Chapter 9
Phoenix
“I’m worried you might have feelings for me.”
I hear those words come out of Holland’s mouth—I definitely hear them, but they don’t register very well. I stop dead in my tracks, because walking and processing are too much for my brain to handle at once.
“Feelings,” I say dumbly. “For you?”
She tucks a few strands of that blonde hair behind her ears, shifting her weight. Her eyes dart away before meeting mine again, like she’s forcing herself to hold my gaze. “Yes,” she says. She raises her chin defiantly. “I’m concerned that you might feel romantically toward me.”
She’s a vivid spot of color in this office, bright hair and blue fingernails and a little yellow dress that shows off more tan skin than I need to see. I take pride in my space—brown leather chairs and dark wood bookshelves; a large, comfortable desk; lots of natural light—but when she’s here, she makes the place look dull.
Even when she’s spitting nonsense.
“I seem to remember telling you,” I say, “that nothing you have appeals to me. Personality was included in there.” I take another step toward her, until only a couple feet separate us.
“I also remember that,” she says, glaring at me. “But you asked me to marry you, Flamingo.”
“Haven’t heard that one before,” I mutter, clenching my jaw.
“And even though you said it would just be a contract marriage,” she goes on as though I haven’t spoken, “people don’t propose to people they don’t like. That’s not something that happens in real life. You only propose when you have feelings for someone.”
I roll my eyes. “Grudgingly asking for your help and having feelings for you are two very different things. Don’t give yourself so much credit.” I let out an exhausted breath. “I don’t like you, Amsterdam. I’m not even attracted to you.” Is she objectively beautiful? Sure. Blonde hair, gorgeous body, dimples I never see because she never smiles in my direction. But her personality usually kills any pull she might have on me, so I don’t feel dishonest right now.
Her cheeks, already pink, darken slightly; that muscle in her jaw jumps. “You need to tell me if you’re lying,” she says, stepping closer.
I scoff, and she goes on.
“Do you think I would be saying this if I were just trying to be annoying? These are embarrassing claims for me to make,” she says, angrier now. “They’re presumptuous and conceited. I know that. But I cannot marry you if you have feelings for me.”
Unbelievable. I shake my head as a dull pain begins to throb in my temples. Is this what will kill my dreams for Butterfield? Her misplaced, unfounded belief that I like her?
“I don’t have feelings for you!” I burst out, throwing my hands in the air. My mind races, searching, hunting, until it lands on a half-developed solution. “Look,” I say. “Watch.” I close the distance between us, grab her roughly by the cheeks, and kiss her—hard. Two uncomfortable seconds of our mouths slammed together, and then I push her away, my chest heaving with frustration. “I feel nothing right now, Amsterdam,” I say, pointing at my heart. “Nothing. At all.”
For a second, she just gapes at me; her arms hang motionless at her sides, and even the swishing skirt of her dress seems frozen. I’m frozen, too, because I just did something terrible and horrible and who knows how she’ll react?
I’m not surprised when her wide eyes narrow, or when she lets out a disbelieving laugh. When she steps toward me, though, eliminating the space I just established—that, I’m unprepared for. And when she saunters closer, closer, closer, lifting up onto her tiptoes?
I’m not ready for that, either.
I hold my breath and quiet every fight-or-flight instinct in my body, waiting. She leans slowly toward me, every centimeter excruciating; her nose brushes mine before our mouths ever touch, and her breath is soft on my lips.
I refuse to give her what she wants; I refuse to back away, and I refuse to move nearer.
I refuse to be the one who breaks.
But she lingers . This insufferable woman lingers, and when her lips finally touch mine, I barely feel them; they’re soft, gentle, her hands light on my shoulders as she steadies herself, and my vision is beginning to swim from lack of oxygen?—
She leans back, and I inhale as quickly but discreetly as possible. She doesn’t go back down from her tiptoes; she doesn’t even remove her hands from my shoulders.
“I don’t feel anything,” she says, and the mere sight of her inches from my face is enough to make my blood simmer and my jaw clench. “But you,” she goes on, challenge in her eyes, “your face is red, Hummingbird.”
“Because I’ve been holding my breath so I don’t have to smell you,” I snap, though I know for a fact that she always smells like peppermint and vanilla, somehow sweet and sharp at the same time. “Get over yourself.” In one swift motion I slide my arm around her waist, tangling the other hand in her hair, and then I yank her body to mine. The last expression I see on her face is one of daring and taunting, and I can’t stand it. I can’t stand her.
My lips crash down on hers.
