All To Myself Read online

  All To Myself

  Annemarie Hartnett

  All To Myself

  Copyright © 2013 Annemarie Hartnett

  Kindle Edition

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the author. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials. Purchase only authorized editions.

  This book is intended for adults only.

  Cover Image Credit: http://www.dreamstime.com/spwidoff_info

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Epilogue

  Dedication

  For Jess & Sara.

  Chapter One

  The accident was her own fault, but she would never admit it.

  As she writhed on the pavement along the shore road, blood dripping down her leg from the gash on her knee, Rory cursed the owner of the green sports car.

  He had been speeding, she told herself. He hadn’t been paying attention to the road, his gaze instead on the sparkling blue ocean just meters from the road, or he had been messing with an expensive sound system. He’d seen her come off of the trail but rather than slow down, he had swerved to pass her and clipped her bicycle.

  Any excuse except for the truth: that she had been late for work and she had sped onto the road without looking for oncoming traffic.

  “Are you all right?” the driver shouted as he vaulted from the car.

  Rory bit down on her retort.

  Of course I’m not all right. You hit me with your car, didn’t you?

  He knelt and reached for her. Rory shrank away from him. She didn’t have time for this.

  “Ah, Christ, it’s bad,” he said, and despite her best efforts to bar her injured leg from his clutches, he wrapped his big, tanned hand around her ankle and brushed her arm aside.

  “I’m fine. Really.” Rory kept her gaze lowered. Maybe if she played it off like nothing, he’d believe her and just go away.

  But when he drew her leg out a little, a red river poured down her knee, and she moaned as sudden pain bit her.

  “Oh fuckfuckfuckfuckingfuck! Get your hands off me!”

  He backed off like she’d tasered him. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Shit. Oh, shit! I’ll call an ambulance.”

  “No!”

  An ambulance would only make things worse. The road would back up. Someone she knew would see her being put into an ambulance and either call her grandfather, or worse, call down to The White Tip to tell her sister.

  Plus, she wouldn’t get paid and have to beg for an extra shift.

  “But something might be broken,” the man said.

  My foot on your ass, if you call an ambulance.

  She looked up with a scowl, and then it was her turn to reel back as she recognized those brown curls and blue eyes.

  Oh God. She was run over by Noah Hyland.

  The only way things could have gotten worse was if a pack of rabid foxes came out of the brush and dragged her off.

  Her boss’s son swiped his hands over his face, then gave her a helpless look. It lasted only a few seconds, and then he set his wide mouth in a line and frowned.

  “I don’t care what you say. I’m calling for help.”

  “I’m serious--”

  “I’m serious. Even if you don’t want help, I don’t want to get nailed for a hit and run if you go home and die of internal bleeding.”

  He pulled out his phone. It wasn’t some prepaid phone like hers, but one of those six-hundred dollar mini computers that also happened to make calls. She clamped her hand on his wrist. “Look, I live up across the field over there. I just need to clean it off and sit down, and if it’s still bad tonight, I’ll put some ice on it.”

  He gave his head one determined shake. “I can’t let you do that.”

  “If you’re worried I’ll sue you, don’t be. It was …” She pressed her lips together and for just a few seconds the admission burned at the back of her throat, and then it burned coming out. “It was my fault. I was supposed to yield to you and I didn’t. Take a video, for insurance. I’ll say on camera that I came out that way. I go my way, you go your way, and everything will be cool.”

  Noah looked down to her wound, then back up to her face.

  Please, please, please, please …

  “I’ll take you home,” he said, and she deflated.

  She hadn’t actually planned on going home. She planned to hobble her bike into the field until she was sure he was gone, and then peddling as best she could down to The White Tip. She could get cleaned off there. She could suffer through dinner, and when things slowed down she could sit behind the bar with an ice pack on her knee.

  But it was obvious that Noah wasn’t going to be put off so easily. Why couldn’t he have been one of those silver-spoon brats who sped off in a panic?

  She looked down at her leg, then made her final attempt. “I’ll bleed all over your nice car. You might sue me for the repairs.”

  “Just shut up, okay?”

  Rory bit down on the pain and her frustration and tried rolling into a position where she could get up, then squeaked as he invaded her space.

  Before she could push him away, he’d scooped her up. Her head floated a little as he carried her to the passenger side of his little green rocket.

  “Can you open the door, please?”

  “What about my bike?”

  Not that it was an expensive bike. She’d gotten it cheap from The White Tip when they’d upgraded their touring bikes, but without it she would have to walk everywhere. It was all right when she lived in town where she could at least catch a bus, but not now when she lived three miles in either direction from her day and night jobs.

  “I’ll hide it in the bushes and come back for it.”

  So much for getting rid of him.

  Deposited in the front seat of his car, Rory tugged the hem of her T-shirt tight around her waist and drew her knee up to press the bunch of fabric she had gathered against her wound. She didn’t care that he said, she wasn’t going to get a drop on that spotless interior.

