Shae cursed as something sharp pierced her foot. She jumped backward on the uninjured foot until she could lean up against a wall and look at the offending little piece of glass that somehow survived her intense cleanup efforts.

It was big enough that she was able to tug it out with her hands, and she stared at it in anger for a second. One more reminder about the entire Blackthorne fiasco from last night. After the brick had crashed through a window, she’d swept and vacuumed and Lysoled and put plastic over the window, but apparently she hadn’t done well enough. As much as it hurt when she stepped on the glass, her foot didn’t appear to be badly injured. There was only a drop of blood that she wiped away.

Thanks to her line of work, her tetanus shot was up to date. She threw the piece of glass in the trash, and moved on. Even though Blackthorne had to be dealt with, she had more than enough things to keep her busy for the time being. The house she was working on had to be ready to put on the market in a few months. Snowbirds usually started looking at properties around the spring and through the summer, so she had the rest of the winter to fix it up.

This wasn’t the first property she’d flipped, but it was by far the biggest. She’d put her entire life savings into the house, and it was imperative that it made profit, or at least the money she put into it. The beautiful home was right on the beach, and the beaches on the west side of Florida were, in her opinion, the best. The water was calmer, but it was still wavy enough that the kids would enjoy it without the parents having fear of a riptide sucking them down. The sunsets were to die for, and the white sands of the beach were ideal for someone who wanted to escape the cold weather for a few months every year.

But as great as the scenery was, the house needed a lot of work. Shae didn’t know much about the owners of the place before it went to auction. A house like this must have cost a lot of money, but they put no effort into maintaining it. The salty breeze had done its damage on the outside of the home, and the inside was devastatingly dated. Shae’s job was to make the most cost-effective upgrades to make the home as luxurious as possible.

The first home she flipped she’d bought for only twenty thousand in a not-so-reputable area of Miami. But after putting in ten thousand dollars of work, she’d managed to sell it for fifty thousand and made a pretty good profit. And considering the other homes she had seen, her repairs were much better quality than what a lot of flippers these days were doing.

Shae knew she had a full workday in front of her, but she still took a moment to go out the back door. She reluctantly put on flip-flops to protect her damaged foot from the sand, but she usually loved to walk this path barefoot. She liked to feel the sand beneath her toes and appreciate the limited time she had here. If this job worked out, everything would change for her. She wouldn’t be a single-woman operation, hiring contractors whenever necessary. She might be able to organize a small staff and actually have people she could trust working for her instead of finding people she didn’t know in every city. Also, if this job went as planned, maybe she could stop worrying about her father dragging her back home.

But that was something she didn’t want to think about. She walked closer to the water’s edge. There was still a bit of a ways to walk before she could actually reach the water. Thanks to the recent cut on her foot, she couldn’t let her feet sink into the sand and feel the waves crashing like she loved. She stopped at a safe distance and looked at all the shells that had been scattered along the beach. A sandpiper got daringly close to her as he continued looking for his food for the day. In the distance, a pelican soared overhead, looking for food, while another seabird took a deep dive and stabbed into the water beak first.

It really was beautiful here. Maybe when she made enough money, she could look into getting her own place on the beach. Not as big a place as she was renovating, of course. Maybe a one- or two-bedroom. Something cozy that didn’t need a lot of upkeep. It was her job to restore homes, so she didn’t want to spend that much time working on her own. Right now, she normally lived in the places she was working on. Some days it could be inconvenient, or downright hazardous depending on the state of the building, but it saved a lot of money on rent. Besides, what better way to make sure homes were livable than to actually live in them?

She was still taking in the beautiful sight of the ocean when movement caught her attention from the corner of her eye. Shae turned and saw someone was in the neighboring property—the McCormick Place. Not the most original name for a home, but the McCormicks were rarely ever there. They used their home maybe four weeks out of the year and spent the rest of the time renting it out. She’d only met them once or twice while she’d been working on Seaside Escape. So the person she was seeing silhouetted on the back porch was most likely their newest renter. She squinted but couldn’t make out any of the man’s features from this far away. Just from his build, she guessed he was probably younger. Maybe around her age, in his late twenties. He probably had his wife with him. This was more of a retirement community, so single guys didn’t really frequent the area. There weren’t a lot of clubs nearby, or beaches with a bunch of bikini-clad ladies.

She’d have to make sure she didn’t do any loud late-night work. It was nice that the place was deserted most of the time, because she didn’t have any neighbor on the other side of her and she didn’t have to worry about bothering anybody. But because she was going to try to sell the place, it was important that she maintained good relationships with the locals.

