Beauty (A Midsummer Suspense Tale) Read Online Free PDF Page B

faded jeans that showed off her ass—the glow of the bonfire wasn’t much to see from at this angle but enough that he could appreciate the assets she offered.
    His gaze flickered away. Last thing he needed was to be the new weirdo in the dark staring at some poor girl’s behind.
    “How’s this?” Surfer Guy said after rummaging through the bottom of the cooler. He produced a tiny bottle, the sampler size for hard liquor. She accepted it, stowed it in her pocket, and wiggled her fingers for another.
    “Leech,” he muttered but gave her a good-natured grin and passed a second mini bottle.
    The girl swung around and picked her way around the bonfire again, plopping herself down next to Sawyer. The others gave her a nod and a wave but that was it, like perhaps they all knew each other but not enough for her to join one of the small groups.
    He looked at her again, took in her profile. Thick curls of black hair rolled down over her shoulders, wind-tossed but not messy. Cute nose, full lips. The orange light caught long lashes over smart eyes. She lifted the beer bottle to her lips and took a long drink, sighing deeply when she pulled it back again.
    “Long day,” she said.
    He realized she was talking to him just a moment too late to say something back casually.
    Instead the pause was long enough for her to look his way and cock a brow in question. She wiggled the bottle of liquor in her other hand, some kind of local whiskey. “How was yours?”
    Sawyer studied her eyes, looking for any sign that she recognized him. For a moment he lost himself in their dark depths, searching and searching though coming up with nothing. She was guarded—too guarded to get much of a read on her.
    Her cheeks darkened, though, and gaze swiftly averted—it was then he knew the query was genuine. She didn’t know who he was.
    “Also very long,” he said. He angled his beer toward hers in greeting. “To long days and quiet nights.”
    A tiny smile played on her lips, the kind that made his heart thump—it was just the quirk of the corners of her mouth, the promise of something saucy there, and he found his attention quite focused on it.
    She reached over and clinked the bottom of her beer bottle with his. “Hopefully not too quiet.”
    Sawyer grinned in reply, his previous sour mood long forgotten. Perhaps the walk along the beach wasn’t a bad idea after all.

 
    Chapter Three
     
     
    Bryar kept stealing glances at guy beside her. She didn’t know him—hadn’t seen him around here before. She didn’t know all the guys from the community college, and plenty had friends from elsewhere that showed up, but usually they came in groups. This one sat alone and no one spoke to him, like perhaps they didn’t know him either.
    Weird.
    Still, he wasn’t bad to look at. Hair was brown, long enough to brush his brow and curl around his ears. Jaw strong and square with a dusting of five o’clock shadow. He looked like the type who was normally fairly clean-cut but was more delicious when scuffed up and rough around the edges. An open button-down was layered over a T-shirt, the wind cutting through it. Just about everyone wore a jacket heading to the beach—a bit odd that he didn’t. He must’ve parked close.
    Even the smallest movement, to lean back a bit or take a sip of his beer, displayed strength from broad shoulders and sculpted arms. Heat moved up Bryar’s cheeks as she realized she was staring and she looked away. Weird that no one else was talking to him—a couple of the girls there that night would climb the first warm body they found—but the party was already in full swing and perhaps no one had gotten a good look at him.
    She set her beer bottle in the sand, held between the toes of her shoes, and fished the second small bottle of whiskey from her jacket pocket. She offered one to the guy and kept the other for herself. Not like Dennis over there didn’t have more tucked away.
    “To improve your long day,” she said