by Ciara Knight
She stopped short of the tackle, but the way he looked at her caused a sensual shiver through her body. His gaze was intense, searching—for what, she didn’t know, but she couldn’t hold it, so she looked toward the one thing in the world that was always there… The ocean.
“I know your type, and I’m nothing more than a sand flea at your barbeque. If you could, you’d swat me away.”
Hands. Strong hands. Hands that sent a heat up her shoulders, over her neck, and down her spine. Hands that promised peace, hope, security wrapped around her biceps and squeezed. Squeezed the breath from her lungs. She blinked at him and told herself, They are just hands. Hands that lie.
“Let me tell you something, young lady.” Dustin’s gaze narrowed. His chin set, brow furrowed. But then he took in a breath and dropped his head, still holding her like a life preserver in a storm. “No. You’re right. That is the type of man I am…or was.”
His voice, the tone sharp and pained, slapped her with realization. The man struggled, but with what? “Was?” she asked, her voice soft and probing.
“I hope it’s how I was and not who I’ll be.”
He released his grasp and took a step back. She thought she’d drown from the loss of his unexpected, unrequested, unnerving touch. A touch she hadn’t asked for or wanted but needed. For the first time in years, her gut didn’t feel like she was stuck on a ship in a Category 5 hurricane surrounded by waterspouts. She shook off her crazy thoughts and watched the man look to her ocean as if he wanted to find something beyond his fear.
“I’m like the moon. Old, worn, and solid in where and who I am in this universe. But I don’t want to be the moon. I’ve been the moon for too long, and all that resides on my planet is dust and craters.”
“You’re full of holes?” Trace tried to decipher his analogy, but she couldn’t. Where were Jewels or Wind or Kat when she needed them?
“Yes. No. I mean…” He spun on his heels in the thatches of St. Augustine grass sprouting between dirt piles, but he didn’t speak. He only looked to her as if she was supposed to say what he couldn’t.
“I’m sorry. I don’t speak man. Heck, I’ve been accused by more than one ex-boyfriend that I don’t speak human. Not that you’re my… What I mean is…”
He laughed. “How could you decipher what I can’t even figure out? I’m rambling. All I mean to say is that I came to Summer Island to find something Trevor discovered, but according to him I can’t find something if I’m not willing to look.”
“What are you looking for?” Trace asked, wishing he’d spit out what he really meant.
“I don’t know.” Dustin moved in. His tall frame and wide shoulders reminded her of a Navy SEAL she’d known when she’d been working on a top-secret research project in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Yet, his soft dark curls, which had grown since he’d arrived, framed a handsome, less angular face.
Trace looked at her tennis shoes. This was the moment when she usually ran from a conversation. When she didn’t have answers or understand what someone was talking about.
Dustin snagged her fingers with a light touch. “But you could help me figure it out. Dinner?”
Trace thought about awkward conversations discussing moons and the uncomfortable mention of feelings and all other subjects that she hated to talk about. Maybe her friends were right and she was emotionally stunted at birth or what Rhonda told everyone about her being raised by an animal so she didn’t relate to humans. No, this was a bad idea. They needed to work together and get the job done. That’s what Trace did best. No entanglements. Only work. And she’d never, ever allow another Robert into her heart. “Yes.”
“Yes?” Dustin lit up like a full moon.
Wait, was that all he needed? A little light in his life? Dang, no, this was impossible, she had no gift at reading people.
“I don’t know if I can help with figuring out why you’re a rock in the sky, so don’t expect too much from me.”
“No worries. I won’t try to compare myself with an inanimate object again. Casual conversation, non-date, good food, and I pay.” Dustin held out his hand once more.
“Limited conversation, non-date, okay food, and Dutch.” She took his hand.
He held it tight and leaned in. “Limited conversation, non-date, average food, and I’m paying.” He shook and then released her hand and strutted up the hill with that I-bested-you swagger.
“You didn’t win that. It was a compromise,” she shouted before tromping through the weeds and sand.
“A compromise with you is a win,” he shouted.
