Billionaires On the Beach: The Anderson Brothers Read online

  But when she looked over at him, she realized that he’d eaten the whole muffin. Now why did that make her feel…good?

  Silly, she thought, admonishing herself for being so vain about her cooking. So, the man ate one of her muffins! That didn’t mean anything. Nothing at all. Maybe her joy was just a southern thing, she thought. Southern women…they knew how to cook and bake and do all those fabulous kitchen things. When company arrived on one’s doorstep or, in this instance, in her coffee shop, she wanted to share her baked goods with her customers.

  And still, it was just a muffin!

  Suddenly, she heard his deep, sexy voice behind her. “Thank you for the muffin. How about if you wrap up the rest and I’ll take them with me?”

  Maria spun around, shocked to find him standing almost directly behind her. Woah! How’d he get that close without her hearing his approach?

  Again, the man was strange.

  “Um…” she tilted her head. “What in the world are you going to do with a bunch of day-old muffins and cookies?” she asked.

  Once again, there was a slight shift in those lips, and Maria was trying very hard to keep from thinking he was laughing at her.

  “The muffin was good. I’ll bring in the rest for a meeting I have tomorrow morning at my office.”

  She stared up at him, not sure what to make of his request. “All of them?” she asked calmly. Okay, so her voice came out like a squeak. Not sexy, she told herself. Not sexy at all! And exactly the opposite of sophisticated. Drat!

  “All of them,” he replied, then stood there, waiting. Looking down at her.

  A bug, she thought. A curious bug. She was just a strange, curious, amusing bug to him.

  Taking a deep breath, she straightened and turned around. “All the muffins. You got it.”

  She took a pair of tongs and a box, putting all of the remaining muffins into the box. There were only about six of them left and five more cookies. It was closing time, after all, and she’d worked hard to eliminate waste. Maria’s Gramma Jenny had left her this coffee shop after she’d passed away six months ago. At the time of her grandmother’s death, the coffee shop had been more than eight months behind on the mortgage payments. After implementing several cost saving procedures and putting a marketing plan into place, Maria was changing things; the shop was becoming more profitable, but it was a slow process.

  ***

  Sloan watched with increasing fascination as the beautiful woman bustled about, wrapping up the muffins so that they would stay relatively fresh overnight. She was pretty in an energetic but shy sort of way. Her blue eyes had captured him over and over during the past hour, as she’d peered at him over the countertop. He’d been unable to look away, needing just one more glance, one more connection. And every time he’d caught her eye, it had felt like he’d been zapped by an electric current.

  He also loved the way her dark hair defied the efforts of the elastic band that was trying, and failing, to contain the chaos on top of her head in a messy bun. His fingers ached to stroke the delicate, pale skin of her neck or explore the enticing curve of her spine. Watching her slender, yet perfectly curved, figure, he’d had trouble concentrating on his work, especially when she was walking away. Her jeans rode low on her slim hips, perfectly enhancing her adorable derriere, making his mind picture her in his bed, those blue eyes glancing over her shoulder as he looked down at her naked form, her naked butt, as he contemplated all of the things he wanted to do to her.

  Ms. Maria Ellis, he thought. Sole beneficiary of the late Ms. Jennifer Ellis, founder of this coffee shop. Sloan knew a great many facts about Ms. Maria Ellis - her bank account balance, her profit and loss data, the daily totals on all of her business accounts as well as her home address, her age, her college education…what he hadn’t read in the report was how startlingly lovely she would be, or how her blue gaze could blast his body into full predator mode, intense lust making him ache and a powerful need hitting him hard and fast.

  Reining in his seemingly out of control lust, Sloan suspected that she wasn’t normally this enchantingly shy. Just around him.

  Too bad he was going to be her big, bad wolf. As head of his own investment company, he was backing a group of investors who were making plans to foreclose on the six stores that made up the small cove of stores named “Southern Pearls of Wisdom,” a quirky but insolvent group of shops at the end of the Wrightsville Beach boardwalk. His company was planning to take over the cove, as well as the land next to it, and build a resort. He’d been walking around the area all afternoon, calculating the costs, working out the details in his mind. The area was primed for development, just waiting for new energy and money. He planned to provide both.

