Chapter Seventeen
Everly’s pinkie toes were staging a rebellion. Who’d have thought a well maintained but still dirt path on an island ninety miles off Cuba would finally be the thing to make her curse her addiction to high heels? Okay, any non-crazy person would have known that, but she hadn’t been dressing for sanity this morning. She’d been putting on armor—because of the man currently walking next to her, hauling her suitcase and his as if they didn’t weigh an ounce when she knew damn well hers, at least, weighed close to forty pounds.
She took another step forward, and her right heel sank into the ground and stayed there, making her lose her balance. Desperate to stay upright, she flung her arms out and clamped down on a very firm biceps. One she still hadn’t seen, despite the fact that he’d been buried inside her with another part of his anatomy. The whole situation made her pissed off at herself again, but it didn’t stop her body from reacting to him with a stomach flutter and a hello-there-hottie clench in her core. This was fucking ridiculous.
“You okay?”
“Fine.” Holding onto him, she yanked her foot and the corresponding shoe heel out of the dirt.
“I have a pair of tennis shoes in my bag. We’d need to stuff some socks in the toes, but it might make the last mile easier.”
“I said I’m fine.”
She sounded like a petulant bitch. She knew this. She had to.
“What in the hell is your problem? You’ve been a pain in my ass since the parking garage.”
“You mean since we fucked on my car?”
“Yeah. Tell me, do you have some weird disease where orgasms make you mean instead of relaxing you?”
“That’s totally it, so you’d better stay away.”
Of course, the skies took that cue to do one of the Florida-midday-sudden-rainstorm things. One instant it was hotter than hell, more humid than a sauna, and sunny. The next it was pouring gigantic droplets of rain, was still hotter than hell, and—weirdly enough—sunny. It made no sense.
“Come on.” He swapped a bag so he was holding one under his arm and the other in his hand, then looped an arm around her waist and half walked her, half propelled her under the protection of one of the few palm trees dotting the path.
Since getting soaked to the bone wasn’t on her agenda for the day, she went with it. Okay, the fact that her body had reacted with the “Hallelujah Chorus” when he’d touched her and short-circuited her brain probably helped make that happen. He set their suitcases down and shoved his fingers through his wet hair. His now partially see-through white button-down shirt clung to his chest. He’d rolled up the sleeves earlier, and she’d been tormented with some solid forearm porn during the flight. This was worse because all she wanted to do was look and touch and taste what had stayed covered the other night.
He threw open his suitcase and rummaged around in the distractingly organized interior, then pulled out a pair of Nikes and some gym socks. After flipping the lid shut again and zipping it closed, he stuffed the toes of the shoes and only then did he look back up at her. The combination of now wet black hair, determined blue eyes, and hideous footwear made her catch her breath.
He pointed to a stump next to the palm tree’s trunk. “Sit.”
“You don’t get to order me around,” she said, falling back on the one thing she could always count on, her attitude.
“Sit or I’ll make you.” He took a step toward her, frustration coming off him in waves, practically sizzling the rain that had the balls to land on him. “There’s no way in hell you’re wearing those shoes for the rest of the walk. I can actually hear your feet crying out in agony. ‘Please save us, Tyler. You’re our only hope.’ That’s what they’re saying.”
The Star Wars reference was what made her sit down on the uncomfortable stump that was still better than standing in her demon heels. It was funny. It surely wasn’t the buzz of anticipation vibrating along every inch of her skin. “It’s just the toes.”
She expected him to hand her his shoes. Instead, he squatted down in front of her, wrapped his strong fingers around her left ankle, and lifted it. The gesture was intimate, more than she could handle at the moment, and she stiffened.
He let out a deep sigh but went to work on unbuckling the strap around her ankle. “I have no clue what I did to piss you off so much, but whatever it was, I’m sorry.”
“I’m not mad at you.”
“Really?” He undid the strap and slid off her heel. “Coulda fooled me.”
The Waterbury he tried so hard to hide slipped into his speech, letting her know just how much of a bitch she was being and how unfair it was to him. “I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at myself.”
He kept his gaze on her foot as he slid his size-twelve tennis shoe on it and began to lace it up. “Why?”
“Because…I confused fighting with foreplay. We both know nothing more could ever happen between us.”
He didn’t disagree. That hurt. It wasn’t that she’d been expecting him to but, yeah, a little protest would have been nice. Instead, he went to work on the strap of her other shoe.
“I don’t know what to say to that,” he said, pulling it off and sliding on his tennis shoe.
“Then let’s not.” She brushed away his hand, needed desperately to regain a semblance of control, and tied the shoe herself. “I’ll stop being a hag and we’ll move on as if the parking garage never happened.”
