From Hollywood heartbreak…

…to happy-ever-after?

After her heart is broken and her dreams are stolen, singer Allie Cook hides away in her grandmother’s Californian beachside cottage. Until unexpected houseguest Sam Walker arrives with a toddler and a puppy in tow! As Allie helps an out-of-his-depth Sam adjust to his new single-dad status, she finds herself tempted to put her heart on the line for her new dream—a family with the captivating tycoon.

CARA COLTER shares her life in beautiful British Columbia, Canada, with her husband, nine horses and one small Pomeranian with a large attitude. She loves to hear from readers, and you can learn more about her and contact her through Facebook.

Also by Cara Colter

Interview with a Tycoon

Meet Me Under the Mistletoe

The Pregnancy Secret

Soldier, Hero…Husband?

Housekeeper Under the Mistletoe

The Wedding Planner’s Big Day

Swept into the Tycoon’s World

Snowbound with the Single Dad

His Convenient Royal Bride

Cinderella’s Prince Under the Mistletoe

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

Tempted by the Single Dad

Cara Colter

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-0-008-90311-4

TEMPTED BY THE SINGLE DAD

© 2019 Cara Colter

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Version: 2020-03-02

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To the brother I found in my place of endless summer,

Jeffrey Byron Werle.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

EPILOGUE

Extract

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS A perfect moment. Of course, if there was one thing Alicia Cook had a right to distrust, that was it. Perfect moments.

Still, with a sigh, and a sip of her lime-infused club soda, Allie gave herself over to it. The setting sun was gilding the foam on the ocean waves, and turning the beach sand to pure, luminous gold. From the hanging porch swing in the shadows of her covered veranda, she observed as the daytime crowds dissipated.

Now, one last family remained, the father deflating a humungous ride-on dragon water toy, the mother shaking out a picnic blanket and calling the children back from the water’s edge as she packed the remains of their day into an oversize basket.

A pang of pure longing hovered at the edges of Allie’s perfect moment, so she shifted her focus. Farther down the beach a couple strolled, hand in hand.

The sense of longing intensified.

“Don’t believe a word he says,” Allie muttered, watching through narrowed eyes as they stopped, leaned into each other and he nuzzled her ear and said something to her that made her laughter carry up the beach.

Allie’s muttered words were a defense, of course, against all that weakness that was still there, even though she, of all people, should know better than to long for dangerous things.

Perfect moments. To not be alone. To share life. To be deeply connected…there, her perfect moment was gone. She looked away from the couple, ignored the family and took a determined sip of her drink, concentrating furiously on the beauty of the setting sun, hoping to get it back.

No, the moment had been as iridescent—and as fragile—as a soap bubble blown from a child’s wand. It was gone.

She set down her drink, leaned over and drew her guitar from a shadowed corner.

“Perfect moments do not pay bills, anyway,” Allie told herself sternly. The contract to produce a jingle was the practical approach to solving her financial difficulties.

The guitar, however, was unmoved by the urgency she felt. She ran her thumb coaxingly down the six strings—E, B, G, D, A, E—but the guitar refused to be seduced. The instrument was acting like a friend who was mad at her, silent, refusing to speak.

It was almost a relief—a reprieve—when Allie heard a muffled noise through the patio door that opened into the cottage behind her. What was that? Was someone at her front door? She strained her ears. That had to be her imagination.

The very same imagination that would not give her a song, was quite happy to indulge her fears, she noticed.

But as she strained to hear, she could have sworn the sound she was hearing was very real. She was hearing the creaky front door handle being tried!

A recent newspaper article had been pinned to the community bulletin board in front of the post office. Mimi Roberts’s villa—located just down the beach—had experienced a break-in. An audacious thief had come in the front door while Mimi was home, but fortunately for the well-known celebrity, she was out back enjoying her deck. A Sugar Cone Beach police spokesman said there had been several similar break-ins in the neighborhoods surrounding the beach community and urged people to lock those front doors, even while they were at home.

Honestly, Allie had had trouble sleeping ever since, awaking to every sound, too hot because she was keeping the doors and windows firmly locked. No wonder she couldn’t write a simple jingle. Sleep deprived.

A muffled bang made her jump. Okay. It was definitely her front door. Being kicked in? No, probably something way less threatening, like a newspaper being thrown up against it.

You don’t get the paper, a little voice insisted on reminding her.

Still Allie tried to reason with herself. It would take an extraordinarily unambitious thief to choose her little cottage for break-and-enter purposes. The end of Sugar Cone Beach that was farthest away from her had long since gone to developers. High-end hotels and condos, with their main floor restaurants and shops, vied for every inch of space along that baby-powder-fine stretch of sand.

But the beachfront properties at this end of Sugar Cone Beach—a sheltered bay—were largely single-family homes that had become the enclave of the very wealthy, like Mimi Roberts. For the past twenty years extravagant beach houses had been popping up here. The glass, concrete and steel behemoths rose out of the sand on either side of Allie.

And there she sat, in the middle of them all, in a sagging and tiny gray-shingled cottage, that had been her grandmother’s for as long as she could remember.

Gram. Allie felt the ache in her throat that momentarily overrode the adrenaline that was beginning to pump through her. Her Gram was the one person who had stuck by her, believed in her and never given up on her.

Gram was gone now but the cottage that was so beloved to them both had been her final gift to Allie.

If Allie could hold on to it. The taxes alone took her breath away. And every day, someone came, ignored the unfriendly sign that said No Soliciting and knocked on her front door. They were developers and real estate agents, and people just passing by, putting temptation in front of her, offering her ridiculous sums of money to sell the one place in the world where Allie felt safe and hidden from prying eyes.

And where the love of her grandmother remained, as comforting as a hug.

There was definitely somebody at the door but Allie calmed herself with the rationale it was probably not a thief, though it was unlikely to be a real estate agent at this time of day, either. Whoever it was, they weren’t ringing the bell.

