Still Not Over You(13)

Like I’m weightless.

Like the insane stress and worry my life has become is gone, and I can just float until my mind clears and my thoughts buckle and I can start the day with a clean slate.

I feel a little less like destroying everything in my path by the time I pull myself out of the waves, towel off on the sand, and head up to the house. The sun is just breaking over the horizon, turning the pale grays and whites of my home into a multicolored canvas of pinks and blues and purples and golds.

I’m not expecting company when I let myself in through the kitchen door.

And I’m certainly not expecting Kenna, sitting right there at the kitchen island, her legs crossed primly in another pair of those damnably short shorts, her fingers busy with a pen, scratching across the pages of a little black book in scribbled dashes of ink.

I hadn’t realized she was an early riser, too. Also didn't know, last night, the implications of giving her free run of the house while I’m still in it.

She’s so completely focused she doesn’t even realize I’m there, though she’s got a hand free for Velvet in her lap. The cat shamelessly prostrates himself for her idly stroking hand. Mews prowls around the legs of the barstool, pushing himself up to rub against her little bare feet, occasionally being rewarded by a distracted scrunch of her toes between his ears.

Little traitors.

All it takes is one soft touch, and they’re fraternizing with the enemy.

If she keeps being nice to my cats, it'll be that much damn harder to tell her to fuck off and leave once I come back from Sonoma.

I linger in the doorway, but as I step inside Velvet perks up, jumping from her lap and trotting toward me, Mews on his heels. I’ve suddenly got two lumps of fur twined around my ankles, plus a pair of wide, startled green eyes watching me, looking so lost it’s not hard to tell she hadn’t even realized I was here.

Tearing my gaze from hers, I bend to stroke between the cats’ ears and down their backs, up to the tip of their tails. When I look back she’s watching me with a sort of quiet fondness.

Something I really don't need right now.

Especially because the last time I saw her with a little black book in her hands, she was prying where she didn’t belong.

Everything inside me hardens, the tension I’d sloughed off in the pool cutting through me again to leave me bristling. She blinks at me, then falters, her head bowing, a shamefaced flush across her cheeks.

She remembers, too. She doesn’t need to say it. The guilt in every line of her body speaks for her.

She remembers what she did. I made sure she'd never forget.

“Sorry,” she mumbles. “I haven’t had much inspiration for a while, and it just hit this morning. I didn’t realize you’d be here.”

I don’t want to talk to her, all of a sudden. But I need to.

It's business. And I need to keep it strictly business, yet there’s a hard knot in the pit of my stomach that’s thinking of anything but keeping professional as I close in, watching how her hair falls across her face.

She’s never been able to keep it wholly in a ponytail, soft chestnut strands always slipping free like they just can’t keep themselves from touching her irresistible lips and playing against her cheeks. Those tumbling sweeps of hair shadow her downswept eyes, now, and there’s an itching in my fingers that wants to brush her hair back, skim it across her brow, lift her chin until she looks at me with those eyes that always seem so innocent no matter what happens to her.

She’s not innocent, I remind myself sharply. There’s nothing innocent about her.

I clear my throat, shifting to lean against the counter, looking for that perfect neutral distance between too close and too far. Hell, even being in the same house with her is too close, but I can deal until I ship out for the gig. I rest my elbows on the counter and tell her, “We need to talk.”

Her head flies up. Her eyes widen. She’s so damned transparent, so guileless, that I can tell what she thinks I mean. That I want to talk about what happened back then, years ago.

She's flat out wrong. If the day ever comes when I'm ready to talk about that, shoot me first.

Before she opens her mouth, I cut her off. “About the fire,” I clarify. “Something doesn’t feel right.”

Her brows knit together. “What do you mean?”

I don’t say anything for several moments. I don’t know how to say this without either panicking her or sounding like a paranoid asshole, and I’m already in bona fide grumpy old man territory with my temper seething every time I have to chase those goddamn kids off my lawn.

Finally, “This isn’t the first incident,” I force out grudgingly. “It’s just been little things. People fucking with my shit. I wrote it off, blamed those rich brats screwing around on the beach, but this was dangerous. This fire could’ve hurt someone. That, to me, says foul play. And motive.”

She goes pale. “What kind of motive? Why would anyone ever –”

“I don’t know,” I bite off. “But it almost feels like someone’s trying to send a message.”

Kenna frowns. She doesn’t say anything, but she looks away, her gaze shuttering, and it’s not hard to tell she’s trying not to look frightened in front of me; trying to look tough.

It’s not hard to tell that she's scared, either. Not with the way she wraps her arms around her shoulders. I don’t think she even realizes she’s doing it, but I’ve learned to read people’s body cues, the language of flesh that speaks louder than words.