“The incident that will not be spoken of.” The seriousness of his tone was totally ruined by the twitch of his lips as he tried not to smile.
“Now a butchered Potter reference?” She accepted his outstretched hand and stood up, her fingers tingling. “You really were a library nerd.”
“I’ll break out the Tolkien later,” he said, not bothering to stop the smile now. “I can tell you all about the one ring and do it in Elvish.”
“Oh my God.” She laughed. “Please don’t.”
He slapped a hand over his heart. “Direct hit.”
“I’m pretty sure you’ll live.”
He peeked out at the sky, which was a beautiful blue without any hint of its weather split personality. “You ready to do this?”
Looking down at his shoes on her feet, she wiggled her toes. It felt like heaven. “Always.”
“Once more into the breach.” He grabbed both bags and headed back onto the path.
Taking a few tentative steps, she followed him. It was weird to have her feet flat on the ground, and she felt way shorter than she was used to being but lighter, too. Maybe she and Tyler could find a way to go from being warring parties to one-time lovers to actual friends. In the moment, it totally sounded plausible. Of course, that was if she ignored the fact that she was walking behind him just to watch that glorious ass of his as he trudged forward.
Girl, you’re officially a hot mess.
…
Tyler spent the last mile tormenting Everly with Elvish—or at least what she thought was Elvish. Since ninth grade had been a long time ago, he’d improvised. She didn’t seem to notice, judging by her fits of giggles. Now that was something he hadn’t expected. His hard-ass Riverside girl was a giggler.
Your Riverside girl? That was so wrong on so many levels. One, she most definitely wasn’t a girl. She had the brains and body of a full-grown woman, a fact that hadn’t gone unnoticed by his dick giving him the uncomfortable knowledge of what it felt like to walk a mile with a semi. Two, she wasn’t his. As she’d so kindly pointed out, there wasn’t anywhere for the intense attraction between them to go. Not that he was looking for a Mrs. Jacobson just yet, but he’d worked too hard to shake off the last vestiges of Waterbury to have her bring it all back. And she did a little more each time they hung out, not just the speech but the overwhelming urge to haul her up and fuck her hard against the nearest available flat surface. Or horizontal. Or just about anywhere. That had never happened with any of the Harbor City women he’d dated, which was for the best. It let him focus on what was really important—solidifying his position.
“Oh wow,” Everly said in an excited whisper, coming to a stop in front of the gate leading to Alberto’s island home.
He couldn’t have put it better. Shaped like the Pentagon, the two-story house had solar panels on the roof, warm soft-brown wood, and windows everywhere. There was a kidney-shaped pool next to it, a luxurious fire pit, and a hammock big enough for two. It almost made him want to chuck it all and move.
“It’s gorgeous.” She swung open the gate and walked inside.
He followed, and they strolled across the stamped concrete patio to the French doors leading into the house. He punched in the security code provided at the bottom of Alberto’s note and they walked inside. It was cool but not frigid—a miracle in South Florida with how everyone blasted the AC—and the interior matched the exterior, making the whole thing look like a rich person’s version of Swiss Family Robinson.
Setting down the suitcases on the bamboo floor, a little cloud of dust floated upward.
She glanced at her dirty suitcase. “We should clean up. I don’t want to wreck the place before Alberto and Helene even get here tomorrow.”
Of course, the first image to appear in his head was of her naked and soapy in the shower. “That’s a great idea.”
It would be better if he was in the shower with her, but that wasn’t going to happen. They were going to do this whole pretend-it-didn’t-happen thing instead. That sounded about as much fun as experiencing the Red Wedding firsthand.
They headed up to the second floor. She took the first bedroom. He took the next. He was shucking off his shoes when he heard the shower go on. Hello, insta-boner.
His imagination didn’t have to do a lot of work to picture her in there with the warm water trailing over her skin. He hadn’t gotten to look as long as he wanted the other night, and God knew he hadn’t gotten to touch or taste her enough, but that didn’t matter in the moment. His horny brain filled in all the missing pieces. The part that almost killed him was the image of big white soap bubbles sliding across her pretty peach nipples. They’d gotten so hard the other night, and her moans of pleasure were so hot that—
Stop acting like a fourteen-year-old perv, Jacobson.
He stomped into his room’s private bathroom, stripped down, and turned the water on full blast. Then, for good measure, he turned the knob all the way to cold. If a little hypothermia didn’t make things better, then he wasn’t sure what would. Twenty shivery minutes later and he was in a T-shirt and board shorts, convinced he could spend a night alone with Everly and not have another parking-garage moment. Why? Because she’d been right, and sex would only complicate the truce they’d been able to make.
