He's So Fine

Olivia had been dragged along. She could still remember being on the floor reading in a corner when the casting director had noticed her.

The next thing she knew, she’d filmed a commercial that had gone national.

Jolyn still hadn’t forgiven her for that.

Or for all that came after. Not Again, Hailey! had catapulted them to Hollywood and changed their world, a world that then depended on Olivia.

“Doing this retro show won’t change your life,” Tamilyn said, “but it’ll change mine. I need a girly surgery.”

“Save it, Mom. Jolyn already told me you want another boob job.”

“Well, damn it, they don’t stay perky forever. You’ll see.”

“If you need money for living expenses, I can help you a little bit,” Olivia said.

“Oh, no. I’m not a charity case. I just want what’s mine. A fair cut as your manager, is all. Do the damn show. It’s one day of filming. TV Land can start rerunning the series, and we’ll be rolling in the royalties, and you can go back to hiding beneath a rock in Lucky Rock.”

“Lucky Harbor.” And she wasn’t hiding. She was living. “It isn’t just one day, Mom. If I do this, we both know the drill. TV Land’s going to want a full-blown reunion show, and TV Guide’s gonna want to do a big deal on it, and…” And people here would realize who she was, and then she’d cease to be Olivia. She’d go back to being Sharlyn Peterson, a washed-up child star, complete with the humiliating public shenanigans.

Okay, maybe she was hiding just a little bit. “I’ll think about it,” she said.

“Well, think fast. Jolyn’s talking of heading out there to see you.”

Olivia’s gut hit her toes. “Tell her no. I’ll call.”

“Soon?”

“Yes. But right now I’ve got to get to work.” Olivia cut off the call and the usual wave of guilt rolled over her.

Damn it. She so didn’t want to do the retrospective show. She liked her life just as it was right now.

Crossing the alley from the docks and beach, she came to the warehouse building she lived in. Once upon a time, it’d been a cannery, and then a saltwater taffy manufacturer, and then an arcade. Sometime in the past thirty years it’d been divided into three apartments.

Three poorly renovated, barely insulated, not-easily-heated apartments.

But there were bonuses. The ocean-facing wall was floor-to-ceiling windows that, yes, let in the cold wind, but also let in the glorious view and made her feel like…herself, just a woman who owned a vintage shop and lived as simply as she could here in sweet, quirky Lucky Harbor.

Olivia entered the building and stopped in the hallway at her front door. She occupied the middle unit. No one lived in the far right one. Her neighbor on the left was Becca Thorpe, soon to be Becca Brody, once sexy boatbuilder Sam Brody got her down the aisle.

“Not the sharpest tool in the shed today,” she said to herself. Because she hadn’t hidden a key in case of idiocy—such as losing her keys rescuing a hot guy who didn’t need rescuing. She sighed loudly.

A woman peeked out from the third and supposedly empty apartment. She was in yoga pants and a large sweatshirt, covered in dust from her strawberry-blond hair, which was piled on top of her head—although much of it had escaped its confines—to her battered tennis shoes. “Excuse me,” she said to Olivia, “but are you talking to me?”

“No,” Olivia said. “I’m talking to myself.”

The woman smiled. “Gotcha. Carry on. Oh, and I’m Callie Sharpe. I’m moving in this weekend and just checking the place out. The walls are pretty thin.”

“No insulation,” Olivia said.

“Well then, I’ll try to keep the wild parties to a minimum. You going to tell me your name, or should we just stick with Not the Sharpest Tool in the Shed?”

“Olivia.” She didn’t give a last name. She didn’t like new people. Hell, she barely liked old people.

“Nice to meet you, Olivia,” Callie said, and like a good neighbor, she vanished back inside without asking a bunch of questions.

Huh. Maybe Olivia would like her after all. She looked at her front door. Still locked. She eyeballed Becca’s door, blew out a breath, and headed over there, knocking softly.

God, she really hated needing help.

Becca didn’t answer at first and Olivia was debating her options—either go around to the back and break in through one of her windows or walk into town in Cole’s big-ass shoes and break into her store—when Becca opened her front door.

She wore a man’s T-shirt that said LUCKY HARBOR CHARTERS on one breast and, near as Olivia could tell, little else except a dreamy smile.

Dollars to doughnuts it was Sam’s T-shirt. No doubt he’d been in Becca’s bed directly before he’d arrived at the boat and was solely responsible for her dreamy smile, her mussed hair, and the whisker burns along her throat.

It wasn’t envy that shot through Olivia, or so she told herself. But it was sure hard not to be at least a little wistful.

It’d been a damn long time since she’d had whisker burns.

“Hey,” Becca said, and rubbed the heel of her hand over an eye as if trying to wake up. “You okay?”

Becca was a jingle writer, the local music teacher, and the only person Olivia knew who was newer to Lucky Harbor than herself. Becca was sweet and kind and unassuming, and at first Olivia had been suspicious of her because she didn’t think anyone could really be so nice.