Page 27 of Lucky Haven

“I know, you’ll kill them,” I say weakly. “Which, I’ll repeat, you cannot do.”

“You asking for the other emails to be retrieved will go a long way to prevent me from murdering someone.”

I groan. “I know I’m a coward—” I choke up.

“Hey, no, it’s okay.” He grabs the email, then shoves it into his pocket. “Jesus, I wish I could give you a hug.”

With a jolt, I realize that’s really why I came here. Not just because Cash is a problem solver, and not just because he knew about the last email. What I really wanted was something I can’t get from anyone else.

With a sob, I throw myself against his hard chest.

“Ah, Lucky,” he murmurs. His arms come around me, steely hard across my back. “You’re okay. I’m sorry this happened again.”

It’s not his fault. He wasn’t at that meeting.

But I wish he had been. It would have been nice to be able to send him an SOS message. If I had, he would have come before the meeting was over, I know that without a doubt.

I think about Jeb’s confidence, and how it fuels cruelty from others. The cold shoulders, the silence that closes in around me in certain corners of this town. Six months of holding my head high and telling myself it’ll get better.

Now I’m not sure it will.

And Cash reads my mind. He eases me off his body and looks down at me grimly. “This is probably going to escalate.”

He’s right, and I hate that.

“I know,” I say. My voice is painfully small.

“So we should get ahead of it.”

“How?”

If he weren’t so serious, the sigh he lets out would be comical. “We’re going to have to let everyone in Dragonfly Creek think you’re my girl.”

“No.” I shake my head. “Cash, I can’t ask you to⁠—”

“You might think you can’t, but your mouth had other ideas, didn’t it? When push comes to shove, you know deep down that I’m your best weapon against Jeb. And your mouth was right. If you’re up to it, this is the most straightforward way to make sure every small-minded person in this town understands that you have someone in your corner. Someone fearlessly terrifying.”

He doesn’t want to do this. He’d rather be my bodyguard than my boyfriend, he’s made that crystal clear, the way he faded into the background at Bar None.

But he was there.

He watched over me.

And I’d rather he be my fake boyfriend than my real bodyguard. That’s too weird.

“Fake dating?” I ask, just to be sure.

He shrugs.

“People would talk.” I scrub my hands over my face. “That’s really jumping into the fire, isn’t it?”

“Let them talk.”

I stare at him. “That’s easy for you to say, people are always talking about your…”

He raises his eyebrows. “My…”

Is he going to make me say it? “You know what I mean.”