The bell hasn’t worked for three weeks, Allie told herself. It’s not a thief.

But whoever it was, they weren’t giving up, either.

Allie put down her guitar, not unaware that she felt relieved for a distraction, no matter how unpleasant that distraction might be. She got up, and went through the back into the cottage, not sure of the proper protocol for a would-be break-in.

Should she make lots of noise and throw on all the lights so it was apparent someone was home? Or should she tiptoe up to the door and peek out the front window?

Coming from the brightness outside into the cottage was like being plunged into a mine shaft. It had originally been a fisherman’s place—the only one that remained on this stretch of beachfront. Back in the 1920s, when it was built, no thought at all was given to such frivolous concerns as where to place windows to take most advantage of the view. Windows would have been regarded as a luxury in those days.

And so the kitchen was in the back of the house, cramped and dark. Faucets dripped and cabinet doors hung crookedly, and the painted wooden floor was chipping. Despite all that, there was a determined cheeriness to the space, a laid-back beach vibe that Allie adored.

One summer she and her grandmother, in an attempt to brighten things up, had painted all the cabinets sunshine yellow, and they had liked the color so much they had done the kitchen table, too. They had installed a backsplash of handmade sea-themed tile, and hung homemade curtains with a pink flamingo motif.

Off the kitchen, there was a narrow hall, painted turquoise, with Allie’s childhood art hung gallery style. There were three tiny bedrooms on one side of the hall, each holding little more than a bed, a bureau and a nightstand. Her grandmother, a quilter, had loved fabric and every closet in the whole cottage was stuffed with it. Allie could not bring herself to throw a single remnant away. Each bed was adorned with a handmade quilt. Allie’s favorite, the double wedding ring pattern, was on her own small bed.

Still tiptoeing, Allie followed the hallway to the front door, and the arched opening to the living room, where a paned picture window looked onto the street. The furniture and the wooden floors, worn to gray, sagged equally with age and good use.

In the heyday of her career—imagine being twenty-three years old and the heyday of your career was already over—Allie had been in many houses that looked like the ones on either side of her. Houses that were open plan, with light spilling in huge windows, and stainless steel appliances bigger than most restaurants required. They had miles of granite countertops, gorgeous beams and sleek furniture. Not one of them had ever made her feel this way.

Home.

That’s what she needed to remember about the career that had soared like a shooting star, and then fizzled even more quickly, and that’s what she needed to remember when another million-dollar offer was made. Neither success nor money could make you feel at home. She steeled herself to the possibility of temptation as she moved past the door to have a peek out the window.

But before she made it past, there was another thump. Someone had kicked the door! Her heart flew into double time. Then, to Allie’s horror, the door creaked open an inch. Allie stopped and stared, her heart in her throat. Her first instinct, the one she had reasoned herself out of, had been correct.

Home invader.

She was sure she had locked the front door since seeing the news report.

Not that it mattered. Locked or not, her space was being invaded! Her safe place was being threatened.

In one motion, she reached out and grabbed the nearest thing she could lay hands on—a heavy statue, one of her grandmother’s favorites. It was a bronze of a donkey, looking forlorn and unkempt. Weapon firmly in hand, Allie threw her weight against the opening door, trying to force it closed again.

Sam Walker was beyond exhaustion. He’d been late getting away. The traffic heading to the beaches of Southern California, in anticipation of the upcoming Fourth of July holiday, had been horrendous. And his traveling companions were cantankerous.

The key had been sticky, but finally worked. But despite trying to persuade it with his foot—twice—the door remained stuck.

He was used to the cottage being a touch temperamental, but his patience was at a breaking point. Sam had had quite enough of cantankerous anything for one day. The floorboard beneath the door was probably swollen with moisture or age. He’d put it—and the lock—on his list of things to fix while he was here. Not even in the door yet, and he had a list of things that needed doing. Normal, mature man things. What a relief.

The door had finally opened a miserly inch and then jammed stubbornly. Sam’s patience broke. He put his shoulder against it and shoved, hard, two years on the college football offensive line finally put to good use.

The door flew open, and his momentum catapulted him through the opening. He was rendered blind by the sudden entrance into cool darkness, in sharp contrast to the outside, where the world was being washed with end-of-day light.

The hair on the back of his neck rose when he heard a startled grunt somewhere in the dark space in front of him. He squinted, his muscles bunching. Hadn’t he seen on the news there had been break-ins along this stretch of beach?

Sure enough, there was the intruder. The force of the door opening had slammed him to the floor, where he lay, stunned, catching his breath. He didn’t look immediately threatening—small, probably a teenager up to no good.

Casting one quick look at his cantankerous companions—thankfully, stuck in the yard—Sam thrust himself forward. He realized the kid, burglar, intruder, whatever, was starting to sit up. It appeared he had something in his hand to use as a weapon.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Sam asked, his voice a growl of pure threat. And then he lunged forward, easily won a tug-of-war for the object and tossed it aside. He pressed down on the kid’s shoulder, hard, forcing him to sit, not rise.

The squeak of pain was sharp and, he registered slowly, not masculine. At all. A light, clean fragrance tickled his nostrils.

The momentum that had been propelling Sam forward came to a screeching halt.

His eyes adjusted to the lack of light. It wasn’t a kid. And it wasn’t a boy, either. Eyes as big as cornflowers, and nearly the same color, flashed up at him, filled with fury and indignation.

He let go of her shoulder instantly, but still, held up his hand, warning her not to get up.

It was the perfect ending, he thought wearily, to a perfectly awful day.

CHAPTER TWO

ALLIE PULLED HERSELF to sitting, feeling stunned and winded. She glared up at her attacker, filled with impotent fury mixed with panic. A stranger was in her house! Asking her what the hell she was doing! Ordering her, with imperious hand signals, to sit here, as if she was a prisoner!

