Half Moon Harbor Read Online Free PDF Page A

know it’s come as a shock. I can see you’re upset and I understand why. But I didn’t knowingly do this to you. I had no idea about you, any more than you had any idea about me. I thought the property was abandoned.” She didn’t want to hurt him any further, but needed him to be realistic. “Once you’ve had time to think it through, I think you’ll see that this could be a good thing. One less part for you to have to deal with, and something that can only bolster whatever it is you hope to do here.”
    â€œThat’s something we’ll need to look into then.” He turned abruptly and headed back up the dock, glancing back when he reached the ladder down to the lower dock. “You coming?” He slapped his thigh, and Whomper, the traitor, took off toward him like a bullet.
    â€œComing?” she repeated, her mind going to places it had absolutely, positively no business going.
    â€œInside,” he clarified. “We can defishify ourselves and make a few calls. I’m sure this can all be sorted out.” Brodie hopped down the steps and turned to catch Whomper as the dog made the leap off the higher dock, trusting completely that he’d be caught. Brodie’s smile returned as he cradled the scruffy mutt in his arms, even as he winced at the smell and gave the dog a healthy scratch between his ears.
    â€œThere isn’t anything to sort out,” Grace called, lifting the papers in her hand as proof, feeling ridiculous for being jealous of a damn dog.
    But Brodie had already turned and continued on his way to his boathouse.
    The boathouse he lived in—where he apparently walked around half naked. Only a hundred yards or so away from her boathouse. As that future reality set in, she also took note that his stride was confident, not angry and not worried like someone who feared he’d lost a part of what was his and meant to get it back by whatever means possible.
    Whomper was back on the dock, trotting happily at his side. Men. She should simply walk away, leave the two of them to each other, and get on with the business at hand, which was charting out the first steps she needed to take with her newly acquired property. Her new life. Her new future.
    Her new everything.
    But she wasn’t looking at her newly acquired future everything. She was still watching Brodie’s broad bare back and his very fine plaid pajama-bottoms-covered tush as he neared the point where the pier would take him around the corner of the boathouse and out of sight.
    He paused as he reached it and slapped his chest. Whomper immediately sprang upward, blissfully happy to once again be in those manly man arms, clasped to that equally manly man chest.
    Grace sighed, intending it to be one of disgust, but was forced to acknowledge it had been rather wistful, instead. She should head back to the bank, then the town municipal building, make absolutely certain that there hadn’t been some kind of small-town misunderstanding about the property, some hidden handshake deal or verbal agreement. Neither would hold up in court, but she didn’t have the time or need the frustration and financial drain of a potentially lengthy legal battle. Not to mention that regardless of Brodie’s personal standing in the community, she was certain that suing a member of one of her newly adopted town’s founding families was probably not the best way to go about introducing herself to her new neighbors.
    But there was also the part where she reeked of dead fish, was down to only one functioning shoe, and had a splinter in her palm that felt like she’d jabbed a needle into her hand and left it there.
    â€œOkay, so maybe I go talk to the half-naked Irishman some more, get my dog back—or not,” she added darkly, “then go clean up before calling my architect, or my banker and the county clerk, depending on how well I do in convincing him this is all going to be a