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  He was grinning now, sexy laugh lines fanning out from his eyes. “There’s nothing unethical about his treatment. In fact, he’s rewarded like a king for his efforts.”

  “Ahh,” Ginger teased. “Hence the name Midas.”

  “Gorgeous and smart.” He folded his arms across his chest and took a half step closer. “He gets extra treats for such a rare find.”

  Ginger was so captivated by their flirtatious exchange that she didn’t hear the innkeeper approach until the woman spoke beside her.

  “Well, Gavin, did Miss Walsh break anything?” The innkeeper’s hand was still poised and ready to dial the cell phone.

  “Nah, she’s just dusted up a bit.” He pointed to Ginger’s backside, which was covered in a layer of gravel dust. Ginger jumped back a step, swatting at the area he’d obviously been checking out.

  “You can call off the cavalry, Mom. She isn’t going to sue.”

  Mom?! Ginger looked from the innkeeper to Mr. Amazing Mouth, taking in the insignia on his golf shirt: McAlister Construction and Engineering. Cheese and crackers! He was the innkeeper’s son. She and Patricia McAlister hadn’t hit it off too well earlier that day. What had she told her son? That Ginger was “obsessed” with food?

  Cheese and crackers with crap on top!

  Making matters worse, McAlister Construction and Engineering was the firm handling the renovations, which would make Mr. Amazing Mouth the “hot contractor.” The hottie who wasn’t really flirting with her, but more likely buttering her up so she wouldn’t sue his mother. Fate was never kind enough to Ginger to actually put a handsome stranger in her path and make him attainable.

  She pulled in a deep breath, shifting her messenger bag under her arm while she regrouped. Eighty-four more days, she silently reminded herself. It was better that she muscle through her stay in Chances Inlet without the complication of a small-town fling, anyway. If she and Diesel managed to pull this show off, she’d be on her way to restarting her career and avoiding the walk of shame back to her mother’s ballet company. Until then, she could put up with persnickety innkeepers who wanted to judge her and handsome strangers who weren’t above flirting for sport. The trick was to keep reminding herself their actions couldn’t hurt her. Even when they did.

  Sliding her sunglasses up her nose, Ginger pasted on her sunniest soap opera smile. “No harm done, Mrs. McAlister. If you’ll excuse me, I have some work to do before the production meeting.” She moved to walk between them and up the inn steps, but Mr. Amazing Mouth, aka “the hottie,” aka Gavin McAlister blocked her way.

  “Hey, don’t run off.” He took a tentative step toward Ginger. The concern was back in his eyes, but she was no longer mistaking it as concern for her. “Let me get you a cup of tea or something.”

  “I thought you had a date in Wilmington?” His mother’s tone clearly indicated she’d rather her son go to Wilmington than spend time with Ginger.

  Of course he has a date. Ginger silently chastised herself for her traitorous reaction to the guy.

  Gavin shot the innkeeper a look as Ginger slipped past.

  “Thank you anyway, but some other time,” Ginger said, climbing the veranda stairs. Judging by her body’s reaction to his touch just now, there couldn’t be another time, not if she wanted to maintain her composure while working around him every day. “Besides, you shouldn’t leave your dog in the car,” she teased, trying her best to sound indifferent. “Those PETA people tend to get really nasty about that.”

  She left him standing at the bottom of the steps, his hands on his hips, as she entered the inn.

  * * *

  Patricia McAlister dried off the last of the dessert plates used at the afternoon’s tea and placed it on top of the stack at her elbow. She glanced out the window as the last shards of sunlight danced above the Atlantic Ocean churning across the street from the inn, but she wasn’t seeing the spectacular display. Instead, she was rehashing the encounter between Gavin and the soap opera actress earlier that day. The middle of her five children, Gavin was always levelheaded and hard to rile up. But he’d been angry today. Angry that Patricia had interrupted them. And that worried her.

  “I’m not sure I understand why you’re so upset. He’s a single guy. She’s a pretty girl. So they were flirting. What’s the problem?”

  She turned to the man standing beside her at the sink, her head barely reaching his chin, he was so tall. The dish towel draped over his shoulder in no way detracted from the virile picture he presented dressed in his sheriff’s uniform.

