LITMIR.BIZ

      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

      Epilogue

      Chapter One

      Love at first sight. If anyone had told Kenzie Daniels that it was about to happen to her she would have hooted with laughter.

      Two people who’d never met before didn’t just take one look at each other and go all soft inside. Outside of the movies it didn’t happen like that. Not with a total stranger, not coming face-to-face in the middle of nowhere—and certainly not if the other person happened to be a seven-year-old boy.

      But that’s exactly what happened, and in a place Kenzie would never have expected: on the beach not far from her house, while lying on a towel reading a magazine.

      She’d been up most of the night before drawing—as an artist you worked when your muse was awake—so this morning she’d gone out after breakfast to lounge in the sun before heading to the grocery store to do her weekly shopping.

      Crossing the dunes by way of the boardwalk, she spread her towel in the sand. The tide was low and the waves washed lazily onshore. One of the things Kenzie loved about the beaches that made up Cape Hatteras National Seashore was the fact that they were rarely crowded. This time of morning only a few anglers stood casting their rods into the shore break while a group of teenagers waxed up their surfboards nearby.

      Of course, in a few hours families would come spilling from the houses lining the dunes behind her, loaded down with beach chairs, umbrellas and toys. After all, July was peak season on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, and every town from Nags Head south to Buxton, where Kenzie lived, was crowded with vacationers.

      But the sheer length of the Outer Banks’ shoreline meant that there was always plenty of room for everyone. And for the time being few people were around to disturb the peaceful morning hours.

      Taking off her shirt to expose the slim, one-piece swimsuit underneath, Kenzie rubbed on sunscreen, then stretched out on her back and reached for her copy of Newsweek. Already she could feel the tension in her neck and shoulders seeping away. She’d spent too long hunched over the drawing board again, but inspiration had struck just before bedtime and she now had two good drawings to show for the sleepless night.

      How long had she worked anyway? At least until three o’clock. She grimaced ruefully, picturing her mother nagging her for keeping such hours. Good thing she wasn’t living at home anymore. And good thing she hadn’t heeded her mother’s advice by advertising for a roommate. This way she could burn the midnight oil as long as she wished, play the music as loud as she wanted, never worry that she was running afoul of someone else’s privacy, feelings or sleeping habits.

      You were wrong, Mother. You, too, Brent. Living alone definitely has its advantages.

      So did the fact that she and Brent hadn’t gotten married the way they’d planned.

      Had that been the case, “I’d

Скачать книгу