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“You could have tried to get me to stop drinking.”
I hold up my hand, one finger in the air. “Number one…I’m not your mother. Number two…I only saw you with one drink. Number three…what kind of a lightweight are you? You never even finished that first drink!”
Her nose crinkles and I almost reach out to touch those freckles. “I forgot how much I don’t like to drink.”
“I get the feeling it doesn’t like you either!” Her smile warms a little.
“Yeah. I usually don’t drink for exactly that reason.” Her eyes dart up and down me. “Did I really tell you that I’d have breakfast with you?”
“Yep.”
“Huh. That doesn’t seem like me at all.” The lingering confusion on her face nettles me a bit.
“You don’t think I can get a girl like you?”
“Oh,” Shame darts across her face. “No. That’s not it all. I just don’t usually talk to men and even if I do, they sure as hell don’t want to meet up again. I’m kind of a disaster with guys.”
My brows lift and I can’t hide the surprise on my face. “Baby, I find that hard to believe. You’ve got everything that guys like.” I let my eyes skate down her lush curves and my mouth dries out.
She snorts and her eyes fill with laughter. “Stop being so nice to me. I was an idiot.”
I see the way the street is bustling and I grimace. The damn festival is well on its way to being a royal pain in the ass. I see my brother ahead of us bitching like a crazy motherfucker at a tiny woman who’s all up in his face on the steps of the library.
I turn us around and head the other way. “Let’s go this way. I think breakfast at the diner sounds really good.”
Her head swivels around and I groan when her soft hair slides across my knuckles where they rest on her shoulder. “Who the hell was that guy?”
I sigh and keep walking. “That guy is my brother. The very illustrious Sheriff of Candy Cane Key and the biggest tight ass on this whole damn island.”
Her eyes widen and then a huge smile crosses her pretty pink lips. “Tell me how you really feel, Merrick!”
I stop and start coughing, fighting back the laughter that she inevitably drags out of me. From the minute I saw her trying to sing some damn dirty ditty because she was drunk as hell, on two sips of alcohol apparently, I’ve been either laughing or fascinated.
“Let’s go get breakfast, woman. If I’m going to keep up with you, I think I’m gonna need to keep my strength up!”
I wrap my arm around her slender shoulders and try to push down how right this feels.
I’m no good for anyone in the long run. Just a beat-up, old bastard who still believes in a dream that I should have given up a long time ago.
Fantasies are a helluva lot better than reality though. And fuck if this woman walking beside me isn’t the biggest fantasy I’ve ever had because she feels like she belongs right where she is. Not for a brief fling either. She feels like home.
And I don’t really know what that feels like. I’ve never had one. My brother and I bounced around from one foster home to another. It’s what’s made him such a tight-lipped son of a bitch who can’t handle feelings at all.
And it’s what’s made me incapable of really letting someone in. Sure, I can be a charming fucker for a short period of time. But not long-term. It’s too easy to let yourself start to believe that you’re actually worth something if you do shit like that.
And as my brother will tell anyone who listens…I’m not worth a damn thing.
I push that thought aside and grin at Onyx. Her sharp blue eyes study me but then she just smiles and laughs.
“I am hungry.”
I am too. Her soft pink lips catch my eye and it takes everything in me to push that thought down.
“Food. I need food.”
Laughing like I just said the funniest thing in the world, we stagger down the street.
CHAPTER3
