Don't Speak (A Modern Fairytale, #5)(11)

“I . . . I can’t,” she said, sighing heavily and turning back to her father’s boat.

“Why not?”

She spoke over her shoulder. “Because there’s no point.”

“No point in hangin’ out with me? Wow. That’s rough.”

“You’re a dingbat—I mean . . .” She sighed, glancing back at his mansion before looking into his eyes. “You’re summer folks.” And the governor’s son.

“Ahhh,” he said. “Now I see. You’re a snob.”

They’d reached the dock, and Laire turned around to face him, her eyes burning with indignation. “What do you . . . No! No, I’m not a snob. You’re the . . . I mean . . .”

“You won’t go out with me because I’m only here for the summer, and you called me a dingbat.”

He looked so affronted, she couldn’t help giggling.

“I didn’t call you a dingbat,” she said, stepping onto her father’s boat. “I was about to call you a dingbatter.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

He put his hands on his hips, staring down at her, and she got the feeling he was feigning hurt feelings, but that in reality he was enjoying himself very much.

She lifted up the fourth cooler and plopped it inelegantly onto the decking, then swung her body up beside it. “A dingbatter is someone who’s not from the islands. Specifically not from Corey or Ocracoke. Don’t mean nothing bad. Even folks who’ve lived out there for fifty years are called a dingbatter if they weren’t born on the islands.”

“You know what? Your accent is wild,” he said, his lips twitching again, like a smile was about to break forth and there was nothing he could do about it if he tried.

“That’s what they tell us,” she said, reaching down for the cooler and turning her back to him as she started back up the boardwalk toward the house.

It was too narrow for him to walk beside her, but sure enough, he decided to keep up the chitchat from behind her after they’d walked several feet in silence.

“It’s like, uh, a little Scottish. Highlands Scottish.”

“Uh-huh. Some say Australian,” she said, her fingers hurting like hell. “First ones to Ocracoke and Corey were Scottish and Irish, English and Welsh. They say our accent got frozen in time for a spell before the woodsers come out from the mainland and started changing it with Southern-style speaking.”

“I hear a Southern accent in there too,” he said.

“But not like yours,” she answered.

His was dreamy, like the hero in a romance film. Like the boy in The Notebook who fell in love with the rich gal from Charleston. He sounded like a Southern gentleman. Like a movie star.

“What’s different about mine?” he asked, his footsteps heavy behind her.

“It’s posh.”

“You know who I am?” he asked. “Who my father is?”

She stepped off the boardwalk and onto the lawn, determined not to stop or she didn’t know how she’d lift this damn cooler again. Each one was heavier than the last.

“The governor’s son,” she said simply. “Erik Rexford.”

“Well, now, that means you have me at a disadvantage, Freckles, because all I know about you is that you’re a cute-as-hell island girl who delivers crabs and won’t go out with me.”

Cute as hell. She could die and go to heaven now.

“My name is Laire,” she said.

“Laire, like hair?”

She nodded.

“Laire what?” he asked.

She rounded the pool, relieved beyond belief that the side of the house was in sight now. Laire Who Shouldn’t Be Talking to You. “Laire Cornish.”

“Well . . . it’s sure nice to . . . meet you, Laire . . . Cornish.”

He sounded breathless behind her, which was fairly flattering, considering her name was pretty ordinary on Corey.

“You too, Erik Rexford.”

She rounded the corner of the house and almost ran to the kitchen entrance, dropping the heavy cooler just inside the door with a grunt of satisfaction. Resting her hands on her knees for a moment, she took big gulps of air.

“Ahem,” said Erik from behind her. “You mind?”

Straightening and putting her hands on her hips, she turned around to face him, and found him standing behind her, a huge grin on his way-too-beautiful face, and the last two coolers in his strong arms.

***

That was the moment Erik Rexford knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he couldn’t allow this to be their one and only meeting. Her eyes widened, her lips parted, and his dirty mind went straight to the gutter, wondering if that’s how Laire Cornish would look when he made her come with his cock or his tongue.

And I’d sooner die right here and now than never find out, he thought, grinning down at her.

“I didn’t . . . I didn’t ask for your help,” she said softly to his back as he brushed past her and placed the last two coolers on top of hers.

“I figured you wouldn’t. But, sometimes, Freckles? Sometimes you just lend a hand because you can, not because there’s a gun to your head.”

He wasn’t certain where that sentence had come from, because the filthy, fantastic images in his head were a lot less lofty than the words that came out of his mouth. But he found that he meant them—there was room to want her and to help her. Both objectives cohabited together in the front of his consciousness.