Hideaway Cove (A Windfall Island Novel) Read Free

mean.”
    Jessi shook her head, amused. “Consolation prize?” He’d asked her for a dog at least a thousand times, but somehow he always managed to find a new angle. “Only you, Benj.”
    He gave her a bright, mischievous smile. “I’ll talk you into it,” he said, tossed in a “’Bye, Mom,” and jumped out of the car, too old to kiss her in front of his friends anymore.
    She’d gotten used to that, even if she waited until he’d gone inside before she turned the car—and her thoughts—toward work. Best to concentrate on what she could have, what she could do. To remember that while it would be amazing to give her son a once-in-a-lifetime dream, by getting through every day, every week, every year, by sending him to college, she’d be giving him the tools to realize all his dreams.
      
     
    Windfall Island perched just off the coast of Maine, a long, narrow, unforgiving spit of land edged with rocks too damn hard for even the relentlessly pounding surf of the Atlantic Ocean to wear down. Her people were just as hard, just as unforgiving, and just as moody as the Atlantic—not to mention they ran the gamut from mildly eccentric to downright off-kilter.
    Holden Abbot had come to Windfall Island to do a genealogy of the residents. All the residents. According to his research, the island had been settled by those on the fringes of society, sailors who’d jumped ship, men who’d broken laws, and runaway slaves. Fugitives from justice all. They’d left a legacy of insularity, paranoia, and a severe dislike for any form of law enforcement—maybe because, over the centuries, breaking the law had often meant the difference between survival and starvation for the people of Windfall.
    Laws weren’t broken on a regular basis anymore, at least not the big ones. Nowadays tourism provided. The season, however, had ended with the falling leaves and dropping temperature. The last tourist had vacated the island long before the wind became cutting and the surf turned deadly.
    Hold wasn’t a tourist, but he was an outsider—which had proven even less tolerable to the citizens of the island. At least the male citizens. The women tended to be a lot more welcoming. Rabidly so.
    Except for the one he wanted to get to know.
    Jessi Randal seemed mostly oblivious to him—friendly, helpful, and sort of vaguely flirtatious without putting any real intent behind it. Without ever saying no, she kept him at arm’s length. Then again, he’d never outright asked her for a date because hearing her say no—well now, that would be a true rejection.
    She walked in, petite, pretty, and looking so fresh and so sunny it seemed she brought spring in with her. And there, Hold thought, his blood sizzled, his nerve endings tingled, and a weight seemed to settle on his chest, making it just a little hard to breathe.
    “What’s new, Mississippi?” She peeled a puffy coat the color of fresh lemons off her curvy little body, and when she turned and leveled her bright smile and dancing green eyes at him, he couldn’t have kept a thought in his head with duct tape and wire mesh.
    “I know you Southern boys like to go slow, but it can’t possibly take this long for you to come up with an answer. You only need one word, like fine or good .”
    Being from the South, Hold generally took his time over, well, everything. Jessi made him feel a powerful impatience; he just didn’t want her to see it. So he sat back, folded his arms and played it cool.
    “Unless you’re up to something nefarious and you don’t want to tell me about it.”
    “Not me.” Unless, Hold thought, she considered it nefarious to picture her naked. Which she probably did.
    “Okaaay, so let me try this again. What’s new?”
    “Not a blessed thing, sugar.”
    “Well then.” She sat at her desk, and although the phone began to ring, she only looked over at the old-fashioned wall clock, which stood at one minute to eight.
    She waited, watched the second hand sweep its