CHAPTER ONE
“Well, hello there,” greeted an appreciative masculine voice. “If it isn’t the Princess of Roosevelt High.”
Yes! Hope Goodwin had been waiting for this moment since the Diver’s Cove Community Center Benefit was announced. It could even be said—although she’d deny it—that as community development liaison, she’d planned the entire benefit for the sole purpose of seeing one particular person. And she’d be happy to play his princess as long as he was the sexy prince she rode on while the sun set.
Ready to share that flirty—and yes, carefully rehearsed—comeback, Hope turned so quickly that she almost fell out of her Valentino Rock-Stud t-straps. Her heart raced and her smile glittered as bright as the chandeliers overhead.
Oh.
She was glad her lipstick was matte. Gloss would have been too slick to keep her smile from falling away.
“Hi.” A surreptitious glance at the name tag kept her going. “Marty. Um, how nice of you to join us for the benefit. I hope you’ve been well.”
In a voice carefully modulated to carry to as many people as possible, former football quarterback Marty Edwards told her all the impressive things he’d done over the last ten years since he’d graduated high school and left the small town of Diver’s Cove, Oregon.
While he got down to the details of his boasting, Hope surreptitiously searched the ballroom.
Already close to three hundred people here already, the crowd was thick. But she was sure she’d have no trouble spotting the man she was looking for. Granted, she hadn’t set sight on Cameron Drake in real life in eight years, but she’d know him anywhere. She should. She’d slept with his picture under her pillow for two years in high school.
He’d been the sexy bad boy from the wrong side of town. Intriguing at a distance, then after he’d helped her out when she’d been sixteen, he’d been more. He’d been real. Gruff and sweet and oh-so-tempting. The off-limits troublemaker who’d inspired fantasies hotter than Hope had known what to do with at that tender age.
And before she’d been able to find out, he’d left town.
Leaving Diver’s Cove filled with men no better than the braggart now boring her senseless.
Hope eyed the former football player as he showed off photos of his cars.
Perfect guys. The kind of guys her mother had been determined Hope would marry. Ones so upright, uptight and boring that Hope was afraid that one day all that blahness would simply engulf her, smothering any and all prospect of her ever having a fantasy again, let alone actually living one out.
“So what do you say, Hope? Are we going to be king and queen of the benefit like we were back in the good ole days?” Marty asked, his nudge replacing any and all fantasies with horror.
Leaving behind the feeling of being bound by velvet chains to the role she’d played all of her life. The perfect daughter. The biddable friend, the sweet do-gooder.
It was enough to make a woman with naughty fantasies curl up and cry.
“There you are. I’ve been looking everywhere.” Bonnie Potter, Hope’s best friend and the only person in Diver’s Cove who didn’t see her as a pampered princess, teetered over on five-inch heels. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but we need you up front. Benefit emergency. You know how it is.”
Bonnie blew Marty a kiss before tucking her arm through Hope’s and tugging her away. As soon as they were out of hearing range, she giggled. “Oh, the expression on your face. You looked like you’d swallowed a frog.”
“Who do you know that eats frogs for your point of comparison?” Hope wondered aloud, matching her steps to Bonnie’s shorter ones. Her heels were lower, but her legs longer so she towered over the blonde by a good three inches.
“You know what I mean,” Bonnie said, dismissively. After glancing at the large group of people by the first ballroom entrance, she used her hold on Hope to pull her to the other set of ornate doors. “Bottom line, I rescued you from a snooze fest.”
“I was checking the crowd and got caught,” Hope admitted. More to the point, she’d been distracted by her search.
“I don’t think you have time penciled in on your schedule for crowd control.”
“I gave myself a little wiggle room.” Hope’s lips twitched at the reference to her obsession with time management.
That obsession had come in handy in planning this benefit.
Given her other obsession—Cameron Drake—she’d carefully tied the weeklong event to class reunions for ten years’ worth of Roosevelt High graduating students. Having grown up the daughter of Diver’s Cove’s wealthiest residents, she knew how important appearances were. The fancier and classier the events, the more money people would pay to participate, and ultimately donate for the center. She’d arranged a golf tournament, a tour of the local winery plus a spa day so everyone could relax. She’d spent months perfecting the banquet and formal ball to be held on Saturday.
She’d done it all despite an irritating co-chair and a nagging town council.
