Picture Perfect (Butler Island) (4 page)

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but it
wasn’t like that”, she assured her. She went on to tell her about her jellyfish
encounter and how Grant had been there to administer first aid. Olivia finally
stumbled across a costume she liked and held it up to get Kendall’s approval.

“I think that one’s perfect! And do
you want to know what else I think?”

“Of course.”

“I have a gut feeling that you’re
going to become familiar with that beach house and the man who lives in it…”

Kendall and her gut feelings.
Her
intuition, although at times mysterious, was also very reliable. And just to
make sure, Olivia had to ask. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, c’mon—he’s gorgeous, he’s
single, and he’s
totally
into you!”

“He is not—he’s Ty’s best friend.
He’s just trying to be polite. And besides… how do you know who Grant’s ‘
into’?”

Kendall shot Olivia a hollow look.
“Need I remind you again? Gossip circulates quickly on this island.”

“Oh yeah, I almost forgot…”

“Okay, I think this is the last box”,
Ty an
nounced as he carefully stepped down
from the ladder
.

Olivia sat on the cool concrete floor
of the carport with her legs tucked underneath her. She’d already opened the
first box of Halloween decorations and was nostalgically sifting through them
when Ty knelt down beside her.

 “I can’t believe you kept this all
these years”, she said as she clutched the homemade Halloween trivet she’d
constructed in her Home Economics class in the seventh grade. It’d been fabricated
from orange and black ceramic beads and Popsicle sticks. She’d been so proud of
her creation then and had given it to Ty as a gift. But seeing it now through
her adult eyes, she realized how pathetic it actually looked.

“Of course, I kept it.”

“Ty, it’s the ugliest darn trivet
I’ve ever seen! You mean to tell me that you still put this out on the counter
every year?” she asked in disbelief.

“Every year.”

“That couldn’t have made Cameron very
happy…” She watched as he wiped his hand down the front of his face. He was
hurting and she wished more than ever that she could absorb the pain he was
experiencing so that he wouldn’t have to endure it.

He let out a sigh and then met his
little sister’s gaze. “No—she wasn’t fond of the trivet…”

“Or me”, Olivia added. “I want you to
know that me being gone all this time had nothing to do with you… It’s no
secret that Cameron and I didn’t like each other very well, but I saw how happy
she made you. And I figured your happiness was long overdue.”

“Liv, I’m so very sorry.”

“Sorry? For what? You have absolutely
nothing to feel sorry for”, she assured him.

“Yeah, I do. Cameron made you feel as
though this was no longer your home—”

“That’s right—
Cameron
—not
you.”

“Yeah, but I let her…”

Olivia wrapped her arms around her
brother and gave him a squeeze. “It’s okay—that’s behind us now. This is a new
beginning—for
both
of us.”

“I’m so glad you’re here”, he mumbled
as he hugged her back.

“Me, too”, she
said before pulling away. “Enough
of this emotional mushy stuff—we’ve
got some Halloween decoratin’ to do…”

An unexpected cold front had arrived
earlier in the day, causing temperatures on the island to plummet into the
mid-fifties upon nightfall. Grant parked his truck along the street in front of
Ty’s house. He’d chosen to dress as a 1920’s gangster this year, sporting a
black and white striped suit and black fedora. He emerged from his truck with a
toy Tommy-gun in hand and then headed inside.

He was greeted by a grinning Ty,
decked out in a flight suit and aviator glasses; looking like “Iceman” from the
movie
Top Gun.
“Well, this gives a whole new meaning to ‘wing man’,
doesn’t it?”

“Nice monkey suit, asshole”, Ty
responded.

Grant stepped inside and placed his
beer in the refrigerator before taking inventory of all the various costumes in
the room. Eddie was dressed as a pirate, complete with an eye patch and fake
parrot attached to one of his shoulders. Jimmy Phillips and his wife, Lana,
were dressed as a tough-looking biker and biker-babe, and Randall Burns was
dressed as the blue guy from
Avatar.
He was amazed by the crowd’s
creativity, but there was one person in particular that impressed him most.

Olivia.

She was standing on the patio by the
stainless steel, outdoor heater in a skimpy little referee costume, hair down
in large, voluminous curls like a Texas beauty queen. Her snug referee ensemble
clung to her mouth-watering curves, the hem falling mid-thigh, revealing the
sexiest pair of legs he’d ever seen. She wore black stiletto boots that rose
midway up her lower legs and a pair of black and white tube socks that settled
just below her knees. Unable to resist, he opened the French doors and ambled
toward her.

Olivia met his astonished gaze and
smiled, throwing up her hands in front of her as though she were surrendering.
“Don’t shoot”, she uttered as he approached.

His eyes journeyed down the length of
her body and then stalled at her cleavage. “I don’t know—you don’t look so
innocent
right now…”

Olivia cocked her head sideways and
cleared her throat, distracting his attention away from her breasts. “Watch it,
Womack—you just might find yourself with a penalty.”

Sexual innuendos, one of his favorite
games.
Grant flashed a wicked grin. “Oh yeah? Which one would that be?”

“Unsportsman-like conduct”, she
responded playfully. Olivia swept her gaze down Grant this time, pausing when
she reached the large bulge in his pants. “I like your Tommy-gun. It’s so…
big.”

Holy shit.
“Who’s on the verge of a penalty now?”

Olivia took a step closer and rose
onto her toes so that her mouth was inches from his ear. “I’m just the ref; I
call ‘em like I see ‘em”, she whispered before she walked away.

“She’s somethin’ else, isn’t she?”
Randall asked as he joined Grant on the patio.

