be a little more forthcoming. Inquiring minds want to know.”

“You mean
nosy people
want to know. Okay, here’s the deal—I was in the army, I left, and now I work for a private military contractor called Double Shield.”

She rewarded him with an encouraging smile. “That’s a start. Now what exactly do you do for Double Shield? Which, by the way, sounds like a condom ad.”

Ryan was torn between laughter and irritation. He didn’t like people pressing him for details of his life, but he knew Morgan was just kidding around. “I protect people who need protecting.”

“Holy cow, you mean like movie stars and rap artists?” She batted her eyelashes in a
golly-gee
imitation of someone who was actually impressed with what he did.

“All kinds of people,” Ryan said with just enough edge to signal the topic was closed for discussion.

Morgan blew out a sigh. “See what I mean? Getting information out of you is like digging for gold in Seashell Bay. Totally pointless.”

“Now that’s an incisive little nugget of analysis.”

She groaned at his lame joke. He was really hitting them out of the ballpark today.

The boat pulled up to the Little Diamond Island dock, and a few passengers started to gather up their things.

“Call me paranoid,” Ryan said, “but I’m going to head downstairs for a few minutes to make sure nobody gets ideas about your stuff.” Maybe they could talk about something else besides his life when he came back.

She smiled. “If it makes you feel better, go for it. They’d be crazy to try with you playing watchdog. Dude, you look more ripped every time I see you.”

“Right, a regular man of steel.” Ryan flexed a bicep like Popeye to make light of her comment and then headed for the stairs.

As she watched Ryan disappear below, Morgan told herself that her rapidly beating pulse was simply a coincidence. Most übermasculine guys in their early thirties tended to swagger, especially around women. Ryan, though… he moved with a quiet yet powerful grace that was a wonder to behold. His body was pretty damn wonderful too, with broad shoulders tapering to the classic six-pack and long, muscular legs. His Red Sox T-shirt hugged his brawny chest and showcased his cut biceps. That amazing body was the product of years of military training and his beloved kayaking, and it was all too easy to imagine how it would feel wrapped around her.

She breathed a tiny sigh and slumped against the back of the bench, turning her face up to the warm June sunshine. She’d spent hours rushing around Portland to pick up supplies. Normally she gave herself enough time before the boat’s departure to use the cargo service for her goods, but too many errands today and a fender-bender near the parking garage had delayed her. Thank God that after her mad dash, Ryan had appeared to help her. The fact that he
liked to rattle her chain spoke to the easy friendship that still existed between them.

Her thoughts about Ryan had often strayed from friendship into fantasy territory over the years, and their encounter at last summer’s festival dance had done nothing to change that. The two of them had ended up in a slow dance at the end of the evening, egged on by their friend Laura Vickers. A little drunk by then, Morgan had found it all too easy to melt into the dangerous shelter of Ryan’s embrace.

It had been a culmination of a stressful evening, brought on by a horrible and very public confrontation between Lily Doyle’s father and his longtime enemy, Sean Flynn. Morgan had been so rattled and worried for Lily that she’d responded by drinking more than she normally did, which had lowered her staunch defenses against her supersecret crush on Ryan. Her heart had pounded like a battering ram as he held her close—too close. His bristled jaw had rubbed gently over her cheek, and she’d thought he was going to kiss her right there on the crowded dance floor. Under the influence of alcohol and nerves—and, yes, sheer lust—her smarts had evaporated in the heat in Ryan’s mysterious gaze.

At precisely the same moment, they’d both snapped out of it. By some sort of unspoken but clear mutual agreement, she and Ryan had derailed the makings of a runaway train. Even in her instinctive relief, Morgan had been shaken to realize how good it had felt to be held by him. How thrilling the moment had been in its raw sexual power.

And how insanely stupid it had been to let it go that far.

While in theory, she loved the idea of having hot sex
with Ryan Butler, she was not going to be a one-night stand for a hard-ass soldier who flitted on and off the island, not even stopping long enough to make a ferry pass economical. And Ryan had clearly felt the same, because they’d quickly parted ways after the dance, never speaking a word about what had happened during those few electrifying minutes.

Dammit, though, one look at him today had sent her right back into the grip of an emotional—and hormonal—tsunami. Whatever that dance at the social had stirred up, she obviously hadn’t managed to bury it deep enough. Morgan knew her traitorous body would happily straddle Ryan’s lap for a hot make-out session right now, in full view of a bunch of islanders who knew them both. But surely all that told her was that it had been way, way too long since she’d had sex.

Yeah, sure, that has to be it.

Ryan came back up the stairs, taking them two at a time as the boat pulled away from the dock. He sat next to her and said, “So, tell me about Golden Sunset. How are you and Sabrina making out with the place?”

She mentally winced, hating the idea of voicing her struggles with the inn. Should she be honest with Ryan or put on the brave face she maintained for all but her closest friends? Uncertain, she gave a little shrug.

“Not too good, huh?” His gaze looked both sympathetic and concerned, and she could tell he wanted an honest answer.

She capitulated. “It’s been rough. An awful lot of our regular guests came back year after year mostly because they loved Dad. You know what a big personality he had, and he really knew how to make people feel welcome and wanted.”

“Cal was a stand-up guy. One of the best.”

Morgan took a deep breath, the grief almost choking her. “Quite a few couples canceled their summer reservations after they heard Dad had passed. I don’t know whether they didn’t want to come if he wasn’t there or they thought the place might be too depressing after we lost him.”

