Love In Translation

Nine

R heo walked out of the diner and joined Fletch on the sidewalk. She clocked his rigid expression and sighed. He was still pissed. She felt her skin prickle and her hackles rise—maybe she had spoken out of turn and come across as harsh, but the the main reason credit cards didn’t work was because they were maxed out. It wasn’t like she’d suggested he was a kitten kicker.

Rheo turned to walk home but Fletch’s hand on her elbow stopped her. He pulled out his phone and waved it. “Give me a minute. I want to check what’s going on with my card.”

Her early-morning start was catching up with her, and she wanted to go home for a nap. Going back to work and putting in an eight-to ten-hour day was going to kick her ass. Her sabbatical had made her soft and lazy.

Fletch rested his back against the wall between Abi’s shop and the boutique next door and lifted his boot, placing his foot on the wall behind him. His fingers flew over his phone and Rheo went to stand beside him, a fair distance away so she couldn’t see his screen and invade his privacy. He punched buttons, cursed softly, and punched more buttons.

“Everything is fine. My card must be faulty,” he told her.

Rheo wanted to believe him, but she’d heard the excuse a hundred times. She would far prefer him to be honest.

Admittedly, with this credit card situation and his reaction, she’d lost a little respect for him. Relief rolled through her. There was no way she would fall for him now. This was an insurmountable barrier, and even if he had another occupation, if he was a banker or accountant or lawyer, she couldn’t fall for a guy who, in his midthirties, didn’t know how to manage his finances. Not that she’d ever had intentions of falling for him but, well, things happened.

“Jesus, I’m so close to calling it right now,” Fletch told her.

Rheo frowned. What did he mean?

“I’m not crazy about people who assume shit.” Fletch machine-gunned his words.

Oh. He meant calling whatever they had. Ending it. Rheo swayed on her feet. Okay. Wow.

She lifted her chin. “What shit did I assume?”

“That I am some financially challenged moron who can’t find his ass with a flashlight.” Before she could think of a response to his furious statement, Fletch thrust his phone at her and she looked at the screen. Her eyes darted over the information. He didn’t owe any money on his credit card. In fact, he had a far bigger credit limit than hers.

Rheo started thinking she’d grabbed the wrong end of a poison-tipped stick. Shitshitshitshit.

“Would you like to see what I have in my bank account?” he demanded, now properly angry.

Oh crap. She’d misread this situation. Badly.

“I can assure you it’s equally healthy. I also have long-term savings, a retirement plan, a healthy portfolio of stocks, shares, and cryptocurrency. I own a production company, Rheo. I’m not rolling in cash, but I make decent money.”

Damn. Fuck . Rheo wrinkled her nose and met his eyes. She could talk her way out of this by lying or changing the subject, but both actions were beneath her. She’d made assumptions. And a complete ass of herself.

“I’m sorry,” she said, because she had no idea what else to say.

Fletch shook his head. “Not good enough. Do you want to tell me why you assumed I’m a deadbeat traveler with no clue about how to manage my finances?”

No, she didn’t. Her heart stumbled around her chest, and a lead weight sat in her stomach. She’d hurt him—she could see pain under his irritated expression, in the frostiness of his eyes. Hot shame and cold remorse made her body temperature irregular.

A truck slid into the parking space a few yards from them, and another car slid into one farther up. Gilmartin was waking up, and she didn’t want to beg forgiveness on the sidewalk.

She placed her hand on his arm and Rheo winced when he yanked it away. “If I have to explain—”

“Oh, you do,” Fletch assured her.

“Then can I do it at home?”

He stared at her, obviously debating whether to demand an answer right now or whether he could wait. Fletch eventually nodded, turned, and walked in the direction of the Pink House.

Rheo half ran to match his long-legged stride, and she was puffing by the time they reached the gate of the Pink House.

“You could’ve slowed down,” she complained as they walked around the house to enter the kitchen via the back door.

Fletch ignored her, standing back after opening the door for her. “Look, I’m too pissed to have a rational conversation with you right now. I’ll find you when I’m ready,” Fletch informed her and stomped back out the door.

Right. Shit.

A few hours later, in the Pink House’s empty kitchen, Fletch leaned against the counter by the coffee machine and crossed his arms. He was still seriously pissed off and had been since Rheo made her comments about him living in a van. Somewhere along the line, she’d assumed he’d stumbled from country to country, living hand-to-mouth. That she hadn’t looked further, or asked him, annoyed him even more.

