Chapter Ten
A scream pulls me out of bed with a jolt, and though I try to grasp at the details of the dream I’d been having, they slip away like smoke through my fingers. It’s still dark, and a part of me wonders if the scream was in my dream as I gaze blearily around my quiet bedroom.
Then I hear the whimper.
Fully awake now, I scramble out of the room and through the back door to find Georgie crouched in a ball near the pool, her arms over her head and a stream of muttered curses spilling from her lips. The sky is an inky black, but there’s enough light coming from the open door of the pool house for me to see the cause of her distress.
Prince Harry is smelling her hair with great interest.
I release the tension from my shoulders with a breath. “What are you doing?”
Georgie’s head snaps up, knocking into Prince Harry’s mouth, and then she cowers again. “Get this monster away from me,” she hisses.
I reply through a massive yawn. “You must smell good.”
“King.”
One step forward is enough to convince the llama that his freedom is in jeopardy. Abandoning his sniffing, he lumbers quickly toward the pool. I shout and leap forward, but he’s too fast for me and plunges into the dark water with a kerplunk.
I curse and stuff a hand into my hair. “Stupid beast,” I mutter.
Standing, Georgie hurries to my side but stops about a foot away when she seems to realize I’m in nothing but my boxers. Though she averts her gaze, her blush is still obvious in the dim light. “Can, uh, can llamas swim?”
I press a hand over my heart to try to calm its racing. I think my dream had been a nice one, whatever it was. I also think Georgie might have been in it, so maybe it’s a good thing she interrupted it. “Yes, they can swim. Whether they can float is another question.”
Prince Harry lets out a mournful cry when he realizes his feet can’t touch the bottom of the pool. A few feet to the left, and he’d be fine…
“How does he keep getting out?” I ask under my breath, moving over to the pen and the wide open gate. Even I can barely get the latch open half the time, so I really have no idea how an animal with a clear lack of opposable thumbs has managed it more times than I can count.
“Why don’t you just wire it shut?” Georgie asks.
I turn to explain to her Prince Harry’s bizarre need for a walk around the neighborhood every couple of days but stop when my eyes catch on what she’s wearing. A tank top snugly hugs her curves, and her shorts could never be accused of being long. The sight of her legs—the sight of all of her, really—traps any words I might have said in my throat, leaving me standing here like an idiot with my mouth gaping open. Georgie is all woman, and I have never been gladder that I’m forcing her to sleep in the pool house.
Only the sounds of Prince Harry’s splashing and complaining fill the space between us for a long few moments, until Georgie clears her throat and wraps her arms around her middle.
“Um. Does he need help, or…?”
I glance at the llama, who has begun doing laps side to side. If he would turn ninety degrees, he would discover a whole other side of the pool that he could enjoy. “He’s fine. For now.” I’m tempted to jump in and force him out anyway, if only for the shock of cold water to keep my thoughts where they are safe. I may need to make a few more rules if I’m going to make it through this marriage. No tank tops. No shorts. No early morning wakeups when I’m too tired to keep my eyes from studying her face. And everything else. “What time is it?”
She looks at her watch. “Three.”
A laugh escapes out of my lungs. I’m used to waking up early, and bakers tend to keep early hours. But this is Willow Cove, and this town tends to sleep in. Kingston’s doesn’t even open until eight. “Why?” I breathe.
She shrugs. “I was slee…” She stops, seems to consider what she wants to say, and then shakes her head. “I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I would get an early start today. But then this creature”—she nods toward Prince Harry—“decided he wanted to take a bite of my hair.”
“Llamas don’t eat hair.”
“Yours seems to.”
I lift my eyes to her head, which is a safer place to look anyway, and barely hold back a wince when I see a giant glob of slobber in her damp curls. At the same moment, a breeze picks up, and I get a whiff of her shampoo. My body tenses up as I resist the urge to step forward and get a deeper lungful of the tantalizing scent. She smells amazing, and I would love to bury my face in her hair and breathe her in. Kiss her like I did in the bakery. Maybe…
I dive into the pool before I get any bad ideas.
It takes a good twenty minutes to coax Prince Harry up the stairs on the far end and out of the pool, and neither of us are happy when I shove him back into the pen and triple check that the latch is closed. I’m soaked, I smell of wet llama again, and my early morning wakeup is starting to catch up to me; the only reason I’m not in a foul mood is because I can probably go back to sleep for a couple more hours now that Georgie is around to handle the bakery. I haven’t had that luxury in weeks.
“Will it hold?”
I jump at the sound of Georgie’s voice, crashing into the wire fencing with a soft curse. “I thought you were gone,” I gasp.
She twists her lips up in a smirk. “And miss watching that show? I never would have guessed a llama would be so intent on staying in a pool.”
