Up To Me (Shore Secrets #1)

Chapter One

Tan legs, muscled arms and rippling abs added up to the sexiest half-naked man Ella Mayhew had ever seen. Well, technically not ever . As a massage therapist, she’d seen more than her fair share of half-naked men. Ella liked to think of it as a job perk. People in other careers got to rack up frequent flyer miles, or go to fancy parties and nibble on gourmet delicacies while working. She got eye candy galore. Or at least the possibility of it. And although her demeanor always remained professional, occasionally it was impossible not to notice a stand-out physique from the steady stream of weekend golfers and middle-aged wine enthusiasts who mostly lay on her table.

Like the time a cyclist in training for the Tour de France had spent a week here at Mayhew Manor. Every morning he’d done sprints all around Seneca Lake. Then in the afternoon he’d come into the spa and demand deep tissue massage. His muscles had been so rock hard, Ella needed a massage after she wore herself out working on him. Now that was a body she’d never forget.

She pressed her forehead against the window for a better look. Then cupped her hands around her eyes to block out the light of the spa. So maybe this man jogging by wasn’t the absolute hottest in the universe. But something about him glued her in place, unwilling to miss a moment of his legs and arms pistoning in tandem.

“Aren’t you the one who usually yells at me for gawking out the window?” Brooke DiMucci dug a sharp, acrylic-tipped nail into Ella’s ribs. “And isn’t it you who claims it isn’t appealing to our clients and—holy guacamole, look at that hottie.” Brooke plastered her hands on the next pane over. “Good spotting.”

Ella didn’t bother to deny any of it. She was convinced it freaked out arriving guests to see faces looking at them like zoo animals. And she was equally convinced of the off-the-charts hotness of the man in the loose black shorts headed up the drive. “I saw him jog by about an hour ago. Just from the back. His lats were a thing of beauty. I watched him go the whole length of the parking lot until he turned onto the road.”

“No wonder you volunteered to cover the front desk while I tore my hair out balancing the end-of-month P cedarwood, orange and ylang-ylang. Not too girly, but still potent enough to ease his mind.

Her hand hovered at his nape. Ridiculous. She touched fully naked men all day, every day. What about Gray was so different? That made the mere thought of stroking the cords along his neck full of heightened anticipation? No. She was a professional, damn it. Gray deserved five minutes of bliss, and she was the one to give it to him.

Ella planted her thumbs on either side of his spine and pushed upward along his bronzed neck. She tried to think of banal small talk. “You’ve got quite a tan for this time of year.”

“Thanks for noticing.” He sounded smug. Like he knew she’d been checking him out earlier. Here she’d hoped that the sunlight had kept him from actually seeing her and Brooke staring at him, all but drooling on the window.

“Well, it’s noticeable up here where spring doesn’t really hit until, well, now. We’re practically in Canada, you know. The cherry and apple trees just started blooming this week.” The weather. The ultimate go-to for meaningless chitchat. Not an ounce of flirtation in it.

“I spent the last three weeks in Miami. Practically in Mexico,” he teased.

Funny. Sexy and funny and charming. This guy was celibacy Kryptonite. Not that Ella specifically chose to be celibate for three years. More that she didn’t choose not to be. “Were you on vacation then?”

The barest hesitation hung in the air before he answered. “I’m on vacation now. Work then.”

She dug her elbow into the hollow of his neck. He groaned. Ella had spent much time cataloging and translating a litany of client groans. Some were a verbal expulsion of stress. Some teetered on the edge of begging her to stop. To her practiced ear, Gray’s groan was a compliment, and an expression of pleasure.

“I can think of worse places to be stuck working than Miami.”

“Yeah? It’s hot. Constant shirt-stuck-to-the-small-of-your-back hot.” His body relaxed, stopped fighting her. He slumped lower on the chest pad. “Traffic sucks. Everyone’s so busy staring at the topless girls and guys in banana hammocks they ignore green lights. The ocean’s bathwater warm. Not exactly refreshing. And every time I went for a run, some damn rollerblader almost took me out. Every time!”

“Perhaps you should ask for a hazardous workplace bonus.”

“Funny.”

“Don’t knock the sun and sand.” Ella dug her fingers deeper into the ridges along the top of his shoulders. Muscled, yes, but also knotted beyond belief. She added another dollop of oil and waved her palm beneath his face so he’d breathe in the stress-reducing aromatherapy. Not that it could turn him around to a Zen-like state of peace in only five minutes.

“By April Fool’s Day, we’re all having waking hallucinations of a tropical paradise up here. While we shovel out from a late-season snow. It gives us something to focus on as we scrape half an inch of ice off the car windows, wrapped in scarves, gloves and hats.” Geez. She really needed to quit with the weather commentary.

“I can think of worse places to be stuck working than a lakeshore.”