And her ability to piss him off pissed him off more . He cared far too much about her and her opinion. He never gave a crap about how people viewed him; he didn’t spend a moment worrying about shit like that. People either liked him or didn’t, accepted him or didn’t.

He did care what Rheo thought...

Fuck. Not good.

Fletch reached for an apple from the fruit bowl and crunched down. He was—cliché or not—a lone wolf and had been for most of his life. His parents weren’t overly involved. Their aim was to make themselves superfluous to him as early as possible and insisted on him becoming independent from a young age. They never did anything for him he couldn’t do himself, and it made him self-sufficient. But there had also been a level of disengagement between them, and he carried that detachment into the other relationships in his life.

CFS had made him feel vulnerable, a sharp contrast to the independence instilled in him by his parents, and he avoided relationships that required him to expose his vulnerabilities. He had friends, like Carrie, Seb, and the senior members of his crew, but he didn’t easily let people in. Few people knew he had his own production company and that his company owned the rights to his adventure documentaries, as well as producing other travel shows. He left the day-to-day running of the company to his capable CEO and staff. In his industry, despite him owning a tiny house and wearing old jeans, he was a success.

He only ever indulged in brief sexually charged relationships and never allowed anything serious to develop. Falling for someone was something he refused to do, because commitment would limit his freedom and tie him down. He was close-ish to Carrie, but that was only because she chased freedom as hard as he did, and there wasn’t a dash of chemistry between them.

Rheo rapped on the door frame of the kitchen. She’d showered and pulled on a short flower-print sundress. She stood on one bare foot, the other tucked behind her calf. Rheo’s blue eyes met his and her remorse dropped his anger a notch. But she wasn’t off the hook yet, not nearly. He still needed, and deserved, an explanation.

“Can I come in?”

He nodded and continued to eat his apple. She pulled a chair from beneath the wooden table and sat. “As I mentioned, my parents lived in a van before it became a thing,” Rheo explained. “I lived with them until I went to high school.”

“You make it sound like they sentenced you to ten years in a penal colony,” Fletcher coldly stated. “A lot of people would consider yours a fantastic childhood.”

She pulled a face. “I hated every minute of it,” she told him.

He heard the crack in her voice and his attention sharpened.

“I hated not knowing where we were, where we were going, or what it would look like when we got there. I hated the changing view. We often broke down. And because we lived on top of each other, I heard every discussion between my parents and listened to them fighting about money, how little they had and how to get more. They were always short. It didn’t help that they were into fishing and hiking and rock climbing while I hated getting dirty and sweaty, and I have a fear of heights.”

Fletch tossed his core in the trash and sat opposite her. To a teen with CFS, hers sounded like the dream childhood—everything he wanted to do all the time. But he could admit that if Rheo didn’t enjoy the lifestyle, if she craved security and stability, if she hated what her parents loved—and it sounded like she did—then living in a van would’ve been hell.

But he still didn’t understand how her past related to her assumptions about his financial status.

“Why did you make those assumptions about me? Because of your parents?”

Rheo looked away, her focus on the marks left on the wooden table by countless Pink House dinners. “My parents are useless with money. Their old van is held together by duct tape and prayers, and I have no idea how they manage to afford to keep it and themselves on the road. I witnessed money sliding through their hands. You live in a tiny house, you don’t wear fancy clothes, we’d just been talking about them...and when your credit card was declined—”

He sighed. “You thought I was like them.”

“It was a gut reaction...and so wrong of me. I’m sorry.” She did look mortified, and he knew she was sorry.

But he needed more. “Were your parents that bad or did your childish imagination make it worse than it was?”

Kids had a way of exaggerating; he’d done it himself. Some days he thought his nine months spent dragging his tired ass around was the teenage equivalent of being a prisoner. Other days he thought they weren’t bad, just deeply boring. It depended on his mood and emotional buoyancy.

“I don’t know,” Rheo replied, lifting her shoulders to her ears.

His parents had taught him to be independent, but they’d also distanced themselves from his emotional needs. He found it difficult to form bonds. He tended to keep everyone at arm’s length, and it came at the cost of a deeper connection. This was the first time in—well, shit—forever that he wanted to dive deeper. He needed to get to the bottom of this. He needed to understand. Understand her . To do that, he needed more information.

“Tell me about them, Rhee.”

“My parents? What more can I say?”

