Amanda’s cousin, Ethan Ballard—who hadn’t been able to take his eyes off of her through the whole evening.
He was gorgeous, too. Tall, lean, broad-shouldered. Dark. Dark eyes, dark hair.
Sam killed the intrigue he made her feel.
He’d asked her to dance four times, but she’d said no. Even his voice gave her the shivers, deep and measured.
The truth was she didn’t know how to dance, and wasn’t going to make a fool of herself by trying for the first time in the heels. The truth was, Ethan was asking the illusion to dance. If he’d seen her in her normal duds—rolled-up jeans, sneakers, a faded shirt that advertised her pet store and supply business, Groom to Grow, he would have never looked that interested.
Of course, there was always the possibility one of the local guys had dared him to show interest in her, or offered him twenty bucks to dance with her.
Knowing that any man in St. John’s Cove who went near Samantha Hall was going to have to run the gauntlet of her brothers.
Sam glanced over to where Ethan was standing, one shoulder braced against the wall, his tie undone, his crisp white shirt open against the end-of-June early-summer heat in the reception room. He was nursing a drink and still looking at her.
And he didn’t look like a fool, either. Ethan Ballard radiated the confidence, wealth and poise one would expect from a businessman from Boston.
He raised his glass to her, took a long, slow sip without taking his eyes from her. Now how could that possibly seem suggestive, make her insides melt into hot liquid?
How about because she hadn’t had a date in over a year? And that date had been with a sumpie—she and her friends’ pet name for summer people—because the locals were afraid to ask her out. And with good reason. After one drink, her brother Mitch had shown up at the Clam Digger, glowering and flexing muscles earned from plying his strength and guts against the waters of the Atlantic to make his living as a lobsterman.
To the local male population, she was Sam, not Samantha. She could outrun, outsail and outswim most of them—it was a well-known fact no one had beaten her in a race to the buoys since she was sixteen. But even if the local young men weren’t totally intimidated by that, nobody wanted to deal with the Hall brothers, Mitch, Jake and Bryce, when it came to their little sister.
Which was okay with her. Fairy tales had finished for her family when her mom and dad had been killed in a boating accident when she was twelve. Mitch, newly married, had stepped up to the plate and taken in his siblings, but his wife, Karina, had not bargained for a ready-made family of two rowdy teenage brothers, and a twelve-year-old girl swimming in pain. Karina, Sam’s one chance for a bit of feminine influence, had jumped ship.
Her brothers had raised her so she could fight but not put on makeup, handle a fishing rod but not wear heels, arm wrestle but not dance. They’d given her an earful about what men really wanted.
Plus, all three of her brothers had taken Karina’s abandonment personally and were commitment phobic, and so was she.
Most of the time. Occasionally Sam felt this odd little tug of wistfulness. She felt it when she watched couples walk hand in hand along the beach at sunset, she felt it when old Mr. and Mrs. Nelson came into her shop, their teasing affection for one another reminding Sam of her mom and dad.
And Sam had felt it with surprising strength when Charlie and Amanda had exchanged their vows earlier at St. Michael’s, Amanda glowing, and Charlie choking up on emotion.
Sam’s own eyes had teared up, and she was so unaccustomed to that, she didn’t have a tissue, and so unaccustomed to mascara that she didn’t know crying in it would have unfortunate consequences.
And she had reacted like that even though she personally felt that if there were ever two people who should not have gotten married, it was Charlie and Amanda!
The pair were part of a tight-knit group of six friends, Colton St. John, Vivian Reilly and Sam’s brother Bryce, who had been hanging out together since grade school. Sam was the youngest of the group—she had started as a tagalong with Bryce. Amanda and Charlie had been dating on and off since they were fourteen, their relationship punctuated with frequent drama, constant squabbling, and hundreds of breakups and makeups.
Ah. Sam’s hand connected with the steel bar of the exit door of the reception hall. She pushed, caught a whiff of the fresh June breeze coming in off the bay. Freedom. On an impulse, she turned and wagged her fingers at Ethan Ballard, goodbye.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Vivian Reilly said. Vivian, also a charter member of the Group of Six, was the other bridesmaid, and she caught Sam’s arm just as she was halfway out the door.
“How come the dress doesn’t look like dog puke on you?” Sam asked, wishing she could take back that impulsive wag of the fingers.
The color of the dress should have clashed with Vivian’s incredible red hair, but, of course, it didn’t. Vivian looked leggy and beautiful, but then Vivian could wear a grain sack and make it look sexy. If anything, the dress was slightly more demure than Vivian’s usual style.
“It mustn’t look all that bad on you, either,” Vivian said with a laugh. “Check out that man staring at you. I’m getting heat stroke from it. He’s glorious. Ethan something? Amanda’s cousin?”
Ethan Ballard. Sam remembered his name perfectly, not to mention the touch of his hand in that reception line. Lingering. Sam slid Amanda’s cousin another look, and looked away, though not before her heart tumbled in her chest, and she felt the tug of something a lot stronger than the wistfulness she felt when she looked at old Mr. And Mrs. Nelson picking out a new collar for their badly spoiled Pom, Duffy.
Ethan Ballard was glorious. And no doubt just as superficial as every other guy in the world, including her brothers. She did not kid herself that the good-looking cousin would have given her a second look if her hair was pulled back into its usual nononsense ponytail, her eyes were not smudged with the plum shadow that Vivian and Amanda insisted made them look greener, and her chest wasn’t falling out of the embarrassingly low-cut dress.
The door clicked shut again, and Sam, resigned, tugged at the dress. She glanced up to see Ethan Ballard watching, an amused smile playing at the handsome, firm line of his wide mouth.
There was that hot rush again, so she stuck her nose in the air so he wouldn’t ever guess.
“Come on,” Vivian said, steering Sam back toward the gaggle of giggling single girls and women waiting for the traditional throwing of the bouquet. “Be a sport.”
Amanda was standing at the front of the room now, still glowing, a queen looking benevolently at her subjects. No doubt she was kidding herself that this was the best day of her life, Sam thought cynically.
As soon as Vivian let go of her arm, Sam moved way up to the front of the gathering of hopefuls. She’d played ball with the bride, and Amanda had a strong throwing arm. As long as she didn’t do the I’m-cute-and-helpless routine, that bouquet should sail right over Sam’s head and hit old Mable Saunders in the back row.
Sixty and never married.
Which will probably be me someday, Sam thought, and given that she was cynical about the institution of marriage she was not sure why the thought made her feel more
