Bad Girl Reputation (Avalon Bay #2)(57)

“Stop,” Gen warns, though she’s still smiling. Because she knows, dude walks around dressed like that, he’s asking for it. “What do you want?”

“Hey, there’s no hard feelings, right?” I offer my hand to the deputy. “Truce?”

“Sure.” He grips my hand with what must be all the force he can muster. I almost feel bad for the guy. Almost. “Bygones.”

“Evan …” She cocks her head at me, impatient.

“You look nice.”

“Don’t do that.”

I fight a grin. “I can’t give you a compliment?”

“You know what I mean.” She likes it. The amusement in her voice betrays her words.

“You do look nice.” I’ll always prefer the real Gen, the girl in a pair of cutoff shorts and a loose tank top over a bikini. Or nothing at all. But that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate this little white slinky number that, in the right light, I can all but see through against her tan skin. “Big plans today?”

“We saw your race,” the guy says. He could tell me his name a thousand times, and it still wouldn’t stick. I could cover my eyes right now and have no idea what the guy looks like. He should have gone into the CIA or something; a dude this incapable of leaving an impression would do well, I imagine.

“It was, um, eventful.” Gen tries and fails to pretend she isn’t checking me out.

“These things are always so boring,” I tell her. “Thought we’d add a little drama.”

“Is that what that was? Drama?”

“Rather be last than boring.”

Even behind those sunglasses, I feel her dragging her eyes down my bare chest. The way her teeth tug at the inside of her lip conjures all sorts of images in my head. I want to shove my fingers in her hair, put her up against the wall, and make this guy watch her melt against my lips. Whatever ideas she’s got about playing the field or making me jealous, we both know he can’t kiss her like I can. He’ll never know her mouth, her body, the way I do.

“Why don’t you join us for lunch?” the chaperone interjects.

Even Gen looks like she’d forgotten he was there. She startles, glancing over at him. “No, you don’t have to do that.”

“Lunch sounds great,” I say cheerfully.

“Seriously?” This time her exasperation is directed at him. “Harrison. We had plans.”

Surprisingly, he doesn’t budge. “I insist.”

Oh, buddy. I don’t know what he thinks he’s playing at, but there’s no scenario where he puts Gen and me in a room together and it goes in his favor.

“Fine. I’m going to the restroom first.” She points a finger at my chest. “Behave. And put a shirt on.”

Gen leaves us standing outside a tacky gift shop. I’m content to keep my thoughts to myself, but it’s Officer Chuckles who speaks up.

“She’s a special woman,” he starts.

That he talks about her like he knows her at all grates my nerves. “Yep.”

“This sounds silly, but even back in high school I had a crush on her.”

Back in high school we were making out in the yearbook darkroom while skipping third period.

“I know what this is,” he announces, squaring up to me like he just found his balls. “You think you can intimidate me or scare me. Well, I promise it won’t work.”

“Dude, I don’t know you.” I remind myself he’s a cop, and that I promised both Gen and Cooper I was done picking fights. Still, he’s got to know I’m not the guy you test. “But if I were trying to scare you off, I wouldn’t be shy or cute about it. I’d just do it.”

“What I’m saying is, I like Genevieve. I intend to keep dating her. And nothing you do is going to change that. Keep crashing our dates, if you want. It won’t make a difference.”

I have to hand it to the guy. Even when putting himself between me and what’s mine, he does it with a Boy Scout smile. Almost polite. Civil.

But it doesn’t erase the fact that I’d step over his bleeding carcass to get to her. However long it takes for Gen to come back to me, I’ve already won this fight. He just hasn’t figured it out yet.

“Then by all means,” I say with a half smile. “Let the best man win.”





CHAPTER 22

GENEVIEVE

These days, not much surprises me. For two months now, my life has become a predictable routine of the nine-to-five grind, with the occasional evening where I find a few hours to have a life. That isn’t so much a complaint as an observation, because I asked for this. I went to great pains to tame my wilder tides.

But Evan, well, Evan Hartley still manages to surprise me. The weekend after the regatta, he picks me up for our date looking all primped and polished. He’s wearing a clean white T-shirt and cargo pants without a single wrinkle in them. He even shaved—an especially rare treat. And where I expected one of his usual hairbrained schemes to get us into trouble on some ill-conceived adventure, we find ourselves sitting down to a late lunch at a modern vegan restaurant overlooking Avalon Beach.

“I have to ask,” I say, enjoying the roasted eggplant pasta. “What made you decide on vegan? I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen you eat a vegetable that wasn’t wrapped in meat or cooked in animal fat.”