Playing By Heart Read online

  Playing By Heart

  by

  MELANIE SHAWN

  Melanie Shawn © 2019

  Kobo Edition

  All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this book. No part of this may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission in writing from Melanie Shawn. Exceptions are limited to reviewers who may use brief quotations in connection with reviews. No part of this book can be transmitted, scanned, reproduced, or distributed in any written or electronic form without written permission from Melanie Shawn.

  This book is a work of fiction. Places, names, characters and events are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Disclaimer: The material in this book is for mature audiences only and contains graphic content. It is intended only for those aged 18 and older.

  Cover Design by Wildcat Dezigns

  Copyedit by CookieLynn Publishing

  Book Design by BB eBooks

  Published by Red Hot Reads Publishing

  Rev. 1.0

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Epilogue

  Valentine Bay

  Other Titles by Melanie Shawn

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Alison stopped in front of the dark, rambling house and dragged herself out of the car. It had been a long, punishing day of driving, but she didn’t care. She was here. She was finally here.

  When she’d decided to pull up stakes and take an extended sabbatical far away from the pressures of New York, she’d gone about completing the necessary preparations in an efficient way, checking items off the list one by one.

  Sublet her co-op. Check.

  Stop her subscription delivery services. Check.

  Choose a destination and arrange a long-term rental with an option to extend. Check and check.

  But when she’d gone online to book her plane ticket, a little voice inside urged her to reconsider. Not the trip itself. Hell, no. She knew she needed that. Just the mode of transportation.

  Alison flew all over the country, even the world, on a regular basis. There were meetings, press junkets and other promotional duties, and touring from time to time. Flying would seem like part of the same old life. It wouldn’t give her the feeling of separation she craved.

  Now, driving across the country, hair tucked up under a ball cap and oversize sunglasses firmly in place so as to remain anonymous? That sounded like just the kind of deep dive into her new life she could get behind.

  Not to mention, she was going to need a car in her new small-town Oregon coast life, anyway. Not every place was like Manhattan, where any destination was just a subway ride or a hailed cab away.

  In fact, most places weren’t like Manhattan, and not just in that respect. That was exactly what she was counting on.

  The metallic thunk of the car door closing split the silent darkness. Until that sound hit her ears, she hadn’t even realized how profound it had been. It reached depths of quiet that Manhattan never did, not even at the darkest and loneliest hour of the night. When it was restored again, she stood still and drank it in.

  Mmmmm. Amazing. Now if I can just get a little peace to go along with that quiet, it’ll be an awesome start.

  She took a deep breath, filling her lungs with cold, clean air. It was salty and tickled her nose. She liked that—a nice reminder that the crashing ocean waves were just on the other side of the dunes at times when she couldn’t hear or see them.

  A playful breeze kicked up, tickling the hair on the back of her neck as it lifted the strands and made them dance in the night air.

  A smile touched her lips and filled her heart. It was the first in quite a while. Hopefully the first of many.

  She was here. She hadn’t even been scheduled to arrive until tomorrow, but when she’d stepped out of her Montana hotel room and hopped in the car early that morning, she’d been seized by a sense of determination. Shaking the rental property keys out of the padded FedEx envelope they’d arrived in, she’d held them in the palm of her hand and made a decision.

  She would drive straight through, no matter how long it took. She had wrung every bit of symbolism, not to mention enjoyment, from her meandering trip across the nation. Now she just wanted to arrive.

  And thirteen hours, two gas stops, and three hastily wolfed-down fast food meals later, she had.

  Now that she was finally standing in front of her new temporary home in Valentine Bay, she wanted something else, and the desire was overwhelming.

  Sleep.

  She pulled her suitcase out of the trunk and rolled it up the gravel drive to the porch steps, her eyes getting heavier with each step. She prayed the bed was comfortable—although, in this state, she would’ve even settled for a spring or two poking into her back.

  Her tired fingers fumbled with the key but finally managed to turn the lock and then, blessedly, she was in the house. She closed and locked the door firmly behind her. Dragging her suitcase along, climbed the stairs on heavy feet, stepped into the first bedroom she came to, and fell on top of the covers, fully clothed. She didn’t even stop to take off her shoes.

  The lack of comfort hardly mattered, though. She was sound asleep before her head had even fully sunk into the fluffy pillow.

  Chapter 2

  Bang. Bang. Bang. Bzzzzzz. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bzzzzzzz.

  The alternating sounds of a hammer and a power saw jolted Alison awake. She sat upright in bed, her eyes darting around the room as she searched for some familiar object that would help her make sense of where she was and what was going on.

