Second Chance Summer Read online

  “We both know what she was doing. She wanted to see the last place Ashley had been.”

  “Well she didn’t. She didn’t get more than halfway up there.”

  “She will,” Aidan said with certainty. Lily was tough to the very bone, and she didn’t give up. At least the old Lily wouldn’t have given up. “What I don’t get is why Cedar Ridge now, after all this time?”

  “Now, see, if you followed Buzzfeed you’d know why,” Gray said smugly, licking residual chocolate from his fingers.

  “What’s Buzzfeed?”

  Gray shook his head. “One of these days you need to do something on your iPad other than watch porn. Lily was working at some fancy spa in San Diego where the rich and famous go, not just for hair but stuff like Botox and chemical peels too.”

  “What the hell is a chemical peel?”

  Gray shrugged. “Beats me, but they do it, all far away from the Hollywood eye. Lily had worked her way up from cosmetologist to assistant manager. Then it got out that some celebrity client used hair extensions or some such shit like that, which was a problem because she’s in all these shampoo commercials. Word is that Lily leaked it.”

  “She lost her job over hair extensions?”

  “That celebrity’s kinda known for her soft tresses. The news that her hair isn’t real has the potential to backfire for both her and the salon, which lost a lot of credibility.”

  Aidan went brows up. “Tresses?”

  “Shut up,” Gray said. “I’m married. I know shit like the word tresses. And yeah, Lily got canned. Not only that, she was blacklisted over it. Seems that Hollywood’s got a long reach. Anyway, she needs this job. She’s got a bunch of resumes and feelers out, but so far no one’s willing to touch her. And Jonathan said it’s only a temp thing, until Cassandra has her baby and finishes her maternity leave.”

  “That’s such bullshit, Lily’d never do something like that.”

  Gray shrugged.

  Aidan stuffed in the last bite of his sandwich, thinking about Lily and how she must feel. “Anything else I should know about?”

  “Yep. Shelly’s in your bed.”

  Aidan nearly choked. “And you’re just now telling me this?”

  Gray shrugged, snatched another brownie, and headed for the door. “She’s sleeping.”

  Shelly was a local bartender and had been on their S&R team for a while until she’d broken her ankle last year. She and Aidan were long-running friends with benefits minus the friends part. They were also on-again off-again, currently mostly off.

  He had no idea why she’d be here now, but he could guess. Kicking Gray out, he headed down the hall. Maybe sex with Shelly and eight straight hours of sleep was just what he needed.

  He opened his door and stopped in the doorway.

  Wearing nothing but his sheets, Shelly sat up in the center of his bed with a come-hither smile. “I forgot why I was mad at you,” she murmured.

  “Because I work too much,” he said.

  “Oh, yeah.” She affected a pout. “Seems silly now, though, doesn’t it? I read about that search and rescue of the little girl you saved from the river last week. You jumped off the bridge like it was nothing. It was … amazing,” she said a little breathlessly. “I think I need to be searched and rescued too.”

  Telling himself he was game, he kicked off his shoes and pulled off his shirt, and then hesitated, suddenly feeling the need to stall. “Let me take a shower first.”

  She got up on her knees and crawled toward him, hooking a finger in the waistband of his pants and reeling him in. “Search and rescue me first,” she whispered breathlessly, “then shower.”

  Thinking that should be sexy as hell, he bent to kiss her, but … couldn’t. “Shit,” he said.

  Shelly stared at him and then got off the bed. She bent for her clothes, pulling them on in jerky movements. “You know,” she said, no longer breathless, “if you weren’t in the mood, you should’ve answered my text.”

  He pulled out his phone for the first time in hours and indeed found her unread text. “Shit,” he said again.

  “You’re a jackass, you know that?”

  Aidan scrubbed a hand down his face. Lily hadn’t even been back in town twenty-four hours, and she was already screwing with his head. As much as he wanted to get laid, all he could see were her moss-green eyes when he closed his own. “I’m sorry, Shelly.”

  She looked shocked. “Good-bye sorry, you mean?”

  He couldn’t believe he was going to do this, turn away a sure thing with no strings attached. “Yeah. This isn’t working for me.”

  Shelly paused. “Let me get this straight—all the casual, easy sex isn’t working out for you?”

  “No,” he said. “It’s not.”

  She was looking and sounding pissy now. “Your job is your life, Aidan, and I get that. You’ve said you don’t have time for a real relationship, and I get that too. I don’t want one either. But I do want honesty. I deserve that much.”

  She was right about his job being his life. But he also did want a real relationship … someday. And though they were compatible in a lot of ways, Shelly wasn’t the one he wanted a relationship with.

  Just as he wasn’t the one for her either.

  “You do deserve honesty,” he said. “And okay, yeah, this is about more than my work, but I don’t know what exactly it is. That’s the truth,” he said when she gave him a skeptical look.

  She stared at him, the temper still clear in her eyes. “You’re funny and hot and magic in bed, but I don’t play second fiddle, Aidan. Not even for you.” She slipped into her sandals and headed toward the door. “You’re going to miss me, you know.”

  But when she was gone and he looked at his empty bed, he felt nothing but a little ping of relief that he could have the entire thing to himself.

  Chapter 7

  The next day, Lily woke up early because her toes were missing. When she cleared the cobwebs from her brain, she realized she was still in possession of ten toes—they were just frozen. Overnight, the temps had dropped, and she could in fact see her own breath inside her apartment.

  Damn. It’d been a long time since she’d experienced the fifty-degree drop between night and day that Colorado called normal. Huddling under the covers, she wished for a magic blanket warmer. Or a really warm man.

  The image that came to her wasn’t her usual fantasy of Channing Tatum and Chris Hemsworth.

  It was even more embarrassing.

  Aidan. Naked. Heated. Willing and able to share that heat …

  Gah.

  She grabbed her phone and distracted herself with her daily morning chore—checking her email for a response to one of her resumes. Any response at all would do. But, like yesterday and all the days before that, she had zip.

  Sucking in a breath, she braced herself for the rush of cold before sliding out of bed. The early light drew her to the window, where the mountains backdropping the resort seemed to mock her.

  She yanked the shade down.

  Yesterday she’d unloaded her suitcases from her car but hadn’t unpacked. So she dug through them until she found a sweatshirt and pulled that on over her PJs. She added wool socks and then stood in the middle of her apartment hugging herself. There was no central heater in the place, just a woodstove.

  With no wood.

  The welcome letter on the counter read:

  Utilities come with the rent. The stacked wood by the dumpsters is free. So is the Internet.

  We hope you’ll take advantage of some of the recreation the resort offers this summer season; biking, climbing, rafting, kayaking, a ropes course … the sky’s the limit.

  Enjoy your stay.

  That would be easier to do if she were back in San Diego, where it didn’t get cold at night. Or ever. Where she could insulate herself from her past with a nice, solid thousand miles between herself and Cedar Ridge with all its memories.

  Including Aidan Kincaid.

  Shivering again, she