Angel Beach (Summer Romance Collection) by Tess Oliver Read Free Book Online Page B

grassy land that looked out over a nice stretch of beach. There was a group of gulls clustered together in the grass, and they took off as I walked toward them. My foot struck a block of cement that had rusty pieces of rebar sticking out of it. There were more concrete blocks spread out over the entire space. It had obviously been the site of a large building at one time.
    I walked toward the edge of the lot and looked down. A very rickety, very steep stairway wound its way down the hillside to the beach below. A rusty chain hung across the entrance to the stairs. I climbed over it onto the first step. It was worn by sea and wind, but it seemed to be strong enough to hold me. The hand railing was another thing altogether. The minute I grabbed onto it, it fell over. I was going to have to climb down the steep steps without it.
    Sections of the stairway were more treacherous than others and a lot of the steps were covered with the weeds and vines coming up from the hillside, but I made it to the bottom without breaking my neck.
    I walked along the beach for several minutes. It was a pretty stretch of coast surrounded by picturesque cliffs and it was totally useable. Sometimes I wondered if Dad went after places like Angel Beach just so he could feel the rush of causing a bunch of crap for other people. He saw a quiet, cozy town like Angel Beach and immediately set out to try and destroy it.
    We’d struggled once and he could never understand how anyone could be happy with meager surroundings. He’d never been able to comprehend that for some people wealth and extravagance were not needed for happiness. It wasn’t even out of pure meanness that he planned to buy the town out from underneath its inhabitants. He actually believed they would be thrilled to be given a decent sum of money to pack up and leave their homes.
    Hunger stirred me from my thoughts. I glanced back at the shabby stairs zigzagging up the steep hillside and wondered how I got down them in the first place. Ten minutes later, after a difficult climb back up, I’d made it to the clearing where the jeep was parked. And that’s when I saw her. My heart started beating faster than it had on my death-defying stair climb.
    Her light brown hair blew in the breeze, and even from the distance I stood, I could see the tiny spray of freckles across her nose. She was pushing a bicycle with a flat back tire. It was definitely a long haul back to Angel Beach, especially with a broken bike.
    My jeep caught her eye, and she stopped and glanced around until she spotted me. I waved. She hesitated before returning the wave. I jogged over to her. Her face was flushed pink from the walk making her hazel eyes stand out even more.
    “It looks like you could use a ride back to town.”
    She kept pushing the bike and shook her head. “No, it’s not that far. I can make it.”
    “You’re kidding, right? It has got to be at least four more miles on this highway. Seriously, let me give you a ride. You can put your bike in the back.”
    She stubbornly kept walking. “It’s only three point six miles from Emerald Beach back to Angel Beach.”
    I walked along next to her. “Is that what this beach is called? Emerald Beach?”
    She nodded and tried her hardest not to look annoyed at the fact that I was walking with her. “At dusk, the shadows from the surrounding cliffs cause the water to look to emerald green.”
    “It looks like there used to be a building here. What happened to it?”
    She pushed a little faster, but I kept pace with her. “It burned down about twenty years ago. My grandmother said no one wanted to rebuild it. They thought the site was jinxed, so it has remained a vacant lot.” She peeked sideways at me. “Aren’t you going to head back to your jeep?”
    “Nope, I’m going to walk with you and annoy you until you let me give you a ride back.”
    “Why?”
    “Because I don’t bite, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t throw your bike into my jeep