Temple refused all of Lucy’s offers to make anything but a plain green salad, and that night they ate more frozen dinners of dry turkey, mushy brown rice, and mashed parsnips. Lucy fell back on her favorite expression from when she was fourteen. “This blows.”
“So does being fat,” Temple replied self-righteously.
“You blow, too,” Lucy grumbled.
Panda lifted an eyebrow. Temple reached across the table to pat Lucy’s hand. “Somebody’s got PMS.”
Panda slammed his elbow on the table. “I swear to God, if I hear any more about PMS, cramps, or even female acne, I’m going to blow something up.”
Temple waved a breezy hand toward the door. Panda glowered. Lucy hadn’t been able to get him alone yet, and she didn’t want to talk about what had happened at the farm stand in front of Temple, so she picked another target for her bad mood. “I hate this table.”
“Tough,” Panda said.
Temple snorted. “He likes being surrounded by squalor. It reminds him of his hideous childhood.”
“How hideous?” Lucy said. “He never tells me anything.”
“My father was a drug dealer shot by a dissatisfied customer when I was two,” he said matter-of-factly. “My mother was an addict. We had rats in our apartment. That’s the part Temple likes best.”
“
Lucy pushed her plate away. It didn’t seem right for Temple to know more about him than she did. “What else did you learn?”
“He graduated from college with honors,” Temple said.
Panda frowned, clearly displeased by any information that didn’t portray him as a menace to society. “How do you know that?”
“Google.” She sniffed. “You don’t think I’d have kept hiring you if I hadn’t investigated you?”
“By Googling me? You’re a crackerjack detective, all right.”
“He was also in the army,” Temple went on. “Boring. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything about his romantic history. I think we can safely assume a trail of broken hearts has been left behind.”
“Or unmarked female graves,” Lucy said, which only made him smile.
How could Temple work out with him every day and not want to rip his clothes off? Instead, whenever she took a break, she tended to stare out the window. Lucy studied the long tendon that ran down the side of his neck. The one she liked to bite. He caught her at it and gave her a look that said he knew exactly what she was thinking.
PANDA DIDN’T COME THROUGH HER sliding door that night, and the boathouse remained dark. It was the first time they hadn’t been together since their affair had begun, which led her to wonder… If his connection with Bree only involved real estate, why was he being so secretive?
Rain peppered the windows the next morning, matching her mood. What was it that he didn’t want her to know? She needed their affair to be completely straightforward-no murky corners or dark mysteries she might find herself pondering when they weren’t together. She pulled on an old yellow slicker that one of the Remingtons, maybe Bree herself, had left behind in an upstairs closet, and she set off across the wet grass. But instead of heading for the woods, she turned toward the three acres of land on the north side of the house, a rockier area she hadn’t originally realized was part of his property. By the time she reached the top of the steep slope, she was out of breath.
Panda stood at the edge of the bluff in what she’d come to think of as his brooding place. He wore a high-end dark gray rain jacket and jeans. His head was bare, hair wet and wind tousled. She took in his swarthy, rain-slicked face. He didn’t look happy to see her.
“I missed my sex last night,” she said. “I’m thinking about firing you.”
PANDA HAD FIGURED SHE’D FORCE a confrontation, but he’d hoped to buy a little time before it happened. He should have known better. Shit. If he didn’t get away from this place soon-away from her-he was going to lose it. He’d tried to talk Temple into letting him out of his contract, but she’d refused. When this was over, he was getting back to doing what he did best, protecting clients from real danger.
The wind flipped up the collar of his jacket. “I wouldn’t advise firing me,” he told her. “I’ve got a sex tape.”
She didn’t smile. In a yellow slicker, with a black-lined hood pulled over her ridiculous hair and three inches of black cuffs turned up, she looked like a wet bumblebee. “You’re lying,” she said. “Tell me why you had your little freak-out when you saw Bree.”
“Would I lie about something as serious as a sex tape?”
“In a heartbeat. I know Bree’s family owned the house. She told me all about it.”
He should have made the connection between the woman named Bree that Lucy visited at the cottage and Sabrina Remington West, but this asinine assignment had dulled his thinking. “Video cameras are small,” he said. “I’m exceptionally good at hiding them.”
Again, no smile. She meant business, and he didn’t like that. “Bree told me she’d never met you,” she said. “So why did you run off like that?”
He came up with the most plausible explanation. “She reminded me of an old girlfriend.”
“What old girlfriend?”
He ignored the slick of raindrops on her cheek to work on his sneer. “I don’t ask about your lurid past. Leave mine alone.”
“You don’t ask about my lurid past because you know you’d fall asleep if I told you about it.” She paused. “Something I intend to fix.”
He frowned. “You told that woman who you are. Do you really think she’s going to keep it to herself?”
“She has for a month. And other than Temple’s dubious companionship, Bree is the only friend I have on the island.
What did that make him? “Who needs friends here?” he said. “We’ll all be leaving in a couple of weeks.” He ramped up his argument. “You’re getting way too cozy with people. You ride into town whenever you like, talk to whoever you want. It’s not smart.”
“I like talking, and this conversation isn’t about me. It’s about you, and if you don’t tell me the truth, I’ll start digging around. Believe me, my resources are a lot more powerful than Google.”
He wished she hadn’t moved so close to the edge of the bluff, but if he told her to step back, she’d bite his head off. He yearned for the quieter, more compliant woman he’d first met. “Why do you even care?” he said.
“I don’t like mysteries.”
“Leave it alone, Lucy.”
Her hood blew back. “Here’s what I think. I think you have some kind of connection to the Remington family. That’s why you bought this house, and that’s why you don’t want anything changed.”
“The house has roots, and I don’t. It’s what I like about it and why I’m not getting rid of the table you’re so obsessed with.”
Fortunately she moved a few steps away from the edge. “Could be true,” she said. “Now tell me the rest.”
Like hell he was telling her the rest. As he watched the wind slap that yellow slicker against her small body, he couldn’t imagine spilling his guts about any of it. Curtis, the army, how it felt to be a cop walking into some rat-hole apartment to tell a mother her kid was dead. How it felt not being able to trust yourself. He’d rather tell her how beautiful she was. Even her messy hair and fake tattoos couldn’t destroy the sweet feistiness of that face or the allure of those green-flecked eyes.
He reminded himself that all this sweetness, that spirit, was destined for somebody else. Someone who hadn’t spent so many years mucking around in the shadows. Someone who could never hurt her.
“There’s no rest to tell.” He reached out and pulled her hood up, sending rainwater down the back of her neck. “You laid out the terms for this affair. Don’t tell me you’ve gone soft and fallen for me.”
He watched her closely-not sure what he wanted to see-both relieved and disappointed that her expression remained unchanged. “I’ve fallen for your body,” she said, “even if you are starting to look like a warning poster for illegal steroids. The body is definitely spectacular-all but the part between your ears.”
She was so full of life, so smart, so screwed up. For years, she’d been pushing herself into a mold that didn’t quite fit, trying so hard to be the perfect daughter, and now she was floundering. As for the two of them… For all her big talk about her asinine reverse bucket list, she wasn’t cut out for a dead-end affair. She needed real intimacy, something he couldn’t give her, and damn it, if she wouldn’t look out for herself, he’d do it for her.
