Chapter 7
7
Sloane
Can a woman not visit her favorite spot in town before work in the morning without having her pretend fiancé follow her around?
This is getting creepy. Especially the part where someone else was in the alley and another someone else was driving a car, and that person looked weirdly like Davis when they drove past, right down to the manbun.
And that weird feeling has taken firm hold even before Davis strolls through the back entrance like he owns the freaking place.
“What are you doing?” I hiss as he tests that the door is shut and locked. “How did you do that? We changed the code. We’re changing the code daily . How did you know the code?”
I don’t know why I’m hissing.
I could yell.
We’re alone.
No one to hear me.
Probably.
I think.
“You didn’t lock the door behind you.”
I blink. Did I?—
I did too . And on top of that, we upgraded the locks yesterday so that they lock automatically.
He knows the code.
He knows the freaking code.
“Who are you working with? Why are you following me?”
He doesn’t answer.
Naturally.
But he is staring rather intently at the two maps that one of the volunteers left laid out last night when she closed up.
“Are you spying on me?” I ask again. Or— “Oh my god, are you guarding me?”
His face freezes.
You’d think I couldn’t tell with Mr. Poker Face, but I’m paying close enough attention that I see the shift.
His face has gone as still as the eye of a hurricane.
“You are .”
“Prefer not to.”
“Why are you guarding me?”
“What I do for my pretend fiancées.”
I’m not a growler. I’m truly not.
But for the second time in just a few days, I’m growling at a man.
He holds eye contact briefly, and I swear his lips twitch up.
Just the teensiest bit, but it’s enough for me to be certain he’s amused by me.
And that annoys the shit out of me. “I could call the sheriff and have you removed.”
“Someone broke in here three days ago and one of your staff left maps out overnight? That normal?”
I shiver.
I don’t want to, but I do.
Fine. I’m not here because I like to visit before work, or because it’s my favorite place in Shipwreck.
I’m here to make sure everything’s in order.
And he’s right.
It’s not normal for maps to be left out overnight. I hadn’t noticed before the hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I ducked my head outside to see why I was suddenly freaking out as soon as I got in the building.
“You know the code,” I remind him. “I don’t know how you keep knowing the code, but you know the code. So you could’ve been in here causing problems.”
“I haven’t been here since Saturday.”
“How do I know I can trust you?”
Dammit .
Heat floods my face. I’m fake marrying him, and I don’t know if I can trust him. He’s doing me a favor, and I’m calling him suspicious.
Am I overreacting?
Stop it, Sloane , I order myself. You have every right to be suspicious. Including about why a guy like Davis would even agree to pretend to be your fiancé.
And don’t tell me it was because he wanted a favor.
He could’ve asked a favor from anyone in town. Or he could’ve snuck into Pop’s house the same way he snuck into my museum and gotten it for himself.
But he didn’t.
He asked me to get involved with him.
So yes, I’ll continue to be suspicious about what else he’s getting out of fake marrying me.
He watches me like he knows every thought flitting through my mind.
And then he shrugs. “You don’t know that you can trust me.”
Dammit.
Dammit .
That weirdly makes me trust him more.
And also less.
He shifts his gaze to take in the workroom again. The coffee spill and broken mug from Saturday have been cleaned. The wide filing cabinet has been repaired. Aside from some marring on the metal, there’s no sign left that anything went wrong in here the other day.
“You know everything in here,” he says.
Ah.
It’s about the treasure hunt again. Of course. “Maybe.”
“More than anyone else in Shipwreck.”
“Not more than the Rocks do. They know everything.”
“You know things you probably don’t realize you know.”
“Like what?”
Instead of answering, he crosses the room to study one of the two old maps that we haven’t put out on display and which shouldn’t have been left out overnight.
It’s old— old old—and crumbling at the edges.
The museum is one of those projects that we started locally, all on volunteer power, without fully realizing what we had on our hands. We’ve had a few consultations with preservationists and archivists and curators, so we’re keeping with best practices as much as we can, given funding and time constraints.
Yes, yes, we could ask Cooper and Waverly for help, but they already do so much. And it makes me proud that we were able to rally everyone in town to support this without having to ask for major donor assistance.
It’s probably time though.
Because someone left two maps out overnight.
That’s unusual.
Everyone on staff pays close attention to proper handling and storage.
Not for the first time in the past few days, a shiver slinks from my scalp to my tailbone.
Tillie Jean says the treasure isn’t real.
Cooper and their other brother, Grady, both say the treasure isn’t real.
Grady’s wife, Annika, told me she thinks it might’ve been real at one point, but also that it was found years ago—before the internet—and that we’ll never know what happened to it.
But is that what the Rock family is supposed to say?
Or is it the truth?
And what does Davis know?
If he was trying to find a treasure to make people quit looking for a treasure that doesn’t exist, he could use his resources to fake-find it instead, pay off the experts who’d authenticate it, and that would be the end of it.
But he’s actually looking for it.
And I don’t think it’s because he’s worried other people will hurt themselves doing the same.
“The treasure… It’s not real,” I say.
He doesn’t answer.
He’s bent over the map, studying it. “You got this from Sarcasm.”
“How do you know that?”
“Only reason it wouldn’t be on display.”
He’s lying.
I mean, yes, I think all men are lying on a regular basis, and I’m well aware Davis has to have his own reasons that he’s not sharing for ninety percent of everything he’s done since Saturday, but I swear on Thorny Rock’s maybe-not-so-imaginary treasure, Davis Remington is outright lying to me right now.
