Can
Kyra and Dax let go so easily—or has love become a preexisting condition?
SUDDENLY ENGAGED
Lake Haven #3
Julia London
Releasing July 25, 2017
Montlake
Single
mother Kyra Kokinos spends her days waiting tables, her nights working on her
real estate license, and every spare moment with her precocious six-year-old
daughter, Ruby—especially when Ruby won’t stop pestering their grumpy next-door
neighbor. At first glance, Dax Bishop seems like the kind of gruff, solitary
guy who’d be unlikely to offer a cup of sugar, let alone a marriage proposal.
But that’s exactly what happens when Ruby needs life-saving surgery.
Dax showed
up in East Beach a year ago, fresh from a painful divorce and looking for a
place where he could make furniture and avoid people. Suddenly his life is
invaded by an inquisitive munchkin in sparkly cowboy boots—and her frazzled,
too-tempting mother. So he presents a practical plan: his insurance will help
Ruby, and then they can divorce—zero strings attached.
But soon
Kyra and Dax find their engagement of convenience is simple in name only. As
their attraction deepens, a figure from the past reappears, offering a way out.
Can Kyra and Dax let go so easily—or has love become a preexisting condition?
Chapter One
Seven years later
July
Leave it to a
female to think the rules did not apply to her.
The little
heathen from next door was crawling under the split-rail fence that separated
the cottages again. Dax, who already had been feeling pretty damn grumpy going
on a year now, wondered why she didn’t just go over the fence. She was big
enough. It was almost as if she wanted the mud on her dress and her knees, to
drag the ends of her dark red ponytails through the muck.
She crawled
under, stood up, and knocked the caked mud off her knees. She stomped her pink,
sparkly cowboy boots—never had he seen a more impractical shoe—to make them
light up, as she liked to do, hopping around her porch several times a day.
Then she
started for cottage Number Two, arms swinging, stride long.
Dax watched
her from inside his kitchen, annoyed. It had started a week ago, when she’d
climbed on the bottom railing of the fence, leaned over it, and shouted, “I
like your dog!”
He’d ignored
her.
Two days ago
he’d asked her, fairly politely, not to give any more cheese to his dog, Otto.
That little stunt of hers had resulted in a very long and malodorous night
between man and beast.
Yesterday
he’d commanded her to stay on her side of the fence.
But here the
little monster came, apparently neither impressed with him nor intimidated by
his warnings.
Well, Dax had
had enough with that family, or whatever the situation was next door. And
the enormous pickup truck that showed up at seven a.m. and idled in the drive
just outside his bedroom window. Those people were exactly what was wrong with
America—people doing whatever they wanted without regard for anyone else,
letting their kids run wild, coming and going at all hours of the day.
He walked to
the back screen door and opened it. He’d installed a dog door, but Otto refused
to use it. No, Otto was a precious buttercup of a dog that liked to have his
doors opened for him, and he assumed that anytime his master neared the door,
Dax was opening it for him. He assumed so now, stepping in front of Dax—pausing
to stretch after his snoring nap—before sauntering out and down the back porch
steps to sniff something at the bottom.
Dax walked
out onto the porch and stood with his hands on his hips as the girl brazenly
advanced.
“Hi!” she
said.
She was about
to learn that she couldn’t make a little girl’s social call whenever she
wanted. There were rules in this world, and Dax had no compunction about
teaching them to her. Clearly someone needed to. He responded to her greeting
with a glower.
“Hi!” she said again, shouting this time,
as if he hadn’t heard her from the tremendous distance of about six feet.
“What’d I
tell you yesterday?” he asked.
“To stay on
the other side of the fence.”
“Then why are
you over here?”
“I forgot.”
She rocked back on her heels and balanced on them, toes up. “Do you live
there?”
“No, I just
stand on the porch and guard the fence. Yes, I live here. And I work
here. And I don’t want visitors. Now go home.”
“My name is
Ruby Kokinos. What’s yours?”
What was
wrong with this kid? “Where is your mother?”
“At work.”
“Then is your
dad home?”
