Playing With Trouble (Desire Bay 1)

Chapter One

Laura Baughman took a deep breath, smelling the sea air and the coming rain. What the hell was she doing? Oh, right, she was taking her life back. Which was why she was standing in front of her father’s home-and-garden shop in the small town she’d grown up in and hadn’t been back to in ten years.

A raindrop hit her nose, and she could almost hear the splat of the water lash her skin. She gasped, because it was a shock. She hadn’t seen a lot of rain in the past ten years in California. Hell, being desert-bound for a decade, she’d almost forgotten what water looked like.

“Are you okay?” her friend Hannah’s voice boomed through her cell phone.

“Yes, I’m fine,” Laura said and wiped her nose. “Just . . . I think it’s starting to rain.”

“Yeah, that’ll happen. It’s fricking Oregon.”

Laura balanced the phone between her shoulder and ear and continued to stare down her childhood. This was the shop her father and mother had started before she was even born. The shop that was supposed to be a part of her future . . . before she’d run away.

“Yes, I’m aware it rains in Oregon,” Laura said defensively. It had been a long time, but she could still remember how a storm sounded when the clouds rolled above the ocean waves and surrounded the cute coastal town with a rumble of thunder. It had always calmed her. Not scared her. Because her mother loved the rain. Had loved it.

“Not much changes around here,” Laura said, squinting to look several blocks down Main Street. The same bright-colored shops still lined the cobblestone sidewalk, and the yellow lamps in front of every store glowed softly. Her father’s shop—its own structure with an acre surrounding it—was at the end of the street. Now wasn’t the time to walk into town and literally down memory lane, though. She had to find her dad, who should be here—yet there was no sign of life.

“A lot more has changed than you know,” Hannah said. Laura could hear people talking in the background and glasses clinking. “You coming by my bar later? Say hi to your best friend properly?”

“Of course,” Laura said. She and Hannah had grown up together and stayed in touch. She really was her best friend and, honestly, the only person she’d confided in about the past and the struggle that came with it.

So much had happened in the past, and Laura was starting a mental graveyard in her mind where all her hopes had gone to die. Yep, she had had a lot of things, and then she’d lost them.

Laura tugged on her ring finger. Her left ring finger. The finger that had had a ring on it but was now bare. Even though it’d been a year since she’d filed for divorce, there was six months of fighting beforehand. It had taken only a few weeks for the ink to dry before she packed her few possessions in her car. And still she tugged that same finger when nervous. But she’d said good-bye to her ex-husband a long time ago. In her heart and in her life. It had been a brutal year, but she was finally healing. Over him. Over the mess that he’d made of her life. Ten years of being emotionally beaten down. Being told, convinced, that she was nothing more than what he allowed her to be. Nothing was hers. Not the money, not the career, nothing. It was all his and he’d taken it, and she was happy to be rid of him. Because she still had her spine and her ambition. And she’d lost herself there for a while, but she was ready to take back her life for herself. And claiming her family shop was the first step.

Another drop of rain hit her nose, and she shifted in her four-inch pumps. The store parking lot was riddled with chunky old asphalt, and she struggled to find a flat surface.

“Lot of cute guys in here tonight,” Hannah said.

“The man I’m interested in is Waylon Wells.”

“Ew, the old guy?”

“He still does concrete around here, right?” Laura asked. Her father had hired him twenty years ago to pour the parking lot in the first place.

“Ah, yeah,” Hannah confirmed.

“Great.” Because Laura wasn’t interested in dating, or men—she was interested in getting this home-and-garden shop looking fresh and in top shape.

Hopefully without making a mess of things first. Because that was something she’d been known for. Laura Baughman: the girl who makes messes and wrong decisions. Like her ex, for example. She was the one who’d fallen for him. But that was her curse. Her mother used to tell her all the time, “Laura Baughman, you’re better suited to pick a man from a hat than from your intuition.” And that was fair. Considering Laura had always picked the wrong man. Always. But that was going to change, since not only was she back in town to pick up the pieces of a life she’d left behind, it was her final shot to make something of herself. For herself. And that meant no men. And absolutely no dating.

Yep. Zero.

Just the thought made her brain—and other parts—throb in protest, but she had to stay strong. She’d been celibate this past year going through a messy divorce; what was another year?

She shuddered at the thought. Granted, her ex, Graham, hadn’t been stellar in the bedroom. Once upon a time, she was a naive nineteen-year-old and he was the older, wiser guy who’d blown through town with swagger and mystery. But she wasn’t a coed or a virgin anymore. She’d given both those things to Graham, and now, with one sexual partner and a d

ecade of disappointing nights under her belt, she could surely forgo sex and intimacy, since it wasn’t like she’d been rolling in either beforehand.

“So . . . you really okay?” Hannah asked, seeming to pick up something in Laura’s silence. And the truth was, no, not really. Staring at the shop with its white shutters and empty flower bed out front made her miss her mother even more. It was ten years ago this week that she’d passed away. Ten years ago that Laura had had the choice to stay and help her father with the shop, to grieve, be a good daughter, and step up. Ten years ago that she’d chosen to run from her mother’s death—the pain—and follow the wrong guy right out of town and never look back. Ten years ago she’d made a lot of wrong choices. But she had been a nineteen-year-old in pain. Wasn’t an excuse, but it was something she had to make right.

“I’m good,” she lied. “Just need to find my dad.” Her father had been kind to her. Keeping in touch, with limited phone calls from time to time. Laura had been isolated in her marriage, and the memories of her mother were too tough, so she hadn’t come back to town before this. Everything had changed after her mother died. She was the warm, stable glue that kept their little unit of three together. When she passed, her father’s quirks came out with a vengeance, just like Laura’s flighty need to always chase something far away. They’d both lost their rock and had been free-falling ever since.

And she was sorry.

So damn sorry she couldn’t look at herself in the mirror anymore. But she’d fix everything. She’d try. She’d help. And she’d make it right with her father, the shop, and her mother’s memory.

“Are you back for good, then?” Hannah asked. It was the same question she’d asked several times since Laura told her she was coming home.

“Yes. That’s my plan,” Laura confirmed.