  She watched him collect her bike, which looked no worse for wear, and disappear onto the bicycle path with it. He returned moments later, snatched up her backpack and jogged to the car. Rory had butterflies as he slid behind the wheel.

  The car started with what sounded to her like a derisive cough, as if to say what are you doing here with your five dollar shorts sitting on my fine interior? She’d never owned a car, but her last couple of boyfriends had. Beaters. The kind that begged for mercy when you turned them on.

  “Where am I taking you?” he asked.

  “Back onto the main road. It’s just over there, but you can’t get to it without getting out of the park.”

  “Were you headed for the beach?” He tipped his head towards her backpack, where her striped towel was rolled up in the mesh pocket outside.

  “Later, after work.”

  “Skinny dipping?”

  She snapped her gaze to him. His eyes were on the road, but a smirk played on his mouth.

  “Um, no. I have my suit, but I don’t think I’ll be on the water tonight.”

  She lifted the fabric away from her knee and examined the wound. Still oozing, but not dripping.
<
br />   He glanced at her and took one hand off the wheel to place it over hers, then pressed down. “Leave it alone.”

  Rory didn’t like the little thrill that went through her with the pressure of his hand over hers. She didn’t like the sudden heat in her cheeks as his stern tone bled into her. She turned her wrist, hoping to be rid of his grip, but he held on.

  So this is Noah Hyland. Slick as snot on a doorknob.

  His family had taken over The White Tip when she was fourteen, and that had been the first summer he had come to the resort community. She heard the gossip before she’d ever laid eyes on him. In the week of his arrival, he’d thrown a huge party on the beach that got out of hand and had to be shut down by the Mounties. He got a warning, but the next night there had been another party on another beach. The wealthy cottage owners who had paid a small fortune for their waterfront oasis refused to put up with the screaming and loud music, and when the Mounties came by a second time they’d caught Hyland and a few friends getting ready to drag along the parkway. He’d been banned from the park for the rest of the summer, and shortly after he had been shipped home to Ontario. He hadn’t returned the following year, but he was back again when Rory was sixteen and had her first job at the hotel.

  She rarely saw the outside of the kitchen where she washed dishes, but she had seen him passing through the lobby with sunglasses propped atop his dark head and his tanned chest bared for all to see, and she’d heard the older girls talking about him. In one breath they said he was a god with his cock, and in the next they cursed him for pushing them aside after getting his dick wet. He reportedly went through most of the young women who worked at The White Tip that summer before moving on to the tourists.

  He went to school throughout the year, but she doubted he showed up half the time and if he did, he probably didn’t put any effort into making the grade. As she watched him heading down to the beach, flanked by his entourage, she had thought about how unfair it was that she slaved in a hot kitchen all summer while he got to sun himself.

  She hadn’t seen much of him this summer. He’d apparently graduated by some miracle and was headed to grad school, but if he was here on the island she expected he would be wasting another summer in the sun.

  She tried again to get rid of his hand as they neared the park entrance, but he didn’t move. She kept her head down as they went through the tolls. She didn’t know who was working the booth, but it was probably someone she knew. She hoped they would just assume the blonde head belonged to another one of Hyland’s playthings.

  “How far?” he asked, turning the car west.

  “Across from the laundromat, down MacKinnon Road.”

  “Hey, is that lemonade stand still there?”

  “What lemonade stand?”

  “The one that did all the different kinds: watermelon, raspberry, pineapple, rhubarb. It’s a little yellow shack with big pink flowers on it.”

  She shook her head. “You must be thinking of the other park. There’s never been anything but a laundromat over there as long as I can remember.”

  “A few of summers ago, it was the go-to place before hitting the beach. Get a jug and have them fill it about halfway, and pour vodka in the rest.”

  “That’s … really irresponsible,” she said, and this time she deliberately pushed his hand away. “There are a lot of little kids on the beaches all day long. You could pass out and they’ll just come along and help themselves.”

  “It’s not like we just left it lying around.”

  “And do you know how many drunken idiots the lifeguards pull out of the water every summer? Or how many people are mowed over on the roads when a party clears out?”

  “Jesus, what’s your problem?”

  “I don’t have a problem. If you want to drink, do it like an adult. Don’t get plastered and puke all over the beach.”

  Noah placed both hands on the wheel and let out a disbelieving laugh. “Wow.”

  She hadn’t meant to lay into him, but her knee was starting to throb and she wasn’t interested in hearing about his party-boy exploits on the beach.

  They rode in silence. Noah went at least twenty-kilometers over the speed limit the whole way. She didn’t rebuke him for it. The faster he drove, the faster she could get home, slap a bandage on, and get moving.

  “Up here, just past the curve,” she said as the laundromat came into view.

  He signaled, and the ride got bumpier as pavement gave way to a red dirt road. “Are you originally from here?”

