The House At Sunset (Sunset SEALs #5) - Sharon Hamilton

Chapter 1

Christmas Week 1980

Hank Borges scanned his living room at the house he’d rented at Sunset Beach on the Florida Gulf Coast. It didn’t feel like Christmas. The sun was too bright, the weather too warm. He didn’t even have a Christmas tree. It felt like the middle of the summer in New York City.

There were more crumpled pieces of paper lying all around him, making him into a human hamster, than acceptable pages of his manuscript stacked neatly in a box on his right. It might’ve made him chuckle except for the fact that with this sea of rejected words scattered all over the floor meant he was failing. Failing to get this book out on time.

Christmas didn’t have anything to do with it.

Ba Humbug.

As a successful science fiction author of some thirty widely acclaimed bestselling novels, he had a reputation and following much to be envied by the literary world. He was lucky enough to have fans and fans of fans—sons and daughters, grandson of fans—who had read him over his nearly twenty-year career, which was ignited as a struggling psychology major his sophomore year in college.

He’d taken an elective creative writing course and fell in love with his sensual teacher, Miss Cohn, a child Holocaust survivor whose shapely legs and beautiful lips were so oddly mismatched to the numbers tattooed into her forearm. Most of Hank’s friends were going to sock hops and dance parties, learning the Twist and the Mashed Potatoes, screaming over Elvis Pressley. Hank’s passions lay elsewhere, between the pages of his favorite futuristic fantasy novels.

She couldn’t have been more than ten years his senior. He almost stalked her, finding places he could run into her until she agreed to talk to him about his writing—without scaring her, of course. She was a beautiful, fragile creature and Hank’s heart was completely enchanted. The rest of the world disappeared when he thought about her.

“Aliens? You wish to write about aliens?” she’d said in her slight German accent. Her honey-brown hair drifted across her face as she lifted it back behind her ear. Her smile set his heart on fire.

Did she know?

“I love reading science fiction,” he’d stammered.

He watched her brown eyes widen, was distracted with the crease at the right side of her upper lip. She waited for him to elaborate.

“What is most important I think is if you think I have any talent. I have this—” he hesitated to speak the words but did anyhow—“this passion for writing now. You’ve inspired me, Miss Cohn.”

She actually blushed, her long dark lashes caressing the top of her cheeks as she looked down demurely. He’d always wondered how something so horrible could happen to such a delicate creature. He wondered how God could be so cruel. And was it wrong that he was attracted to her? Maybe he’d burn in hell for his crime of sitting in front of her presence, the strength of her womanhood and her resiliency infusing him with something more than admiration. It was a genuine major young man’s first crush. His father would beat the crap out of him if he ever found out.

She was forbidden fruit. She was not only his teacher, but she was also Jewish, something his Italian Catholic father would never tolerate.

But when had Hank ever done what he was supposed to do? He was always skirting the edge of something naughty. He never laid a hand on her that summer. But he loved her nonetheless, as she edited his first fledgling pages and made story suggestions that made him dive into lost weekends with his typewriter. She was a part of every book heroine he wrote after that. They all had brown eyes and big lips. They all had a deep crease at the side of those lips where her flesh mated in a half-smile.

His agent said it was a fluke. But fluke or no, Hank never went back to college. He never found out what became of her and it filled him with regret.

Now there were two motion pictures based on his book series, and three others optioned and in the works. He was contracted for at least two and hopefully three books for his publisher this year, but due to an editorial dust-up late last year, he’d canceled one publishing date, bought out his contract, costing him nearly thirty thousand dollars, and had rescheduled with a new imprint. That set him back a good two books, yet, he was still behind for the new publisher. He