“My daddy is
in Africa. He teaches cats to do tricks,” she said, pausing to twirl around on
one heel. “Big cats, not little cats. They have really big cats in
Africa.”
“Whatever,”
he said impatiently. “Who is home with you right now?”
“Mrs. Miller.
She’s watching TV. She said I could go outside.”
Great. A
babysitter. “Go home,” he said, pointing to Number Three as Otto wandered over
to examine Ruby Coconuts, or whatever her name was. “Go home and tell Mrs.
Miller that you’re not allowed to come over or under that fence. Do you
understand me?”
“What’s your
dog’s name?” she asked, petting that lazy, useless mutt.
“Did you hear
me?” Dax asked.
“Yes.” She
giggled as Otto began to lick her hand, and went down on her knees to hug him.
“I always always wanted a dog, but Mommy says I can’t have one now.
Maybe when I’m big.” She stroked Otto’s nose, and the dog sat, settling in for
some attention.
“Don’t pet
the dog,” Dax said. “I just told you to go home. What else did I tell you to
do?”
“To, um, to
tell Mrs. Miller to stay over there,” she said, as she continued to pet the
dog. “What’s her name?”
“It’s a he,
and his name is Otto. And I told you to tell Mrs. Miller that you are
supposed to stay over there. Now go on.”
She stopped
petting the dog, and Otto, not ready for the gravy train of attention to end,
began to lick her face. Ruby giggled with delight. Otto licked harder, like
she’d been handling red meat. Frankly, it wouldn’t surprise Dax if she had—the
kid seemed like the type to be into everything. She was laughing uncontrollably
now and fell onto her back. Otto straddled her, his tail wagging as hard as her
feet were kicking, trying to lick her while she tried to hold him off.
Nope, this
was not going to happen. Those two useless beings were not making friends. Dax
marched down off the porch and grabbed Otto’s collar, shoving him out of the
way. “Go,” he said to the dog, pointing to his cottage. Otto obediently
lumbered away.
Dax turned
his attention to the girl with the fantastically dark red hair in two uneven
pigtails and, now that he was close to her, he could see her clear blue eyes
through the round lenses of her blue plastic eyeglasses, which were strapped to
her face with a headband. She looked like a very young little old lady. “Listen
to me, kid. I don’t want you over here. I work here. Serious work. I can’t be
entertaining little girls.”
She hopped to
her feet. “What’s your name?”
Dax sighed.
“If I tell you my name, will you go home?”
She nodded,
her, long pigtails bouncing around her.
“Dax.”
She stared at
him.
“That’s my
name,” he said with a shrug.
Ruby giggled
and began to sway side to side. “That’s not a real name!”
“It’s as real
as Ruby Coconuts.”
“Not Coconuts!”
She squealed with delight. “It’s Ruby Kokinos.”
“Yeah, okay,
but I’m pretty sure you said Coconuts. Now go home.”
“How old are
you?”
“I’m a lot
older than you,” he said and put his hands on her shoulders, turning her
around.
“I’m going to
be seven on my birthday. I want a Barbie for my birthday. I already have four.
I want the one that has the car. The pink car with flowers on it.
There’s a blue car, but I don’t want that one, I want the pink
one, because it has flowers on it. Oh, and guess what, I don’t want a Jasmine
anymore. That’s my favorite princess, but I don’t want her anymore, I want a
Barbie like Taleesha has.”
“Great. Good
luck with that,” he said as he moved her toward the fence.
“My shoes
light up,” she informed him, stomping her feet as they moved. “My mom says
they’re fancy. They’re my favorites. I have some sneakers, too, but they don’t
light up.”
They had
reached the fence, thank God, before the girl could give him a rundown of her
entire shoe collection. Ruby dipped down, apparently thinking she’d go under
again, but Dax caught her under her arms and swung her over the fence,
depositing her on the other side.
Ruby laughed
with delight. “Do that again!”
“No. This is
where our acquaintance comes to an end, kid. I don’t have time to babysit you,
get it?”
“Yes,” she
said.