  Lamar Hollister had been elected sheriff of Chances Inlet the previous year, nearly six months after he’d arrived in town. A retired military policeman fresh from two tours in Iraq and another two in Afghanistan, he’d been able to ride the wave of the throw-the-incumbents-out sentiment sweeping the country and get elected in a town where he was a virtual stranger.

  It was the stranger part that had attracted Patricia. She’d been married to her husband, Donald, for thirty-three years, twenty-eight of those years living in this very town. When she found herself widowed suddenly at fifty-three, the loneliness had at times seemed unbearable. She’d been a part of a couple for so long that she wasn’t able to get her bearings as a single woman. Making matters worse, no one in town saw her as anything other than Donald’s widow. The situation infuriated her. Sure, she was an independent woman with her own business to run, but she had needs, too. When the loneliness started to eat a hole in her, she’d decided to look for companionship. Not an easy task considering most of the men within a two-hundred-mile radius knew her husband, and therefore expected her to remain loyal to him.

  The arrival of Lamar Hollister was a godsend. He hadn’t known Donald. Best of all, he hadn’t known her as Mrs. Donald McAlister. And then there was the attraction between the two. It was immediate and powerful. So intense that Patricia didn’t feel like a grandmother. Instead, she was a successful businesswoman enjoying a hot relationship in the autumn of her life—with a man five years her junior.

  “The problem,” she said, leaning into him, “is that Gavin doesn’t flirt. At least, not since Amanda.”

  Lamar wrapped the dish towel around the back of her neck to pull her in closer. “Nonsense. He flirts all the time. Hell, Jolene down at Pier Pressure will ignore a bar full of customers just to chat him up. And he’s constantly buttering up Lois Carter every morning to get a free muffin. Not only that, but some days she gives him a kiss with his coffee.”

  Patricia let out a delicate snort. “Lois doesn’t give anything away for free.”

  Lamar’s normally stoic mouth lifted in a half smile. “That right? She gives me a free doughnut every day.”

  The woman in question was an octogenarian with little to no hearing, but Patricia still felt a twinge of jealousy. She reached up to thread her fingers through the sheriff’s thick, sandy brown hair, pausing to trace the gray at his temples. “Well, I guess I’ll just have to stop by the Java Jolt tomorrow and give her what for.” She stretched up on her toes to kiss him.

  “Anyway,” she said, returning to their discussion of a few minutes earlier. “That’s not Gavin flirting. That’s just him being charming. He’s a natural. It’s in the McAlister genes.”

  “You’re not going to let this drop, are you?” The sheriff let out a long-suffering groan. “Gavin showed an interest in a pretty woman. Alert the media. Trust me, the whole town will be elated since every female age four and older has been trying to fix him up for as long as I’ve lived here. It’s about damn time, I say.” He reached a finger under her chin, lifting her eyes to his. “Unless you’ve become attached to whomever he’s seeing in Wilmington?”

  Patricia pulled out of his embrace, crossing her arms over her stomach. “There’s no one in Wilmington. At least, I don’t think so.” She sighed. “Sure, he probably goes there to meet women, out of the prying eyes of everyone in town. Who could blame him? But if there was someone he was serious about, he’d have let me know. Or one of his br
others or sisters at least.”

  “I’m still not seeing the problem, Tricia,” he said softly.

  A spasm of awareness fluttered in her belly as Lamar called her by the name only he’d ever used. It was followed quickly by a churning of fear for her son. “The problem is she won’t stick around, either.” A single tear rolled down her cheek. “He’ll be left behind as she goes back to La-La Land to pursue her career. And I don’t want to ever see him hurt that way again.”

  “Come here.” Patricia didn’t resist as Lamar gathered her into his arms. “He was just flirting with her, not marrying her. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.”

  “But you didn’t see the way he was looking at her,” she said, her face buried against his strong chest.

  Lamar laughed, its sensual sound reverberating through his body to hers. “Was it something like this?” he teased.

