Californian Kings. Maureen Child

it. He wasn’t interested in Bella Cruz.

      But there was a certain woman in Morgan Beach he was looking for. His mystery woman.

      Narrowing his gaze on the sea, Jesse thought back to one night three years ago. He didn’t remember much about that night or her…He’d won a huge competition that day and he’d been doing a lot of celebrating before he ran into her. Then there was more celebrating and finally, there was sex on the beach. Amazing, completely staggering, sex.

      She’d been at the edges of his mind ever since. He couldn’t recall her face, but he knew the sizzle of her touch. He couldn’t remember the sound of her voice, but he knew the taste of her.

      Oh, it was more than the waves that had brought him to Morgan Beach. His mystery woman was here. Somewhere. At least, he hoped so. She could have been in town for the competition, he supposed, but he liked to think that she lived here. That sooner or later, he’d run across her again.

      And this time, when he got his hands on her, he wouldn’t let her go.

      His phone rang, thankfully silencing his thoughts. Automatically, he turned to snatch it up. “King.”

      “Jesse, it’s Tom Harold. Just checking with you on the photo shoot scheduled for tomorrow.”

      “Right.” More photos. But this was for a national campaign advertising King Beach and its end-ofsummer sale. He might not have wanted to become a businessman, but now that he was, the King blood in his veins refused to let him be anything but a success.

      “Yeah, we’re set, Tom.” He turned back to the window and stared out at the ocean. “The models will arrive first thing in the morning, and you can do the shoot on the beach. The mayor’s cleared it for us to rope a section off.”

      “Perfect. I’ll be there.”

      Jesse hung up, sat down at his desk and shoved thoughts of Bella out of his mind. There was plenty of paperwork—the one sure way to keep his thoughts too busy to wander.

      “For Pete’s sake, Bella,” Kevin Walters told her over dinner that night, “stop antagonizing the man. Do you want him to end your lease?”

      Kevin, with his dark red hair, tanned skin and blue eyes was Bella’s best friend. They’d known each other for five years, ever since Bella had moved to Morgan Beach and rented her house from him. She could talk to him as she would any girlfriend and he was usually willing to give her the guy’s point of view when she needed it. Tonight, however, she’d really rather he saw things from her perspective.

      “No, I don’t,” she said quickly. She still had two months left on her lease and if Jesse King tossed her out, she’d have to sell suits out of her rental house; she didn’t think Kevin would be thrilled with that solution. Which was just one more reason to be mad at Jesse King.

      “You know, another couple of years in my location and I could have bought my house from you—”

      He held up one hand. “I’ve offered to make you a deal.”

      “I don’t need special deals, Kevin. You know I want to do this myself.”

      “Yeah, I know.”

      Reaching across the table to give his hand a pat, Bella said, “I really do appreciate that you want to help me buy the place, Kevin. It’s just that it wouldn’t really be mine if I didn’t do it all myself.”

      “Right. Like that shirt you’re wearing?” He pointed to the heavily appliquéd, long-sleeved yellow muslin shirt that she wore with her best black skirt. “That’s yours, right? So what? You did the weaving yourself? Stitched it all together and did the little flowers around the collar?”

      “No…”

      “So houses and shirts are different?”

      “Well, yeah.”

      He shook his head and sighed. “Fine. Good. You want to buy the house and if you make King mad enough, he’ll end your lease and then no house. So why continue to piss him off?”

      Bella used her fork to poke at her vegetarian lasagna, then gave it up and dropped the fork to her plate with a clatter. Folding her arms atop the table, she looked at Kevin. “Because he doesn’t even remember me. It’s infuriating. Humiliating.”

      She’d confessed all one night during a monster movie marathon. And Kevin had immediately told her that she should have reminded Jesse of who she was when she’d run into him the following day. Of course he had. He was a guy.

      Kevin shrugged and took a bite of his zucchini and potato casserole. “So tell him.”

      “Tell him?” Bella just stared at him. “You know, maybe I’d have been better off with a girl for a best friend. I wouldn’t have to explain to another woman why telling Jesse that we’d slept together was a bad idea. She would know that instinctively.”

      Grinning, Kevin said, “Yes, but a girl best friend wouldn’t come next door at ten at night to unclog your shower drain.”

      “Good point,” Bella said. “But you’ve got a blind spot when it comes to Jesse.”

      “God, women always make everything harder than it has to be,” Kevin muttered with a shake of his head. “This is why the battle of the sexes exists, you know. Because you guys are always on the battlefield ready for war and we’re standing around on the sidelines saying, ‘What’s she mad about?’”

      Bella laughed at the irritation in his gaze, which didn’t appease him much.

      “Let me guess,” Kevin said with a tired sigh. “This is one of those If-he-doesn’t-know-why-I’m-mad-I’m-sure-not-going-to-tell-him things, isn’t it?”

      “Yeah. And it’s not a ‘thing’, it just is. He should know,” Bella snapped and reached for her wineglass. “For Pete’s sake, are there so many women in his wake that we’re all just blurs to him?”

      “Bella, honey,” Kevin said, leaning back in the red leather booth, “you know I love you. But that is so female it has nothing to do with the world of man.”

      He was right and she knew it. Men and women came at the whole sex thing from completely different mindsets. Even though she’d had too many margaritas that night, Bella had made a conscious decision to sleep with Jesse. And it hadn’t been because he was rich or famous or gorgeous.

      But because they’d really talked to each other. She’d felt a connection to him that she’d never felt before to anyone. That was the only reason she’d done what she did. Jesse, though, she realized by the next day, had only had sex with her because she was there. Willing. There’d been no meaning in it for him at all.

      “If you wanted more from him than one night, you should have said something the next day,” Kevin told her. “Made him remember. But no. Instead, you went all female on him and left him in the dark.”

      “I didn’t put him in the dark,” Bella reminded him.

      For at least the tenth time, Bella went back over her conversation with Jesse King that morning three years ago. He’d looked right at her. Given her all his most practiced moves and never once remembered that they’d had sex! The man had had so many women, she’d been lost in the crowd from the moment she gave herself to him.

      “Look, I know you don’t like the guy, but he’s here now and he’s not going away,” Kevin pointed out around another bite of his dinner. “He’s moved the corporate offices here, he’s opened his flagship store in town. Jesse King is here to stay, like it or not, and no protest is going to change that.”

      “I know,” she grumbled.

      “So if you’re going to live in the same town with him, tell him what’s bugging you. Otherwise, you’re gonna drive yourself insane.”

      “You know,” Bella told him, “I wasn’t really looking