cutie. Aren’t you even going to look?” Tim, newly divorced and constantly on the make, had spent the entire summer chasing female tourists who were too young for him, so this comment rolled right off Jude’s back.
He’d learned the hard way that tourists always went home. Besides, he had a rule about blondes. His mother had been a white woman with blond hair, and she’d abandoned the family when Jude was fourteen. He could do better than a blonde. He wanted a Clair Huxtable who could also speak Gullah, the Creole language of his ancestors.
“I can’t believe you aren’t even going to check her out,” Tim said. “She’s got a hungry look in her big brown eyes.”
Jude raised his head without meaning to.
Big mistake. The woman’s gaze wasn’t hungry exactly. It was steady and direct and measuring. It knocked him back, especially when her mouth quirked up on one side to reveal a hint of a dimple, or maybe a laugh line. And she wasn’t blond. Not exactly. It was more cinnamon than brown with streaks of honey that dazzled in the late-afternoon sun. Her hair spilled over her shoulders, slightly messy and windblown, as if she’d spent the day sailing. She was cute and fresh, and he had this eerie feeling that he’d met her before.
Her stare burned a hole in his chest, and he turned away slightly breathless. Damn. He was too busy for a fling. And never with a woman like that.
“See what I mean? She’s maybe a little skinny but…kind of hot,” Tim said.
Jude ignored the sudden rushing of blood in his head and focused on snapping up the boat’s canvas cover. “Stop objectifying. Haven’t you heard? It’s no longer PC.”
Tim chuckled. “Objectifying is a scientific fact.”
“So says the science teacher. If the parents of your students could hear you now, they’d—”
“Come on. Let’s go get a drink and say hey,” Tim interrupted.
“No. I have a meeting tonight.”
Tim rolled his eyes. “With that group of history nuts again?”
“They aren’t nuts. Dr. Rushford is a history professor.” And he’d donated his time and that of his grad students to help Jude get several old homes listed on the historic register. Jude’s last chance to preserve those buildings was the petition he and several of his cousins and relatives had made to the town council, asking for a rezoning of the land north of town that white folks called “Gullah Town.” The area wasn’t really a town at all, but a collection of small farms out in the scrub pine and live oak that had been settled by his ancestors right after the Civil War. Jude’s people never used the term “Gullah Town.” To them, the land north of Magnolia Harbor was just simply home.
The council was having a hearing this week. Jude had been working on this issue for more than a year with the professor’s help. He wasn’t about to miss a meeting to flirt with a tourist. An almost-blond tourist at that.
“Okay. It’s your loss.” Tim slapped him on the back. “But thanks for leaving the field of play. You’re hard to compete with, dude.” Tim strode off while Jude finished securing the last bungee cord. When he glanced up again, the woman with the honey hair was still staring at him, even as Tim moved in.
Tim was going to crash and burn. Again.
Jude turned away. He wanted nothing to do with another one of Tim’s failed pickup attempts. Instead, he headed down the boardwalk toward the offices of Barrier Island Charters, his father’s company, where Jude had parked his truck. He needed to get on home and take a shower before the meeting.
“Can I have a minute of your time, Mr. St. Pierre?” someone asked from behind him.
Jude turned. Damn. It was the woman with the honey hair. She had a low, sexy voice that vibrated inside his core in a weird, but not unpleasant, way. “Do I know you?” he asked.
“Um, no. Abigail. The waitress? At the raw bar? She told me your name.”
“Can I help you with something?” he asked.
“Well,” she said, rolling her eyes in a surprisingly awkward way. Almost as if she was shy or something. Which she was not, since she’d chased him down the boardwalk. “I was wondering if you might be willing to give me sailing lessons.”
“What?” That had to be the oddest request he’d gotten in a long time. He was not a sailing instructor.
“I’d like to learn how to sail a small boat.”
“Did Abby put