  Almost immediately, her jumpy gaze landed on her suitcase standing in the corner, and everything came flooding back—her trip across the country to escape New York, where she was currently persona non grata with the Who’s Who of the theater community. Her last-minute decision to forgo staying yet another night in a hotel and instead push through the last leg of the drive, resulting in a grueling twelve plus hours in the car.

  Her difficulty in finding the right house, which was at the end of a long and isolated cul-de-sac that backed up onto a bluff, which led down to the sand.

  There was only one other house on the street, another big and stately one like her own rental, and she’d been assured it would be empty for the next couple of months. That worked perfectly for her. All she wanted was silence and solitude, all the better to contemplate her life and how it had drifted so fa
r off the rails. And, moreover, how she could get it back on track.

  The loud, persistent hammering and sawing was not exactly “silent contemplation” material. They weren’t going to be piping it into yoga studios anytime soon.

  Oh, God! I have to figure out how to make it stop!

  Still shrouded in the kind of denial that only happens during the first moments of wakefulness when the thought of falling back into blissful oblivion still seems tantalizingly possible, she took the only course of action that made sense at that moment—she laid there and prayed it would go away.

  As a tool for making the noise disappear, it was singularly ineffective, and after ten more minutes of the banging and buzzing, Alison was fully awake and prepared to be a little bit more proactive.

  She ran a brush through her hair and smoothed down her jeans and vintage tee from the day before. Not my most glamorous look, she thought, but it’s not like I’m accepting a Tony.

  As she passed through the kitchen on the way to the back door, she had a brilliant idea. I’ll brew a pot of coffee and bring a cup to the foreman as a goodwill gesture.

  She knew that most of her passionate, artistic, fiery friends would stomp over and scream at the offending party, hurling insults so creative that not only would the worker be shamed, but also his entire family tree going back generations.

  That wasn’t Alison’s style. She’d always believed you could catch more flies with honey—or, in this case, coffee.

  She searched through the kitchen cabinets until she found a can of coffee grounds and the accompanying coffee filters. The owner of the house had told her that the cupboards would be stocked with basic amenities, and she was grateful for that convenience now. It was not only going to be heaven to enjoy a cup of coffee before she got herself together to go to the grocery store this afternoon, but it would also provide her a foot in the door for a (hopefully) cordial and (more importantly) effective conversation with the construction foreman next door.

  After the thick, hot, brown magic elixir had finished dripping down into the glass carafe, she poured a steaming cup and filled her lungs with the aroma-thick steam that arose from it.

  Oh, hell yeah. A person doesn’t exist who wouldn’t be charmed by that heavenly smell.

  Alison stepped out of the French doors that opened off the kitchen and into the fog-shrouded morning air. She wished for a moment that she’d taken the time to dig a sweater or hoodie out of her suitcase before setting off on her mission, but she ignored that and pressed forward.

  Doesn’t matter. It just means the foreman’ll be all that much more grateful when I hand over this steaming cup of coffee.

  Walking across the stretch of lawn that separated the two homes with a purposeful stride, she pasted a smile across her face and resolved to be gracious no matter who or what awaited her at the neighboring house.

  Alison pushed aside the plastic tarp that covered the front door opening and stepped just inside the threshold of the unfinished interior, the smell of freshly-cut wood overpowering even the aroma from the steaming mug of coffee she held in her hand.

  She stood there for a moment, waiting for a break in the steady buzz of the power tools. When the noise died off, she wasted no time. She didn’t want to lose the opportunity.

  “Hello?” she called, pushing her powerful pipes to their limit.

  A man stepped around the corner, covered in a light coat of sawdust. He slid a pair of protective goggles off of his eyes as he met her gaze across the room and ruffled his hair to dislodge the wood dust.

  He favored her with a smile that was easy and charming. She stood rooted to the floor. She’d been raised to believe it was rude to stare, but damn if all that home training hadn’t flown out the pane-less, tarp-covered window the second she’d laid eyes on the tool-belted Adonis walking toward her.

  “Hi, there. What can I do for you?”

  God, his voice was just as cheerful and disarming as his eyes and his smile. She opened her mouth to answer, but nothing came out. Her eyes widened and a flush crept up her cheeks.

  Rather than looking at her as if she were a crazy person—though he would’ve been well within his rights to do so—he just broadened his smile and put his hand out toward her.

  “I’m Troy. Troy Valentine.”

  She extended her hand to shake his but her mesmerized brain forgot about the coffee she’d brought over as a make-nice gesture. As her hand shot forward, the hot liquid sloshed over the edge of the cup, getting all over her hand and burning the skin.

  She yelped and involuntarily straightened her fingers and yanked her hand back in an instinctual attempt to escape the pain, the way a person would yank their hand back from a fire when the heat started to singe their fingers.

