If I Can't Have You. Beth Kery

      Prologue

      Sixteen months ago

      The spring evening was unseasonably hot and humid, but the remnants of winter still lingered in Lake Michigan. Colleen Kavanaugh Sinclair shivered for the first five minutes of her swim, but by the time her internal clock told her it was time to turn back toward shore, the cool water felt delicious sliding against her heated skin.

       Her swim off Sunset Beach was as much a part of her summertime routine as taking her children, Brendan and Jenny, to soccer or baseball practice. Traditionally, her first swim of the season happened on this weekend. But this Memorial Day would be her last swim here. This evening, she was saying goodbye to Sunset Beach.

       She climbed onto the sand and dried off, thinking of all the times she’d cavorted on this beach with her brothers and sister while their mother, Brigit, sunbathed and chatted with her friends. The late-night bonfires and holiday barbecues. Her sister’s water-skiing events—never again.

       Colleen had acquired her final memory tonight. Her favorite public beach had been gobbled up by the wealthy elites of Harbor Town. She’d personally gone and spoken out against the privatization of the public park at the last few city council meetings, but in the end, money talked louder than she could.

       Movement caught the corner of her eye. She turned and saw him standing there.

       “It’s a nice night,” Eric Reyes said, his voice low.

       Colleen froze in the action of toweling off her bare belly, caught off guard by his bare-footed, silent approach in the sand. His dark eyes flickered downward, making her skin tickle with sudden awareness.

       She knew who he was, of course.

       He’d already finished high school by the time Colleen and Liam attended Harbor Town High. She’d known who he was before that, though. He’d worked for the local landscaper. More than once, the tall, dark boy with the serious expression had caught the attention of Colleen and her friends when they saw him working shirtless in the park or unloading a truck on Main Street. She’d heard once through the grapevine that he was Harbor Town High School’s best hockey player.

       Eric Reyes wasn’t like Colleen, or Mari Itani, or any of her other friends who vacationed with their families in Harbor Town during the summers. He was a year-rounder who worked and who didn’t have the time to while away the hours on one of the beaches in the charming lakeside vacation community.

       One summer before the accident—she couldn’t recall which summer, precisely—Colleen had been walking with several of her girlfriends down Elm Street and saw Eric Reyes coming out of the Harbor Town Library, several books in the crook of his arm. He’d paused on the sidewalk, probably struck by the gaggle of suntanned teenage girls. Her friends had grown predictably giddy in the vicinity of a good-looking, older boy, but when Colleen’s eyes met his, she’d given him a smile.

       Now they stood face-to-face again, strangers who shared a past. Fifteen years ago, her father had killed his mother in a three-way car crash. The lawsuits against Derry’s estate had drastically altered the Kavanaughs’ economic status. Eric had used his portion of the lawsuit to go to medical school. Now he owned a luxurious Buena Vista beachfront home, and she was the trespasser on the familiar beach.

       Now she was the outsider.

       Seeing him standing there caused anger to flare hot inside her, the strength of it shocking her a little.

       “Are you going to call the police?” she asked him quietly.

       “I hadn’t planned on it, no. Why, are you about to do something illegal?”

       She had a wild urge to manually remove that little smirk he wore.

       “It’s illegal for me to be here. I never saw you at any of the city council meetings, but surely you know about Sunset Beach becoming private.”

       “I know about it.”

       “Yeah. I thought so.” She unfastened the band at her neck and began to work a comb through her hair. “I can’t imagine you wanting the beach to remain open to the great unwashed.” She glanced at him in annoyance when he chuckled. He raised his dark brows when he noticed her scowl.

       “You look pretty clean to me.” His gaze once again flickered down over her bikini-clad body. She stiffened. It didn’t offend her, his glance, or creep her out like some men’s stares had in the past. It did unsettle her.

      Bedroom eyes.

       The phrase leapt into her brain unbidden. Dark eyes…knowing eyes. It surprised her a little, to feel this strong sexual current emanating from him. How dare he, given their past, look at her with such potent male appreciation? So what if