Bungalow Nights(53)

Baxter let his shirt drop and his voice softened. “This isn’t about hospital corners, is it, Addy?”

She made a face. “Was it the Freudian ‘measure up’ that gave me away?”

He came toward her, the bright light of day hiding nothing of his face and killer body. “You know,” he said, his voice casual. “There’s one good thing about my OCD. It means I’m very, very detail-oriented.”

“Does it also mean you’ll consent to keeping your eyes shut whenever the clothes come off?” She thought of the underwear she wore today, a pale green cotton set sprinkled with darker green frogs, little golden crowns perched atop their heads. It was her story, gender-reversed, wasn’t it? The handsome prince kissed the ugly frog, transforming her.

His hands on her shoulders, Baxter lightly kissed her mouth. “Addy, I want to look at you. All of you. You’re beautiful.”

Still worry crept in, stiffening her muscles. Damn her body issues!

“Shh,” Baxter said, then kissed her cheek, her nose, her forehead. “This is me. Just me.”

Just him, the most gorgeous man she’d ever known. Her crush of a lifetime.

With stinging eyes, she looked up at golden Baxter. Even swimming in her tears he was leading-man material. “I told you before, we’re the embodiment of One of These Things Is Not like the Other.”

He closed his eyes for a brief moment, as if in pain. “Addy, no...”

“I mean it,” she insisted.

“Addy.” He moved his hands upward, using them to cup her face. “No job. No French.”

She let that sink in for a moment. Finally she heard herself add, “No taste in superheroes.”

“What?” He glanced down at the big S on his chest.

“Superman,” she scoffed, feeling her mojo on the rise again. “So banal, Baxter.”

He scowled now, but she knew he was just playing along. “I’ll add that to prissy and pasty.”

She laughed. “I’m sorry. That was my defense mechanism talking. You’re hunky and so handsome that it was hard for me to handle.”

“Handle me now, Addy.”

And she heard it as a plea. He wanted her. He needed her touch. So she applied herself to getting him naked. Superman shirt gone—note to self, get him into an edgier crime fighter before hitting Paris—he stopped her hands on their way to his jeans.

“Time for you to get naked, Addy,” he said, his voice guttural.

She stalled again, her hands returning his tight grip. Be brave, she told herself, closing her eyes and breathing in the scent of his warm skin. Intellectually, she knew she wasn’t that little girl who had lived in the dark. She was a woman, a loved woman, getting ready to have sex with the man she wanted in her bed for the rest of their lives.

I can do this, she thought, stepping away from him in order to shuck the rest of her clothes. I can do this.

Then, over his shoulder, she caught sight of herself in the mirrored closet doors across the room. She shuddered. It didn’t matter what the size label said on her clothes. It wasn’t even about size.

It was about feeling loved. Her parents hadn’t loved her enough to stop the shouting, to end the rounds of stabbing criticism, to find a way to make the world feel safe for their young daughter. Her only security had been in an episode of Saved by the Bell and a Snickers bar. In Dances with Wolves and a bag of Doritos. In Little Women and lemon bars.

Baxter glanced back, saw what she saw, she supposed, because he moved, coming behind her, holding her back against his front. He crossed his arms over her waist, this hold not so much sexual as cherishing. His gaze met her reflected one.

“I love you,” he said. “I love you.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder and inspected their images in the glass. Despite his words, the sincerity in them, it still wasn’t easy. Did the frog prince still see his old warts once he’d been kissed by his beautiful lady?

“Shh,” he said again, and then bent his head so he spoke against her ear. “Screw mirrors, honey, if they bother you. Just look at yourself in my eyes.”

That did it. That got her turning away from the reflection and toward the man of her dreams. Her comfort crush. The freakin’ love of her life who could make her believe in the lasting power of what was in their hearts.

Addy March got to have Baxter Smith.

“So many happy endings today,” she told her guy.

Smiling, he touched his absolutely best male nose in the world to hers. “Still got no job, no French, no taste in superheroes.”

“But we’ve got each other,” Addy said. “Je t’adore.”

* * *

LAYLA SLAPPED AT VANCE’S hand as he tried sneaking one of the cupcakes from the plastic carrier she’d brought home from the food truck. “Those are for dessert,” she said, pushing the container farther down the kitchen counter.

“But it’s my party,” he said, a wheedling smile on his face. His hips pressed closer to hers as he pinned her against the bullnose tile.

She laughed up at him. “You’re in a mood.”

“Mmm,” he agreed. “Getting all his limbs in order can do that to a man.”

The final cast had been removed. Though he wore a soft splint in its place, he’d come home from the doctor’s upbeat and energized. Likely already thinking of his return to active duty.

That thought threatened her own mood, a little melancholy creeping in at the idea of their time together coming to an end. But she wasn’t going to think about the future. Not tonight.

With a saucy smile, she tilted her hips, pressing into the thickness she felt between his legs. “This limb seems to be in fine form, too.”

He bent to her ear, his hot breath sending chilly tingles down her neck. “You are such a naughty girl.”

“But I don’t have time to show you just how naughty,” she said, shoving at his shoulders. “Remember? Addy and Baxter called to say they wanted to have dinner with us.”

His big body didn’t move, even when she tried shoving again. “Is it too late to phone and put them off for—”

Vance hadn’t even finished his sentence before the other couple was walking into Beach House No. 9, both of them carrying grocery bags and wearing high-wattage smiles. As Layla helped unpack the groceries, Vance snatched a magazine from Baxter’s hand.

“What’s with the CarBuy mag?” he asked his cousin. “You in the market for another car?”

“Research,” Baxter replied. “I need to find the right price to ask for my Beemer.”

Vance blinked, and then he stumbled back and fell into a chair at the kitchen table. “Is it just me, or are there pigs flying around this room?”

“Ha-ha,” the other man said. “It’s not a miracle that’s making me sell the roadster...it’s marriage.”

Addy made a little noise, half distressed, half pleased. “Baxter. We talked about this. It’s too soon to be throwing around that word.”

“You like my self-confidence,” he said, and snagged the blonde with an arm around her neck to bring her close. “And you love me.”

Layla felt her eyes go round. Vance looked equally startled. “Um...is there some news we should know?”

Addy’s face was pink but she hadn’t moved away from Baxter. “Yes. It’s so cool. We’ve solved the mystery of Sunrise Pictures.” Then she told them of a letter Baxter discovered that made clear it wasn’t an affair that had ended the company, but Edith’s own wish to be out of the business.

“So now you know,” Layla said.

Addy nodded. “But not everything. The Collar is still missing. Edith put it somewhere for safekeeping...I think here at the cove. Baxter believes it’s in an undiscovered bank safe-deposit box, but that’s because there’s no romance in his soul.”

“My soul has romance,” he protested. “But my brain says no man would hide a priceless necklace in a beach cottage.”

“Ah, but no man did,” Addy pointed out. “And shortly after Edith took action, there came the Great Depression. People didn’t hold a great deal of faith in banks. I bet she thought it was just fine wherever she’d stashed it.”

“But wouldn’t she have told someone where that was?” Vance asked.

“She didn’t tell Max in the letter she wrote him.” Addy sighed. “And then she died a few years later, unexpectedly, of pneumonia. Perhaps she never had a chance.”

“Or perhaps some visitor to Crescent Cove found it,” Vance said, “and took it home with him or her, never knowing that it’s a real treasure.”

Layla frowned. “I don’t like that ending to the story.”

“All of that is old news, anyway,” Vance said. He turned his gaze on his cousin. “I didn’t forget the new news you just dropped five minutes ago. Selling the Beemer? Did you actually use the word marriage?”