And just like that, Shae’s mind went back to work. She had a laundry list of things she would need to do before she could put the home on the market. Right now she was focused on flooring. Pretty much the entire thirty-five hundred square feet of the house had been done in a dated shag carpeting. So Shae’s life currently was taken up by flooring. Hardwood would’ve been ideal, but it was so temperamental and expensive. Instead, she’d chosen an upper-end vinyl. It didn’t have the class of hardwood, but the overall effect it would give once the home started showing would be priceless.

However, that didn’t make it any easier to actually install the stuff. Luckily the home was mostly empty of furniture, which meant there wasn’t a lot of heavy lifting required. She considered herself reasonably strong, but even she had her limits. If she needed a helping hand, there was a local handyman she could hire. He helped her prep the house, but the actual installation she was mostly doing by herself.

Working alone didn’t bother her. She got to blast her music and get lost in the job. Before she knew it, the sun would be setting and she’d be binging on Netflix until she fell asleep. There was a special kind of joy in doing something you loved for a living. Wasn’t it a saying? If you do what you love, you never work a day in your life? Considering the various aches and pains in her body during any given day, she would say that was not so accurate, but there were parts of it that rang true.

The house was cold because she would leave all the windows open to let the dust from the vinyl escape, but once she worked long enough, the home would warm up. Even winter in Florida was warm. The sooner she got started, the sooner it would be finished.

Shae started back for the house and took her attention off her new neighbor. If she worked as much as she wanted to, she probably wouldn’t see him again. The house she was renovating, currently nicknamed Seaside Escape, was still pretty from the outside, even if it was basically falling apart. The house had a wraparound porch that had covered all four sides of the house, so the view of the ocean could be appreciated from almost anywhere. The house was two stories tall, and pretty much the entire back wall was floor-to-ceiling windows so the ocean could be seen. There were no curtains, and she didn’t think she was going to add any. She didn’t want to do anything to obscure the main selling feature of the home. It was shit for privacy if there were any boats on the ocean, but who cared when the view was that nice? She just about reached the back porch when she realized that her neighbor hadn’t disappeared into the McCormick house. He was walking over to her.

She turned and for the first time got a good look at the man. Immediately, she felt she was thrown back in the closet and the stranger was next to her, promising that he would be right back. Shae blinked the image away and tried to bring herself back to the present. No, that man was long gone. John, or whatever his name had been, wasn’t really showing up at her doorstep.

Besides, she’d never even seen him. His entire body had been silhouetted when the door had been open, and then the room had plunged into utter darkness. Her mind was playing tricks on her.

She tried to get her social face on. She probably looked a mess considering she hadn’t gotten home until well past two in the morning, and after that little mini kidnapping, sleep had been evasive. She tried to ignore her makeup-less face and the circles under her eyes as she plastered on a smile for the approaching neighbor. “Hey there,” she said in the most charming tone she could muster. “I hope I wasn’t too loud for you this morning. I didn’t realize there was anyone staying at McCormick Place.”

As she looked up at the man, she became suddenly so much more embarrassed that she wasn’t wearing any makeup. This guy did not belong in the sweet little seaside community. He belonged on the sexy beach scene of Miami. He belonged in the streets of New York City. He belonged on a movie screen in LA. He was tall and lean, with gorgeous black hair that was pushed back carelessly. She didn’t even think he had gel in it. It just happened to lie perfectly.

His cheekbones were model perfect, and the little bit of stubble along his jawline somehow only made him look more charming. He wore a pair of dark-wash jeans that looked as though they’d never seen a day of work in their life and a black T-shirt. Not exactly the shorts and sandals beach look she was used to seeing, but damn if he didn’t wear it well. Shae knew she could clean up okay when she wanted to, but she wasn’t anywhere close to being cleaned up right now.

She kind of wasn’t even on the same planet as this gorgeous man in front of her. Which made her all the more curious about why he was in front of her right now. He held out a hand, and she cautiously met it in a handshake. Still waiting for the other ball to drop.

“I wanted to introduce myself,” the man said.

Even though she already ruled him out as the man she’d been trapped in the closet with last night, she still listened closely to his voice. The man from last night had had a deep, confident voice. This seemed... happy-go-lucky? Dammit, why couldn’t she think straight? It could’ve been the same one. Everything from last night happened so fast. It never occurred to her that she’d have to memorize what his voice sounded like. She’d been scared and jumpy. To be honest, she still was. For all she knew, this was one of Damask’s men sent to spy on her. The suddenly paranoid thought had her straightening and looking at this man with newly critical eyes. That’s why some super-hot man would be talking to her. For all she knew, this was the same guy who threw the brick into her window. It wouldn’t be hard for Damask’s men to rent the house next door. In fact, it would be a smart way to keep tabs on her. A way to get rid of her....

