HARLOW SHOWS UP bright and early the next morning, balancing a tray with three Styrofoam cups on one flattened palm, a white paper bag clutched in her other fist.

“Good morning, Sunshine!” she chirps, pushing past me into the living room. “I brought breakfast.”

“It’s seven in the morning, Snap,” I mumble after her, reaching up to scratch my jaw. I haven’t shaved in two days, I’m not wearing a shirt... she’s lucky I’m even wearing pants. “What are you doing here?”

“We’re going to brainstorm.” She walks into the kitchen and turns to whisper-hiss, “Is Oliver still home?”

The old house is still chilly. The floorboards are cold beneath my bare feet as I lag behind her.

“He’s in the shower.”

At least, I think he is. At home I’m up before sunrise, down at the docks. But this beach life has spoiled me and indulges my natural night owl tendencies. I don’t think I’ve slept until seven in nearly twenty years. But I’m waiting until Oliver leaves to call my brothers and fill them in on my meeting with the producers.

Any thought of my brothers at all is wiped from my head when I turn the corner and get an eyeful of Harlow bent over the dishwasher, her perfect ass wrapped in a pair of skintight yoga pants.

Oblivious to my ogling, she straightens, and begins opening cupboard doors. “Plates?”

I cross the room and stop just behind her, reaching over her head to retrieve a stack of yellow plates from the shelf. Harlow freezes, fingers gripping the edge of the countertop before she seems to relax, and leans back against my chest.

“Here you go,” I tell her, bending to say the words against her hair.

She smells so good and her ass is pressed against my dick, I have to step away before she can feel that I’m already half hard, worked up like a seventeen-year-old boy. Pushing back, I take a seat at the small island and weave my bare feet around the legs of the bar stool.

It takes a moment for her to collect herself, too, and I grin as she clumsily sets down the plates and opens the paper sack.

“You look a little breathless there, Snap.”

She looks up, shoots daggers.

“So what is it we’re brainstorming?” I ask, rolling an orange along the counter. My stomach growls on instinct when I see her reach inside the bag and pull out some of the biggest, gooiest, most frosting-coated cinnamon rolls I’ve ever seen.

“Your situation,” she stage-whispers, and slaps my hand away when I try to sneak a fingertip of icing.

“My situation... ?”

“Dreamboats on the Pacific? Try to keep up, Finneus.”

I roll my eyes. “You know that’s not what it’s called.”

“Only because they never asked me for ideas.”