Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
RHYS
Fuck!
My heart twists in my chest, and I can’t manage a deep breath. I slam the fridge door shut so hard, the jolt rattles my teeth. I should have hit the liquor store. Rosé won’t cut it at a time like this.Shooters of flaming eighty-proof rum are what this guy needs to settle down.
Way to ease us in, Dani .
Like, how about a lakeside sunset together before making my body scream? Am I supposed to pretend that away?
She dropped me off a minute ago, and we both said polite goodbyes after suffering through silence darker than deep space on the ride home. And now a zillion strange emotions swirl inside me. A wild ache. Unexplainable shit.
It’s just a little early for moves this intense, and for feelings like this.
Going through the motions of idle chit-chat during lunch while the knot in my chest refused to untangle was brutal. I tried to silently connect with her, to help me perform some mental arithmetic, to figure out what it all meant, because something untold fuelled her. Instead of a playful manhandling, she rode me into wasteland territory with six guns blazing.
To prove a point is what it felt like.
I pace around my expensive kitchen that smells like lemons, feeling caged in, trapped in an endless loop. I can still smell her, feel her skin beneath my fingers, her voluptuous body pinned needily against mine.
The explosion of need in my blood caught me off guard.
Me shutting her down on the way home didn't pave the path to resolution, but the need to protect my heart kicked in automatically. The rumors about me are partly true, told spectacularly to my face last month by one of the countless women who have chased me.
“Everyone knows you don’t fall for Rhys because you cannot fall for anyone.”
And for the record, “countless women” is not a humble brag. I’d trade quality over quantity in a heartbeat. Especially when, every other week, some Crazy sets her sights on me.
Feeling hollowed out and a little lost, I crash onto the sofa. I stare off into space, my hands clenched into fists before I even realize it. The whole No Man is an Island thing suddenly hits hard.
I might have lost touch with reality while camped out on Corfu, keeping everything—family, the idea of love, my insecurities—at bay. That’s what hurt little boys do after a lifetime of searching for a father figure: they numb themselves by leaving home, talking to an inanimate object, and embracing the adoration of strangers because the alternative—being unwanted—sucks.
The trouble is, the more I realized fans always want something from me, the less I gave of myself, to the point where my inability to fall for someone is an actual thing.
Oh sure, you can drop me into any party, and I’ll light it up. Golden, sunny Rhys. Quick to make you laugh. Ready to pose in a selfie. I can be the guy you think I am. The truth is, I don’t even know who I am anymore. A facade? A fucking hologram?
Virtual reality Rhys.
There, but not real.
In the dense silence of my hot, airless villa, I replay everything in my mind from the minute I arrived here. Dani gave me the impression that she might be different. Or at least see beyond the veneer of a pretty boy influencer. Why I stubbornly cling to that notion after two days of knowing her is ludicrous, especially after she wielded those goddamned grapes like a temptress overjoyed to witness the fall of a feeble, weakened man.
That doesn’t change the weight of what happened. And her guilt-ridden aura during lunch speaks to a deeper, stormier motivation.
I gnaw on my thumb, mind racing.
Now what?
I have a five-week commitment to honor. There is no island to hide on. Unlike a perfectly curated post, I can’t edit out the morning and pretend it never happened.
This mess with Dani needs to get sorted.
Recent events say showing up uninvited at Dani’s place spells all kinds of trouble. But giving her a heads-up might mean she ghosts me. The only play is a sniper attack. And now that I know where her front door is, I plan to stay glued to the welcome mat until we erase this tiny hill of weirdness.
I knock on her door, not aggressively, but with an intensity that rings through the wood. If Dani views me as a six-foot-one piece of ass who can’t keep it in his pants, not only will Sawyer have a leg up, but this powerful feeling rattling my heart might eat me alive.
I sense this is something bigger than me, but I don’t understand it.
I don’t know what follows this.
Ten seconds pass. No answer. I knock again, louder. Despite all my positive self-talk on the way over, there is a chance of being told to fuck right off.
If she’s home, that is.
I took a long cold shower, napped, and scarfed down a microwaved burrito before I summoned the courage for this mission impossible. Is Dani out on the town? Raging with the seniors? Restless thoughts ricochet in my brain as I stare at the lake, inhaling and trying to let nature calm me. The still green water feels trapped, confined by the dusty hills. On Corfu, the turquoise sea stretches forever, a never-ending horizon.
“Hi.”
I spin around to find Dani hovering in the doorway, a purple robe wrapped tight around her. Domestic goddess. And the current threat to my emotional well being.
“Hey there.” I smile even as I feel my throat go a little tight.
A moment of silence passes. Dani angles her head, waiting for me to go on.I can sense the smile slipping from my face, but an emotion lurks in her expression, enough to make me brave the nerves.
“You know, today ended a bit weird, and I’m not great with weird, so I thought maybe I could cash in the rain check? To watch the sunset together,” I clarify because it’s apparent she has no clue what I’m talking about. “It doesn’t have to be anything other than two people watching the sunset,” I’m quick to add before she shuts me down.
She raises her eyebrows ever so slightly. I had no clue how she’d react when she saw me, and I half-expected her eyes to glare holes into me. But those light gray wonders skim over me with interest and make my body come alive.
“I’m still trying to recover from today,” she admits, hands suddenly fidgety, twining and untwining.
“You and me both.”