Was she a prisoner? Her shoulder tingled oddly where he had touched it, and she resisted the urge to rub it, as if that would betray weakness.

As he folded his arms over the rather impressive contours of his chest, and planted his long legs, she felt, weirdly, as though her panic was put on pause. She had a sense of being caught in a luxurious place of slow time suspension as she studied him.

Surely home invaders did not look like this? She could see the man was very tall. The last bits of sun creeping over his extraordinarily broad shoulders spun his dark hair to milky chocolate. He looked strong and fit, and carried his body with that casual confidence she assigned to athletes, not to someone up to no good.

Allie saw the man was well dressed in pressed khaki shorts that made his bare legs look very long, and a sports shirt that hugged the enticing muscle of very masculine arms.

There could be worse people to take you prisoner.

She was appalled at this traitorous thought.

Of course he would look well dressed. That was exactly how a thief would try to blend in, as he was out trying door handles and breaking down doors in an upscale neighborhood like this one.

The intruder backed up from her, slowly, keeping his eyes on her, until his hand was on the doorknob.

Leaving, she deduced with relief.

But then he took his eyes off her for a moment, and glanced outside. It occurred to her he had a partner in crime, an accomplice.

Then she noticed keys dangling from the lock. How could she have been so stupid? She had locked the door, yes, but left the keys in it. The pressure to produce the jingle was making her absent-minded, obviously.

Allie weighed her options and saw two. He was distracted right now. She could get up and race back down that hallway, and out onto the beach before he knew what had happened.

She was rather shocked to discover her unwillingness to retreat. This was her home, her safe place. This was the one thing she had left that she was willing to make a stand for.

“Get out while you can,” she ordered him. She staggered to her feet. She hoped her voice wasn’t as wobbly as her legs were. Thankfully, she had lots of experience overcoming nerves, especially with her voice. She slipped her hand into her shorts pocket. “I have a weapon.”

The part about a new weapon was a complete fib. Still, you would think he would have the decency to be startled at this latest threat to his diabolical plan, whatever it was.

But no, the man turned back to her, ever so slowly, and regarded her through narrowed eyes. With the last light spilling in the front door, she could see her home invader was one long, tall drink of handsome!

“I think we’ve already dispensed with the weapon,” he said, something dry in his tone, almost as if he found her laughable.

“I have another one,” she insisted, pressing her finger up against the shorts pocket in what she thought was probably a fair approximation of a pistol barrel.

He had chiseled, perfect features and eyes as dark brown as new-brewed coffee. His cheeks and chin were ever so faintly whisker-shadowed, but in a way that made him look roguish and sexy, not at all like the home invader that he was.

Allie was hoping, given her warning, he would bolt back out the way he came, but he didn’t. He frowned at her, any amusement he felt at her efforts to defend herself completely gone.

He moved across the space that separated them in less time than it took her to take a single breath. He caught both her arms, tugged them out of her pockets, and pinned them to her sides. Her squirming to release herself only served to tighten his grip, so she stopped.

To her relief, it was apparent his hold on her arms was not intended to hurt, but to control. His touch was warm and made her pulse with a strange, electrical awareness of him.

It seemed to be an entirely inappropriate time to notice he smelled good, like a deep forest afternoon on a hot summer day.

Why hadn’t she run when she had a chance?

“Who are you?” he asked, his voice an unsettling growl of something between menace and seduction. “And what have you done with Mavis?”

Shock shivered along Allie’s spine. He knew her grandmother? He could have read her name on the mailbox.

No, he couldn’t have. It had faded a long time ago. So, yes, he knew her grandmother. So what? Did that give him the right to barge into her house?

“What have I done with Mavis?” Allie stammered. She tried, again, to wiggle away from his grip, but he held her fast.

“Where is she?” He managed to say that as if Allie was barging into his home, and not the other way around.

“You think I’m the home invader?”

“You’re the one with the pistol in your pocket.”

She managed to wiggle her fingers just enough to reach into her pockets and turn them inside out. He looked unsurprised, and not impressed, at all. It was all too much. She had gone from panic to fury to this. Her life wasn’t in danger. This was all some kind of misunderstanding.

Allie began to giggle. Okay, it might have had a tiny bit of a hysterical edge to it.

“I fail to see the humor,” he said tightly. “It’s been on the news. There have been break-ins in this neighborhood. Mavis would be very vulnerable.”

She giggled harder. “I’m not the intruder. You’re the intruder.”

He let go of her shoulders completely, and looked down at her, his brow knit in consternation. “Who are you?”

“Who am I?” she sputtered. “I live here. I think the question is, who are you? And how dare you just walk into my home?”

“Your home?” The frown deepened around the exquisite corners of a wide mouth.

“I’ve rented this cottage from Mavis, in this time period, every year for the past ten years. My mom and dad rented it before that. That’s why I have my own key.”

What? Allie thought, completely taken off guard. She noted his voice was a masculine and sexy rasp. She could still feel her upper arms tingling from where he had held her fast.

Now that there was, obviously, no threat, her thoughts wandered. She despised herself for the wish that flitted through her mind: that her hair was not rumpled, towel-dried from her last swim, the tips still a shockingly different color than the rest of her blond hair. She wished she was not standing there, barefoot, in a too-large T-shirt that ended just past the shorts she had pulled on over a still-damp bathing suit.

Allie actually wished she had makeup on, which was totally against the cottage rules.

She snapped her mouth shut, since it had fallen open as she struggled to make the leap from home invader to well, home invader. Suddenly, it didn’t seem very funny at all, and the giggle, hysterical or otherwise, died within her. He didn’t know, and she hated being the one to break it to him.

“Mavis is my grandmother.” Somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to say was as if that would erase something too completely from her world. “She’s gone.”

“Your grandmother,” he said, cocking his head at her, as if trying to discern truth.

“Yes, my grandmother.”

