“Then why are you here?” she asked, and he heard the toe of her shoe tapping against the floor. “My rent’s not due for another three weeks.”
“So warm. So welcoming,” he said, giving Bella another smile. It bounced off her like bullets off a tank. Woman was determined to hate him. Jesse shoved his hands into the pockets of his khaki slacks and walked off to study the racks.
“I’m very welcoming. To customers,” she said.
“Yeah, the store’s so packed I can hardly walk.”
She huffed out a breath. “Summer’s over. Sales slow down a little.”
“Funny, everyone else says business is great.”
“Worried about your rent?” she asked.
“Should I be?”
“No,” Bella said quickly. “I have a small, but loyal clientele.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’re impossible,” he thought he heard her mutter. Jesse smiled to himself. Good to know he was getting to her as thoroughly as she was getting to him.
Beyond the plate-glass window, Morgan Beach was going about its day. It was late morning and the surfers were packing it in for the day. He knew all too well that the best rides were just after dawn, before the water was crowded with kids and moms and wannabes with their little belly boards.
People were wandering the tidy sidewalks, sitting at sidewalk cafés and, in general, enjoying the day. While he was standing in a women’s-wear shop talking to a female who practically hissed when she saw him. Jesse stifled a sigh of impatience.
He shifted his gaze to the interior of Bella’s place. Pale, cream-colored walls were dotted with handmade swimsuits tacked up beside framed posters of some of the best beaches in the world. And Jesse should know. He’d surfed most of those beaches. For ten years, he’d hardly been out of the water. He’d snatched up trophies, endorsement deals, nice fat checks and plenty of attention from the surf bunnies who followed the circuit.
Sometimes he really missed that life. Like now, for instance.
“So, since I’m your landlord, why don’t we play nice?”
“You’re only my landlord because Robert Towner’s kids sold you the building after he died. He promised me that they wouldn’t, you know,” she said, regret tingeing her voice. “He promised that I could stay here another five years.”
“But that wasn’t in his will,” Jesse reminded her as he turned around to meet her hard gaze. “His kids decided to sell. Hardly my fault.”
“Of course it was your fault—you offered them a small fortune for the building!”
He smiled. “Good business.”
Bella smothered a sigh. What good would it do? Facts were facts and the fact was, Jesse King was now the owner of her building, despite Robert’s promises.
Robert Towner had been a sweet old man, a surrogate grandfather to Bella. They’d had coffee every morning, dinner at least once a week. She’d seen him far more often than his own children had and she’d hoped to actually buy the building from him one day. Unfortunately, Robert had died in a car accident nearly a year ago. Despite his assurances, he hadn’t made any provisions for Bella in his will.
A month or so after Robert’s death, his children sold the building to Jesse King and Bella had been worried about her future ever since. Robert had always kept the rent low enough so she could afford this great location. But she knew that Jesse King wouldn’t be doing the same.
He was making “improvements” right and left and would soon be raising the rents to pay for them. Which meant that Bella would have to look for another shop to rent. She’d have to leave Main Street and relocate farther inland, losing at least a quarter of her business, since many of her customers were drop-ins off the beach.
Jesse King was going to ruin everything. Just as he had three years ago.
Not that he remembered. The bastard.
Bella really wanted to kick something. Preferably her new landlord. Which was so far out of her character, she blamed that notion on him, too. Jesse King was the kind of man who expected the world to roll over and beg whenever he crooked his finger. The trouble was, it usually did.
He looked over his shoulder at her and grinned. “I really irritate you on a personal level, don’t I? I mean, this is more than me buying up Main Street, isn’t it?”
Yes, it really was. Bella stiffened instinctively. The fact that he didn’t even know why she loathed him was just infuriating. She couldn’t tell him what he’d so obviously and embarrassingly forgotten.
“What do you want, Mr. King?”
He frowned a little. “Bella, we’ve known each other too long to stand on ceremony.”
“We don’t know each other at all,” she corrected. He was going to call her Bella whether she wanted him to or not, it seemed.
“I know you love your shop,” Jesse said, moving back to the counter. And her.
Why did he have to smell so good? And did his eyes really have to be the deep, dark blue of the ocean? Did his smile have to cause dimples in his cheeks? And why had the sun bleached out lightercolored streaks in his dark blond hair? Wasn’t he gorgeous enough?
“You’ve got some nice stuff in here,” he said, looking down into the glass display case at the sunglasses, flip-flops and tote bags. “Good eye for color, too. We’re a lot alike, you and I. My company makes swimwear. So do you.”
She laughed.
He scowled. “What’s so funny?”
“Oh, nothing,” she said, bracing her hands on the glass countertop. “It’s just that my suits are handmade by local women from custom-woven organically sound fabrics and yours are stitched together by children hunched over dirty tables in sweatshops somewhere.”
“I don’t run sweatshops,” he snapped.
“Are you so sure?”
“Yeah, I am. I’m not some Viking here to pillage and burn,” he reminded her.
“Might as well be,” she muttered. “You’ve changed the whole face of downtown in less than a year.”
“Andretail shopping is up 22 percent. I should be shot.”
She simmered like a pot about to boil over. “There’s more to life than profit.”
“Yes, there’s surfing. And there’s great sex.” He grinned again, clearly waiting to see if she’d be affected.
Bella would never let him know just how much that smile and his dimples did affect her. Or the casual mention of great sex. Women came too easily to Jesse King. She’d learned that lesson three years ago, when she’d been a card-carrying member of that adoring throng.
The World Surf competition had been in town and Morgan Beach partied for a week. Bella had been on the pier, watching the waves, when Jesse King had strolled up. He’d smiled then, too. And flirted. And teased. He’d kissed her in the moonlight, then taken her to the small bar at the end of the pier where they’d toasted each other with too many margaritas.
She could admit now that she’d been flattered by his attention. He was gorgeous. Famous. And, she’d thought back then, really a very nice guy underneath all the glamour.
That night, they’d wandered together along the sand, until the crowded pier and beach were far behind them. Then they stood at the ocean’s edge and watched moonlight dance on the