Free Trapped in Tourist Town by Jennifer Decuir

are probably a dozen men more qualified to take over the position. My father would have no problem naming a successor. But they’d cut me off. I’d lose my monthly stipend, any inheritance I stood to gain. I’d be penniless.”
    “Excuse me? You have a job. Or am I missing something? Your magazine is paying for you to stay in that cottage by the shore. They’re paying your expenses. They’re paying for a freaking assistant.” Her eyes widened.
    Burke pressed his lips together tightly, suddenly finding the lighthouse so fascinating he couldn’t tear his eyes from it. Darkness had descended and the automated light winked on and off.
    “Oh, Burke,” she whispered.
    “It was worth it.” He still wouldn’t look at her. His voice came out gruff.
    “But it has to stop. The paying part. Not the work.”
    Now he gave her his attention. His face in shadow, she could still read the intensity in his gaze.
    “Why would you offer to help me like this? Unpaid? You barely know me. You have your own goals. You have somewhere you’re meant to be.”
    “And I’ll get there. But you first. Screw Sanders Resorts! Let’s finish your magazine series and find you a job in Scallop Shores that gives you plenty of time for writing.”
    He reached out a finger and lifted her chin, leaning in close enough for her to feel his warm breath on her face.
    “You still haven’t told me why.”
    Her heart ricocheted in her chest. She could have come to love this man. Perhaps she already did, to some degree. But he was right. Theirs were different goals, leading them on very different paths. Maybe someday she’d find someone who made her feel as alive as Burke did.
    “Because you’re my friend. And I would do anything for my friends.”
    “Your friend?” She hardened her heart against the tone in his voice, the look in his eyes by the light of the nearby lamppost.
    It was better this way.

Chapter 7
    The large LCD display on the bedside clock read two eleven a.m. Burke rolled over, punching his pillow, though it was more from frustration than an effort to make the cotton more pliable. Friends. Is that what they were? Had his kisses had so little effect? He was more out of practice than he thought.
    They had something. He wasn’t imagining it. There was a hum, an intensity that drew them together like magnets. Yet Cady was so fixated on getting out of Scallop Shores that she refused to do anything about it.
    So now he lay sleepless, in the dead of night. His body ached for a woman who seemed intent on testing the very limits of his endurance. He’d come to this town for a story, for a job that, until recently, had seemed satisfying and quenched his thirst for writing. And now, because of Cady, he was ready to throw away a cushy inheritance and a career that would set him up for life. All for a woman who intended to leave him at the end of the summer. He was insane.
    From the far side of the house came a muffled crash. Burke sat up straight, scrambling to the edge of the mattress and feeling for the steel baseball bat he kept under the bed. Damn it! This wasn’t his apartment in Manhattan. He was in a rented cottage with no accessible weapon. Another crash came, this one a little closer to the back porch. He searched wildly for something to fend off the intruder. Coming up empty in the bedroom, he padded stealthily toward the kitchen in his boxer briefs.
    The bright light from a nearly full moon shone a path to the counter and his cell phone, sitting on the charger. Burke snatched it up and dialed 911.
    “911, what is your emergency?”
    “I need to report an intruder.” He rattled off the address of the rental cottage.
    “Someone is inside your house?”
    “Well, no. He’s breaking in.”
    “Could you be more specific? Have they broken a window? Are they attempting to get in through the door?”
    “Seriously, lady? Are you going to wait until the guy gets inside and kills me before you send someone out here? Maybe I could