Did he see some resemblance? People had always said she had her grandmother’s eyes. They certainly shared a diminutive size. His shoulders suddenly relaxed. “Mavis goes every year. To visit her sister. But when I saw you here, it just shocked me. I wondered if she had come to harm.”

“Do I look like the type of person who would harm an old lady?”

He looked at her carefully, as if he was weighing this. “You claimed you had a weapon in your pocket.”

“When I thought I needed one for self-defense.”

“You came at me with a lamp…or something.”

“It’s a statue, and I didn’t exactly come at you.”

“But you would have, if I hadn’t knocked you over with the door.”

Well, she couldn’t deny that.

“That was an accident, by the way,” he said, his voice both rough and soothing, “I thought the door was stuck so I threw my shoulder behind it. Are you okay? I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

He must have decided she did not look like a mugger of old ladies, if he was interested, albeit reluctantly, in her well-being.

“I’ll live.”

He gazed at her steadily, as if trying to make up his mind, then rolled his shoulders, ran a hand through his hair.

“I apologize for acting as though you were an intruder. It’s just that I was shocked to find you here. You’re Allie, then. Allie of the artwork on the hallway walls. I guess I pictured Mavis’s granddaughter as much younger. To match the artwork.”

There was something vaguely unsettling about this stranger being familiar with the artwork of her younger self. Better to nip any familiarity in the bud.

“I’m sorry. I have some other shocking news. Mavis hasn’t gone to visit my great-aunt Mildred. She—” But somehow, when she went to say the actual words, her lips quivered, and she could feel tears welling.

Talk about an emotional roller coaster! But maybe that is what shocks did to people? Put them through their whole range of emotions?

Understanding dawned in his face. “Mavis died?”

“Yes.”

“I’m terribly sorry to hear that.” He looked genuinely taken aback. He raked a hand through the dark silk of his hair again, and then glanced back outside.

Sorry. What an inadequate word. She made herself swallow back the tears that were forming and assume a businesslike tone. “I inherited the cottage. I wasn’t aware of any rental arrangement.”

“That explains being met at the door with—” he squinted over her shoulder “—a bludgeoning device.”

“My grandmother called him Harold. The bludgeoning device.”

“Is the fact that the bludgeoning device bears a name supposed to make it more or less threatening?” he asked.

There was something about the faint smile that tickled the edges of that extraordinary mouth that made her feel just a little more off-kilter.

“As you said, there have been break-ins. I saw it on the news, too. Defense by Harold seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Look, you are about the size of a garden gnome…”

A garden gnome?

“…I don’t think tackling an intruder head-on is the best idea. Harold or no Harold. The fake pistol in your pocket was really dumb.”

Ouch. Not just a garden gnome, but a dumb garden gnome.

Allie had to get rid of him. She made her tone deliberately unfriendly. “I hardly need lectures from strangers.”

“Not even a stranger you tried to bean with a sculpture?”

“Unsuccessfully,” she muttered.

“I make my case.” More softly, he said, “I don’t feel as if we are exactly strangers.”

The fact that he had seen her artwork did not make them friends.

“I liked your grandmother a great deal,” he said softly. “I think she would have wanted me to warn you against tackling intruders.”

Allie did not like how his expression had softened with concern, as if she was a silly child who was in need of his supervision. Still, no point being churlish about it, especially since he was right: her grandmother would have approved of his well-meaning words.

“Well,” Allie said, “thanks for your sage advice.” Maybe the tiniest hint of sarcasm had gotten into her tone, because he was looking at her with his brows lowered in a most formidable way.

She would not be intimidated. “So, our mutual caring for my grandmother notwithstanding, I think our business here is concluded. Let me show you the door, Mr….er…”

“Walker. Sam Walker.”

“Mr. Walker, then. My apologies for the mix-up. It will have left you in a bit of a pickle, but—”

“The pickle may be yours, I’m afraid. I have a contract.”

CHAPTER THREE

ALLIE STARED AT Sam Walker, entirely flabbergasted by his arrogance.

The concern, along with his sympathy, had evaporated. His tone suggested he felt that the existence of a contract resolved everything. He did, unfortunately, radiate a certain power, a man very accustomed to obstacles melting before his considerable presence.

“I’m not sure what you think that means,” Allie said, “that you have a contract. Or that the pickle may be mine.”

“It means, legally, I have possession of these premises for the next two weeks.”

“Are you a lawyer, then?” she asked, folding her arms over her chest.

“No. But I have access to some pretty good ones.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Not really.”

But he was threatening her. Somehow this threat felt more like a clear and present danger than him barging into her house.

“And what am I supposed to do?”

He lifted a shoulder, but seemed preoccupied with something he was looking at outside. “Vacate, I guess.”

She didn’t like this one bit: that in the blink of an eye she had gone from the one throwing him out, to the one being thrown! He was the kind of man who was like that: life-altering storms practically brewed in the air around him.

Vacate? Her own home? “You expect me to leave to accommodate you?” Her tone was properly indignant. And she hoped imperious.

He turned back to her. She got the impression that her indignation barely registered with him and that her leaving was exactly his expectation.

“I don’t have anywhere to go,” she sputtered. She sounded defensive. And faintly pathetic. Who didn’t have anywhere to go? Plus, worst of all, she sounded as if she had already given up, as if she would defer to him and his stupid contract.

She had been so right not to trust that perfect moment of just minutes ago. Why did calamity lay in wait for her?

He lifted a shoulder and glanced back at her. “I don’t, either. It’s been a long day, and I’m not about to start searching for alternate accommodations now.”

She could see, suddenly, that all that handsomeness had hidden a truth from her. His face was lined with weariness. And something else was in those devil-dark suede eyes…hurt? Loneliness?

Allie, she scolded herself, you are in the middle of a crisis here. She did not need to be exploring the damage to the dark stranger who had appeared on her doorstep.

