Chapter 17
The grill was winning.
Everett had known this for the last several minutes, since the first plume of black smoke lifted off the cast-iron pan and carried with it what used to be a filet of salted fish.
He stood at the grill station with the ocean spread below him, flat and silver-blue in the early light, wondering what the hell he was doing.
He didn’t cook.
Ever.
He lived in a hotel for a reason. And when he wasn’t at the hotel, he was at one of his parents’ homes, where there were plenty of staff around to make sure he didn’t starve.
Even knowing this, he found himself raiding Sebastian’s deep freezer, pulling out the most ambitious ingredients, and attempting to make a breakfast to wow Remington when she woke up.
After what she’d been through last night, she deserved so much more. But all he could offer her was a temporary distraction.
The right kind.
Not the kind he’d made last night.
Scraping the fish into the trash, he abandoned the idea of starting over. He turned his attention to the goat sausage, spitting grease in every direction, and the root vegetables, escalating quickly toward a blackened state and sticking stubbornly to the pan.
The kiss.
The reason he hadn’t slept a wink last night.
Remington had been vulnerable, traumatized by what she’d done to Bobby. He’d comforted her, held her, and then crossed a line he never should have.
He hadn’t meant to kiss her. It just happened.
Everett tossed the spatula onto the counter with a clatter and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. The kiss had looped so many times in his head that it had become both crystal clear and surreal.
His hands had found her beautiful face, thumbs grazing her cheekbones, fingers threading through her hair.
When their lips met, something feral ignited in his chest. The kiss morphed from gentle to consuming in a blink.
He devoured her mouth with an urgency he couldn’t control.
Her lips parted instantly, no hesitation, giving him the opening he needed.
His tongue swept inside and found the mouth he’d once known but longed to rediscover.
The familiar taste of her had sent a jolt of electricity straight through his core.
His cock hardened as his grip on her face tightened.
He angled her head to deepen the kiss. Their mouths moved together with such desperate hunger that breathing became secondary, irrelevant.
They were perfectly in sync in a way that stole the breath straight out of him.
The kiss had consumed him, erasing everything but the sensation of her lips, the shared heat, the thundering pulse between their bodies.
Remington didn’t resist any of it. She didn’t push him away, yielding to his every move, soft and pliant. She accepted everything he gave.
But that wasn’t the same as kissing him back.
And that was the reason he’d torn himself away from her, breaking the kiss in a flurry of awkward apologies.
A splatter of grease leaped from the pan and caught the back of his hand. Everett cursed under his breath, then reached for the tongs. He turned the sausage. One side was nearly black.
“Damn,” he muttered, then moved it again.
Everett knew enough about love to know it didn’t dissolve because of anger, disappointment, or rash regretted actions.
Despite what she’d done, Remi still loved Bobby, in whatever complicated, fractured shape that love had taken.
She was grieving the loss of him at her hands.
A grief that had its own kind of loyalty.
She’d welcomed the comfort of Everett’s kiss, but her heart wouldn’t let her commit to it.
He understood that. He didn't have to like it to understand it.
He paced toward the edge of the deck, staring out at the black sand in the distance.
He more than didn’t like it.
He hated it so much that it was wrecking him.
But he had to stay strong for Remington. Push his feelings to the hidden parts of his mind so he could focus on what she needed. Help her out of whatever hell last night had become.
Knowing that she thought of herself as a killer had triggered the primal protective instinct he had only for her.
A deep need to erase the pain etched across her face and replace it with the truth.
No matter what happened last night, Everett knew who Remington was, inside and out, down deep in her soul.
She wasn’t a murderer. After everything she’d been through, he wasn’t surprised that any new threat would cause her to lash out.
Protect herself with everything she had. She wouldn’t be a victim again.
The question he couldn’t answer was what kind of threat Bobby had been to Remington?
What had he done to her?
He gripped the edge of the railing, veins bulging in his hands. He glanced at his wrist, then thought of hers. The bruise tattooed around it, dark and deliberate. The knot on the back of her head she’d tried to hide from him.
He clenched his jaw, second-guessing every tortured decision he’d made after Jamaica. He’d been too broken, his life shattered, dreams torched. He hadn’t stayed. He hadn’t been around to witness what she’d gone through. How she’d coped with everything that happened to her.
Bobby was the one who’d been by her side.
They’d both loved her. Bobby had loved her for longer. Everett had loved her and was the first to get her love in return. Never in a million years had he thought that Bobby could physically hurt Remington.
Had he been wrong?
Had the bastard manipulated her? Twisted her gratitude into some kind of warped sense of love and devotion, then turned on her. Put his hands on her? Had she killed her husband last night because he’d given her no other choice?
Bile rose in Everett’s throat. His fingers dug into the railing, splinters threatening his skin.
His vision darkened at the edges as he conjured images of Bobby’s hands around Remi’s delicate wrists, squeezing until those purple-blue bruises bloomed beneath his fingers.
He swallowed hard, forcing down the urge to vomit.
He’d kill Bobby himself if the bastard weren’t already dead.