Trace marched up the street, chastising herself for being caught up in the Devilish Dustin Drama, and bolted through the front door of Jewels’s house to avoid Win and Jewels. She showered, all the time having a mental argument about why she’d said yes to the all-wrong-for-her man. She returned to the guest room to find Houdini with a knowing glance, staring at her suitcase as if to say, if I could speak, I’d tell them about that letter. He reached out with his paw and set it on a dress. He seemed to say, Ha-ha. This is payback for hiding the truth.
Wind, ex-best friend turned traitor, bounced like a cartoon character on two-pounds of Skittles. “Wear this,” she said in an obnoxious unicorn and rainbows fantasy tone.
“It’s a dress.” Trace snatched a pair of shorts, T-shirt, and a sports bra from her duffel. “Why would I wear that?”
“Date with Dustin,” Wind announced.
“Not a date. You’re the one who’s dating him.” Trace’s chest tightened. Her breath caught between a way out and an off-ramp she didn’t want to take.
“Dustin and I are too similar, and opposites attract. And you two are definitely opposites.” She held up the dress, but Trace tightened the towel around her body as if it would serve as her shield.
Houdini chattered in ferret peer pressure.
Trace shook her head at him. “Not you, too.”
Wind pouted with a lip that looked like a filler injection had gone rogue. “Come on. It’s a date with Dustin. Trust me, this is soooo much better.”
“What are you? Twelve?” Trace faced the wall and put on her sports bra and T-shirt.
“Modest. Geesh. Not like we didn’t all jump in the ocean naked as kids.”
“That was so when we skipped classes to go swimming and we didn’t have any other clothes to wear, we could return to school without getting caught.”
“Still, I thought at our age, modesty was a misnomer.”
“At our age, modesty is a must. Especially when my spare tire has deflated from age.”
Wind shot up and turned her around, lifting her shirt and poking a finger in her belly button, the one sensitive spot she hated anyone to touch. It was like someone stuck a finger inside her and touched her light socket, zapping her insides. “Stop that.”
“Still don’t like it?” Wind dropped her shirt and picked up the dress from the bed. “Please, you’re in better shape than any of us. You’ve still got long, lean muscles from swimming. And how’d you avoid sun damage in your profession? Wait, you had to have that lasered off.”
“Right, the woman who has slept in tents and bunkrooms with twenty other people to avoid paying for a hotel has money to blow on skin treatments.”
“Compromise?” Wind leaned out the door and waved. “Do you own a real bra?”
Trace huffed. “Yes, of course.”
Jewels joined them, holding her own clothes. “Wear these capri pants. Dress isn’t you. Shorts aren’t good for dinner with mosquitoes and are too casual.”
Trace plopped down on the bed. Her mind was spinning with questions, as if she was fifteen again. Why’d she care what Dustin said or wanted? He had been her enemy. “Why would someone think they were a moon?”
Jewels placed the outfit on her lap and picked up Houdini, who now purred louder than a 1950s marine engine. “What do you mean?”
Trace threw her hands up. “I don’t know. I mean, Dustin said he was like a moon. You know I don�
�t like to read between the lines.”
Wind sat on the bed by her other side, leaving Trace as the meat in the friendship sandwich. She folded the dress, as if surrendering to the idea of putting Trace into it. “It means he’s alone, far away, and cold. In other words, he’s lonely and lost and looking for the sun.”
Trace shot up straight. “You got all that? Are you like a man whisperer or something?”
“Me? Yes.” Wind smiled in her theatrical way, so Trace braced for a performance, but she didn’t give one. Instead, Wind patted Trace’s leg. “Don’t worry. You’ll figure it out. I honestly think you and Dustin are perfect for each other. Neither of you know it yet.”
“Do you really trust the man? I mean, he’s like… others.”
Jewels and Wind shot a knowing look to each other, and then their arms both landed around her shoulders. “Not every man is the same.”
Wind played with the back of her hair, relaxing her into compliance. “Dustin’s a good man. Yes, you can trust him.”
Trust him? Did it mean anything that her friends judged him trustworthy?
