Castaway Cove by Joann Ross Page A

to pick up her bag, but he was faster. “They prefer keeping their thoughts to themselves.”
    Wasn’t she the same way? Life in the revolving door of the foster care system and then her failed marriage had definitely taught Annie to keep what she might be thinking to herself.
    “More likely people just mistake stupidity for inscrutability.”
    “I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.”
    Well, wasn’t he just Mr. Sunshine?
    Deciding that the hottie in Ray-Bans was the male version of beauty going only skin deep, Annie felt sorry for whomever the man was here to visit. Feeling that she’d wasted enough time, she grabbed hold of her rolling craft bag, and after a momentary tug-of-war, he released it.
    “Well, again, I’m sorry to have run into you.” Since she was all too aware of the fact that they’d suddenly begun to provide entertainment for a group of residents sitting at a table putting a jigsaw puzzle together, she managed, just barely, to keep the annoyance she was feeling out of her voice. “Have a nice evening.”
    With that, Annie squared her shoulders and walked past him, toward the door. For some inexplicable reason she was tempted to look back to see if he was watching her, but she resisted the impulse.

8
    Mac watched the woman hold up her pass card to the electronic eye that opened the glass doors. She was tall and slim, but what curves she had were definitely in all the right places. Her hips swayed enticingly in a simply cut sleeveless dress covered with a splash of flowers that reminded him of the garden his mother had so lovingly tended. They also had him thinking of starlight and tangled sheets.
    Even as he tried to shake off that distracting thought, he watched her pull the flowered bag down the sidewalk to the parking lot. With a new job, a grandfather sinking deeper into dementia every day, and a daughter who, once she’d realized he really wasn’t going to leave her again, was proving to have a very strong mind of her own, he had no business even thinking about tangling sheets with a woman. Which hadn’t happened in so long, sometimes days would go by before he’d even miss it.
    When her pert breasts had pressed against his chest like a wake-up call to his too-long-celibate body, every thought in his head had immediately gone south. He presumed that was why, instead of some clever, casual pickup line, his sex-battered brain had come up with cat insults. More proof that he’d definitely lost his touch. Even some alien landing from Mars would undoubtedly know that most females actually liked cats.
    “You could’ve at least gotten her name,” he muttered to himself as he used his coded key to enter the first-level memory care wing, where his grandfather’s room was located. “Asked her out for a drink. Maybe even dinner.”
    Or to his bed.
    “Don’t go there.” Besides, the invisible wall that had shot up between them after he’d insulted the cat wasn’t all that encouraging. Although he did feel like he owed the cat a thank-you for causing the close encounter with the sexy stranger.
    Assuring himself that the sudden jolt of lust was proof that all his guy parts were still in working order, despite the suffocating sense of survivor guilt that had been hanging over his head these past months since the explosion, Mac plastered a smile he was a long way from feeling on his face as he paused at the desk.
    “Hey, look at you,” he greeted Analise Peterson, the floor nurse. She was wearing her signature brightly patterned scrubs, which she’d once told him helped keep residents engaged by initiating conversation. Today’s green shirt and pants were printed with—wouldn’t you just know it?—kittens. “You’re tan.”
    “Kelli Douchett was right about Hawaii being the best place ever for a honeymoon.” She dimpled prettily. “The beaches were amazing. Including one we stumbled across on Molokai that looked like something out of a movie. It had this one gorgeous stretch