Chapter Twenty-Two #2
“You’re not puking now. Want to go snorkeling with us later today?”
“Um, no, thank you. I can’t imagine how you two would snorkel.”
Rhys snorted into his coffee.
“I heard that.” Abigail pointed at the man as silent laughter shook his chest. “Let’s go shopping. It’ll be fun, so long as you two don’t sneak off into a dressing room or something.”
“We’re not sneaking off anywhere.”
“Given how pink your cheeks have been during this entire meal, I don’t believe you.”
Their waitress returned and asked, “Anything else I can get for you?”
“Nope. Just the check,” Abigail said.
The waitress smiled, pivoting to face their table and Rhys’s. “Actually, someone covered your bill. They said to tell you, ‘Happy retirement.’ Congrats. You’re good to go. Have a great day.”
Jules locked eyes with Rhys.
“Thanks,” Abigail said, though her voice faltered.
Rhys jumped to his feet. “Who picked up the check?”
The waitress stumbled back. “Uh, I, um. I don’t know.”
“Do you have security cameras?”
“No.” She shook her head, inching back.
“I need to talk to your boss,” Rhys said. “You’re not in trouble. We’re not causing a problem. I just need to talk to her.”
The waitress nodded and scurried away.
He scanned their surroundings again and relocated from his table to theirs. “Who knew you were here?”
“No one,” they said. Rhys knew the restaurant had been chosen at random as they walked through the center of the resort.
The manager approached, and Rhys stepped to the side to have a private conversation. He returned a moment later, still scanning the outdoor seating. “You have your phones on you?”
They nodded.
“All right. Let’s go.”
“They’re tracking us with our phones? How is that possible?” Jules asked as they moved into the throng of people.
“Just one possibility of many,” he said. “Dean will check back with the restaurant and follow the payment.”
He moved them through the crowd as though it were far bigger a deal than he wanted to admit.
“Does this mean we don’t go shopping?” Abigail asked.
“No.” Rhys guided them down the street. “We carry on as normal.”
“Then why are you hurrying us?”
“Because I don’t like the unknown.” They slowed down at the corner of the shopping district, where artisans bartered and traded, shopkeepers offered incentives, and tourists walked elbow to elbow. “Doesn’t this look fun?”
“That didn’t sound believable,” Abigail said over her shoulder.
Dropping back, Rhys pressed his phone to his ear. Jules guessed Titan wouldn’t be able to trace the payment, and that would sour everyone’s mood even more.
They window-shopped until he finished his call.
Rhys promised all was fine but stayed close.
Jules had had plenty of people bother her over the years, and she had learned to live with it.
Right now, it was taking more effort than usual.
But if she wasn’t in danger, she’d keep shopping with her sister. This was the life they’d grown up in.
They bumped into people who recognized her, and she agreed to a few pictures. Whenever the attention became too claustrophobic, Rhys rescued them.
Jules and Abigail bought hand-sewn scarves and skirts, picked out jewelry for Sloane and Margot, and found handcrafted stationery for their mother and a shot glass for their dad. He’d never admit to it, but his touristy shot glass collection made him happy.
“Do you think Scar would like this?” Jules picked up a choker necklace with a turquoise-blue and olive-green beaded lily and held it up for Rhys. “The flower goes on the side. Like this.”
Rhys stared at her, then Abigail, seeming to be searching for the answer to a trick question. “I can’t picture Scarlett wearing anything floral.”
“It’s not floral. It’s a flower.”
“Right.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I’ve seen part of her hair that color blue before. So, yeah?”
They got Scar the necklace for no other reason than how confused Rhys looked, and by the time they’d returned to the bungalows, the day had caught up to them, especially Abigail, who protested she was fine but couldn’t hide the exhaustion creeping into her eyes.
They dropped her at her bungalow then followed the snaking sidewalks past his old bungalow, winding along the gardens and the beach toward theirs.
“Do you have more of those photos?” Jules asked him.
“Maybe.”
She elbowed him. “Are you on Tinder or something?”
He laughed. “Nope.”
