“He thinks you’re breaking up with your boyfriend because he’s going into the service.”
Silence had filled the other line. “I was worried you were going to break up with me, Evan. Are you?”
“No! I mean . . . I hadn’t planned on it. Is that what you want?”
“No. I want to marry you. But you have an exciting life ahead of you, and I wasn’t—”
“Let’s do it.”
“What?”
“Let’s get married.”
“What? When?”
“Before I leave.”
“Evan, we can’t . . . Can we?”
“Of course.”
When he’d announced the next day to his family that he was marrying Renece Peters, he was met with a round of silence. The silence was broken, about three seconds later, by his mother’s soft sobs, his father’s barked question if she was pregnant, and the whoosh of Drew’s fist as it punched him in the face.
Renece’s family hadn’t given them a much warmer send-off.
They’d ended up getting married at the San Diego courthouse with two sets of crying mothers, two suspicious-looking fathers, a bouquet of daisies, a barely healed black eye, and a two-hundred-dollar ring Evan had hardly been able to afford from his scraped-up savings from cleaning labs at night. Drew hadn’t come at all. . . .
The sailboat now pitched as Evan tucked his tie under his collar and bent down to look at his reflection in the small stateroom mirror. He tightened the tie around his neck.
So he couldn’t kiss Lia. Or touch her. Or even look at her as much as he wanted to. He would allow himself to spend one more evening with a woman who made him think of life instead of death, but then he was done. She had a boyfriend. And he wasn’t in the game of inadvertently stealing anymore. And she and Drew had some kind of connection, even if they couldn’t identify it. Cinderella kept saying she and Drew were friends, but that’s what Renece had thought, too. And Evan wanted to make one last attempt to apologize to Drew—it wouldn’t help matters if he was having feelings for another of Drew’s friends.
He straightened the knot in the mirror and gave it one more tug.
Glutton for punishment, for sure.
* * *
Lia stood on the sidewalk in front of the Ocean Museum and stared at the night-lit entrance banners billowing in the breeze, with artwork splashed across the center heralding the start of the Whale Festival. Her first thought was that the artwork was beautiful—a minimalist sweep of blues and grays, depicting a whale spout—and her second was to wonder who the ad agency was.
“Lia, hello!”
“Hello, Mr. Thompson.” She shook hands with the owner of one of the most exclusive hotels in the area, who she’d done some ad work with.
“This is my wife, Linda.”
Lia was almost always one of the youngest people at these kinds of events, but she knew how to hold her own. She always stayed on top of the new openings, changes in county politics, and the overall who-was-who in the area. She easily slid into conversation with Linda, admired her sequin-rimmed cocktail dress, and nodded in agreement at the beauty of the Ocean Museum’s new wing and courtyard.
“Are you coming in?” Mr. Thompson asked.
“I’m waiting for someone.”
“We’ll see you inside, then.”
Lia nodded and ran her hands up her arms, twisting on the sidewalk to see if Evan was coming. As her eagerness gave way to a strange trepidation, and the goose bumps on her arms seemed more from nervousness than from cold, she hoped this wasn’t a mistake. She hoped he would come with the requisite suit and respect for these kinds of events, not to mention the humility it would take to apologize to Kyle.
But a small spear of panic shot through her when she realized how unlikely that was. Her best navy clutch bumped against the sequins of her dress as she rubbed her arms more furiously. What had she been thinking? Evan was not Drew. Drew would show up with his hair neatly parted, his suit neatly pressed, and would shake hands with all the people she told him to, even though he hated to shake hands. (She allowed him brief escapes to swath with antibacterial gel.)
But Evan didn’t seem the least bit interested in selling himself. He was more likely to show up and embarrass her with his suspicious, sullen behavior in front of important people like Mr. and Mrs. Thompson.
While she had jumped at—well, okay, sort of manipulated—the possibility of spending another evening with him and his sexy arms, she now realized her ridiculous attraction to a rough-around-the-edges, secretive, intensely roguish man might have clouded her usually good business judgment.
“There you are.” His deep voice came through the dark.
She whirled to see him step up from the marina docks, circle a bird of paradise bush, and shove his hands in the pockets of a dark blue suit with an ocean blue tie that matched his eyes. His hair still came down over the starched white collar, but he’d slicked it back in a debonair look. He didn’t greet her with a smile—more of a look of dread—but a breath of relief still escaped her lungs.
“Hey there,” she finally managed. He even had dress shoes on.
“Hey.”
“You look great.”
“You clean up pretty well yourself.” His eyes made a quick sweep of her dress, which happened to match his suit almost exactly. He stalled slightly at her breasts, but then cut his gaze away and cleared his throat.
“I was hoping you didn’t change your mind,” she said, scrambling for the small talk she was usually so good at.
“No, but I have ten pretty solid reasons I shouldn’t be here, so you’re going to have to do some clever convincing.” He was already scrutinizing the festival banners.
“Okay.” Another shiver went through her. “Let’s get inside and get at least one bacon-wrapped shrimp in you to help me out.”
