I never should have agreed to this. But I had to get her out of the house.

I can still feel her hands on my neck and in my hair, her gaze on my lips. It was too intimate—too eerie and confusing. Like she cared about me.

Why the hell did she do that?

She takes me to a trendy bar serving girly drinks and tapas. If it weren’t for the promise of Blake Vandershall being here, I’d leave now.

I should’ve forced the truth on her. Like I’ve been meaning to and avoiding for days. But the piece of me that detests pain, the small part of me that isn’t corrupted, is still pretending. Pretending that I don’t have the vicious truth buried in my truck. That I don’t have tales of evil trailing me everywhere I go.

“You need a drink,” she says.

I’m going to have to show her. And I don’t want to. Her innocence, her sweetness, I abhor it. I may want to damage it. But it doesn’t mean I want it gone.

“Logan, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I ask the bartender what’s on tap.

He looks at me like I walked off Mars. “We only have bottled beer.”

I turn to Penny. “If they don’t have beer, this isn’t going to work.”

“They do have beer. Pick something.” She waves at the menu.

A girl pops out of nowhere, squeals at Penny, and gives her a hug. There are way too many happy chicks in this place, and all the cuteness makes me want to hurl. Or grab Penny and haul her back home.

It’s going to be a long night.

I choose a beer and decide I need some entertainment. I could do a “husband” thing and order her a drink. I pick the sourest thing on the menu. She’s a sweets and sugars girl. She isn’t going to like it.

She introduces me to her friend. “This is Layla.”

Layla’s hair, the frizziest red bob I’ve ever seen, bounces like she’s happy to see me, or amused.

“Going by that look, I’d say you’re not happy to be here. Similar to what I expected.” A wry smile graces her pale peach face, and freckles crinkle across her brow.

Penny raises her eyebrows at me, and I realize I’m scowling.

I do my best to fake a smile and say to Layla, “You’re exactly like Penny hasn’t described but even more like I expected.”

Penny elbows me in the gut, but Layla laughs. “Okay, maybe I like him.”

The bartender sets out drinks, and I pass the cocktail to Penny. Her eyes light up like I handed her Christmas in July. “You got me a drink?”

“Yeah.” But I’m not wasting the twenty bucks in my pocket on a frou-frou cocktail and a shitty beer.

She pulls a credit card from her purse and pays. I wait for her to sip her drink and am rewarded with a grimace. “Blick! What is this?”

“A Sour Patch Doll.” I can’t help a real smile stretching my mouth. This girl is way too predictable. She needs a wake up to her senses.

“A what?” She picks up the menu and stares at the description. “Ew, gross!”

“Let me try.” Layla sips from Penny’s martini glass that looks like it’ll spill with a flick of my finger. “Ooh, I like it.”

“Here, you have it.” Penny tries to give it to her friend, but I decide to make things interesting and whisper in Penny’s ear, “Drink it, and I’ll hold your hand.”

“Seriously?” Her appalled expression is almost as interesting as the view down her shirt. She has these perky little breasts almost as enticing as what she flashed me between her legs at the house. “Keep looking at me like that and you won’t need to hold my hand.”

“How am I looking at you?”

“You’ve got that can’t-wait-to-eat-me look.”

“Is that what you want? For me to eat you?”

She sputters and spits out her drink.

Her friend pats her back. “Don’t choke yourself.”

Penny’s eyes water. “Amisha, meet Logan.”

Amisha’s reaction is the opposite of Layla’s. No wry smile, no jokes. She flips her midnight-dark hair over her shoulder and a scowl mars her delicate umber complexion. She says nothing.

“Say hello, at least.” Penny prods me.

“I think Amisha would rather I not speak. Or, more likely, prefer I leave.”

Penny and Amisha draw in breaths, eyeing each other for what to say.

“Uh-oh. Play nice,” Layla mocks. “Mr. Vandershall.”

The name burns my ears, but I realize she means me. “Mr. Vandershall?” Anger surges in me like a wild fire. I force myself to breathe and contain it. I don’t think she could insult me in a worse way. But I can’t show her that.

“Whoa, macho much?” She chuckles. “It’s a joke. She’s never told us your last name.”

“Kane.” The stiffness I feel filters into my voice, and Penny shakes her head at me with a warning in her eye. I hide my expression in my beer, trying to suppress the rage that lives and boils in me.

“So does that mean you’re Penelope Kane, now?” Amisha asks Penny.

I answer for her. “She signed Penelope Elizabeth Vandershall on the marriage certificate, if that’s what you mean.”

The three girls stare at me with surprised eyes.

Amisha breaks the silence and says to Penny, “I didn’t know your middle name was Elizabeth.”

I forget to stop myself before I say, “It was her mother’s name.”

Layla balks. “She told you that?”

I start to correct her. It’s the name of the hospital they founded for her in Nashville. “No, I—”

Penny talks over me. “Yeah, I told him.” She reaches down and squeezes my hand. She links her fingers with mine, and I fight the urge to brush her off.

When she touched me in her condo before we left, it was awkward and strange. I don’t know why I didn’t refuse her. Same thing now, for as strange as it feels, I should throw her hand away. Delicate touching, affection makes me think of when I used to have it—before Louisa died and how she’s gone.

But I stand there, feeling Penny’s little fingers, too soft, too small, and I’m filled with dread for what I’ll have to do to her girlish sensibilities later. I’ve waited too long.

She stands on tiptoe and kisses my cheek. Her lips too moist and too gentle. I fight the urge to wipe the kiss from my cheek. I don’t need to feel where she kissed me like a brand, claiming me in front of her friends.

She shakes her head as if to say, Go with it.

Her friends whisper between themselves and I whisper to her, “Now you have to finish that drink.”

“If you say so.” She winks at me and sips it.

The ring on her finger, the one I supposedly gave her but she bought for herself, twinkles. I have the strangest urge to replace it with something of mine, to change her name so she’s mine, to put my stamp on her.

It’s only because I want to annihilate the Vandershall that she is, to erase the Penny she and everyone else knows her to be, to replace her with something I create. To obliterate her father’s daughter until there is nothing left of him about her.

“Careful there, lover boy. You might want to save that look for private.” Layla points at me. “Tsk, tsk, tsk.”

“Lover boy?” I glance again at Penny, who has blushed a shade of cherry so fierce, her face looks aflame.

“Let’s get a table,” says Amisha. Layla and Penny follow her toward the back.

I try to drop Penny’s hand, but she clings to it. “Be good,” she says.

“You have no idea what good is for me.”

“Maybe later you’ll enlighten me.” She sways her hips and brushes my fingers across her ass as she walks in front of me.

We pass a dance floor pounding with loud music. I bend to her ear so she’ll hear me over the noise. “Don’t flirt with me. You don’t want to find out what happens.”

Her sly look implies she has no intention of stopping. It’s a dark look, a pointed look, one I never thought to see on her pretty little face. And it has me envisioning her spread out for me, letting me touch her and eat her the way she said I look at her.

The girls sidle up to a table on the edge of the deck, overlooking the ocean, and I wonder if there’s anything in this town that doesn’t revolve around the beach. I’m so sick of hearing the crashing surf.

“Blake!” Penny waves across the bar.

I see the dark head of her brother bobbing toward us. He sees me and glowers. The sight of him makes me want to hit him, which I can’t do yet. I need an excuse to get her away from here. But there isn’t one.

I angle in front of Penny. I don’t trust Blake near her. Not for a second. I know who his father was.