Bungalow Nights (Beach House No. 9) (2 page)

“I’m fine. Fine,” Baxter muttered, sinking back into his seat. “Never been better. Not a care in the world.”

“Whatever you say.” Vance gestured toward one of the free chairs at the table. “Sit down, Addy. You’re right on time. Layla should be here any minute.”

“With her uncle?” the young woman asked.

“I suppose.” The arrangements to meet today had been made via email through Phil Parker, the contact he’d been given by Layla’s father. If you asked Vance, the man came off a bubble short of level, his often-vague replies free of punctuation and peppered with irrelevant references to kismet, fate and surfing. Each email ended with
namaste,
whatever the hell that meant.

“The stuffed animal’s a nice touch,” Addy said.

The mention of Teddy irritated Vance all over again, so he slipped the photo he carried out of the breast pocket of his sports shirt. Yeah, he’d sort of dressed up for the kid, too. His best jeans and a short-sleeved button-down, straight from the dry cleaner’s plastic. He slapped the picture onto the tabletop. “Her father had this with him. It’s what gave me the idea.”

Layla Parker stared up at the three of them. She was sitting on a short flight of concrete steps, one of her knobby little-kid knees sporting scabs. Her long hair was in pigtails tied below each ear, revealing a wide forehead over big brown eyes. She appeared to be approximately ten years old and she stared into the camera, a little smile curving her lips as her skinny arms hugged a potbellied teddy bear to her middle.

“Ah,” Addy said, smiling. “Cute.”

“Yeah.” Her dad’s fingers had been trembling when he fished out the picture.
Isn’t she beautiful, Vance? You’ve got to do something for her. You’ve got to do something for my girl.
What choice had there been? The husky emotion in the mortally wounded man’s voice had impelled Vance to say he would.

He’d also done everything in his power to save the colonel, but it hadn’t been enough. Too soon he’d been gone, leaving Vance alone with his pledge to fulfill the fallen officer’s final wish.

“I’ve got to go,” Baxter said again.

“Sure.” With Addy on scene, there was another person at the table to smooth over the awkwardness of the initial meeting with young Layla. He angled his head toward his cousin. “Thanks for—”

Vance broke off as the breeze made a sudden shift, blowing a cold breath across the nape of his neck. The small hairs on his body—even the ones surrounded by the infernal cast and brace—went on instant alert as if eager to escape. He tensed. Soldiers learned to rely on their gut, and Vance’s was suddenly shouting that the person who should be leaving was him.

But though he’d been scared shitless a hundred times, since joining the army he’d never ducked his duty and he wasn’t about to start now. Anyway, what could possibly endanger him in this sun-drenched civilian world?

That weird breeze chilled him again, and Vance jerked his head in its direction. Sunlight dazzled him. Something dazzled him, anyway, and he was forced to blink a couple of times before bringing into focus the deserted hostess stand across the deck and the lone figure positioned before it. It was a very pretty woman, probably in her mid-twenties, wearing a silky-looking dress of swirling jewel colors that hit at midthigh and was belted around her slender waist. Medium-brown hair waved past her shoulders and her forehead was covered by a deep fringe of bangs.

A new feeling tickled him. He should know her, he thought, frowning. And not just in the way any red-blooded man would want to know a woman that hot. She looked familiar.

And nervous. Her fingers combed through the ends of her long hair as she went on tiptoe to scan the area. When she settled back on her heels, she bit down on her bottom lip.

God, didn’t he know that mouth?

He wouldn’t have forgotten kissing those lips, would he?

Still puzzling it out, he narrowed his gaze. He was thirty and she was about five years younger, which crossed her off his list of high school hookups—even if one might have coincidentally ventured here, an hour from home environs. As for more recent conquests—until six months ago he’d been in a yearlong, serious relationship. Meaning if this lovely little mama was part of his past it would have been in his wild and crazy years...wild, crazy and
hazy
.

He glanced over at Baxter, who had been his partner in crime—okay, he’d been the designated driver—whenever Vance could pry him free of his Aeron office chair. “Cuz.”

