I’m halfway through the best crab salad sandwich of my life, something new on the shop's menu, when my phone starts ringing.

I glance at the door of the Enguard Security office, but Sky's nowhere to be seen, probably still plugging away inside. I set the sandwich back down in its paper wrapper on the dash of the Dodge and dig my phone from the glove box.

Landon’s number. Weird. I frown.

I’d seen his Impala peeling out of the parking lot from a block away when I’d gotten here, but that was hours ago, so why's he calling me now?

I swipe the accept call icon and lift the phone to my ear. “Hey.”

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he spits back in a low, seething growl.

I blink. “Uh. Eating a sandwich, last I checked. Something up, boss?”

“Don’t get cute with me, Barin.”

I clench my teeth, wondering if that’s where Skylar got that phrase from.

“Shit. I’m a little confused,” I say. “Why the hell you crawling up my ass, Landon? What's going on?”

“I’m not paying you to be a damn escort, that's what,” he snarls. “I’m paying you for security. Protection. Trust. You want an hourly rate, you get someone else to buy your humongous ass.”

“Okay, now you’re really not making any sense. Since when am I an escort? I never needed to sell these bones to any woman in my life.”

“Since you started fucking Skylar?”

I blink.

And then blink again as my blood boils.

“Look, Landon, I ain’t getting much sleep lately, but I’m pretty sure I’d remember if that happened.”

“Fooling around or fucking, it doesn’t matter. Keep your head in the game, Gabe. Keep your shit in your pants, too.”

“My head's right where it belongs. You’re the one talking like a damn fool!” I frown, drumming my fingers against the steering wheel. “Nothing happened between me and Skylar. Honest. We ain’t kissed, ain’t nothing. We had ourselves a little sparring session because she’s dead set on a pissing contest, and things maybe got a little hot under the collar, but I’m not putting any moves on her, and she’s not putting any on me. Where the hell did you get the idea?”

“Straight from her,” he snaps back.

That’s when it hits me.

That little hellion set me up.

Fuck me silly. That tiny, two-timing, Tinker Bell...

I don’t know if I want to swear or laugh. That’s getting to be my norm around that damned woman. She drives me crazy and makes me grin nonstop when I’m not fit to blister the paint off the walls cursing.

Groaning, I thunk my head back against the seat. “I promise it’s not what you think,” I say. I’m not gonna rat her out, but we are gonna have words when I see her. “Look, man, I’m not gonna endanger her that way. Never. Mission first. Focus. Always. Let me talk to her and straighten this out.”

“As long as all you’re doing is talking. I’m serious, Gabe. If something happens to her or her family because you lost sight of the objective over your hound dog dick, you’ll be worse than fired.”

I can’t help being hurt, my chest tight. Landon’s my oldest damned friend, and you’d think he’d trust me more.

But then he knew the old me, too.

He knew how I’d drown myself in booze and women while I was running from what I was afraid to become, a shadow of my old man.

He knows the monster, the fool, I turned into for a while, back when I was trying to convince myself I didn’t give a damn about everything I was losing.

He knows there’s a weakness inside me. He knows that underneath my skin, there’s a terrible man.

That doesn’t change the fact I’d give anything for somebody, anybody to have a little more faith in me for once.

The call with Landon ends awkwardly.

I mean, it’s hard to hang up after your best friend chews you out for not fucking his employee after she went and told a goddamned whopper on you.

Why the hell did she even do that?

And why can’t I stop thinking about what it'd be like if we had? If that little minx was telling the gospel?

Fuck! If I’m gonna get reamed for something I didn’t do, might as well just damn well do it.

Except, she’d rather claw my eyes out instead.

I know she’s attracted to me.

There’s a heat that fills the space between us, and a certain way she has of not looking at me, like she’s trying her best not to see me so she won’t have to acknowledge that subtle smolder that almost turned into flame when I had her pinned under me.

Sky's so damn small. That shouldn’t turn me on but it does.

Like I can just wrap her up in me and completely shelter her, completely protect her, completely take every part of her.

If we ever fucked, I'd brand her from the inside out, and I know damn well she’d feel me everywhere for days to come when she can barely even get her legs open wide enough to fit me. She’d had her thighs around me, wrapped against my hips, and I’d been able to feel every tension and pull of her muscles when she struggled to hold me.

Lord, if it hadn't fucked me up inside, till I thought my cock was gonna bust out of my jeans.

I hadn’t thought I was that kind of possessive animal. Not anymore. But just the thought of Sunbeam straining like that, her thighs against my hips, has me so hard right now I can barely stand to sit still against the truck's leather seats.

I’m so mad at her I could spit.

I want her so goddamned bad I could die.

