One More Night (Sweetbriar Cove #13) - Melody Grace Page 0,1

came to her own love life…

Well, her numbers weren’t pretty.

She was thirty-two, which meant she’d been out there dating for almost fifteen years. And what did she have to show for it? She’d crunched the math once, on a particularly boring blind date, and the results were enough to make a betting woman give up, start eating carbs again, and get a cat. Countless awkward first dates, a handful of serious relationships that fizzled out – and a failed engagement that ended so politely, it was proof they weren’t meant to be. Watching her friends all start their families and move on to the next phase in their lives filled her with a terrible ache, but instead of despairing, Letitia decided to do something about it. She couldn’t just sit around hoping she’d swipe, or click, or bump into the perfect man on the street. Whenever she wanted something in life – from a promotion, to impossible-to-get concert tickets – she made a plan, figured it out, and didn’t stop until she was victorious.

This should be no different.

So what if finding lasting love and happiness might be a little bit harder than bribing a ticket resales girl with Letitia’s favorite pair of pink slingback shoes? The same rules still applied. If she made her list, and stuck to it, she would find a man she could built a life with, and start a family. A partner, who ticked all the right boxes. The perfect match. Not just some guy who made her heart race, but would leave her high and dry the minute she started making plans for their future.

Even if he was thigh-clenchingly sexy…

Letitia flushed, recalling her run-in with the mysterious surfer a couple of weeks ago. She’d been having coffee at a roadside diner just up the Cape, chatting to a friend about what she was looking for in a man. The guy at the next booth had overheard, and pretty much laughed in her face. She’d been so humiliated and angry, they’d wound up having a passionate fight in the parking lot.

And then a passionate kiss.

Her pulse kicked, just remembering the taste of his tempting mouth, and the feel of his body, hot and hard against her…

Letitia groaned. What had she been thinking, making out with a total stranger like that? He wasn’t even her type! She liked preppy, distinguished men, not scruffy guys wearing threadbare T-shirts, in desperate need of a haircut and a shave. No, she decided firmly, it was a moment of madness, a brief lapse in sanity, and judging by the tire marks that his beat-up Airstream left as he high-tailed it away from her, he felt exactly the same.

This was exactly why she needed her plan: to avoid wasting time on distractions like him.

However hot and pleasurable that distraction had been…

“Hello?”

A familiar voice echoed up the stairs, and Letitia headed down to find her cousin, Cal, and his fiancée Eliza, looking curiously around the front room.

“Hey,” Letitia greeted them, surprised. “What are you guys doing here? In fact,” she asked, “how did you even know where to find me? I haven’t even sent my mom the address!”

Eliza grinned. “We just saw June at the bakery, she said you’d snapped up her last summer rental. We came to check it out, and officially welcome you to town,” she added, producing a pastry box and a beautiful bouquet of hydrangeas.

“But I thought this was just a vacation,” Cal said, greeting Letitia with a hug. He took in the stack of boxes in the middle of the room. “I didn’t realize you were moving here permanently.”

Letitia gave him a playful shove. “You know I don’t pack light.”

“Seriously,” Cal grinned. “Remember that awful family trip to the mountains? You must have brought two tons of luggage up to that lodge. The poor bellhops walked with a stoop all week,” he told Eliza.

“They did not!” Letitia protested, laughing. “And I tipped them double, all the same.”

She led them through to the sunny little kitchen. “Sorry I don’t have much to offer you, I need to do a grocery run.” She slid the pastries they’d brought onto a china plate, and hunted down mismatched silverware from the drawers. “Sparkling water, or fresh juice?” she offered, plucking a bottle of each from the cooler she’d packed.

Eliza laughed. “If this is your idea of roughing it, I can’t imagine what you’ll do with some warning.”

“Are you kidding?” Cal said, with a smirk, “Tish was hosting five-course meals for her dolls