Bungalow Nights(48)

Now, Baxter thought, relieved. Now they were getting somewhere. He turned his head and placed a kiss on her temple. “Addy.”

Her face turned toward him and then the kiss was lip-to-lip, sweet. He thought he tasted a yearning inside her. It couldn’t be all on his side. He touched his tongue to the seam of her mouth and she opened, her own tongue brushing his. With a little moan, she broke away.

“Baxter, no.” Her voice sounded strained. “I told you, I don’t want goodbye to hurt.”

He captured her hand again. “Won’t it already?”

“No,” she said, pulling free again and swinging around on the cushions in order to face him. “Because I’m still certain, here—” she thumped her fist on her chest “—that I don’t get to have you.”

“Wha—”

“An Addy March doesn’t get a Baxter Smith.”

He stared at her, trying to decipher the puzzle of her words. This close, even without any light, he could see she was serious. Determined. Near furious.

“Honey, I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me.”

She huffed out an impatient, irritated breath. “How many ways do I have to say this?” she asked, lifting her arms. “Here’s how it is— You’re the golden guy. I’m the plain fat girl.”

His brain couldn’t keep up. What? What, what, what? She could fit in a thimble. “I’m having trouble here.”

Her feet thumped on the hardwood as she jumped up. “You don’t remember me as a kid.”

“Uh...” Not really. He remembered her as a concept—until That Night. As a kid he’d known the couple down the road had a girl, younger than himself and his cousins. Just with that, she had been dismissed from his consciousness. “Maybe I saw you passing in a car, or...?”

“It doesn’t matter.” She was pacing. “I told you, I developed ways to deal with the ugly atmosphere at my house. Stories in every form. Pretend. Food. I’ve burned every picture of myself between the ages of eight and nineteen.”

Oh, Addy.

“Home was hell. School was hell. Then, for a high school graduation present my dad offered me a summer at fat camp.”

Baxter couldn’t think of one thing to say. But his heart was giving him grief, squeezing so hard that it seemed to constrict the beat. “That...that couldn’t have been the gift you wanted.”

“Are you kidding?” She rounded on him. “It was a great gift.”

He should keep his mouth shut. He really, really, really should. “Okay.”

“I had a chance to get away from my toxic household. I had a chance to think about me and what I wanted. I deferred college a year—I told you that—and I found new ways to cope. I learned some healthier habits.”

“That’s good.”

“Damn good.”

“Damn good,” he echoed. “But why can’t we—”

“Because when I see myself in the mirror, more than half the time I don’t see this me.” She faced him, and even in the dark he could see her vibrating with emotion. “Instead, I see the old, miserable me, unhealthy, unhappy, and I’m just a breath away from hiding from my reflection in those former habits.”

“Honey—”

“I can’t do it.” Her voice sounded tense. “I can’t spend more time with you and then leave the country. It’s bad enough that I might come to...miss you, but to be emotionally brittle and living in the land of croissants and chocolate?”

“Addy...”

She shook her head. “I just can’t do it.”

It still sounded as if she liked him, though. Baxter couldn’t dismiss that. He didn’t want to dismiss that—he cared too much. Rising off the couch, he approached her. She didn’t try to evade him, even when he curled his fingers around her upper arms. “It doesn’t have to be disaster. The way I feel—”

“You don’t get it!” She shook her head. “We’re not suited. We’re that kids’ game made literal. You know, One of These Things Is Not like the Other.”

“Bullshit.” He shook her a little. “That’s just bullshit.”

“God, Baxter.” Her voice went hoarse. “Tell me something about yourself that’s less than perfect.”

His stomach sank. Not because he thought he was flawless by any means, but because he didn’t think there was anything he could say that would appease her. Still, he tried. “Addy, I’m going to suck at this.” The BSLS didn’t have a line item for self-examination.

“Give it a try.”

“Uh...I hardly ever floss.” He thought harder. “I can’t work up an interest in ice hockey.”

She made a disgusted sound. “I knew it.”

Desperate, goaded, Baxter opened his mouth again, hoping something persuasive would fly out. “I hate my job.” It wasn’t until he felt her new, rigid stillness beneath his hands that he heard his own words. I hate my job.

Had he said that?

Had he really said that?

To escape answering his own question, Baxter dropped his hands and strode from the house.

* * *

THE MORNING FOLLOWING the break-in, Layla meandered her way from the Karma Cupcakes truck back to Beach House No. 9, aware she was—literally—dragging her feet. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the physical evidence in the skid marks in the sand. She’d slipped from Vance’s bed at dawn, while he was still asleep, and now she’d have to face him in the glaring light of day.

The shift in their relationship worried her.

The shift in herself worried her.

I thought you were sugar and spice and everything nice. But maybe you have a naughty side, after all.

A shiver wiggled down her back as she remembered his dark, drugging words. And then his other words, the ones that were graphic and...and crude, except they hadn’t felt crude, they’d seemed just another element of the hypnotic spell he’d cast with his deep kisses and knowing caresses. His demands.

Straddle me, sweetheart. Put your breast to my mouth.

Touch yourself and come for me.

How was she supposed to look at him after that? After she’d done exactly as instructed and then been blissfully rewarded?

But she’d been the one to start it, hadn’t she? He’d suggested they head to separate beds and she’d decided not to waste that sizzling sexual force that existed between them. It was gratifying to remember how little it had taken to persuade him.

She slowed even more as she began mounting the steps at the bottom of No. 9. Vance wanted her in his bed for the rest of the month now. Nerves jittered in her belly at the thought. Deciding to sleep with a man a single night at a time was one thing. Going into it as a sort of...of living arrangement, no matter how fleeting, felt like something different altogether.

What if that somehow left her wanting more—despite knowing never to count on such a thing? Maybe she’d better run back to Uncle Phil and ask for one of his vaunted lectures on the Buddhist principal of nonattachment.

She was so intent on her thoughts that she blinked as she arrived on the deck, startled to see people there she didn’t recognize. Her head whipped around. In her distracted state, had she approached the wrong beach house? But there was Vance, breaking away from a couple of strangers to come her way. “Hey,” he called out. “There you are.”

He caught her fingers in his and drew her farther onto the deck. “Are you okay?” he asked softly.

“I’m great,” she replied, going for bright and confident instead of embarrassed and unsure of her next step. “You have visitors?”

“Our predecessors, in a sense,” he said. “Jane Pearson and Griffin Lowell.”

Layla shook hands with the woman first. She was sandy-haired and her light gray eyes picked up the blue in the sleeveless shirt she wore over cropped jeans. “Cute shoes,” Layla told her, taking in the wedged espadrilles that were dotted with small seashells arranged in the shape of flowers.

“My librarian’s trademark,” Griffin said, grinning. He was dark and lean with piercing blue eyes and a strong grip. Then his smile died. “I knew your father. And admired him. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

Layla’s throat tightened. “Thank you.”

Vance rubbed her arm with the back of his knuckles, a gentle, sympathetic touch. “Remember? Griffin was embedded with us. He brought with him some photos from that time—of your dad and others—if you’d like to see them.”

Would she?

“Even one of your favorite combat medic, too,” Griffin added. “They’re in the house.”

A photo of Vance. Vance, at war.

Before she could respond, Skye arrived from the beach, wearing her usual sloppy pants and sweatshirt, a black Lab at her heels. “Private rushed me along. I guess he’s excited about the wedding, too.”