Summer at the Shore (Seashell Bay Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

busted.”
    Lily laughed. “Oh, well, you could always make it your summer project to find out everything he’s been up to, I suppose. If anybody can probe that man’s defenses, it’s you. Especially after what happened between you guys at—”
    “I prefer not to be reminded of that particular descent into insanity,” Morgan interjected. “It was a momentary aberration due to stress and alcohol.”
    “Uh-huh. You stick with that story if it makes you feel better, girlfriend.”
    Morgan tossed a throw pillow at Lily.
    “Are you going to assault me or get on with it?” Lily said, after deftly catching the pillow. “There are some juicy bits, right? I bet all that wicked chemistry between you is still front and center.”
    Off the charts
. But Morgan wasn’t yet ready to admit that. “Ryan doesn’t want to stay with his folks, so he’s going to try to rent a house.”
    Lily smirked at the dodge but let it go. “That makes sense, though he must be forgetting how busy it is here in the summer.”
    “I told him he’d have trouble.” Morgan tried to sound casual. “So I offered him one of the empty rooms at the B&B for a while. For free, of course. Just to help out a friend.”
    Lily set down her beer. “Uh, well, that was certainly kind of you. Probably not the smartest move you’ve ever made but definitely kind.”
    If there was one thing Morgan could always count on with Lily—though actually there were a lot of things she could count on—it was the unvarnished truth.
    “It seemed to make sense in the moment,” Morgan said. “You know how much work needs to be done, and I’m so strung out financially that I can’t really afford to pay a carpenter or handyman to do it all.”
    “And what did Ryan say after he picked himself up off the deck of the boat?”
    Morgan waggled a hand. “He agreed, eventually. I insisted that he either had to take the room or I had to pay him for his work. I’m not about to take advantage of the guy that way.”
    Though I’d like to take advantage of Ryan Butler in a bunch of other ways. Oh, yes, I would
.
    “So when does he move in?”
    “Tomorrow.”
    “Mother Mary. Well, at least he’ll be sleeping upstairs in one of the guest rooms, not right next to you in the annex. Temptation will still be close though.”
    “I’ll be sure to keep my bedroom door locked in case he comes down to the kitchen for a midnight snack and gets lost,” Morgan said.
    Lily laughed. “Look, I totally get why you’re doing this, but if the shoe were on the other foot, you’d be giving me holy hell. You were like a mama bear from the moment you got a sniff of something starting to happen between Aiden and me.”
    Morgan didn’t buy that comparison. “Not the same, Lily. You’d been in love with Aiden since forever, so I thought you’d get really hurt when he went back to his life in baseball. But all I’ve ever had for Ryan was some . . . uh, well, let’s call it hormone-related interest.”
    “Had? Past tense? Hey, sweetie, you can’t fool me.”
    “Okay, so maybe I do still have a certain lust for his fine form. But it’s not like I’d be courting a broken heart. It won’t happen, because Ryan and I are totally different.”
    Lily lifted an eyebrow. “How so, exactly?”
    “Well, what do we have in common? Nada, other than this island. And when it comes to Seashell Bay, Ryan steers clear of the place except for a few days a year, while I come home every chance I get. That’s a pretty fundamental difference, don’t you think?”
    “That sounds like what I said about Aiden and me,” Lily said drily. “And I still remember how you called bullshit.”
    “Okay then, how about the fact that he spends his lifetoting a gun? You know how I feel about the gun culture, Lily. And while I support our troops, I don’t think war is a good answer to anything.”
    “Forgive me for harping on the same theme,” Lily said, “but Aiden and I don’t exactly see eye to eye