Page 87 of Safari Murder Party
The sudden topic change had Fletcher choking on her charcuterie, little cracker crumbs shooting to the back of her esophagus. Tears sprang to her eyes. With two hands she reached for Waylon’s canteen, chugging it dry.
She swiped the back of her hand over her mouth, took a deep breath, and tried to remember how to function like a normal human being who didn’t have a giant deadly secret. She’d much rather discuss her apartment’s blatant lack of culinary equipment.
“What, um…What do you mean?”
It hardly sounded casual.
“Opal said Sheila knew something about her plan, but I haven’t seen Jackie in days.” Waylon scuffed his knuckles along the cliff of his jaw. “Do you think she’s heading to the marina?”
The truth was nuclear codes. A big red button that saidDo Not Push. Telling him the truth was something she’d assumed she’d get around to eventually—most likely around the time the yacht’s engine chugged to life. But that was before she’d kissed him. Before she’d learned how the slant of his mouth felt against hers. Before she realized Waylon was someone she could lose.
If the words left Fletcher’s lips, she would never be able to take them back. This thing between them—whatever it was, whatever it might become—would be blasted to smithereens.
Like sending documents through a paper shredder, Fletcher tore apart the honest answer until it was indistinguishable. All the information still there but unreadable. “Probably, right? You did say it was going to be a bloodbath over there. We’ll have to be careful.”
Waylon considered this. Evidently satisfied, he said, “Your turn.”
With all his attention on her, Fletcher’s skin felt too snug on her bones, her lungs too tight. Tapping her fingers along the countertop, she reached past a half-squashed pear where a bottle of alpine water acted as a paperweight. “What’s that?”
Clearly, she’d caught Waylon off guard. Rolling out his shoulders, Waylon took a moment to say, “That’s…the letter my dad left me. The one from his bedside table.”
Fletcher eyed it. Wrinkled, water-damaged, and woefully unopened. “I think he might have intended for you to, I don’t know, read it.”
“Maybe.”
“Are you going to?”
“Maybe.”
What it felt like, holding the last words your father would ever say to you, Fletcher couldn’t imagine. Estranged as they became, Dyer and Waylon hadn’t always been at such odds. Different men on different paths, sure. But how did you say goodbye to someone you had stopped speaking to for so long?
It wasn’t her turn again yet, but Fletcher asked, “What happened between you two?”
Waylon’s shoulders heaved with an Atlantean sigh. “We never saw eye to eye, but things really started going downhill after my mom passed. She was like our translator. I’d always say the wrong thing, or he’d piss me off, but she helped us understand each other better. Hard to believe it’s been five years already.”
He rubbed at an ache in his chest. A raw spot of grief this week had only agitated.
“After that, everything became about the business—his legacy. Every conversation we had was just some checklist his lawyers gave him aboutpreserving the company’s imageormaximizing shareholder returnsor whatever other bullshit thing they wanted to control me with. All my life I’ve been Waylon Cartwright, whether I wanted to be or not. People always think they know me. Think they can use me to get whatever they want. I was sick of it, especially after Eliza. The mold he wanted me to fit in, I refused. Eventually, I guess it became easier to cut me out entirely.”
His shoulders sagged, brows creased. Fletcher itched to smooth the wrinkle, massage the tension from his muscles.
“He loved my mom. I know he did. I even used to think he might have loved me.” Resentment lingered in his tone. “But never more than he loved Cartwright Media.”
Fletcher’s feet hit the floor, the distance between them vanishing. Lifting her chin to meet his gaze, Fletcher could slather herself in SPF 50 and spend all day long swimming in those eyes. Want readilypooled beneath her navel. Guys like him really should come with a warning label. “Can I kiss you again?”
He towered over her, and a striking smile touched his lips. “I think I get to ask the next question.”
“Maybe I’m tired of playing by other people’s rules.” Her fingers twisted into his shirt. She didn’t want to think about how they got here, or what happened when the sun rose tomorrow and her time ran out. They were here. Now. Together.
“Won’t this ruin your ten-year plan?”
“Yeah,” Fletcher said, just a breath punctuated with a laugh. “But I think that plan went out the window a few days ago.”
He grinned, a hand coming to rest against the dip of her waist. Desire bloomed in every corner of her body. “Sounds like a problem for us once we get off the island.”
Us.The word rang through Fletcher, bright and clear as a knife against a champagne flute. “Ifwe get off the island.”
“If we get off the island,” he conceded. His thumb traced the curve of her ear, down her jawline, until he caught her chin between his fingers. Waylon kissed her. Or maybe she kissed him. They met messily somewhere in the middle, kissing the same way they’d spent the last two days running: like their lives depended on it.