“Are you okay?” the man asked with a puzzled expression.

Shae blinked and tried to swallow down her fear. She wasn’t convinced her paranoia was unjustified, but he didn’t need to know everything she was thinking. “I’m okay. It’s still early for me.”

The man looked at his watch. “Twelve o’clock?”

“It was a late night,” she said without offering any other explanation. “Can I help you?”

He let out a laugh. “Sorry. I came over to introduce myself and haven’t even told you my name yet. I’m Tristan.”

Tristan, not John. Not that it would be hard to say a fake name. But if he were the guy in the closet with her, why would he lie about it? The whole thing was too off to her. She missed her vinyl flooring. The flooring didn’t make her paranoid. Vinyl flooring made sense.

She needed to get out of this conversation as soon as possible so she could get back to her vinyl flooring. “It’s great to meet you, Tristan. My name is Shae. I’d love to talk, but I really have a full day in front of me.”

She started to back away, but he started to walk with her. She was torn between admiring his balls and telling him to leave her the fuck alone.

“You know, I’ve never really been to St. Pete Beach for pleasure. The McCormicks said you might know some nice places for the younger crowd to go to.”

Which McCormick said that? Shae was about twenty years younger than the median age here, sure, but she wasn’t exactly known for her partying. “I don’t think I can help you,” she said honestly. “I work a lot.”

“Oh really? What do you do?”

This guy really couldn’t take a hint. But she had brought up the subject of work, so she felt the need to answer. “I work on houses. I bought this one a few months ago, and I’m working on fixing it up and getting it back on the market before the spring sales start.”

“Damn. That’s impressive. I’ve never even owned a house before, let alone flipped one.”

Okay, she was slightly impressed now. Ninety-five percent of the time when she told people she flipped houses for a living, they made a comment about her being a woman or how small she was. So she gave him points for at least not mentioning that. “It’s definitely an interesting career.” She wanted to tell him to leave but couldn’t think of a good way to do it. So she went ahead and asked him the questions she truly had. “So are you here alone? Or did you come with friends?”

“Alone.”

She didn’t know whether she imagined it or not, but she could’ve sworn his eyes went up and down her body in a quick scan after he said alone. As though letting her know he was alone and interested. A blush crept up her cheeks at the thought. Her imagination really was on overdrive today. Before she could get too embarrassed by her reaction, he was going on.

“I had some business in the area and now I have about a week between that and my next trip. I figured I would take in the beach. I heard St. Pete is one of the best beaches in the country.”

“You’re here for a week?”

He nodded. “Is that so surprising?”

It wasn’t really that surprising, but she couldn’t imagine what would keep him busy for a whole week. St. Pete was for relaxation. It was for sitting back with a beer or cocktail and listening to the waves. She knew almost nothing about this man, but she could tell by the energy vibrating off him that he was an active one. He was going to get bored within twenty-four hours. As long as he didn’t bother me when he was bored....

“It is one of the best beaches,” she admitted. Her personal favorite, but for some reason she didn’t want to give him any personal information yet, no matter how unimportant. “What kind of work do you do?” Once again she’d asked a question instead of dismissing him. She really needed to get out more. It was all well and good that she could install vinyl flooring in a huge beach house, but unless she could actually hold a normal human conversation, she wouldn’t be good for much.

“I work in advertising. The spin business kind of thing. I can sell anyone anything, anytime.”

She scoffed at the audacity of that statement. “That’s big talk.”

“I can back it up. Want to test me?”

She couldn’t help the smile that spread across her face. “No. I really do not want to test you.”

“Ah, I was really hoping for a yes. I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve.”

Okay, it was official. He was definitely flirting with her. She couldn’t deny that some part of her was flattered by it. Something about the stress and danger of the last few days had this pleasant conversation stroking just the right fire in her. Who didn’t enjoy a good flirtation with a super-hot guy? She once again remembered that this might not be innocent flirtation. He could very well be working with Damask. The smile on her face faltered and she could tell that he noticed because he also appeared a tad more serious and a concerned line furrowed his brow.

“Is everything okay?” he asked.

“Yeah... I just... I have to get to work. It was nice meeting you, Tristan.” She quickly hurried away. It was only when she reached the house that she realized he hadn’t moved. He was just watching her retreat. She turned her gaze away from him and went inside. She didn’t have time in her life right now for handsome strangers.