She didn’t put her sandals back on.
The parking lot asphalt is going to burn her feet, dammit.
I hurry to catch up in case she needs to be carried, too.
“This rescue would be a lot more romantic if you weren’t mooning over my sister,” Jude says, laughing while in obvious pain. “But it’s pretty decent of you regardless.”
“I’m just trying to save time. It would have taken you a week to hobble up to the parking lot and I’m on the clock.”
“Whatever you say.” I frown down at him, but his mouth only twitches. “You looked a little piqued coming out of the cave, bounty hunter.”
“Shut up.”
He laughs.
We reach the car a minute later and I set Jude on his feet, carefully, where he can lean against the side of the vehicle. As predicted, Taylor is hopping back and forth, trying to keep from burning off the soles of her feet. I wrap an arm around her waist and pull her up against me. “Stand on my boots.”
“Oh,” she whispers, her hands flattening on my chest, toes perching on mine through the thick leather. “Thank you.”
I nod once, walking us around to the driver’s side of the car, step by step, my forearm braced against the small of her back. I’m sure we look completely ridiculous and yeah, I could definitely just carry her, but there’s something about this position I like. Maybe because she’s looking me in the eye. Or because the twin movements of our legs feels like teamwork. Whatever the reason, it’s dangerous, but that fact isn’t going to penetrate my thick skull until she drives away and I can snap out of this trance she puts me in.
“I’m going to make tacos tonight,” she says, looking at my chin shyly. “You have to fuel yourself for the investigation, right? You…I-I mean, if you’d like to come, it would be the least I could do after you carried my brother to the car like some kind of action hero.”
“I was walking this direction anyway.”
She smirks at me.
Don’t kiss her. Don’t even think about it. But Jesus, those lips are begging for me. “I’ll be patrolling outside the house, in case the buoy thrower comes back. That constitutes doing my job. But I can’t come to dinner, Taylor.”
I say it with the kind of finality that she knows my staying away is about more than tacos. It’s bigger picture. Spending time together. Every minute I’m around her, we get in deeper despite my best intentions. Despite the warnings I keep giving myself. This has to stop. Because I’m pretty sure if we’d gone any further in that cave, I’d be promising her the moon. I’d be promising her things I can’t—and never have delivered on. I have no reason to believe I could suddenly be good at relationships. My last one was rocky from the start, not because of an abundance of fighting, but because I cared more about my career. Now? I’ve got a shit load of baggage and no permanent address, for crying out loud.
“Okay.” She chews her bottom lip for a beat, then goes up on her toes and kisses me on the cheek. “Bye, Myles.”
My chest rumbles.
And then she steps down off my boots and climbs into the driver’s side. The instructor hands her forgotten sandals through the passenger side and Jude passes her the car keys from the backseat. With one more glance at me through the window, she pulls out and leaves.
I’m no longer touching her. And I damn well like touching her, which might be why I reach into my back pocket to stroke the lace of her red panties. Just to have some sort of contact—
They’re gone.
I start, checking the other pocket. Not there, either.
Taylor stole back her hookup panties. Snuck them right out of my pocket. How did she know they were there in the first place? And what does it mean that she took them back?
Who I wear them for is none of your business.
“Son of a bitch,” I mutter, popping an antacid into my mouth.
With a stomach full of broken glass, I return to the motel, determined to go over my case notes and plan my next moves. Not think about shit like red lace panties and women who cry over children being nice to each other.
Do your job and go home.
You’ll forget her eventually.
Like in a hundred years or so.
Maybe.
Not even a little bit.
Fuck.
Chapter 11
Taylor
* * *
From the corner of my eye, I watch Myles’s motorcycle drive past the house for the second time in an hour. The sky is beginning to darken, the smell of Saturday barbeques is in the air. Some cloud cover has drifted in, as it is wont to do on the Massachusetts coastline. There is a chance of rain, as usual, but it isn’t stopping vacationers from enjoying the ocean, their flower-laden wraparound porches and big, frosty pitchers of margaritas or cans of beer. The sound of laughing children and conversing adults drifts up from the beach on the snatches of music, breezing in through the open windows of the rental house.