Chapter Fifteen #2
“Mm.” Derek gets through the big knot and runs his fingers through my hair a few times, searching for more. “At some point, Donovan Tate, I’m going to figure out why you’re the only person in the world who doesn’t make me question everything about myself when you say things like that.”
“I’m pretty sure I’m the only person in the world who says things like that to you, period.” The rest of the world has probably only ever seen the perfect side of Derek Riley and have never had a reason to think poorly of him.
Technically, I haven’t had a reason either.
“I think that’s all of the tangles.” Derek sounds like he’s smiling. Despite his words, he keeps working his fingers through my hair, starting at my scalp and making his way down to my back, leaving me shivering beneath his touch. “Your hair is incredible.”
Nerves pool in my belly, and I’m so glad it’s been years since my hair has been anything but its natural red. There’s nothing spectacular about it now. “It’s a nightmare,” I say with a forced laugh.
“It’s beautiful,” Derek counters.
“It used to be.” I wince, moving on from that thought quickly. “Nowadays, I let it run wild to try to scare men away. It usually works.”
His fingers grow still, knuckles resting against my shoulder blades near the tips of my hair.
My breath catches in my throat as my fear shifts to something completely different with his touch.
It’s been a long time since anyone was close to me like this, and a part of me wants to run away before I start thinking this can be normal.
But I want it to be. I want to stay right here and pretend we’re two average people pulled together by attraction.
“I get not wanting to date customers,” Derek says, the words slow and careful. “But you date outside of that, right?”
My mind flashes back to the last time I agreed to a date. He charmed me on the river, respectful and intelligent and full of bright smiles and easy conversation. I trusted him with my heart—all of it—and it nearly led to my whole world crumbling around me only weeks later.
That’s what happens when I trust people with my past. I need to remember that.
Jarred out of whatever spell Derek put me under, I shift away from his hands.
“Here,” I say, grabbing my shampoo and conditioner and spinning to hand them to him.
His gaze is fixed on my face, that piercing stare he’s used before, and the instant he takes the bottles from me, I sink beneath the water and stay there.
I can’t compare Derek to a guy whose name doesn’t bear repeating, but neither can I trust my heart with him. He’s Hollywood’s biggest star, known and loved by millions, and his life doesn’t lend itself to letting sleeping dogs lie.
My secrets can never be safe with someone like him.
When I’m desperate for breath, I rise back up and pretend I was simply rinsing the conditioner from my hair.
Derek’s too smart to think I wasn’t avoiding his question, and though he’s scrubbing shampoo into his scalp, he keeps watching me with shrewd eyes. I don’t think he’s going to let this one slide.
I have to find a way to answer his question without letting him knock my walls down more than he already has. Explaining why I don’t date is far easier than explaining what I meant on the boat today when I told him not to remake my mistakes, and maybe this will satisfy him.
With a sigh, I stand up, shivering when the early summer air hits my wet skin as I shuffle toward shore.
“Wait, don’t…” Derek’s fingers freeze in his hair. “…leave.”
Another shiver runs through me, but not from the cold.
He’s looking at me like… Well, the same way I looked at him when he came in.
Which is ridiculous, because I’m in a pair of swim shorts and a black bikini top with more coverage than The WanderLove gals’ suits combined.
Nothing special. But Derek’s jaw falls slack as I sit at the edge of the beach, where Emmett was sitting before my ogling drove him and Maverick away.
Self-conscious, I cross my legs and sit up straight, all too aware of my exposed skin. I don’t usually concern myself with how I look, but when next to a man who is literally paid to be beautiful… It’s been a long time since I was so aware of being seen.
Pulling my hair to one side, I squeeze the water from it with more force than necessary.
I swear I can still feel Derek’s fingers on my scalp, and my hands tremble as I go through the familiar motions of twisting my hair into a braid.
“You’re asking about my dating life because you want to get in the mindset of a river guide, right? ” Please say yes.
He swallows, lowering his soapy hands into the water. “Yeah, let’s say that.”
I don’t believe him for a second, but I pretend I do because that’s the only way I’m going to get through this.
“Then no, I don’t date. But I wouldn’t call myself typical.
Most guides just do this for the summer, so we get a lot of teachers like Farah, or college kids like Mason and Thiago. I’m sure they go on plenty of dates.”
Derek tilts his head. “Do guides ever date each other?”
“All the time. Just not me.”
“Why?”
I snort. “I’m thirty years old. A bit old for the twenty-two-year-olds.”
“My friend Freya is seven years older than her husband.” He shrugs. “They make it work just fine.”
Her husband being Derek’s supposed brother.
I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the stories when the Candoran queen married her bodyguard, even with the rumors that Derek and Elliot Reid are half-brothers, and I have to swallow my curiosity before I ask Derek if the rumors are true.
If he’s deciding not to mention Elliot by name, I’ll respect his privacy.
“I had no idea Her Majesty was a cougar. Good for her! But for me?” I shake my head.
“Nah. Besides, they’re only here for a summer or two, and then they get on with their real lives. ”
He lifts an eyebrow, though it’s almost too subtle to notice.