Rheo looked off into the distance and he waited her out. She would either talk or not. He would wait till later to work out why he was going against the habits of a lifetime to learn everything about her.

Much, much later.

“I’m more like Paddy than like them. She’s organized and thoughtful, and she’s an incredible planner. As I said, I came to live with her when I was thirteen, and my world, for the first time, made sense. I had a routine, a bed that didn’t move, and a view that didn’t change. I was so grateful to feel settled that I emulated her in every way I could. Paddy planned, so I planned. Paddy read and spoke languages, so I did the same. She’s been my role model and I’m terrified of disappointing her. When she finds out how I screwed up and had to take a sabbatical and that I’ve been living here—”

The moisture in her eyes suggested she was getting emotional. “Take a breath, Rheo.”

“—she’s going to lose her shit. And Paddy losing her shit is not a fun experience.”

“Aren’t you overreacting?”

“I wish I was,” Rheo replied, sounding glum. “Paddy has higher expectations for me than she does for the rest of the family. I’m like her, the one who’s living life the way it should be lived.”

Right, she was back to sounding judgmental. There was more than one way of living life, but Paddy, and her granddaughter, had obviously missed that memo.

“People have a right to live the way they want to, Rheo.”

“Paddy doesn’t believe that, but I do,” Rheo agreed. “But you have to be able to pay for the life you lead.”

Fletch scratched the side of his neck and made the connection. “And your parents didn’t do that?”

“No, while they lived very frugal lives, they still never made enough money to pay for their way of life. Instead of doing something else, anything else, they borrowed money from family and friends, frequently ‘forgetting’ to pay them back. And if the demands for repayment got too loud, they borrowed money from someone else to repay that loan, with a little extra, and the snake started to eat its tail.”

“Did they borrow money from you?”

Rheo nodded. “More times than I can recall. I worked through high school and college so I had money to send them. They promised to repay it at the end of the week, the end of the month. Then they stopped making promises. Months would pass, they’d ask for another loan, and the cycle started again. Eventually, I just accepted I’d never get the money back. Love was tainted with resentment, respect with disappointment.”

“Something else happened.” He knew there was more to her story. “What else happened?”

Rheo threw her hands up, bemused. “How do you see what I don’t want you to?”

Easy to answer. “I keep telling you, you have an exceptionally expressive face. What else pissed you off?”

“You are so persistent,” she complained.

“If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t do what I do. Spill.”

Rheo traced a crack in the table with the edge of her thumbnail. “My father borrowed quite a bit of money from Paddy. He promised her, faithfully, hand on his heart, he’d repay it. I had my doubts and so did Paddy. He didn’t pay it back.” Rheo wrinkled her nose. “During one of their arguments, my father demanded to see Paddy’s will. He wanted to know what he was going to inherit from her. She was furious and refused to talk to him until he apologized for being so crass and greedy.”

“And did he?”

“He admitted to asking her about her will, checking that she had one and that her affairs were in order. He insists he never asked to see her will.”

It sounded like a special type of bullshit to him, and they all needed their heads knocked together.

“I know it sounds ridiculous, Fletch, it is ridiculous,” Rheo told him, rubbing her hands over her face. “But you can predict future behavior by past behavior. My parents have never saved, and they are getting older, and even my Peter Pan parents have to, at some point, start thinking of the future. The easiest way to fund their future is through inheriting money from Paddy. Paddy’s pissed because she worked damn hard for the money she’ll leave behind, and my parents, in her eyes, haven’t worked at all. She feels my father is being dishonest because he won’t admit to asking to see her will.”

“But you’re being deceitful too,” Fletch pointed out. “And you’re being a little hypocritical too. Aren’t you?”

He expected her to argue, but she didn’t. “Because I haven’t told Paddy I’m living here and what happened at work? Of course I am.” Misery jumped in and out of Rheo’s eyes.

Points for being self-aware, Rheo. But, man, her family situation was complicated, dominated by strong characters, misunderstandings, and undercurrents. He wasn’t into drama, thanks. It was another bullet point to add to his don’t-get-involved-with-Rheo list.

He was only here for another few weeks and wasn’t sure how long Rheo would be around either. The link between them was great sex and enjoying each other’s company. So God knew why he was asking about her family and digging into her past and problems. He needed to stop that shit. Immediately.

