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  into posing for a “tasteful” nude show at her art gallery.

  The woman needed her hormone levels checked.

  “I’m just out for a walk,” Lucille said innocently.

  Innocent, his ass.

  “My doctor says I’ve gotta put in a few thousand steps a day minimum.” She waved her cell phone. “It’s an app.”

  “Good,” he said, “because for a minute there I thought you were taking a picture.”

  “Of you shirtless?” she asked guilelessly. “On the open street that’s free public domain? Would I do that?”

  “Yes,” he said. “And then you’d put it up on Pinterest or anywhere you’re not banned.”

  “Tumblr,” she said. “I’m at Tumblr now. They don’t have a stick up their ass about tasteful art the way Facebook does.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said, and awkwardly—and painfully—yanked a sweatshirt over his head. Then he shoved his feet into another pair of running shoes. It was bad enough that he’d just gotten himself three to four days of leave for being a pussy. He didn’t need to extend the leave by getting sick on top of it.

  “Going running or something?” Lucille asked.

  He just gave her a long look.

  She raised a hand in supplication. As if. “Fine,” she said. “None of my business. Moving on. But remember, call me if you and your fellow hotties change your minds about a show at my gallery. You and Tanner are the last hot single guys in town. That warrants a show, you know. It’s practically a public service.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind.”

  Chapter 6

  After leaving the boat, Olivia went straight for the old warehouse that was her current home, moving fast. She had a feeling that Cole was going to come after her in some misguided attempt to help her get into her place without a key, and she didn’t want that.

  Correction. She wasn’t ready for that.

  And she couldn’t even explain why; not to him, not to herself.

  Halfway there a call had her phone vibrating in her pocket.

  Her mother.

  Hard to say why Olivia answered. Maybe she was just sick of the badgering about doing a retro show and wanted to get the fight over with. But there was also the daughter in her that needed to be sure everything was okay, especially since there’d been plenty of times when things hadn’t been. Such as last year when Tamilyn had wrapped her car around a pole after one too many drinks.

  She’d walked away from that accident with a DUI and a leg cast, which had given Tamilyn yet another excuse to play the victim. But Olivia had been in touch with the doctors herself and knew that no matter what Tamilyn wanted people to believe, she was fully recovered. “Hi, Mom.”

  “Finally, Sharlyn. My leg’s killing me and you’re taking your damn time picking up the phone. You’ve gotten my texts?”

  “Olivia,” she said, as she’d had to for years now. “You know I go by Olivia now.”

  “I like Sharlyn better. It’s my favorite name. As a baby having a baby, it was the only thing I could give you.”

  How about loving her for who she was instead of what she was worth? “We’ve been through this,” Olivia said. “I needed the change.”

  “You mean you wanted to get away from the paparazzi and the life.”

  The life being the craziness, and yeah. Especially since it’d been of her own making. Fact was, she’d been a Hollywood has-been before she’d even been legal. That she’d stayed in the public eye past that time had been due to—as her mom called it—living the life. Aka, being stupid. “How are you doing?”

  “You know how I am,” Tamilyn said. “So broke I can’t even pay attention.”

  This was nothing new. Her mom had always been terrible with money, always looking for the next get-rich-quick scheme. She’d lucked out once and only once, and that had been the day that she’d heard about the open casting call in Lexington, Kentucky, where she’d been a housekeeper on a horse farm. A director had been looking for an “adorable young girl” for a commercial, and Jolyn had begged and begged to go audition.

  Olivia had been dragged along. She could still remember being on the floor reading in a corner when the casting director had noticed her.

  The next thing she knew, she’d filmed a commercial that had gone national.

  Jolyn still hadn’t forgiven her for that.

  Or for all that came after. Not Again, Hailey! had catapulted them to Hollywood and changed their world, a world that then depended on Olivia.

  “Doing this retro show won’t change your life,” Tamilyn said, “but it’ll change mine. I need a girly surgery.”

  “Save it, Mom. Jolyn already told me you want another boob job.”

  “Well, damn it, they don’t stay perky forever. You’ll see.”

  “If you need money for living expenses, I can help you a little bit,” Olivia said.

  “Oh, no. I’m not a charity case. I just want what’s mine. A fair cut as your manager, is all. Do the damn show. It’s one day of filming. TV Land can start rerunning the series, and we’ll be rolling in the royalties, and you can go back to hiding beneath a rock in Lucky Rock.”

  “Lucky Harbor.” And she wasn’t hiding. She was living. “It isn’t just one day, Mom. If I do this, we both know the drill. TV Land’s going to want a full-blown reunion show, and TV Guide’s gonna want to do a big deal on it, and…” And people here would realize who she was, and then she’d cease to be Olivia. She’d go back to being Sharlyn Peterson, a washed-up child star, complete with the humiliating public shenanigans.

  Okay, maybe she was hiding just a little bit. “I’ll think about it,” she said.

  “Well, think fast. Jolyn’s talking of heading out there to see you.”

  Olivia’s gut hit her toes. “Tell her no. I’ll call.”

  “Soon?”

  “Yes. But right now I’ve got to get to work.” Olivia cut off the call and the usual wave of guilt rolled over her.

  Damn it. She so didn’t want to do the retrospective show. She liked her life just as it was right now.

  Crossing the alley from the docks and beach, she came to the warehouse building she lived in. Once upon a time, it’d been a cannery, and then a saltwater taffy manufacturer, and then an arcade. Sometime in the past thirty years it’d been divided into three apartments.

  Three poorly renovated, barely insulated, not-easily-heated apartments.

  But there were bonuses. The ocean-facing wall was floor-to-ceiling windows that, yes, let in the cold wind, but also let in the glorious view and made her feel like…herself, just a woman who owned a vintage shop and lived as simply as she could here in sweet, quirky Lucky Harbor.

  Olivia entered the building and stopped in the hallway at her front door. She occupied the middle unit. No one lived in the far right one. Her neighbor on the left was Becca Thorpe, soon to be Becca Brody, once sexy boatbuilder Sam Brody got her down the aisle.

  “Not the sharpest tool in the shed today,” she said to herself. Because she hadn’t hidden a key in case of idiocy—such as losing her keys rescuing a hot guy who didn’t need rescuing. She sighed loudly.

  A woman peeked out from the third and supposedly empty apartment. She was in yoga pants and a large sweatshirt, covered in dust from her strawberry-blond hair, which was piled on top of her head—although much of it had escaped its confines—to her battered tennis shoes. “Excuse me,” she said to Olivia, “but are you talking to me?”

  “No,” Olivia said. “I’m talking to myself.”

  The woman smiled. “Gotcha. Carry on. Oh, and I’m Callie Sharpe. I’m moving in this weekend and just checking the place out. The walls are pretty thin.”

  “No insulation,” Olivia said.

  “Well then, I’ll try to keep the wild parties to a minimum. You going to tell me your name, or should we just stick with Not the Sharpest Tool in the Shed?”

  “Olivia.” She didn’t give a last name. She didn’t like new people. Hell, she barely liked old people.