The Truest Thing: Hart's Boardwalk #4 Read online

  Jack split his time between eating his burger, watching the screen above the bar, and talking to Coop while his friend served customers.

  There was nothing atypical about the evening.

  Jack was foreman of his own construction company, a job usually done by someone older. But Jack had worked in construction since he was fourteen years old. He’d hired Ray English, the guy he’d learned everything about construction from, stealing him away from the competition. He and Ray were more like co-foremen.

  They’d closed the site they were working on earlier than usual. It was a private development of a small community of homes, out near Jimtown. Jack tried to keep the weekends free, but sometimes when a client offered a lot for overtime, it was hard to say no. Not only was his team not working the weekend, but with permission from their clients, he’d given them Friday off so they could enjoy the kickoff game with a few beers the night before.

  His guys had been working flat out all summer and deserved the extra day. As for Jack, he was looking forward to doing some work to the home he’d bought six months ago in North Hartwell, near Coop’s house.

  Yeah, there was nothing out of the ordinary about Jack hanging out at Cooper’s Bar, eating, drinking, and shooting the breeze with his buddy and their local friends.

  Old Archie sat at the end of the bar, dressed immaculately from head to toe, despite the fact that he’d probably been drunk for forty-eight straight hours. His real name was Archibald Brown, and he was from old money. He was also an alcoholic whose wife had left him twenty years ago and had taken the kids with her.

  People had tried to help. Jack had tried.

  It was no good.

  Old Archie didn’t want help.

  Jack had to learn to let the guy be.

  “The Saints are looking good.” Old Archie gestured to the screen.

  Jack nodded. They were playing the Minnesota Vikings. “Yeah.”

  “Where’s Dana, Coop?” Old Archie asked. “She’s usually here for the first game of the season.”

  At the mention of Cooper’s wife, Dana, Jack flicked his buddy a look. Cooper was pulling a pint, not looking at Old Archie as he replied, “She wasn’t feeling it tonight. She’s at home, watching some shit romantic comedy and having something she called ‘self-care time.’”

  Jack looked up at the game, afraid the derision he felt was obvious. Self-care time? The woman worked eight hours a week at the salon as a receptionist and then did nothing else. She didn’t help Coop around the house. She didn’t help him at the bar. And she didn’t provide the guy with any kind of support beyond what she gave him in the bedroom. She bought shit Cooper had to work his ass off to afford, and Jack was afraid one day Dana would bury Coop in debt.

  Or worse.

  It would be fair to say Jack Devlin did not like Dana Kellerman Lawson.

  In fact, she’d caused the first real argument between him and Coop.

  Sometimes, Jack still couldn’t believe Cooper had disregarded Jack’s opinion.

  For years, they’d joked about Jack’s superpower—his ability to smell bullshit on someone from a mile away. Perhaps it was growing up in a house like the one he had with manipulative bastards around every corner. But Jack had instincts about folks, and he wasn’t often wrong. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been wrong about someone.

  And when Dana Kellerman came back to Hartwell from college and set her sights on Cooper, Jack tried to make his friend see sense. However, Coop couldn’t see past Dana’s beauty or that falsely sweet smile. Or the way she seemed to rely on him entirely, something that fed the protective, alpha-male shit Coop always had going on with the women in his life.

  However, Jack saw right through Dana. He saw past her movie-star looks and what did he find?

  A whole lot of nothing.

  That woman only wanted Cooper because other women wanted him, and they failed to nail him down.

  It probably didn’t hurt he owned lucrative property on the boardwalk.

  She wanted a handsome husband who bought her nice stuff and took care of everything and that’s what she got in Cooper. Seriously, she didn’t lift a finger to do a damn thing. They even had a housekeeper to look after their average-sized, three-bedroom house, something Cooper complained about because his mom had raised him to clean up after himself.

  Worse, whenever Cooper had a problem or was worried about the bar, Dana didn’t want to hear it. So Cooper laid that shit on Jack. What was the point of having a wife if it wasn’t a partnership, a support system? Jack had asked this, and Coop shut him down every time, so he stopped asking.