To distract himself, he shifted his thoughts to the way she made him feel physically. Rheo seemed to love sex as much as he did, and there wasn’t a better form of distraction. And they needed to be distracted, needed to be yanked out of the emotional and into the sexual.

Fletch walked around the table and held out his hand to Rheo. He wrapped his arms around her body, thinking about how well she fit next to his, how they seemed to be made for each other. Her soft against his hard, her femininity a perfect complement to his brawn. He slid his hand under her shirt, needing her hot, soft, fragrant skin under his hand. He brushed his mouth across hers and lifted his head to look at her.

“We talk far too much,” he told her, wondering if she’d get the subtext behind his comment. The more they talked, the closer they got, and that was dangerous. For him. For her. They needed to dissolve the emotionally sticky web they’d run into.

Awareness flashed and her nod came quickly. “We should definitely do more and talk less,” she told him, running the tips of her fingers along his jaw.

They were thinking alike, thank God. Relieved, Fletch covered her mouth with his, loving the way she responded, with no hesitation.

Rheo’s tongue tangled around his in a hot, slick slide, and her kiss annihilated thoughts of anything but the way she made him hum, then burn. Fletch swiped his thumb across her already hard nipple, waiting for her groan. Fletch sensed, no ego involved, he was the best lover she’d had. It was a title he was proud to own.

Fletch lifted her and sat her on the wooden kitchen table, shoving her skirt up her legs to bunch it across the top of her thighs. She spread her legs and he touched the wet spot on her plain white cotton panties. “I love how responsive you are,” Fletch said, his voice a growl.

“Lift your ass,” he told her.

Rheo lifted, and he pulled her panties down her legs, dropping them to the table next to her bare thigh. He looked down at her, open to his gaze, all pink and pretty and swollen and wet.

“Gorgeous. I can’t wait to be inside you.”

Rheo clasped the back of his head and pulled him down, feeding him hot, want-you, open-mouth kisses. He knew what she was trying to say: Take me away, make me stop thinking, get me out of my head...

She wanted his fingers, his mouth, and his cock in her, over her, taking and filling her.

He’d give her what she desired...eventually.

Fletch pushed her dress’s thin straps down her arms, and the top fell to join the skirt in a bunch around her hips. He unhooked her plain white bra and immediately fastened his mouth on her nipple, sucking it to the roof of his mouth. Her hand held his head in place, and he heard her soft pants, and her skin felt hotter. Her smell—the sexy, musky smell of perfume and a turned-on woman—hit his nose and his cock pushed against the fabric of his shorts, painfully hard. Needing more, he switched to her other breast, and teased her with his teeth before pulling her dress over her head and tossing it to the floor.

As long as he lived, he’d remember Rheo sitting on her grandmother’s table, the morning sun streaming into the room, painting her skin with a rose-gold sheen. He hooked a finger under the band holding up her hair and pulled it away. Her hair tumbled down her back, glinting in the sunlight.

Keeping his hands off her was nearly impossible, but he needed to burn this image in his mind. Her breasts were full and high, her nipples a delicious pink. Rheo placed her hands on the table behind her and looked at him, her gaze bold and confident. As his eyes moved down her body, over her rounded stomach, she spread her legs wide. Beneath the tidy patch of hair, her lips were pink and inviting. They glistened, and Fletch licked his lips, desperate to kiss her there.

This was what he needed, what he thought she needed too. After an argument, sex could be a reset, a way to push feelings, complications, and irritations away, to get back to the basics.

What did he know for sure? That they were just two consenting adults enjoying each other, cramming in as much good sex as they could before life pulled them apart and sent them in different directions.

Sex, this insane biological need to be together, made sense when not much else did.

“Let me look at you too, Fletch,” Rheo commanded him.

Unable to refuse her anything, he fumbled as he undid the button on his pants. Within seconds, less, he was naked. When her eyes hit his cock, he stroked his shaft from base to tip, imagining her lips around him, taking him deep. The wet warmth, her tongue rimming his head...

“That’s hot,” Rheo said, her voice breathy. “You’re hot.”

Rheo’s hand dipped between her legs, and she dragged her finger through her folds and swirled the tip around her clit. Thinking was bad, watching was good, but he preferred action...

Fletch dropped to his knees and, because he was tall, found his head was at the perfect height. He placed both his hands on the inside of her thighs, spread her wide, and covered her clit with his mouth. He licked. Then delved. Rheo moaned, then shuddered, but he didn’t stop. He sucked her clit onto his tongue, then lathed it gently, changing the pressure and intensity every few seconds.