  “Oh, God! I’m so sorry!”

  Mortification swept through her as the ceramic shattered on the plywood floor and a dark stain spread out from the epicenter.

  What. The. Hell. Is. Wrong. With. Me?

  Chapter 3

  Damn it all to hell. There’s no way I’ll ever get this done in time.

  Troy Valentine had been doing his best to put those kinds of self-defeating thoughts out of his mind as he took a deep breath, centered his mind, and refocused his efforts—hell, if he had to do this entire job on double speed in order to get the results in the necessary timeframe, then that was damn well what he was going to do.

  Just as he’d settled into a new smooth and productive rhythm, a knocking sound hit his ears, different than the industrial cacophony created by his hammer and the occasional power tool.

  He paused his work and listened, just hoping it wasn’t a raccoon or some other animal that had decided to make a home somewhere on the unfinished property. Taking care of the critter infestation would eat into his already impossibly tight schedule, and tie his gut up into even tighter and more complicated knots than it already was.

  It wasn’t a raccoon, though. Rather, it was a creature potentially much more dangerous, and possibly even harder to shake.

  “Hello? Is anybody here?”

  The beautiful woman stepped tentatively through the open front door frame, rustling the semi-opaque plastic sheeting as she did, and Troy watched her from his perch on the second floor landing.

  As soon as he saw her, glossy black hair backlit by the diffused morning light, her lithe body elegant even in jeans and a faded tee, his heart jumped in his chest.

  It wasn’t like he’d never seen a beautiful woman before. In his years as a pro ballplayer, they’d been a constant fixture. But there was something different about this lady … and he realized then that’s what it was. She was a lady. Everything about her told a story of grace, poise, and confidence. There was an air of mystery about her that intrigued him. Within two seconds of laying eyes on her, he knew he wanted to get to know her better.

  He sped down the back kitchen stairs and came through the doorway to the living room, unable to take his eyes off of her.

  He was stopped short by a sudden image of himself. He still had his safety goggles on, and he must’ve been pretty well covered in a fine coat of sawdust. Trying to be as smooth as possible, he slid the glasses off and gave his hair a quick back and forth with his fingers. He had no idea how much good that would do, but he had to try.

  “Hi, there. What can I do for you?”

  She just stared at him.

  Oh, shit! I must look even worse than I thought.

  He decided to overcome whatever bad first impression he’d clearly made by employing directness and charm. It had been a winning strategy in the past. Maybe it would work now, too.

  He put his hand out to shake hers. “I’m Troy. Troy Valentine.”

  She thrust her hand out, presumably to meet his, but it was occupied by a coffee cup that went crashing to the ground after the hot liquid splashed onto her hand.

  The ceramic shattered and dark brown coffee spread and sank into the plywood covering the floor. Her eyes widened, horrified, as she watched it grow
, and she cried, “Oh God, I’m so sorry!”

  Troy put an arm around her shoulder and hustled her out through the same doorway she’d come in. “We need to get some cold water on that hand. It’s already turning red.”

  She looked down at her wrist, studying it like it was an alien life form. “I didn’t even notice. It hurts like hell now that I’m thinking about it.”

  “You’re in the house next door?” He felt pretty confident in his guess. There weren’t any other houses on this long private road; where else could she have come from?

  “I am. Just got here last night.”

  Troy grinned. “Welcome to the neighborhood.”

  She let out a laugh that was a perfect mix of sardonic and appreciative. His heart jumped again. Beauty, grace, and mystery were alluring enough on their own, but a woman who got his sense of humor? Hubba hubba!

  When they stepped onto the back porch, he reached out to steady her as they climbed the steps. In the back of his mind, he realized how ridiculous he was being. After all, it was a small burn, not a debilitating injury. He couldn’t help himself, though. He felt an inexplicable need to provide her with a steadying hand, to make sure she was all right.

  He didn’t even know her name.

  She opened the back door, and they stepped into a gorgeous kitchen. Even as distracted as he was by the sudden appearance of this beautiful woman, he couldn’t help but surreptitiously check out the finish work. Top-of-the-line fixtures, granite countertops, stainless steel appliances. He’d always wanted to see inside this place, and it didn’t disappoint. He made quick mental notes of things he might want to incorporate in his future projects.

  As she rotated her hand under the cold water pouring from the faucet, she gave him a quick grin. “That coffee was supposed to be a goodwill gesture. I think it may have had the opposite effect.”

  “Goodwill gesture?”

  “To establish friendly communication.”

  He returned the smile. “A simple ‘hello’ would’ve been good enough.”