How's that for contrast? Or torture?

This really, really ain’t like me. I know I said it before, but looking at it in the hard light of day, it’s a little unnerving.

I don’t act like this. Not since I settled down and sobered up. I just don’t play around anymore.

Don't risk chasing strange skirt, getting myself into all kinds of trouble I don't need.

If I’m gonna fuck someone, it’s gotta mean something. We don’t have to be deep in love, but there’s at least gotta be a little liking there. Something mutual.

With Sky? Who the fuck knows.

Hate's a better one-word emotion for what's blazing on between us.

Shit.

Maybe Landon’s right. Maybe I really just need to stop thinking about this so much. Keep my head in the game, without worrying about the what and why.

Still, can't help how my heart jumps when Skylar comes strutting out of the office; it’s not hard to tell the pixie’s tired, but there’s also a certain air of smugness about her – and when her gaze flicks from its scan of the parking lot to me, she actually smiles. A wicked, triumphant little curl of her tiny, heart-shaped mouth that confirms everything.

That little hellcat set me up.

And I can’t talk to her. Not fucking now.

I’m simmering, betrayed, arrow jammed deep in my side. If I talk right now, I’m gonna say something rude to a lady, and my momma taught me to never be really, truly rude to a lady.

So, I just wait for her to get in the damn truck, start it up, and pull out onto the highway in complete silence.

She seems content to let it hold. Honestly, she’s looking pretty pleased with herself, and that sinks the claws in even deeper.

We’re almost to her place when she finally speaks, glancing over at me with her victory smirk still on her lips, a few strands of her hair loosely drifting from its bun to tease across her eyes. “If you still want me to show you around town, it’s not happening.”

“Never thought it was,” I say through my teeth. I’m gonna be polite and civil if it kills me. “I’m here to do a job. Serve, watch, and protect. That’s it.”

She snorts. “Wow. Somebody’s pissy.”

My hands tighten on the steering wheel. “You don’t think I have a right to be?”

“I’d say we’re even now,” she tosses back with a saucy little shrug.

“Even? For what?”

“You followed me to the restaurant,” she retorts firmly, her smugness fading to bristling annoyance, “and put me in a position to lie to my family. You lied to my family, and now they think we’re a...a thing.”

I gotta wait a whole ten-count while I shift gears and take a few breaths before I speak, keeping my voice calm and even.

“I’m just doing my job. A job you agreed to let me do,” I point out firmly. “And you’re already lying to your family. You’re lying to your own damn self, too, but don’t even pretend I didn’t lie to follow your wishes. You made it clear you don’t want your family involved in this. So, now you’re gonna get revenge on me for making sure they stay out of it, just like you wanted?”

She makes a faltering, hesitant sound. “I...I...”

I risk a sidelong glance at her. She’s got an odd look on her face.

Like she’s struggling, fighting something, fighting herself. I never met no one who had as hard a time dealing with anything but anger as this woman, and damn it I’m mad myself, but I’m still gonna go diving in and fish her out so she doesn’t have to fumble for something to say.

“Look,” I say, sighing. “You got a lot going on right now. I get it. I know you’re wrapped up inside your head and dealing with a lot of hurt you won’t let out. But if you wanna be an asshole to someone, remember I’m just following orders for a paycheck. Do you shit on the waiter ‘cause the cook fucked up your meal?”

I hate myself for it before it’s even out, but there it is. A brief second of hurt flashes in those wide blue eyes, before they ice over with fresh, angry pride again. She draws herself up.

“Is that the kind of person you think I am? Seriously?”

“No. And that’s why this is so damn frustrating.” I hit the turn for her place and steer down the off-ramp toward the beach, but my mind’s on her and not the road. “I know damn well you’re a good person. Kind. Warm. Caring. Loving. You done buried all that way down where no one can reach it, but that can’t stop me from seeing it. You wouldn’t be such a mess over Joannie if you weren’t the kind of person who loves hard and with everything in you. But you’re in so much goddamned pain from all this poison you got walled up inside you, and you’re pushing that pain on anyone who wants to help out. It ain't fair. Not to you, not to anybody.”

She jerks her gaze away, glaring out the window; her reflection all pale and washed out in the window, glaring at me in reverse. “No one can help me.”

“Bull. You won’t even let me try.” In for a penny, in for a pound, and I admit, “I read about what happened with Joannie, Sky. I know you were there that day. Know you blame yourself, though you shouldn’t. You’ve been gnawing on that and gnawing on that some more, and soon you’re gonna gnaw yourself right in two if you don’t let it out. Open up. So maybe you could sit down and talk instead of flinging around like a frigging hand grenade with the pin pulled.”