Fletch looked up into her eyes, foggy with lust, and his heart did a one-two thump. It felt too full, on the brink of exploding in his chest, less sexual, more emotional. He yanked his eyes away, not wanting her to see how she undid him, that she made him weak, how he wanted to fall apart in her arms...how he could fit into her life.

She was unlike anyone he’d ever met. Could staying in one place for her be worth it?

What was he thinking?

Why was he thinking?

Fletch felt Rhee’s fingers tugging his hair, her harsh moans continuing. This was so much fun—making her come was his new favorite thing to do. It was the best way, in his opinion, to spend a morning. He lapped, sucked, stroked, and Rheo lay flat, her head tipped back and her hair spreading over the table. His hands went beneath her ass, and he lifted her, changing the angle, and pushed his tongue into her, then retreated to suck on her. Through panting breaths, she told him to put his fingers inside her, and he did, working in two, then three fingers. He ate at her, and she screamed, coming against his fingers and into his mouth with a hot, wet rush.

Her shaking continued as he pushed his cock into all that amazing heat and wetness. Her legs locked around his hips, and when he was as deep in her as he could go, he stopped moving. This was another moment he wanted to be burned into his memory bank.

“Why have you stopped?” she demanded, her voice ragged.

“Some things are meant to be savored,” he replied, shocked at how unsteady his voice sounded. “And I need a condom.”

“I’m on the pill and tested negative for everything at my last physical. If you did too...” She lifted her hands to cradle his face. “I need you to take me, Fletch. Hard and fast and fiercely...”

He wanted to, but he was a big guy, and she was a lot smaller than him. “I want to... God, so much.”

“I can handle it, Fletch,” she assured him, challenge in her deep blue eyes. “I can handle you.”

God, he loved her boldness. He pulled back, nearly all the way out, and plunged back inside her, burying his cock deep, loving the delicious feel of being skin on skin with her.

Blood roared as he found her mouth, kissing her with ferocious intensity. This was wild and primal, and he imagined fucking Rheo outside next to a river on a rock under the hot, bold sun. Given how much she hated the outdoors, she’d probably hate it, and a chuckle rose up his throat. He’d never wanted to laugh during sex before.

Then again, he’d laughed more with Rheo in the last few weeks than he had in years.

He pulled back to look at her and fell into her bright blue eyes.

“Taking you is the best thing,” he told her.

Rheo’s eyes widened and then she smiled. One day, sometime soon, he wanted to come on her smile.

Rheo’s hand slapping his ass, her rough voice demanding he make her come again, jerked him back. He’d been so inside his head, he’d lost track of his body, and her body.

That had never happened before. It wouldn’t happen again.

Fletch pounded into her, his hand under her butt anchoring her to him. Rheo lifted her hips, and when she gripped him, he finally let go, pulsing inside her, five or six times, shuddering as his orgasm rocketed from his balls to the base of his skull.

“Rhee... God . We’re so good at this.”

And fucking awful at the rest.

He rested his face against her neck, panting softly against her skin. Best sex ever.

“Why am I doing this?” Rheo demanded, five minutes into their hike. She glared at Fletch’s back as she followed him down a narrow path through a dense forest. She was a strong-willed woman, so how did he manage to persuade her to pull on a pair of leggings and a never-used pair of sneakers and follow him through a forest?

Sex. He’d asked her when his head was between her legs late last night, and she’d said yes. In her defense, she would’ve agreed to dive with great white sharks at that point. Without a cage...with chum in the water.

“You play dirty, Wright. Using sex to lure me to hike with you,” Rheo complained. “I don’t hike.”

Fletch didn’t look back, neither did he stop. “It’s a walk on a trail not two miles from your house, Whitlock. Newsflash...this is not an expedition to summit K2.”

The man was fluent in sarcasm. Damn, she liked that about him.

Rheo looked at the huge trees, caught glimpses of the sky beyond them, and decided it wasn’t, well, bad . In fact, it was quite pretty.

“You do realize we could be back in bed right now?”

Fletch, as she expected, ignored her. He wore a small backpack, and she prayed it contained a thermos of coffee. She needed a reward for being active. But she still maintained that sex was a more fun way to pass time.

