She bit her lower lip and decided that, after driving all day for days on end, her need to find her place outweighed the threat. Hopefully . . .
The last of the sunlight slanted through the warehouse, highlighting everything in gold, including the guy using some sort of planer along the wood. The air itself was throbbing with the beat of the loud indie rock blaring from some unseen speakers.
From the outside, the warehouse hadn’t looked like much, but as she stepped into the vast doorway, she realized the inside was a wide-open space with floor-to-rafters windows nearly three stories high. It was lined with ladders and racks of stacked wood planks and tools. Centered in the space was a wood hull, looking like a piece of art.
As did the guy working on it. His shirt was damp and clinging to his every muscle as it bunched and flexed with his movements. It was all so beautiful and intriguing—the boat, the music, the man himself, right down to the corded veins on his forearms—that it was like being at the movies during the montage of scenes that always played to a sound track.
Then she realized she recognized the board shorts, or more accurately the really excellent butt, as she’d only moments before watched it walk away from her.
Sexy Surfer.
Though he couldn’t possibly have heard her over the hum of his power tool and the loud music, he turned to face her. And as she already knew, the view of him from the front was just as heart-stopping as it was from the back.
He didn’t move a single muscle other than one flick of his thumb, which turned off the planer. His other hand went into his pocket and extracted a remote. With another flick, the music stopped.
“You shouldn’t be in here,” he said. “It’s dangerous.”
And just like that, the pretty montage sound track playing in her head came to a screeching halt. “Okay, sorry. I’m just—”
Just nothing, apparently, because he turned back to his work, and with another flick of his thumb the planer came back to life. And then the music.
“—Looking for someone,” she finished. Not that he was listening.
On the wall right next to her, a telephone began ringing, and the bright red light attached to it began blinking in sync, clearly designed just in case the phone couldn’t be heard over the tools. She could hear it, but she doubted he could. One ring, then two. Three. The guy didn’t make a move toward it.
On the fourth ring, the call went to a machine, where a recorded male voice said, “Lucky Harbor Charters. We’re in high gear for the summer season. Coastal tours, deep-sea fishing, scuba, name your pleasure. Leave a message at the tone, or find us at the harbor, north side.”
A click indicated the caller disconnected, but the phone immediately rang again.
Sexy Surfer ignored all of this.
Becca had a hard time doing the same, and she glanced around for someone, anyone, but there was no one in sight. Used to having to be resourceful, she let her gaze follow the cord of the planer to an electric outlet in the floor. She walked over to it and pulled it out of the wall.
The planer stopped.
So did her heart when Sexy Surfer turned his head her way. Yep, Sexy Surfer was an apt description for him. Maybe Drop-Dead Sexy. Either way, he took in the fact that she was still there and that she was holding the cord to his planer and a single brow arched. Whether it was displeasure or disbelief was hard to tell. Probably, with that bad ’tude, not many messed with him. But she was exhausted, hungry, out of her element, and a little bit pissed off. Which made her just enough of a loose cannon to forget to be afraid.
“I’m trying to find Sam,” she said, moving closer to him so he could hear her over his music. “Do you know him?”
“Who’s asking?”
Having come from a family of entertainers, most of them innate charmers to boot, Becca knew how to make the most of what she’d been given, so she smiled. “I’m Becca Thorpe, and I’m trying to find Two-Oh-Three Harbor Street. My GPS says I’m on Harbor Street, but the buildings don’t have numbers on them.”
“You’re looking for the building directly to the north.”
She nodded, and then shook her head with a laugh. She could get lost trying to find her way out of a paper bag. “And north would be which way exactly?”
He let the planer slowly slide to the floor by its cord before letting go and heading toward her.
He was six-foot-plus of lean, hard muscle, with a lot of sawdust clinging to him, as rugged and tough as the boat he was working on—though only the man was exuding testosterone, a bunch of it.
Becca didn’t have a lot of great experience with an overabundance of testosterone, so she found herself automatically taking a few steps back from him, until she stood in the doorway.
He slowed but didn’t stop, not until he was crowded in that doorway right along with her, taking up an awful lot of space.
Actually, all of the space.
And though she was braced to feel threatened, the opposite happened. She felt . . . suddenly warm, and her heart began to pound. And not in a terrified way, either.
He took in her reaction, held her gaze for a moment, then pointed to the right. “The front of the building you’re looking for is around the corner,” he said, his voice a little softer now, like maybe he knew she was torn between an unwelcome fear and an equally unwelcome heat.
She really hoped the heat was mutual, because it would be embarrassing to be caught in Lustville by herself. “Around the corner,” she repeated. Did he know he smelled good, like fresh wood and something citrusy, and also heated male? She wondered if she smelled good, too, or if all she was giving off was the scent of confused female and ranch-flavored popcorn.