Summertime at The Resort – Is it really FINALLY Available?

Yes! Summertime at The Resort has been released!

The much anticipated final installment of The Resort series is here!

In the last Resort book, Allison and Carter are broken up, for real this time. Allison’s moved back to her apartment above the ice cream parlor and she quit her job as his office assistant. She’s ready to venture out on her own, to figure out life…without Carter.

Then her grandmother dies, and in her will, she leaves the ice cream parlor to Allison. It’s the perfect distraction while she tries to get over the love of her life.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t take her long to figure out that someone’s selling drugs out of her ice cream parlor, and when she cuts the business off at the knees, well, that’s when the real trouble starts.

Trouble, in the form of handsome detective Dan McIntyre, who sees no reason whatsoever that he should deny his attraction to Allison, now that she and Carter are through.

The way Allison sees it, she has three choices: Carter, Dan or alone. Which will she choose? Check out the preview, then click the link at the bottom to find out!

Chapter One

 

Saturday morning I lay in bed, thinking about the last few weeks of my relationship with Carter. Again. I was officially sick of thinking about it, but I couldn’t seem to stop.

I dragged myself out of bed and threw on a sports bra, tank top and a pair of running shorts, completing the outfit with a pink Dallas Cowboys baseball cap. When I glanced in the mirror, I almost took off the hat just because Carter gave it to me, but I didn’t have anything better with which to cover my unwashed bed head, so I reluctantly left it where it was.

I tucked the fancy new phone Carter bought me into my pocket, stuck ear buds in my ears and cranked up Nonpoint, hoping the head banging hard rock would make me forget the memories from the past few weeks. A pair of sunglasses perched on my nose and I was ready to go, leaving my apartment and deliberately not locking the door, because I knew it would irritate Carter if he knew.

He hated the fact that I considered locking doors completely unnecessary. We reside in a tiny town comprised of five hundred residents, all of whom love gossip nearly as much as they love hanging out on the lake in the summertime. If someone actually stole something of mine, I’d simply listen to the grapevine to hear who did it and then go to his or her house and take it back.

As I jogged, I thought about Carter. Then I reminded myself that Carter and I were broken up and therefore I should stop thinking about him.

Which didn’t stop me from thinking about him.

This might have something to do with the fact that this time, it was for real.

I swear.

I even moved back into my tiny apartment over the ice cream store. Luckily, Grandma hadn’t decided to rent it to someone else over the course of the last ten months. I think she’s just used to not getting a rent check, since she’s let me live there for free pretty much my entire adult life, save the ten months I lived with Carter.

Moving back was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made. I’ve lived with Carter since last August, and while we have certainly had our moments, it has never been as bad as this.

Another jogger came up behind me, caught up and started keeping pace. I glanced over, saw Carter’s masculine form, all those sleek, hard muscles shifting and moving as he effortlessly jogged along next to me, and I stumbled and nearly fell into the river that was meandering along next to us.

Carter caught me and pulled me tight against his body, and I went limp for a moment, savoring the warmth and muscles and everything I’ve missed so desperately for the last week and a half.

“Are you okay?” Carter’s voice, laced with amusement, brought me back to my senses.

Carter generally found almost everything about me amusing. It used to annoy me, and then I’d just gotten used to it, but now that we were broken up, it annoyed me again.

I pushed away from him and pulled the ear buds out of my ears. “I’m fine. Stumbled over a rock.”

“You look good, Allison.”

The compliment had me sucking in air and rethinking the breakup. Just like that. I hated the hold Carter had on me, even as I felt powerless against it.

“Thanks,” I said, trying to sound indifferent. I’m sure I failed miserably.

“My house is right here. Want a bottle of water for the road?”

I didn’t realize I’d jogged right into his yard. Or maybe it was subconscious, because as soon as we stepped inside the sliding glass door of his bedroom, he reached over, tucked a lock of hair behind my ear and I fisted my hands in his shirt and pulled him towards me so I could suck on his face.

Whether he expected that reaction or not, I have no idea. All I knew was forty-five seconds later, I was flat on my back on his bed, naked, my legs wrapped around Carter’s waist, my arms clinging to his back, as he buried his face in my hair and pounded into me with the desperation of a man who hadn’t had sex in, well, a week and a half.

Fifteen minutes later, we lay side by side on our backs, lengthwise across Carter’s bed, on top of the comforter, naked and gasping for breath.

“Crap, why did we just do that?”

“Because it felt good?” Leave it to Carter to sound reasonable after mind-blowing sex that never should have happened in the first place.

“Besides that. There are lots of things that feel good but it doesn’t mean you should indulge in them. We aren’t together anymore. We shouldn’t do this.”

Carter rolled onto his side and propped his head in his hand. “About that. Why are we broken up again?”

