Gavin watched in fascination as Scarlett sang Maroon 5’s Sugar at the top of her lungs while they roared down the highway toward the ocean. She had the worst voice he’d ever heard, but what she lacked in talent she made up for in enthusiasm. No inhibitions at all. So weird, considering in Zachsville she was all closed-up paranoia.

This was the woman he’d married in Las Vegas. Watching her throw her hair around, and sing her heart out, he knew exactly why he’d done it. When she let herself go, Scarlett was more fun than he’d had in his whole life. Both Scarletts were different sides of the same irresistible woman.

She picked up her drink and began to sing into the straw.

He cracked up when she gave him a flirty wink as she sang the word ‘shit’. She slapped his arm, then leaned toward him with the cup, and they took the chorus together.

When the song ended, she collapsed into her seat. “I love that song. Have you seen the video? I get goosebumps every time I see it. Can you imagine if Maroon 5 showed up unexpectedly to sing at your wedding?”

“They’re cool guys, you’d like them.”

She stared at him.

“What?”

“You know Adam Levine?” The reverence in her voice made him laugh.

He shrugged. “Yeah. We played a couple of awards shows together. He’s a kick ass guitarist. They’re great—”

“Stop talking. I’m trying to get my head around the fact that you know Adam Levine. Whose life am I living?”

“Don’t get too excited yet. I just threw away any hope I had of resuming my career.”

“Does it help if I tell you that you did the right thing?”

“Yes, it does.” He had done the right thing, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t occupational suicide. In this business, you did not piss off people like Maury Weinberg and Wynn Petty and expect to work again.

He slowed and pulled into the house that used to belong to the best friend he’d ever had—a brother in every way but blood, and the person who’d betrayed him.

“Oh, wow. This was Johnny’s house?” She slid her sunglasses onto her head and examined the front of the house.

“Yeah.” The pancakes from that morning threatened to make a reappearance. Sweat rolled down his temples and neck, and slid between his shoulders. Shit, he hadn’t considered what it would be like to be here again. White knuckles on the steering wheel screamed panic attack, and he tried to make himself relax. Too late, the beast already had him around the throat. “Fuck.”

“Gavin?” She shook him. “Hey, look at me.” Another hard shake. “I said, look at me.”

The command in her voice stopped him. “I’m sorry I said fuck.”

She waved away his comment. “Are you alright?”

He wiped his wet brow with the back of his hand. “I haven’t been here since he died.”

“Oh, Gavin. Why don’t we find a hotel and stay there?”

“No.” He would face this. One more step to moving on with his life, and he wasn’t alone, she was there if it became too much. Selfishly, he was glad she was with him. “I need to see the place. I had all of John’s things packed up and moved to storage or shipped to me. There’s all new stuff in the house now. My financial guys said I should fix it up to rent, but I couldn’t stand the thought of strangers here.” He brushed a curl off her forehead. “Besides, the view is killer.”

They climbed the steps to the Cape Cod bungalow. When he swung the door open a tiny sound of pleasure whooshed from her mouth. She walked into a large room with pale hardwood floors the same color as the golden shore outside, and a huge floor-to-ceiling window covering the entire back wall. Beyond the window the ocean rolled and foamed on the glowing sands of Malibu Beach. There were infinity pools, but this was an infinity window. The house, the beach, and the surf were connected. The beautiful living room opened onto a large deck that was partly shaded and had steps that lead down to the sand. “Breathtaking,” she whispered.

He tossed the keys on the bar and stopped in his tracks. Scarlett silhouetted against the backdrop of the Pacific Ocean was the most breathtaking thing he’d ever seen. Emotions he didn’t have names for barreled into him one after the other. Being with her was a lot like the water outside the window. Fun and unpredictable, but dangerous if you didn’t know what you were doing. And he definitely had no clue what he was doing, but it didn’t seem to matter. He was diving in.

“It is.” The words barely made it past his constricted vocal chords. He came up beside her, and they stood at the window for a long time watching the surf. Their breaths synced with the flow of the waves, their hands brushed against each other, and there wasn’t anywhere else he wanted to be.

She gave him a shy smile and took a half step away from him. “Wanna go for a swim?”

Hmm, let me think about it, her wet and in a bikini? “Absolutely.”

He led her to one of the bedrooms and left her to change. The master bedroom was so completely different he had to stand at the entrance and acclimate to his surroundings. It was decorated in blues, grays, and white. Peaceful.

Nothing like it was the last time he’d been here. When Johnny lived here, dirty clothes, alcohol bottles, drug paraphernalia, and sadness covered every inch of the room.

This wasn’t the day to remember that. He’d grieved and would continue to grieve his whole life, but today was for the living. He shook off the memory and changed his clothes.

