Love In Alabama (The Love In Series Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

destination.
    Paige, Mimi and I had spent a few nights researching places to stay in each state. It was a great way to keep the topic of conversation away from speculating about all the guys I was going to hook up with—because they both had very vocal opinions about that, too. My very first requirement was that if the state was on the coast, I was staying on the beach. I loved Vermont, the mountains and the countryside and the vibrancy of the seasons, but I'd always been fascinated by the ocean. It was an unknown to me, something that I'd probably romanticized because I'd never had access to it, but I was in love with the idea of staying on the beach, of hearing the waves crash and sinking my feet into the sand and watching the sun rise or set over a horizon of open water.
    So we'd immediately zeroed in on beach areas in Alabama and I'd settled on Perdido Beach, a small strip of land about an hour southeast of Mobile, near the Alabama-Florida border and on the northern end of the Gulf of Mexico. Crossing the bridge over Mobile Bay made me smile and by the time I turned southward and hit Perdido on the massive sparkling blue gulf, I was grinning from ear to ear.
    There was nothing familiar looking about Alabama. Palm trees. White sand beaches. Scrubby grass that looked more brown than green. A gulf that looked as big as the universe. Stucco buildings with red-tiled roofs, housing everything from chain restaurants to souvenir shops. Shirtless guys on bikes, girls wearing nothing more than bikinis as they strolled the sidewalks. Vermont, this was not.
    I picked up my phone to check for directions to my hotel and a text from Paige flashed across the screen. I swiped the screen and called her.
    “So?” she said, not bothering to say hello.
    “Hi, Paige,” I said. “My flight was fine, thanks for asking.”
    “Good to know. I texted in case you were...in the middle of something.”
    “I haven't slept with a guy yet,” I told her. “I mean, I haven't had sex with a guy yet. Or a girl.”
    “What the hell is taking you so long?” she asked, only half-joking.
    “Well, I guess I could have pulled Dylan into one of the family bathrooms at the airport and had a quickie,” I said. “But I'm trying to go in alphabetical order. By state, not guy.”
    “Ewww,” she said. “Do not discuss sex and my brother in the same sentence.”
    I chuckled. “What do you want?”
    “I'm just checking up on you,” she said. “Making sure you got in okay.”
    “Yeah, right.”
    “Are you at the hotel yet?”
    “Almost there,” I said. “Still driving.”
    There were several buildings along the Gulf, high-rise condos and hotels. They all sort of blended together and I was glad I'd chosen a smaller, more intimate place to stay.
    “So what's the plan?” she asked.
    “Excuse me?” I pulled to a stop at a red light and scanned the road stretched out in front of me. I had another block or so to go. “I'm going to find a guy to have sex with. Duh.”
    I tried to sound flippant but my insides had once again twisted into knots. It had been easy to focus on the travel part of my trip, on the fact that I was going to be seeing parts of the country I'd never seen before. But Paige wasn't calling to ask about that.
    “Good,” she said. “Just making sure you haven't gotten cold feet. Or a cold vagina.”
    “Paige!”
    She laughed. “Call me tomorrow. I want to hear all about your first night.”
    The call ended and the screen immediately reverted back to the map. It indicated I was close to my destination and I glanced up and saw the sign for the hotel almost immediately. The Beach House Inn. The hotels surrounding it dwarfed the three-story building that I was going to call home for the next couple of days. I pulled into the mostly empty parking lot, breathing a sigh of relief that the inn looked like the pictures displayed online. A long, white stucco building, three levels of rooms, all with exterior doors facing the parking lot.