Moment of Impact
Authors: Lisa Mondello
Tags: #new adult, #college romance, #new adult and college, #coming of age, #contempory romance, #beach reads
Moment of Impact
By Lisa Mondello
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Published by: Lisa Mondello
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ISBN: 978-1-940512-13-6
License Notes
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MOMENT OF IMPACT, book 2 of the Summer House Series
Do you remember that moment when you wanted time to stand still? When you could anticipate the train wreck ahead but had no way to stop it? Or stop the desire you had in your heart to protect the person you loved?
To Lily Carlson, running toward the oncoming train was better than being suffocated by her parents' goals and strict regime. While they wanted her to spend her days taking summer classes and then go to Harvard, all Lily wanted to do was dance and spend a summer on Nantucket Island living in The Bluffs, the name of the summer cottage she was renting with three other girls. She wanted to experience everything she'd missed. No curfews. No hitting the books and missing out on parties and meeting hot guys. She was finally free to be herself. And then she saw the man staring at her as she walked along the water's edge to work. She'd been dancing and it was clear he liked watching her dance. Drawn to him like a moth to a flame, she couldn't stop herself from seeking him out only to discover that he was a drug she couldn't resist...and everything her parents feared.
Gus Jennings knew that he was every parent's worst nightmare. He hadn't exactly lived his life on the right side of the law. He had his reasons, not that anyone understood them. There had never been anyone in his life who believed in him enough to care. He needed to spend a month working landscaping on Nantucket Island and keep himself clean or face the harsh consequences. He knew when he saw the beautiful Lily Carlson dancing down the beach on her way to work that he should just turn his head and forget her. But Lily was irresistible, and she'd made it clear that she wanted him. He only hoped that he could get close enough to touch her, to be with her, without his past coming back and destroying her future.
Lily
He was watching me again.
It had been two weeks since I’d noticed the man staring out the window of his ground level room as I walked down the beach toward the restaurant. At first, I thought it was just a coincidence. It was early and not everyone was up on the island of Nantucket. Just those of us who needed to be at the restaurant or tourist traps early enough to get there before the rush of people.
He’d opened up the curtain just enough for me to see his face, his eyes, and then let the curtain float back down into place as I passed by. Every time was the same. Every day I questioned it. Of course he wasn’t watching me. Why would he?
But then I’d catch him the next day.
Penny, my roommate at the summer house called The Bluffs, insists the guy isn’t a pervert. She would know. She works alongside him every day. As far as Penny goes, she can sniff a loser out a mile away. She sure as shit called it first with Heather’s ex, not that any of us can convince Heather of that.
The early morning is cool, just the way I like it. I love the feel of the morning breeze in my hair. It’s only five-thirty, my favorite time of the day when no one is badgering me about anything. I’m alone with my own thoughts. And the sun hasn’t had a chance to heat the air and spoil that fresh smell of salt coming in from the ocean.
The Seagulls are already flying onto the beach to see if they can capture a small crab or quahog that might be exposed now that the tide was receding. Soon the sun would begin to bake the sand and everything that inhabited it and it would smell like low tide down at the fishing harbor.
Except for the seagulls, an older couple walking their golden lab down at the far end of the beach, and a runner moving in the same direction I’m headed, I am alone.
And of course, the guy.
He’s usually hidden, staying inside and peeking out the window from behind a raised curtain. His room is in the lower level. I see the curtain fall back into place as I approach the old three-story house with a wraparound porch.
I don’t know why but to have him suddenly shut me out after giving me even the smallest bit of attention feels odd. But there is no way anything can ruin my morning. In four weeks I will be auditioning for a part in the dance program in college. I lift my arms as if I’m on the dance floor getting ready for a pirouette. My hair tangles around my face as I twirl and then stumble on the sand, laughing.
That’s when I saw him. He steps outside the door and stands in the sand beneath the porch, lighting up a cigarette. Why the hell didn’t Penny ever tell me the guy was so hot? She gets to work next to this hottie every single day?
He doesn’t bother looking away like he normally does. I know he sees me. And I know he watched me dancing. He always does. And since he is, I may as well give him a show worth remembering.
* * *
Gus
Damn that girl is fine.
She sees me staring at her all the time. I know she does. Otherwise, why would Penny have made it a point to say how her roommate was a dancer? Penny never talks about any of her other roommates. Only Lily.
Yes, her name is Lily, like the flower. Penny had added that part too, as if I gave a fuck about the damned flowers like she does. I just plant the damned things where I’m told.
I should feel like a dick. I mean, watching Lily move and dance down the beach gives me a hard-on like every morning as strong as if she were standing naked in front of me.
And she knows I’m staring at her. How else would Penny have known unless Lily had mentioned something about seeing me?
Since Lily was on to me, there was no sense hiding anymore.
I pull a cigarette out of the half-empty pack I’d bought yesterday after getting paid. There is no sense waiting until she walks past the house. All I’m doing is having a smoke.
