Jenny (Beach Brides Book 5) Read online

  Dare dragged the toe of his boot across the asphalt. “Yes.”

  “When was your last date, O’Rourke?”

  He shrugged. That wasn’t an answer, but the truth would only give Hamilton more ammunition.

  A corner of the staff sergeant’s mouth lifted. “That long ago, huh?”

  Dare nodded once. He hadn’t felt like meeting women after what happened with Kayla and Brock. Not wanting to be hurt again had been his priority.

  “I’ve been thinking about dating,” Dare finally said.

  “Maybe this Jenny person is a way to get in the game and put yourself out there.”

  Dare drank a swig of water.

  “What have you got to lose?” Hamilton asked.

  “Money and my identity if she, or he, is a scammer.”

  Hamilton cursed. “You’re a United States Army Ranger, O’Rourke. You’d better be smarter than that.”

  “I am.” Granted, he’d been clueless about what Kayla had been doing with Brock or maybe Dare just hadn’t wanted to see.

  “Then reply.” Hamilton’s tone challenged Dare the same way it had in the past, often in a faraway land on a different continent. “You know you want to.”

  Maybe Dare did. He typed a quick email.

  “Send it,” Hamilton ordered.

  “You can’t tell me what to do in my personal life.”

  “I can, and I did.” Hamilton laughed. “Relax, O’Rourke. I’m only doing this because it’s for your own good.”

  Dare hesitated. Keeping the email exchange going made no sense. “This is a bad idea.”

  “When have you let that stop you before, O’Rourke?”

  They didn’t call him Dare for nothing. “Never.”

  He didn’t know why he was putting so much thought into this. It was just an email. No big deal. He’d probably never hear from Jenny again.

  Dare hit send. “Done.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Jenny sat on the big, overstuffed reading chair in the corner of her office. It was more comfortable working on revisions on her laptop here than at her desk. Her back couldn’t take much more sitting there.

  She reread part of her editor’s notes on Assassin Fever. Rewriting a short scene had taken her the entire morning. This didn’t bode well for the rest of the manuscript. Still, making the story better was worth the work.

  Her stomach growled.

  She needed food—not the M&M’s peanut or plain variety. Maybe after she rewrote another scene.

  Footsteps sounded on the hardwood floor. “Ready for lunch?”

  The sound of her sister-in-law’s voice brought a smile. Jenny should have known Missy would come to her rescue. “Yes, because I’m starving.”

  “Not enough to stop writing and feed yourself.” Missy Hanford carried a tray of food. As she walked, her auburn-colored ponytail bounced. “Which is why you have me around.”

  The smells made Jenny’s mouth water. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “Same, though I have enough sense to eat more than peanut M&M’s for breakfast. Plus, enough self-control I can avoid the internet without having to ask someone else to turn off the router when I need to get something done.”

  Missy and Rob, Jenny’s little brother, had known each other their entire lives, became boyfriend and girlfriend in middle school, and married at eighteen after Rob joined the United States Marines. Their dreams of having a house full of kids and a happily ever after ended when an IED in Afghanistan killed Rob. He’d been twenty-three.

  “I’m a writer. I have no sense. Most days, I don’t even get out of my pajamas,” Jenny admitted. “If I turn off the Wi-Fi, I know I can turn it on, but I don’t even know where the router is.”

  “Whatever gets the book finished.” Missy set the tray on top of the desk, which was covered with marked-up pieces of paper. “I don’t mind turning the router on and off, but you should know where it is. I’m not always here.”

  Six years had passed since Rob’s death, and not a day went by that Jenny didn’t think about him. Missy continued to struggle with her grief. If not for the two cats she and Rob had adopted before that fateful deployment, Missy might have given up, but her good days now outnumbered the bad ones. Although she hadn’t shown any interest in dating or men in general.

  “I don’t mind waiting for you to get home,” Jenny said.

  Rob had asked her to watch out for his wife before he deployed, and Jenny had. After her first Thorpe Files novel hit it big, she’d wanted to move out of her tiny apartment and buy a house. One of the selling points of this place had been a two-bedroom separate guesthouse where Missy could live. They had privacy, but could still look out for each other. The arrangement had worked out well, especially after Missy became Jenny’s personal assistant. She knew it was what Rob would have wanted.

  “Chicken satay, spring rolls, wontons, yellow curry, shrimp pad thai, and white rice. I ordered extra so there would be leftovers.” Missy drew her eyebrows together in an exaggerated expression. “You do know how to use a microwave, right, or should I leave instructions for that?”

  “Ha-ha.”

  “Don’t laugh,” Missy said. “I’m going to be working longer shifts this week at the cupcake shop. The chemo is hitting Elise hard. I offered to take on more hours so she didn’t have to keep juggling work schedules. Bad timing with your revisions, I know. Sorry.”

  “It’s not a problem. You’re the best assistant an author could ask for, and that’s a nice thing to do for your boss.” Missy had worked at the same cupcake shop since she was fifteen. She didn’t need the money as much as she liked the familiarity and staying busy. “Elise needs more help than I do.”