The fact that he’s controlling his expressions both calms me and makes me nervous.
He’s trying to downplay his curiosity, at the same time reminding me that he’s an actor and someone I should be avoiding. “And what’s your real life, Donovan?”
Instead of getting up, like I should do, I adjust my position so my feet are flat on the ground and I’m hugging my knees as I give his question some thought.
Maybe this is a way I can repay his honesty from earlier today.
It’s easy to talk about my current life without getting into my past, and I just have to tell him enough to keep him satisfied.
He doesn’t need my whole life story, even though he’s apparently forgotten about the shampoo in his hair as he stares at me, waiting.
“My uncle—Spencer’s dad—has a ranch called Solace Creek,” I tell him.
“It’s in Boulder, a small town a few hours southwest of here.
My Pops lives with him now that he’s retired, and they’ve turned it into the kind of place where people can escape the world.
Cabins, camping, a few rooms in the big house.
They do horseback riding and take people on ATV trails, and when I needed a soft place to land…
” Nope. Not where I meant to go. I shrug and rest my chin on my knees.
“I go there when I’m not on a river. Help out where I can in between whatever other odd jobs I find.
You should rinse that out before it dries. ”
Though he narrows his eyes, catching my change of subject, Derek finally dunks his head back and rinses his hair. He only gets half of the shampoo out before he’s upright again and watching me as soapy water runs down his body. “Do you like being on the ranch?”
“It’s my home.”
He frowns. “What makes it home?”
“Everything, I suppose.” Too much to sum up in a single answer, but I want to try. Something familiar in the way he’s studying me makes me want to share it with him so he’ll stop looking so…lost.
His emotions are still subtle, but he looks the same way I felt when I first got to Pops as a teen.
Swallowing, I shrug and act like my whole life didn’t change when I ended up in Utah. “It’s where I learned a lot about who I am and what really matters to me because the rest of the world doesn’t reach it.”
“It sounds nice.”
I nod. “On the banks of a river like this is my most favorite place in the world. Solace Creek is a close second.”
For a moment, he looks like he’s trying to picture the ranch, his eyes growing distant, and I try to imagine him in another place I love.
A Hollywood socialite with a two-hundred dollar haircut and a slew of people who work for him, drinking coffee from a thermos from the back porch during the first snowfall of the year… I don’t know if I can see it.
With his impressive career and his struggle with perfectionism on top of it, I wonder when he last took time to just sit in silence and rest. I can’t imagine he does that very often.
Derek opens his mouth, but then he swears and jumps backward, losing his footing and slipping under the water. He comes back up, spluttering, and says something about a fish before a rivulet of shampoo runs into his eye and prompts another curse and another slide in the mud.
As a snicker escapes me, I realize something important.
Derek is human. I may have told him earlier that he doesn’t have to be perfect, but until this moment, as I watch him struggle to stand up straight again, I’m not sure I believed my own words.
But he’s just as hopeless as the rest of us, and even a legend like him needs help sometimes.
Rolling my eyes, I scoot back into the water and grab his arm to stop him flailing. “Relax,” I tell him and brush my palm across his forehead before he gets attacked by more shampoo.
“A fish swam between my legs,” he says breathlessly, as if worried I missed the first explanation.
“That’s good luck, you know.” My thumb runs across his eyebrow next, and I hold back a comment about how well-maintained it is.
He’s too pretty for his own good. “Here, lie back.” Do I practically push him deeper into the water to hide his chest now that I’m close to him again?
Maybe. But the joke’s on me because as soon as I start rinsing the soap from his hair, he closes his eyes and gets the most blissful look on his face, like he has never been treated so gently.
My dumb heart aches for this man and the insanity that is his life.
I know from experience that even though he has everything he could want, he needs to be treated gently.
To be taken care of. I can only imagine how much energy he spends being the perfect man, and I would bet money that everyone around him, his friends included, have no idea how tiring his life really is because he’s so good at hiding it.
When he’s the one who needs someone to lean on, is anyone ever there?
I take my time rinsing his hair, and when the shampoo is gone, I don’t stop running my fingers along his temples and forehead.
Across his cheekbones and bruised jaw. He doesn’t move except to furrow his brow.
What would he do if I leaned over and kissed him?
The answer worries me, mostly because I think he would kiss me right back, and then where would we be?
Heartbroken when we go back to reality and realize our worlds don’t mix and we were doomed from the start.
But until then?
Someone clears their throat on the shore.
Derek opens his eyes, looking up at me for half a second with a million thoughts behind his eyes before we both look over to find Hunter standing on the beach, his arms folded over his chest and a scowl darkening his features.
“There was a fish,” Derek tells his bodyguard weakly.
Laughing in a poor attempt to dispel the tension still thick between us, I splash some water in Derek’s face and climb out of the water, patting Hunter’s bicep as I head to my tent to dry off and change into something a little less likely to lead to whatever that was that just happened.
No, I know exactly what happened. Derek asked me questions no one has ever asked me, and I think I just traded a part of my heart for his.
That’s not going to end well.