Ella bit back a laugh. Gray was good at turning her words around to suit him. Made it harder to think of him as just a well-put-together collection of tanned muscles.

“You’ve got a big-ass lake—”

She cut him off. “Thirty-eight miles from top to bottom.”

“Like I said. Big. Sparkling. Surrounded by trees that come right down to the shoreline. And from what I can tell after running along it for an hour, you’ve got a winery every ten feet. Not bad working conditions. Unless you’re on the wagon. Then it would be torture.”

“We’ve got thirty-two wineries here on Seneca Lake alone, and almost two hundred in the Finger Lakes region.”

“What gives?”

Ella cupped her hands around his shoulders to do a little quick work on his amazing biceps. “Well, because the lakes are so deep, they provide a lake-weather effect that protects grapevines from early and late frost.”

“What the hell?” He snorted. “I meant, do you have a second job with the tourist board?”

“No. But I’ve lived here all my life. I guess I’ve picked up a few facts over the years.” More like they’d been drummed into her by her third-generation hotelier parents. Tourists always had questions. Especially about wine. After all, wineries were responsible for a crazy high percentage of their guests. According to the Mayhews, Ella needed to be prepared for any guest eventuality, which meant knowing the answer to every possible question, and knowing how to solve any potential problem.

“I want to learn about you.”

Oh. Blunt. And sweet. Caught off guard, she stilled her hands for a moment. Gray, on the other hand, forged ahead.

“Not the meteorological averages of Geneva, not the depth of Seneca Lake, but you, Ella. Do you think we could finish the conversation without you spouting off any more statistics?”

“Maybe. No promises.” He craned his head up to glare at her. With a rueful laugh, she pushed his head back onto the cushion. “I’ll try.”

“Good.”

“Why me?” If he got to be blunt, so did she. “Why not Brooke?”

“Are you fishing?”

“No. Just surprised. Confused that you’d overlook the obvious.” She racked her brain for a sports term. “That you’d pass on a slam dunk in order to risk sinking a three-pointer from the line.”

“Are you a basketball fan?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“Well, I appreciate the effort. You got the lingo right.”

Basketball ran on three plasma screens in the lounge every night. All weekend. In March it felt like basketball played twenty-four hours a day. “I pick things up. No matter how I try to avoid it.”

“How about we switch to business, instead? The higher the risk, the higher the reward.”

“You think I’m risky?” Odd, when she was the one fighting this ridiculously over-the-top attraction. Something she clearly needed to backpedal on. Ella barely knew him. Definitely didn’t know him enough to ascertain if she just wanted the feel of his skin against hers, or if she actually wanted Gray the man.

“The way you look at me with those mermaid eyes? Full of secrets and shadows? Absolutely.”

Ella dragged her fingers from the top of his head, down his spine, all the way to his shorts. “We’re finished.”

“I hope not.”

His words shimmered with promise. Ella had absolutely no idea how to respond. So she fell back on the habitual, safe litany of her daily work. “How do you feel?”

Gray sat up. He cracked his neck on one side, then the other, and rolled his shoulders. “Actually, I feel good. Really good.”

“Told ya so.” She handed him another towel to wipe off the residual oil, and saw Brooke gesturing from the doorway. “I’ll be right back.”

As soon as she crossed the threshold, Brooke grabbed her arm and dragged her down the hall into the nearest treatment room. “You should ask him out.”

Whoa. That was not what she expected to hear from her friend. And not something she’d ever contemplate. “No. Absolutely not. No way. I’ve never asked a guy out. I’m too old to start.”

Brooke rolled her eyes. “You’re twenty-seven.”

“Exactly.” Since it was there, Ella washed the residual oil off her hands in the small copper sink. “If I wasn’t brave enough in my fearless college years, I’m definitely not brave enough now.”

“You left the door open. I heard you two talking. He’s totally into you.”

The thought made her smile. It was always nice to want somebody, and be wanted back. “If that’s true, then Gray can ask me out.”

“Why leave it up to chance?”

“He’s the first man to interest me in a very long time.” She dried her hands. “That can be enough for now. Let’s take this one step at a time.”

“I thought you might say that.” Brooke thrust her smartphone at Ella. “Which is why I texted a bunch of your friends and we took a vote. Read this.”

Ella swapped her towel for the phone. Saw the long string of texts. The first in the line, Ella’s Finally Horny, made her wince, and immediately hand it back over. “Subtle as always, Brooke.”

“I didn’t have time to be subtle.” Brooke blocked the doorway with her arm. “Opportunity is knocking at your door. Trouble is, you’ve got it locked up tighter than the U.S. Mint.”

If they stood here arguing much longer, it would become a moot point. Gray would give up and leave. “Point taken. But as of today, I’d like to think I’ve drilled a peephole in the door. That’s progress.”

