Love on Lavender Island (A Lavender Island Novel Book 2) by Lauren Christopher Page A

write it down, dear: flat iron.”
    “Got it.”
    “Do you want me to get it for you? My hip’s been giving out, but maybe Bob could take me down the hill and we could—”
    “No, no, that’s okay. You rest, Gert. I’ll get it. I promise.”
    “And a card.”
    “A card?”
    “A birthday card. Get something nice, and write something meaningful inside. It might be hard for you two to communicate right now, but take this opportunity to write something nice to her.”
    Adam nodded. Gert was probably right. He and Amanda had gotten off to a rocky start, but he just needed to try harder.
    “All right, dear,” she said. “You take care.”
    “You, too, Gert.”
    “Maybe you can come over one of these nights soon for some red velvet cake. It looks like you’re losing weight. I’ll pack you a few dinners, too. Bring Amanda.”
    “Thanks.”
    Adam hung up and pinched the bridge of his nose to keep a headache from coming on. He was going to miss Bob and Gert. He’d always said he wanted to leave this island the entire time he was growing up, but now that it was becoming a reality, damn . . . he would miss some of these people.
    He glanced out the tiny office window and did a double take at Paige Grant walking by. He wasn’t used to seeing guests—especially between dude groups—walk along the back way, along the planks that ran in front of the pine forest. Seeing her made his pulse race. Damn. That almost felt like good, old-fashioned attraction. He’d nearly forgotten what that felt like.
    Back in his more randy, carefree days, he’d felt plenty of attraction. He’d enjoyed a string of females every summer, as far back as he could remember, because when you lived in a resort town, there were new girls every season.
    As he got older, though, the “summer girls” became part of normal life, normal expectation, and Adam realized he had no taste for the local girls anymore. The local girls were around forever, while the summer girls were deliciously temporary. No strings, no messy breakups, no expectations of forever. Adam had had enough worry and responsibility in his life. He certainly didn’t need girls tipping the scales. So the summer girls grew up and became summer women. And Adam grew up relishing them. It had worked his whole life.
    But ever since his dad’s first heart attack six years ago, he’d only had time for the most basic of actions and reactions: get up, take care of the ranch, haul feed, fix fences, take care of the hotel patrons, take care of the horses, rinse, and repeat. Impressing new women, or thinking about things beyond his fence line, never seemed to enter the picture.
    But now, as he stared out the window at Paige, he remembered how she’d gotten his blood pumping the day before. How she’d made him smile. How he’d felt strangely protective of her when she’d encountered that intruder. How he’d felt bad when the lights clanked out at the hot tub and she’d been scared. How he’d felt that twinge of nervous empathy crawl through his arms when he’d removed that splinter in her foot . . .
    He watched her walk along the back porch to her room—her arms loaded with two big bags—and suddenly wanted to talk to her again.
    But some kind of sense kicked in, and he told himself to ignore her. His life was a shit-storm. He had no right thinking about, or looking at, a woman right now. Especially a woman to whom he could offer nothing. And especially a woman who wanted something from him, business-wise, that he couldn’t provide.
    He rustled some papers, moved some things around on his desk, tried to concentrate on the month’s payroll. But as he glanced up at Paige through the window again, his blood started thrumming, his heart started working, and he took a deep breath.
    Ignoring her was going to be like ignoring lightning.

CHAPTER 8
    The next morning, Paige sprang out of bed, practiced ninety minutes of pranayama breathing exercises, went into her favorite hatha-yoga