  After he’d warned Cooper not to propose to Dana, calling her shallow as a kiddie pool, he and Cooper hadn’t spoken for days. Jack finally had to apologize, knowing he’d lose his friend if he didn’t just let him do what he needed to do with Dana.

  Still, standing up as his best man at the wedding had not been an outstanding day for Jack.

  Cooper was more brother to him than his own brothers, and Jack wanted the absolute best for him.

  He deserved better than Dana, something that was becoming more apparent with each passing year.

  She’d realized Jack didn’t like her, and Dana didn’t know what to do with that. She expected all men to fall at her feet in worship and the fact that Jack didn’t was a challenge.

  Dana had been getting in his face lately, and Jack had been working overtime to avoid her, which wasn’t easy when she was married to his best friend.

  “Self-care?” Old Archie snorted. “What the hell does she need self-care for? The woman spends all day every day self-caring.”

  Jack’s lips twitched around his beer bottle as he stared determinedly at the screen.

  “She works,” Cooper said easily. “At the salon.”

  “For one day a week and only to catch up on the latest gossip.” Iris’s voice sounded behind Jack and he glanced over his shoulder. Iris Green, along with her husband, Ira, owned Antonio’s, an Italian pizzeria on the boardwalk. They weren’t Italian but their food certainly was. Jack lifted his chin at Iris.

  She smiled and patted his shoulder before looking at Cooper. “You got that table for three I reserved?”

  “Yeah, reserved you a booth.” Cooper nodded to the back of the bar. “You going to introduce us?”

  Wondering who Coop meant, Jack leaned so he could see past Iris.

  He spotted Ira standing next to a tall woman with pale-blond hair that spilled down a slender back in attractive waves. She wore a long, dark blue dress made of a material that clung to her body. And what a body it was. At least from what he could tell from the back. Narrow waist, gentle roundness to her hips, and the dress clung to an ass that made all the blood in his body travel south.

  Fuck me, he thought. Turn around so I can see that face.

  “Emery’s kind of shy.” Iris’s words pulled his attention from the new woman to her.

  “Emery?” Why was that name familiar?

  “She inherited the Burger Shack,” Cooper said, leaning on the bar.

  “The woman who’s turning it into a bookstore?” Jack had heard about her. Everyone had. Property on the boardwalk was prime real estate. His father, Ian Devlin, owned a lot of property in Hartwell. What he didn’t own was boardwalk property. Jack endured Sunday dinners at his parents’ house every second week and when news of Emery’s arrival hit, his father was disgruntled, to put it politely. “Some little upstart from New York inherited the Burger Shack from her grandmother and won’t sell it to me because she’s planning on running a business there. Idiot child. You know she’s moving here under a false name. Thinks the businesspeople here are too stupid to do a background check. But she’s not who she says she is. She’s a society princess with more money than brains. Woman is worth a mint.”

  When Cooper told him about Emery Saunders converting the place next door, Jack hadn’t told him that the woman was from money. No one needed to know her business, and while he trusted Cooper, he didn’t t
rust his friend wouldn’t tell Dana.

  And if Dana knew, everyone would know.

  “And when I say shy”—Iris leaned toward them conspiratorially—“I mean shy. We need to break this one in gently.”

  Jack snorted and shot the woman another look. “She’s not a horse, Iris.”

  “Trust me, Jack.” Iris sighed. “I know what I’m talking about.”

  It was then, as Jack flicked another look at Emery, that she turned around.

  And his typical evening at Cooper’s Bar went completely atypical.

  His heart raced like he’d just run a marathon. His mouth felt dry.

  Holy shit.

  Emery Saunders was the most beautiful fucking woman Jack Devlin had ever seen.

  “She’s only twenty,” Iris said. Her voice filled his ears as his eyes locked with Emery’s startling light blue ones. A blush stained her pale, smooth cheeks, and her lips parted as if she were surprised.

  His gut tightened.