  “I grew up outside of Summerside. I stay here in the summer to work.”

  “Have we met before?”

  She bit her lip. She wasn’t ready to reveal that she worked for his father at The White Tip. “I don’t think so. We might have seen one another around. Not here, keep going.”

  He had slowed in front of a small collection of luxury cottages, and Rory laughed to herself that he was in for a shock when he saw the place she called home.

  “Nice little spot,” he said, then glanced at her. “Have I fucked you?”

  Rory’s jaw actually dropped. She gaped at him, mouth open and a gurgling little sound struggling at the back of her throat. “N-no.”

  “Did you suck me off?”

  “Stop the car. I’ll walk the rest of the way.”

  “I was just asking.” It drove her nuts that he sounded so nonchalant. “I’ve been coming here every summer. I’ve fucked a lot of local girls, though not so much lately. I’m getting older and they’re getting younger. You’ve been so frosty with me, I figured I might have fucked you at some point.”

  “I’ve just been hit by a car, so excuse my lack of social intercourse,” she said with a sneer, “and if it’s a regular thing for women to hate you after you fuck them, then maybe you need to rethink how you treat them after you flush the condom.”

  “You’ve got a point. What’s your name?”

  “What does it matter?”

  “I’d like to know the name of the girl I could have killed back there.”

  He waited, and Rory couldn’t think of a reason to deny him her name. She could make one up, but it seemed like such a ridiculous thing to do.

  “Rory.”

  “Rory? ….”

  “Mitchell.”

  “Any relation to Francie Mitchell?”

  She hadn’t expected him to know who her sister was, but then again, if his ass was in the vicinity to kiss, Francie would be on her knees in a shot.

  “Yes, Francie is my sister.”

  “Lucky you,” he said, and Rory couldn’t hold back her laugh at his dry tone.

  “Yeah, she’s a fun one.”

  “So, your sister works at The White Tip. Do you want to take a guess at who I am?”

  Caught in a smile with him, Rory was suddenly ticklish and blushing. “I know who you are.”

  His grin widened. “Who am I?”

  “Your Dad owns The White Tip.”

  They arrived at the end of the road where her little blue cottage waited. He cut the engine and held out a hand to her. “Noah.”

  She shook, then reached for the door handle. Before she could wriggle her way out of the seat, Noah lifted her once more.

  “I think I can make it to the steps,” she said, but her tone wasn’t as caustic as it had been. “And my key is in my backpack.”

  “Let me take you up the stairs. I’ll come back for the backpack.”

  She could have wriggled out of his grip, but as she held onto his shoulders she found she liked the closeness. She wasn’t exactly light, but he was strong. She could feel it in the way his muscles barely tensed as he carried her up the stairs.

  He left her leaning against the railing as he went for the backpack, and he waited at her shoulder while she fumbled with the lock.

  “Thanks,” she murmured, and gave him a quick smile.

  “For running you off the road?”

  “For bringing me home.”

  He stood close as she undid the
bolt, and the hair on the back of her neck stood up. She pushed open the door and he reached forward to hold it open, and she turned on the threshold.

  “You don’t have to stay.”

  “I’ve got to make sure you get patched up.”

  “No, really--”

  “Don’t make me pick you up again.”

  She hesitated. She’d never been ashamed before. In fact, she loved her little cottage. It belonged to her grandfather and she’d spent every summer here for as long as she could remember. Now she paid her grandfather two hundred dollars a month for a view that could easily get him a grand a week from some summer tourists. It was clean and bright, and when she woke up in the morning she could sit back with a cup of coffee and watch the boats on the water.

  But it was rustic. The only thing in the cottage that was younger than a decade was the mattress her grandfather had insisted on buying at the beginning of summer. Noah’s definition of a cottage was probably closer to the million dollar chalets that dotted the coastline. She didn’t want him inside.

  She didn’t want him to see the stained kettle over the ancient stove or the frayed upholstery. She didn’t want him to look in the cupboard and see all the yellow store brand packages of instant food.

  She didn’t want to be embarrassed by what was hers.

  He didn’t give her a choice. He pushed in, one hand on her arm, and took a quick look around. If he had any thoughts about her living conditions, he kept them to himself. He honed in on the sofa and guided her towards it.

  “Bathroom?”

  She pointed at the narrow doorway off the kitchen, and hugged herself through her embarrassment. The bathroom was tiny, with just a dingy little shower stall. She heard him rooting around in there and her chest ached when he emerged with the small red emergency kit she kept under the sink and one of her dollar store face cloths.

  “You really, really don’t have to do this,” she said as he dropped the kit on the floor in front of her and moved to the kitchen sink. She wished she had done the dishes after her morning shift at her other job. If she hadn’t flopped out on the sofa, he wouldn’t be running the cold water over the scummy remnants of her boxed macaroni and cheese lunch.