“Trace, are you ever going to tell us what happened?”
Trace bolted from their embrace. “Nothing to tell.” She raced to the bathroom, her heart, pulse, and breath rapid and erratic. She shut the door and fell against it, huffing and puffing. She needed to escape the idea of her and Dustin. They might understand men, but they didn’t understand how low and dirty they could be.
No. No. No. She’d never trust another man again.
Chapter Fourteen
Dustin held up his long-sleeved dress shirt and knew it would be drenched in sweat by the time he reached the car in the scorching Florida heat. Too hot, too uncomfortable, and too wrong for going out with Trace on a non-date. “Hey, Trevor. You got one of those short-sleeved shirts I could borrow?”
“You mean the ones that you make fun of, calling me a Shriveling Salty Senior?” Trevor hollered up from the downstairs living room.
Dustin stepped out of his eight-by-eight claustrophobic closet-sized room and looked over the balcony at Trevor with his feet up on the coffee table and computer in his lap. “Yeah, but that’s you in your old-man bod. I’ll rock the look. Besides. It’s hotter than a skillet set on the sun.”
“You keep telling yourself that, but desperation doesn’t look distinguished on you.” Trevor set the computer on the coffee table and climbed the steps to the second floor. “If you want to dress to impress Trace, then I’ve got the perfect outfit for you.”
“I didn’t ask for a makeover. I’m not a thirteen-year-old girl. A shirt, dude. That’s all I wanted. I’ve ordered some clothes, but they haven’t arrived. Apparently even the Zon can’t deliver in a day out here.”
Trevor disappeared into his closet and came out holding a linen shirt with a lavender stripe down the front.
Dustin shot his arms up in front of him in a barrier to bad fashion. “No. Not happening. I’m not wearing that. Give me the plain white one.”
“It’s dirty.”
Dustin eyed the hamper. “How dirty?”
Trevor removed the frou-frou shirt from the hanger, balled it up, and threw it at him. “This is Florida. The shirt smelled five minutes after I put it on. Take this or don’t and wear one of your stiff-neck, suffocating shirts.”
Dustin snarled. “First you drag me out here, and now you force me to dress in this girl shirt.”
“There’s a statute of limitations on you blaming me for your decision to move here. And that’s not a girl’s shirt.” He shoved his pointer finger into Dustin’s chest. “Besides, you won’t fit in anything I own.”
“You calling me fat?”
“If the shirt fits.” Trevor laughed and buddy-slapped Dustin’s shoulder on his way to the hallway. “I’m talking about your muscles. You’ve always been the muscle-strutting type. Don’t deny it.”
“Can’t help it if I look good.” Dustin slid the sleeves of the linen sissy shirt over his shoulders and buttoned it. Much cooler than his dress clothes but not a grimy work T-shirt. It’d have to do, light purple stripe and all. “Wait, why do you own this shirt? It’s a large. You’re at best a medium.”
“Wind sent it over this morning. She bet you’d have a date with Trace by this afternoon. You owe me twenty bucks by the way.” Trevor’s voice faded with each step he took down to the living room.
Dustin grunted, grabbed his wallet and keys. “Non-date. Both of us have to eat, and I’m sick of eating with your ugly manipulating mug,” he shouted over the balcony.
Trevor held a hand to his heart. “I’m hurt.”
“Keep on and you will be.” He shuffled down the steps to the main floor. “I was going to offer to bring you something home, but forget it. You can starve.”
“Got a hot date of my own, so no worries. Jewels and I are going for a moonlight picnic on a sandbar,” Trevor said, sounding like he’d lose his bachelor status at any moment. Ugh. Too soon. Way too soon to be chained to another woman since it hadn’t been that long since Marsha had dumped him like a rabid raccoon. Jewels was nice and all, but who wanted to rush from one marriage to the next? Dustin had managed to avoid it his entire life. Didn’t get why anyone wanted to be part of that institution.
