Love and Rumors: A Summer Sisters Beach Reads Contemporary Romance (The Summer Sisters Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

those big cocky jerks women hated.
    His stomach churned and he reached out for her, to let her know he didn’t mean it. To show her he was actually a nice guy. A guy whose mother would beat him about the ears if she’d heard what he’d just said to a nice Canadian girl in a nice Canadian town on a nice Canadian holiday.
    Instead, he watched as his wild-haired chick slipped past him, fire blazing in her eyes. Filled with longing and regret, Finn placed his palms on the wall and hung his head. He liked her already.

C HAPTER 2

    Hailey handed the tax reassessment form to her sister Melanie, her hands still shaking from slapping Finian Alexander less than an hour ago. Why the hell had she done that? She didn’t slap people. But he’d just been so…sure of himself. Intense. Sexual. Cocky. Cornering her and expecting her to fall against his crotch. Women like her didn’t want jerks like him, and she’d hated the way her body had responded, singing and vibrating at his touch. Wanting him. Badly. Wanting—no craving —to know what his skin would feel like, bared and warm, against hers.
    “Do you think we can get them to reassess it before this year’s bill is due?” Hailey asked.
    Melanie’s eyebrows shot up. “Doubtful. Bureaucracy and all that, right? Did taxes go up?” She sifted through the forms laid out on her small round kitchen table, her long legs tucked underneath her. “How much is it?”
    Hailey clutched the slender teacup, hoping to hide her shaking hands. “Don’t worry about it, I just think we’re being taxed too high. No point in paying out, only to have it handed back, right? Plus, I’m not sure they reassess retroactively.”
    “Do you need money?”
    “I’m just trying to save us on taxes. We need to fix the chimney and some other stuff.” She pulled the papers back toward her. Melanie had just graduated with her law degree and wasn’t making much money in her first job and had a ton of student loans. In a few years she would be in a position to help carry the burden, but not yet. Letting her know how bad things were would just stress her out, and she’d worry herself into another ulcer. Plus, she’d feel the need to help out and there was no way she could. Not this year.
    Other than help find some loopholes that apparently weren’t there.
    “I can look into it,” Melanie said, pouring another cup of tea out of the fine bone china teapot that had been their grandmother’s. The one who had somehow got their cottage and island as a gift from an obviously wealthy secret admirer. “But you know, Maya’s business degree might be more helpful in terms of ducking through the ins and outs of taxation, red tape, and bureaucracy.”
    Hailey bit her bottom lip. Maya’s nickname, Snap, had been well earned. She made snap decisions which she tended to stick to stubbornly. Plus, she always wanted to wrestle control from Hailey. “I thought your law degree would be able to help us.”
    “Seriously, you two need to stop competing and learn to work together.”
    “We work together fine.”
    Melanie rolled her eyes as if to say, Yeah, right. She handed back the forms and straightened the oversize shirt she insisted on hiding her strong build in ever since a summer crush had called her Sasquatch in the eleventh grade. “You can figure this all out. Just follow the red tape. I don’t see a way we can one-up the system.”
    She smoothed down her curly hair and, reflexively, Hailey did the same, finding it knotted and wild from her early morning boat ride from a photo shoot she’d done of a family of loons near the cottage, followed by stalking Finian through the rainy alley.
    The bar. She almost groaned. He’d seen her with demented hair. The one time she got to face her crush and she looked like a patient who had escaped from North Bay’s psychiatric wing.
    “I’ll print off a few photos to send with the application to prove it isn’t a fancy place with enhancements.” Hailey stood,