Chapter 21. Is the Shit About to Hit the Fan?
Is the Shit About to Hit the Fan?
“Can you zip me up?” I say to Oliver as the sun sets through the windows to our bedroom. It looks so innocent outside, so peaceful, but it’s the opposite of peaceful in my brain.
I should be used to that by now, though. Anxious is my default setting.
Which would explain why I spent the first twenty minutes back in this room searching it for listening devices. I came up empty, but I’m not a spy. From what I’ve read on the internet for book research, those things are pretty easy to hide.
So, instead, I’ll just have to pretend like they aren’t here, because the alternative is not good for my paranoia.
I feel Oliver come up behind me and gather my hair in his hands. He lifts it, then reaches down and slides the zipper for my dress up like a sigh.
“Thank you.”
He lets my hair go and puts his hands on my shoulders. His fingers automatically start to massage the hard knot of muscles there, and God, that feels good. Too good.
Because what I want to do is turn around and wrap my arms around his neck and let our bodies meld together until I can blot out everything but him. His mouth. His hands. The way our bodies fit together, not perfectly, but perfect for us.
Now is not the time to get all hot and bothered, though.
Besides, this is a closed-door mystery.65 Cozy adjacent.66
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“About what?”
“You know. The way I was acting earlier.”
His eyes meet mine in the mirror. “When you were flirting with Connor?”
“I wasn’t … No, sorry, you’re right. I was doing that thing where we vibe when we’re trying to solve something. It’s this thing we have. I don’t want to do it.”
“I know.”
“But I do.”
“Yes.”
I lean back against him. We look good together, like one of those couples that you meet, and you think, Oh, right, that makes sense. “I feel like we’ve had this conversation before.”
“Have we?”
“Trapped on an island, our relationship in question, a murderer on the loose.”
“When you put it like that.” Oliver steps away.
I shiver, the air-conditioning caressing my bare shoulders the way I wish Oliver would.
“I’m sorry,” I say again.
“Are you?”
“Yes, of course I am.”
I hear a sound in the other room. I freeze.
“It’s just Harper,” Oliver says.
“Oh, right. I haven’t seen her all afternoon.”
Oliver raises his eyebrows. “I’m sure the whole firing thing is going to take a minute to sink in.”
“Did I really do that?”
“You did.”
“Good.”
Oliver turns around in surprise. “Pardon?”
“It needed to be done. She can’t live her life in my shadow anymore.”
“I wondered when you’d come around to that.”
“Eventually. My timing wasn’t the best, though,” I say.
“Timing doesn’t seem to be our strong suit.”
“No.” I take a step toward him. “But I want it to be. I want to put everything else aside, and I don’t want to pretend that you didn’t almost propose last night.”
“I’m not sure we can do that.”
“Yes, we can. Remember what we promised?”
“Remind me.”
I smile at him, trying not to cry. “That we’d work it out. That’d we make sure we were the most important things in each other’s lives.”
“I don’t remember you saying that.”
“Maybe I used different words, but that’s what I meant. You know I did. Hasn’t it been good between us lately? Writing the book together. Living together?”
“Hiding from the media.”
“Okay, but together we got through it.” I reach for him. He hesitates for a moment, then takes my hand. I wind my fingers through his, squeezing tight. “Marry me.”
“What?”
“Marry me. I don’t care about the perfect moment or having a ring or any of it. Let’s do it. We can even do it here. Just get on a boat and go out to sea and have the captain marry us.”
“You’re serious?”
“I couldn’t be more serious.”
He looks into my eyes, and I start to sink into my shoes. He’s going to say no, he’s going to say no, he’s going to say no. And my heart is breaking into a million pieces.
“Please say yes.”
“I want to.”
“It’s easy. You can. Yes. See?”
“What about Connor?”
“He’s not important.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because he isn’t. I don’t want to be with him.
He’s a liar and a cheat, and he put all of our lives in danger.
Again. He doesn’t care about me. He never did.
Yes, I have residual feelings for him. I think when you love someone, that never goes away entirely.
And as much as it pains me to admit it, I did love him.
Not like you, but I did. And I know you were with people before me.
We’ve never run into any of them, but it wouldn’t surprise me if something leftover came up if you were around them. I wouldn’t take it personally.”
The corner of his mouth turns up. “Uh-huh.”
“Okay, I would. But I’d know it didn’t mean anything. Not in here.” I bring his hand to my chest, right over my heart. “You must feel it. I know you do.”
“I do.”
“So don’t quit on us, please.”
“I’m not going to. But there’s a big space between that and getting married.”
“I know. And I’m asking you to leap into it. To leap across it. With me. Because I know we can make it. Look at what we’ve overcome. Look at everything thrown our way, and we’re still together. That has to mean something.”
