“It kills me to do it,” he whispers, wringing his hands.
“I know.”
We sit in the quiet for a few minutes, just listening to the traffic on the 405.
“I had a good time tonight,” I tell him.
“Even though you had to break up a fight?”
“Well, it wasn’t a fight yet. But yeah, especially because of that. Given the fact that rehabbing your reputation was part of this whole bargain, I was kind of curious about what the fighting was about, but figured it would all come out in due time.”
“Did you lose any respect for me?”
I reach up and graze the back of my fingers along his cheek. “Gained some, actually. I figured your fighting would be some dumb testosterone-y thing. I wasn’t counting on the chivalrous, good brother aspect. Although I should’ve, getting to know the kind of guy you are.”
He looks at me, holding my gaze for this long, tense moment. “What kind of guy am I?”
“You’re the kind that’s beautiful on the inside in a city that’s full of people that are only beautiful on the outside. I mean, obviously you’re also beautiful on the outside, but it’s the inside part that counts.”
He laughs, then reaches up and cups my face. “You’re beautiful on the outside, and where it counts. Your smile just lights everything up.”
“I think that’s because of you,” I admit. “You make me happy in a way that I haven’t been in a long time.”
He stares right into me, past all of my defences, then his gaze slips down to my mouth. The air is charged, full of something inexplicably exciting, and I lick my lips in anticipation for whatever comes next. With him? I know it’s gonna be nothing but good.
“You make me…” he says, words failing him. His thumb brushes across the curve of my chin. “You make me…”
Then he presses his lips to mine, soft and wanting. He steals the breath from my lungs and makes me want more of this breathlessness. I let out this soft whimper into his mouth, and he opens up for me, brushing his sweet tongue against mine. I lean in for more when a smattering of flashes go off pulling me out of the moment.
The moment is gone, lost forever, and River grabs my hand and rushes me over to the car.
He helps me in, and we sit there, breathless, looking for the culprit and finding nothing.
“Did you know they were there?” I ask, wondering how much of what just happened was even real.
He looks like I smacked him. “Of course not.”
That makes me feel a little better, takes away some of the anger that’s coursing through my veins. I choose instead to focus all of it on the intense feeling of violation that’s stabbing through my gut.
“Will you take me home, please?”
“I didn’t know they were there, Skye.”
“Okay,” I tell him softly.
“Please say you believe me.”
I nod. “I believe you.”
He fires up the engine.
Chapter Eight
The days following our kiss are awkward to say the least. It was going to be a natural break in our time spent together anyway, because River and Casey had a wedding to attend in Florida already on the books, so Claudia and Keith had already arranged for us to meet up on the island for our “getting serious getaway.”
We’ve texted a few times, but the closest we’ve come to addressing our kiss is with vague declarations of we need to talk.
Apart from the personal turmoil that it tossed me into, the pic of that kiss certainly accomplished what it set out to: setting the internet on fire. Turns out it was taken by a couple of newbies trying to make a quick buck, who were hanging around looking to catch something salacious and didn’t even have good enough equipment yet to take photos in the dark sans flash.
It was enough to push my engagement on social media up by the thousands, people flocking to follow me for the next tidbit, commenting on unrelated pictures asking for more.
So, this little experiment is working out well for my professional life, it’s just thrown my personal life into havoc. It’s left me scared as hell and wanting more. Wanting to end the whole experiment to get some space from River so I can clear my head, and left me wanting to hold on tight and never let go.
It’s why I’m kind of glad that my trip to the Caribbean is alone. Claudia chartered a plane to get me here undetected and avoid the weirdness of us arriving separately. She’d tried to convince River to take me to the wedding with him, but these are longtime, close friends of his family’s and he didn’t want to turn their day into a photo op.
Makes me like him even more.
Keith’s brother’s house is on a private island just off the mainland, only accessible by boat. It’s full of brightly colored mansions that are probably worth ten times my own house. He also owns a bungalow on this tiny little island about two football fields away with its own private beach, which is where our first photos are scheduled to be taken.
I arrive at the house early in the afternoon, while River’s out for a run. The first thing I do is grab my bikini out of my bag and make my way out onto the deck to get some sun. Fresh air has always done wonders for me, and I’m hoping it’ll help clear my mind to make sense of the mess that is my personal life.
I get situated on the sunporch with a bottle of water and a magazine, and let the sound of the water lapping against the docks soothe my nerves.
It’s not long before I hear a pair of footsteps padding across the deck. I steel myself for River, but when I peek out from behind my sunglasses, I see a person I’ve never met before.
“Hi,” she says sweetly, taking a seat on the lounge
