Shiver

  I was thinking the same thing. “I’m so glad we’re jetting off to Mexico tomorrow.”

  His mouth curved. “You all packed?”

  “Yep.”

  “Good. This time tomorrow, you’ll be on the beach.”

  “Not a fan of sand, but I won’t mind lazing on a sun lounger while reading my Kindle.”

  He brushed his knuckles down the column of my throat. “If that’s what will make you relax, do it.”

  “And you won’t feel neglected? Because you have a habit of suddenly wanting my attention whenever it’s elsewhere.”

  He smiled. “I won’t feel neglected.”

  Lying on my stomach, I sighed at the forked slice of mango that was held near my lips. “You said you wouldn’t feel neglected.” Propping myself up on my elbows, I obligingly opened my mouth and accepted the fruit.

  Perched on the edge of the waterproof upholstered bed on which I was lying, Blake shrugged, looking innocent. “I just want to feed you.”

  I snorted and pushed aside my Kindle. I’d spent a little time soaking up the sun on the deck of our very spacious beach cabana, but it was just too freaking hot. The breeze wasn’t cool enough to offer any real reprieve from the prickling heat, and my eyes had hurt from the sun glittering off the rippling water—even with my sunglasses. Shade was my friend right now.

  The air inside might have felt stuffy and humid if it weren’t for the blessed ceiling fan. Like most cabanas, it had a thatched roof and privacy curtains. But it didn’t just have the basics of rattan chairs, a dining table, and some recliners. No, it was hedonistic to its core. There was a widescreen T.V., minibar, bean bags, digital safe, music system, waterproof bed with pillows, and even an honest-to-God misting system. We also had our very own butler, who regularly brought us chilled towels, fruit platters, and all manner of snacks.

  As I chewed the mango, I stared out at the frothy sea-green water, watching the waves roll inland, dissolve into foam, and sweep ashore. Blake was making use of the music system, but it wasn’t so loud that I couldn’t enjoy the sounds of the water lapping at the shore or the waves crashing against rocks, tossing up spray.

  A row of similar cabanas dotted the uneven shoreline that was strewn with shells, bits of seaweed, footprints, and the occasional surfboard. The beach was private and relatively quiet. The large, swanky resort had just about everything, including a golf course and enough thrill-seeking activities to keep any adrenaline junkie content.

  Blake leaned in and breathed deep. “I love the smell of your sunscreen.”

  The coconut-scent mingled nicely with the other scents of tangy fruits, briny sea air, and salty water.

  “And I really love this bikini.” He traced the lime-green strap all the way to where it knotted with the other strap at my nape. “It’s both pleasure and torture to know that with just one tug, I can have you half-naked.” He planted a soft kiss on my shoulder. “You’re roasting.”

  Yeah, the telling tingle on my shoulders and forehead told me I’d burned a little.

  “Want to go back in the water to cool down?”

  “Nah.” Feeling the cool water lap against my skin had been heavenly. For the first twenty minutes. Then the gritty sand had made its way into my bikini—chafing sensitive places—and, yeah, things had changed. Still, we’d spent a fair amount of time in the sea. Now, though, I just wanted to relax. “But you go right ahead and take a dip.”

  It was truly a treat to watch him emerge from the sea and all that water pour off his head and down his hard body. Of course, I wasn’t the only woman who enjoyed that treat, so maybe it was a good idea for him to stay exactly where he was.

  “Nah,” he said, feeding me a cube of melon. “I’m staying with my baby.”

  As the drapes flapped in the light breeze, I frowned. “Why did you close the privacy curtains?”

  “I was getting damn fucking tired of that teenager in the next cabana perving at you. Maybe we should have gone somewhere cold, where you’d have had to layer up,” he grumbled.

  I rolled my eyes. “He’s just a kid.”

  “Baby, he’s not the only one who couldn’t take his eyes off you. I’m used to guys looking at you, I’m just not used to most of your body being on display while they’re looking. It’s pissing me off more than I thought it would. And if that fucking lifeguard stares at you one more time, I’m going to break his ribs.”