As much as he wanted to know every single detail of what happened last night, he wouldn’t push. He couldn’t. He had no right to know anything more than what she chose to tell him. If she chose to tell him. She’d been through enough without him adding the weight of his questions to it?—
“Are you trying to burn this place down?” Remington’s voice cut through his spiraling.
He turned toward the sound. His heart skipped a beat as he took in the sight of her, still wearing his sweatshirt and pants.
Her hair had dried into the loose waves he’d always loved and hung down her back to her waist. She stood over the grill, pan lifted as tendrils of black smoke curled into the air.
A sly smile played on her lips as she stared at him with those gorgeous hazel eyes. She was too damn stunning for words.
“I was trying to make you breakfast.” He bit his lower lip, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned against the railing of the deck.
“You were making charcoal.” She lifted the blackened goat sausage patty with tongs and held it toward him. “What is this? A hockey puck?”
“Goat sausage …”
Her pained gasp made him chuckle.
“Please tell me this isn’t premium goat meat from our farm.” She winced, leveling him with a stern stare.
“Fine. I won’t.”
Shaking her head, she reached for the knobs on the grill, turning the fire down, then dumped all the food into the garbage.
“How about I start over and fix something we can actually eat,” she said, peering at the bowl filled with a mixture of milk, cinnamon, and bread that had disintegrated into mush.
“I’m not going to ask what this was supposed to be.
” She dumped it into the trash with the others.
“Seriously, Everett. What made you think you could make breakfast? You can’t cook.
Boy born with a silver spoon in his mouth and staff waiting on him hand and foot. ”
“After everything that happened last night, I wanted to do something nice for you.”
She paused. Her hands trembled as she rested them against the small wooden counter next to the grill. As her head lowered, the first tear slipped from her eyes and slid down her cheek.
He stepped closer, then stopped. “Hey … I didn’t mean to …”
“Coming to help me like you did is so much more than I deserve,” she said, her voice low. “You don’t need to do anything else for me. That was more than I ever hoped for?—”
He couldn’t resist her anymore. Closing the distance between them, he pulled her into his arms, tilting her head to look up at him. “I’ll always be there for you. No matter what. You need to accept that as the one truth that will never change, Remington. Never.”
The sob choked in her throat. “Everett … what am I going to do? My life is over. I can’t come back from what I did. I’m going to prison for the rest of my life?—”
“No, you’re not.”
The thought of her spending a single second in Tiverton made his blood boil.
It would kill him to know that she was trapped in that place for the rest of her life.
The thought of her wasting away in a maximum security prison for getting rid of a man who didn’t deserve her made his skin crawl.
He couldn’t let that happen. He wouldn’t.
“I don’t have a choice. I have to turn myself in,” she said, but she wasn’t convincing herself or him.
She was saying what she thought he wanted to hear.
But he learned a long time ago that his rules didn’t apply to Remington.
“I can get you out of here. Give you a new life far away where no one can find you. You’ll have your freedom, but it won’t be without some sacrifice.”
In the short time that Stingray Security had been fully operational, they’d done that for a handful of clients who had no other options.
The threat to their lives was too great to eliminate.
They’d gotten damn good at it. He would do the same for Remington.
She never had to face the consequences of the biggest mistake of her life.
“It’ll be tough leaving your family behind. Your mom, the twins, and especially your dad.”
“And you.” Her words pierced his heart as she rested her hands on his forearms. “I know we haven’t spoken much in years, but it gave me a sense of peace and comfort knowing you were here on the islands with me. Close enough that I could see how you were doing without interfering with your life.”
He closed his eyes.
Remington was his life. That was why he settled back in the Palmchat Islands instead of moving home to Connecticut. Distance from her didn’t work for him, even knowing she was married to a man he despised.
“I’m going with you,” he said. “You won’t be alone.”
Her eyes grew wide.
“You’d leave your entire life behind, all your friends, your PI business, Stingray Security, your parents … for me?”
“In a heartbeat.”
“Everett …”
“That’s a non-negotiable. Your new life, far away from here, comes with me. Package deal. It only makes sense. I’m the one with the skills and expertise to make us disappear and ensure we’re never found unless we want to be.”
She went still, the warmth in her expression fading into something uncertain.
“That doesn’t mean you’d have to …” he struggled to say the words. “It could be like it has been here in the Palmchat Islands. I’m close enough to watch over you. Close enough for you to feel safe. That’s all.”
“That’s all?” She gripped his arms tighter. “That’s everything. But I don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand?”
Couldn’t she see that he loved her too much to ever leave her?
“Why would you be willing to do all of this without knowing why I killed Bobby?” She inhaled a deep breath, then stared into his eyes and straight through his soul.
“You haven’t asked me to tell you a single thing about what happened last night.
Don’t you need to know before you throw your life away for me? ”
“Spending the rest of my life having you all to myself doesn’t come close to throwing my life away.
” He paused, wishing that he hadn’t been so honest. But being this close to her was making it difficult to hide how much he loved her.
That his feelings for her had never changed, no matter what personal hell he’d gone through.
“And to answer your question, no, I don’t?—”
His phone buzzed, rumbling between them.
He pulled it from his pocket and stared at the screen.
“Damn it …” he muttered. “I gotta go.”