Seaside Lovers: Grayson Lacroux (Love in Bloom: Seaside Summers)

  Seaside Lovers

  Seaside Summers, Book Seven

  Love in Bloom Series

  Melissa Foster

  This is a work of fiction. The events and characters described herein are imaginary and are not intended to refer to specific places or living persons. The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.

  SEASIDE LOVERS

  All Rights Reserved.

  Copyright © 2016 Melissa Foster

  V1.0

  This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Cover Design: Natasha Brown

  EVERAFTER ROMANCE

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  A Note to Readers

  For more information on the Love in Bloom big-family romance collection, follow me on Facebook, join my Street Team, and of course, sign up for my newsletter so you never miss a release.

  http://www.MelissaFoster.com/Newsletter

  The Seaside Summers series is just one of the subseries in the Love in Bloom big-family romance collection. Characters from each subseries make appearances in future books so you never miss an engagement, wedding, or birth. Keep track of your favorite characters with the essential Love in Bloom Series Guide: www.melissafoster.com/LIBSG

  Love in Bloom Subseries Order

  Snow Sisters

  The Bradens

  The Remingtons

  Seaside Summers

  The Ryders

  Wild Boys After Dark

  Bad Boys After Dark

  Harborside Nights

  Get your FREE first in series Love in Bloom books here: http://www.MelissaFoster.com/LIBFree

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Excerpt: CHASED BY LOVE (The Ryders)

  Excerpt: CRUSHING ON LOVE (The Bradens)

  Excerpt: TEMPTING TRISTAN

  BOOK LIST

  Acknowledgments

  Meet Melissa

  Chapter One

  PARKER COLLINS SHOVED a handful of M&M’s in her mouth, eyes glued to Saw III. A burst of light illuminated the pitch-black media room, followed by a scream of terror. Christmas, her four-year-old English mastiff, sacked out beside her on the couch, pushed his big head beneath her legs as darkness shrouded them again. Another shrill scream brought her big chicken of a dog deeper into her leg tunnel.

  “Whoever said dogs were a man’s best friend was an idiot. My best friend.” Especially now that Bert’s gone. A few tears slipped down her cheek.

  Christmas whimpered, pulled his head from beneath her legs, and licked her from chin to eyes, getting every last one of her tears and coming back for more. He’d been lapping up her tears for two weeks, ever since she’d lost her friend, mentor, and the only family she’d ever known. Bert Stein had suffered a massive heart attack while Parker was in Italy filming her latest movie, and she’d been moving on autopilot ever since: picking up Christmas from his housekeeper in Los Angeles because Bert had been watching him while she was away, attending Bert’s funeral, trying to remember how to breathe, and finally, coming to her house in Wellfleet to mourn—and, she hoped, to mend a fence Bert was never able to with his estranged brother.

  Holing up in the bay-front home she’d built for the Collins Children’s Foundation, where no one would look for her, was the only way she could grieve without negative ramifications. God forbid an A-list actress went out looking like an average woman whose heart had been ripped from her chest. Rag magazines would pay big bucks for pictures of her puffy, tired eyes and I-don’t-give-a-shit tangled hair. She could just imagine the headlines: Parker Collins’s New Drug Addiction, or Unplanned Pregnancy for Parker, or anything else that would sell magazines. Nobody cared that she’d never even smoked a cigarette, that she needed to have sex in order to get pregnant, or that she’d gone so long without, she wondered if her best parts even worked anymore.

  She pressed her hands to Christmas’s droopy cheeks, kissed her bewildered boy’s snout, and reached for the bottle of tequila she’d been nursing. She’d never had tequila before tonight, but it was the perfect addition to her chocolate–horror movie grief remedy. After pouring herself another shot, she tossed it back in one gulp, savoring the warmth as it slid down her throat and drowned her sadness.

  She set the glass beside her on the couch and shoved her hand into the jumbo bag of peanut M&M’s that had consoled her throughout the evening—because a big lazy dog was great for licking tears, but nothing quenched sadness like candy-coated chocolate. And tequila. Definitely tequila. Her fingers scraped the bottom of the bag. Damn it. She tossed the empty bag to the floor. Christmas hung his head over the side of the couch and whimpered.

  “Don’t judge me. It can’t be that bad.” She leaned forward to assess the damage, knocking an empty pizza box to the floor, and reached for the coffee table to stop the room from spinning. “Whoa.”

  Another scream brought her eyes to the movie, then toward the movement in her peripheral vision, where a shadowy figure blocked the entrance to the media room. It took her alcohol-drenched mind a minute to realize the tall, broad man filling the doorway wasn’t supposed to be in her house. Panic spread through her veins, catapulting her to her feet. Christmas darted to the stranger with a friendly woof.