  “How many?”

  “What?”

  “How many ribs?”

  One side of his mouth curled. “Five. That’s for every time he’s gazed at your tits. They’re mine.”

  “The guy works on a beach, he sees women in bikinis all the freaking time—he’s got to be relatively immune to the sight at this point.” But Blake shook his head. I sighed, exasperated. “It could be that he’s looking at the bites you left on them. In which case, it would be your fault.”

  Blake breezed his finger over the swell of my breast. “I noticed that one of them has almost faded. I’ll have to do something about that later.” He fed me a red grape. “My dad was a lifeguard when he was younger. That was how he met Laurel—he saved her from drowning. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the incident was an act on her part to get his attention.”

  I blinked, taken aback by him volunteering personal information. He never talked about his father or Laurel. Eager to know more, I asked, “Were you close to your dad?”

  “No. It’s not that we didn’t get along. We just didn’t have anything in common. Didn’t really connect. And he found it hard that I didn’t like Laurel.” He idly plucked at my bikini strap. “Even when I was a kid, I didn’t like her.”

  “Any particular reason why?”

  “She was just so fake and sickly sweet, always asking me questions about my mom. She never liked that my parents got along well after their divorce. She felt threatened by their friendship.” He fed me another grape. “I walked in on her fucking her PT when I was eleven.”

  “Shit.”

  “Walked in on her with the pool guy when I was thirteen.”

  “Double shit.”

  “But the worst was when I heard her tell Emma that it was probably for the best that my mom died; that Rose was too messed up to raise me if she couldn’t even handle the dark. She’d only been dead three weeks.” He paused as a jet ski thundered past with a roar of its engine. “I lost the plot with Laurel that day. Came exceptionally close to slapping her.”

  “I don’t blame you.” I probably would have slapped her.

  He breezed the pad of his thumb over my cheekbone. “I guess you know what it’s like to hear people slate your mom.”

  “Oh, yeah, I know what it’s like.” I ate the slice of mango he held out to me. “What happened the night Laurel first came onto you?”

  “It was two years to the day that Levi died. She came into my room, drunk out of her mind, to check I was ‘okay.’ Said she was worried about me and begged me to confide in her. I told her to go. And she just flicked open the hook on her halter dress and let it fall to the floor. No underwear.”

  My cheeks flushed with anger. “Jesus Christ.”

  “I told her she had the count to five to get the fuck out of my room. She was gone by the count of four.”

  “But she tried again, didn’t she?”

  He nodded. “At random times. Like the day of my dad’s funeral, if you can believe that.”

  I gaped. “You are fucking joking.”

  “No, I’m not. It’s not that she desperately wants me or anything, Kensey. She tries it on with pretty much every young guy who crosses her path. She’s getting old and she hates it. Hates it. Fucking guys twenty-years her junior makes her feel young. I was just conveniently there at those particular times when she needed someone.”

  “If she tries it again, I’ll slap the shit out of her. Just so you know.”

  Mouth twitching, he kissed me. “She’s not worth your anger, baby.”

  “Does she hate that you’re with me???
?

  “No. From what Emma said, she’s glad I have someone. Like I said, Kensey, she doesn’t desperately want me. The times she came onto me … it was never about me. It was about her own insecurities and anxieties about aging.”

  “I still think she’s twisted, which probably sounds judgmental coming from someone who accepts that her mother married a death row inmate.” I looked toward the sea as I heard a girly shriek followed by a resounding splash. Resurfacing, the girl glowered at her laughing boyfriend. She had my sympathy, because Blake had done the same damn thing to me earlier.

  “Speaking of my family … Emma called. The email address won’t help us find Smith.”

  I frowned. “Why not?”

  “She tracked the IP address to Canada. Obviously, Smith isn’t there. Emma suspects he used a Proxy to mask his actual IP info and give a false one.”

  “Fuck it all. He’s so much smarter than I initially gave him credit for.”

