“She’s not that bad.”
He snorted again. “You act like I don’t know Sloane Ellis.”
“You should order a mai tai.” Jules settled back against the lounger and pushed her sunglasses into her hair. “I can’t day drink by myself.”
“Can’t you tell?” He gestured to the water and beach and his fruity-looking drink. “I’m working hard here, Jules.”
She twirled the pineapple garnish. “Working on a vacation,Rhys.”
“You’reon vacation. I’m working.”
She slipped the sunglasses back onto her nose and stared at him over the fruit. “Whatever happened to whatever the client wants?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She sipped her drink again. “I could have sworn you said that to me before.”
“Whatever the client wants?” His lips pulled down. Maybe she was tipsier than he realized, because they’d had one huge disagreement in their past that would forever haunt them. “That doesn’t sound like me. Must be another one of your bodyguards Sloane wants to set you up with.”
“You’re the only one for me,” she said, lips wrapped around a straw.
Jesus Christ, he needed something else to look at. Rhys scanned the private beach. There wasn’t a tourist in sight. No one paid attention to them, and he guessed that was the point of spending what she had on this resort. Not even the hotel staff acknowledged thattheJules Lowry was staying in one of their bungalows. The people who worked here had probably grown immune to the rich and famous, similar to how he was immune to the people he was assigned to protect. Though none of his clients were like Jules.
The butler assigned to their seaside cabana returned with a tray of fresh drinks, another mai tai for Jules and another mango-pineapple juice for him.
She crunched on the pineapple garnish from the empty mai tai glass and swirled the fresh one, mixing the yellow and orange liquids. “Did you know?”
It only took a second to decipher the abrupt subject change. “No.”
“Do you think I should have?” she asked.
“No.”
She sighed into her drink. The ice clinked as she tipped the glass back and sipped from the sugar-coated rim. “You would have known if you were me. You know everything. You see everything. You figure it out. What’s it like to be able to…” She gestured to the water. “Know everything?”
“I don’t know everything.”
“No, you just remember it. I bet there was something I saw and didn’t put two and two together.”
Was this what Jules and Abigail discussed over mai tais? He wanted no part of rationalizing Mason or Monday-morning quarterbacking the fallout. “I’ll go catch Abigail. Bet she’s not inside yet. Probably looking at the plants and flowers, snapping a thousand pictures along the way.”
“No. Forget it.” She spun the pineapple garnish in the glass. “Did you ever think we’d be someplace like this when you pulled me out of that frozen, falling-down barn?”
A chill skirted down his back, much like the day he’d rescued her. Every nerve in his body had been on high alert that cold winter afternoon in Montana. The glaring sun on the beach was just as hard to deal with as the sun’s glare reflected off the acres of ice and snow. The old wooden barn had shown no signs of life. No clear path in. No footsteps pressed into the snow-covered ground. He hadn’t thought they’d find Jules Lowry alive, and when he saw her, curled in a ball, half covered in hay and sawdust, her lips blue, the neural connections in his brain rewired.
Those few seconds were the only ones in his entire life when his brain glitched. The only time he couldn’t recall with precise, picture-perfect, high-definition detail every single second. He’d never admitted that to anyone. He didn’t have to. He knew every moment leading up to finding her and every second after he realized she was alive.
“No.”
“One-word answers don’t make for great conversations,” she said.
He watched the waves. This was the rum and the sun asking questions. Jules didn’t ever talk about what happened. “I never thought I’d see you again.” After he’d tracked her down, his job was done. But the powerful Lowry family had other ideas, and in the end, they led him to a gig where he was on call for one of the most famous women in the world.
“Surprise.” She laughed. “Here we are. On a honeymoon.”
Yup, the sun and the alcohol were catching up with her. He grabbed the menu off the little table between their loungers. “You could use lunch.”
“We had lunch already, and I’m not hungry.”
