His lips were soft against her shoulder, making her wish she was someone different, someone who could have a good time with a hot guy and not hate herself for it the next day. “It was more fun taking it off than it was putting it back on.”

Jenny smiled in the darkness. He was sweet and funny and sexy and so much more than she was ready for. She’d only recently decided to give dating a whirl. Rolling around naked on the beach with a guy she’d only met that morning was way too far outside her comfort zone.

He helped her to locate the other half of her bathing suit, kept his back to her while she got dressed, shook out the towels and walked her back to the lighthouse without touching her again.

Jenny wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed that he’d kept his hands to himself. At the door, she turned to him, his arresting face illuminated by a floodlight. “I’ll, um, I guess I’ll see you when you cut the grass again.”

His confident smile unnerved her. “If not before.”

“Alex, really, I’m not in a good place for this sort of thing—”

He silenced her with a deep kiss that made a total and complete liar out of her. “See you around, Jenny Lighthouse.” He let her go so suddenly that she had to reach for the door to steady herself as he handed the towels to her.

She held on to the door handle while he started the motorcycle and drove off in a cloud of dust. Her mother had always warned Jenny and her sisters to be wary of men who preferred motorcycles. Alex was exactly the kind of guy her mother had worried about—a bit reckless, a bit devil-may-care and a whole lot of trouble.

Jenny planned to take her mother’s advice and stay far, far away from him.

***

By the end of the long, emotional day, Maddie was completely drained and feeling like a jerk for making such a big deal out of not being pregnant when she hadn’t even wanted to be pregnant.

She cringed when she recalled her breakdown at Syd’s. Like she had any right to be mourning an unwanted pregnancy in front of her friend, who was going to such enormous lengths to get pregnant after losing two children in an accident. “You’re one hell of a good friend,” she muttered to the darkness.

Her kids had refused to go to bed, and, sensing she was teetering on the edge of losing it completely, Mac had sent her outside with a glass of wine to decompress while he wrestled them into bed.