He drove the two blocks to Jewels’s house. Wind’s car was out front. With one hand on the door handle, he hesitated. The shirt. Had Wind sent it as a joke and he was about to deliver the punchline to the front door? He’d deserve it. Not sure why, but when it came to women, he’d realized a long time ago that he provoked their anger and resentment. He had to, or it wouldn’t have happened so often.
With a deep breath, he wrenched the car door open and marched up the front walk.
Wind opened the door before he reached the front step. A coldness whispered up his spine. “Good evening, handsome. Ready for your big date?”
“Um… non-date.” He shifted between his feet and ran a hand through his hair. “Listen, I hope you don’t think—”
“That you will break Trace’s heart?” Wind sauntered to the last step, placed a hand on his shoulder, and leaned in as if to kiss him. “Listen, relax. I’m not upset. I’d hoped you’d ask her out. But if you hurt her…” She tapped his lips with a finger from her free hand. “Well, you won’t have to worry about swimming with sharks, because I’ll feed you to a gator.”
Wind pirouetted and opened the front door, waving him inside.
Houdini scurried into the room, up the gangway, around the platform, and hopped onto his shoulder, chattering as if giving him the big brother speech.
“You tell him, Houdini." Wind pointed to the melodramatic ferret he was sure she had sent to acting school. He reached up to pet him, but Houdini smacked his hand away, hopped over the couch, and then disappeared down the hallway.
“You remember what I said.” She mimed a knife across her throat, hanging, and stabbing.
Dustin smiled, grinning away her threat. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her into his side. “No worries. We’re not dating. Complete opposites don’t even begin to define us as a couple.”
Wind broke free of him, laughing with Broadway projection.
“What’s so funny?” he grumbled.
“You.” She fanned her face. “In your denial, you admitted you liked her.”
“What? No I didn’t.” Did he? Wait, no. He didn’t think of her as more than a friend. A sexy, passionate, beautiful friend. But a friend. “How’d I do that?”
“You said couple, which means you’ve thought about it. Besides, you protest more when you are tiptoeing around something.”
“How would you know that?” Dustin lowered his voice to a conciliatory whisper.
“Because unlike Trace, who deserves better than either of our shallow selves, we are too much alike.” Wind winked and whirled to face the hallway. “Trace, your date’s here.”
“Non-date,” she shouted from an open door on the right. Trace marched to the edge of the hall in a b
lue button-up shirt that highlighted her waist, her breasts, her eyes.
“What?” Trace stared down at her feet and then back at him. “You’d think I was wearing a dress.”
Wind shoved a handbag at her. “Pepper spray in here in case he gets handsy.”
He hoped she was kidding.
Based on Trace’s grimace, she didn’t want to carry it, but then she huffed and pulled a wad of money and cards from her pocket and shoved it into the purse. “Let’s go.”
He rushed to the door to open it for her, but he wasn’t fast enough and his hand covered hers on the knob. If he wasn’t wrong, she gasped at his touch.
She took in a deep breath, calling his attention to her chest. Her gaze snapped to him with a glower. “Non-date. Remember?” She tugged her shirt around her neck and wrenched the door open. “By the way, nice shirt. Wind dress you?”
She marched outside, leaving Dustin to look to Wind.
“Stop treating her like you would a normal date. She deserves better. She’s not a filet on your plate. She’s a flower in a vase at the center of the table.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Wind fluttered away, leaving him to decipher her cryptic message. A problem even Pythagoras couldn’t solve.
Chapter Fifteen
Trace stood at the car, eyeing the tiny interior. She needed to keep her distance from Dustin and her wayward thoughts of a man oh so wrong for her. Darn friends. It was their fault. Wind and Jewels filled her head with garbage.
Dustin reached the end of the steps, and she panicked. “Let’s walk.” She took off, hands clasped in front of her, the bag swinging at her side.
“Wait. No. I was taking us to Cocoa Beach for dinner.”
No, that would be a date. A romantic, remote restaurant with time for ideas. Bad ideas. Ideas that could lead her down the wrong path again. “Skip’s is fine.”
“You just want Skip to see me to tell Rhonda. I refuse to be a pawn in your war.” He remained by the car.
“No, that’s not it,” she blurted but stopped walking.