Derek tried to catch her.

He really did.

Pepper still went down like a sack of bricks.

Her skirt flew up, and he shouldn’t have looked. He did anyway. And sweet Christ, her ass—clad in barely there black lace—jiggled in that perfect female way. The one that made him want to nip and kiss then slide around to her front to do the same there.

All of a sudden, his pants weren’t cold any longer. They were painfully tight.

Martial arts. His grandmother’s underpants. Water-borne illnesses.

Derek tried to think about anything except Pepper’s glorious ass and how much he wanted to grab it.

Which was so not helping.

Pepper struggled to sit up, hands yanking at the skirt of her dress so fiercely he was surprised that she didn’t rip the thing to shreds, but then the hem was brushing the middle of her thighs and Derek’s brain began working again.

She kicked off the heels and stood, eyes closed, for a long minute.

Her hand rose to her bra, she extracted a twenty-dollar bill, and placed it carefully on the table.

“Sorry for the mess,” she told Bert.

And then she was gone.

Derek should have let her go. Left her to her troubles, let the complication that was Pepper O’Brien run straight out of his life.

He didn’t.

He grabbed Pepper’s twenty off the table and replaced it with two of his own. After an apologetic smile to Bert, he took the towel a waitress offered him and made his way out of the restaurant.

Chocolate ice cream dripped down his thighs, soaked into his socks.

His personal Hansel-and-Gretel moment. Only instead of breadcrumbs, he was trailing drops of milkshake.

Pepper had disappeared by the time he pushed through the door of Bert’s Burgers. He spun, searching, expecting . . . to what?

Find her waiting for him.

Unlikely, after he’d bungled through the conversation about her father and ruined her date.

Derek started for her cottage even though it was somewhat unsatisfying not being able to chase after her like he wanted. Still, he had enough Millennial in him to realize he was being slightly unreasonable.

Only slightly.

Snorting, he dropped the towel into a trashcan and turned the corner for the beach. Cold air hit his crotch, and he winced.

Fuck, but that was cold.

Almost as cold as Pepper’s eyes had been as she’d left the restaurant. Though, that should be a good thing. His movie depended on him keeping her out of trouble . . . and on keeping his dick in his pants.

Sleeping with Pepper definitely wouldn’t appease Peter O’Brien.

His feet slid to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk as images bombarded his brain. Black lace, pale skin, pink nipples—okay the last was his imagination. But he’d had no shortage of that in his life as of late.

If he’d pulled his stopping routine in L.A. or New York, other pedestrians would have pushed past him, bumped into him, irritated that his moment of fantasy had interrupted their rush to the next important place on their to-do list.

In Stoneybrook, he was alone.

No one brushed by him. No one glared. And he was stuck with disturbing thoughts coming to perfect clarity.

He was attracted to Pepper. Well, obviously. Any man or woman would be. She was gorgeous, and not only on the inside. As sappy as it sounded, she had an internal kindness that exuded from her pores.

But Derek was starting to realize that he didn’t know her at all.

Poor Pepper. Klutzy Pepper. Train Wreck Pepper. That was the girl he knew. This woman—still klutzy, still slightly chaotic, sexy and sweet and somewhat sad—was wrecking havoc on him in a different way.

Her father wanted him to watch out for her. He want to fu—

Well, suffice to say, his instincts weren’t purely protective.

He wanted her. As a woman.

And that was going to screw up his life.

Deliberately, he rotated, turning his back to the ocean and his front toward the bed and breakfast he was staying at.

He might have made it, too.

If not for the flash of red, the swirl of green coming around the corner, black heels in her hand, eyes down, emerald dress wet from the milkshake she’d dumped in his lap and plastered to her body.

“Pepper.”

The shoes clattered to the sidewalk, but she didn’t bend to retrieve them.

They stared at each other, frozen, unsure, until—and he would never be sure which one of them moved first—the distance between them was somehow gone and Pepper was in his arms.

“Why can’t you just leave me alone?” she asked, a bead of milkshake dripping down her cheek.

He swiped it away. “Because every time I look at you I forget.”

Her mouth was right there. He leaned in—

She rose on tiptoe and slanted her lips across his.

Heat exploded along his spine, surged down, expanded until he was a blazing inferno. It didn’t build slowly. It burst forth and consumed him. Her lips were silk against his. She tasted sweet with the slightest undertone of mint.

And her body.

Soft breasts pressed against his chest, firm fingers gripped his shoulders, undulating hips met his own. They moved together, teasing, stoking the fire until—

Her mouth left his.

His heart raced. He couldn’t get enough oxygen into his body, let alone form words.

Pepper didn’t seem to have the same problem.

“Goodbye, Derek,” she murmured, before bending to pick up the shoes and disappearing from sight.