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I tip my face up to his, noting for the first time that the curve in his naturally imperfect nose has been straightened. His cheekbones are sharp as ever, though, and when I glance at his full, seductive lips, I try, and fail, to forget how velvet soft they’d been against mine.
Shifting my stare to the waving palms above us, I eventually mutter, “If I’m anything, I’m resourceful.”
“Shit, to your left.” He points over my shoulder, but when I whirl around, there’s only a flock of seagulls picking at a pile of discarded food on the ground.
“Made you look.” His face is bright with humor, and too close for comfort.
I shove him before taking a good couple of steps back. “You’re insufferable, did you know that?”
I’m no closer to solving what possessed him to come to Pearl Beach, and phony kiss aside, I’m damn determined to figure it out.
He opens the driver’s side door, stopping short to hang his forearm over the top. “Let me give you a ride back.”
“No thanks.” Recalling my excuse, I take another step back. “I’ve got a dress to find, remember?”
A shadow seemingly darkens his features, but he recovers quickly. “Why did you block that photographer’s shot?”
“I already told you why.”
I’ve got to have the best storyLusterhas ever produced, and that can’t happen if Marcus is running around town, letting these guys get the jump on me.
“But you hate me. Why would you cover for me?”
The question throws me for a loop. And not because I can’t tell him why, but more so the glaring vulnerability in my response.
“I don’t know…”
His eyes slide across my face, peeling my exposed layers apart before I can stitch them back together.
Situating himself in the driver’s seat, Marcus closes the door and then rolls the window down. “I’m not letting you quit.”
I gape at the audacity. “I’ll do whatever I damn well please.”
But that flirty smirk says we both know I won’t be giving up. Article aside, it’s just not in my nature.
With the window rolled down, he backs out slowly, and I can’t help the dreadful sense that he’s privy to something I’m not.
Marcus leaves me with a wink. “See you back at the ranch, slayer.”
CHAPTERNINE
Marcus
The delicate metal sliding between my fingers feels as though it weighs one hundred pounds. As the sun crowns the mountainside in a wash of vivid orange against the purple-blue sky, I trace the intricate words in the center of the connecting chains.
Footsteps across the wooden deck alert me to someone’s presence well before Jango even blinks an eye open.
“Not much of a guard dog,” my cousin says with amusement.
I glance at the grayed snout resting between my feet to find the hound blissfully snoozing. But I can’t bring myself to smile.
“I wonder what Leah’d say if she could see us now,” I muse.
Penelope takes a long sip from a steaming mug with the words ‘bad bitch club’ scrolled along the side. “She’d probably tell you to get your head out of your ass and quit being a slave to your parents.”
With a sigh, I curl my fingers around the bracelet and stuff it back into my pocket. “Undoubtedly.”
Almost everything about this place reminds me of Leah. It’s not just the barn, but Augustine itself. I can’t see a sunrise without remembering how much joy they brought her or listen to music in the work truck because I can still hear her complaining about the rock songs I would force her to endure.