  “And if the way she reacts around men is anything to go by, the girl is innocent as Snow White.” Iris tapped Jack’s shoulder and he reluctantly pulled his gaze away. She smirked at him. “She’s not a tourist you can mess around with—you hear what I’m saying?”

  Jack frowned at her but before he could respond, Iris was walking away. She led Emery and Ira across the bar to their reserved booth. Emery shot Jack another shy, quick look over her shoulder before sliding onto the bench seat, her long hair swaying across her slender back.

  “She’s a beauty,” Old Archie observed.

  Swallowing hard, wondering why his heart wouldn’t slow down, Jack tore his eyes away and stared unseeing at his half-empty plate.

  “Jack?”

  He looked up at Cooper. His friend was amused.

  “You might want to wipe your chin. You got a little drool right there.”

  “Fuck off,” Jack muttered good-naturedly.

  However, as the minutes passed, Jack couldn’t get back into the game. Instead, he kept looking toward his right shoulder, wanting to glance at her.

  Finally, he lost the struggle and looked across the bar at her.

  She was smiling softly at something Iris said.

  Jack itched to get off his stool and cross the room to introduce himself.

  He’d never been one for settling down. He’d expected to later, maybe in his thirties, which was only a couple years off. He wanted kids eventually. Someone to come home to.

  But since the age of thirteen, he’d been content to play the field. Jack had enjoyed his and Cooper’s standing in high school. They were on the football team. Girls thought they were good-looking. He’d never had a problem getting a date.

  Living in a tourist town was excellent for a guy who didn’t want to settle but also didn’t want to hurt a woman’s feelings. Born with a natural charm that he used to his advantage, Jack would see an attractive woman, approach, and make easy conversation that would eventually lead to a sexual relationship lasting only as long as their vacation in Hartwell.

  He firmly steered clear of local women.

  However, staring across the bar at Emery Saunders, Jack did not want to steer clear. The opposite, in fact. Some caveman-bullshit need to scoop her up before any other bastard got to her fired his blood.

  “Jack.”

  He wrenched his attention away, turning to face Cooper.

  His best friend’s amusement was replaced with disbelief.

  “What?”

  Cooper flicked a look in Emery’s direction and then back to Jack. Understanding dawned, and he grinned. “Really?”

  Feeling like he’d been caught doing something wrong, he shrugged, rubbing the nape of his neck, which was weirdly hot.

  Cooper leaned on the bar, lowering his voice. “Woman is beautiful. Iris is taken with her, which says a lot. You know she doesn’t suffer fools easily.”

  True.

  “But you heard Iris. Pure as fucking Snow White.” He raised an eyebrow. “You don’t fool around with a woman like that.”

  No. You didn’t. And Jack wouldn’t.

  As he remembered the calculating look in his father’s eyes that Sunday he talked about Emery, he knew he couldn’t approach her—even if he wanted to get to know her with a fierceness he’d never felt before.

  What no one else knew—what Ian Devlin was keeping close to his chest probably to use in the future—was that Emery Saunders was actually Louisa Emery Paxton. She’d inherited the majority shares in her deceased grandfather’s company, the Paxton Group, a billion-dollar corporation that owned airlines and an aeronautical company.

  If Jack attempted to insinuate himself into Emery’s life, Ian would only use him to get to her.

  Tightness clawed at his chest as it always did when he thought about his father and brothers. Jack had tried his best to break away. Now and then, one of them would hound Jack to come back into the fold. And Jack did whatever he could to avoid fucking up and giving Ian something he could use to blackmail Jack.

  All this time he thought he’d made it out. Free and clear of Ian.

  But Jack realized now that he hadn’t.

  When he finally settled down, it would have to be with a nobody. Someone Ian couldn’t use.

  It couldn’t be with a woman as wealthy as Emery Saunders.

  Disappointment that seemed out of proportion to the situation, considering he hadn’t even spoken two words to Emery, flooded him.

  Cooper must have seen something in his face because concern furrowed his brows. “You all right?”