“Because you think I should dress like a woman from the eighteenth century just because we’re dating.”

“I know that’s not the reason, because if it is, it’s a stupid reason and you should move back in.”

“You completely flipped out over the bikini I wore when we took the boat to the sandbar on Memorial Day.”

“That bikini doesn’t even have as much material as your underwear. But that aside, I cannot believe my reaction to that ridiculous excuse for a bikini is really the issue here.”

I stared at the ceiling fan as it slowly twisted round and round. “You’ve changed. You’re … on edge all the time. Agitated. Frustrated. More emotional. You snap at me as if I have a stalker or a serial killer after me, and nothing of the sort has happened to me in months.”

“Something for which I am eternally grateful.”

“So why won’t you tell me what’s going on?”

He hesitated. His face closed off. His eyes shifted to smoky gray. If he was about to divulge anything at all, I knew it would not be the truth, or at least enough of it to make me happy. To mend our relationship.

“It’s complicated.”

“Complicated?”

“Just bear with me, Allison. I just need a few more weeks. I promise, it will all make sense soon.”

It didn’t make sense now. Just like it hadn’t since Memorial Day, when he went off the deep end, practically unprovoked, and hadn’t quite managed to climb back up the cliff since. I sat up.

“Okay, I think it’s time for me to go. It’s been fun. Probably we should avoid doing this in the future.” I walked around the bedroom, snagging articles of clothing and returning them to their rightful places on my body.

“I don’t want to avoid doing this in the future. I want to do it again in about thirty minutes.”

I forced myself not to look at his still-naked form, because I knew Mr. Happy was very likely still happy to see me. I knew from personal experience that Carter would indeed be ready for round two in very short order. But I wasn’t.

Okay, I was, but I won’t.

“The last week and a half has felt like a year.” His words ripped a hole in my heart. Why, if we were both so in love with one another, were we so at odds?

“What’s your deal with my red bikini anyway? I thought you liked it when I looked sexy.”

“It’s entirely possible to look sexy with clothing covering all the important parts. I swear, I could see your areola, and your breasts aren’t even that big.”

I glared at him as I jerked my sports bra down to cover those not-so-big breasts. “You’re a hypocrite. And an insensitive jerk. So if my boobs were bigger, it would be okay to wear that bikini?”

“Quit putting words into my mouth, Allison.”

Carter was quickly getting worked up, which was, in truth, the real catalyst for our breakup. The only time Carter got worked up was when I was in danger. Like I just told him, I hadn’t been in a dangerous situation in months. So why had his personality changed so radically in the past month or so?

I turned away from the sight of him, naked and spent, yet ready for round two, as his eyes darkened from anger, not lust. “I have to go.”

I tugged the baseball cap onto my head and left through the sliding glass door, speed walking the six blocks back to my apartment.

After I took a shower, I dressed in a clean pair of gym shorts and a fitted white t-shirt and called my best friend, Bree Jefferson.

Bree and I met at the same time I met Carter. At the time, his company, J&J Securities, had been protecting her from someone who was trying to kill her, and I kept getting in the killer’s way. Somehow over the course of the past ten months, we’d become nearly inseparable friends. Until just recently, anyway.

“Hey, Allison,” Bree said when she answered the phone.

Shortly after Carter began having his odd mood swings, Bree suddenly became distant. Not a lot, and if we weren’t best friends I might not have even noticed, but we were, and I did.

We weren’t talking nearly as much and we hadn’t done anything together in weeks. When I finally made the decision to move out of Carter’s house, I had a moment of paralyzing fear when I thought the two of them were having an affair.

I immediately called Bree, already crying, and she’d snorted and told me I was crazy because I knew damn well she wouldn’t be able to put up with Carter’s possessiveness for more than thirteen seconds, and that wasn’t nearly long enough for her to get her jollies out of the experience. Although, she said in typical Bree fashion, she’s always been curious about how he was between the sheets. Even though we were no longer a couple, I begged Bree not to make moves on him for at least five years and she assured me she wouldn’t.

“Are you busy?” I asked.

“A little, why?”

“Just looking for someone to hang out with.” I sounded whiny, I know, but I really could use my best friend right now.

“Still haven’t made up with Carter?”

“Nope. Although we sort of fell into bed together this morning.”

“And why didn’t you stay there?” 

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If you enjoy the book, please let me know by leaving a review on Goodreads or wherever you purchased it. Thank you!

 

PS – Here’s the other version of the cover. Truthfully, I like this one better, but the pink stands out more as a thumbnail version, i.e. when you are searching for books to purchase on websites like Goodreads, Amazon, Smashwords and Barnes and Noble. Besides, every cover in the series has that pink background, so it sort of felt… necessary to end on the same note. Still, it’s a pretty cool alternate cover, isn’t it?