Lightning flashed and thunder rolled as the elements echoed her excitement at finally knowing his touch. She turned, she turned more, and—

Crash!

I woke up on the floor, covered in sweat and tangled in sheets, blankets, and a very thick quilt. My heart was racing, and no wonder. I’d had one of the most erotic dreams ever; my mind was still full of the images conjured by my subconscious.

Subconscious Viv was extremely horny. Something Conscious Viv could appreciate as well.

I struggled to get out of the cocoon, finally pushing everything down and shimmying out the top. Crawling back on top of the bed, I leaned over and pushed back the curtains, the dawn just beginning to creep into the sky. I looked at the clock. Not quite 5 a.m. Ugh.

I looked forward to the day when I was on California time. I looked forward to the day that I could sleep through the night. I especially looked forward to the day when my sex dreams were replaced by actual sex.

I leaned back in bed against the pillows. Occasionally I had dreams where I cast myself in my own romance novel, brought about no doubt by reading a few chapters of The Wolf of Lust Street the night before.

But unlike the romance novels where I could always see the hero so clearly in my head, when I dreamed, it was always a dark lover I could never quite see. A suggestion of full lips, strong jaw, giant c**k of course—but I could never see his face.

Pulling the quilt from the floor, I curled into myself like a roly-poly, pushing thoughts of dark faceless lovers from my head. In the light of day, a faceless lover was actually creepy, not sexy.

Except for the giant cock. Who needed the face when they had that?

Unless that face was buried between my lusty thighs . . .

Get a grip, Viv!

Yeah, a grip of that hair as I hold him in place while he . . .

Without a face, there’d be no mouth. Without a mouth, there’d be no tongue.

I’ll concede the point.

Did all heroines have entire conversations with themselves inside their head? This is why I could never be a romance novel heroine. Insanity precludes it.

I went downstairs to make myself some breakfast. I was determined to start cooking for myself, but the Magic Chef stove that Caroline was so enamored of was clunky, old-fashioned, and a pain in the ass. You couldn’t just turn it on and cook. Nope. You had to light it, jiggle the handle, then coax the flame out—and if you didn’t pass out from the gas fumes before it actually lit, then an hour later, you had boiling water. Which made no sense at all, gas stoves were usually incredibly efficient. Something must be clogged somewhere, something was dirty or just plain old and busted. Which seemed to be the theme here.

I also was determined to make my own coffee. The percolator had met with an unfortunate accident when it was thrown across the backyard, almost beheading a chicken. It now lived in the garage. I’d found an old French press in a jumble of junk in the basement, washed it out several times, and it worked great. So as soon as I had boiling water, I could make coffee. While I waited, I wandered out onto the back porch with a banana, perching in one of the old rockers with my nightgown pulled down over my knees.

I’d never been a morning person, but lately I was finding it one of my favorite parts of the day, even though they were still starting earlier than I liked. Maybe it was still the time change, maybe it was all the fresh air, but I slept hard and fast and woke up ready to start the day.

The sea was quiet today, calm and peaceful. Gulls flew here and there, pelicans flapped lazily then dove like missiles for fish they’d spotted.

I’d thought I’d feel something more . . . final about selling my company to my father. I’d buried myself in my work for so long it had become my world. So why wasn’t I more broken up over it?

Instead of feeling sad or discouraged or questioning whether I’d done the wrong thing, I felt the complete opposite. I had no idea what I was doing out here, why I wanted to stay, or what I was going to do with this new life. I just knew that I was . . . content. I was pleased with this turn my life was taking, and excited by the fact that I didn’t know where it was going. It had been a long time since I’d been on an adventure.

Speaking of adventure, my teakettle was whistling. I padded into the kitchen, poured hot water into the pot with my dry oatmeal and into the French press, and started cutting up some fruit. Raspberries, blueberries, and a chunked-up peach went into a bowl with a squeeze of lemon and a sprinkling of sugar. I found I ate more fruit if I made it into a salad.

After finishing up with the fruit, I checked on the oatmeal. Soft. I checked on the coffee. Brewed. Perfect.

Ladling a few spoonfuls of oatmeal into a bowl, I added some of the fruit, a drizzle of honey, a splash of cream, and a sprinkle of cinnamon. I pressed the plunger down on the coffee, watching as the grounds were pressed down and the dark brown coffee was expressed to the top. Pouring some into a cup, I settled into a chair at the old kitchen table. And as I ate, I looked around at the room.

I wasn’t a designer by any means, but I knew what I liked. And I’d always been drawn to a more industrial look and feel, something modern and clean. Maybe it was growing up in a house full of boys who were constantly making a mess of everything. Our house was big, sure, but always filled to almost bursting with sports equipment and action figures. Hockey pucks, G.I. Joe towns, and Legos underfoot (which hurt like you wouldn’t believe when stepped on barefoot). My mom’s charity fund-raising banners and posters, country French decorations, collection of stone turkeys, shadow boxes full of miniatures. Footballs, gym bags, my dad’s model cars, homework, paperwork . . . A family of eight makes for a lot of stuff. So when I got my own place, I went to the total opposite.

Chrome. Glass. Black leather couch and chairs. Clean lines. Right angles. Hard corners. My home office consisted of four computer monitors and a Lucite table covered with notebooks full of equations. My bed? Platform. Suspended night tables. Inlaid reading lamps. Everything in its place and in order.

They say a home reflects its owner’s personality, and Oprah says your home should “rise up to meet you.” I just wanted to able to come in, find what I’m looking for, and go about my day.

This house? Seaside Cottage? It rose up to meet you, and said “Hey, whatever you’re looking for, I think we’ve got it. Somewhere. Let me just look in one of these boxes; I bet we can find it.”

The clutter, the crap, the chaos—it was too much. However. There was something kind of cozy about it.

Take this kitchen, for instance. Huge, especially considering the age of the home. Usually kitchens in older homes were small and efficient. This one was filled to the brim with “things,” but it was cozy. Through the large, sunny window on the back wall you could see the barn and the garage, the flowers out back, and the ocean. The bottom half of the walls were covered in what Caroline said was wainscoting, battered and chipped a bit in places, but it was in pretty good shape. The old butcher-block countertops were covered in cuts and nicks, but I could imagine a hundred-plus years of women gathered here, dicing and chopping and laughing and chatting as they prepared another Thanksgiving dinner. There were three, count them three, blenders on those same counters, none of which worked. But at one point, did they whip up milkshakes for a generation of kiddos running here and there? Was I one of those kiddos?