  Patricia met his eyes. The heat and lust reflected there was very much like what she’d seen in her son’s eyes earlier in the day. But whatever fears she had for Gavin quickly evaporated as her mind and her body succumbed to the passion. Lamar bent down to brush his lips below her ear.

  “Let’s go to the carriage house,” he whispered, the breath against her skin causing her to shiver. “And I’ll see what I can do to distract you from worrying about Gavin.”

  Patricia turned off the lights and followed him out of the inn, knowing he’d show her exactly what happens when a man looks at a woman like Lamar had just gazed at her. She’d worry about Gavin tomorrow.

  THREE

  The Piggly Wiggly was deserted at nine o’clock on a Sunday night. Just the way Gavin liked it. Mr. Henderson, the produce manager, had been stalking him for weeks, trying to fix Gavin up with his granddaughter, who’d just graduated first in her class at cosmetology school. Brittney of the Magenta Hair sported a few too many piercings and tattoos for Gavin to be interested right now, if ever. Unfortunately, Mr. Henderson had been difficult to shake when Gavin stopped in for some bananas earlier in the week.

  “Thanks, Ryan, for holding Miles off.” Gavin spoke into his cell phone as he strode into the store.

  “Hey, what’s a hundred thousand dollars between brothers? Besides, I’ve always wanted my own political action committee.”

  Gavin grabbed a cart and pushed it toward the far side of the store. “I know money’s tight for you right now with the lawsuit and everything. The contribution to Miles’ campaign fund should have come from McAlister C and E. Hopefully, there’ll be some cash left after the show to pay you back.”

  “For crying out loud, Gavin, I’m not destitute. I let my agent talk me into a ridiculous investment. Once the dust settles, I’ll be flush with cash again. And I don’t want to be paid back. I would have given him the money anyway,” Ryan insisted. “You don’t have to fix all of this on your own. I only wish it was six months from now when I’ll be in a position to help out more. You could tell Miles the truth, you know.”

  “It’s too late now.” Gavin dropped a bag of dog treats into his cart. “Besides, he’s got enough on his plate launching his campaign for Congress. He doesn’t need to be worrying about the family legacy and the debt Dad left behind. Dad wouldn’t have wanted any of this to tarnish Miles’ image.”

  Ryan blew out a disgusted snort. “Yeah, well, everyone thinks you’re doing the home restoration show to promote McAlister Construction, not to pay off Dad’s debts so you can sell the family business.”

  “It would break their hearts. You were pretty shocked when I told you the plan.” Of course, he’d left out the fact that if the business went under, so, too, would their mother’s beloved inn. The relationship between Gavin’s younger brother and their father could only be described as strained at best. The pair hadn’t spoken for several months before the man’s death, for reasons even Gavin didn’t know. But Gavin didn’t want to add to Ryan’s already tarnished memory of their father, so he kept his own counsel with regard to the looming balloon payment for his mother’s inn.

  “Only because you waited two years to let me in on the big secret, which, by the way, shouldn’t be a secret. It’s not your responsibility to clean up Dad’s mess. Trust me, it won’t break our hearts if the business closes. We’ve all made our own lives—Mom included. You had a life of your own in New York that you gave up.”

  “I didn’t give it up.” Gavin threw a couple of cans of Pringles into his cart. “It’s just on hold.”

  “And your marriage? That on hold, too?”

  Gavin paused in front of the frozen pizzas. He hadn’t thought of Amanda in months. For some reason, his family, not to mention everyone in Chances Inlet, thought he was still broken up about his fiancée calling off the wedding the week before they were supposed to walk down the aisle. She’d told him it was life in a small town, away from New York, that scared her off. He’d felt the same way, so he really couldn’t fault her too much. Besides, he’d believed his time in Chances Inlet would be short, figuring they’d pick up where they’d left off when he got back to New York.

  Amanda marrying his former roommate six months later, though—that still stung.

  “Mom is on to you, you know.” Ryan’s voice in his ear brought him back to the conversation at hand. “She knows you’re not dating anyone in Wilmington.”

  “Who says I didn’t have a date tonight?”

  “Dude, it’s only nine o’clock and you’re in the Piggly Wiggly.”

  “She’s a flight attendant with an early call in the morning.”