She didn’t
get it. She wasn’t even listening. She had already climbed onto the bottom
rail, as if she meant to come back over.
“I mean it,”
he said, pointing at her. “If I find you on my side of the fence, I’m going to
call the police.” He figured that ought to put the fear of God into her.
“The
policemans are our friends,” she said sunnily. “A policeman and a police woman
came to my kindergarten. But they never shot any peoples.”
Dax had a
brief but potent urge to correct her understanding of how plurals worked, but
he didn’t. He turned around and marched back to his cottage.
He didn’t
even want to look out the kitchen window when he went inside, because if she’d
come back over the fence, he would lose it.
He’d known
that family was going to be trouble the moment they’d arrived a few days ago.
They’d cost him a table leg he’d been working on, because they’d slammed a door
so loudly and unexpectedly that Dax had started, and the permanent marker he
was using to outline a very intricate pattern on said table leg had gone
dashing off in a thick, black, indelible line down the leg. He’d had to sand
the leg down and start again.
Naturally,
he’d gone to investigate the source of the banging, and he’d seen a woman with
a backpack strapped to her leaning into the open hatch area of a banged-up
Subaru. She’d pulled out a box, hoisted it into her arms with the help of her
knee, then had lugged it up the path and porch steps to Number Three. She’d
been wearing short shorts, a T-shirt, and a ball cap. Dax hadn’t seen her face,
but he’d seen her legs, which were nice and long and shapely, and a mess of
dark hair about the same color as wrought iron, tangled up in the back of the
cap. She’d managed to open the door, and then had gone in, letting the door
bang behind her.
Neighbors.
Dax was not a fan.
The door of
Number Three had continued to bang away most of the afternoon, and Dax had been
unable to work. He’d stood at the kitchen sink, eating from a can of peanuts,
watching the woman jog down the front porch steps, then lug something else
inside. He’d noticed other things about her. Like how her ass was bouncy and
her figure had curves in all the right places, and how her T-shirt hugged her.
He’d noticed that she looked really pretty from a distance, with wide eyes and
dark brows and full lips.
Of course
he’d also noticed the little monster, who’d spent most of the afternoon doing a
clomp clomp clomp around the wooden porch in those damn pink cowboy
boots.
Kids. If anything could make Dax grumpier,
it was a cute kid.
He’d turned
away from the window in a bit of a snit. Of course he was used to people
renting any one of six East Beach Lake Cottages around him for a week or two,
and usually they had kids. He much preferred the olds who took up weekly
residence from time to time, couples with puffs of white hair, sensible shoes,
and early bedtimes. Families on vacation were loud, their arguments drifting in
through the windows Dax liked to keep open.
The cottages
were at the wrong end of Lake Haven, which made them affordable. But they were
at the right end of beauty—each of them faced the lake, and a private, sandy
beach was only a hundred feet or so from their front porches. He’d been lucky
to find this place, with its unused shed out back, which he’d negotiated to
use. He had to remind himself that his setup was perfect when new people showed
up and banged their doors open and shut all damn day.
Dax had
realized that afternoon, as the banging had undone him, that the woman and kid
were moving in—no one hauled that much crap into a cottage for a
vacation. He’d peered out the kitchen window, trying to assess exactly how much
stuff was going into that cottage. But by the time he did, the Subaru was
closed up, and he didn’t see any signs of the woman and the kid.
He’d wandered
outside for a surreptitious inspection of what the hell was happening next door
when the door suddenly banged open and the mom came hurrying outside. She’d
paused on the bottom step of the porch when she saw him. Her dark hair had
spilled around her shoulders and her legs had taunted him, all smooth and
shapely and long in those short shorts. Don’t look, those legs shouted
at him. Don’t look, you pervert, don’t look! Dax hadn’t looked. He’d
studied the keys in her hand.
“Hi,” she’d
said uncertainly.
“Hi.”
She kept
smiling. Dax kept standing there like an imbecile. She leaned a little and
looked around him, to Number Two. “Are you my neighbor?”
“What? Oh, ah
. . . yeah. I’m Dax.”