I brush my hand through my hair to keep it out of my face, all too aware of Georgie’s eyes tracking the movement with unveiled interest. She really needs to stop looking at me like that. I fold my arms, trying to cover some of myself up. “He loved the pool at Uncle Bill’s, but mine is too deep for him. It’s a miracle he hasn’t drowned yet.”
“Why don’t you drain some of the water out so it isn’t so deep?”
Her question hits me hard. Too hard. The solution is so simple, but it never once crossed my mind because I’ve been so tied up trying to keep everything else afloat along with Prince Harry. To my shock and horror, tears well up in my eyes, like all the emotion I’ve been tamping down is finally pushing back against my efforts.
I hate that Georgie is the only thing that’s been able to save me from drowning when she’s the one who pushed me in in the first place.
I clear my throat and turn toward the house. “That’s a good idea.” By some miracle, my voice comes out clear and calm. “Uh, I’ve got a family coming in for surf lessons today, so I probably won’t be able to stop by the bakery.”
“I can come by when I’m off.” Georgie’s voice sounds smaller than normal. “King, are you—”
“It might be a couple of busy days, honestly, so we’ll have to find some way to make sure people know we’re really married. I’ll, uh, text you.”
I slip inside the house and don’t stop moving until I’m safe in my bedroom, but even then I feel like Georgie’s eyes are on me. I know I shouldn’t hide from her like this, not when I need to play the part of loving husband, but I’m already getting sucked into her pull, imagining how much better my life could be with her in it.
If only I knew she could stay.
To make it through this, I’m going to have to change my strategy and avoid her whenever I can. This marriage is going to be the biggest wave I’ve ever attempted, and to make sure I don’t wipe out, I’m going to have to find my balance and ride this wave all the way through.
“Will you stop staring at me like that?” The question comes out of me rougher than I’d like, but I can’t help it. This is the first time I’ve gone out with the guys in weeks, and they’ve been looking at me like I’ve grown a second head. “What is with y’all?”
Coop snorts a laugh. “Don’t even pretend you don’t know what you did, Kingston.”
I sigh, gritting my teeth as the sounds of billiards and darts in the pool hall fill in the silence left behind by Coop’s comment. I came out to The Shallow End, Willow Cove’s local hangout spot, to try to get away from my new marriage, but of course my friends aren’t going to ignore the elephant in the room. That would be too convenient.
“So it’s true?” Duke asks, lifting an eyebrow at me. “You really married What’s-her-face?”
“Georgie,” Perry grunts, lining up his shot.
Beck frowns as Perry knocks two balls into the pockets at once. “Isn’t she the one who always got you into trouble over the summer?”
“She’s the one who turns King into a flat-out moron whenever he’s around her,” Coop says before I can argue. “Put the two together, and there’s one brain cell between them.”
I shoot a glare at him, but it isn’t all that effective because the other guys laugh. These guys have known me my whole life, which I would have thought would put them on my side, but apparently not. “Pretty sure you’re overreacting, Coop,” I say and then turn to Beck. “I didn’t get into that much trouble.”
“You once stole Carl Pinnock’s boat because Georgie wanted to re-enact that scene from Tangled,” he argues.
“One of the lanterns set fire to part of the boardwalk,” Duke adds.
“And almost got my dad’s plane,” Coop says.
I glance at Perry, wondering if he has his own addition to this attack, but he’s busy planning out his next shot. Hopefully that means I’ll have at least one ally tonight. The problem, though, is I can’t say anything about the Tangled incident because it was my idea. Not Georgie’s. “This isn’t a big deal,” I mumble. “So I got married. It’s not going to change anything.”
I’m met with four deadpan stares.
I guess I can’t blame them for disagreeing with me. They’re all as single as I was up until three days ago when I said, “I do,” and that’s unlikely to change. Clenching my hand into a fist, I shake my head and try to focus on Perry’s attempt to get another striped ball.
Coop doesn’t let me. “Dude, it’s like you forgot how this girl broke your heart.”
Duke and Beck both murmur agreement, and Perry makes his shot. He misses. Then he looks at me, and I feel like he’s trying to tell me something but I don’t know what it is. It would be helpful if he used his words more often than he does.
“I didn’t forget,” I say, trying to look at each of them so they know I mean it. “I don’t think I could ever forget.”
“Good,” Duke says. “Because you were the worst after she left.”
Beck chuckles. “I’ve never seen a guy mope the way you did.”
Again, I can’t argue, and I’m regretting more and more my decision to come out tonight. But if I had stayed home, I don’t think I would have been able to avoid Georgie. I’ve been doing my best to keep my distance the last couple of days after the incident with Prince Harry, but each night it gets harder. I’ve found myself staring out the window into the backyard, hoping for a glimpse of her.
I got one earlier tonight. She was talking to her phone—a video call, probably—and pacing along the edge of the pool in a t-shirt and cutoff jean shorts, her hair pulled up in a high ponytail that spilled her curls up and out like the top of a pineapple. I had a hand on the back door before I caught myself, and I was out the front door and driving into town a moment later.