Still arm in arm, Hope and Bonnie stepped through the ballroom doors to the wide veranda. Most of the guests were entering through the hotel entrance, but they could see a few wandering in from the gardens.
But none of them were Cameron.
“He’ll be here.” Bonnie squeezed her arm. “It’s not going to be like your seventeenth birthday party.”
Hope tried not to groan. At least, not out loud.
There was no way to prevent the mental groan for that horrible memory. She’d begged, wheedled and planned an elaborate excuse of a party for the sole purpose of having something to invite Cameron to. She’d insisted on barbeque because she’d heard it was his favorite, she’d chosen the DJ music from the playlist of songs she knew Cameron liked. And when her mother had put her foot down, demanding approval of the guest list or she wouldn’t pay for the party, Hope had emptied her savings account.
Only to find out he’d left for Navy boot camp the day before she’d worked up the nerve to ask him to attend.
“Maybe he’s here and I missed him,” she murmured, turning back toward the ballroom. Hope pressed her hand against her silk-covered stomach, trying to calm her dancing nerves. He’d RSVP’d that he’d attend. She’d checked to make sure he had a reservation here at the hotel. She’d even checked to make sure his flight had arrived on time.
Not that she’d shirked her chair duties.
The Goodwin Community Center was secure. Her mother had seen to that by donating the land and funds to build the center last summer. But she’d died three months later, before she could implement her vision of a place for families to gather, for children to play and teens to hang out after school. She’d seen the center as a place that included the entire community.
The town council, on the other hand, had an entirely different vision. An adults only type vision. But enough people on the council were still sympathetic to Hope’s loss, so they’d agreed to give her until the end of January to raise the funds to outfit, furnish and fund the center for a year.
“It sucks that Pete March is such a stickler about the money,” Bonnie said as she waved to the newest arrivals.
Hope could have funded the rest of the center’s requirements through her trust fund if not for the council treasurer’s claim that the Goodwin family had reached the limit of charitable donations for the year allowed by the town.
So she’d paid for the benefit instead.
“You are way too wound up.” Bonnie inclined her head toward the music and voices spilling out of the ballroom. “You’ve done everything you can. The benefit is off to a good start and your dream guy will be here when he gets here. You need to learn to let yourself enjoy life once in a while.”
But that’s what she did, Hope wanted to say. She dreamed the big dreams. Then she planned and she prepared and she did everything she could to make them come true. But had she ever enjoyed herself?
Her eyes widened.
What if Cameron came back to Diver’s Cove and instead of seducing him, she hid behind her duties? What if they did spend time together and he realized that she was still too much the good girl for his tastes?
Her fingers clenched together, strangling each other.
Or worse, what if they did get together. What if they stripped each other naked before rolling their bodies in honey, and she worried too much about attracting bees to enjoy herself?
“Let it go,” Bonnie advised as if reading her thoughts. “Remember, this event is actually about more than giving you a chance to ride Cameron Drake like a roller coaster.”
But what if she rode him like one of those roller coasters that swirled and swooped and did it upside down? She didn’t have to look at Bonnie’s expression to see that was a no.
“I know my priorities.”
As if summoned to challenge that statement, the vision of her every lusting thought stepped through the garden. Tall, dark and handsome didn’t do justice to the sight of Cameron Drake.
He was bigger, was all she could think. Broader, more muscular. Her gaze slid over the military cut of his dark hair, along the sharp angle of his cheekbones to rest on those shoulders. Easily wide enough to hold onto for any roller coaster riding, she noted before her eyes slid lower.
Was he bigger everywhere? She had no actual frame of reference, but it stood to reason that he was. Her eyes met his again and all she could do was wonder how long it’d be before she found out.
Cameron reached the doors, his eyes locked on hers.
Then he smiled.
That wickedly crooked smile that lit his dark eyes and promised so many naughty delights.
“Hello, Hope.”
She opened her mouth but nothing came out. Probably because she couldn’t breathe. Swallowing carefully, Hope pushed her trembling lips into a smile and held out her hand. Her knees shook as desire wrapped around her, gripping tighter than the hand holding hers.
Cameron Drake. The hottest guy to graduate Roosevelt High and now a sexy SEAL. She’d crushed on him for as long as she could remember. She’d wanted him with a desperate need she barely understood. This time she was having him.
“Cameron.” She gave him her most seductive smile. “Welcome home.”