Baxter started. He’d been watching Addy, who’d been watching the waves curl toward shore. “Uh, what?” His hand smoothed over the tasteful stripes of his preppy tie even as he slid a last look at the blonde seated beside him.

Vance couldn’t cipher what was going on there, not when he had to determine the identity of the leggy girl at the hostess stand. “Don’t be obvious, but check out the woman waiting for a table.” He saw his cousin lift his gaze in the right direction. “Do I know her?”

Bax’s eyes flicked back to Vance’s face. “Huh? How would I be aware of all your acquaintances?”

“It’s a long shot, but...” But he had this dreadlike feeling that she wasn’t a mere acquaintance. He fought the urge to ogle her again, though the guy in him was clamoring for a second look. It was a bad idea, though. If she was a former...interest of his, he didn’t want to attract her attention. He’d become a little classier—and a lot less of a party animal—over the past few years, and it would only embarrass them both if she attempted reacquaintance and he was forced to admit he’d forgotten her name and how he knew her.

How well they might have known each other.

Could I really have forgotten that mouth?

Hooking a foot around a leg of his chair, he gave it a little twist, presenting more of his back to the brunette. “Never mind.”

“Um,” his cousin said, his gaze drifting over Vance’s shoulder again. “I guess she’s given up waiting on the hostess. She’s walked onto the deck and it looks as if she’s coming in this direction.”

Hell! Vance did a rush shuffle through his memory banks. In college, he’d double majored in hedonism and procrastination until dropping out to join the army. Returning to California after his four-year stint, he’d briefly gone back to his bad boy ways. Though he’d soon straightened up and begun a relationship with a woman he’d thought was his future, it still left time for him to find then forget the wavy-haired woman he could practically feel from here.

He took a chance and glanced back. She was standing still again, scanning the restaurant’s patrons with a hint of anxiety in her expression. He hoped some asshole hadn’t stood her up. As he watched, her eyes started to track toward their table and Vance hurriedly turned his head. Sliding lower in his seat, he made to grab a menu from the table to use as a shield, then froze.

What the hell was he doing? If he hid behind the vinyl folder, Addy would think he was addled. Bax would laugh his ass off. Vance considered himself an idiot just for having the craven impulse.

Anyway, no chance I would
have forgotten that face.

Preparing to start some relaxing small talk with his companions, he cleared his throat. Addy and Baxter both looked at him and then, as one, their gazes transferred to a spot above his head. Vance’s belly tightened. A delicately sweet scent reached him on another of those cold, cautionary breezes.

“Vance?” a throaty, feminine voice asked. “Vance Smith?”

That slightly scratchy timbre goosed him somewhere deep inside, waking his previously snoozing sexual urges with a start. Shit, he thought, tensing. Now wasn’t the time for this. Now was the time for Layla Parker to show up. And if the girl arrived this very minute, then an awkward encounter with the female he’d forgotten could get lost in the flurry of meeting the colonel’s daughter. His libido would settle back to its deep sleep. Without moving a muscle, he waited a beat for his wish to come true.

When his hope went unfulfilled, Vance swallowed his sigh of resignation and slowly half turned in his seat.

“So...The Breakers?” he asked, naming one of his old hangouts as he shifted. “Or was it Pete’s Place?”

“What?” she asked.

He made himself look into her eyes. They were big and a soft brown, circled with thick dark lashes. Damn, Vance thought, those eyes, that mouth, the whole package stirred him up.

And stirred a memory, but for the life of him, he couldn’t place it.

“I’m trying to recall where we met,” he clarified. There was nothing to do but confess, though the way his body was responding it seemed unbelievable her identity wasn’t burned in his brain. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know...”

“Oh.” She shook her head, and a pair of gold hoop earrings swung. “We haven’t met. I took a guess. You have the shortest haircut out here.” Her lips curved just a little and—

It clicked. That tiny smile snapped the missing piece into the puzzle. It was the same one worn by the bear-toting kid in the officer’s photograph.

His gut knotted.
Hell,
he thought, stunned.
Oh, hell.

She was right; they’d never met, but he knew her all the same. As a matter of fact, he’d been waiting for her.
Yes, Colonel, she
is
beautiful
.