I’d been lucky enough to get this one room apartment on the beach at the last minute. If I piss off my landlord again by smoking inside, I’ll be out on my ass and have some explaining to do back in Walpole. The dingy digs aren’t exactly the same as most of the expensive rooms along the beach, but for me, it’s enough. And you can’t beat the view. Both the ocean and the girl.
I laugh as I push out the screen door and stand under the overhead porch, lighting up and taking a deep drag. I can hear Edmond’s theatrical voice in my head now. “August Jennings. Is there any trouble out there you can’t be a part of?”
Trouble. Well, that’s harder to stay out of than even I ever anticipated. But shit, I am trying. I’ve kept up my end of the bargain for a whole sixty days already. Good ol’ Ed should be happy enough about—
“Jesus,” I say, practically under my breath as Lily twirls in the sand, letting the wind whip her hair like lace around her face. She doesn’t have big breasts, but they’re firm. I can see them clearly beneath the white T-shirt she’s wearing with the ugly brown skirt she wears while she works at the restaurant.
“Is that you smoking again, Gus?”
I groan at the sound of my landlord’s voice. “Yes, it’s me, Mrs. Beachman.”
“That damned cigarette smoke is coming in my window again!”
What the fuck does she expect? She won’t let me smoke in the house.
“You know that filthy stuff is bad for your health. Why aren’t you quitting?”
“I don’t know,” I say, watching as Lily makes her way down the shoreline, just feet from the surf. “I guess I’m dumb.”
“Try foolish!” she calls down to me. I don’t have to look up to see her practically bent over the railing of the porch above me. She does it all the time. “You didn’t get fired from work, didja? And make sure you don’t throw no butts in the sand. I like a clean place.”
I roll my eyes and snuff out the rest of my cigarette in the sand, making sure I take the filter back into the house and deposit it in the can I keep on the counter.
“I’m getting ready for work now, Mrs. Beachman.”
“Good, because you know I’m doing my cousin a favor by letting you stay here. That means you need to be working.”
“Have a good one, Mrs. B.”
I walk into the tiny apartment and glance around. Mrs. B forgets the part about me paying rent as if she’s doing this whole thing out of the goodness of her heart.
And then it hits me as I take in the faded color of the sofa, which is probably older than I am, with a stain of some kind on the arm, and suddenly my gut sinks lower than the floor. What the hell am I doing?
Lily Carlson is a beauty. And a man doesn’t take a beauty like her back to a pit like this.
I press my hand over the hard-on as if I’m still watching Lily dancing in the sand. Then sigh, closing my eyes. Women like Lily Carlson don’t run with men like me. I know that. But she sure as hell is nice to look at.
I push the morning show out of my head as I make a cup of coffee and drain my cup almost as quickly as it’s made, burning the inside of my throat. Drake Sutton isn’t a boss who tolerates late employees. Although he is just a few years older than me, he’s come far with his small landscaping company and he’s been fair to me.
I dressed in a light t-shirt and shorts, drop two energy bars into my pocket, and head out the door to where the crew would meet for today’s job. This was the first time in my life that I actually give a fuck about not letting someone down. No, that’s not true either, I muse as I jog the distance to the restaurant where we’ll be planting summer flowers and spreading mulch today. I don’t want to disappoint Edmond, either. But Edmond is different. Drake didn’t know me from the pool guy before he hired me. Even after learning about my past, he still gave me a chance when no one else would. For that reason alone, I’ll crawl on my belly through the sand to get to work on time.
* * *
Lily
At nine-forty-five, the breakfast rush is still in full swing and I can already feel my feet hating my shoes. They’re going to ruin my dancing if I don’t get a pair that manages to get me through an eight hour shift without giving me blisters the size of quarters. Maybe there’s some place in town I can score a new pair of sneakers.
“Scooners,” I hear Melinda say. Melinda was another one of Beverly Pickam’s summer house girls, but she lived in a bigger house, The Sandpiper, located further up the beach. Beverly owned The Bluffs, the house I’d become comfortable living in with Penny, Heather and Jenna. Unlike The Bluffs, which only has four girls staying there, six girls are staying at The Sandpiper, and from what Melinda says, not all of them get along.
Melinda jots down an order that someone has phoned in, tallies up the total and then rips the order from the pad and clips it to the wheel. The owner of Scooners, Brenda Calhoun, spins the wheel and pulls the order from the clip. This will go on all morning during breakfast and then again during the lunch hour. Of course, it’s never an hour, I learned. Unlike my job waiting tables at the local burger place in my town, Scooners never slows down until the WE’RE CLOSED sign gets turned around on the door. That won’t happen until nine tonight. But I’ll be long gone by then.
“Order up!” Brenda says. Two of the other waitresses are still taking orders at tables so I walk to the kitchen window to look at whose order it is. It’s not mine, but I decide to deliver the food to the table anyway since I know I have a minute or two before I need to start refilling coffees.
I carry the plates to booth number 8, a table by the windows facing the ocean, and look down at the plates.
“Okay, it’s just a guess, but I’m thinking you get the pancakes with the smiley face on them,” I say to the little girl with pigtails and a Nantucket t-shirt that she probably insisted on her parents buying for her, but is three sizes too large.
