he had stayed with them more times than he could count.
His mind snapped back to the present when he saw Ava, dressed in a flimsy nightgown, drag the metal garbage can from the side of the house to the front yard. She hauled the dress off the ground and dumped it into the garbage can before walking away. For a moment Derek thought that that might be it, but she came back with a can of lighter fluid and a box of matches. He watched motionlessly as she squirted the entire bottle into the can.
Something inside of Derek screamed at him to move.
He sprinted from his house and made it to Ava just as she lit a match. He caught her hand, blew it out and took the box away from her.
“Are you insane?” he shouted.
She looked up at him with shocked, angry eyes, and even though she looked crazy as hell, he still found her insanely attractive. “Are you trying to burn down the whole damn neighborhood?”
“Mind your business, Mr. Holier-Than-Thou. This doesn’t concern you.”
“Yes, it does! Anyone who attempts to burn down my island becomes my concern.”
“Get over yourself. I’m just lighting the dress on fire. It’s in a metal garbage can. It’s not like I sprayed lighter fluid on your house.”
“But it’s windy, and you put enough fluid on there to have thirty-five cookouts. My house is full of wood and varnish and every other kind of flammable thing. There was a terrible fire on the island a few years ago that destroyed many homes. Just because you’re pissed that your scumbag fiancé turned out to be an even bigger scumbag than you thought, doesn’t mean you can put my house or anyone else’s in jeopardy.”
“The last thing I need is a lecture from you. Isn’t there a dolphin you could be rescuing or a citizen you could be lecturing about their civic duty?”
“I don’t lecture people. I’m just trying to stop you from being a pyromaniac lunatic!”
“All you do is lecture. It must be exhausting needing to be right every single moment of your life. Tell me, do you get nosebleeds from sticking your nose so high up in the air?”
He had never heard her speak like this; in fact, he rarely heard her speak at all, and when she did, it was in a quiet measured way. She always seemed to ooze class and elegance, and frankly she seemed like a snob to him. But today she was full of fire.
Literally and figuratively.
“Why did you choose to rent a house next to mine? There have to be dozens of rentals on this island.”
“Well, excuse me, Mr. Mayor. I don’t care enough to keep tabs on which house is yours, but if I had known that I would be living next door to such an insufferable jackass, I wouldn’t have rented here. In fact, I would have rented a house on the other side of the island.”
“Why don’t you do us all a favor and go back to where you came from? This way, I won’t have to worry about anything going up in flames.”
“You want me to move?” Her eyes went wide as she pointed to herself. “Well, that’s too damn bad, because I’m going to stay all spring and summer and possibly into fall. I’m going to throw raging keggers and hold a wet T-shirt contest and have a parade of unsavory, big-resort-building ruffians stomping through my house at all hours of the night just to piss you off. And there isn’t a thing you can do about it.”
“I could call the police and make a noise complaint.”
She threw her head back and laughed. “You would do that, wouldn’t you? I bet you were that kid in school who ratted out all the other kids. I can see the headline on the local paper now. ‘Annoyed Mayor Calls Cops on Heartbroken Bride.’ I’m sure your citizens will love you for it, too. Once they find out that you’re living next door to the ex-fiancée of the man who tried to ruin their island, I’m sure they’ll be over here with flaming pitchforks.” He saw more hurt flash in her eyes. It was clearer and sharper than the anger that was radiating from her body, and it made his own anger diminish. He wasn’t sure what happened between her and Vermeulen, but he knew it must have ended terribly. He almost felt bad for her.
“I wouldn’t call the cops. I like to handle disputes myself.”
“There won’t be any more disputes—just give me back the matches. Let me have this. I need to do this.”
“I’m sorry. I just can’t let you risk your safety or any of the homes on this island.”
“Then go to hell.”
She stomped away from him then and he was left feeling...he couldn’t describe it, but he knew he had never had an interaction with a woman like that before. And as he watched Ava’s retreating form, he was pretty sure this wasn’t going to be the last time they would be shouting at each other.
Ava looked at the box of chocolate-covered mint cookies in her shopping bag and realized that she hadn’t bought a single ounce of organic, fresh, never-processed or frozen food. She had double-chocolate doughnuts and three kinds of chips.
She even had an entire block of cheese among her purchases because she couldn’t make proper nachos without cheese. It was the first time since Maxime had proposed to her that she didn’t care about watching what she ate or how many calories were in a serving size. She didn’t care about getting enough protein or eating kale or how she was going to look in her wedding dress and on the arm of her handsome, rich husband. She was going to have wine tonight. Cheap seven-dollar-a-bottle wine that she really liked but had to pretend to not like to impress her ex and his snobby friends.
She was going to drink alcohol and eat ice cream with chocolate syrup and gummy worms and gnaw on a block of cheese, and she was going to enjoy every damn moment of it. As she grabbed the second junk-filled bag out of the trunk she noticed her neighbor’s classic pickup truck pull into his driveway.
Ava didn’t know why she hadn’t known that Derek Patrick owned the house next to hers. It was odd that out of all the rentals on the island she picked the one next to his. If she had known the young mayor had lived there, she wouldn’t have taken it. Things had gotten rather nasty between him and Maxime during the height of the resort debate. Max would have had a fit if he’d known she was living next door to a man he considered an enemy. But she was glad she hadn’t known, because she had fallen in love with the little candy-colored cottage. The road it was on was sparsely populated and away from the busier downtown. The scenery surrounding the home was lush, with wild flowers, tall green grasses and fruit trees. She was walking distance to a small beach that was only used by the residents on this road. She could go there whenever she wanted. It was paradise. But she hadn’t been to the beach the entire time she had been on the island. She hadn’t taken the time to enjoy herself at all. That was going to change. She wasn’t sure when she decided that she was going to stay for a long while. But it was probably around the time when Derek told her that she should move off the island.
She would stay just to spite him. Besides, she didn’t have anywhere else to go.
She tried not to glance at him as he stepped out of his truck. She wasn’t so sure what it was about him that rubbed her the wrong way. It wasn’t the thing with Max. Any mayor going so hard to protect his island was admirable,