When he made it downstairs, she was standing on the deck looking out at the ocean. Her curls were piled on top of her head, exposing her long neck, and the red bikini they’d bought after leaving Storm Side exposed the rest of her. That caveman sense of ownership ripped through him again when he saw the ‘G’ of his name peeking above the top edge of her bottoms. He wanted to take them off with his teeth and place open-mouth kisses over his name. Finally, an emotion he could recognize. Good ol’ fashioned lust.

But the situation was complicated. Scarlett was complicated. Some might say more trouble than she was worth. Not him. He’d grown to like complicated. He liked her. And even though love was a farce, true friendship wasn’t. Next to Johnny, she was becoming the best friend he’d ever had. The reality of his decision to walk out of Storm Side lurked at the door of his mind, but her presence held it at bay.

She understood why he’d done it without him having to explain it to her. He’d never had the feeling of being known before. It was addictive. So no matter what happened with this ridiculous deal they had, they’d stay friends, and he would keep her in his life. Decision made, he went to have fun with the beautiful woman in a bikini.

* * *

The rough wood of the deck railing scratched Scarlett’s hands. The sound of seagulls and surf were better than any massage to relax her muscles and razzed nerves. There’d been two more texts from Poppy when she’d checked her phone, one of a clock and the other of a pair of handcuffs. The woman was psychopathic.

She still had a some time to figure out what to do about Poppy. Hopefully, Luanne would have some ideas the next time they spoke.

Marie, on the other hand, had also texted and called several times wanting to discuss strategy.

She wanted more than anything to tell them both to screw off, like Gavin had done to those two idiots at Storm Side.

“Hey.”

She glanced over her shoulder and nearly swallowed her tongue. He wore a pair of black board shorts and nothing else. Lordy. He looked like a big, powerful cat stalking toward her. A sexy cat with luscious olive skin and beautiful tattoos.

He carried a cooler, beach chairs, and an umbrella. “Let me help with that.” She took the chairs and followed him down to the sand, eating up every motion of the muscles of his back as they flexed from the weight of the cooler.

The call of the water was too much to resist for her overheated mind and body. She dropped the chairs and ran for the waves. The bracing water splashed her skin, and she screamed in delight.

A warm hand snaked around her middle and drew her back against the hard planes of his muscled chest. The swirl of the moving water and the heat of his body turned her bones to mush. She knew she should swim away, but instead, she relaxed into him as he kissed her neck. The world dissappeared, and it was only the two of them at this moment. Her tension slid out to sea when he tightened his hold around her waist.

Then, without warning, he picked her up and dunked her under the water.

She came up spewing and coughing. Her top was pulled to the side, nearly exposing her breast, her bottoms had migrated to places they were never meant to be, and her bun hung off the side of her head. She adjusted the swimsuit, then pulled the rubber band from her wet mop and slid it on her wrist. “You tricked me.”

“How?”

“You tricked me with your sexual prowess to get me to drop my guard.”

“I have sexual prowess?” His smug smile was a mistake. Scarlett jumped, caught him off guard, and took him under the water. Satisfaction was sweet.

She hollered as he rolled and quickly wrestled back control. “Gavin, behave.”

“I don’t think so, Red.” With a push, she found herself under the tide. The salt burned her nose, but there was something so freeing about letting go with him that she didn’t care.

A few more seconds of holding her under the water, then he yanked her up. “Give?”

“Okay, okay. Uncle. I give up.”

He set her down and wiped sopping hair from her eyes. “You alright?”

“My ego’s bruised, but otherwise I’m fine.”

He held her head in his hand and searched her face like she held the answers to every question he’d ever had. For a moment, she thought he would kiss her, but he released her and glanced at the horizon. His tattoos glistened under the water sliding off his tan skin. She wanted to chase each droplet with her tongue.

It was a bad idea.

But here, thousands of miles from her life in Texas, it was hard to remember why that was. And even harder to remember why she cared.

He brushed a finger across her bare shoulder. “You’re already burning. We should get out of the sun.”

She was burning alright, and it had nothing to do with the sun. His touch ignited a lava pit deep in her body. With him this close, all she could do was nod.

Under the umbrella, she sipped a bottle of water and drew doodles in the sand. He dropped down beside her and dug in the cooler for his own bottle of water. “It’s a nice day, but then again, almost every day’s a nice day in Southern California. It’s the only thing I missed when I moved.”

“Why did you move?” When pain slid over his face, she quickly added, “You don’t have to answer that.”

He picked up sand and let it sift through his fingers. “I don’t mind answering. I never talk about it.”

He took a deep breath like she’d seen people do before they walked into a haunted house. “After Johnny died I lost my shit. I’d always hated L.A., and after his accident, I hated it even more. The city represented everything that killed him. The booze, the drugs, the money-sucking women, and fake-ass people who tell you what you want to hear because they sure as hell want something from you.” He tossed his empty water bottle back in the cooler and snatched another one. “So I got the hell out and moved back to Seattle. That’s where we’d grown up.” He picked at the label of his drink. “Did you know that Johnny and I grew up in foster care together?”