But the air was fresh, and the sun, when it touched her face and shoulders, was toasty on her skin. She liked stretching her muscles and enjoyed the silence. No, it wasn’t silent—she could hear birds chirping, a stream burbling, the crack of a branch, and the whistle of the wind. But it was peaceful. And, yes—she almost didn’t want to admit it—rather lovely.

She wasn’t going to tell Fletch her thoughts. If she did, she’d never hear the end of it. And if she gave him an inch, she might next find herself in a kayak or in a harness preparing to climb a rock face.

Rheo wound her thin sweatshirt around her hips as she recalled yesterday’s fight. Embarrassment still burned. She was too old to make stupid assumptions. At her age, she should know better.

After she recovered from their hot kitchen sex—how was she ever going to enjoy family dinners knowing what she and Fletch had done on that table?—she’d apologized to Fletch again for being so judgmental. He’d nodded and only asked that she not do it again.

But she couldn’t stop the niggling thought... She’d been so quick to assume the worst about him. Did she do the same thing with her family? And after talking to Fletch about her family, she questioned her attitude toward her parents. She’d simply accepted Paddy’s version of her and her dad’s argument about the will. Rheo never reached out to get his side of the story. She made her judgment solely based on Paddy’s perceptions. She trusted her grandmother, but Paddy was intolerant and easily frustrated.

What if, like Rheo had today, Paddy got it wrong?

Her grandmother wasn’t infallible—though she liked to think she was—and she was getting older. What if Rheo’s dad was being honest? What if his explanation was the truth? Ed was many things—he admitted to being disorganized, lazy and unambitious—but he wasn’t a liar. He preferred to avoid painful subjects rather than bring them into the open and deal with them.

Believing Paddy’s version of events was easy. It was what she’d always done. Rheo always sided with her grandmother. They were the sensible members of the family, the ones who did things right. According to them...

People have a right to live their lives their way...

Rheo, deep in thought, crashed into Fletch and his arm encircled her, keeping her on her feet.

“Daydreaming, sweetheart? Wishing you were somewhere else?”

While she was lost in her thoughts, they’d hit a stream. A simple but sturdy wooden plank bridge was the only way to cross the water.

Fletch gestured to a fallen log. “Let’s sit.”

Rheo sat and stretched out her legs. Ahead was a clearing, and in the distance, a lake. She turned at the sound of chatter behind her and watched a group of teenage girls approaching them, fit and young and radiating energy. They wore expensive hiking boots, tight shorts, and crop tops. Rheo felt frumpy in her misshapen gray T-shirt and brown leggings. This pair had a hole in the fabric on the inside of her right thigh, so she kept her knees locked together.

The kids greeted them, skipped across the bridge, and strode away. Rheo, because she was fantastically mature, stuck out her tongue at their departing backs.

“It’s nice to see kids in nature and not behind a screen,” Fletch said, pouring hot coffee into the mug from the thermos. He handed it to her. “We’ll have to share the mug. I didn’t bring another.”

Rheo sipped, thanked him, and eyed his rucksack. “Did you bring anything to eat? I’m starving.”

He rolled his eyes. “Again, we are only two miles from home. You had breakfast twenty minutes ago!” he reminded her.

“Fresh air makes me hungry,” she muttered.

“You really need to get out more,” Fletch told her, his mouth quirking.

She loved his smile. It softened his face and made him seem more relaxed. Rheo decided to throw him a bone and used the coffee cup to gesture to the view. “This isn’t terrible,” she conceded.

“Be still my beating heart,” he dryly replied, removing the coffee cup from her grasp, its contents sloshing over the rim. “I’ll take that before you spill it.”

They passed the cup back and forth, the silence comfortable. Fletch seemed happy to be quiet and let her think.

His phone buzzed and Fletch pulled it from the side pocket of his cargo shorts.

“Aren’t you supposed to switch your phone off when you’re out in nature?” Rheo demanded.

“Again, we’re on the outskirts of Gilmartin, not in the upper reaches of the Andes,” Fletch replied, opening an email. He read it and his expression, excited but hesitant, intrigued her.

“Good news?”

He put his phone away and tossed the dregs of the coffee onto the grass. “Discovery Channel wants me to host a program on what they call Lazarus species. I need to tell them whether I’m interested or not.”

“What’s a Lazarus species?”

“They are animals we thought were extinct but have been found, usually in very remote habitats. The Caspian horse, the Fernandina tortoise, and the Somali elephant shrew are examples.”

Rheo had never heard of any of them.