  “Yes,” agreed Blake. “I think we—” He cut off at the sound of his cell phone ringing. “Give me a sec.” He left the bed, retrieved his phone from the digital safe, and stood on the deck as he answered, “This better be important.” His entire body tensed. “What?” He swore. “How the hell did you miss that?” A long pause. “When I get back on Sunday, I expect this to be sorted … No, why the fuck would I come home early? You don’t need me for this.” He sighed. “Just fucking deal with it.” With that, he ended the call.

  I rose from the bed and crossed to him. “What happened?”

  His frown smoothed away, but his expression was stony. “It’s not related to Smith.”

  “It’s related to your project.”

  “Yes.” The word was curt. Emotionless. A door slamming shut, ending the conversation and shoving me out so abruptly I was surprised I didn’t shuffle back a step. I felt cold. Shunned. Alone.

  I almost laughed bitterly. One minute we were talking—really, really talking—and he was looking at me with a warmth that could melt my bones. The next minute, there was a distance in his eyes and a coolness about him, and damn if I didn’t shiver at the sudden chill.

  “I need to go make a call.” And then he walked away.

  It wouldn’t have mattered if he’d stayed; I was too dispirited to eavesdrop. Right then, I didn’t fucking care about his damn project or have any interest in finding out what it was. I wished I could say I also didn’t care about Blake, but that would have been a lie.

  I curled up on the rattan chair with my kindle, needing a brief escape. But I found myself reading the same sentence over and over; the words just meant nothing, I couldn’t absorb them.

  I scrubbed my hand down my face, despising Tara in that moment. My gut told me that she’d been the caller, and it honestly wouldn’t have shocked me to hear that she’d purposely fucked something up in the bitchy hope that we’d cut our vacation short or that, at the very least, she’d manage to ruin it.

  It was a few minutes before Blake reappeared. Wiping all emotion from my face, I looked up from the Kindle I wasn’t reading. His expression was still cool, his eyes still held a distance.

  “I didn’t want this to follow us here,” he said. “I’m sorry that it did.”

  He probably was sorry, but he didn’t seem it. The words sounded more like a formality. I shrugged and said, “Not your fault.” I lowered my eyes to the Kindle. “I’m gonna read for a while.”

  “Hey, look at me.”

  With an inward sigh of annoyance, I did. There was a flare of something in his eyes now, but it was far from warm.

  “Don’t pull away from me, Kensey.”

  The bastard had some front to say that to me. I kept my voice flat, refusing to let him see just how much this hurt. “It wasn’t me who pulled away. You’re the one that wants distance, Blake. Not me.” And then I turned back to my Kindle.

  He bit out a curse and stormed out of the cabana. Oh my God, could he be more of a fucking child?

  I hissed, furious. If anyone had the right to storm off in a huff, it was me. I was tempted to just grab my things and go back to the hotel suite. But why should I cut my day short? Why should I go confine myself to the suite just because he’d acted like a dick? I wasn’t going to let him—and, by extension, Tara—fuck up my day.

  I couldn’t just sit there and read, though. No, I was too pissed. Too full of restless energy that urged me to pace. Well, I wasn’t going to freaking pace either.

  Shutting my e-reader in the safe, I slipped on my sandals to protect my feet from the burning hot sand, and headed for the water. Maybe the annoying chafing of the sand would distract me from how pissed I was with Blake.

  Leaving my sandals near the shoreline, I waded into the sea. Cold yet welcome due to the blistering heat, I sighed as the water lapped against my skin. I didn’t go far; could feel the sandy floor of the sea with my toes. Around me, couples cuddled and talked quietly—something Blake and I had been doing not so long ago. How the hell had we gone from that to a thousand emotional miles apart in mere seconds?

  When I began walking back to the cabana, I noticed that Blake was back, sitting on his sun-lounger, eyes on me. It was wise of him not to have joined me in the water. I’d needed that time alone, and I suspected he’d known that.

  I kicked off my sandals at the base of the steps, climbed onto the deck, and walked right past him with my head held high. I didn’t spare him even the briefest glance. Fuck him. Fuck him sideways.