“You’re scared.”

Ella threw up her hands. “Of course I’m scared. I already admitted that.”

“You think you’re scared he’ll say no. I think you’re really scared of what’ll happen if he says yes.”

Hmm. It was the sort of comment her therapist used to make during their twice weekly chats. Insightful. Searching. Thought-provoking. No chance at all that it came from Brooke’s brain. Somebody on the email chain probably dropped that little nugget. “Potato, pot ah to.”

“Okay, I couldn’t get a hold of a wide focus group with so little time, but three out of four concerned friends say you should go for it.”

“Ha. I’ve got wiggle room if it wasn’t unanimous.”

“Technically, yes.”

Ella tickled Brooke’s ribs for the millisecond it took before the other woman folded in half, squealing. “Then I’m wiggling right out of here on that technicality.” She hurried down the hallway, spotting Gray already waiting back at the reception desk. That naked chest of his packed as big a punch as the first time she’d seen him, with just enough black hair sprinkled down the middle to make it interesting. Bronzed pecs that popped as he reached into his pocket for his phone, and abs so sharply defined you could grate cheese on them. Or eat cheese off of them, which would be much more fun. And now she had the tactile memory of all that warm, smooth skin to overlay on top of the visual. Ella wondered if he planned to run every day of his stay at the Manor, because she definitely wanted to watch him in motion again. Watching from afar wouldn’t be dangerous at all.

When he saw her, those dark brows winged upwards. “I started to think you’d deserted me for someone who had the foresight to make an appointment.”

“Not a chance.” There. Earnest, truthful, with just a dash of flirt. That’d show her friends—whichever ones were smart enough to realize the true fear holding her back. Because it had only taken an instant to realize they were right. It probably was time to move on, to start dating again. But the black hole of the unknown surrounded the whole concept.

Ella was no longer the same person she’d been back when she dated with reckless abandon. Would she react the same way? How would a man react to her? How would Gray, for instance? She didn’t know what to expect from herself. Was it fair to drag a man into that exploration with her?

It had been a full year since she last sat on her therapist’s couch. The one with a box of tissues at each end and on the cherry coffee table, just to be safe. Maybe the smartest thing to do would be to have a catch-up visit with Dr. Takeuchi. Be assessed. Get his take on if she was truly ready to take a swan dive back into the dating pool. It wasn’t stalling. Not entirely. Ella preferred to call it reasonable caution. So even if Gray did ask her out, she’d say no. Definitely.

Gray rolled his head in a circle with a satisfied sigh. “You really know how to rub a guy the right way, Ella.”

The double entendre was doubly delightful. Okay, downgrade that definitely not to a maybe. Coated with a lot of you-only-live-once bravado. “Thank you. It was my pleasure.” She fiddled with stack of brochures on the countertop. Offering to set him up with a full massage didn’t feel right anymore. Not with having to explain that she wouldn’t be the one to give it to him based on the hot-and-cold-running lust he caused.

“If the rest of my stay here is as good as the five minutes you spent with me, this vacation will be one for the record books.”

“How long do you plan to stay?” Funny, the way his face solidified into an emotionless mask for a moment. Gray’s easy smile and laughing eyes went completely flat. Or maybe she’d imagined it, because a blink later he blew out a long breath and looked relieved.

“Two whole weeks.”

So the temptation wouldn’t be going away any time soon. It meant she had two whole weeks to give herself a headache from flip-flopping back and forth on what to do about him. If she should bite the bullet and ask him out. Two whole weeks to innocently chat with him, run into him in the halls, perhaps take up running herself. Two weeks to see if he asked her out, and decided whether or not to say yes. Two stomach-churning weeks of what if .

“Let me ask you something, Ella.” Gray reached across the counter to take her hand. Brushed his thumb over the top of it with a touch so light it barely registered on her skin. It did register on every nerve ending in between her scalp and her fuchsia-painted toenails, however.

Then his phone rang. As he let go and grabbed for his phone, a woman in a big red hat bustled into the spa.

“I don’t have an appointment.” She dumped her keys, hat and purse on the counter to flap her hands in the air. “I know, I’m horrible. But we left early expecting traffic, and got here two hours too fast. Neil pulled out his clubs and went straight to a driving range. So I’ve nothing to do but beg you for an appointment. Massage, body wrap, scrub, whatever you can do to me in two hours.” Red talons tapped at Ella’s wrist. “Please say you can squeeze me in? I’ll pay extra for the inconvenience, of course.”

The first rule of working in a service industry was to always be of service. No matter how badly it derailed your personal plans. Ella nudged over the brochure detailing their offerings. “I’m happy to help. By the time I’m finished, you’ll feel like a new woman.”

Already on the phone, Gray melted toward the door with an apologetic wave. Forget what if. Ella was left wondering, what now ?