First Time in Forever (Puffin Island 1)

“You’re Brittany’s friend, living in Brittany’s cottage. That makes you a local.”

“All it takes is one person. One call to the press and suddenly the island is flooded with them, like ants finding sugar to feed on.”

He finished his coffee. “You’re safe here tonight. Tomorrow we’ll formulate a plan.”

She knew a plan wasn’t going to change the basic facts.

Like it or not, she was responsible for a child.

*

HE DROVE HOME along the coast road, saw a light burning in Alec’s house, considered stopping in and then decided he’d end up fielding questions he didn’t want to answer.

He avoided the bustle of the bar and went straight to his apartment. The building that now housed the Ocean Club Apartments had originally been a boatyard. It had stood empty for over three decades, battered by storms and winter weather, which was why he’d managed to buy the land for a ridiculously low price. He’d seen potential where others hadn’t.

It had been a labor of love converting it, but his reward had been a profitable rental business and a premium apartment he could have sold a hundred times over. It stretched the length of the building and had a large glass-fronted open-plan living space that was always flooded with light regardless of season or weather.

At night he liked to sprawl on one of the sofas and watch the sun melt into the sea. Tonight he made straight for the office area in the corner and flipped open his laptop.

He hit the power switch and grabbed a beer from the fridge while he waited for it to boot up. Sprawling in the chair, he thought about the woman.

Those green eyes had been the first thing he’d noticed about her when she’d opened the door to him that day, closely followed by those delicious curves that no amount of discreet clothing could conceal.

The fact she’d put her life on hold to care for her orphaned niece was laudable, but at the same time put her strictly out of bounds.

Ryan wasn’t looking for that level of complexity or intimacy in his relationships.

He’d had his fill of parenthood at an age when most kids had barely discovered the meaning of sex.

Without the plea from Brittany asking him to check on her friend, he would have stayed the hell away from her, and now that he had the facts, he was starting to wish he had.

He understood her situation better than she could possibly have imagined, which made the power of the sexual connection an inconvenience he was determined to ignore.

A woman with a child was not part of his game plan, and the fact that the child wasn’t biologically hers made no difference. White knight was a role he avoided, right along with women who made noises about weddings and settling down.

Juliet Fox.

Brittany obviously hadn’t mentioned his past. If Emily had known the truth, she definitely would have closed the door in his face.

With a soft curse he turned to his laptop and hit a couple of keys.

He started by searching the internet. He knew where to look to get the information he needed, and once he’d found everything he could without going deeper he reached for his phone and made one call.

“Larry?”

“Hey, stranger.”

He could imagine his old colleague and adversary hunched over his untidy desk with papers overflowing over every square inch of space. “Slow news day?”

“Why would you care about the news? I thought you’d retired, yacht boy.”

“I have, but the paper I saw today was enough to send a person to sleep. Lana Fox on the front page. What’s that about?”

“Why do you care? Not exactly your area of interest, and anyway, last time I heard, all you read was tide tables. Are you thinking of coming back to the real world?”

“No. I’m just curious.”

“Curious is one step from coming out of retirement.”