one addressed to the beautiful blond boy who lived down the road.
Skye shook her head. “He used to spend his summers here—in Beach House No. 9 as a matter of fact—but we started writing to each other less than a year ago. Gage—Gage Lowell—is a freelance photojournalist.”
And Skye’s secret crush, Addy decided. She might claim they were just friends, but the careful way she was handling that letter said that its future lay in a special box alongside the others the man had sent her.
Of course, that could just be Addy’s overstimulated imagination. The hours she’d spent searching through the souvenirs of the silent film era and Edith Essex had made her preoccupied with love affairs and all their attendant complications. “You know,” she told Skye now, “I’ve been unsuccessful in finding any letters between Edith and her husband, Max. I thought they might tell a truer story than the gossip rags of the day, which said she married the owner of Sunrise Pictures for what he could do for her career.”
“But you think...?”
“I don’t know.” Addy sighed. “Later, there was also speculation that Max got out of the movie business to punish her for the affair and that flamboyant gift of jewelry...while also putting out the word he wouldn’t tolerate anyone else hiring her.”
“Not too nice.”
Addy shrugged, then shoved her hands in the pockets of her cropped white jeans. “She stayed with him, though, and they had a couple of kids in quick succession and then, only five years later, after giving birth to their younger daughter, she got pneumonia and died. Did she resent her husband’s actions? Did she regret the loss of her acting career to her dying breath?”
“The only family lore I can add is that my great-great-grandfather never remarried,” Skye said.
Addy sighed again. “Well, you told me Crescent Cove has had its share of broken hearts.”
Skye gave a lopsided smile. “I did, didn’t I? Though to be fair, there is—” She broke off, her eyes brightening as her gaze moved over Addy’s shoulder. “Teague,” she said, in pleased surprise.
Addy glanced around. A dark-haired man was heading for them, barefoot and dressed in shorts and an unbuttoned short-sleeved shirt. Its edges fluttered in the breeze, revealing a chiseled chest and a pack of ab muscles worthy of a magazine spread. “Wow.” She looked at Skye. “I think one of us should start exchanging passionate letters with that guy.”
“Are you really interested?” the other woman asked, her eyebrows rising. “Though we’ll need to take his romantic temperature first—he had a recent disappointment.”
“Maybe.” Addy shrugged. Because perhaps a summer fling was what she needed to purge her lingering and girlish infatuation with Baxter. She hadn’t seen him since that day when she’d told him the past was past. But, dammit, his response continued to echo in her head. That leaves the present wide-open.
Not that he’d made any inroads into her present since then, she thought with a scowl. He’d likely found some svelte beauty that was the same twelve-on-a-scale-of-ten as himself. Someone he could picture in his golden life and golden future.
With an effort, she morphed her scowl into a smile as the good-looking guy joined up with them. He had a warm hand and a firm grip.
“Teague spent his summers here, too,” Skye explained after introductions were made. “Along with Gage and his twin brother, Griffin.”
“And their sister, Tess,” the man added.
Maybe it was her imagination going wild again, but the way he said the name made Addy suspect this Tess was the source of the blow to his heart.
Skye confirmed the suspicion when she sent him a pointed glance. “Are you okay?”
“Getting there,” he said. “I’m back to the beach, aren’t I? First time since she left.”
Addy felt a little embarrassed to hear this bit of personal business until he turned to her with a rueful grin. “I’m trying to exorcise a ghost, I guess. Last month I fell a little too hard for a lady who was already taken.”
“Already taken by a husband and four kids,” Skye put in.
“Yikes,” Addy murmured. “Four kids?”
“I like rug rats,” Teague said, and she gave him credit for not being at all abashed about the admission. “Comes from a childhood as a lonely only.”
“Lonely only?” Addy repeated. “Hey, me, too.”
“Yeah?” Teague’s gaze sharpened.
“Yeah.” Addy took in his handsome features, the dark hair tousled by the wind, the ripple of muscles. She had someone she wanted to exorcise from her life, as well, and why the heck not with this