The Summer of Us (Mission Cove 1)

Except, as I slid behind the wheel and drove the short distance to the house, one thought permeated my brain.

I wasn’t giving Sunny up without a fight.

And this time, I wasn’t above fighting dirty.9LincI pulled up my car beside the bright-pink SUV in the driveway of my father’s house. He would have been horrified at the sight of it—and the woman who slipped from behind the wheel, her high-top sneakers hitting the pavement with a loud thump.

Abby approached my car, her blond hair, complete with a wide pink stripe to match her sneakers, piled on top of her head in a messy cluster of curls. The color caught the sun, glowing bright and gold. It wasn’t the same burnished glow of Sunny’s but rather like a beacon of sunshine. Abby wore a tight-fitting dress in pink and white, the material stretched over her breasts, highlighting “the girls,” as she called them. Most of her face was covered by the huge sunglasses she wore, but her smile was wide, although I noticed the tension in her shoulders.

“Hey, boss man. Nice place.” She snorted. “You meant it when you said ostentatious.”

I bent and brushed a kiss to her cheek, taking the bag she grabbed from her back seat and throwing it onto the passenger seat of my car. Then I ran a hand through my hair.

“I hate this place.”

She laid a hand on my arm. “I know.”

Taking the opportunity, I hooked my finger over the top of the sunglasses and tugged them down her nose. She immediately slapped my hand away.

“Hey, stop that.”

I didn’t try again. I saw what I needed to see. I wasn’t the only one having a bad day. The dark circles under her eyes told me all I needed to know. I had to find out what had happened, but I had to wait for the right moment. Otherwise, she would shut me down faster than the speed of light.

I slid an arm around her shoulders. “Come on in. Ned will be here soon. You can keep me company, and we can go through my schedule.”

“I am dying to find out why you’re staying on in Mission Cove,” she admitted, grabbing her huge purse from the back seat. I swore she kept half the contents of her apartment in it. “You said you’d rather spend eternity in hell than come back here.”

I glanced at her over my shoulder as I slid the key into the front door lock. “I think we both have stories to tell.” I arched my eyebrow. “You know the code, Abigail. Tit for tat.”

She huffed out a breath but didn’t argue. From the moment I met her, that had been our code. If I shared, so did she—and vice versa. We had no secrets between us. Our unseen scars were real and open—often bleeding, and the cause of them spoken out loud in the hopes that they would cease to hurt us.

Sometimes, it worked. Other times, the scars ran too deep and would forever fester and wear at us. But still, we pushed on, baring our souls and accepting each other for the people we were—the people we had to become to break free from our pasts.

She nodded, the smile gone from her face. Inside, she followed me to the kitchen and accepted the bottle of water I handed her. To provide her a chance to collect her thoughts, I gave her a tour of the house, then we headed to my father’s den.

She looked around the room. “Has the place changed much since you lived here?”

“Nope. Nothing—except a few things I removed to keep, but nothing anyone would notice. They were already packed in boxes or shoved in drawers.”

She shivered. “It’s cold. What an austere place to live.”

I swallowed a long drink of water. “It was nicer when my mom was alive. When she died, my father removed any trace of her. It became a shrine to himself. To his power. This—” I tapped the desk “—was his throne. He commanded his world from it.” I snorted. “Mine as well.”

“He was a real bastard.”

“I know.”

“But he’s gone. And you’re slowly erasing him and his deeds. Spending his fortune on everything he hated. That must feel good.”

“It does.”

“So why the frown? What’s wrong?”

I rubbed my eyes. “Sunny,” I said simply. “She’s here.”

Her eyes widened. “What? Here in Mission Cove?”

“Yes, she’s been here for a while.”

She sat down in the chair across from the desk. “Tell me.”

I told her everything. How it felt returning to Mission Cove. Walking into Sunny’s bakery and the shock of seeing her. Our altercation here in the den. When I got to the part about Sunny slapping me and my response, Abby gasped quietly.

“Oh, Linc. How awful.”

I shook my head. “No, it was what we needed to break the ice. She had been holding in her anger all this time, so it’s hardly a surprise.”