Page 27 of Smartasses
“Don’t hate on the messenger. The good news is that we have the identity now, and I’m working to get her Insta account shut down. Copyright violations or something. I don’t know. Fred will come up with some scary bullshit to put in a cease and desist. All you have to do is stay clear of that woman from now on.”
The pronouncement still hit like a sucker punch. Carter knew his brother was right. Even if he wanted more than anything for it all to be a misunderstanding, too many things suddenly made sense. There were too many coincidences. Had she arranged to have a connecting room? Had the pants theft just been a ruse to get his attention? Were her friends in on it? How much were the gossip sites willing to pay for the photos? Was all of it bullshit?
A dark, swirling anger as the inevitable realization exams too tangible to ignore made his entire body tense as he watched Aubrey. “We’re in Nassau together.”
“Then get back to the ship and ditch her,” Byron all but yelled into the phone. “Remember what’s at stake here, Carter. What’s more important, some chick you met on a singles cruise or the role of a lifetime?”
He stared at his phone after his brother hung up without a goodbye, per usual, and tried to unwind the emotions twisting him up. Part of him wanted—needed—to believe it wasn’t right, that Byron had gotten it wrong. But that wasn’t possible. His brother was a lot of things, but he was damn good at his job, and he was thorough. There’s no way he would have named Aubrey without a solid, airtight case.
Carter looked up to where she stood about a third of the way up the limestone staircase. She paused to take a photo of the waterfall next to the stairs and then turned around and waved at him again. He didn’t wave back. He couldn’t. He was having too much trouble catching his breath after that gut punch. She hesitated for a moment, then headed down to him.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
And the concern in her voice as she took his hand, that all too familiar buzz of awareness shot through him at her touch, had him rethinking the truth again. Was he really this gullible? Or was there more to all of this than he or Byron knew? God, the whole thing made his head feel like it was going to explode.
“We need to get back to the ship,” he said.
Once there, he’d figure this all out. He’d get the truth from Aubrey, and after that, he had no fucking clue.
She looked down at the clock on her phone. “Oh, shit!” She turned the screen to face him. “How is it that late?”
Adrenaline jolted him into motion, and they took off at a sprint. Backtracking their path back to the port should have been easy, but that wasn’t how it worked. After at least five wrong turns, they got there right in time to see the ship heading home without them.
“What do we do now?” Aubrey asked, her eyes wide with panic.
Wasn’t that the question he couldn’t get out of his head? “I’m getting a hotel room, and then we’re going to have a talk, and you’re going to tell me everything.”
Because that discussion sure as hell could not take place in the open. He wasn’t about to have his cover completely blown by having a fight with Aubrey in the middle of the Nassau cruise ship port where any tourist with a camera could document the entire thing and sell it to the highest bidder. He took her hand and started toward the hotel they’d passed a few blocks back.
“Carter, what’s going on?” she asked, taking a step and a half to every one of his long, fast strides.
“We’ll talk about it at the hotel.”
“No.” She tugged her hand free and stopped walking. “You need to tell me right now.”
He turned, the white noise of his hurt and anger rushing in his ears and blocking out the sound of the ocean, the people passing them on the sidewalk, and everything else in the world except Aubrey. He heard her perfectly, and it cut right through him that she was still playing the innocent. She wasn’t dumb. She had to have guessed the gig was up, but she couldn’t let go. Whatever the payoff was, it had to be significant.
“I know you were the one running that damn thirst account that said I was on the cruise.”
She took a step toward him, reaching for him. “I can explain.”
He sidestepped her easily and started walking again. “Not here.”
And as they made their way at a fast clip to the hotel, he pushed down the part of him that still hoped there was an explanation for all of this. He couldn’t afford to let that happen. He’d been fooled by her once already, and he couldn’t let that happen again.