“I’d have to go to the areas where the species live, help the scientists find them, talk about how important they are and what their loss of habitat means for them.”

“It would be quite different from what you do now.”

“Very,” Fletch agreed. “Shorter, for one. Each trip would be about three months instead of a year. I’d be able to use my degree in biology. But it would be a big departure for me, and I’d be going off-brand.”

“But you’d have a far bigger audience,” Rheo pointed out. She placed her hand on his shoulder. “It sounds like it’s something you’d like to do.”

Excitement flared in his green eyes, which then turned dense and unreadable. “Yes, no... I don’t know. I’ve worked damn hard to get to where I am. I would be going off course if I did this.”

“Or simply finding a new way through the jungle,” Rheo suggested.

“And you?” Fletch asked. “What’s your plan for the future?”

Ugh, just when she’d started enjoying herself in nature, just a little. But Fletch was done talking about himself, and it was her turn. Shrugging, she wrapped her arms around her bent knees. “Dunno.”

“You need to come clean to your family.”

That wasn’t news.

“It shouldn’t be this hard, right?” she asked him, leaning sideways and resting her head on his big shoulder.

“You made a mistake, Rhee.” He crossed his legs at the ankles and pushed his sunglasses into his messy hair. “You are allowed to make mistakes. It’s what humans do, it’s how we grow.”

“Have you? Made mistakes?” she asked him.

“ Fuck , more times than you would believe. When I was younger, my ego and my determination to get everything done better and quicker caused me to make dumbass decisions. I was damn lucky none of them ended in someone getting hurt. So, what’s stopping you from telling them?”

Could she tell him? Could she be that honest with him? Would he think less of her?

“Probably my ego,” she said, keeping her voice low.

He placed his hand on the back of her neck and his gentle squeeze gave her the strength to continue.

“I think I’m better than them, that I’m more sensible, the adult in the room. I really don’t want to admit I messed up.”

She’d followed Paddy’s example and picked up on her grandmother’s prejudices. She and Paddy planned everything, came home to the same bed in the same place every night and made “sensible” decisions. Her parents and Carrie were irresponsible and flighty and their choices questionable. But unlike Rheo, the flighty threesome were flexible. They could maneuver when life threw them off course.

They had more freedom, while she and Paddy played within the boxes they’d created for themselves.

Fletch kissed her temple and held his head to hers, seeming to understand how little she liked herself right now. Coming face-to-face with yourself, seeing the aspects of your personality you didn’t like, was agony. Doing it in front of a man you were crazy about was torturous.

Fletch moved away, bent his legs, and rested his forearms on his knees. “Can I make a suggestion?”

Rheo nodded and made a rolling gesture with her hand.

“Why don’t you explain your situation to Carrie first?”

She pulled a face and Fletch sighed.

“I don’t understand why you and your cousin aren’t better friends. If you met each other as adults, you’d enjoy each other. She’s a little wild, sure, adventurous, but she has a heart as big as the sun. And while you think you don’t have an adventurous bone in your body, you are far more open to new things than you profess to be.”

Rheo gasped. “How dare you!” she stated, dramatically slapping her hand on her heart. “I’m not in the least bit adventurous!”

He ignored her amateur acting. “I think you are. There is more than one type of courage, and you don’t have to run around the world to have an adventurous spirit,” he told her. “And Carrie is nicer than you think, and she’s a damn loyal friend.”

“She can’t keep a secret to save her life,” Rheo muttered. Carrie spoke first and thought later.

“She can,” Fletch insisted. “She’s kept a couple of mine.”

Rheo’s stomach churned and jealousy seared her throat. She hated that Carrie knew things about Fletch that she didn’t. She wanted to be the keeper of his secrets, the person who knew him best. Crap. She was sliding down that slippery slope from attraction to like , and she couldn’t do that. It would be a seriously stupid move.

“You need to get out of your comfort zone, Rhee.”

Okay. Change of subject. “Is that why you insisted I hike with you? Because you think I’m in a rut?” she asked.

“ Again , this isn’t a hike, it’s a stroll. And, yes, you need to get out of your comfort zone. You’ll get your confidence back quicker if you do things that scare you.”

“I don’t wanna.”

He ignored her. “Tell Carrie, see how she responds. Then tell your parents and your grandmother. You’ve got to start moving forward, sweetheart.”

Again, she didn’t wanna.

But he was right. She was treading water and she either needed to swim or she would sink.