  But yes, these quaint little shops on the boardwalk were soon to be a thing of the past. Maybe after the dust settled, he’d look up this pretty woman and take her out to dinner. Those enchanting blushes earlier indicated that she was feeling the strong, sensuous pull between them as well.

  Good. He wanted her in his bed. In an unprecedented occurrence, he’d been distracted by her glances earlier, an unheard of situation. Sloan was never distracted. His focus was legendary. Still, he’d sat in the odd, yet strangely appealing, coffee shop, trying to calculate the capital costs, the development expenses, and the long term return on investment for the upcoming resort, while his mind kept thinking about what it would be like to spread this woman out on his bed and enjoy all of the interesting responses he might discover as he explored her lush body.

  Pulling his eyes away from her blue gaze, he firmed up his resolve. Yes, this woman was going to be his. Not yet, he knew. But soon.

  With a nod of thanks, he swiped his credit card once again, paying for the muffins. One more glance, one more blush, and he walked out of the coffee shop, quaintly named “Three Gallons of Crazy.”

  Chapter 2

  The pain felt good.

  Pushing harder, Sloan turned right, wanting to extend his run this morning, going for the next level. Gone was the winter chill that had slowed him down at the beginning of his run, obliterated by the heat generated by the effort of running, pushing, going faster and harder. The sun was just starting to come up over the ocean as he pushed even harder, his breath coming out with large gusts of steam as he plowed through the morning.

  If one particularly enticing brunette with long legs and a gorgeous smile continuously popped into his head, he only pushed harder, disgusted with himself for his lack of discipline.

  The barking was his first warning. But since he’d been focused on getting down below that six-minute mile, he’d pushed out every distraction, forcing his muscles to run harder and faster.

  The floppy dog with too much hair jumped right in front of him and Sloan stopped abruptly, looking down at the mutt that…well, he wasn’t pretty. Brown, black, and grey fur, longer on the head, smoother on the dog’s back…it was possibly the ugliest dog he’d ever seen.

  And yet, the strange-looking canine seemed to be smiling up at him, even with a tennis ball in his mouth. The dog jumped up, then crouched down, carefully placing the tennis ball at Sloan’s feet. With eager expectation in those dark eyes, the dog waited impatiently with an exuberantly wagging tail, which caused the entire back end of the dog to wiggle.

  Sloan glanced at his watch, then down again as the dog nudged the ball closer with his nose before resuming his tail and body wagging, tongue hanging out the side of his scruffy face and that hound-like hope intensifying somehow.

  With a shake of his head, Sloan reached down and took the ball, avoiding as much of the slobber as possible, then threw it as hard as he could.

  The ugly dog bounded happily after the ball, eager to retrieve the sloppy mess. With a chuckle, Sloan shook his head and started running again, putting all his focus into making up the time he’d lost with the dog.

  He’d just started to get back into a rhythm again when the dog bounded up beside him - tennis ball back in his mouth, long, floppy ears dancing as he kept p
ace. Sloan looked down; the dog looked up. The ugly hound was blissfully happy just to be running alongside Sloan. With a shrug, Sloan accepted that, for this morning’s run, he had a companion. As long as the dog didn’t bite him, he welcomed the company.

  His new route took him closer to the beach, along the smaller cottages that lined one part of Wrightsville Beach. Their normally bright, beachy colors were dimmed in the soft, morning light but during the summer months, these little houses shimmered like soft jewels. Their colors and unique designs were one of the many reasons people flocked to this beach. Each one was slightly different – pink, mint green, turquoise, or light blue, a few of them white, but all of them uniquely designed.

  Sloan also owned a beach house, but it was up on one of the dunes, set back from the beach slightly. His area of the beach was isolated. No one traversed his private beach and he enforced the no trespassing rules. His privacy was sacrosanct.

  Obviously, canines didn’t respect that privacy, he thought, as he rounded another corner, the dog keeping pace and barely even breathing hard.

  He pushed harder around the next corner, coming to a circle and sprinted as he went up the slight incline, dog still there, still keeping pace.

