The things I do for you, Daisy Carmichael.
“Great!” Nellie suddenly clapped her hands together. “Let’s go over it, then, shall we? Let Operation: Crush Dalton’s Ego begin!”
CHAPTER 7
Turned out that Operation: Crush Dalton’s Ego was pretty simple.
We didn’t need to make things complicated. Jamie didn’t need permission to reach for my hand, and I didn’t need permission to wrap my arms around him. We both trusted each other enough to follow the other’s lead, no matter what situation arose. It made things far, far simpler than the fake dating books Nellie said she normally read—we didn’t need rules or code phrases. Heck, just being ourselves got us halfway to this predicament in the first place. We could do this.
And even though I still wasn’t sure I wanted to, I knew I needed to.
“Daisy.” Jamie’s gaze locked on mine in the rearview mirror while he waited for the traffic at the stop sign to move forward. “You good?”
I picked at the braided strap of my beach bag, hatinghow frayed the edges were getting but unable to quit my fingers. “Yep.”
Nellie, in the front seat, planted an elbow on the console and turned to me. I’d loosely braided her dark hair back into a French braid down her back, and she had her sunglasses perched on top of her head. “Don’t be nervous,” she said. “These people are like dogs and toddlers. They sense fear.”
I snorted, some of the tension breaking at her ridiculous words. “Got it. Don’t be nervous, less I tip off the toddler dogs.”
“Lest,” Jamie corrected.
“Shut up.”
I caught a glimpse of his smile in the rearview mirror, and, like Nellie’s joke, the grip around my chest eased further.
It seemed everyone was kicking off the week with a trip to the bay. We’d been waiting at the stoplight before the parking lot for almost fifteen minutes, inching forward as all four directions passed through the intersection.
A beach day. With the Alderton-Du Ponte group.
And Dalton Giovanni.
I shifted in my seat, pretending it was anxiety, not anticipation.
I was seriously testing my self-control, especially on four hours of sleep. Except this time, it wasn’t just me who’d be embarrassed if I caved—Jamie would be dragged under too, either looked at as the pitiful guy who I’d cheated on or the pathetic friend who’d agreed to help hiseven more pathetic friend make her ex jealous. It was a lose-lose if I screwed this up.
So I couldn’t. I had to put on my game face.
We had to park pretty far out in the lot, right beside a van of children unloading from it, with their father grabbing a beach chair out of the trunk. One of the girls looked Theo’s age, with blonde hair like Ivy’s. A sick feeling pricked at me, thinking about the way we’d all parted this morning.
I closed my eyes, wincing as Junie’s worried face flashed across my mind.
And when I opened them again, I found Jamie watching me in the rearview mirror.
My door wrenched open. Nellie had climbed out, slid her sunglasses over her eyes, but I could see her raised brows above the rim. “It really is okay, Daisy,” she insisted as I climbed out. “You look great. And like we talked about—it’s really no different than normal. You just have to hold Jamie’s clammy hand.”
“My hands arenotclammy,” Jamie called as he got out of the driver’s seat.
“I’mfine,” I said, not wanting to go into everything that’d happened this morning. It felt ten kinds of wrong to complain about the kids, and I felt too guilty over it to rehash. “I’m just hungry.”
“Our first stop after we find our group can be getting corn dogs from Hoppin’ Dawgs,” she promised.
“With extra mustard.”
“Gross. But sure.”
We both giggled as Jamie went to unload the trunk.Nellie had packed a small handheld cooler of soda cans, and Jamie had a bigger bag full of towels and other supplies. He hooked the bag over his narrow shoulder, picked up the cooler, and shut the trunk.
Jamie slid his fingers underneath my beach bag strap and eased it from my shoulder, hoisting it over his own without thought. “You don’t have to carry all the bags,” I objected, reaching for it again. “I can?—”