“Hi, Dax. I’m
Kyra,” she’d said. That smile of hers, all sparkly and bright, had made him
feel funny inside. Like he’d eaten one of those powdered candies that crackled
when it hit your mouth.
“I wondered
about my neighbors. It’s pretty quiet around here. I saw a car in front of one
the cottages down there,” she said, pointing.
“Five,” he
said.
“What?”
He’d suddenly
felt weirdly conspicuous, seeing as how he was standing around with nothing to
do. “That’s Five,” he said, to clarify.
“Ah.”
“You’re in
Three. I’m in Two.”
He’d been
instantly alarmed by what he was doing, explaining the numbering system on a
series of six cottages. She’d looked as if she’d expected him to say more. When
he hadn’t said anything, but sort of nodded like a mute, she’d said, “Okay,
well . . . nice to meet you,” and had hurried on to her car much like
a woman would hurry down a dark street with some stranger walking briskly
behind her. She opened the door, leaned in . . . nice view
. . . then emerged holding a book. She locked the door, then ran past
him with a weird wave before disappearing inside.
Dax had told
himself to get a grip. There was nothing to panic over.
He hadn’t
panicked until much later that afternoon, when he’d happened to glance outside
and had seen a respectable pile of empty moving boxes on the front porch and
the little monster trying to build a house out of them.
That was definitely a long-term stay. And
he didn’t like that, not one bit.
He’d managed
to keep busy and avoid his new neighbors for a few days, but then, yesterday,
the truck had shown up, treating him to the sound of a large HEMI engine idling
near his bedroom window.
He’d let it
pass, would have figured it was someone visiting.
But it
happened again. Just now.
Dax was in
the middle of a good dream when that damn truck pulled in and groggily opened
his eyes, noticed the time. It was a good hour before he liked to get up. Was
this going to be a regular thing, then? He groaned and looked to his right;
Otto was sitting next to the bed, staring at Dax, his tail thumping. “Use the
damn dog door, Otto,” he tried, but that had only excited the dog. He jumped up
and put his big mutt paws on Dax.
With a grunt,
Dax had pushed the dog aside, then staggered into the kitchen. He heaped some
dog food into a metal bowl and put it on the ground. In the time it took him to
fire up the coffeepot, Otto had eaten his food and was standing at the back
door, patiently waiting.
Dax opened
the door. He glanced over to Three. The Subaru was gone, and he couldn’t help
wonder who was driving that massive red truck. A husband? A dad? Jesus, he
hoped the guy wasn’t the chatty type. Hey neighbor, whatcha working on over
there?
Yeah, no, Dax
was in no mood for more neighbors or barbecue invitations or neighborly favors.
But it was becoming clear to him that little Miss Ruby Coconuts was going to
make his policy of isolationism really difficult.
Dax got
dressed and went out to the shed to work. A few hours later he walked into the
kitchen to grab some rags he’d washed in the sink and happened to look out his
kitchen window.
The redheaded
devil was hanging upside down off the porch railing of her house, her arms
reaching for the ground. She was about three inches short, however, and for a
minute Dax was certain she would crash headlong into that flowerbed and hurt
herself. But she didn’t. She managed to haul herself up and hopped off the
railing. And then she looked across the neat little lawn to Dax’s cottage.
“Don’t even think
about it,” he muttered.
Ruby
hesitated. She slid her foot off the porch and onto the next step down. Then
the other foot. She leapt to the ground from there, looking down, admiring the
lights in her shoes. Then she looked up at his cottage again.
“Don’t do it,
you little monster. Don’t you dare do it.”
Ruby was off
like a shot, headed for the fence.
Julia
London is
the New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers
Weekly bestselling author of more than forty romance novels. Her
historical titles include the popular Desperate Debutantes series, the Cabot
Sisters series, and the Highland Grooms series. Her contemporary works include
the Lake Haven series, the Pine River series, and the Cedar Springs series. She
has won the RT Book Club Award for Best Historical Romance and has been a
six-time finalist for the prestigious RITA Award for excellence in romantic
fiction. She lives in Austin, Texas.