And he did not want her to know, either, what painful secrets he held, because the window that weariness had opened briefly in his eyes slammed shut.

His voice had an edge of hardness to it when he spoke. “I couldn’t find anything on such short notice, regardless.”

That was true. It was the beginning of July. Sugar Cone Beach was one of the most sought-after holiday locations in California. People booked, particularly the July the Fourth holiday, well in advance. Sometimes, years in advance. People who had yearly arrangements—like him apparently—clung to them. She had heard of rental agreements being passed down, generation to generation, and that might be the case with him. He’d said his parents had it before him.

Still, it was even more reason she was not abandoning her house to him. She would not be able to find anything else, either. Though the contract thing was a little worrisome. The last thing she needed was a legal battle. The truth was, after the shock of the tax bill, she was barely squeaking by.

Allie cast Sam a glance. He looked like he had a lot more money than her if it came to that.

Still, she couldn’t act intimidated, and she couldn’t take it on. It was his problem, not her problem.

“Who doesn’t at least make a phone call before heading out on their holiday?” she asked, her tone querulous. “It’s not as if my grandmother was young. Did it not occur to you things can change?”

He looked her over with narrowed eyes. His voice was cold when he spoke. “I happen to be one of the people most aware of how things can change, without warning, how an entire life can be thrown off course in a single second.”

She was suddenly dangerously aware they were not talking about a rental agreement gone wrong. He looked stunned that he had revealed that much of himself, and covered his tracks quickly.

“We’re going to have to reach an agreement,” he said.

His tone was reasonable, but Allie could feel herself bristling. Despite that lapse where he said a life could be thrown off course without warning—his life presumably—he was the kind of man who wouldn’t like that. Who wouldn’t like that one little bit. Who would move heaven and earth to make sure it didn’t happen to him again. He practically oozed the kind of irritating confidence bordering on arrogance of a man who expected everything to go his way. Who would make everything go his way.

He was in for a surprise this time. He was going to have to go, and that was that. She was in creative mode—or trying desperately to be in creative mode—and she knew how easily the muse could be derailed. She had a deadline to meet. She had to stand as strong as him. This cottage was hers, and she was not leaving it!

“I doubt an agreement that is satisfactory to both of us is possible,” she said.

“Thus the invention of contracts.”

With his contracts and his annoying confidence, Allie decided she didn’t like him at all. And that was a good thing. So much easier to make him go.

Wasn’t possession nine-tenths of the law?

She opened her mouth to tell him—Allie, show no weakness, particularly to a man like this—but before she could say a single word, he was back out the door. The screen slapped shut behind him, and she went to see what had caught his attention so suddenly.

His keys still hung there. Maybe she could pull them out, slam the door and lock him out? She could imagine, with some satisfaction, the astonished look of disbelief that would bring to his unfairly handsome features.

Childish, she told herself, but in the face of his arrogance, his absolute certainty that he was right and she was wrong, she could not help but feel a certain glee at the prospect.

But when she moved to the front door fully intending to remove his keys, she saw what had pulled him out of her house with such urgency.

Allie’s mouth fell open, her resolve evaporated and her heart dropped. Now what?

Just as Allie had first suspected, when she had seen Sam glance back out that door and hold it open, Allie’s home invader had not arrived alone. No wonder, even as he spoke to her, he had been keeping a sharp eye on the front yard.

He was now crouched beside a small boy, who was trying to unstick a red wagon that had gone off the concrete pathway, and had its two side wheels imbedded in the soft dirt of the somewhat neglected flower bed that ran beside it.

The child was adorable: he looked to be maybe three, with a head full of tangled blond curls and the sturdy build of a tiny wrestler. Dimpled legs poked out of denim overall shorts. The chubby legs ended in tiny hiking boots. He had on a red T-shirt, and a faded superhero cape, one hem drooping, was draped over his shoulders and tied under his chin.

The wagon contained a small suitcase and a stuffed toy of some sort. The child was determined to free it himself.

He furiously waved off Sam, who could have freed the wagon in less than a second. Sam stood back, hands up, in the universal sign of surrender.

Allie realized it might be just a wee bit petty to take delight in seeing the self-assured Mr. Walker taking his orders from a child.

The little boy grunted and pulled, but the wagon did not move. But the stuffy did. It lifted its head, gazed with a combination of adoration and long-suffering at the child—an expression nearly identical to the man’s, actually—then sighed, and put its head back down. Not a stuffy, then, but a dog. It looked like a cross between a cocker spaniel and a red feather duster.

Allie considered all of this. Finding accommodations would be hard enough in Sugar Cone in July. The complication of the dog and the child would make it impossible.

Which meant what?

She could harden her heart to Sam Walker. It would take effort, of course, he was one of those men who effortlessly caused softening in the region of the female heart. However, she thought she’d become rather good at hardening her heart to men, and particularly one like him, who seemed altogether too sure of himself.

But the little boy? And that moppet of a dog?

What was she going to say? Go sleep in your car? Go home where you came from? I don’t care about you, or your excitement about a holiday on the beach?

For all that she had been through, had she really become that person? Was she going to allow herself to be callous and hard?

It was a sensible approach to life, she tried to convince herself. She touched the ink-dark tips of her hair, as if to remind herself which way she needed to go if she did not want to be hurt any more.

But an attitude of complete cynicism did not feel as if it fit her, as much as she might have wanted it to. And her grandmother would not have approved.

Her grandmother had known this man. Possibly she had known him since he was a child. She had never mentioned a rental arrangement, but Allie had never visited her at this particular time of the summer, either.

It occurred to Allie there might be a Mommy somewhere, but a quick glance at the curb showed no one else coming from the car that was parked there.

She couldn’t identify the silver car, low-slung and sporty, beyond the fact that it was clearly expensive. The kind of car that a man who could afford a team of lawyers drove.