He knows the map was donated by a citizen of Shipwreck’s rival town, and he doesn’t want me to know how he knows it.
Does he know who donated it?
Or just where it came from?
“Say the treasure is real.” Are these words actually coming out of my mouth? Tillie Jean had better be prepared for lunch with me today because I have so many questions for her too. “How do you know it’s still where it was buried? How do you know someone else didn’t find it years ago? How do you know it’s not hidden between the walls in some gazillionaire’s house for his heirs to find six generations from now when they do heavy renovations?”
Davis slides a look at me. “For someone who doesn’t believe the treasure’s real, you have interesting ideas for where it might be located.”
“My grandma used to show us the Muppets version of Treasure Island all the time. Knowing pirate lore and believing there’s a treasure in Shipwreck are two different things.”
Davis isn’t touching the map.
He’s studying it intently, bent over, eyes roaming over every inch like it’s the missing piece to the puzzle.
It reminds me of how he kissed me Saturday night.
Intently.
With purpose.
I shiver again and add a mental head slap.
Who cares how Davis kisses women?
Not me.
Definitely not me.
I’ll kiss him again this coming Saturday at our fake wedding, possibly once or twice more if Nigel comes to town and Davis hears about it and shows up before Nigel leaves again, and that will be it.
And in the meantime, I have a drawer full of toys to help me do for myself what very few men have ever done for me, and I’m quite content with that.
“Why does it matter where the map came from?” I ask him.
“How much do you know about Sarcasm?”
“Founded by a guy named Walter Bombeck, supposedly a distant relative of Thorny Rock—who once tried to poison Walter. The two towns have been at war ever since.”
He straightens and stares directly into my soul again. Can the man do anything less intensely today? Please?
“Who told you that?”
And I’ll add Annika to the list of people I need to talk to today.
Grady’s wife is from Sarcasm.
That little intel came directly from her.
“Do you know how many people I’ve talked to while we’ve been putting this museum together? And you think I remember who told me what about who?”
He folds his arms. “Yep.”
I shrug with my eyebrows.
He watches me.
I fold my arms and watch him back.
Hello, my name is Sloane Pearce, and I’m a thirty-five-year-old nurse who has staring contests with men who have agreed to fake marry me.
Because even when it’s fake, they’re still fucking annoying .
He blinks first. “You need better security here.”
He’s not wrong.
“To protect it from people like you?” I ask.
That gets me a nostril flare, and his brown eyes go flat.
We’re so gonna sell this fake marriage thing.
Look at how well we annoy each other already.
“Are you working here today?” he asks.
“Nope. Day job calls.”
“Tell whoever’s working that your security system’s getting an upgrade today. And don’t walk to work alone.”
I bite back a snippy answer, mostly because I’m here this early only partially because I’ve been having trouble sleeping since Saturday night.
The other part is that my grandmother called to tell me she’s lonely and worried about my safety in a pirate town and having heartburn over how old my ovaries are getting.
Oh, and also that Nigel told her I’ve been lying to her about the man I’m engaged to, and if I don’t love him enough to tell her his real name, then I shouldn’t be marrying him.
That was a reasonable point which she unfortunately ruined by adding that he probably has sex with barn animals and that you should never trust men who cover their sins with ink on their arms.
Yep. That’s what has my grandmother out of bed and making phone calls before five a.m. her time.
I get it. She’s lonely and worried about who will take care of her as she gets older. It’s been worse since my brother left Two Twigs to work for a different airline, but it feels like it’s worse for other reasons too.
Like she’s not entirely in touch with reality at all sometimes.
I’ve stayed in touch with a couple of her friends as much as I can tolerate to make sure she’s not completely alone—and she’s not, they tell me she has a very active social life—but I’m stuck between wanting to live my own life and worrying she’s right, that I’m the only person who’ll be able to take care of her when she can no longer take care of herself.
It's a hard spot to be in, and between the extra guilt and the dating nonsense she throws at me every time, I just don’t enjoy talking to her much anymore.
So I opted to head here while we were on the phone so I’d have to make an excuse to go when I got here.
And now on top of planning a fake wedding to a man that my family has written off because of his former job and his tattoos, my fake groom is convinced an imaginary treasure is real and that my museum isn’t as safe as the sheriff thinks it is.
“The museum can’t afford—” I start, but I stop when Davis tilts his head.
It’s subtle.
You have to watch this man carefully to notice.
But that little head tilt makes his eyes go even flatter.
Like he’s offended that I’d think he’d order an upgraded security system for anyone and expect them to pay for it themselves.
I suppress a shiver at the idea that a man would spend thousands of dollars even before rush job fees to keep me safe.
This isn’t about me.
It’s about guarding evidence about where his precious treasure is.
Also, the money is nothing to him.
He’s a former famous person.
Probably has plenty of cash to throw around at little projects. Even if he didn’t, we both know with one call to Cooper, an upgraded security system would instantly be funded.
And Cooper’s reachable. He and Waverly aren’t taking their honeymoon until after the holidays, so they’re hanging out up on his mountain.
Not that anyone wants to bother the newlyweds.
But I think Davis would if he needed to.
For me.
No.
No .
This isn’t about me .
He doesn’t actually care about me.
“Don’t you have a day job?” I ask him.
“Sure.”
Yep.
It’s becoming more and more clear why he agreed to the fake engagement.
It’s because he thinks I have information he can use for his own purposes.
Honestly, that makes him the best fake groom for me.
So very fitting.
And I’m going to throttle him before our fake wedding is over.