“You don’t believe in fate.”
“You’re right, I don’t. But I also don’t believe in coincidences. So it’s not just happenstance that we’re together. That we broke apart and got back together.”
“No, it’s Connor’s fault, in both instances.”
“So we have Connor to thank, then.”
He laughs. “I’ll pass on that.”
“I thought you’d made your peace with him?”
“I decided not to let him bother me anymore, but that doesn’t mean I like the guy.”
“I know.” I take another step toward him, and now his hand is trapped between us. I’m sure he can feel my heart beating.
Thump, thump, thump, thump. It feels like a clock ticking down. A metronome clicking out the beat of us. Of our ending.
“Eleanor?”
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
I gulp. “Yes, yes?”
“Yes.”
I launch myself at him, and he meets me in a kiss. Is it a kiss for the ages? I don’t know how to rate kisses. I only know I’m going to remember this kiss for a long time, and I try to put all of my hopes and dreams and feelings into it.
I resist the urge to unbutton his shirt.
He flirts with the zipper he just did up, lowering it enough to free my shoulder and shower it with kisses.
Eventually, we break apart, a little breathless.
“Now what?” I ask.
“Thought we always got that part right.”
“Yes, but probably not the time right this minute.”
“True.” He rests his forehead against mine. One of his curls tickles me. “To answer your question, I don’t know. I’ve never been engaged before.”
“Me either.”
“I don’t think we should do that find-a-boat thing, though.”
“No?”
“Last time we were on a boat, someone died. Let’s wait until we’re back safe in Los Angeles.”
“Last time we went to a wedding, someone died, too.”
“Are you trying to talk me out of this?” he says.
“No, I … I just keep feeling like I’m missing something.”
“About us?”
“No. The case. Oh. You never said. What happened with Connor?”
He frowns. “I brought him to Officer Rolle. Hopefully, he did what he said he was going to do.”
“And Inspector Tucci?”
“We couldn’t find him.”
The back of my neck starts to twitch. “That’s weird. How hard did you look?”
“I asked around, did a lap of the property … He’s probably just off trying to find clues in weird places. Someone said they’d seen him taking the little ferry to the island offshore.”
“We should go there tomorrow. I hear the beach is nice.”
Oliver smiles.
“What?”
“Maybe Connor’s going to jail,” he says.
“I doubt it.”
“He and Guy knew where Marta was and didn’t turn her in.”
“They heard a rumor. He’ll slither out of it like he always does.” I twine my hands through his. “Any sign of Marta?”
“Not that I could see. But I never met her. And I assume she’s not stupid enough to be wandering around in the open if she’s killed two people.”
“Assuming she’s still here.”
“Yes.” I go through my mental checklist, all the things I’ve noted to myself to check up on. I come up empty.
Well, almost.
“We’re still missing something,” I say.
“What?”
“The ring.”
“Oh, that.” Oliver laughs. “Why don’t we go to this dinner, and I’ll give you the ring afterward?”
“Having second thoughts?”
“No, I want a minute to think about how I’m going to do it.”
“What?”
“Propose.”
“We’re already engaged!”
“Yeah, yeah, but I want to do it properly.” Oliver’s mouth turns up at the corner. “I’m sure Connor’s keynote will give me plenty of time to think about it.”
“Oh God. What’s the topic again?”
“‘Can Romance Bloom While Murder is Afoot?’”
“That is the worst title ever. I can’t believe Vicki’s giving him book deals and dropping Elizabeth.”
“What?” Oliver says.
“I didn’t tell you? Vicki had to drop her. She told her today.”
“That’s insane.” He lets my hands go and pulls away. “I’m so screwed. If Elizabeth’s getting dropped, I’m next.”
I want to argue with him, but what’s there to say? Vicki basically told me he was getting dropped. And I’ve kept it from him because I don’t want to be the person who delivers that news.
“We have our book coming out later this year. Hopefully, it will do well, and that will help?”
He gives me a brief smile. “That would be good.”
“I know you want to do it on your own.”
“I do. But that’s not important right now.”
“What is?”
He catches my hand again. “This. Us.”
“Oh, that.”
“Forgot already?”
“Never.” I kiss him, pressing against him again. I feel like I’m always trying to convey my feelings with kisses when I should be much better at doing it with my words. But words fail me.
An alarm sounds in the distance, faint, insistent.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Time for dinner.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s the sound Harper uses on her phone when you have to be somewhere.”
“I should know that.” I check the time. “Isn’t dinner in thirty minutes?”
He gives me a look.
“I’m not always late.”
“Enough times, though.”
“How am I going to be on time now that I’ve fired her?”