They entered the museum courtyard through a bright green shrubbery arch coiled with twinkling lights, Evan taking in everything with critical surveillance. After handing over their tickets, they stepped into a large, pebbled patio strewn with lace-tablecloth-covered bar tables, the cloth tied at the base of each table to create martini-glass shapes. Glass-block vases of hot pink orchids sat in the center of each table, illuminated with tea lights. Lia snagged a table toward the back, one with no chairs, where they could keep an eye on the entrance for Kyle.
Once their stake was claimed with her clutch purse, she grabbed two champagne glasses off a passing tray and set one on the table in front of Evan. Her confidence was back, her work hat back on. “So ten reasons why you shouldn’t be here. We’ll count backwards. Number ten: Go.”
He took a sip with the bandaged hand. “I hate crowds.”
“Yeah,” she said, leaning in. “Why is that, anyway, Captain Betancourt? Is that why you live on that boat all by yourself?”
“I didn’t think this was an interrogation. I thought I just had to tell you my reasons.”
“Well, we only count them as valid if I can’t counter them.”
“So how do you counter the fact that I hate crowds and you’ve just invited me to a party?”
“As far as crowds go, this one’s pretty small, you have to admit.”
He glanced around, looking none too certain.
“It’s fifty people max,” she insisted. “And you know two of the attendees already. And, if you’re going to ease yourself back into society, this might be the way to go.”
“What makes you think I’m easing myself back into society?”
“Aren’t you?”
“No. I’m back on the boat as soon as my engine’s fixed.”
“So why did you stop here, anyway? Was it to see Drew?”
“Just to fix the engine.”
“But why here?”
He looked away, letting his gaze bounce around to the other patrons. “It was just t
o fix the engine, Cinderella.”
A tray of hors d’oeuvres passed by, and Lia took a few spears of prosciutto-wrapped asparagus on cocktail napkins and set two in front of Evan. “Certainly you could have stopped in San Diego, where I’d think you knew the marinas better. I think you pulled in here, whether consciously or subconsciously, because you really wanted to see Drew again.”
He ignored the appetizers she’d set in front of him and stared at her from under his eyebrows. “Let’s move on.”
“Okay, well ‘crowds’ is negated because there are less than fifty people here. And besides, I’m here to protect you from all the crazy extroverts. I can hold my own with any of them.” She smiled and popped her asparagus spear in her mouth. “Reason nine?”
“I hate dressing up.”
Her perusal snagged at his biceps, which strained the navy fabric sleeves as he leaned across the bar table. “Well, you should try it more often. You look great.”
Better words than “great” leaped to her mind—powerful, sexy, hot, virile, lickable, jumpable—but she knew she needed to watch her mouth tonight. This was no time to blurt out what she was really thinking.
“I wouldn’t have pinned you for a suit-in-the-back-of-the-sailboat kind of guy,” she said diplomatically. “Where else do you wear it?”
“We’re not interrogating, remember?”
“I just want to know where you wear all that gorgeousness. Looks like Armani.”
“Funerals.”
Lia blinked. Her cocktail napkin slid to the floor. The jazz guitarist struck up a new number in the corner of the patio surrounded by twinkling lights and Japanese boxwood plants, and she used the musical distraction to pick up her napkin and regain her composure.
“I’m really sorry to hear about your wife,” she finally said, her voice only loud enough to be heard over the guitar. “How long ago did you lose her?”
Evan shook his head. “We don’t want to talk about death at a party. Sorry I said that. Let’s move on.”
“No, I want to know.”
A strand of hair had escaped his carefully slicked-back style and fell across his eyes. “Two years ago. But that’s all I’m saying. Let’s move on.”
“Do you not like to talk about her?”
A scowl crossed his forehead. “I love to talk about her. But it just doesn’t seem appropriate right now. Next topic.”
“What did she look like?”
He shook his head and laughed a little. “You do your own thing, don’t you, Lia? Don’t take direction very well?”
“As I said, it’s not my strong suit.” She took a sip of champagne and looked away from his dimple. “So what did she look like?”
He stared at his glass stem, twisting it. “She looked a little like Avery, actually.”
Lia’s eyes widened. “Avery? Really?” She reran all the looks Evan had given Avery, and viewed them through a new filter. “Is that why you were all over her?”
“All over her?”
“Well, you know, the touching, and all that . . .”
“I wasn’t touching her.”
“Well, you know, holding her in the galley when she stumbled into you, and letting her hold your arm at the club, and being alone with her in the den at the end of the night . . .”
Meeting Evan’s confused stare, Lia bit her tongue. She realized she’d just catalogued every pass she saw between the two of them and how obsessed it made her sound.
She took a nervous sip.
“Well, I thought she was pretty, but I wouldn’t say I was attracted to her exactly,” Evan said. “And I certainly didn’t think I was ‘all over her.’ She made me uncomfortable, actually.”
She watched Evan spin the stem of his champagne glass and was suddenly struck with the fact that he was opening up. The enormity of the gift, and the enormity of his loneliness, hit her full center in her chest.
