Page 94 of A Beach House Beginning

“Yay!” Hope exclaimed.

“I’ll stay on one condition,” he continued with a wide smile that made her toes tingle. “You have to let me help.”

“Of course.” Christa forced a smile, though those nerves were jumping around her insides like an entire cast of Lawrence Welk dancers.

What had she done? An entire evening with Jace McCandless and all these glittering feelings bursting through her.

She had to be crazy.

Chapter Six

Jace leaned against Ellen’s deck railing, noting a bit of a wobble. He made a mental note to brace it the next time he was out here.

If therewasa next time.

He grimaced. He had been trying not to think about it all day, but he knew his time here was limited. The night before, he’d received the latest in an increasingly urgent series of phone calls from his business manager. Tom had been hounding him for three weeks to get off his butt and return to Houston so they could wrap up last-minute details of several business endeavors that were hitting critical mass.

He’d done his best to ignore the man, but he knew he couldn’t do it much longer—nor was he at all certain he wanted to.

Maybe a little distance from the Sullivan women would be good for him, would help him scramble back to safer ground.

All of them—Ellen, Hope, Christa—were becoming too tightly wrapped around his heart, and it scared the hell out of him.

He didn’t let people inside his life like this. He just didn’t.

It wasn’t as though he was some kind of hermit. He had friends he cared about—plenty of them—but always from a much safer emotional distance.

Yeah, he knew it was probably another of those grim lessons he’d learned from his mother and the particular hell of spending his formative years with a junkie. But sometimes the patterns of the past were just too damn ingrained not to keep repeating.

Through the window he could see Ellen and Hope watching television. Ellen smoothed a hand over her granddaughter’s hair, and something tightened inside him.

He let out a breath, wishing fiercely for a little Jack Daniel’s to block all these terrifying emotions. But he hadn’t had anything to drink since that evening two weeks earlier when he had kissed Christa. In many ways, that night had been a wake-up call, when he fully realized how very much he hated what he was becoming.

For the first time since the hotel fire he was thinking clearly. He was still haunted by that night and by the cries of those he couldn’t get to in time after the flames became too intense, but he finally allowed himself to be comforted by thoughts of the dozen people hehadbeen able to save.

He sighed, gazing out at the pretty little valley. As grateful as he was for the change in perspective, that didn’t change the essential fact that he would soon have to leave this place and especially this family.

The screen door squeaked open and Christa came out holding a platter. She was so lovely she took his breath away.

He was fairly sure he had known more beautiful women in his life, but he couldn’t remember any of them affecting him the way this one did, with her huge green eyes and her soft smile.

He had missed her these last two weeks. He didn’t even like thinking about how much. It had been painfully tough to force himself to schedule his visits with Hope and Ellen here at the house for times when he knew Christa would be at work.

“Are the coals ready?” she asked.

He cleared his throat, but his voice still came out gruff. “Uh, yeah. They should be just right.”

“Good. I’m starving.” She flashed a smile at him.

He watched her bustle around the grill—she checked the coals and moved them around with her tongs, adjusted the rack just so, then finally transferred the chicken breasts to the grill. In only a moment, savory smells emanated across the deck.

He might have expected her to keep her distance. Instead, after she had the chicken grilling, she joined him at the deck railing. Her shoulder just brushed his as they both leaned on it, looking out at Sage Flats and the surrounding area.

“This has to be the prettiest view in the whole valley,” he said after a moment.

“I’ve always thought so.”

“Must have been great growing up here.”

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