  “Oh God.” She reached for the wall to steady the spinning room, fighting to push through her drunken haze. She’d seen enough movies to know she was going to die in the media room of this lonely house, wearing chocolate-stained sweatpants—or more accurately, ice-cream-, tequila-, pizza-sauce-, and chocolate-stained sweatpants—while her dog made a new friend of her killer.

  “Stay back. He’s a killer. One command and you’re dead!” Not likely with her loving dog.

  The man sank to one knee, his face hidden by her big, traitorous dog.

  “Yeah, I can see that,” he said casually, as only a coldhearted psycho killer could.

  Searching for a weapon, she grabbed the tequila bottle, only too late realizing it was spilling down her wrist. She flipped it upright, wishing this was a movie and someone would yell, Cut!

  A piercing scream drew their attention to the heart-pounding terror on the projection screen. Suddenly the room was showered in light. Parker’s eyes slammed shut against the sensory invasion, then flew open to get a look at the man who would probably find fame as the Parker Collins Killer.

  Her breath caught in her throat, and her hand flew to her fr
antically beating heart, as she took in the Greek god rising to his feet before her. His smoldering dark eyes nearly brought her to her knees. Grayson Lacroux.

  “Grayson?” Do I sound scared, drunk, or like I want to jump your bones? Probably all three, which wasn’t good. Grayson had won a two-year contract in a design competition last summer, and for the past ten months he’d been designing artwork for the Collins Children’s Foundation. As the founder of CCF, Parker headed up the project, and they’d exchanged hundreds of emails—emails that felt intimate and meaningful and had pulled her through too many long, lonely nights to count.

  “What are you doing here?” She cringed at how breathless she sounded. Even in her drunken state she knew it had nothing to do with her initial fears and everything to do with the towering male across the room.

  His lips curved up as he surveyed the room. She’d come straight down to the media room in full-on holing-up mode after arriving from LA. Her open suitcase lay in the middle of the floor, lace and silk seeping over the sides. The clothes she’d worn on the flight were strewn across the hardwood floor. One pink high heel peeked out from beneath an empty bag of Twizzlers; the other was nowhere in sight. An orgy of fun-size candy bar wrappers and M&M’s littered the floor.

  “I might ask you the same thing.” His voice was low and rich and made the room feel fifty degrees hotter.

  Maybe that’s the tequila.

  “I came to take measurements for the railing and heard a noise. I didn’t know you were here.”

  Measurements? She couldn’t think with his dark, assessing gaze trained on her as he crossed the room. Each step was a declaration of power and control—the same air of confidence he relayed in his emails. Parker was used to beautiful people, but holy mother of hot and sexy men, Grayson brought manliness and sex appeal to a whole new level. An enticingly tempting level. She was five nine, and he had several delicious inches on her. His bulbous biceps and massive breadth made her feel more delicate than she was. His tousled, thick dark hair and unwavering air of command made her knees wobble. She took a deep, unsteady breath and backed against the wall to stabilize those wobbly knees, but he stepped closer, assaulting her senses with his musky, and somehow summery, scent.

  Nope. Definitely not the tequila. The man was a walking heat wave.

  He eyed the tequila bottle in her hand, and his eyes filled with amusement. “Having a little party?” He plucked a sticky piece of candy from her hair and held it between his large finger and thumb with a cocky grin.

  A crazy-hot cocky grin that sent dirty thoughts about his mouth rushing to the front of her mind. “Not exactly,” she mumbled.

  “You’ve been avoiding my emails.”

  She’d been avoiding email, voicemail, and life since Bert’s funeral. Grayson was on her callback list, along with her agent, a few foundation staff members, and about a dozen so-called friends.

  “I…Um…” Can’t really think clearly. She lifted the tequila bottle. “Care to join me?”

  His gaze dragged down her tank top, bringing her nipples to attention and reminding her she’d taken off her bra. As if on cue, Christmas woofed, Parker’s pink lace bra dangling from his mouth. Grayson’s eyes brimmed with heat, making her want to put him on a totally different kind of to-do list.

  He’d been the subject of her late-night fantasies for so many months she felt like she already knew him well enough for him to own that list.

  This was bad.

  Very, very bad.

  Parker didn’t have that kind of to-do list. She did relationships. Or rather, didn’t do them, based on her dating history.

  Ugh! Her head was too fuzzy to try to untangle the web of lust she’d weaved with every email, every intimate glance into his private world of family, friends, and his love of his craft. Grayson worked with heavy metals, as evident from his insanely perfect physique, which no gym in the world could produce, and his designs were excruciatingly unique and beautiful. Parker had probably driven him crazy making changes, but if she had, he’d never let on. She loved reading his descriptions about why he designed certain pieces and how he felt when he was creating them. Sometimes he wrote about missing his family, or about bonfires and outings he’d gone on when he flew home to work with his brother on specific designs for CCF. She’d been careful not to ask personal questions, so she wouldn’t feel inclined to share her personal life, but she had secretly clung to each of his tales, treasuring the emotions he’d so eloquently shared. She’d made excessive design changes just to keep those intimate glances of him coming.

