1 #2
The other half of me freezes to admire the height, the collection of muscles, and the eyes that seem simultaneously to be blue, green, or brown—their beautiful hazel a color I’d probably have tried to buy contacts to match a decade ago.
He’s not overly muscled, but not too lean either.
Like he works out when he feels like it, but it’s not a priority for him.
His pale shirt is loose on him, aside from his biceps, where his sleeves seem to cling, rolled up to reveal veins and a Rolex.
And then I remember I just crawled out from under a bush. And his words sink in.
“And why would you do that?” I try to straighten myself out and make it seem like I’m not doing anything wrong. There’s a chance he didn’t see me unearth myself. I’m wandering around, just like him.
I get distracted by the dimple that appears as he speaks, when he points to me and then to my previous hiding spot. “I just assumed someone hiding under a bush isn’t a guest at the resort.” His Adam’s apple bobs as he speaks, his finger back to pointing at me. “Your wig is falling off.”
Shit.
I adjust the bundle of synthetic ginger curls atop my black hair as much as I can without a mirror. “Plenty of people wear wigs. Is that a problem for you?”
He raises a thick brow. “Not at all.” I realize his voice is that of my savior from earlier. “Do you have an explanation for the first part of my question?”
I make a show of looking around. “Funny, I didn’t hear any question marks.”
He tilts his head, his full lips, with a sharply pointed Cupid’s bow, pulling up. “They were more like statements, you’re right. I just thought if I said them, you’d answer.”
“Well, I’m not a mind reader. If you have a question, you should ask it.”
I blink as the scent of mango and sandalwood encircles me. “Okay, stranger, why were you hiding under the bushes?”
“I don’t know you. I don’t have to tell you anything.”
Amusement glimmers in his gaze, which travels up and down my body, and it takes all my self-control not to shift my weight or fidget. Usually, I have so much restraint over myself, but being caught like this is disorienting.
His thickly lashed eyes, the hazel that changes color depending on the way the light hits them, narrow on me. “You’re right again.” I’m sure he broke his nose during childhood, the way it crooks at an angle slightly. “But I saw you when I first walked through, and my curiosity is more than piqued.”
I’m well aware the curiosity is more about my actions than me, but the way he says it, softer, sexier, sends ripples of awareness down my spine. Suddenly, I remember just how long it’s been since I had sex, since I had a man speak to me with his gaze piercing me into place.
Just as suddenly, I realize what he said.
“If you saw me earlier, why didn’t you say anything?” I cock my head to the side. “You knew it was me sneezing, not an animal.”
“I’m no snitch,” he says, and his smile is too infectious for me not to mirror.
“Well, I’m not a threat, stranger. No need to call security, and thanks for keeping my hiding place a secret.
” I step away, trying to make a break for it.
He’s already seen my real hair under the wig and already has too much attention on me when I’m supposed to maintain a semblance of anonymity while wedding wrecking.
After a job, if you saw me again, you might recognize me vaguely, but you’d never be able to give an accurate description to an artist. Whether I’m contouring my face, sculpting a sharper shape from my soft features, paling out my tan complexion, covering my freckles, plopping colored contacts over my brown eyes, or wearing crooked glasses, I always put in effort to look far removed from my actual appearance.
There’s only a slim chance someone will recognize me while ruining a relationship, but I prefer to make the margin even smaller.
It’s not something I want my own circle of vastly more successful marketing peers and honor-roll college graduates to know about.
As much as it feels good helping, wedding wrecking’s not supposed to be my forever career path; it’s just something I stumbled into five months ago, right after I lost my job.
Even though my curiosity wants me to stick around a bit, it’s better I skedaddle while I can.
He steps toward me. “I can’t even get your name?”
“I’d only give you a fake one.”
His chuckle is stormy and sexy, eliciting spots of warmth throughout my body, and the butterflies that have been long asleep flutter with anticipation.
The way his appearance seems mysterious, but his eyes are alight with harmless mischief, is stimulating too many forgotten hormonal responses from me.
Love steals your logic, but lust steals your self-preservation.
“You’re only making me want to know more,” he says, his gaze traveling lazily up my body, and my legs actually buckle. All right, seriously, I’ve got to get out of here.
“Sorry,” I say, placing much-needed space between us. “Someone’s calling for me.”
Another amused sound escapes his throat. “I don’t hear anything.”
“Coming!” I shout to the sky, and with no other options, I literally and metaphorically run away, as fast as my heels can take me.
When I make it back to my room—after showering and popping some Claritin—I remove the three missed notifications from Taina, who’s house-sitting for me since I promised to check in on my neighbor’s cat while she was away before I got this job.
I open my camera roll and pull up the video I threw out my dignity for to send to Jennie.
The Birds are in center view, angled slightly toward each other, as if they’re in a romance poster. This could be it, what Jennie needs to save Eliza. I crank up the volume, hit play, and—
I rewind and try again.
I stare at the screen, the silence echoing in my skull.
My finger must have been on the speaker. The only noise is the occasional rustle of movement when I inch closer.
This isn’t good enough. I can’t send this to Jennie. It’s basically a silent film.
I drop the phone on the bed and flop onto my back, staring up at the ceiling. It might have sea glass embedded in it. Or maybe I’m hallucinating from stress and Claritin.
A pounding begins to drum behind my eyes.
This job’s already been harder than usual. The ruin is always simpler with time—it also allows me to infiltrate their bubbles more organically, instead of a last-minute insertion.
Some people want me to pretend I’m a long-lost lover.
Others sneak me into the bridal (or bachelor) party to plant seeds of doubt into people’s heads.
Less risk, less reward for my bank account.
Others—and this is mainly because of the false advertisement my sister, Taina, wrote on the website, claiming I have experience as a private detective—want me to dig around and see if their gut feelings about cheating partners are correct.
My one requirement is that I only target couples I’m certain are bad for each other—this isn’t about breaking up happy relationships.
Jennie’s request came just a week ago. Extra charge for the timeline, sure—terrible for infiltration. No cover, no invitation, so I’m just another plus-one at someone else’s wedding, poking around from the outside. Harder to get access, harder to find angles, harder to get proof.
Very little time to work with for a very big job. Regardless, I’m going to have to find that couple again tonight.
Get closer. Get cleaner footage.
With a long, dramatic sigh, I rub circles into my temples.
Some birthday weekend this has been—freshly twenty-eight, no real career, no real relationships, bug bites burning into my skin, and running around trying to prove someone’s infidelity.
My parents would be so proud.
Wedding wrecking was supposed to be temporary. A weird little pit stop before I found another marketing job—preferably one that didn’t involve a New York tech firm run by misogynistic man-children with god complexes and backhanded compliments that slowly crushed your will to live.
A job where I wouldn’t have to worry about dress codes or about the way I speak.
Or being assertive, but not too much, because you’ll sound like a bitch.
Taking exclamation points off emails because it’s not professional, letting men think they’re explaining a process to you that you already know how to do.
Repeating the same marketing plan used for every campaign because the people in charge don’t believe in thinking outside the box when they have a perfectly good, boring box already.
But that was five months ago. And I’m still here.
Every time I think I’ve hit rock bottom, the floor rips from under me and reveals another level.