I kiss her with every emotion she stirs in me—frustration and exasperation and wild, red-hot anger—except it’s not a kiss; this is a battle. We’re holding onto each other too tightly, breathing too hard, and none of it is romantic. I nip at her bottom lip, and she gasps, her fingers digging painfully into my sides.
“You think you can just?—”
“Watch me,” I snarl against her lips, a surge of triumph rising in my chest as I steal the rest of her words, swallow them. I tangle my hand further in her hair, tilt my head; this is still a fight for dominance, and I’m not going to let her win.
But when she slides her hand into my suit coat, something heats behind my sternum—a tiny, flickering flame that jumps and flares as her touch travels sharply from my waist to my back, fingers curled and grasping.
And when her other hand slides up my chest, finds my tie, and tugs, that flame grows brighter.
No, I tell myself desperately as I’m forced even closer to her. I can barely hear my own thoughts over the sounds of our harsh breathing. You are not enjoying this. You’re proving a point.
She scrapes her teeth against my lip, a bite of pain that heats my blood, and I hate it, I hate it—I hate that she can have this effect on me. I hate how well she knows me.
In fact, at this very second, I hate everything about her .
I deepen the kiss, taste her, the strokes of my mouth punishing. She gasps and then retaliates; she pushes me, hard, but not away from herself—she stumbles after me, our mouths still slanted together as my back collides with the bookshelf, and I wince. I can feel the shape of her lips as she grins, and she breaks away just enough that I can see that same challenge in her eyes.
“You can’t claim you’re not attracted to me and then kiss me like this?—”
“Like what? You’re kissing me the same way,” I say breathlessly. I yank her body back to mine and spin us around, pressing her none too gently against my shelf of classics. Her hair spills around her shoulders, mussed and staticky against the spines of Tolstoy and Dickens and Twain. “This is fueled by spite, Amsterdam. Not love, not attraction,” I go on, trying desperately not to notice the rapid rise and fall of her chest or the flush of her skin.
“No one said anything about love. ” She spits the word out, her hands fisting angrily into the fabric of my shirt.
I keep my eyes firmly on hers, don’t let them pull away like they want to when I hear that word coming from her lips—because it’s too intimate, and I know her too well, and I’ve seen too much of her deepest soul to trifle with subjects like that.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “I don’t love you, I don’t like you, and I’m not attracted to you. Can you say the same, Holl?”
I let it slip without thinking, the name I take care never to call her. Her eyes widen infinitesimally; she’s still pressed so close that I can feel her breath hitch.
She inhales, shallow, brief, and then speaks as her gaze shutters closed once more, blank brown eyes framed in long, dark lashes. “Don’t call me that, Phoenix. ”
My pulse stutters with an odd mixture of nostalgia and regret.
See this? her expression tells me. This is the line we don’t cross. Do you understand?
I swallow and then duck my head in agreement, the sole concession I can make, because those names belong to a different time, different versions of ourselves. I move my hands from her waist to her shoulders and push gently away, stepping backward—because she’s too close, and I don’t want her near me. I don’t even want her in my line of sight right now.
So I turn my back to her, just as she speaks.
“I’ll do it,” she says, her voice empty of emotion. “I’ll marry you. Once you’ve legally inherited the company and once your grandmother passes, we separate. As compensation, I want a salary. I also want Maggie’s tuition paid for in full, and I want to be added to your insurance.” She pauses just briefly. “I think I did something to my knee.”
Her knee. Crap.
I jerk my head to glance over my shoulder. “Did I hurt it?” I say, my voice gruff.
“No.”
I give a jerk of my head and turn away again. “Fine. Come back tomorrow and we’ll discuss terms. I’ll have the contract drawn up after that.”
“Here?” she says. “In your office?”
“Do you have a problem with that?”
“No.” I can picture her chin jutting, her jaw clenching. “I’ll be here at five.”
I hear her move, and she brushes past me, heading straight for the door. She stops just as one hand comes to rest on the handle; then, without looking back at me, she adds one more thing. “This never happened. ”
“Obviously,” I say coolly.
“There will be no romantic feelings between the two of us.”
My eyes narrow. “Not a problem.”
“And people would misunderstand, so don’t tell anyone.”
I roll my eyes. “Go home, Amsterdam.” I hesitate. “And fix your hair before you go out there.”
She leaves without another word.
The nice thing about being your own boss is that you don’t need permission to take a day off. So when I leave the next morning, driving my ridiculous little golf cart because I refuse to walk everywhere on this island, I don’t go in the direction of my office building. I head over to Dax’s place instead.