  I pulled a bottle of water out of the fridge. Even though my skin had cooled from my swim, the bottle still felt icy in my hand. As the cold liquid slid down my throat, I almost sighed in contentment. Then I felt his body heat at my back, and it was all I could do not to snarl.

  “I fucked up.”

  “No, Blake, you just did what you’ve always been good at—you shut me out. I’m used to it at this point.”

  Warm hands cupped my hips and his chin rested on my shoulder. “I don’t shut you out. Earlier, we had a conversation about my father and Laurel.”

  “And then you slammed up a wall. Bounced from warm to ice-cold in an instant. Completely dismissed me with a single word. It’s not the first time you’ve done it, and it won’t be the last, but it’ll always be fucking hard.”

  He turned me to face him. “Baby,” he said softly. His hands palmed my face. “You know I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “I know.” But he had. “And for the record, storming off was plain childish.”

  “I didn’t storm off. I knew you were pissed and needed space, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to give it to you if I stayed here. I would have hounded you and just made things worse.”

  Unable to argue with that, I said nothing.

  “I’m sorry.” He dabbed a light kiss on my mouth, but I didn’t respond to it. His lips curled. “Still pissed at me, I see.”

  “Yep.” I frowned as he backed me into the bed. “Now wait a minute—” His mouth on mine silenced me as he toppled us onto the mattress.

  Positioning us on our sides, he braced himself up on one elbow and said, “You want to talk? We’ll talk. Choose the topic. But the project—”

  “You’re not ready to tell me. I know.” Nothing new there. I bit my lip. “Will you tell me about Levi?”

  His eyes dulled. “I already have.”

  Once. And he’d barely revealed anything. “You don’t have to tell me about his suicide. Just tell me about him; what he was like, how you met him.” Give me that much.

  Blake slid his hand into my bikini bottoms to rest on my ass. “I’d known him since Kindergarten.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded, a ghost of a nostalgic smile on his face. “We weren’t really friends until the last year of primary school, though. That friendship lasted all the way to high school. He was a good guy. Popular. Quarterback. The girls loved him. But he wasn’t as tough on the inside as he was on the outside. He had a soft heart. The soul of a poet, Tara says.” Blake shrugged. “They were close. He looked o
ut for her. Especially at home. He protected her from their dad, who liked to smack her around when he’d had a drink—which was often. Tara didn’t just lose her brother. She lost her protector. The person she felt understood her best.”

  “She feels like he abandoned her; that he left her to deal with their father alone,” I guessed.

  “Yes. Bastien picked up the mantel and did his best to help her. He feels like he should have seen that Levi’s head was so messed up. That’s why he ran to Tara when she drunk-called him, saying she had nothing to live for. He’s scared the same thing will happen all over again.”

  In my opinion, Tara had said what she’d known would get Bastien’s attention. Manipulative bitch. I splayed my hand on Blake’s chest. “You’ve told me how Tara felt about it. You’ve told me how Bastien felt about it. How did you feel?”

  “I didn’t know what to feel,” he said, smoothing his hand up my spine. “I was numb for a little while. Then it hit me … and let’s just say I didn’t take it well.”

  “Nobody would, Blake.” Tracing the lines and dips of his abs, I said, “When Libby lied that I tried to kill myself, you thought it was a cry for attention. Was it like that for Levi? A cry for attention that went too far?”

  “No, Levi wanted to die.”

  There were so many things I wanted to ask, but I could see just how hard it was for him to talk about—he’d already told me a lot today, I could shelve my other questions for now. And since I wasn’t so hypocritical as to not share something personal in return, I said, “Clear will end her life one day. She says she can’t live without me. I believe that. But she can’t live without Michael either. I’ve never been enough for her. When the time comes that he’s executed, I think she’ll kill herself that very same day.”

  “It won’t be your fault if she does,” said Blake. “It’s not that you’re not enough for her. The lack isn’t in you, it’s in her. She looks to other people to complete her, which is fucking unfair and I hate what it does to you. But you’re not responsible for her, Kensey. You’re not.”