Page 37 of Sucker For You

He grinned at her now as he’d grinned in her imagination, thumbing a speck of sand off his chin.

Or—maybe it was too easy.

A swell of warmth flushed her cheeks again. She ducked her head, dropping to her heels beside another tide pool, evaluating the rough angles of the rock for barnacles or evidence of tool usage. Octopuses had been observed employing empty clam shells to break the protein byssal threads that attached mussels to their boulders. But if the evidence was here, she didn’t see it. She couldn’t focus on the task. Not with Wes’s shadow across her neck.

“How’d you help me in the shower? The interviewer might ask.”

Ink, steam, the texture of his body under her fingers.

She thrust her hands into the pool. Her knuckles knocked into a sea urchin’s spines. She took comfort in the disconcerting, distracting sensory change for a moment, the water icing her own skin, steadying her breath before she tackled his question—and that smile.

“I—”

Then her phone vibrated.

It vibrated so violently that it buzzed itself from the rear pocket of her trousers. Isabel barely caught it before it splinteredon the rocks, the device’s illuminated pixels swimming under her wet fingerprints.

Maybe she should have let it crack.

New Message:Dr. Chase Meyer Jr.

Suddenly, here was a different question.

“Are you going to answer him?” Wes’s grin was gone.

“I. . . I haven’t read the text yet. I don’t know what it says.”

He ignored her reluctance and her deflection. Instead: “Are you going to tell him?”

Are you going to tell him about this?

About us.

If she explained—confessed—to Chase that she was canceling their wedding, there would be no retreat from that decision. She would have made a final choice. Right or wrong, it would be done. If she cut him off, stopped trying to correctly manage her reaction to, and fix, last night’s situation at the St. Francis Yacht Club, she’d have put her complete trust in Wes Monaghan. A man she’d known for less than a day.This stranger.She would have committed herself to a terrifying, rash, and maybe even brave choice and—

Buzz.

A second message appeared under her thumb.

Appeasements and apologies with Chase were safe. She knew their benefits and consequences. Nothing about Wes was safe. Not his fantasies, not his profanity, not his welltraveled stories, not his quick, bold laughter—everything as transparent as glass, as a rock pool without a tide. The responses of her own body weren’t safe, either, not with her pulse beating hot and hard now from a brutal cocktail ofanxiety, vertigo, and pure, visceral awareness. Her mouth tasted like copper.

And he was waiting.

But she frowned at a third message notification on her screen and the audio call that followed. If Wes could wait, why couldn’t Chase?

Why shouldn’t he?

So she didn’t answer. Instead, she sent the man to voicemail. Then Isabel muted Chase’s number and twisted off his ring.

Just today, maybe she could have this quiet.

Not forever. She knew that. Eventually, she’d have to answer him.

Today, though?

“Nothing,” she said. “For now, I’ll tell him nothing.”

“It’s what he deserves.” Wes’s smile reemerged more swiftly than the sun had parted Monterey’s fog. So bright, so easy, like summer. He nodded at her bare finger. “But also,for now, we’d better check our cereal boxes. Maybe one of the prizes inside could be a replacement for you. Or at least a ring pop.”