Moonlight on Monterey Bay Read Online Free PDF

Eastland.”
    “I’m not pregnant either,” he said.
    She looked sideways at him. His mouth was still, but she caught laughter in his eyes. “Touché,” she said, finding herself unreasonably happy that he had a sense of humor. But he was almost finished with his hamburger and would be rushing off in another minute; she needed to concentrate on more important things. “What do you do when you aren’t working?” she asked suddenly.
    She was smiling brightly, her chin slightly tipped up, her eyes bright. Lord, she was beautiful, so natural and unaffected with that incredible dark hair falling freely everywhere. Laid-back Santa Cruz had been a perfect backdrop for her. Here in San Jose she seemed less comfortable, restrained somehow.
    “During your free time,” she persisted, “what do you do?”
    “That’s an odd question for a stranger to ask.”
    “Stranger.” Maddie frowned. Then she brushed her hair from her cheek and looked at him squarely.“It’s called small talk,” she said. “Something to fill the time while waiting for a check, or a bus, or an elevator.”
    “Small talk,” he repeated. “Interesting concept.” The corner of his mouth lifted.
    “I know you swim. What else?”
    “I don’t have much spare time.”
    “Do you hunt? Play a musical instrument? Collect things? Fish?”
    “No, a long time ago, not really, occasionally.” He reached for the grease-stained check and scanned it.
    “You’re definitely getting the hang of this small-talk routine,” Maddie said. “With a little practice, who knows?”
    “Don’t bet the farm on it.” Sam slipped a bill from his pocket onto the counter and stood up. He needed to get out of there. Maddie Ames had sucked him into a twilight zone. He was unnerved, distracted. He looked at her for a moment, his face expressionless, and then he said, “Well, thanks. The company was nice, and the small talk passable.”
    He left then, and Maddie couldn’t tell if he was smiling or frowning as he hurried out the door. His broad shoulders flexed as he slipped his arms into his suit coat. With purposeful steps he strode down the street and out of sight.
    Maddie sighed.
    The waitress appeared in front of her. “Big tipper,” she said, nodding toward the door.
    “How big?”
    “Ten smackers for a three-buck burger. Not bad.”
    Maddie nodded. Okay, then, the trip hadn’t been entirely in vain. She knew now that Sam Eastland was a big tipper. And on the drive back to Santa Cruz, she added to her meager cache of personal insights the fact that he had donated a wing to a children’s museum, that he occasionally fished, that he rarely relaxed, and that he was sexy, definitely sexy.
    Surely she could design an interior around all that.
    Sure she could.

THREE
    It was dusk when Maddie drove up her street and parked her yellow Bug beneath the bending oak tree. The sky was deepening into night, a midnight-blue sky without a cloud, and Maddie felt at one with it. All the way back home, from the time she turned onto the winding highway back to Santa Cruz, she had been filled with a sweet, delicious humming sensation.
    “Come on, Eeyore,” she called out to her golden retriever, holding open the screen for the lumbering dog. “Let’s hit the beach, pal.” And together they ran down the short block, across the park, and to the waiting beach.
    There, while surfers paid her no heed and several older couples, seated on the hard benches, watched her with vicarious pleasure, she slipped out of her shoes, bunched her skirt in her arms, and with Eeyore at her side, ran with abandon along the hard sandyshore. Her hair flew wildly behind her, sand sprayed out from beneath her bare feet, and somewhere along the curving shore, her head began to fill with colors and plans and textures. What she would come up with would be good, and it would fit East of the Ocean as no one else’s plan would.
    When Maddie and Eeyore returned home a while later, she was ready. With a