So damn beautiful Vance felt a little sick.

The sexy woman standing two feet away was none other than Layla Parker. Layla Parker, the “little girl” whose dreams he’d been charged with making come true.

Good God, he thought. This changed everything, didn’t it? The little girl was all grown up.

* * *

V
ANCE WAS SO UNBALANCED
he didn’t get to his feet, he didn’t speak, he might not have been breathing. Baxter’s manners kicked in, thank goodness, and it was he who shepherded the colonel’s daughter to the empty chair beside Addy. Layla let herself be led away from Vance and gave her attention to his cousin and the woman he’d hired to live at Beach House No. 9 with him and the little girl.

The little girl who wasn’t a little girl in the least.

Still trying to come to grips with that, he let Baxter and Addy initiate introductions and continue the conversation. Layla smiled and spoke, even as Vance didn’t hear a word she said.

Her big browns kept stealing glances at his face. She was clearly puzzled by his continued silence, but he couldn’t do more than try to ignore his body’s reaction to her while thinking of the speediest way to put an end to this impossible situation.

A server, apparently noting every chair at their four-top was occupied, hurried over to discuss the menu and take requests. He considered telling the aproned girl they wouldn’t be sticking around that long, but Baxter—who’d apparently changed his mind about leaving—and the others were already making decisions and communicating food orders. There was nothing he could do but ask for a sandwich and iced tea.

So they’d have lunch. Share a meal before bidding goodbye. Layla was more than twice the age he’d expected and surely she had better things to do than hang out at the beach with a virtual stranger.

Just as he had the comforting thought, she addressed him. “My dad wrote me about you.”

Vance blinked, looking up from the photograph he’d tossed on the table before, now half-obscured by a place mat. “He did?” They’d known each other, of course—the officer had held a keen interest in the men under his command and he’d been deeply respected and admired in return—but their real closeness had come on that fateful day when Vance had been one of the patrol accompanying the colonel across the valley to his meet with a tribal elder. Fighting to save someone’s life brought about a profound intimacy.

Her gaze dropped to the stack of thin metal bracelets circling one delicate wrist. She spun them one way and then another. “He sent me long letters, describing the people he worked with, the scenery around him, that sort of thing.”

Vance thought of the stingy emails he tapped off to his family and for the first time experienced a pinch of guilt. “Ah.”

“He was a good storyteller,” she said in that sweet rasp of hers. “If he hadn’t been a soldier...”

Her words dropped away, leaving behind an awkward pause. The fact was he
had
been a soldier and they all knew how that had turned out.

Addy broke the uncomfortable silence. “What is it you do?”

Yeah,
Vance thought,
good lead-in
. Layla would want him to know she had a life that made spending four weeks at Crescent Cove inconvenient, if not downright impossible.

“Karma Cupcakes,” she answered.

Karma cupcakes? He didn’t know what the hell she meant, but it reminded him of something else. “Where’s your uncle?” he asked abruptly. For God’s sake, surely the man should have realized Vance had been operating under a misconception.
I was expecting a ten-year-old, Phil!

Layla shrugged. “About now? When he can, he practices tai chi in a city park from noon to one.”

Didn’t that just figure.
Namaste
. It only solidified Vance’s burgeoning belief that the man was flaky enough not to pick up on the oddness of the situation he’d arranged for his
grown niece
. No wonder Layla’s father hadn’t entrusted his last request to his brother. “And after that?”

“He drives the cupcake truck.” Glancing around at their confused expressions, she released a laugh.

A little husky. Young.

Yet dangerous miles more mature than the laughter of the female he’d been expecting to entertain at Beach House No. 9. God, what a joke.

“We operate a mobile bakery, Uncle Phil and I,” Layla informed them.

Addy looked interested. “Gourmet food trucks are the new big thing.”

“Exactly,” Layla said, nodding. “We’re called Karma Cupcakes, and we make the batter and bake the cakes in our truck. Then we sell them at various locations in Southern California. We have a regular schedule of farmers’ markets and popular stopping points. Our customers happen upon us or track our whereabouts via social media.”

Baxter straightened in his chair. “I read this article in
Commerce Weekly
—”