Hell, despite her best efforts, the inn’s atmosphere
was
depressing. It still seemed impossible that it should carry on without her dad.

“Maybe a little of both,” Ryan said, frowning a bit. “It’s too bad they didn’t look at it as an opportunity to keep supporting the place. And you.”

“Amen to that. Anyway, unless business somehow picks up, it looks like we could wind up in the red for the summer. And I think you remember how dead the rest of the year is for tourism in Seashell Bay.”

The B&B’s bread and butter had always been the summer vacation crowd. While most of that revenue came from tourists, a lot of island residents didn’t have room in their homes and cottages for all the family and friends that descended on them in the summer, so those folks often ended up at Golden Sunset. That kind of business would continue at various levels all year, but only during Christmas was the inn ever close to full during the off-season. If Morgan didn’t manage to pull in some good summer business, her father’s B&B was headed for disaster.

Ryan glanced at another ferry, the
Maquoit
, as it passed them to starboard on its way back to Portland. At least a dozen people waved at them, as always happened when boats passed each other. She forced a little smile and waved back.

“Have you given any thought to selling?” Ryan said. “Or will you be able to ride it out?”

Oh, I think about selling every freaking day.

“I’m not sure anybody would buy the place at this point. Everything was up in the air even before Dad died. Aiden and Lily and their partners are building that new resort… and, well, who really knows how it’ll impact our little place?” Morgan was, of course, happy that Aiden Flynn had returned to the island for good. But she had some worries about the effect of his upscale ecoresort on her small business.

“Most of your regulars should stay loyal,” Ryan said. “A lot of people prefer the atmosphere of smaller inns. From what I hear, Aiden’s place is going to cater to a different crowd.”

Morgan gave him a wry smile. “Yes, a crowd that likes lots of comforts and the latest in modern conveniences. Our place is short on both, I’m afraid. Heck, Dad even hemmed and hawed before finally putting in Wi-Fi last year. And our rooms are pretty… well, basic.”

She almost said
run-down
, but that felt disloyal. Facing an increasingly tight financial squeeze, her father had let things slide over the past couple of years, and now the place needed a lot of work, both structural and cosmetic. “Anyway, I have to try to make a go of it for my sister’s sake. She’d fall apart without the B&B.”

Though he’d been mostly away from the island for more than a dozen years, Ryan would know Sabrina well enough to understand. When she was a preteen, she’d been diagnosed with a learning disability. While she was a hard worker at the B&B, cooking and cleaning and doing other chores that were familiar territory for her, there was no
way she could manage the operation. Most normal administrative tasks were simply beyond her, which meant they all fell on Morgan.

“So it sounds like you’re putting your teaching career on hold for the foreseeable future,” Ryan said.

Whenever Morgan thought about that, it felt like someone had punched her in the gut. Though she’d told her principal that she intended to be back in her grade five classroom in September, the low number of confirmed reservations at the inn had made that an increasingly remote possibility.

“I’ve been hoping I could get the place operating efficiently enough this summer to let me hire a part-time manager to run it with Sabrina after I leave, but that seems more like a wish at this point than a plan. So I’m just taking it one day at a time and trying to figure things out.” Morgan didn’t want to surrender to pessimism, but she refused to bury her head in the sand either. The stakes for both Sabrina and herself were too high to engage in self-delusion.

“One day at a time is never a bad idea.” Ryan leaned back on the bench and stretched out his long legs. His feet reached all the way to the opposite bench. “I guess I’m going to be doing something like that myself for a while.”

Morgan welcomed the shift in conversation. “So, what are you going to do with yourself on the island? Kayak all over the place and drink beer? Or will your dad need a sternman this summer?” Like a lot of people on the island, Ryan’s dad was a lobster fisherman.

“Actually, I was thinking that if I end up spending the whole season here, I’d try to kayak to every one of the Calendar Islands. Give myself a little challenge to pass the time.”

The islands of Casco Bay were sometimes called the Calendar Islands, a reference to the fact that there were supposedly 365 of them. Some, however, were barely big enough to stand on.

“Well, that’ll be a heck of a workout.” Morgan’s brain, which refused to behave itself, easily conjured up the image of Ryan’s half-naked, ripped form gleaming in the sun as he paddled through the chop of the bay.

“Just a walk in the park if I stick around for a couple of months. As for helping Dad out, yeah, if he needs me to sub while his sternman takes some time off, I’ll be on the boat.”

“That’s nice of you, since you hate lobster fishing,” she said, scrunching her nose in sympathy. Like Ryan, many of Seashell Bay’s younger generation had no desire to follow in their fathers’ footsteps when it came to the hard slog of hauling traps from sunrise to sunset.

Ryan shrugged. “I don’t much like a lot of things I have to do. Doesn’t mean I won’t answer the call.”

She smiled at the typically cryptic Ryan Butler statement. “Your parents will be happy to finally have you at home for more than a few days.”

“Yeah, but I’m not going to stay with them. I want a place of my own, a place to…” He paused for a couple of moments, his gaze distracted. “Anyway, I’m going to rent a cottage or a house, hopefully one on the water.”

Morgan raised an eyebrow. “Renting isn’t going to be easy. Almost everything is booked by this time of the season.”

“I know, but it can’t be helped. I only made the decision to do this a few days ago. I figure there should be something out here, even if it’s a bit of a dump. I don’t need
anything fancy. As long as it’s got indoor plumbing, I’m good to go.”