Barefoot with a Stranger (Barefoot Bay Undercover #2)(79)

It was her turn to stare at him, mouth closed, but eyes wide as she waited for what he had to say.

“But I can’t just…love someone.”

Her mouth opened, dropped into an O of disbelief. He closed it for her, touching her chin and making sure she didn’t eat any more bugs.

“You want to know why?”

She nodded, her eyes just a little bit damp, which scared him and touched him and kind of amazed him. Did she really care that much?

“I can’t really tell you why. I just know that I’m not meant for that. Every time I’ve given a person a chance, they screwed me over. Starting with my mother, who spent my childhood screwing me over, and a couple other women here and there, and even Alana…”

“So you were romantically attached to her,” she said.

“No.” He shook his head. “I swear, we were friends, but even that friendship, she used me, and then…” He turned, looking toward the distant lights of the town of El Salvador. “She had to have kept the money. She was the only person who knew where it was in the first place. And that’s made my life even shittier.”

“While we’re there, why don’t you ask her about it?”

He shrugged. “She’ll just deny it. And what am I going to do? Implicate her? I served my time, and I saved her kids.”

She reached for his arm. “And that amazes me,” she said. “So why don’t you save yourself?”


And ruin her life? “I wouldn’t even know how to settle down, Chessie. I know what your plan is, and I’m not the man for you. I’ll always have a record. I’ll always be an embezzler. That’s not what you want, is it? A guy who’s done time at Allenwood?”

Her eyes flashed hot in the moonlight. “Can’t I be the one to decide that? Can’t I know whether or not that bothers me?”

“It has to bother you,” he insisted. “In your perfect family of law-abiding, crime-fighting, good-doing heroes, you want to drag an ex-con who did time for stealing half a million from the US government to Christmas dinner?”

When she didn’t answer, he nodded, hard, and gave her a nudge to keep walking. “I didn’t think so.”

“But I know the truth! You didn’t do it. You took the blame to help her.” She marched next to him, her white high-top sneakers caked in mud and splashing more with each angry step. “It’s so damn unfair!”

“I’ve accepted the unfairness of it.”

“Not that! I could fix that. I could prove you’re innocent, and you know what? It wouldn’t matter.”

“It would matter. It would mean I spent four years of my life in vain. She still has kids. They’d still be taken from her.”

“Oh please.” Disgust darkened her voice. “You could be cleared of everything and free to have lunch with the freaking president of the United States, and you’d come up with some bogus reason why you’re all wrong for me, because, you know what, Mal?”

He had a feeling she was about to tell him.

“You’re afraid of love. You’re terrified of the real thing. You don’t think you’re worthy of it, so you build some kind of wall and move every four months and do undercover work that keeps you from being real, because you’re just so damn scared of someone leaving you or hurting you.”

He just closed his eyes and huffed out a breath. “I’m not having this fight here. We have to—”

“Find that kid and get home,” she finished. “I can’t get away from you fast enough.”

The announcement smacked him, so far from what he was feeling and how she looked. “That’s the adrenaline dump talking,” he said.

“It’s my heart talking,” she shot back, walking so fast now he had to work to keep up with her. “My bruised and lonely and really stupid heart that picks the wrong guy over and over again. Like I can fix him or something and make him…not quit.”

“Not quit?” The indictment stabbed like a steely knife.

“Yeah. You know my plan? My silly, 1950s innocent life plan? It requires a man who doesn’t give up when the going gets tough.”

“Is that what you think I am?” he asked, his gut burning. “A quitter?”

“You’re giving up on your life and happiness before you even have it, so yeah. And I don’t like that. I don’t like you.”

Somehow, they’d gone from we can make this work to…I don’t like you.

“Which is exactly the rule we set, remember?” he reminded her.

“I remember. Like it was yesterday. Come to think of it, it practically was. Come on, let’s move it. I want to find my nephew and get home.”

Her shoulders hunched, her head down, her hair falling in her face, Chessie walked on like a prisoner who had…no hope.

Taking that from her was his worst crime. He was innocent of embezzlement. But he was one hundred percent guilty of stealing all the light, hope, and heart from Francesca Rossi.

And he hated himself even more for that.

* * *

The tension between them stretched like a steel wire that could snap at any second.

Chessie stayed perfectly silent, focused on the plan of the moment: find that child. She could be on a plane tomorrow morning.