“I might think seeing a woman who reminded you of the wife you lost would be a good thing,” she speculated. Though her sudden curiosity spike was followed by an embarrassing twinge of jealousy toward Avery.
“You’d think,” he said. “But it wasn’t.”
As embarrassing as the twinge of jealousy was, so was the next wave of relief.
What in the world was wrong with her? Did she think she was going to fill the terrible void in his life? She shook off the absurdity and began to formulate her next question.
“We’re moving on now,” he said quietly.
But she wasn’t done. Her lips formed into the W for her question—she was filled with curiosity—but he shot her a stern look.
“Seriously. Move on.”
As annoying as bossy men were to her usually, Evan, for some reason, was maddeningly sexy. Long-dormant tingles in all of her favorite body parts came to the surface, shocking her and horrifying her at the same time. Lia averted her eyes quickly, caught her breath, and realized she had quite possibly lost her whole sense of self.
“Give me reason eight,” she muttered.
“I’m not crazy about jazz.”
“Aw, this guy’s pretty good.”
Evan glanced over his shoulder at the guitarist but didn’t respond.
“Okay, I suppose that’s legit,” she said. “Everyone is entitled to like what they like. What kind of music do you like?”
“Interrogation?”
“No, it’s part of my counter reply.”
“How is that? Are you going to make it magically appear?”
“Maybe I can request something.”
He gave her his first double-dimple smile of the evening. “I’ll give you a pass on that one—out of your control. What are we on, now? Seven?”
Lia tore her eyes away from his dimples and tried to get her heart to stop pounding so embarrassingly. “I believe so.”
He picked up, then put down, his glass. “Number seven is that this champagne is terrible. Can I get us something else to drink?” Without waiting for her answer, he turned to look for a bar. “What’ll you have?”
“I’m good.”
He nodded and went in pursuit solo.
While he was gone, Lia fluffed the neckline of her dress and tried to air out the perspiration she could feel dripping down the center of her bra. She took another few breaths to recover from that last sweet smile of his, and the soft voice asking about her drink preferences that sounded something like a regular date, something she just decided would be an awfully sexy thing to have. What did Evan do at the end of a date? Did he kiss at the door? Invite himself in? Push his date back into the entry hall while undoing her zipper down her back?
Lia fluffed her neckline another seven times.
This was not a date. She had an almost-boyfriend. She should not be having tingling lady parts over this guy. . . .
Another wave of embarrassment washed over her when she realized she hadn’t thought of Forrest once all night. At the sudden realization, she yanked her cell phone out of her purse and scrolled for messages. There were none from him, but he had another social media post that seemed as strange as the last nine: There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.—Friedrich Nietzsche.
“Looking for messages from your boyfriend?” Evan’s voice startled her.
She shakily clicked her phone off and shoved it back into her clutch. “I’ll look later.”
“I notice he didn’t call much when you were sick. Or at all.” He set a glass of water down in the center of the table.
“Water?” she asked.
“I want to stay sober.”
“Long drive?” She smiled.
“I just think I need my wits about me tonight,” he said, avoiding her eyes. “So what’s with the never-calling boyfriend?”
“It’s . . .” She shook her head. She didn’t think it was fair to discuss Forres
t when he wasn’t there.
“Are you very serious?”
She shook off the question again. She and Drew had had this discussion so many times. She didn’t like the idea of people tying each other down, or keeping each other from traveling, or doing whatever they wanted. She always kept things light with boyfriends, not wanting to place demands and not wanting demands placed on her. But Drew said that’s why she’d never been in love: If you didn’t jump in with both feet, committing your heart wholly and completely, you would never experience true love.
Either way, she didn’t want to discuss this with Evan.
“Dinner’s almost here and you need six more reasons to avoid it,” she said.
“Number six is that I don’t like pretentious people, and these kinds of things tend to be filled with them.”
“Well played, Captain. I’ll counter with Exhibit A, Exhibit B, and Exhibit C.” She nodded across the patio at each uttered letter. “Exhibit A is Mr. Rossmoor over there. He’s on the board of trustees for the Marine Mammal Search and Rescue and gave up a lucrative legal career to join forces with the MMSR and save abandoned baby seals in the area. Exhibit B is Ms. Gomez. She’s a former Assistant U.S. Attorney who quit her job to offer free legal counsel to environmentalists in the area who want to keep the oceans clean. She donates tens of thousands a year to the Ocean Museum. And Exhibit C is Carissa Delgado. She’s a past president of the American Cetacean Society who donates forty hours a week to make sure fishing lines are pulled up properly so as not to harm the whales.” She took a sip of champagne. “These people are the real deal.”
His eyebrow raised while he studied each of her exhibits. “How do you know them?” he asked with a new note of respect in his voice.
“Elle has been representing most of them for years. I come to a lot of the events for her. These charity ones are my favorite because I like to see people doing real things, and making a difference.”
“Does Elle donate, too?”
“Yes, but she’s a bloodsucker. She’s in it for the money.”
He smiled. “Is that why you call her a vampiress?”
Lia’s eyes widened. “Did I say that when I was out of it?”
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