“For one day a week and only to catch up on the latest gossip.” Iris’s voice sounded behind Jack and he glanced over his shoulder. Iris Green, along with her husband, Ira, owned Antonio’s, an Italian pizzeria on the boardwalk. They weren’t Italian but their food certainly was. Jack lifted his chin at Iris.
She smiled and patted his shoulder before looking at Cooper. “You got that table for three I reserved?”
“Yeah, reserved you a booth.” Cooper nodded to the back of the bar. “You going to introduce us?”
Wondering who Coop meant, Jack leaned so he could see past Iris.
He spotted Ira standing next to a tall woman with pale-blond hair that spilled down a slender back in attractive waves. She wore a long, dark blue dress made of a material that clung to her body. And what a body it was. At least from what he could tell from the back. Narrow waist, gentle roundness to her hips, and the dress clung to an ass that made all the blood in his body travel south.
Fuck me, he thought. Turn around so I can see that face.
“Emery’s kind of shy.” Iris’s words pulled his attention from the new woman to her.
“Emery?” Why was that name familiar?
“She inherited the Burger Shack,” Cooper said, leaning on the bar.
“The woman who’s turning it into a bookstore?” Jack had heard about her. Everyone had. Property on the boardwalk was prime real estate. His father, Ian Devlin, owned a lot of property in Hartwell. What he didn’t own was boardwalk property. Jack endured Sunday dinners at his parents’ house every second week and when news of Emery’s arrival hit, his father was disgruntled, to put it politely. “Some little upstart from New York inherited the Burger Shack from her grandmother and won’t sell it to me because she’s planning on running a business there. Idiot child. You know she’s moving here under a false name. Thinks the businesspeople here are too stupid to do a background check. But she’s not who she says she is. She’s a society princess with more money than brains. Woman is worth a mint.”
When Cooper told him about Emery Saunders converting the place next door, Jack hadn’t told him that the woman was from money. No one needed to know her business, and while he trusted Cooper, he didn’t trust his friend wouldn’t tell Dana.
And if Dana knew, everyone would know.
“And when I say shy”—Iris leaned toward them conspiratorially—“I mean shy. We need to break this one in gently.”
Jack snorted and shot the woman another look. “She’s not a horse, Iris.”
It was then, as Jack flicked another look at Emery, that she turned around.
And his typical evening at Cooper’s Bar went completely atypical.
His heart raced like he’d just run a marathon. His mouth felt dry.
Holy shit.
Emery Saunders was the most beautiful fucking woman Jack Devlin had ever seen.
“She’s only twenty,” Iris said. Her voice filled his ears as his eyes locked with Emery’s startling light blue ones. A blush stained her pale, smooth cheeks, and her lips parted as if she were surprised.
His gut tightened.
“And if the way she reacts around men is anything to go by, the girl is innocent as Snow White.” Iris tapped Jack’s shoulder and he reluctantly pulled his gaze away. She smirked at him. “She’s not a tourist you can mess around with—you hear what I’m saying?”
Jack frowned at her but before he could respond, Iris was walking away. She led Emery and Ira across the bar to their reserved booth. Emery shot Jack another shy, quick look over her shoulder before sliding onto the bench seat, her long hair swaying across her slender back.
“She’s a beauty,” Old Archie observed.
Swallowing hard, wondering why his heart wouldn’t slow down, Jack tore his eyes away and stared unseeing at his half-empty plate.
“Jack?”
He looked up at Cooper. His friend was amused.
“You might want to wipe your chin. You got a little drool right there.”
“Fuck off,” Jack muttered good-naturedly.
However, as the minutes passed, Jack couldn’t get back into the game. Instead, he kept looking toward his right shoulder, wanting to glance at her.
Finally, he lost the struggle and looked across the bar at her.
She was smiling softly at something Iris said.
Jack itched to get off his stool and cross the room to introduce himself.
He’d never been one for settling down. He’d expected to later, maybe in his thirties, which was