Page 44 of The House on Blueberry Lane

“To go jogging with me.”

She couldn’t hide the shock on her face. “You want me to go jogging with you?”

“Sure. Why not?”

Why not? Was she missing something here? “You’ve never asked me before. In fact, it’s always been understood that jogging is your private time to think, strategize and plan.”

“Not anymore. I want your company.”

“Why?”

“I’d like to know what’s been going on with you since you left Phoenix.”

“You know all you need to know, Jaye.” She stood to grab her robe from the back of the chair. “Besides, we shouldn’t be seen together.”

He chuckled. “And who’s going to see us in the blueberry fields behind our house?”

Probably no one and he knew it. Plus, hadn’t she made a New Year’s resolution to get more physically fit? Granted, teaching that gymnastics class helped, but she wanted to do more. She hadn’t imagined doing it with Jaye.

Velvet thought about what he’d said about using their jogging time to find out what had been going on with her since they parted ways. She wondered if he knew that meant she would inquire into what he’d been doing as well. Jaye never liked sharing anything about his work with her—or anything personal, for that matter. He’d had the position that their time together was about pleasure and not business.

“Velvet?”

She realized he’d been waiting for an answer, one way or the other. “Fine, I’ll start jogging with you, but not today. I want to go shopping for jogging clothes. I’ll start jogging with you tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

She sighed, thinking that this agreeable Jaye was going to take some getting used to. It wasn’t that he’d made it a practice to be disagreeable, but he had liked ruffling her feathers only to take her to the bedroom to unruffle them. Seeing him standing in the middle of her bedroom naked wasn’t helping matters, either.

Finding her voice, she said, “When you get dressed, I’ll walk you to the door.” She moved to walk around him to the bathroom.

He reached out and took hold of her hand and their eyes met. Instantly, heat began radiating between them. She wasn’t sure who made the next move, but they tumbled back on the bed. In no time at all, he’d removed her robe and she was straddling him.

“We shouldn’t be doing this again, Jaye.” She stared down at him.

“No, we shouldn’t.”

There he was being agreeable again. “But we will,” she said, easing down on his ramrod straight erection.

She watched his eyes darken with desire and he replied in a deep throaty voice, “Yes, we will.”

JAYE LOOKED UP from studying the pile of documents on his desk when his intercom buzzer sounded. Pressing the button, he said, “Yes, Ms. Carter?”

“Your two o’clock appointment is here.”

“Thanks. Please send Mr. Sullivan in.”

Jaye had been surprised when he looked at his roster of appointments that morning and saw Ray Sullivan’s name. Ray had made national news a few years ago when the man—who everyone believed to be dead—was found living in Catalina Cove with retrograde amnesia. It was his wife who’d found him, when she came to the cove to deal with the grief of losing said husband.

Although Reid Lacroix was the wealthiest man in the cove, very few people knew that Ray was a close second. Before Ray’s memory loss when he’d become the jeans-and-T-shirt-wearing, bearded ship captain of a touring boat business, he’d been Devon Ryan, a Harvard-educated, tailor-made-business-suit-wearing suave wealthy tycoon. Although one and the same, Devon Ryan was the total opposite of Ray, even after his memory had returned. He’d told his family and friends he preferred to be Ray. That might be the case, but he still had the wealthy tycoon instinct of Devon Ryan. In other words, whatever Ray touched turned to gold. Like the water-taxi service that would soon be opening in Catalina Cove.

When the door opened, Jaye stood from behind his desk and Ray Sullivan walked in, smiling. Jaye liked Ray as a businessman and as someone he’d gotten to know as a friend after moving to the cove. “Ray, what brings you here today? Another money-making venture?” he asked, shaking the man’s hand.

“No. Something else altogether,” he said, taking the chair Jaye offered him.

Jaye nodded as he took the seat behind his desk. “And before it slips my mind, I want to say congratulations. I heard the news from Vaughn that you and Ashley are expecting.”

Ray’s smile widened. “Yes, we are, and we’re happy about it. We waited long enough to have kids and now it seems we can’t get enough of the darlings.”

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