  And now he was here, all six-something feet of him, close enough to see and touch and taste—and between her grief and his godliness, she was clearly losing her mind.

  She pushed past him, grabbed the lingerie from Christmas, and tossed it into her suitcase. “Lie down.”

  Christmas walked in a circle and plopped onto a pile of clothes with a huff.

  Parker grabbed a shot glass from the bar, determined to remain in her inebriated state so she could deal with all the testosterone flinging around the room, and sank down to the couch. “Coming, big guy?”

  **

  HELL YEAH, I’D totally be into coming. Grayson scrubbed his hand down his face to try to clear that thought from his brain and sat down beside Parker, silently reminding himself that she was technically his boss and a client. That was only one reason he should stop thinking about how incredibly sexy she was. They’d been emailing for almost a year, and he’d sensed affection brewing between them, even if neither one had directly addressed it. Three weeks ago she’d sent him an email pulling him from the foundation project to design a railing for this mini-mansion and had followed it up with a note about being excited to finally get together in person—and he hadn’t heard from her since.

  Another reason he needed to keep his sexual urges at bay—because he really needed to find as many reasons as possible right this very second—was the inebriated state and slightly red, puffy eyes of the scrumptious blonde currently reaching across his lap. Her hair tumbled sexily over her bare shoulders as she fished for something between the leather sofa cushions. There was no ignoring the feel of her pert nipples against his thigh, making him hard and hungry for what he shouldn’t have. At least not tonight, with all that alcohol muddying your thoughts.

  She crawled off his lap and held up another shot glass. “Voilà! Fill ’er up!”

  Needing the alcohol to calm the inferno inside him, he gladly filled their glasses and handed her one. She wrapped her delicate fingers around his, giving him ideas about what else he’d like to see those slender digits wrapped around. Her blue eyes filled with determination, which he also found incredibly sexy.

  “Don’t tell anyone you saw me like this.”

  Seriously? Who did she think he’d tell? “I’ll cross putting an article in the paper tomorrow off my list.”

  She pushed her face to within an inch of his. His eyes fell to her luscious lips as more erotic thoughts raced through his mind. He was skating on very thin ice.

  “Parker can’t do things like cry, or curse, or eat an entire jumbo bag of M&M’s and watch horror movies until her eyes nearly bleed without being judged. Only Polly can do that.”

  “Polly?” He reached for her glass, figuring she’d had enough and needed more babysitting than his sexual urges did at the moment.

  She pulled her glass out of his reach with a devilish glint in her eyes and clinked it to his. “To Bert. I miss him so much I ache.” She downed the drink in one swallow.

  Bert? Jealousy clawed at him. He shifted his gaze away from her, taking in the room again. Tequila, chocolate, pizza? Two weeks of radio silence. Aw, hell. Hallmarks of a rough breakup. That thought bugged the shit out of him, so he moved on to another. Maybe this was her typical go-to stress release after filming and Bert was her…director? No way she’d ache for her director. Unless…Christ, something else, anything else. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get past his first assessment. Had their e
mails only felt personal? It was difficult to assess a lot of things over email, so it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that he’d misinterpreted the depth of their friendship, regardless of the heat simmering between them now.

  As she refilled their glasses, he realized she’d never mentioned her dog. He’d talked about his family and friends, and if he’d had a dog, he sure as shit would have mentioned it. Who would leave out their dog? Feeling like a complete numskull, he realized she’d never mentioned her family, either. Had he been sucked in by her musings over how pretty the countryside was and how she wished he was there to see it? And her off-the-cuff remarks about how acting would be easier if the other actors were as confident as he was?

  Another look around the room told him he was an idiot.

  This is a post breakup breakdown. So much for babysitting. He could deal with a lot of things, but picking up the pieces from some other guy’s mistakes was not one of them. He downed the shot, thankful she’d refilled their glasses.

  “Bert?” he mumbled to himself, thinking about how he’d like to wring the asshole’s neck—right after he wrung his own for being such a fool. Parker was America’s sweetheart. Right up there with Julia Roberts. While he’d been slowly falling for the sweet, gorgeous woman a million miles away, she’d probably been out with dozens of Hollywood heartthrobs. He didn’t like knowing he’d misinterpreted their friendship, but he only had himself to blame for that. But he didn’t appreciate being blown off or having his time wasted. He couldn’t move forward with the railing designs he’d sent her over the past two weeks without her approval—and she’d obviously been too wrapped up in whoever the fuck Bert was to answer a single email.

  It was time for him to leave.