Some might say I’m avoiding the office—“some” being Wyatt, and he did say that—but really I just need a break. I slept horribly last night, plagued by dark, murky dreams of vague foreboding, pulled directly from my memories of the crash—the darkness, the car filling with water, the otherworldly horror that comes from knowing your life is about to end. I woke up drenched in sweat and in a foul mood, made worse by the memory of what happened between Holland and me.
I should have known better. Never kiss the enemy, even if you’re doing it to win an argument.
I shake my head and take a deep breath, savoring the crisp ocean air as I pull around to the side of Sunset Repairs. My eyes scan the docks to see if Dax is there, since he’s the island’s go-to boat mechanic, but I don’t see him. I turn to the large, open car bay instead, where a few golf carts are stationed, as well as an ambulance—the island’s sole emergency vehicle, and one that gets very little use.
“Dax,” I call, killing the engine of my golf cart and hopping out.
From beneath the ambulance, one tanned, grimy arm pokes out; it waves and then disappears again. I approach the vehicle and then crouch down.
“Hey,” I say, speaking loudly so I’ll be heard over whatever tinkering he’s doing under there. “Do you have any spare bike chains lying around?”
The noises coming from under the ambulance stop, and a second later, Dax rolls himself out, his head, arms, and upper torso appearing.
“Maybe,” he says, a frown wrinkling his grease-smudged forehead. “Check over in the bin by the cabinets.”
I stand up, looking toward the back of the car bay. “The big blue one?” I say, pointing.
“Yep,” he says, and his dark head of hair disappears under the ambulance again.
“Thanks,” I say, thumping the side. I let him get back to work, dusting off my suit to make sure it’s not getting dirty and then heading toward the back. There’s a row of black metal cabinets against the wall, next to which I see a giant blue tub; I lean over and peer inside.
“Spare parts,” I mutter. I’m going to have to dig.
So I take off my suit coat, hanging it lightly on the cleanest-looking cabinet corner I see, and then I roll up my sleeves.
“Getting ready to fight, Park?” a voice calls from behind me, and I turn to see Beau Palmer emerging from indoors. He’s got on a short-sleeved button down and tan shorts, which means this must be his day off .
“I wish,” I say. I gesture to the blue tub. “Instead I’m hunting for a bike chain in all this.”
He stops next to me and peers into the tub too, then lets out a low whistle. “Good luck,” he says with a grin.
I just snort and get started, moving aside metal pieces and parts.
“Hey, how’s your girl doing?” Beau adds from behind me, and I freeze. Then, scowling, I turn to glare at him.
“What?” he says from where he’s just seated himself on top of a small table. His voice is too innocent, as is his smile.
“She’s not my girl,” I say. I resume digging.
“But you knew exactly who I was talking about,” he says, and I can still hear the grin in his voice. “Either way—is she doing okay after what happened?”
I freeze again; this time, though, I don’t scowl or glare when I turn around. “What do you mean?” I say, a metal handlebar still dangling in my grip. I straighten up. “What happened?”
Beau’s grin vanishes, giving place to surprise. “Did she not tell you?” he says.
I shake my head.
“Huh.” He eyes me skeptically, like he’s deciding whether to share, and then he ducks his chin. “She called me. A week ago? Maybe a week and a half? She fell for some internet scheme. She said they wiped out her account.”
“They wiped out?—”
“Her entire account, yeah,” Beau says, nodding. He’s serious Beau now, the police officer instead of my friend. “I had her file a report, but there’s not a ton we can do. We’re not sitting on a world-class cybercrimes division or anything.”
I scrub my free hand down my face, exhaling heavily. “Amsterdam,” I mutter, suddenly hit with a wave of exhaustion. This is why she needed money, I guess. “What internet scheme?”
“She was trying to buy something off some sketchy site,” he says. “I don’t remember what it was called; it’s in the report.”
“What was she trying to buy?”
Beau’s lips twist into a reluctant smile. “A dog bed.”
Am I hearing him right? “A dog bed? ” I repeat.
“Yeah—a human-sized dog bed. She seemed super embarrassed, so don’t give her a hard time,” he adds sternly. “I didn’t ask for details, but she said it just looked comfortable.”
A human-sized dog bed—good grief, Holland.
I sigh. “Well, I’m going to hire her, so I think she’ll be okay.”
“You’re giving her a job?” Beau says, looking surprised once more.
I jerk my shoulders and turn back to the bucket of spare parts. “Something like that.” Then, without looking back, I add, “Come help me dig.”