  “I’m fine.” Jack’s voice was flat. “Just realized you’re right. I’m not ready to settle down.”

  His friend gave him a slow nod, but there was suspicion in Coop’s eyes.

  Avoiding him, Jack looked up at the flat screen.

  For the next two hours, he did his best to ignore the urge to look across the bar at Emery. He tried not to look at her when Iris and Ira came over to say good night while she hung back a little. If Iris hadn’t told him she was shy, Jack would think the New York princess was aloof.

  She didn’t look like a New York princess in that long, clingy dress.

  Christ, the image of her in that dress was imprinted on the back of his eyelids.

  As the Greens departed with Emery at their back, Jack’s willpower fled, and he looked.

  Just as Emery glanced back over her shoulder at him. When their eyes caught, she blushed again.

  She made his chest ache.

  Fucking ache.

  Then she was gone.

  His chest ached harder.

  Jack’s reaction was an overreaction. But he couldn’t deny it was how he felt.

  And for the first time in a long time, Jack got very, very drunk that night.

  2

  Emery

  Hartwell

  Nine years ago

  Standing behind the counter of my bookstore café, I gazed in wonder at the space. No one would have believed the compact building that had housed the Burger Shack could look like it did now.

  When my grandmother died, leaving me everything, including the rental properties she’d obtained up and down the East Coast, I’d spent weeks poring over it all with her business manager and financial advisor, Hague Williams. Hague was now in his late fifties, sharp as ever, and as devoted to me as he was to my grandmother.

  I knew I didn’t want to live on her estate in Westchester. The house was too big and lonely. I’d had dreams of opening a bookstore since I was a child, and I wanted as far away from society life as I could get. Like my grandmother before me, I had to trust in other people to run the Paxton Group so I could pursue my own passions.

  My grandmother’s interest had lain with real estate. She liked to travel the country looking for buildings that were unassuming but lucrative. For instance, the Burger Shack in a small beach town called Hartwell in Delaware’s Cape Region. Technically, Hartwell was a city, but it was tiny.

  She bought the building to rent out because
boardwalk property in the tourist city was worth a lot of money.

  When I started investigating her properties, I did it physically. I went out to all the locations that interested me. And I knew as soon as I arrived in Hartwell that it was the place for me. I gave the tenants of the Burger Shack three months to make other arrangements and included a hefty compensation for their troubles, against Hague’s advice. I had to soothe my guilt somehow, though. I was kicking someone out of their business so I could launch mine.

  “You own the building, Emery,” Hague had said, exasperated. “It belongs to you. Not them. It’s in the rental contract that you can end the contract with only six weeks’ notice.”

  I knew that. But still.

  After that, I began the hunt for a place to live. By sheer luck—or at least it seemed like luck—a beach house, minutes’ walk from what would become my bookstore, came up for sale. It was a sizable beach house with an open-plan living space, a wrap-around porch, and three bedrooms. I fell in love immediately. Mostly because the previous owners had attached a stunning porch swing that was almost like a bed. I could sit curled up on it every morning with coffee in hand and watch the sun rise above the ocean.

  Perfect.

  It cost a lot of money.

  But it was worth it.

  And now, I was actually here.

  As you entered the store, to the left was a large counter and behind it, coffee machines. To the right, the bookstore, its walls painted in a soft gray against the white woodwork. Ahead and up a few steps was a seating area filled with cute little white tables and chairs. To the left of those, comfortable armchairs and sofas were arranged near an open fireplace. I’d placed some Tiffany lamps from the house in Westchester around the store to give it a cozy vibe. Behind the counter was the door that led to my office and a private restroom. The customer restroom was behind a door on the opposite wall of the fireplace.

  I bit my lip as I took in the store—my store. The gray was exactly the sedate color my grandmother would’ve chosen. Maybe when it needed refreshed, I’d go for something punchier—like teal or turquoise. I was also thinking about selling sandwiches for people to enjoy with their coffees. I could make them up in the morning before the store opened. I’d have to get a permit for that but it was worth considering.