“Katy, can you box up a dozen chocolate chip?” Pierce asked as he stared right back at the obviously pissed-off woman.
“You’ll get fat if you keep eating these, Pierce,” she said with a dramatic roll of her eyes.
“It hasn’t affected you,” he replied, and I squeezed his arm. I didn’t want my first introductions to end in bloodshed. She looked ready to rip his eyes out. “Besides, they’re not for me.”
Obviously, my new fake fiancé had a death wish because the woman openly had to hold herself back from launching across the counter and tackling him. Her outrage was palpable.
Silence punctuated his words, and I shuffled my feet, getting ready to make a run for it. Pierce didn’t warn me the town was hostile. What in the hell did I agree to here?
“Oh,” Pierce continued, his stance strong so I couldn’t pull him with me. He squeezed his arm muscles and tightened his hold where I gripped him. “Katy, you haven’t met Mari, my fiancée.”
Something sucked the air out of the room as if every person in the bakery took in a collective gasp. I didn’t move, scared that any movement would entice her into action.
It didn’t matter. Katy’s eyes widened in a flash. “Your what?”
I stood frozen, along with everyone else in the bakery. Stares from every direction fell on me and my cheeks heated. It’d been two years since I’d had this much attention placed on me at once.
Her hand wobbled, and the tray tipped. Instinctively, I reached out to grab it, but Pierce took a step back and we were too far to help. The tray tipped further and then fell to the ground, the edge hitting the tile and sending a shock-wave of sound through the bakery.
Pierce’s grin grew at the destruction before us as Katy fumbled to pick up cookies from the bakery floor. “Never mind on those cookies.”
The little bell above the doorway rang as he led me away from the bakery, our hands at each of our sides swinging in unison. Now that people weren’t nearby, the need to play up our fake union wasn’t as strong.
“That was weird,” I said once we made it to the sidewalk and our steps took us toward the beach.
Pierce shook his head. “Not really. You get used to it in this town. There are a few characters, but overall, they’re good people.”
“Yeah, sure.” My words lacked conviction, but as we walked together down the street, our slow pace allowed me to take in the small shops of Pelican Bay.
Each storefront was the same with an outer layer of brick, but each store owner personalized their areas with different colored awnings. Different logos for each shop were affixed to their glass doors, but they felt similar. The entire area could be an advertisement for the idealistic Maine vacation. This is exactly what people thought of when they considered visiting the East Coast. The wind whipped around us causing my red hair to flutter against my face and then fall back to my shoulders.
In many ways the touch of the watery wind off the bay reminded me of San Francisco, the town I called home for most of my life. Here it was completely different, as if more salt floated in the breeze. Also, even though it’s the end of summer, the air was cooler than in the perfectly temperate San Francisco.
Together we reached the last piece of sidewalk where Main Street ended into Bayside Drive and the ocean loomed ahead past the public beach. As we stepped off the curb, a special edition black Maybach Exelero stopped in the middle of the road in front of us. I’d lost touch with many things in America over the last few years, but the car model was recognizable anywhere.
Pierce rolled his eyes as if he knew who to expect in the vehicle, and as the car window lowered my eyes widened with the view. The car hinted the man had money, but his face said hotter than hell. Like whoa. Thankfully, no one expected me to speak because only drool would have come out.
His hair was the same dirty brown color as Pierce’s, but his smile was full so it lit up his eyes until I swore I could see right through them. His presence said easygoing, but I still didn’t think he’d enjoy it if I walked over and ran my fingers through his hair. A male had never caused such a reaction from me before, and I didn’t know how to handle it. Outwardly my expression never changed, but internally I screamed like a little girl who unwrapped a pony on Christmas morning.
“This the girl?” Mr. Hotter-Than-Hell asked as his gaze swept over me.
Pierce smiled, following the conversation. “Yes, meet my new fiancée, Mari Chambers. Mari, this is my cousin, Oliver.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” I said although it sounded more like a question than a statement. My brain hadn’t gotten all the cylinders working yet.
I was tall by nature, and while Pierce still had at least two inches on me height-wise, from the way this man’s head skirted the roof of his vehicle, I easily imagined him standing six inches taller.
“You two want a ride?” Oliver asked, his smile fully directed at me so strongly I almost took a step back from the blast.
I wanted to reach out and touch the sleek vehicle. I had everything in my San Francisco life and mostly I made the right decision by leaving. My days were brighter and my life happier, but at times I missed the perks of having money. Things like expensive clothes and the nice cars.
Pierce answered before me. “No.”
Oliver’s lips slipped into a line and he shrugged before hitting the gas and zooming away from us to the parking lot across the road where he dramatically whipped into a space and parked.
A total show off, he was clearly one of those men with old-school money who didn’t understand how the other half lived. Three years ago, he would’ve sent my heart into a flutter, but living on the other side of the railroad tracks, I now considered such blatant arrogance unattractive. Mostly.
He pushed open the car door as if he was a force of nature and as it closed behind him, he hit the locking mechanism on his key fob and lowered a pair of sunglasses on his head, concealing his gorgeous eyes—the same ones which drew me in from the window of his car. Okay, any girl could admit how hot that move was. Again, old Mari would have been fanning herself. Now, I found it slightly amusing.