Grant took a pull from his beer,
eyeing Olivia until she disappeared inside. “Yeah… How well do you know her?”

“Olivia?” Randall asked. “We grew up
together. She was a year younger than me, but she was still one of my closest
friends. Would’ve given anything to be more than friends, though.”

“Had a secret crush, did ya?”

Randall chuckled softly as he tucked
his hands under his arms. “Me and half the town’s teenage male population! But
she didn’t really date much back then…”

“Why not?” Grant asked as he crossed
his arms over his chest, turning his attention to the electric-blue man
standing beside him.

Randall shrugged his shoulders.
“Partly because she was too busy causing a ruckus to be tied down in a
relationship. And partly because every guy
on
the island knew her free-spirit couldn’t be tamed…”

The party was a big success. It was
late—or early the following morning—before the crowd had thinned. Kendall had
been talking to Ty on the couch when he’d placed the back of his head against
the sleek red leather and closed his eyes. She thought he was just resting them
for a moment, but when he began to snore she realized he’d passed out. “Um,
Olivia?” she called out to the kitchen.

“Yeah?”

“Ty’s out cold.”

“What?” Olivia moved from behind the
counter and walked into the living room. Ty’s glasses were crooked and his mouth
was slightly parted. Olivia gave him a firm nudge, which only made him snore
louder. “Poor guy—he probably hasn’t had a decent night of sleep since Cameron
left a couple of months ago…”

“Bitch”, Kendall murmured.

“Yeah, my thoughts exactly.”

Grant returned
from the restroom and watched
as the nurse and the referee huddled around Ty,
observing him sleep. He quietly crept up behind them and when he was inches
away from Olivia’s ear, he came to a halt. “Am I missing something?” he asked
as the girls leapt from the couch in a startled panic.

“Don’t do that!” Olivia exclaimed,
reaching for her chest to sooth her racing heartbeat. “You nearly scared my
britches off!”

Grant raised an
eyebrow. “Well, in that case—let
me try again.”

Kendall looked at Grant and then back
at Olivia. There was so much sexual tension in the room it nearly smothered
her. “Okaaay—I think this is my cue to go.” She reached for her purse lying on
the glass sofa table and fumbled around for her keys. “Great party, by the
way.”

Without tearing his eyes from the
sexy referee in front of him, Grant inquired about her ability to drive and
after Kendall reiterated that she was perfectly fine, she stepped out into the
cool night and closed the door behind her.

“And then there
were two”, he said as he looked
into Olivia’s emerald eyes.

“Well, actually three if you count
the unconscious aviator lying on the couch. You think maybe we could carry him
to his bed?” she asked.

“I think we can manage.”

After the gangster and referee tucked
the drunken aviator into bed, they cleared the kitchen and patio of empty cups
and beer bottles, essentially erasing any evidence that a party had taken place
there hours earlier. The temperature felt as though it had dropped a few more
degrees as Grant and Olivia sauntered back onto the patio for one last drink.
They huddled around the outdoor heater, sitting on a lounge chair next to one
another as though it were a bench. The pool light had a red cover fastened to
it, creating an illusion of bloody water, and various fake body parts floated
randomly along the surface.

“I missed this”, Olivia said as she
gestured toward the pool. “Ty always decorated the entire house for Halloween
every year when I was growin’ up. We didn’t have a pool then, but he always had
a lot of creativity.”

“He’s a good guy.”

“Yeah”, Olivia sighed. “He sure is…”

“He has a lot of decorations and
quite an im
agination, too”, Grant shared as
he pointed to a plastic
foot floating by.

“
Well,
we accumulated a lot of this over the years.
When I first came to live
with him, the only decora
tion he owned was a
ceramic pumpkin candy dish that
mom had given him. When my parents were
alive,
they decorated the house from top to
bottom with spooky
decorations and since Halloween was my favorite time
of year, Ty made sure we kept the tradition goin’.”

“So, Halloween was your favorite
holiday?”

“Uh-huh—still is”, she offered.

Grant turned his body slightly to
face her. “Why?”

Olivia shrugged her shoulders. “I
don’t know—I guess it’s because it’s the only night out of the year that you
can put on a costume and transform into someone else. You can pretend, for one
night, to lead a completely different life… And I have no idea why I just told
you that!” She confessed as she emerged from her trance.

Olivia turned
and met his intense gaze. “Don’t”,
she demanded.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t look at me like that!”

Clearly amused, Grant revealed a
charming smile. “How am I looking at you?”

“Like… like you think I’m completely
crazy
or somethin’.”

He couldn’t take it any longer. Without
hesitation, he reached behind her head and cupped the back of her neck, gently
caressing her jaw with his
thumb. “I wasn’t
thinking you were crazy… I was
thinking
about what it’d be like to kiss you.”

“Oh”, she whispered.

Grant licked his suddenly dry lips
and then leaned forward. He pressed his mouth against her soft, warm lips,
giving her an opportunity to pull away if she was having second thoughts.

 She didn’t.

Instead her lips parted, inviting him
for a taste. One slick stroke of her sweet tongue and he was gone. He angled
his head to deepen the kiss and heard the sweetest moan escape from the back of
her throat.

Olivia clenched his light brown hair
in her
hands, wanting to feel closer to
him—suddenly
needing to be closer
.
Every nerve-ending was on
alert, her skin hypersensitive to his gentle touch. His hands grazed down her
back, sending shivers down her spine and spreading warmth across her body like
a sultry New Orleans summer day.

“I should probably go”, he whispered
against her mouth. He didn’t want to though, damn it. What he really wanted to
do was strip her out of her referee ensemble and rack up a slew of
penalties.
He wanted to play dirty; he wanted to make a touchdown…