Page 4 of Feels Like the First Time
Chapter 2
One glance at Hawk’s stupid stick should have been enough to quell the flutters in Ali’s belly. She didn’t do fluttery, didn’t do beefed-up jocks, and she sure as hell didn’t do stupid—no matter how impressive the stick.
She’d tried that once and ended up with a broken heart.
Which brought her to the next thing she didn’t do—her sister’s ex-husband. No matter how irritatingly irresistible she’d always found him.
Yet when she pulled up to her dad’s house later that evening, they were still there—the residual flutters flitting around in her chest.
“Those are not flutters,” she told herself. “It’s heartburn.”
Nature’s reminder to steer clear of things that were bad for her. And as good a guy as Bradley Hawk was, he was bad for her well-being.
It wasn’t his two-hundred-and-twenty pounds of alpha-male badass, or even that he smelled like sex—something she’d gone way too long without. Nope, what had Ali feeling all feminine was the way he looked at her, touched her on occasion—as if she were all delicate and sexy.
After spending most of her life in her single dad’s machine shop, Ali, vertically challenged or not, didn’t have a delicate bone in her body. And unless a guy was turned on by steel-toed stylings and blowtorch skills,sexywasn’t a word she’d heard all that often with regard to herself.
Which was why the second Hawk had left, she’d ditched her dress for her usual Converse, ripped jeans, and offensive tank top. Tonight’s was black with pink letters reading,THE ONLY THING SHORT ABOUT ME IS MY TEMPER.After all, informing people of her current state of mind was only polite.
Parking the car in front of the oceanfront bungalow, she grabbed two casseroles and a grocery bag off the passenger seat. The casseroles were to get her dad through one whole week without breaking his doctor’s diet. And the grocery bag was just in case.
Marty Marshal walked out onto the stone porch holding a spatula. His hair was windblown, his boat shoes unlaced, and in his Bermuda shorts and Hawaiian shirt, he looked as if his life was a never-ending Jimmy Buffett song.
“Hey, sweet pea,” her dad said. “I thought I heard you pull up. I was around back, getting ready to fire up the grill for the steak.”
“You mean the fish and vegetable kabobs from the recipe I e-mailed you yesterday?” Ali said, giving her dad a kiss on the cheek.
Marty shrugged. “The cod didn’t look fresh, so I went with the steak.”
“Funny since the market advertises fresh cod caught daily. Right from there.” Ali pointed over the steep cliffs that jutted out from behind her childhood home, to the ocean crashing below. “Can’t get any fresher than that. And what about vegetables?”
“I got corn bread. The doctor said I can eat corn, and you girls love it with my special honey butter.”
“Corn is a grain, not a vegetable, and when you bake it in a buttered skillet then smother it in liquid sugar, I don’t think it meets the guidelines Dr. Cortes was going for.”
Ignoring this, Marty took the bag from her hand and followed her inside. “Is this the pie?”
“No.” Ali smiled. “That’s my just-in-case-you-bought-something-else.”
Marty peeked in the bag at the marinating kabobs and frowned. “What kind of man celebrates his daughter’s big news with cod and zucchini on a stick?”
“A man who doesn’t want to go into a diabetic coma,” she said, walking into the kitchen, hiding her grin at the grumbles Marty was letting loose behind her. “And don’t worry, Kennedy is bringing the pie with her.”
Kennedy was also bringing a buffer—her fiancé, Luke Callahan. If Ali was to make it through an evening with her sister without losing it, then she needed a distraction. And nothing distracted Bridget quite like a handsome man.
Kennedy Sinclair wasn’t just Destiny Bay’s newest celebrity baker; as Ali’s best friend, she also had her back. It had been a long while since someone had Ali’s back—and it felt damn good.
“Coconut cream?” Marty asked, sounding like a kid at a candy store.
“Special order.” Meaning it was high in yum factor—if one liked coconut, which Ali did not—and low in sugar for those glycemicly challenged. Marty would never know the difference. “But only men who eat their cod get dessert.”
More grumbling ensued, but this time Ali ignored it and went right to the fridge, stacking the casseroles and pulling out all the ingredients needed to make a healthy garden salad.
“Where’s Bridget?”
“Running a little behind.”
Ali looked at the clock above the stove, then over her shoulder at Marty. “I thought you were going to take her out onChasing Destiny?” Ali asked, referring to her dad’s pride and joy—a forty-two-foot Catalina sailboat he’d spent the better part of the past decade rebuilding.