  “So, you weren’t the layover?” his brother teased.

  “Funny.” Gavin steered his cart behind a mountain of paper towels to avoid Sylvia Rodrick, the town cougar, who relentlessly pursued him despite having been his Sunday-school teacher when he was ten, a technicality that obviously didn’t creep her out as much as it did Gavin.

  “She wasn’t my type.” Which was a bald-faced lie. The flight attendant was exactly his type: not looking for anything permanent and perfectly willing for a one-night stand. Hell, she’d even suggested they skip dinner and go straight to her hotel room. Unfortunately, Gavin just couldn’t get into her. Now, if she’d had moss-colored almond eyes . . .

  “According to Mom,” his brother was saying, “you and the actress who plays Destiny Upchurch were flirting up a storm with one another this afternoon.”

  “Mom talks too much.”

  Ryan laughed. “I’ll admit Ginger What’s-Her-Name is cute for a chick who’s bad to the bone, but the actress who plays Savannah Rich”—he gave a little whistle—“now, she’s hot.”

  Gavin held his phone out at arm’s length, baffled. “What is it with you people and this soap opera? You’re a professional baseball player. Don’t you have better things to do with your time than watch that crap?”

  “There’s lots of downtime in the clubhouse. And SportsCenter tends to drone on after a while.”

  Gavin shook his head in disbelief as he carefully scanned past the bins of fresh fruits and vegetables for any sign of Mr. Henderson. The produce manager was nowhere in sight, but the object of his phone conversation, Ginger Walsh, stood before him holding a tomato, critically analyzing it as if it held the secret to the universe.

  “Gotta go, bro. Thanks for heading Miles off before he asked me for his profit share of the company.”

  “No prob—”

  The rest was lost as Gavin quickly ended the call, nonchalantly steering his cart behind Ginger. He caught a whiff of her perfume. She smelled sweet, like the mint shampoo his mother left for the guests at the inn. But there was another scent, too, something not quite so innocent. Tendrils of hair had escaped her haphazard knot, dangling against her long neck. Gavin’s cock twitched at the sight of bare skin peeking out from underneath her shirt.

  Seriously? You couldn’t have been more alert two hours ago when I was wasting ninety bucks on dinner for what would have been a sure thing?

  Frustrated, he picked up a bag of salad that likely would spoil before he e
ver ate it and tossed it into his cart. Ginger didn’t flinch.

  “It’s a tomato,” he finally said. “You generally eat it.”

  Startled, she turned to face him. Awareness flashed in those incredible eyes before she reined it in. Gavin bit back a smile as he realized she wasn’t immune to whatever attraction was pulling at them, either. His mother had described Ginger’s face as all angles, but what Gavin saw was a delicately sculpted chin, a lush mouth and high cheekbones. Even her ears were cute.

  “I’m trying to figure out if it’s organic,” she said. “There’s no sticker.”

  Gavin wasn’t sure someone could determine whether a tomato was organic just by looking at it. Hell, he wasn’t even sure whether a tomato was a fruit or a vegetable.

  “Does it matter?” He realized the insensitivity of the question too late to stop himself from asking it. Maybe she had a valid reason for being cautious about her food. Or she was just like most women, concerned about her appearance. He’d known women with more obnoxious idiosyncrasies. Hell, she was an actress, wasn’t she? Her compulsion about her diet could definitely be justified as job-related.

  Ginger blinked her long lashes twice before shaking her head. She put the tomato in a bag along with two others and placed them in her cart.

  “I have to be careful what I eat.” There was nothing delicate about her tone. Clearly, underneath that slight body was a spine of steel.

  Gavin shifted slightly, rubbing his hand behind his neck. “Hey, I can see if Mr. Henderson, the produce manager, is here tonight. He’d know.” It’d be worth the risk, he told himself.

  “It’s fine. I’ll just be sure to wash them thoroughly.”

  She looked over at his cart. Aside from the token bag of salad greens, it contained a smorgasbord of processed foods. Feeling a bit embarrassed, Gavin braced himself for the inevitable comment, but she reached down and pulled out the bag of dog treats instead.