  Breaking through his concentration, he heard a whistle and then the dog perked up. If Sloan hadn’t been more adept, he would have tripped over the floppy-eared canine. As it was, the dog jogged out of the way, then just stared up at him, tennis ball still in his mouth and a hopeful look in his brown eyes.

  “Fine!” Sloan grumbled and stopped. The dog instantly put his ball down, then nudged it with his nose before stepping back, tail wagging and tongue once again hanging out the side of his mouth.

  Sloan threw the ball and the dog’s head jerked to watch, but a moment before the ball stopped, the whistle sounded once more and the dog’s ears perked up. The ugly canine stood frozen for a long moment, obviously not sure if he should race after his precious ball or go towards the whistle. With one last whimper and a glance in the ball’s general direction, the dog sprinted in the opposite direction, towards the whistle.

  Sloan stared after the animal with disgust. The ball was down in the sand and the dog would never remember where it had gone.

  He should just leave the ball. The dog probably had ten of them.

  Turning in the other direction, he started off once more. But as soon as he started, Sloan knew that he wasn’t going to be able to leave it. The dog…

  “Hell!” he muttered under his breath. He jogged over to where the ball had landed, finding it easily since the ball was a neon yellow color, which stood out against the beige sand. As soon as he stood up, shaking the sand off of the ball, the mutt hurried over, dancing up and down, ready for another toss.

  And even better, right behind the canine was his master. Or more appropriately, his lovely, intriguing mistress.

  “You!” Maria gasped, skidding to a halt on the sand. “What are you doing here?”

  She must have realized how odd the question sounded and shook her head, briefly closing her eyes as if she needed a moment to re-gather herself. She lifted her hands in apology as she stared up at him. “I’m sorry,” she gasped. “That was rude of me. I’m just surprised to find you here.”

  Sloan watched the woman, more intrigued than ever. Last night, she’d been in jeans and an apron. But today, she was wearing leggings and a jacket, unzipped as the morning started to warm up. There was a captivating shadow in the deep V of her tee-shirt and it took all of Sloan’s normally-considerable willpower to pull his eyes away from that shadow and maintain eye contact. Once again, he was stunned by the simplistic beauty of her features. Her skin was lovely and those eyes… The long lashes couldn’t be real, he thought, but there was no other makeup on her face.

  Moving closer, he handed her the ball. “I assume this is your dog?”

  Those amazing eyes glanced down and Sloan knew that the dog was looking at both of them. She laughed and the sound made his gut tighten. Damn, he wanted to hear that sound when she was in his bed.

  Too bad that would be impossible. He was the enemy and, in a few weeks, maybe even less time, this gorgeous woman would hate him.

  “Yeah, this is Ollie. Oliver. He’s just a mutt, but…” The big guy heard his name and stood up, wagging his tail once again. The tail wagging was so enthusiastic that it wagged his entire body this time, that pink tongue hanging out the side of his mouth as if it never disappeared.

  “He’s…” Sloan started to say something, but the horrified gasp coming from her pretty lips stopped him.

  Maria was already shaking her head as she returned her attention to him, but her lips were curled up with amusement. “Don’t say it,” she whispered, carefully covering up the dog’s ragged ears.

  He stopped and looked down at her, fighting back his own smile. He never smiled. His brothers teased him because he was “too intensely serious”, according to their annoying gibes, so why was he fighting amusement about something as ridiculous as a dog?

  “Don’t say what?”

  She shook her head in mock seriousness. “He’s named after one of my college friends, Olivia, who is lovely and wonderful. I’ve finally convinced him that he’s the loveliest dog around. He’s a prince among hounds. He’s more gorgeous than a golden retriever. Ollie has at long last accepted his place in the dog world, and I don’t want him to have low self-esteem!”

  Sloan looked at her, then down at the dog, who really was ridiculously ugly, and threw back his head laughing. The idea that this mutt with his ragged ears and crazy, disorganized fur that couldn’t decide which way to go, could be compared to the pretty boys of the canine world was so outrageous, he couldn’t help his laughter.