That certainty lasted right up until he walked into the kitchen to find her in a flowy white sundress that covered her completely down to the ankles except when she stepped in front of one of the large windows overlooking the pool and the sun outlined exactly what she was hiding underneath the miles of cotton. Yep. Mr. Semi was back. Needing very badly not to be looking at her right now, he hustled over to the fridge and opened it.
“I know it’s early, but I’m starving.” He spotted eggs, cheese, milk, and green onions. “How do you feel about omelets for dinner?”
“You’re not thinking of cooking.”
He stood up and looked at her over the fridge door. She was still in front of the window basking in the island sun, and he was still getting a very good look—unknown to her—at what he could never again touch. It wasn’t a gut punch, but his dick wasn’t too happy about it. “Why not?”
She crossed her arms and one eyebrow went up. “You do remember the pasta the other night?”
That had been a six on a ten-point scale of epic kitchen disasters, barely a blip, so it hadn’t fazed him. Now the time he’d forgotten the bacon in the oven until it had turned into charcoal briquettes? That had put him off bacon for a good month.
“This is eggs,” he said. “Totally different.”
“Oh yeah, I’m well aware of your”—she made air quotes—“talent with eggs.”
Okay, so he’d overcooked some scrambled eggs to the point that the smell had taken over the apartment and lingered for a week.
“So does that mean you’re cooking?”
She snorted and started toward him. “Not likely. How about sandwiches?”
He checked out the contents of the fridge. “You good with ham and cheese on rye?”
“Sounds perfect.”
He gathered up the ingredients and laid them out on the island, and from there they fell into sandwich assembly. She sliced the romaine while he assembled the sandwiches. It was mellow, relaxed even as they laughed about the walk to the house, and he didn’t set off a single fire alarm. Afterward, he gathered up the sandwich plates while she grabbed a couple of beers and they headed over to the sliding glass doors leading out to the pool and the fire pit.
Everly jerked to a stop in front of him. “Tyler, what in the hell is that?”
Since he’d been distracted by watching her ass as she moved, he had no idea what she was talking about. “What?”
“There, pacing in front of the sliding doors.”
It was a raccoon, but way smaller than the thirty-pound bruisers that roamed Central Square Park. Leaner and narrower than the raccoons he was used to, this guy couldn’t weigh more than an average house cat, and its fur was a light grayish-brown color. And he was standing on his back paws with his five-fingered paws pressed against the glass. He wasn’t looking at them, though; this guy’s eyes were trained on their sandwiches.
“My guess is Alfred.”
Her face lost some of its color. “So we eat inside?”
He walked toward the sliding door, and Alfred took a few steps back but stayed standing on his hind legs. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of something the size of a cat.”
“It could be rabid.” Everly took a few cautious steps toward the door, her attention glued to the hungry bandit on the other side.
He jiggled the door handle before sliding it open a few inches. The raccoon scurried back to the underbrush on the other side of the pool, disappearing from sight. Tyler stepped outside, the island’s Florida heat more caressing than beating this time. Everly didn’t follow, but she did poke her head out, looking each way as if a band of rabid zombie raccoons was just waiting for the perfect moment to pounce.
“Alberto promised he was harmless,” Tyler said with a laugh and sat down in one of the nearby patio chairs, setting the sandwich plates on the small table between it and another chair.
“Uh-huh.” She didn’t take a step forward. “I’m sure someone said that about every serial killer at some point before he started offing everyone.”
Was it wrong to be enjoying this new, unexpected side to Everly? Because he was. The woman had an amazing capacity to surprise him—something he was beginning to enjoy far more than a chess player like him should.
“Come on, I’ll protect you, Ms. 3B—and anyway, the sandwiches are out here, and if you don’t come out, you can’t eat.”
Her stomach let out an audible growl. Victory was his.
“You know there’s more food inside the house, Mr. 2B.”
“Come on, live a little,” he teased.
She took another suspicious look to her left and then her right before finally stepping outside into the sunshine. The breeze played with the hem of her skirt, lifting one corner of it around her calves—the ones he’d felt on his back as he’d fucked her against the trunk of her car. Shit. This was going to be a long, hard lunch.
“I’m warning you now,” she said as she sat down, obviously oblivious to the path his thoughts had gone down. “If Alfred comes back with his murderous buddies, I’ll take you out at the knees to get inside first.”
Tyler laughed and accepted the beer she held out to him. “I would expect nothing less.”
Because when it came to Everly, the best bet was to accept he never knew what to expect.