  “Yeah, right.” With a laugh, Missy fixed herself a plate. “Come over here and eat before you pass out. Did you sleep last night?”

  “A couple of hours.” The smells called to Jenny. Eating would give her the energy to keep revising. “I couldn’t stop thinking about what changes the manuscript needed, so I decided to make some of them.”

  As Jenny reached for the top of her screen, she noticed an email in her inbox. She’d been obsessive about not letting her emails get out of control again. Maybe she could delete it without reading. She clicked on the postage-stamp icon on the bottom of her screen.

  The message’s subject line sent her pulse racing. DOR had replied.

  Re: Re: Message in Bottle Found

  DOR2008@…

  To: Jenny <8675309@…>

  Pic or it never happened.

  Short and sweet, but the words made her smile.

  “What are you looking at?” Missy asked.

  “An email.”

  Jenny had told Missy about tossing a message in a bottle when she got home from vacation, but not about someone finding it, emailing, and her replying. Her sister-in-law might freak over Jenny doing something so out of character. Maybe that was why receiving a reply gave Jenny a little thrill.

  Her stomach grumbled.

  Missy motioned her over. “You need to eat.”

  “I’m coming.” Jenny wanted to reply, but she needed something before she could do that. She closed her computer and joined her sister-in-law at the desk. Lunch looked as tasty as it smelled. “How hard would it be to find a decent picture of Bigfoot?”

  “Given Berry Lake is Bigfoot central, not hard.”

  “See if you can find one that doesn’t look too fake.”

  “Do I want to know why you need this?” Missy asked.

  Grinning, Jenny filled a plate. “Probably not.”

  ****

  Re: Re: Re: Message in Bottle Found

  Jenny <8675309@…>

  To: DOR2008@…

  Jenny is trapped in Bigfoot’s lair. He’s so tall. Pic attached.

  ****

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Message in Bottle

  DOR2008@…

  To: Jenny <8675309@…>

  Did you think I’d fall for a photo put together with lousy photo-editing skills?
If that blurry person in the background is you, you could be three feet tall or six. The hairy guy is bigger, but there’s no way to determine heights.

  Show me the real Bigfoot and include scale.

  ****

  Pics

  Jenny <8675309@…>

  To: DOR2008@…

  I’m trying to escape from Bigfoot’s lair, and you’re worried about scale?

  P.S. I’m neither of those heights. I fall in between.

  ****

  Standing in the hallway outside the command’s offices, Dare stared at the email he’d forwarded to Jenny that had been returned to his inbox with a bunch of nonsensical numbers and letters. Her address was correct. He’d been using that one for days. Yet, he’d received an undeliverable message from mailer-daemon.

  It didn’t make sense.

  Their exchanges had been fun. Nothing flirty or weird. But he liked hearing from her.

  Maybe her inbox was full. That happened sometimes, right?

  Dare would try again. He hoped it would go through.

  ****

  The router had been turned off for over a week, but that allowed Jenny to work on the revisions without distractions. She’d even finished a day early since it was still ten minutes to midnight.

  Sitting at her desk, she attached the Assassin Fever manuscript and clicked send. The swooshing sound of the email shooting across the internet brought a palpable relief.

  Time to celebrate.

  She unwrapped a candy bar.

  The story had clicked during revisions, and she couldn’t be happier with the result. She hoped readers agreed.

  Ash Thorpe had saved the day—well, mankind—once again, but in the process, he’d lost another love. Someday, he’d get a happily ever after. No more dodging bullets, defusing bombs, and capturing terrorists and assorted bad guys. Just smiles, laughter, and love.

  The forever, true-love kind.

  Most likely before she got hers.

  She bit into the candy bar. The combination of caramel, peanuts, and chocolate was one of her favorites.

  The little postage stamp at the bottom of her screen displayed the number 3413. That wasn’t as many emails that had accumulated the last time she’d been on deadline, but Missy had warned her the email provider had experienced an outage at some point. That meant she would have had more if that hadn’t happened.

  Might as well see what she’d missed. Jenny opened her inbox and scrolled through the emails.

  Delete. Delete. Flag to reply later. Delete. Forward to Missy. Flag. Delete.

  This wasn’t too bad. She kept going. Maybe if she could get through a few hundred tonight…

  Oh. Wow.

  She leaned closer to the screen. The bottle guy had replied two days ago. She clicked on the email.

  Re: Fwd: Search for Bigfoot Special

  DOR2008@…

  To: Jenny <8675309@…>

  Are you okay?

  Not a stalker or weird guy, but I haven’t heard from you. Please reply when you get the chance.

  Dare

  Aww. He—Dare—sounded worried. That was sweet, as was how he didn’t want her to think he was strange. If he were a sociopath, she doubted he’d have written the words stalker and weird in his email.

  Jenny reread his message. She felt as if she were missing something. There had to be another email she hadn’t seen yet. She scrolled through her inbox until she found it.

  Fwd: Search for Bigfoot Special

  DOR2008@…

  To: Jenny <8675309@…>

  Jenny,

  I emailed you about an upcoming Bigfoot show I thought you might want to watch, but the email was returned undeliverable. Trying again.

