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At this point, nothing, my employment status another casualty of Hurricane Lise. But he’s being so decent about everything, I keep my answer polite. “That’s a great question. I’ll let you know when I find out.”
CHAPTER 7
Marco
Tripp has always been closemouthed about his personal life, but he has mentioned his little sister a time or two. No real details, but I believe, in an oddly loquacious moment, he voiced frustration with her girls-just-want-to-have-funways. I remember him fretting that she’d do something stupid and find herself in some kind of trouble. Well, I am now in a position to inform him that his fears have been at least partially realized.
But I won’t. It isn’t my place, and, let me repeat, I value my life. Besides, I’m not a tattletale.
The funny thing is, I have no desire to tell him. I like Annalise, and she doesn’t deserve to be ratted out to an overzealous big brother. So she made a mistake. Who hasn’t? Now, I’m a cynic and a skeptic, pretty much the world’s worst, and I always believe people when they show me who they are. But…despite the fact she took home a stranger, I think she’s actually a nice girl.
Shocker, I know, but I believe her when she tells me she’s never done that before, and I’m not easily deceived. Can’t be in my line of work.
Not that she’s given me much to go on, but I get the impression she’s at some sort of crossroads. The knock-your-socks-off, fun-loving college coed has hit some headwinds, perhaps for the first time, and life has her a little beat down at the moment.
If that’s true, then how much did her present frame of mind have to do with her horrible decision-making last night? I suspect a lot.
So then. Apparently I’m more of a slug than I originally thought.
Makes a guy wonder. How many other women have I taken home who have made their decision at a low point? Have I capitalized on their insecurities? Their hurt or their weakness?
But isn’t it a generally accepted concept that people reach out when they’re down? That lonely people find each other, need each other?
Useeach other?
Something in me recoils as my mind latches onto the word. Does it matter if it’s mutual?
“Somebody’s gone off to another planet.”
Annalise’s comment breaks through my spiraling reverie, and none too soon. I’m a live-in-the-moment kind of guy. All this soul-searching is not my style. I find a grin. “Sorry. Just thinking.”
“Care to share?”
I look over at her, down at her. She’s smaller than I realized, and a puddle of freckles, perhaps enhanced by the morning sun, draws my eyes. I’d like to plant a kiss on them, the ones trailing off along her cheekbone. After that, of course, I’d find her mouth…
“Ah-hem.” A frown has set up on those enticing lips.
“No. Nope. Nothing to share.” I think she read my mind, and her disapproval is a healthy reminder that, drop-dead gorgeous or not, she’s off limits.
“Well, perhaps we head back to the house and you give me a ride to Jake’s to get my car.”
Good thinking.
We do an about face, and it’s funny, the Walker manse doesn’t look nearly as far as it feels like we’ve come. The vastness of the ocean must distort perceptions. Probably some sort of lesson in that.
Back at the house, we de-sand our feet at an outdoor shower. I do hate the feeling of the granules scratching at my toes once I put my shoes on, but the gritty stuff is ubiquitous, invasive, and near-impossible to get completely rid of.
A few minutes later, Lise meets me at the truck and we drive toward Jake’s. Beside me, she is quiet and pensive—and I guess I don’t blame her. This is a fine mess we’ve created for ourselves. We’re strangers, but not. Strangers who almost knew each other—cough, cough—quite well.
And then there’s my partner.
Herbrother.
At the beach, we shared a surprisingly easy exchange about kind of personal stuff, but now, in the confines of the pickup, words have ended and awkward tension mounts. Might be my inappropriate gawking at her very kissable mouth messed things up. So help me, I’m just a guy, and that kiss last night in the parking lot, before everything went crazy towns, had off-the-charts sizzle.
Yes, but there was more than that. It might have been at that very moment a weird protectiveness encroached on my otherwise all-about-me mentality. It could be this was partly why it was so easy to retreat from my original intentions when true identities were revealed—that, of course, and knowing how well Tripp Walker knows his way around a firearm.
And yet, like a true scoundrel, I spend the rest of the ten-minute drive to Jake’s scrabbling to find a way, any way at all, that Annalise and I might still have something.
