Life Guards in the Hamptons
Read Life Guards in the Hamptons Online
Authors: Celia Jerome
Raves for the
Willow Tate
Novels:
“This is a fun zany romantic Hamptons fantasy with the lead couple (Willy and Grant) heating up the sheets with enough energy to keep Long Island warm in the winter.”
—
Midwest Book Review
“Willow Tate is back with another crazy adventure. You’ll love her feisty attitude as she tries to stick to her ‘no men’ creed with her newest partner. Laugh-out-loud funny! Readers will be in stitches.”
—RT Book Reviews
(RT top pick)
“This is a fresh new take on the fantasy world mingling with our own, with a bit of supervillians and true love thrown in. For someone who likes paranormal, but wants a new twist, this is the perfect read.”
—Parkersburg News and Sentinel
This light-hearted urban fantasy series, which is what used to be known as the Unknown style of fantasy adventure, stood out for me with the very first book and the third is the best yet. Willow Tate is an illustrator who can bring magical creatures into our world by drawing them, in both senses of the word. Her latest is a fire wizard, which leads to a series of magical mishaps involving fire, until the secretive organization that deals with these things sends a man whose presence suppresses fire. But that leads to all sorts of new complications. There’s a bunch of quirky subsidiary characters, amusing plot twists, and Keystone Kops type mayhem. This is definitely not a series you want to lump in with the majority of recent urban fantasy, and it’s guaranteed to bring a smile to your face.”
—Critical Mass
“The world-building is the best part of
Trolls
. The people and places come alive; the fantastical back-story is unusual and fascinating; and the whole of it is definitely something new and extraordinary, and a welcome break from vampires and were-creatures.”
—Errant Dreams
“In fine, small-town mystery fashion, Paumanok Harbor is full of quirky people, many with odd little magic talents… . It’s a fun adventure; Willow’s an engaging character … charming series.”
—Locus
“This is a well-written, cute series that is on the very lightest side of the urban fantasy genre—almost chick-lit light, really (but without the shoe shopping)… . The author definitely captures the sense of place in both Manhattan and the Hamptons. This is an entertaining and amusing series that would make a perfect beach read.”
—Fang-tastic Ficiton
DAW Books Presents
CELIA JEROME’s
Willow Tate
Novels:
TROLLS IN THE HAMPTONS
NIGHT MARES IN THE HAMPTONS
FIRE WORKS IN THE HAMPTONS
LIFE GUARDS IN THE HAMPTONS
SAND WITCHES IN THE HAMPTONS
(
Available October 2012
)
Life Guards
IN THE
HAMPTONS
A Willow Tate Novel
CELIA JEROME
DAW BOOKS, INC.
DONALD A. WOLLHEIM, FOUNDER
375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
ELIZABETH R. WOLLHEIM
SHEILA E. GILBERT
PUBLISHERS
Copyright © 2012 by Barbara Metzger.
All Rights Reserved.
Cover art by Daniel Dos Santos.
Map by Pat Tobin.
Map concept by Bob-E.
DAW Book Collectors No. 1587.
DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Nearly all the designs and trade names in this book are registered trademarks. All that are still in commercial use are protected by United States and international trademark law.
ISBN: 978-1-101-64247-4
First Printing, May 2012
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
To old friends and new readers.
Thank you for believing in me.
Thanks to:
Carole Pruzan, as always
Richie Etzel for nautical assistance
Jeri Seiden for Taz and Tino
Brett Bausk for the pictures
Anne Bohner for being a great agent
Russell Pulick for technical support
Donna Etzel for Axel
Jane Liebell for the music
Dawn Berkowski for cheering
Sheila Gilbert, Debra Euler, Josh Starr, and Marsha Jones at DAW for taking such good care of my books
Robin Strong at the Montauk Library for help with the maps
And the Friends of the Montauk Library for being friends
Celia Jerome lives in Paumanok Harbor toward the east end of Long Island. She believes in magic, True Love, small dogs, and yard sales.
You can visit Celia at
www.celiajerome.com
C
HAPTER
1
C
RAZY THINGS KEPT HAPPENING in the Hamptons. I had nothing whatsoever to do with any of them. I swear.
The new nutso stuff wasn’t my kind of crazy, like ten-foot trolls and telepathic horses and pyrotechnic lightning bugs from a secret parallel universe.
1
The latest events weren’t the usual East End insanity either, with billionaires claiming they owned the beach so no one could walk along the ocean, or some do-gooder causing a riot by throwing surfcasters’ striped bass back in the water, or the government allowing people to rebuild houses on land destroyed by hurricanes and storms, when they’d only fall in the ocean at the next big blow. Those were irrational, but not unusual.
Nope, what they now had on the South Fork of Long Island was a surprising off-season crime spree: a bank robbery in Southampton, another in Wainscott; jewelry store heists in Sag Harbor and East Hampton; stickups at the American Legion Hall in Amagansett during a fund-raising dance and at a pub quiz in Springs. No one could remember so much crime in the area in so short a time, especially in mid-September. Even the dumbest thief had to know how effective roadblocks could be, with only two roads, Montauk Highway and the Sunrise
Highway, leading across the Shinnecock Canal and a clean escape off the Island. What made it odder was how no witnesses saw getaway cars. No one recognized the robbers’ voices or accents, or could identify their clothes, only the black ski masks they wore. The people whose watches and wallets were taken couldn’t say how many thieves, how tall, what sex.
Mass amnesia? I loved it, especially since no one in Paumanok Harbor could blame me the way they usually did. I sat cozily in my New York City apartment, minding my own business of writing and illustrating graphic novels for young adults, getting updates from family and friends.
They’d made the six o’clock news tonight, though, after the latest natural disasters. This time a million dollars went missing from the bank account of East Hampton Township, in which the Harbor was the smallest village. Cyber-embezzlement, they said, and called in the FBI. When my book characters—totally products of my imagination, I used to believe—suddenly sprang from my computer to life here on Earth, I had to call in the guys from DUE, the Department of Unexplained Events. Their agents created more chaos in my life and my head and my heart than any five trolls or felons.
Not this time.
My hero stayed on the page, hot and honor-bound, while men in suits and shades chased up and down Route 27 looking for bandits. Spenser Matthews was too busy hiding his real, otherworld identity and fighting evil to care about a crime spree on Long Island. Hell, if he were real, no beaches would be coated with oil.