SLOW PLAY (7-Stud Club #4) - Christie Ridgway Page 0,78

hunt for just such a one—and his readers voraciously feasted on every account of his failures. So while he’d yet to find a breezy, sexy, sloppy-emotions-unnecessary female, now he was determined to go without looking for the rest of this year and all of the next.

There was that irritating bam-bam-bam on his door again. Obviously, the irritator wasn’t giving up. Fine, he’d send them on their way and return to bed.

The soles of Jay’s feet registered the rug in the entry, then his hand found the knob and he wrenched open the door. Heat wafted over him, as well as the scent of car exhaust and hot asphalt mixed with something sweet. The Pacific Coast Highway was as close to the house’s front entry as the ocean was close to his back one and the four lanes were already bumper-to-bumper with Angelenos out for their sand-and-surf fix.

He blinked against the bright sunlight, his gaze now taking in the leggy teen on the doorstep, her hair in two loose braids and her hands clutching some kind of lunch pail.

“Fern’s out,” he said, making the assumption about his young cousin since she hadn’t answered the knock herself. “Don’t know when she’ll be back.” Without waiting for a response, he swung shut the door.

It bounced off the toe of a bright yellow rubber clog. “Mr. Buchanan?” the braided girl said. She had a curiously low, intriguingly husky voice. “I’m here to see you.”

He’d written a ManTalk column last year debunking the myth of the hunch, so it was ridiculous of him to feel cold, webbed feet goose-stepping down his spine. Ignoring the sensation, he inched back the door and peered again at the intruder.

Leggy. Braids. Now that he looked more closely, she wasn’t the teenager he’d first thought. He made a vague gesture to his right, still hoping he could shoo her off. “No, you can’t use the bathroom. And the public beach access is three doors down.” He couldn’t hold back a little grin. “Right between Geffen’s mansion and that equally over-built monstrosity next to it.”

Her brows, he noticed as they came together over her small nose, were a shade darker than her brown hair that was heavily laced with lighter streaks. “What?” she asked.

It was one of Malibu’s longest-running feuds—the privacy-obsessed celebs versus the public’s right to beach access. Newspaper articles and court battles had proven that some of Hollywood’s most liberal were anything but when it came to sharing the sand in front of their homes. Jay wasn’t entirely unsympathetic. In the summer, he’d had his share of sun worshippers trespassing while in search of showers and toilets. But even when his grandparents had built this house in the 1950s, they hadn’t assumed the beach bordering it was theirs and theirs alone.

“It’s the price of privilege,” he explained to the girl. “You get the incredible property, but you have to share it from the high-tide line to where the surf breaks. There’s a public path to the water two hundred and fifty feet down that way.”

Leggy with Braids frowned at him. “Mr. Buchanan, I said I came here to see you.”

He hadn’t missed that, not really, he thought, rubbing his hand over his bare chest. But as his mother always said, Jay was a hoper, and he’d been hoping to get back to sleep. Yet he should have known better, because nothing was ever simple when there was a woman involved. Why did they always have to complicate everything? Leggy with Braids even looked like a complication. A man just couldn’t ignore that sweet, full mouth and she had an interesting sprinkle of freckles across her nose that—

Crap. There he went again, heading off into muddy and probably mined female territory. “What, then?” he demanded, sounding surly even though he was mostly mad at himself. “What is it you want?”

To wring his neck, if her expression was anything to go by. But she gave him a tight little smile, not a slice of teeth showing. “I want to talk to you about the private chef position. Remember, you called me yesterday? I’m Nikki.”

“Oh.” He let his gaze run down Leggy with Braids. Nikki. Nikki of the cute freckles, the slim body, that pretty, earth-and-sunlight-colored hair. “Sorry, you won’t do.”

Without a whiff of remorse, he shut the door again.

Again, it bounced off a rubber toe.

Jay sighed. This was what was wrong with them. Women. They were tenacious and stubborn in the most troublesome ways. You tried to let them down easy,