“Don’t.” It comes out frigid, furious, but there’s a heavy, hurting hitch in her voice. Her reflection-face is trembling, on the verge of crumpling, long bronze-black lashes trembling, and I can’t let her know I can see that or it’ll hurt her even more. “You don’t know me. Don’t try to get inside my head. You won’t like what you find there.”

We’re here, headlights sweeping over her little house, the tufts of tall, grey-green grass waving in the breeze, the faint white froths of the waves hitting the shore. I pull the Dodge to a halt and shift gears to park.

I don’t know what to say to her.

I feel like if I say something, if I answer that, I’ll be nailing the coffin closed on any chance she’ll ever open up to me, believe in me, let me just reach out to offer her a hand up from the dark.

As long as I’m silent, there’s an unanswered question hanging between us, souring the air. Maybe that unanswered question will keep her here for just a little bit longer.

I watch her stare blankly through the window, unmoving, her hands curled into white-knuckled fists in her lap. Then she launches into motion like a robot hit with a charge of current, jerky and stiff and swift, pushing herself out of the truck. She slams the door hard enough to make it rock and bounce, but then turns back, glaring at me expectantly through the window as she rakes her hand furiously through her hair and rips it down from the bun to spill around her face in lashes of dark, sun-kissed brown.

I hit the master button to roll the window down, letting in the taste of the sea and the brimstone of her sulfurous anger.

“I’m not holding anything in. You're wrong, Gabe,” she bites off coldly. “What you see is what you get, and what you see is someone determined to bring Joannie home. That's who I am. That's all I am. I’m going to find her soon. Then I’m going to end the man who took her. And nothing – you hear me? – nothing will stand in my way.”

I don't think any mortal man could doubt the furious will shining in her eyes. But she ain't finished.

“Not you, not Landon, not protocol, not rules, not feelings. And not some asshole who’s the last man on Earth I’d ever want to help me out.”

She steps back. I can feel every inch of distance between us widen, turning into this chasm that swallows up the world.

Her lips tremble, her hair tossing across her face in dark night-lit lashes, and she tightens her jaw, lifting her chin.

“You want to do your job?” she says. “Then do your job. No one hired you to be a therapist, so save that for someone else. I don’t need it – and I don’t need you.”

I don’t need you.

Fuck me.

Not since I got the call that my Dad was found dead in a shithole have any words felt like razor blades, swimming under my skin.

I just wish, as I watch her walk away from me with her spine stiff and proud, trying so hard to be strong, that I could understand why.

Never seen nothing like moonrise over the ocean. It's pretty.

It’s the only sentence I write in my book tonight. Nobody tells you how big and clear the moon looks over the Pacific. We’re getting on that witching hour again, after midnight when Sky’s still up, but I know the exhaustion’s going to claim her soon. It always does, pulls her into a soft, exhausted, fitful sleep.

Just a few days hanging around, and I already know her patterns.

Only, tonight I can’t look at her. If I look at her I’m gonna feel that gulf, that chasm she made sure to pry open between us with a crowbar, reminding me I belong on one side of it and she belongs on the other. Nothing but the strangers she wants us to be.

So, I just sit back and watch the moon rise, and then stare as it hangs low and heavy in the sky, almost touching the waves. It's a quarter full and so damn big and pearly clear, I feel like I could reach out the window and feel the pock marks on its face.

It turns the sky around it a different kind of blue with its silver light. A sweet and melancholy blue. A dark and lonely blue.

I don’t want to be alone right now, but I got nobody I can turn to.

My Ma and I, we don’t talk much. Not since Dad died.

Don’t know if it’s my guilt and shame or her sorrow but we don’t seem to have much to say to each other. Me and the rest of my unit kind of drifted separate ways after that bad business I got mixed up in.

Meanwhile, Landon’s mad at me over something I didn’t do.

My other old pals from the war got their own lives these days. Like my buddy, Brent Eden out in Phoenix, fresh off his own drama with a dead brother, a motorcycle gang, and some Happily Ever After he told me about in a Christmas card with the wife he thought he'd never have and an adorable, happy, brilliant little girl. He'd been raising her all alone till things got wild and he met his wife, Izzy.

My shit ain't his. He's been through enough drama and enough hurt for me to ever think real hard about asking him for tips on how to clean up mine.

And Sky don’t want a damn thing to do with me.

It’s a helpless, awful feeling to realize how alone you are. Never bothered me much before.

Guess I always believe you gotta be the kind of person you don’t mind being alone with, and I’ve always been good with my own company.

Don’t know why it’s not enough, all of a sudden.

Must be because that little wildcat looked right through me like I wasn’t there, like I was just a phantom, and showed me there’s no one in my life who needs me at all.