With the way the guys are looking at me, I might have been better off facing my attraction to Georgie than dealing with their judgment.
“She called me, you know,” Beck says, raising his eyebrows as he watches my reaction.
I try not to clench my jaw and glare at him, though I’m not sure I succeed. “Did she?”
“Seems she has plans to renovate your uncle’s bakery and needs a contractor.”
“Yep.” My voice breaks on that one, and I clear my throat. “Whose turn is it? Mine?”
Coop pokes me in the gut with his cue. “You’re sitting out this round, dude.” Then he nods for Beck to take his turn.
Chuckling, Beck bends down to try to knock the solid blue into the side pocket. “Are you good with that? Making changes?”
“The bakery is hers.” Or, it will be if we can manage to get Vanderman to believe she’s really my wife. Our meeting with him is tomorrow, and I keep getting more and more nervous about that. If he sees through our ruse and decides I’m trying to dupe him, what then? I could divorce Georgie and tell her we gave it our best shot, but that feels…wrong.
But it’s not like these first few days of our marriage have been right.
“I’m meeting with her in a couple of days,” Beck continues. “I can fill you in on whatever she’s thinking.”
“Why would I need that?”
Beck’s shot is off, but only barely, and he chuckles again as he steps aside to let Coop analyze the table. “Because you looked like I slapped you when I said she called me.”
That wasn’t because of the renovations, but I can’t tell him that. It’s dangerous enough that Coop knows the truth, and while I trust my friends, I’m not sure I can trust their reactions if I tell them that my marriage to Georgie isn’t real.
I shouldn’t be worried that Georgie might take one look at Beck and realize she could have done better than me, but I am. Which is crazy. Our marriage is temporary, and we both know it, so it shouldn’t matter if Georgie takes an interest in someone else. Maybe I’m worried about Beck’s emotional stability, since he will get the same treatment I did if he tries convincing Georgie to stick around.
Though, if anyone could get her to change her mind, he probably could.
I growl a little and fold my arms, silently telling myself to relax and stop thinking about what Georgie may or may not do. I’ve never been able to control her actions, and I never will.
“Why marriage?” Perry asks suddenly. He speaks at the same time Coop takes his shot, which throws him off and sends the cue ball spiraling across the table.
“Dude!” Coop complains.
My gaze jumps to Perry once the ball stops moving. “What?”
He shrugs. “You haven’t seen Georgie in years.”
When he doesn’t elaborate, Duke does it for him. “Didn’t she just come back into town? Getting married is kind of skipping a few steps, especially after what happened way back when.”
I glance at Coop, who narrows his eyes at me. Guess I won’t be getting any help from him on this one. I shrug. “Seemed like the best thing to do at the time.”
Coop barks out a laugh. “One brain cell,” he repeats and pats Duke on the back, telling him to take his shot.
“Will you stop?” I complain.
“He has a point,” Beck says. “Whenever you and Georgie were together, you tended to jump right into things without thinking them through first.”
I force out a laugh. “As if all of you were totally logical all the time. We were teens. Of course we were impulsive.”
“The two of you were worse,” Perry says. And then, almost too quietly for me to hear, he adds, “Seems little has changed.”
“Look,” I say sharply, “maybe it was impulsive, but Georgie and I are married. That’s not going to change.” Not for a little while, anyway, but I just need them to believe me for now. “We’ve both grown up, and it is what it is. Okay?”
“How romantic,” Coop mutters, rolling his eyes at me.
We’re all silent for a few minutes, and the guys each take their turn until Perry is left with the eight ball and a difficult shot. But he’ll probably make it. Beck must sense that he and Duke are about to lose because he turns his attention to the rest of the pool hall. There’s a group of women in the corner, and though I’ve noticed them looking our way for the last several minutes, I’ve been ignoring them.
Beck seems interested until his eyes shift to my hand where it rests on my arm. “Any reason you’re not wearing a ring, Kingston?” he asks. “Because we seem to have caught some attention, and I’m getting the impression they think you’re available like the rest of us.”
I groan. “I’ve been busy.”
“Georgie doesn’t have one either,” Coop adds unhelpfully.
“Busy,” I repeat.
“Maybe you should get unbusy and show the world you’re off the market,” Duke says. “Make some space for the rest of us.”
Perry bounces the eight ball off the wall and into the corner pocket, just as he planned, and then he sends a searing scowl toward Duke. “Speak for yourself,” he grunts.
“Amen to that,” Beck agrees.
Coop turns his gaze to me, eyes narrowed but a mischievous grin on his face. “Here’s hoping your fun little impulse decision doesn’t prove us all right. Love is the worst, and you might be the biggest idiot of all of us for thinking otherwise.”
Even if he knows my marriage is fake, I’m worried Coop is going to end up being right, just as he predicted. Love is dangerous.
And Georgie even more so.