  When he got his amusement back under control, he looked down at her, shaking his head. “He’s going to realize the problem sooner or later, you know. When the ladies scorn him, he’s going to come back to you and demand an answer.”

  Maria shook her head. “No. Ollie is a good boy. He doesn’t chase the ladies.” She leaned in closer and, in a stage whisper said, “He couldn’t do anything about it, even if he wanted to!”

  Once again, Sloan chuckled and fought a more enthusiastic response. “You didn’t!”

  Maria nodded with a cringe of regret. “I had to. It’s the right thing to do,” she explained seriously, referring to the neutering of her lovely dog.

  Sloan looked down at the ugly mutt, noticed that her fingers were in his thick hair, scratching his ears, and the silly dog was leaning against her thigh in obvious heaven. Lucky dog, he thought with a tinge of jealousy.

  When he realized where his mind was going, Sloan couldn’t believe that he was actually jealous of a dog! But sure enough, seeing her caress the stupid hound made him wonder what it would be like to have her hands on him, caressing him.

  “I’d better go,” he grumbled, fighting his body’s reaction to the idea of her hands. On him. Damn!

  Those pretty, rosebud lips distracted him again, her smile making his gut tighten with anticipation as the lust hit him hard and fast.

  “Stop by the shop for coffee anytime,” she said, backing up as if that would allow him to more easily disengage from their conversation.

  It didn’t work. Even as she backed up, he wanted to pull her closer.

  Hell! He was about to order his bank to foreclose on her business, and here he was, lusting after the woman!

  Sloan tossed the tennis ball up in the air, teasing the dog. When he looked down, the dog was staring intently at the ball, his furry body literally vibrating with the anticipation of chasing the ball.

  With a whoosh, he tossed the ball down the beach in the direction from which the lovely Maria had appeared, hoping he was sending the ball, and the dog, in the direction of her house. The dog instantly leapt off the sand, then raced across the beach toward the ball.

  Alone now, he moved closer, intent on telling her who he was. “Your muffin was delicious,” he told her. “The best I’ve ever had
.”

  Her wary expression blossomed into one of delight, a smile lighting her eyes and drawing his attention to her lips. Lips he wanted to kiss. Taste. Feel.

  Oh, hell!

  “It’s a secret recipe,” she told him, her voice dropping down a level. He caught her eyes looking at his mouth, and it took incredible restraint to not pull her into his arms and kiss her. The tension spiraled, he felt her sway closer and his hands itched to pull her into his arms, to experience the softness of her kiss, and show her what he wanted from her.

  The bumping on his shins was the only thing that stopped him. Looking down, he saw the dog wagging his tail…well, his whole body…eagerly waiting for another toss.

  Saved by the dog? Or blocked by the hound?

  Sloan wasn’t sure.

  Bending down, he picked up the tennis ball, smiling slightly at Ollie’s enthusiasm, then tossed the ball once again.

  When the dog was racing down the beach, Sloan pulled back. “I’d better go. Have a good one!” he called out, then pivoted around, jogging away before he made a fool of himself. Damn, his brothers would really love to see him like this, flustered by a woman! Unheard of! He was the smooth talker, the serious man who always got the woman. Wyatt joked that Sloan was cooler than James Bond. All four of his brothers would never let him live this morning down if they’d been here watching. Thankfully, they were far away, no longer living in Wilmington or Wrightsville Beach.

  Unfortunately, the whole time he was working his way back to his house, Sloan couldn’t get the woman out of his mind. Her freshness and beauty were astounding. There was no artifice to Maria Ellis. She smiled, laughed, frowned, and concentrated. Everything about her was open and sincere.

  Unlike him, he thought, mentally beating himself up for being such an unconscionable ass.

  By the time he’d run the last five miles of his route, he’d convinced himself that he was actually doing her a favor. She obviously didn’t know how to run a business. The coffee shop, along with the other five small stores in that little cove of the boardwalk, were going out of business. They needed a massive influx of customers to save them so his plans to cut the cord, to get his bank to foreclose on the shops, so that his development company could move in and build a new enterprise, was actually compassionate.