in side-by-side houses on a compound at their sprawling avocado ranch about an hour from Crescent Cove. William and Roy Smith continued to lead the business together, with Vance’s older brother, Fucking Perfect Fitz, and their cousin Baxter being groomed to take over.
Thinking of all that made him scowl again, as old bitterness mixed with new disquiet. Bax was sworn to secrecy, but it worried Vance that he might not be able to keep his return to the area quiet. He was determined to avoid a face-to-face with any other members of his family, including his mother.
That brought on a new thought and he shifted his gaze toward the other man. “Phil, where’s Layla’s mom? Her father implied he was divorced, but his ex—”
“Is in the wind. She left her marriage and her daughter behind when Layla was two. My niece has only me now,” Phil said. “And for the next month, you.”
“Me?” She sure as hell didn’t “have” him.
Then Vance thought of finding her on the beach yesterday afternoon, how the instant she’d known she was being observed she’d brushed away the telltale tear. The save-face gesture had found some soft spot inside him. Then she’d said, Doesn’t keeping your word mean anything? and the question had burrowed deeper.
But the truth was, she’d gotten under his skin from the moment he’d turned his head at the restaurant and glimpsed that stunner of a face. It didn’t bode well, not when he’d been sure his years of rash impulses and hasty reactions were well behind him.
“Things will turn out all right,” Phil said.
Vance shot him a look. That had been his line yesterday, and he still regretted it.
“You won’t let her get hurt.”
What could he say to that? Of course, he couldn’t deny it. It was never his intention to hurt her, and the truth was, his final promise to her father had been—
“As a matter of fact,” Phil went on, “you might just make her happy.”
Good God, Vance thought, his chair legs scraping against asphalt as instinct sent him into full retreat. He wouldn’t be trapped into giving his word on that. Make Layla happy?
He was the Smith family’s black sheep. He’d never been able to do that for anybody.
CHAPTER THREE
WITH THE BAKING DONE for the day and having waved off Uncle Phil as he embarked on a morning-to-midday route that included stops at two public libraries and two parks popular with the Mommy and Me set, Layla headed back to Beach House No. 9. At the sand, she paused to remove her gladiator-style sandals, then carried them hooked on a finger as she strolled southward.
Unlike the early a.m., she didn’t have the beach to herself. Little kids dug holes near the surf, bigger kids splashed through the shallows, adults lounged on towels or tossed footballs and Frisbees. She ambled, the sun striking the left side of her body, its heat tempered by the cool breeze buffeting her right. The air tasted salty and clean and she took in great gulps of it, letting it refresh her lungs and clear her head.
For fifteen minutes she was lost in the sensations of sun, sand and surf. Then Beach House No. 9 came into clear view, its windows thrown open to the breeze, a red, white and blue kite attached to a fishing pole on the second-floor balcony spinning in circles, and on the beachside deck below, the figure of a man stretched on a lounge chair in the shade of a market umbrella.
Vance Smith, denim-covered legs crossed at the ankles. What looked to be a classic pair of Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses concealing his eyes. Nothing covering his chest.
Layla’s feet came to a sudden stop. Oh.
Oh, wow.
Maybe it was the cast and the brace, she thought. They drew attention to his heavy biceps and the tanned, rugged contours of his shoulders and chest. She knew the amount of gear combat soldiers regularly carried on their backs; those muscles of his hadn’t been honed in a gym but had been carved by regularly transporting sixty to a hundred pounds of weaponry and essentials.
Her skin prickled under the soft knit of her cotton sundress. The breeze fluttered the hem, tickling the backs of her knees and making her hyperaware of her sensitivity there. Dismayed, she told herself to blink, to move, to do something, but she was powerless against her reaction. He’d bewitched her, and her body was struck still by the powerful sexual response she’d told herself yesterday was nothing more than