  P.S. Keep it Squatchy.

  The Squatchy line made her smile. Missy had given her a baseball cap with those words on it for Christmas. Guess Dare wasn’t as anti-Bigfoot as he appeared. Maybe there was hope for Roswell.

  Jenny laughed. Something she never expected to be doing post-deadline and exhausted.

  “Thanks, Dare.”

  Whoever the guy was, he seemed nice. Thoughtful.

  Her face felt warm, and her heart was full.

  Missy worried about her, but she was family. Jenny liked the thought of someone else caring what happened to her, even though he was a total stranger.

  Her candy bar was waiting, but she would let Dare know she was okay first. That was the least she could do for the bottle guy.

  ****

  Waking up to reveille would be more welcome than the blaring buzz, buzz, buzz of the phone alarm. Dare hit the off button, but he didn’t get out of bed. Thoughts about Jenny had kept him up late last night. Again. He needed more sleep.

  Stupid.

  For all he knew, Jenny didn’t exist. She could be a scammer. Not replying was probably part of her game plan to pull him in.

  It was working.

  He was concerned something had happened to her.

  Weird.

  Getting worked up and worried over a person he’d never met was crazy. If anything, those feelings showed Dare how lonely he was. Maybe Hamilton was right—it was time to start dating again.

  Something casual and fun.

  That might be nice.

  He rubbed his face, the stubble rough against his fingers.

  Going out would be better than sitting at home waiting for a reply from a stranger. Okay, he wasn’t that bad, but the next time the guys were off to the bar, he would go with them.

  Dare picked up his phone to read his texts. A joke from a friend. A link to a news article from another. He would read that when he was more awake. He checked his email. Blinked. Bolted upright.

  Jenny.

  Finally.

  Re: Re: Fwd: Search for Bigfoot Special

  Jenny <8675309@…>

  To: Dare

  Hey, Dare. I’m okay. Sorry I missed the special. I’ll see if I can find it streaming somewhere. Made it out of Bigfoot’s lair. He’s too smelly for me. I wasn’t hairy enough for him. Guess true love will have to wait.

  Dare is a cool name, btw. Hope all is well with you!

  Jenny

  P.S. Thanks for the concern. There was a glitch with my email provider, so I didn’t get emails for a day or two. Not that I was online to read them. Had a big project due. Stayed offline to finish. Sorry.

  P.P.S. If my email fails again or if texting is easier, you can reach me at 360-555-0147.

  Dare released the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Jenny was not only okay, but she’d also given him her phone number. A win-win.

  He added her number to his contacts. No last name, but that was okay. The less she told him about herself, the less he’d need to share about his life. Jenny could still be a scammer—though nothing she’d done made him think that—but he liked having another way to contact her.

  He also preferred texting to email. His phone was right here.

  Might as well send a message now…

  CHAPTER THREE

  Dare: It’s Dare. Thanks for the number. Texting is easier. Bigfoot’s loss.

  Jenny: Aw, thanks. You’re up early. Unless you’re on the East Coast. The sun is still asleep here.

  Dare: Where’s here? I’m in Georgia.

  Jenny: Washington.

  That meant a three-hour time difference. It was still the middle of the night where she lived.

  Dare: Sorry I woke you.

  Jenny: I was awake. My sleep pattern is completely off due to working crazy hours to finish my project.

  Dare: That happens to me. Exhausted, need to sleep, but can’t.

  Jenny: Exactly. I can’t shut off my brain.

  Dare: I was the same way last night.

  Jenny: Everything okay?

  Dare: Yes. Today’s looking much better.

  Jenny: Good. I should try to sleep or I’ll be a zombie all day.

  Dare: Sleep well.

  Jenny: TTYL.

  Jenny could count on him talking to her
later.

  With a big smile on his face, Dare leaned against his pillow and reread her texts.

  ****

  After two weeks of texting with Dare, Jenny decided the time had come to tell her book club that she’d heard back from the person who found her message in the bottle. She wasn’t sure why she’d kept that a secret when she looked forward to hearing from him. The exchanges were mostly silly, but she liked waking up to his texts.

  Sitting on the living room couch, she typed a message to tell her friends what she knew about Dare—he lived in Georgia and found her bottle on a beach in Key West—and that their exchanges were friendly, not flirty.

  Which was fine with her.

  So far, five of the book club members had heard from their bottle finders. Not quite half, but that was a better percentage than Jenny had expected.

  Meg’s message had led to her being invited on the reality TV show One True Love. She’d ended up falling in love with the producer, not one of the contestants. Jenny doubted anyone would be able to top that. She sure wouldn’t.

  Dare’s first email about him not being in the market for a soul mate or wanting to find true love had been a clear warning, and that was good. It made writing to him easier.

  No pressure. No reason to read anything into what he wrote.

  Her message in a bottle might not have brought her a happily ever after, but she’d made a new friend. One whose emails and texts brought a smile to her face and didn’t make her feel so isolated and lonely when she spent so much of her time by herself.

  She closed her laptop and walked into the kitchen. Missy was unloading the dishwasher. She was working her regular shift at the cupcake shop now that Elise was feeling better.