But then she thought of what she had glimpsed in the man’s face, beyond the travel weariness, and it came to her. Not hurt, so much, and not loneliness.

It was a subject she was something of an expert on, enough that she could spot it in others. Loss. That is what was in the sharpness of his tone when he had told her that he, of all people, knew that life could turn on a hair.

Sam Walker knew some incredible, heartbreaking loss. That is what she had seen, naked in his eyes, before the veil had slammed down.

Of course, she probably had it all wrong. A divorce, plain and simple. In this day and age that would hardly cause a flicker. It was probably more the norm than not: marriage broken, daddy inheriting his kid for a week or two in the summer. What better plan than to head to the beach?

Allie sighed, and recognized it as a surrender. For tonight, anyway. She had two extra bedrooms. It was unlikely that a longtime tenant of her grandmother’s had morphed into some kind of ax murderer. And also unlikely that an ax murderer came with a child and a puppy in tow.

Plus, there was the unhappy existence of a contract to consider.

Maybe there was a bright spot in all this. Maybe she needed to suck it up and consider going beyond tonight. Maybe, particularly since her guitar was locked into an unfathomable silence, Allie needed to consider giving up two weeks of her precious privacy in trade for something she needed more desperately than solitude right now.

Money.

Sam Walker sensed the girl had come outside behind him before he actually saw her. Awareness of her tingled along his spine, as she pressed by him, somehow not touching him, though the walkway was narrow. She paused at where the wagon was stuck.

“Hi,” she said to Cody, who glanced at her, then ignored her.

She ignored him, too, none of that gushing over his curls that Cody and Sam were equally allergic to. Casually, barely seeming to move at all, she tucked her toe under the wagon, and lifted the stuck wheels back onto the walk. Sam noticed there was nary a protest from Cody, who trundled by her without acknowledging her help.

“I guess we can work something out,” she said. Her voice was reluctant, but her eyes on the child had softened with a sympathy that turned them a shade of violet that Sam felt he could look at—or get lost in—for a long, long time.

He shook the feeling off, but still could not seem to stop looking at her. His initial reaction, in the poor light of the hallway, after he’d realized she was not a boy, had been that she was barely more than a child.

She had tufts of very short blond, sun-streaked hair—really sun-streaked, not from a bottle—in a rumple around her head. While the rest of her hair looked natural, there was an odd half inch, right at the tips, that was a disconcerting shade of black, as if it had been dipped in an inkwell.

She was wearing a too-long T-shirt, damp in the front, suggesting a swimming suit underneath it. She had very long, sun-browned legs, but otherwise was tiny, the kind of person who would be chosen for the part of Peter Pan in a play. Or maybe Tinkerbell. Despite being Cody’s guardian for nearly eight months—all of them excruciating—Sam still wasn’t really up on his children’s stories.

Outside, the light dying, but better than it had been in the cottage, he could see she was not a child. At all. Maybe in her early twenties.

He could see, too, that she was the antithesis of the kind of women who populated his world. They fell into two categories: the very glamorous, with perfect makeup and salon hair, with manicured fingers and toes, and everything in between manicured, too. Those women wore designer clothes with casual flair, and tossed two-thousand-dollar handbags over gym-toned shoulders.

The other kind were his colleagues, professionals, as driven as he was, but as perfectly turned out as their glamourous counter parts, with a wardrobe of designer power suits and stylish eyeglasses.

Sam dated—occasionally—women from both those categories. Women sophisticated enough to understand that if they were looking for picket fences and happily-ever-after, he was not their guy.

But if they were looking for the kind of good time—travel, posh restaurants, good wine, galas, charity balls, premieres—that money could buy, they could hang out with him. For a while. As long as there were no demands and they didn’t get in the way of business.

This woman, with her blown-in-off-the-beach look, would not fit into either of those two convenient categories. He thought he had known women who were bold, but this woman who grabbed a statue named Harold and headed toward danger, instead of away from it, could redefine that word.

Next to any other woman he could think of she seemed, what? Distressingly real, somehow.

Not that categories for any kind of woman existed in his life anymore, Sam reminded himself.

No, his old life, that guy who worked hard and played harder, who was carefree and unfettered, was a distant memory, eight months behind him.

“Is there something wrong?” Ally asked.

On the other hand, maybe he would be getting his old life back soon. It was what he had wanted and wished for, almost on a daily basis.

And yet now that it was a possibility…his heart did a sickening fall.

CHAPTER FOUR

“IS SOMETHING WRONG?” she asked again.

He gave Allie of the hallway art—and possibly his landlady—a look. This was the second time he’d gotten the unsettling feeling that she might see things about him that others didn’t. No one but his sister had ever seen past what he was prepared to show them, and he didn’t like it.

But then he saw she wasn’t even looking at him. She was looking at the dog, Popsy, lying in the wagon, one paw trailing, looking as boneless as a pile of rags.

“With the dog?” she clarified.

Sam felt huge relief that she was talking about the dog, not him.

Cody was now facing the challenge of the steps leading up to the cottage. With huge effort, he lifted the limp Popsy off the wagon. The dog reluctantly found its legs.

“Not permanently,” he said and hoped that was true. The dog was unusually attached to Cody. The two were inseparable. He did not think his sudden cosmically ordained family unit of uncle and nephew and dog could sustain another loss. And yet he didn’t feel quite ready to tell her what the vet had said.

The dog is depressed.

Who knew that dogs got depressed? Or that little kids gave up speaking when the unspeakable happened to them?

“I thought I caught a whiff of something as they went by,” she said, trying to word it delicately.

“The dog got carsick.”

“Oh, no!”

Her sympathy was so genuine that he couldn’t resist sharing the full horror. “You have no idea. At sixty-five miles per hour, with wall-to-wall traffic and not a rest stop for thirty miles. Then, when I finally could pull over, I had to unpack the suitcase to find new clothes. Not the Superman cape, though. I don’t have an extra one of those.

