Book 7 Longing for Love #2
Blaine is about to go have a word with her when two cars crash in front of the store.
He tries to get her to go inside, but she shakes him off, determined to cover the paint splotches and get on with her grand opening.
He reminds her of the town’s decency laws, and she tells him to write her a ticket.
She has work to do. He says she caused an accident, and she argues that the drivers who weren’t watching where they were going caused it.
When she lets it slip that she’s also selling sex toys in the store, Blaine’s head is about to explode.
Tiffany realizes her sexy outfit is getting more attention for the store than anything else she could’ve done.
Maybe she should do some “creative marketing.”
No one can believe what Tiffany is selling in her store, even her own sister and mother, but she’s undeterred.
After three hours with no customers, she realizes she’s being snubbed.
She changes into a naughty nurse outfit and goes outside to drum up business.
Blaine, who’s watching from across the street, sees her come out in the racy outfit and decides she’s going to be the living death of him.
He’s seething with jealousy at the reaction she’s getting from cars driving by.
He doesn’t want anyone seeing the woman he already thinks of as his.
He hears his mother’s voice warning him of another “project,” after being taken advantage of by women in the past. He’s heartbroken for Tiffany when she goes inside hours later, defeated at not having attracted a single customer.
He’s going to do something really stupid.
Grace’s judgmental parents show up at her apartment and encounter shirtless Evan, the boyfriend they don’t know she has.
Grace is surprised that they walked into town from the McCarthys’ hotel.
“There are other ways to lose weight besides going under the knife,” her mother says.
Evan invites them to dinner, and after they leave, he wants to know why Grace never told them about him.
Grace explains that they ruin everything for her, and she didn’t want them to ruin Evan for her, too.
Evan says that no one could ever do that, and he gets why she keeps them at arm’s length.
Tiffany is shocked and terrified that no one came to her store.
Everything she has is invested in her new business.
Failure isn’t an option. She gets home to news that Dan Torrington has finalized her divorce and custody arrangement for Ashleigh.
All she wants is to snuggle her daughter, but it’s Ashleigh’s weekend with Jim.
While she’s sad about the failure of her marriage, she knows she did everything she could to make it work.
She thinks about Blaine and how she was supposed to call him the minute she was divorced, but she’s too dispirited to do anything but take a bath.
When the doorbell rings, she finds Blaine at her door and wonders if he’s come to gloat.
He’s worried she’d be upset about the reception to the store.
She tells him she’s fine and things will pick up.
She realizes he wants her desperately. He asks if she’s divorced yet, and she tells him she is as of that day.
“We had a deal,” he says.
“I wasn’t sure you’d still want to hear from me.”
“I think about you way more than I should,” he confesses.
If he comes in, they’ll end up in bed. She invites him in.
He doesn’t like the skimpy outfits she wears outside the store and doesn’t want anyone else to see how sexy she is.
They have the hottest sex of their lives.
Blaine never spends the night with a woman, but he can’t bring himself to leave her.
The next day, Tiffany goes to work with more energy than she should have after a nearly sleepless night with Blaine.
Since they have no customers, she gives her assistant, Patty, a makeover.
Patty hopes the makeover will help her get a boyfriend because she’s never had one. She’s thrilled with the results.
When Blaine comes to visit, Tiffany tells Patty to take a long break.
He wants to be her first customer, if he’s not too late.
Unfortunately, he’s not too late. He pretends to be shopping sexy things for a newish woman in his life.
He goes to see what’s behind the beads in the second, smaller room and emerges scandalized.
She has to explain each item and answer all his questions.
She’s about to die from mortification—and desire.
He wants to know if she’s played with the items, and she says, of course she has.
How could she sell them otherwise? He doesn’t believe her and wants her to pick out things for them to play with together so she can tell her customers about them.
Hearing that her daughter won’t be home until the next day, he tells her he’ll be done with work at eleven-thirty and gives her instructions on what to wear and what position to be in on the bed when he arrives, legs apart, ceiling fan set to high.
They need a safe word in case she wants to stop whatever they’re doing.
Before he leaves, they have another sexy encounter in the back room of the store.
Blaine discovers that the town’s lingerie queen wears white cotton underwear.
He suggests she take a little nap when she gets home because they’re going to be up late—again.
When Blaine gets to work, he learns the mayor wants to see him.
Mayor Chet Upton wants Blaine to do something about the distraction Tiffany is causing outside her store.
Blaine defends Tiffany, saying there’s nothing he can do and that she’s within her rights, so the mayor puts the matter on the town council agenda to possibly reconsider her business license.
He tells Blaine to keep control of the situation outside the store or else.
Blaine tells the mayor not to threaten him, or he’ll quit—the mayor needs Blaine more than Blaine needs the mayor.
As he leaves, the mayor tells him to get a haircut.
The mayor’s wife, Verna, comes into Tiffany’s store and becomes her first real customer. The spark has gone out of Verna’s marriage, and she needs some help. Tiffany realizes the mayor’s wife might be her most important customer ever and tells her she’s come to the right place.
As Tiffany is leaving the store, Jim confronts her, asking what she thinks she’s doing, peddling filth and acting like a common tramp.
Listening to him spew his vitriol, she’s thrilled to discover she doesn’t love him anymore.
She lets him know she’s now got something to compare him to in the bedroom and knows what she’s been missing out on.
He vows to do everything he can to ruin her.
Despite her bravado with Jim, she’s scared he might succeed in shutting down her business.
When she gets home, she falls asleep in the one chair in her living room, exhausted by the constant battles in her life.
Blaine finds her there instead of where he told her to be, and understands something is wrong.
He needs to stick to the sex and not get overly involved, but she touches him.
He wants to know what upset her. She tells him about Jim and his threats.
Blaine doesn’t like her creative marketing any more than Jim does, and he might have to “punish” her if she keeps it up.
She’s not at all threatened by him. He tells her to go upstairs and assume the pose he asked for earlier.
Things between them are even hotter the second night they spend together.
She decides naughty will be her safe word, and they play with the things he bought at the store.
He tells her the mayor is putting the issue of her store on the agenda for Monday’s town council meeting.
Blaine refused the mayor’s order to cite her for indecency.
She’s worried about him endangering his job for her, but she’s also ridiculously pleased that he stood up for her.
He suggests she cut out the creative marketing until after the meeting.
“How will people know what I’m selling in the store?”
“Trust me, honey,” he says, laughing, “they’ll know.”
In the morning, Mac asks Evan to help him at the marina for a few hours.
Evan is worried that Grace hasn’t told her parents about him and isn’t sure what it means that she hasn’t.
It’s Race Week on Gansett Island, and everything is super busy, including the marina.
Evan is glad that his friend Josh from Nashville has decided to accept the sound engineer job at the new studio.
He talks to Mac about Grace not telling her parents about him.
He’s worried that she’s ashamed to be shacked up with a loser who doesn’t have a real job.
Mac says he’s not a loser. He had a tough thing happen with his record company going bankrupt, and he needs to cut himself a break.
Mac also encourages Evan to talk to Grace about why she didn’t tell her parents about him.
Evan thinks Mac and Maddie make it look easy, but it’s not.
She wants to see her deadbeat father, so he’ll give her mother a divorce, but Mac doesn’t want her subjected to him after the way he hurt her by leaving when she was five. They’ve been fighting about it.
Stephanie is still running the marina restaurant while she works on getting her own restaurant up and running at the Sand & Surf Hotel.
Mac tells her they can hire someone else to run the marina restaurant, but she’s got it covered.
They’re all looking forward to the opening of Stephanie’s restaurant.