Free A Summer in Paradise by Tianna Xander

Fifteen
     
     
    Pearl quietly headed into the woods
when she left the cabin. She needed a little time alone to think,
then she would hike into town and find Gemma.
    She checked her watch with a grimace.
It would be full on light in less than an hour and the guys would
be awake soon after that, if one of them didn’t wake up because
they needed to use the bathroom.
    While the cabins didn’t have electric
lights, they did have a generator that could be used to operate the
well for the kitchen and the tiny bathroom that consisted of a
toilet and a small sink. It didn’t even have a shower, which was
why she’d bathed in the river the day before.
    She wanted to bath again this morning,
but settled for washing up in the tiny bathroom before she left.
She didn’t want to take the time to make her way to the lake,
besides, the boar attack left a bad taste in her mouth for swimming
alone.
    About two hours had passed when she
heard the sound of a small motorcycle riding the trail. It was
moving too fast to hide. When the rider stopped and took off his
helmet, Pearl nearly sighed with relief. She knew the perils of a
woman walking in the woods alone, and she hadn’t really wanted to
test out her self-defense skills right now.
    “ Hi!” The rider, a muscular
boy between the ages of sixteen and nineteen grinned at her. “It’s
gonna be a hot day for a hike.” He hung his helmet on the
handlebars and rested his hands on his thighs. “You going up or
down?”
    “ Down.” Pearl smiled. “I’m
Pearl.” She approached the bike and held out her hand. “Are you
going into town?”
    It would be great if he was and would
give her a ride. It would give her a hell of a head start on the
guys. There was no doubt in Pearl’s mind that when Duncan and
Jarrod found her gone, they would track her on foot. Their noses
wouldn’t do them a damned bit of good in a car or truck.
    The boy moved forward on his seat.
“Wanna ride back to town?” He patted the little bit of seat between
him and the sissy bar. “There’s plenty of room. I give my
girlfriend a ride all the time.” He smiled again. Somehow Pearl
knew she knew him from somewhere.
    “ You look familiar.” He
tilted his head and frowned. “Do I know you?”
    “ No.” Pearl shook her head.
“But I’m sure you know my sister, Gemma, if you live in town.” She
knew he spoke of Paradise. It was the only town within an hour’s
ride from here.
    “ You’re Gemma’s sister?” He
grinned at her as though he knew something she didn’t, then held
out his hand. “It’s good to see you again.” He grasped her hand,
shook it a couple of times then released it. “You must be Pearl. I
remember Crystal was just a little thing when you left. I don’t
think she was much older than me.”
    Pearl stared at him, drawing her brows
together as she tried to pull a name from the recesses of her mind.
He looked familiar, but she couldn’t place him. It was difficult to
tell his age. If he was a shifter, and he most likely was, he could
be in his twenties and still look like a teenager. That thought had
her stepping back. Why hadn’t she remembered that
before?
    “ Aww, you don’t have to be
afraid of me, Pearlie.” He used his feet to push his motorcycle
back while he sat on the seat. “I’d never hurt you.”
    “ Oh, my God.” Pearl looked
at the young man before her and tried not to let her mouth fall
open with shock. “Only one person ever called me Pearlie.” How
could he know that unless…“Davie Gibson?”
    She looked at him again. It
was hard to believe this… man in front of her was the boy she used to babysit on
occasion when she was younger. She stared at his broad chest and
muscular thighs beneath the black leather pants he wore and pitied
the young girls of Paradise.
    None of them had a chance of escaping
this one’s charms if he decided to turn up the wattage of one of
his smiles. With that black hair and sky blue eyes of his, girls
were probably throwing