“And guess how long the new clothes lasted before Popsy got sick on Cody again? I may never get the smell out of my car. Sheesh. I may never get the smell out of Popsy.”

He stopped himself, embarrassed. He sounded just like those moms at the playgroup the counselor had recommended for Cody. Sam had tried to drop Cody off there several times.

Nobody warned me it was going to be this hard.

Cody, to Sam’s consternation—he was trying to do the right thing, after all—and his guilty and secret relief, had used his limited communication skills to make it known he hated the play group.

“Cody is your son and the dog is Popsy?”

“Cody is my nephew, but yeah, that’s the whole cast of characters.”

Sam really hated sympathy, which made his recounting of the horrible trip down here even more mystifying. Still, right now, that sympathy—the soft look on her face as her gaze followed Cody and Popsy as they went up the stairs—served Sam well. He was seeing a whole shift in attitude.

“You must all be exhausted. I’ll show you which rooms to take, and put out some towels. I’m sorry for the welcome I gave you earlier.”

“Not your fault,” he said gruffly.

“Well, let’s start again. I’m Alicia Cook. Welcome to Soul’s Retreat.”

She held out her hand. Maybe it was a mistake to take it, because any sense he had left of her being a child disappeared in her grip. Her touch made him look at her differently. She was extraordinarily feminine, and her hand held the unconscious sensuality of the sea in it.

She was very pretty, her bone structure exquisite, her eyes a shade of blue bordering on violet that he would not have been able to name if asked. He was aware of a scent tickling his nostrils, and realized she smelled of the sea and something else. Lemons? Whatever it was, it was faintly ordinary and faintly exotic and faintly enticing.

It occurred to him that she had welcomed them as if she planned to be their hostess. Maybe that’s why sympathy was not a workable strategy. Shared accommodations weren’t going to work, and he needed to let her know right away. It looked like when she got an idea in that head of hers it was hard to displace it!

“I hope you won’t have too much difficulty finding a place to stay,” he said, and heard the cool, no-nonsense tone he used when closing a deal for his computer systems company.

All of it—especially the enticing part—made getting rid of her seem imperative.

That tone he had just used could—and had—intimidated business tycoons with global reputations. But her mouth—plump and pink—set in a very unflattering line, and her brows lowered.

“I’m not going to find a place to stay,” she said firmly. “Your arrival has taken me completely by surprise, but I’ll accommodate you and Cody to the best of my ability tonight. Tomorrow we’ll look at options. Maybe it will be workable for you to stay. With me.”

“You want to share accommodations?” he asked her slowly. “With someone you don’t know?”

“Want to seems to be overstating it a bit. None of you looks dangerous. The dog doesn’t even look like it has the energy to bite.”

Sam felt this odd little niggle, for the second time, of wanting to be protective of her.

Just as when she said she had a weapon when it was so pathetically obvious not only that she didn’t, but that she wouldn’t use it if she did.

Are you crazy? You don’t invite strangers to stay with you.

But he managed to bite his tongue. He looked at the set of her jaw and felt a sudden exhaustion. It had been a horrible day. That look on her face felt as if it would take a lot more energy than he had to sort this out right now.

He needed to get Cody into the bathtub and into a bed. He had dealt with three of Cody’s legendary meltdowns today. For a kid who didn’t talk he was an absolute master at making his displeasure known to all. Sam was not up to another one any more than he was up to dealing with whatever the stubborn set of Alicia Cook’s little mouth meant.

She was right. Tomorrow, they would look at options. Tomorrow, he’d deal with it. His team of lawyers could let her know he had an ironclad contract and she could find someplace else to stay for two weeks.

He knew, despite a team of people working for him, that another place on Sugar Cone was out of the question for either himself and Cody or Mavis’s granddaughter. They’d had a devil of a time finding a condo on the busier side of the beach for Cody’s Australian auntie and uncle and their kids, arriving later in the week.

We need to know him better. He’s all we have left of Adam.

Sam had met them, of course. At the wedding, the christening, Christmas two years ago. At the funeral. Good people. Decent. Hardworking. Real, somehow, in the same category that the woman in front of him was real.

And yet, when he thought of meeting them this time, he could feel his heart sinking to the bottom of his feet.

Despite the fact he was pretty sure he was botching nearly every single thing about raising a three-year-old, just like Cody was what they had left of Adam, he was what Sam had left of his sister, Sue, too.

And Sam had a history with this little cottage. He had been coming here for a long time. He had memories of endless days of him and Sue running on that beach as children. He desperately wanted Cody to feel the kind of unfettered joy that they had felt here.

Sam’s parents had let the lease lapse when he and Sue were teenagers, but when they died, he had approached Mavis and asked about the possibility of leasing again. She, he remembered, had been delighted, almost as if she was waiting for him to come back. Since then, the cottage had always provided exactly what the sign, swinging at the gate with letters so faded you could barely read them, promised.

Soul’s Retreat. Sam Walker was counting on this place to give him something that was in very short supply in his life right now.

Serenity.

Wisdom.

Wasn’t there a prayer about those things? Not that he was a praying kind of man, though given the desperation of the decision he had come here to make, he wasn’t going to rule out the possibility of becoming one.

What he didn’t need were any further complications to a life that was seriously complicated right now.

And this woman, Alicia—Allie—with her black-tipped hair, and a tiny bit self-conscious in her wet, too-large T-shirt, and trying hard not to let it show, had complication written all over her.

He was sympathetic about her grandmother. Of course he was. But, after tonight, she couldn’t stay here with him under the same roof.

She looked like she was still the artsy type that her hallway art indicated. She’d probably love to go to Paris for two weeks. There. Problem solved. He would offer her a round-trip, all-expenses-paid to Paris so he and Cody could have the cottage to themselves.

If only all of life’s problems were so easy to solve.

