Just Married!. Shirley Jump

see you survived my brothers.”

      “You sound disappointed.”

      “They usually run a better defense,” she said. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t from the exertion of walking through the sand.

      “Where are you going?” he asked.

      A different girl might have said, Midnight swim, skinny-dipping, but she couldn’t. She didn’t quite know what to make of his attention. She was enjoying it, and hating the fact she was enjoying it. “Home.”

      “I’ll walk you.”

      No one ever walked her anywhere. She was not seen as the fragile type; in fact her bravery was legend. She was the first one to swim in the ocean every year, she had been the first one out of the plane when the guys had talked her into skydiving. When they were fourteen and had played chicken with lit cigarettes, she had always won. She was known to be a daredevil in her little sailboat, an old Cape Dory Typhoon named the Hall Way.

      Sam was a little taken aback that she liked his chivalry. So she said, with a touch of churlishness, “I can look after myself.”

      “I’ll walk you home, anyway.”

      There was nothing argumentative in his tone. Or bossy. He was just stating a fact. He was walking her home, whether she liked it or not.

      And she certainly didn’t want him to know that she did like that feeling of being treated as fragile and feminine.

      “Suit yourself.”

      He stopped after a moment, slid off his shoes and socks. Since she was stuck with him anyway, she waited, admiring the way he looked in the moonlight, silver beams tangling in the darkness of his hair, his now bare feet curling into the sensuousness of the sand.

      He straightened, shoes in hand, and she saw the moonlight made his dark eyes glint with silver shadows, too.

      She started walking again, and he walked beside her.

      “Do you want to talk about the proposal?”

      A renegade thought blasted through her of what it would be like to actually be married to a man like him. To taste those lips whenever you wanted, to feel his easy strength as part of your life.

       Maybe that’s why Amanda and Charlie had rushed to get married even when the odds were against them, pulled toward that soft feeling of not being alone anymore.

      “I already said I’d marry you,” she said, her careless tone hiding both her curiosity and the vulnerability those thoughts made her feel. “My brothers, strangely enough, liked you. What’s to discuss?”

      He laughed, and she didn’t feel like he was laughing at her, but truly enjoying her. It would be easy to come to love that sensation. Of being seen. And appreciated.

      “Setting a date?” he kidded.

      “Oh. I guess there’s that. How about tomorrow?” She reminded herself most of his appreciation was thanks to the costume: the dress and the hair and the makeup.

      “I’m free, and by happy coincidence that’s when I need a wife. Just for the day. Want to play with me?”

      The awful thing was she did want to play with him, desperately. But what she considered playing—a day of sailing or swimming—was probably not what he considered playing. At all. His next words confirmed that.

      “I’m a real estate investor. I buy higher end properties that have gone to seed, fix them up and flip them.”

      Oh, he played with money.

      “I thought the market was gone,” she said. She thought of the real estate sign hanging in front of her own rented premises, and thanked the wedding for its one small blessing.

      She hadn’t thought of that all day.

      Because ever since the sign had gone up, she’d been getting stomachaches. Her business relied on its prime Main Street, St. John’s, location, the summer people coming in and buying grooming supplies, the cute little doggy outfits she stocked, the good-grade dog foods, the amazing and unusual pet accessories that she spent her spare time seeking out. But she knew she’d been getting an incredible deal on the rent, which included her storefront and the apartment above it. A new owner meant one of two things, neither of them good. She would be paying higher rent, or she would get evicted.

      “I’m in a position where I can buy and hold if I have to,” he said with easy self-assurance, “though the market is never really gone for the kind of clients who buy my properties.”

      “Oh,” she said. He dealt with the old rich, like the St. John family who had founded this town.

      “One of my scouts called in a property down the coastline from here a few miles, a little closer to Stone Harbor than here. It’s ideal—beachfront, a couple of acres, an old house that needs to be torn down or extensively remodeled, I’m not sure which yet.”

      The private beach they were walking down intersected with a boardwalk. Sam leaned over to put on her shoes to protect her feet from splinters on the weathered old boardwalk. When she raised up one foot, she took an awkward step sideways in the sand.

      She felt a thrilled shock when Ethan reached out quickly to steady her, his one hand red-hot on her naked shoulder, his other caressing as he took her remaining shoe from where she was dangling it from its strap in her hand. He slid it onto her foot, his palm cupping the arch for a suspended second before sliding away.

      He stepped away from her, acted as if nothing had happened as he sat down and put on his own socks and shoes.

       How could he possibly not have felt that current that leaped in the air between them when he touched her foot? His touch had been astoundingly sexy, more so than when she had touched his lips earlier. She felt scorched; he appeared cool and composed.

      Which meant even considering his proposal would be engaging in a form of lunacy she couldn’t afford!

      She didn’t wait for him to finish with his shoes, but went up the rickety stairs in front of him, though she soon realized putting back on her own shoes had been a mistake, the heels finding every crack between the boards to slide down between. She was with one of the most elegant, composed, handsome men she had ever met, and she felt like she was in the starring role of March of the Penguins.

      On the seaside of the boardwalk she was passing a scattering of small shingle-sided beachfront homes and cottages. Ethan caught up to her.

      She slipped up the first side street of St. John’s Cove, where it met the boardwalk, and now less wobbly on the paved walkway, marched up the hill past the old saltbox fishing cottages, one of which she had grown up in and where her brother Mitch still lived. The lobster traps in the front yard were real, not for decoration. He must have brought them home to repair them.

      The side street emptied onto the town square, and she crossed the deserted park at the center of the square and went past the statue of Colton’s great-grandfather. His great-grandfather looked amazingly like Colton—tall, handsome, powerful—but he had a stuffy look on his face that she had never seen on Colton’s. The walkway that bisected the park led straight to Main Street, St. John’s Cove.

      The colorful awnings over the buildings had been all rolled up, the tables and umbrellas in front of the Clam Digger put away for the night. The streetlights, modeled after old gaslights, threw golden light over the wonderful old buildings, Colonial saltboxes, shingle-sided, some weathered gray, some stained rich brown.

      All the window, door, corner and roof trim was painted white, and old hinged store signs hung from wrought-iron arms above the doors. Each store had bright flower planters in front, spilling over with abundant colorful waves of cascading petunias.

      St. John’s Cove Main Street was picturesque and delightful—bookstores, antique shops, art galleries and