Free Gypsy Beach by Jillian Neal

years. Clearly she still loved eclectic jewelry in every shape
and fashion. If he wasn’t mistaken, he was fairly certain he’d
caught the flash of a sexy little bellybutton ring when the shirt
had swayed.
    Another assaulting memory peppered his mind.
Their mocked arguments over which band was best, The Stones or The
Beatles. She was vehement in her adoration of Mick Jagger and the
Exile on Main Street album. A long-time Beatles fan himself, he
happily argued that no one would ever touch John Lennon in this
millennium or the next. It always ended with him pinning her
underneath him and tickling her until she agreed that Lennon would
always be king. The heated make-out sessions that followed always
took him to paradise.
    Shaking his head, Ryan tried to loosen the
memory from his skull. He’d been disappointed momentarily when he’d
arrived. Jeans meant he wouldn’t be treated to any more glimpses of
that sexy ass. But she’d just turned from the front windows, and
he’d almost dropped the rip hammer he was using to dismantle the
rotting wood on the porch right on his foot.
    There were frayed tears in the back of the
jeans, as well. One of the back pockets hung down just slightly
from its corner. Her lack of panties gave him a tiny peek of that
silky, olive skin of her backside. Damn, is she trying to kill
me?
    She was so stunningly sexy, and she had no
idea. She never wore makeup. Her clothes were somehow always
haphazard perfection. He doubted she owned one single piece of
clothing that would fit the dress code for the Piedmont Driving
Club, and that fact drove him absolutely wild.
    She’d spent her entire life with a mother
that was determined to shove her into some kind of box that would
make her acceptable in a world that would never and could never
deserve her. That Gypsy fire that danced in her eyes always
incinerated any fabrication. Sienna was the most authentic person
he’d ever experienced, and that same luscious fire always melted
him thoroughly.
    He’d spent a lifetime trying to live up to
someone else’s standards; either his parents, Alexa, or the Atlanta
elite. That had left him on the brink of ending it all, a broken
man walking through hell with no hope of seeing the other side. The
only person that he’d ever wanted to prove himself to was Sienna
Cooper. His one chance at heaven, and he’d blown it.
    “I just made some frozen lattes. Would you
like one?” Her sweet voice ripped Ryan from his vengeful thoughts
about all of the old biddies that loved to gossip about his
business, both when it was going well and especially when it
wasn’t, at the Driving Club. He hated going there. When his parents
forced the issue or when Alexa demanded that he attend some event
there with her, he endured the degrading quips about him working
for a living and tried to laugh away the vicious scowls of his own
wife while she joked about his business to all of her friends.
    Sienna stood before him with those beautiful
eyes and that smile that turned his insides to liquid. She was
bringing him coffee. The longing and the perfection of it all set
his entire body on hardened edge. “Yeah, thanks.” He lifted the
cold beverage from her and drew a long sip. “Sienna, this is
fantastic! Where did you learn to make all of this stuff?”
    A swirl of luscious heat crept up from under
her shirt. It wound through her neck and settled in her cheeks.
“Thanks.” She shrugged off his compliment. “I kind of learned as I
went, I guess. On-the-job training, so to speak. I figured out that
I really like to cook after I got kicked out of college. Well,
actually, my Ramen noodle dorm-room dishes are top-notch, so maybe
it was a little before that.”
    They both laughed. The melody of their
laughter mingling together touched places in Ryan’s heart that he
thought were long dead and gone.
    “You’ve probably never heard of Ramen
noodles, right?” Her face fell. Ryan wanted to bring back her
laughter and her beautiful