“Have lots of women seen those pictures?” she asked, sounding jealous, which she didn’t have any right to be. Yet she wasn’t not jealous. Just curious. Who did Rhys send shirtless pictures to when he wasn’t on a fake-boyfriend-on-vacation trip?
“A couple.” They stopped in front of their bungalow. “Promise you won’t laugh?”
Her eyes bulged. “Why do I need to promise that?”
“You just do.”
She crossed her heart. “Promise.”
“Vivian and Gage—”
“Who’s Gage?”
“Sorta like our number two, but he’s been undercover a lot lately.
So, Viv and Gage had to build this cover story for a client.
Her phone had to be filled with pictures of shirtless guys.
” He shrugged. “So we all took one for the team and shot a couple pictures. Sent them to Dean, who couldn’t say a damn thing because he had done the same.
They stacked the phone full of thirst traps, then never needed to use the phone anyway. ”
Her mouth hung open. Rhys pressed two fingers to her chin until she snapped it shut.
“So the women who saw those photos?” Jules asked.
“Viv and Scarlett, who will probably never stop ribbing us over them.”
Jules sucked in her cheeks. “Will you send me some that no one at your office ever saw?”
Grinning, he winked. “I’ll have to do that sometime.” Rhys punched in the door code on their bungalow. “You going to send me one too?”
She wouldn’t even know how. “Guess you’ll have to find out.”
As they walked in, the air conditioning wrapped around them. She dropped her bags and kicked off her shoes. Tired, hot, and sticky, she needed a shower and probably a nap.
“I’m going to follow up with Dean,” Rhys said. “And probably learn a whole lot of nothing.”
She didn’t understand why someone had chosen her defunct honeymoon to keep harassing her. Would this have happened if she’d married Mason?
Lots of things wouldn’t have happened if she’d married Mason. Like Rhys.
Was she falling for him? With such an intense physical connection, it would seem ridiculous to say she hadn’t already started to. But Jules really didn’t trust relationships, and this one had an expiration date.
Even if it didn’t, she didn’t trust an emotion like love. Attraction made sense and wasn’t sentimental. She couldn’t confuse magnetism for more than it was. She also didn’t completely trust Rhys and hadn’t for more than a decade. But was that still true?
Well, she trusted him with the important parts, like her life. Just not her secrets. Maybe she did trust him and simply hadn’t forgiven him.
Wow, was that screwed up. Rhys hadn’t had a choice. Twenty-year-old Jules hadn’t trusted him—or understood why he’d divulged her secrets. Thirty-five-year-old Jules did. She just hadn’t realized that she had outgrown her grudge.
The realization nearly knocked her over. When had that happened?
It was probably sometime over the years, when he’d kept plenty of her secrets, like about the men she didn’t like dating, the roles that she wished she had won, the fights with her parents, and the red-carpet disasters that she would deny to her dying breath.
She trusted Rhys. And she needed to tell him that.
Really, she needed to apologize for pushing against his testifying.
She’d been so young, and that had seemed like the biggest deal.
Little did she know that time would pass, and what was a monumental problem would be a pebble of an issue in the grand scheme of things.
“I’m going to take a shower,” she called to him as he paced while on the phone.
He nodded and continued speaking.
Jules showered away the afternoon of shopping and slipped into bed. His pillow smelled like him, and she breathed him in, closing her eyes. Napping on vacations was peak relaxation.
She heard Rhys turn on the shower.
Wouldn’t it be nice to live with someone who understood her, who didn’t want anything more from her than just her? She would never have had that with Mason. Maybe she would with Rhys.
Her eyes flew open. With someone like Rhys.
That was what her subconscious had meant.
She’d figure out how to believe that. But it couldn’t be Rhys.
They were only having fun. They lived on separate sides of the continent.
They couldn’t be together. He wouldn’t want to, even if she did.
Rhys hated everything about her life. Not that she liked it all that much.
One week left with Rhys. A dull ache squeezed her heart.
He finished his shower quickly, and when he stopped in the bedroom, she pretended to be asleep. She didn’t know why and couldn’t explain the reason it was suddenly hard to breathe.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she prayed she could stop thinking and just fall asleep.