His more immediate problem was this: he had a very stinky dog and a very stinky kid on his hands. Neither of them liked baths.

“You’ve eaten, right?” Alicia asked, as she watched the shocking change in her life unfold before her very eyes.

Sam Walker stood in the bedroom she had suggested for Cody. The bedroom was not large, at the best of times, but now it looked positively tiny. Sam’s shoulders seemed to be taking up all the space. He was rummaging through the small suitcase Cody had dragged up the walk on his wagon.

Cody and the dog peeked out at her from under the bed. The man and the boy had identical eyes, large, dark brown and soft as suede. There was something in them that could weave a spell around the unwary.

Which she was not.

“Yeah, we stopped at Pizza Palooza,” Sam said, his voice a growl of unconscious sensuality. “Perfect Pal Happy Deals all the way around. Did they make me happy? No. I’m pretty sure that’s what the dog threw up. I wonder if I can sue for misleading advertising?”

Allie felt a jab of sympathy for him. She reminded herself to be wary of spells, and overrode the sympathy. Much more sensible to see this as a reminder that he had a team of lawyers at his fingertips, and presumably, he was not afraid to use them.

Still, she had to venture, “I don’t think the Perfect Pal Happy Deals are dog-designated.”

“Did you hear that, Cody? The Happy Deal is not dog-designated. No more feeding Perfect Pal to Popsy. So, how about a bath, buddy?”

Sam had extracted a pair of pajamas from the suitcase. They looked as if they would fit a good-size teddy bear, and they had fire engines on them. Allie was finding this level of adorable invading her home doing very odd things to her heart, wary as it was.

The dog and the little boy shrank back a little farther under the bed. The man shot her a look, then got on his knees, rear in the air—and a very nice rear, at that—and looked under the bed.

“Come on,” he said, his tone soothing, despite the exasperation Allie had so clearly seen on his features.

The boy scooted right out of sight. The dog made a sound that wasn’t quite a growl, more like a hum of dismay.

Allie backed out of the room to leave Sam to his challenges, which seemed substantial. She reluctantly closed the open patio door—a precaution against the possibility of a burglar in the neighborhood. She was aware she felt a little safer with Sam in the house, though this reliance on a man to feel safe made her annoyed with herself.

Allie retreated to her bedroom, taking her tablet and her guitar with her. The bedroom proved not to be any kind of retreat at all.

For one thing, the cottage, with the closed patio door, was hot, her tiny bedroom window open a tiny burglar-proof crack, was not providing much of a breeze. She would normally leave her bedroom door open, but with guests in the house, that wasn’t possible, especially since, as a defense against the suffocating heat, she stripped down to the bathing suit that was under her clothes. She appreciated its tininess, as much of her skin as possible exposed to the stingy breeze coming in her window.

She picked up her guitar and strummed it hopefully with her thumb, but it told her, with a certain sullen stubbornness, no. Which was too bad, because it might have covered the other sounds coming through the paper-thin walls of the cottage.

While she listened, the child was snared, a bath was run, the little boy splashing while his uncle made motor boat sounds.

There was something about Sam—so confident and so handsome—making motorboat sounds that made him all too human. He was a man way out of his element. And yet trying, valiantly, to do the right thing.

At some point Allie realized the little boy was not speaking, and it distressed her and made her realize she had not asked enough questions before allowing this pair, plus a dog, to share her home.

Why was she assuming Sam was doing the right thing? How did an uncle and nephew end up together on holidays? Why wasn’t the little boy speaking? Where were the mommy and daddy? Was Sam Walker really the child’s uncle? What if she had inadvertently embroiled herself in a parental kidnapping of some sort?

Though honestly, Sam didn’t look like he was enjoying the exercise in child-rearing enough to have used illegal means to experience it.

Sam Walker did not look like a kidnapper any more than he looked like a home invader. In fact, he looked the furthest thing from a man capable of any kind of subterfuge. There was something in his eyes, in the set of his mouth, in the way he carried himself—in the way he handled the child and dog—that made him seem like a man you could trust, even if you didn’t particularly like him.

Her grandmother had known him, she reminded herself. Had not just known him, but liked him enough to share an ongoing rental relationship with him for many years.

Still, Allie was aware that not only was she not sure what the type who became involved in a parental abduction would look like, but that she had an unfortunate history of placing her trust in people who had not earned it. While other people could trust their instincts, she had ample and quite recent proof that she could not.

Determined to not be naive, she put on her headphones to block out the noises coming from the bathroom and typed Sam Walker into the search engine on her tablet. Not too surprisingly, there were thousands of Sam Walkers. She changed tack and put in “recent abductions.” Also, sadly, way too many of them, though no photos of a curly-headed little boy who looked like Cody. No abducted children with dogs.

Giving up, Allie Googled the legal ramifications of rental contracts, only to find out lawyers were quite cagey about dispensing free information over the internet.

After that, she went through her grandmother’s documents, stored in a box under Allie’s bed, hoping for the rental contract, but found nothing.

Through the headphones, she heard the muffled sounds of the bath ending. She took them off and listened.

The bed in the room next to her creaked, a small creak, and then a larger one. Too easy to picture.

“Get off, Popsy, you stink. And you’re next for the bath. Don’t even think of hiding. Okay, where is Woozer, Wizzle, Wobble? Here it is.”

One bedtime story, read three times.

Again, that deep, sure voice, sliding over those silly words was all too endearing: “‘And then the witch said, woozer, wizzle, wobble and turned the toad into a donkey.’”

Ashamed to realize that she was acting like an eavesdropper and that the little scene playing out in the bedroom made her ache with that same weak longing the family on the beach had caused in her earlier, Allie put the headphones back on. She turned the music up.

She pointed her finger at her silent guitar. You are not my only source of music.

Then, she stretched out on her bed, and let the faint breeze play over her skin. Without any warning, the three nights of not sleeping suddenly caught up with her.

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