Sunny Chandler's Return Read Online Free Page A

pier, basted in suntan oil so thick they could trace the initials of their latest beaux on their thighs, bellies, chests.
    How they had giggled! How catty they’d been, speculating if this girl really
did,
as everyone said she did, wondering if this boy was as good a kisser as his smug girlfriend claimed, weighing Warren Beatty’s merits against those of Paul Newman.
    Everything had been such fun then. Growing up in a small town hadn’t been so disagreeable. Maybe that was the problem; she had simply outgrown the town. She was no longer a small-town girl. Now she belonged in the city.
    New Orleans was a laid-back city in comparison with many others, but even at that, it couldn’t offer this sublime serenity. She’d forgotten how quiet the country could be. The hustle and bustle and clamorous noise of the city seemed far away. For at least today, she had nothing to do but lie here in the sun and soak up the silence and the glorious heat.
    For most people the heavy, humid heat would be stifling. Sunny loved it. She welcomed its blanketing embrace. The sun’s rays seeped into her skin like mystical healing powers, inducing a delicious torpor, a state of utter laziness.
    There was very little breeze, but occasionally a breath of it would stir the tops of the cypress trees lining the shore. On the horizon enormous white thunder-clouds were building up. They were empty threats of evening showers that rarely materialized. The lake was still, its surface glassy. Sunny liked the sound of the water lapping at the piling beneath the dock. Insects droned around her. Dragonflies skimmed the surface of the lake, sometimes rippling the water with their fragile, sheer wings.
    Their buzzing sound, combined with the rhythmic, slapping sound of water against the piling, was hypnotic. She dozed.
    “You’ve got a lot of nerve.”
    Sunny sat up, grabbing the top of her bikini in the process. Her heart was in her throat. Bright yellow dots exploded against a field of black in front of her eyes. She had sat up too fast and didn’t immediately regain her vision or her equilibrium. When she did, she muttered a curse.
    Ty Beaumont was hauling himself onto her dock and securing his small fishing boat to one of the piles.
    “You’re the one with a lot of nerve, Mr. Beaumont. You scared me half to death!”
    “Sorry.” His grin said otherwise. “Were you asleep?”
    “I must have dozed off.”
    “Didn’t you hear my motor?”
    “I thought it was a bug.”
    “A bug?”
    “A dragonfly.”
    He looked at her warily. “How long have you been out in this sun?”
    “Forget it,” Sunny said, and uttered a long-suffering sigh.
    She couldn’t lie back down. It was bad enough having to look up at him from a sitting position. She stubbornly refused to secure the neck strap of her bikini. The bra was snug and stretchy enough to stay up by itself. She wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of seeing her rattled. Groping for and tying the straps would make her look like a flustered old maid in the company of her first gentleman caller. Well, she wasn’t an old maid. And he sure as hell wasn’t a gentleman.
    He plopped down on the bare deck beside her. “Won’t you have a seat?” she asked sweetly.
    He merely grinned again. “Thanks.”
    To give herself something to do besides stare into his mirrored sunglasses and wonder what part of her exposed body he was looking at, she took off her own sunglasses and unnecessarily cleaned the tinted lenses with a corner of her towel. “What are you doing here?”
    “I was fishing on the lake and just happened to see you sprawled out here, lying half naked. That’s why I said you’ve got a lot of nerve. You were issuing an open invitation to any pervert on the lake to come over here and take a gander, possibly do you bodily harm.”
    “I’ve been sunbathing on this pier practically all my life, and no one has ever bothered me before. In fact, you can’t even see this dock from the open lake.