Free Take Me All the Way by Toni Blake Page A

too, you know.” Riley was the manager of the Happy Crab. Reece had taken in the old man out of the goodness of his heart—and now Riley was a beloved member of the community. “Sometimes people just need a little help, someone to believe in them.”
    Tamra took that in. She knew it was true. She hadn’t believed much in herself when she’d arrived in Coral Cove with nothing but a car full of pottery and stained glass to show for her first twenty-seven years of life. The kindness of the people here had changed that. And yet she still felt the need to argue, grousing, “Reece needs to be more careful about taking in homeless people—one of these days he could end up with a real nut on his hands.”
    But at that, Polly just laughed and Cami said, “Well, we’re still inviting Jeremy Sheridan to the party.”
    A S Jeremy walked in the door at Home Depot, he scanned the area, high and low, as he automatically did when entering any new environment. As he turned each blind corner, he kept on the alert, ready for anything. He knew there weren’t snipers at Home Depot, but his body didn’t seem to know—his body stayed tense in any unfamiliar surroundings.
    He walked down the tool aisle, then flinched at the sight of a man holding a drill, testing the feel of it in his hand. It’s a drill, not a weapon. Breathe. Slowly. Inhale through the nose. Count four. Exhale through the mouth. Count four. It always helped.
    The truth was, he fucking hated being here. He hated being anyplace with a crowd, with strangers milling around. That was a lot of the appeal of Whisper Falls. No crowds. No unpredictability. It had taken some of the tension out of his day. Most people could walk around a store or a town and feel normal, but for Jeremy it wasn’t that easy.
    And even at the beach, there were vast open spaces—it was easy to stay aware of what went on around him. In a store, though, he was confronted by aisles, and tall shelves, things you couldn’t see around.
    But it’ll get easier. It’ll get a little easier every time.
    As he found a large cart and began collecting what he needed, his mind drifted back to the jobsite, to his interactions with the princess who refused to be anybody’s princess. He didn’t know what he thought of her. Shades of light and dark there. Shades of challenge. And he wasn’t up for mysteries these days, so it was probably best to just do his work and let it alone. It being her. It being whatever weird pull he’d felt moving between them.
    It hit him, as he located the size 10p nails he needed for framing, that she’d actually made him laugh. Unwittingly maybe, but still—he couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed and really meant it. Maybe that was why he’d kept egging her on.
    She stayed on his mind as he gathered the rest of the building supplies, and it was only as he headed to the checkout that he realized he’d spent the last few minutes not looking around waiting for something bad to happen.
    And by the time Jeremy left the store with his purchases loaded into the bed of his truck, he felt a little stronger than he had going in.
    A S the sun sank over the ocean in the distance a few days later, Jeremy sat eating takeout from Gino’s Pizzeria up the street at one of the picnic tables behind the Happy Crab. It had become a favorite spot for him since arriving here, a peaceful spot. He supposed in summer, when the place was more crowded, the motel’s pool might be busy with laughing, splashing kids, or the dock area more bustling with boaters, but for now it was a relatively tranquil place where he could quietly take in this little corner of the world.
    The thing that made it even better tonight was that he’d bought his dinner. No one had given it to him out of generosity. He appreciated generosity—he’d elicited more than his fair share since returning home from