Chapter One
HARPER GARNER STARED at the blank page on her laptop screen, waiting for inspiration to hit. She’d thought she would be able to focus once she left Los Angeles, but if this flight home was any indication of her mental abilities, she was never going to write again. If only the guy sitting next to her would shut up. They were an hour into an almost-six-hour flight, and if he hit on her the whole way, she might end up stabbing him with her pen. Sure, Trey was hot, articulate, and well dressed in a dark designer suit, but if she’d learned one thing while working in Hollywood to help bring the pilot she’d written and sold to life, it was that guys could not be trusted. Neither could she apparently, but not trusting one’s instincts was different from not being trustworthy.
“Are you heading to Boston for business or pleasure?” he asked.
He’d already told her he was on the tail end of a round of business trips, which she assumed was supposed to mean he was important. She was so sick of egotistical people, she could scream.
“You blocked?” He glanced at her laptop and said, “You know what I do when I hit a bump in the road?”
Her fingers curled around her laptop. Everything she’d written since her show was canceled a few weeks ago was crap. She had a month’s work of rambling pages that weren’t funny, sexy, or interesting. She tried not to snap, but months of pent-up frustrations poured out in sarcastic sass. “Let me guess. Make another notch in your Mile High Club belt? Or maybe you have a friend back home and you want to invite me to be the middle of your manwich? Listen, I’m sure many other women on this flight might take you up on a no-strings-attached fling, but I’m not that kind of girl.” She couldn’t stop the words from flying. “I’ve tried flings. One fling, exactly, and it was amazing, but then it was over, and over sucks. I think that’s what left me vulnerable to the pretty-boy LA vultures, of which you are obviously one. And trust me, the others have already shown me that my taste in men sucks. I don’t need to test that theory.” She huffed out a breath, feeling immensely better.
His face went from confused to amused, and he belted out a laugh. “I’m not a talent agent, but if I were, that would have sold me.”
Her jaw dropped open.
“Oh…” His eyes turned serious, and he rubbed his jaw. “You weren’t acting? Well, shit. That sucks.”
“I am not an actress. I’m a screenwriter. Or at least I was, before Los Angeles chewed me up and spit me out. Now I have to go home with my tail between my legs and tell everyone how much of a loser I am. So can we please not talk? I obviously can’t be trusted not to sound like a bitch. I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve to get the brunt of my bad mood.”
He shrugged and said, “Or maybe I did.” He flashed a warm smile. “I’ll leave you to your staring.”
He gazed out the window like her riot hadn’t even ruffled his feathers.
Harper spent the rest of the flight feeling like an idiot, writing exactly three words—I am done—and trying to figure out how to apologize to Trey. It wasn’t his fault her life had fallen apart.
But by the time she figured out how to apologize, they were touching down and he was chatting on his phone. As she stepped into the aisle to leave, he tapped her shoulder, lowered his phone from his ear, and said, “Hey, Heartbreak, take this. I ran out of business cards.” He shoved a piece of paper in her hand. “For when you get your mojo back. Not all people in the entertainment industry are assholes.”
Before she could reply, he started talking into his phone again, and then she was swept into the line of people exiting the plane like rats from a sinking ship.
Harper rushed to the Cape Air gate so she wouldn’t miss her connecting flight. When she was safely settled on the puddle jumper to Provincetown, she looked at the paper he’d given her, on which he’d written his phone number and I run a TV streaming service. Call me when you turn all that energy into a screenplay. Trey
She scoffed and shoved the paper into her purse. Being turned down by a guy she’d chewed out was one more level of embarrassment she didn’t need to experience.
As the plane took off, she closed her eyes, wondering how she was going to face her friends.
THE HEAT OF the bonfire took away the sting of the cool bay breeze sweeping over Gavin Wheeler’s skin as he sat with his feet in the sand and a cold beer in his hand, listening to his friend Drake Savage play the guitar. A few weeks ago Drake married Gavin’s business partner and friend, Serena, in a small evening ceremony on the same beach where he had proposed. Gavin looked at Serena, who was chatting with their friends Chloe and Justin a few feet away. A year ago he never would have imagined giving up his high-powered interior design job at one of the nation’s leading firms in Boston for a small partnership on Cape Cod, but it was the best move he’d ever made. He and Serena were both business-minded and put clients above greed for a bigger bottom line, which was just one thing that made them perfect partners. They were also down-to-earth and at the point in their lives where work simply wasn’t enough for either of them. When Gavin had lived in Boston, he’d missed the camaraderie of close-knit friends like the ones he’d grown up with in Oak Falls, Virginia. Since he’d partnered with Serena and moved to the slower-paced Cape, the friends he’d made had already become like family, only better. No one here knew about all the crazy shit he’d done when he was younger.
“You guys should have seen the wife of one of our clients hitting on Gavin earlier today,” Serena said as she tried to wrangle her long hair into a ponytail to keep it from blowing across her face. “I swear, the voluptuous Mrs. Cachelle had brass ones, didn’t she, Gav?”
“What can I say? Babes dig me.” Gavin took a swig of his beer.
Serena and Chloe rolled their eyes.
“Always the woman whisperer,” Chloe said, sarcasm dripping from her every word. She was a blond smart-ass and a close friend.
“Thank God,” Justin said with a laugh. “Best wingman ever.”
Gavin high-fived him.
He’d met Justin Wicked last fall, and they’d immediately hit it off. Justin was a leather-wearing, tattooed, bearded biker and a member of the Dark Knights motorcycle club. At face value, he was the complete opposite of Gavin’s clean-cut athletic self. Justin was a sculptor, and they’d recently celebrated the opening of his show at a local gallery. In addition to being a successful artist, he and one of his brothers owned Cape Stone, a masonry and stone distribution company. Beneath that rough exterior, Justin was a smart, business-minded man who worked hard and played harder, just like Gavin. Gavin trusted Justin as much as he trusted his own brother. In fact, Justin was the only person who knew about Parker, the gorgeous, intelligent, down-to-earth blonde he’d hooked up with for one incredible night at a music festival in Romance, Virginia, last summer and couldn’t get out of his mind. Like a teenager, he’d kept the matchbook from the inn where they’d stayed and had looked at it a million times over the past ten months, remembering the way they’d explored each other’s bodies and how right she’d felt in his arms. Gavin had been a bit more careful with what he’d told Serena, leaving out Parker’s name and where they’d met. She didn’t need to know the sordid details of their incredible night together. When Serena had given him grief for not dating more often, he’d simply told her that there had been a woman he’d had a brief affair with and would have liked to have gotten to know better.