“I saw it on Music, Behind the Scenes.”

He nodded. “I’d been in the system since I was five. Johnny got sucked in when he was twelve after his parents died in a car accident. They had a sickeningly perfect family. You know, where everyone loves each other and they all get along.” He looked at her and smiled sheepishly. “Kind of like yours.”

She grinned. “Were they off their rockers, too?”

His returning smile was sad. “I don’t know. But their deaths haunted him. He never got over it, and he wore the pain like a second skin. That’s what Wrapped in Agony is about. That was one of the first songs we wrote together.”

“It’s a great song, but hard to listen to. That line, Love peels away my skin and eats me from the inside out, is so raw. It’s even sadder now that I know the story.”

“Yeah. Johnny said that’s how he felt every day.”

“I can’t imagine living with that much pain. How did he survive?”

“With humor at first. He was one of the funniest people I’ve ever known. But his humor was dark and bitter, which was fine with me, but most people didn’t get him. Then he started self-medicating…until it killed him.” He threw a rock into the surf.

Waves continued to crash on the shore, and tiny crabs skittered across the grains of sand. Scarlett drank her water and waited for him to continue.

“I could never understand why he couldn’t get over it. I know that sounds harsh and stupid, but I was a throw-away kid. I didn’t understand that kind of loss. And by the time I’d figured it out, it was too late.”

Throw-away kid. She didn’t think she’d ever heard anything sadder. Her heart broke for that little boy all over again. At least Johnny had known what it was like to be loved by two adoring parents. Gavin never had. She wanted to comfort him but knew he’d see it as pity and hate it. She steeled herself to keep her face neutral. “I’m sorry, Gavin.”

He flipped a shell off his finger and squinted at the horizon. “I blame myself. If only I’d insisted he go back to rehab, maybe…”

“Did you take him to rehab the first time?”

His head fell back to the top of the beach chair. “The first time, the second time, and every time after that, and every time he’d tell me I was ruining his life. He’d get better, check himself out, do well for a while, and then fall off the wagon again.”

“Sounds like you did all you could do. You couldn’t be with him twenty-four hours a day, Gavin. The bottom line is, we can want good things for the people in our life, but we can’t make them accept it.”

“Yeah, I know you’re right. But I promised him I’d take care of him when we were kids. It’s hard.”

Gavin Bain was a brave man. His whole existence was an exercise in courage. Everything had been taken from him, and he’d built a life that he lived on his own terms with brazen boldness.

It was convicting. She’d been given every opportunity in life and made decisions one after another out of fear. She was afraid of her father’s reaction, so she never told him how much her mother’s death affected her. She was afraid of what people would think of her, so she never told anyone about what happened with Poppy. She was afraid of looking stupid, so she’d agreed to the ridiculous contest Carousel set up.

She was afraid.

She was afraid.

She was afraid.

There was something she could do to change that right now. She grabbed her phone and dialed the familiar number.

Marie picked up on the first ring. “Scarlett. It’s about time you returned my call. We have a crisis. Where are you?”

“In Los Angeles.”

“What? Why? Never mind. Carousel wants an explanation for that scene on TV. The only explanation I had was that you were on drugs, and that didn’t seem the most constructive thing to say.”

“I understand. Please convey my deepest apologies to the network.”

Marie expelled a sigh. “I will. Now we need to come up with a plausible explanation for that stunt in the bar.”

“I’m afraid you misunderstand me, Marie. I have no intention of explaining myself to them. I’m withdrawing from the competition.”

“You’re what?”

“I’m withdrawing. I should have backed out as soon as they presented it, but I didn’t have the guts or the integrity to do it then. I do now.”

“What will I tell them?”

“Tell them my work is worth more than this ridiculous game and that it stands on its own merit. Tell them good luck finding anything better than my books.”

“Scarlett—”

“I have to go, Marie. I’ll be in touch.” She jabbed the disconnect button and threw the phone into the bag beside her.

“Right on. ’Bout time you told ’em where to shove their deal, Red.”

His approval meant more than one hundred Carousel contracts. “You.”

“Me?”

“After watching you today with Maury and Wynn, I was inspired. It took an enormous amount of courage to decline their offer, an offer I know you desperately want. You said no to a lot of money on principle because it would’ve cheapened your worth and Johnny’s memory.”

He shrugged. “Yeah, well.”

She put her hand on his shoulder. “You stood up for yourself, you didn’t compromise, and you didn’t let them push you around. It was awesome.”

“Yeah. But you stood up to them first, badass.”

“And now I’ve done the same for myself. A little late, but…go us.” She held up her bottle of water for a toast.

He tapped his to hers. “Go us.”