Dani studies me for a beat. We both know none of today had to do with me. But her actions were not small and meaningless. Am I here to hold her feet to the fire or grill her about motives? No. Do I want to understand what was behind that fine coat of hurt in her eyes as she broke me? Yes, but that can wait.
All I want is to smash the bullshit simmering between us from earlier.
The longer Dani says nothing, the more I feel the moment slipping away. So, I tell myself not to be too excited with her crinkle of a smile.
“Give me a minute,” she says. “I’ll throw on my bikini and grab some towels. It’s still a goddamn furnace in here.”
“One hundred and ten stairs.” Dani directs my attention to the clearing at the cliff’s edge. “Trust me when I say you'll feel them on the way back up.”
What I feel is a sharp jab of arousal in my chest. Holy smokes. Her crochet cover-up covers very little. The deep plunge of her red bikini top reveals an overflowing amount of touchable flesh.
“Let me carry that.” I reach for her canvas bag stuffed with two beach towels. It weighs nothing, but I would carry her down to the lake if it meant my fertilization of Yvette’s prized Chardonnay terroir becomes a distant memory.
“There’s a raft we can swim to if you want,” she says.
“Perfect. I could use a cooldown.”
Dani takes the lead down slatted stairs that are so camouflaged that they seem to sprout naturally from the sand-colored landscape. As we descend, the town comes into view, glowing softly with lights, while the lake stretches out vast and glittering, tranquil before dusk settles.But another view has me equally captivated: her ass cheeks jiggling in the high-cut bottoms of her bikini, bouncing along in silent rhythm with the smacking sound of our flip-flops.
Dear lord. That is a fine rear view.
The stairs end on a strip of fine sand dividing the land from the lake. All the magical sounds and scents of Eau de Summer hit me at once—water lapping on the shore, air spiked with the smoky tang of grilled burgers and charcoal briquettes from a distant campground. Rowdy voices echo across the water, their crispness tricking me into thinking they’re closer than they are.
But this end of the lake is deserted—a moonscape.
“Is this all part of Evelyn’s property?” I ask.
“If she had her way, Evelyn would own the entire town.” Dani shoots me a cryptic smile. “But, yeah, everything up until to that marker is Nero Vino.”
She indicates a small sign hammered deep into the sand and marked with PRIVATE PROPERTY.
“Not exactly the great wall of Trump,” I say with a smile.
“I run into the odd person,” she admits. “Dog walkers mostly. But tonight, we have it all to ourselves.”
I meet her eyes, wrestling with the idea that she’s acknowledged we need privacy to hash things out. Then she pops her cover-up off in one smooth motion, and, goddamn, I can’t acknowledge shit. Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition missed the boat with her.
I drop the bag and kick my flip-flops off, dragging my eyes from her to the lake. “Is that our destination?”
Twenty meters offshore, a raft bobs in the gentle current. It’s twelve by twelve, give or take, with a handrail mounted on one side and supported on rusted-out oil drums.
“Do you want to race?” she asks.
“Is there a prize if I win?”
Dani stands there, hair flowing in the breeze, a challenging glint in her eyes. “What makes you so sure you’ll win?”
“I swim every day.” I’m not trying to sound obnoxiously superior. But also, fair warning.
“Are you willing to wager your glory?” She bites back a smile, no denying she enjoys teasing me. Not that I had much to begin with, but she throws me so completely off my game.
I peel off my t-shirt and toss it onto the sand, feeling a tiny hit of pride as she drinks me in. “On the count of three?”
“I'm ready when you are.”
Dani sways from side to side with a smile I’ll recognize later as downright duplicitous. I should have seen it coming. She bolts before my countdown ends, crashing through the water with a whoop before disappearing beneath the surface in a smooth, clean dive.
So much for following the rules.
I give her a small head start, then surge for the gold, my feet sinking into the soft mud of the lakebed before I plunge into the shallows. Without ocean currents to battle, I reach the colder depths in record time.
Up ahead of me, she's focused on only one thing: beating my ass.
Not a chance.
With wheels and the engine to swim all day, I power past her. Seconds later, I hoist myself onto the raft and strike a victory pose.
Dani pauses to tread water and watch me preen. “You’re such a guy,” she says, laughing. “Can’t handle a woman beating you.”
“I’d say my inability to handle you was made pretty clear,” I correct. “I had to redeem myself.”
Dani’s expression doesn’t change, but her eyes cloud, and she breaststrokes the remaining distance to the handrail in silence. Silhouetted against the hot-pink sunset that stains the sky, the outline of her glistening curves rising out of the water takes my breath away. All that damp, dark hair clinging to her like a wetsuit, her body designed, so it seems, to test my personal weaknesses.
Dani squeezes water from her hair, scouring me with a look that storms through my blood.
“Speaking of redemption,” she says, “what I did today was wrong and stupid. I fucked up, pardon my French. I’m sorry.”
Wow. Straight up owning it. But the look on her face conveys the effort it took to get there.
I bow my head a touch to acknowledge her endeavor. “Apology accepted.”
“And I called you a heartbreaker,” she adds, biting her lip in a way that distracts me. “Which implies you're a womanizing shit, when I really know nothing about you.”
Much to the chagrin of every female who has tried to worm their way into my life, Rhys the player is the furthest thing from the truth. But I don’t miss the opportunity to steer this conversation to where I think it needs to go.
“Did someone break your heart recently?” I ask.
Her eyes flick to the raft with a little wrinkle forming between her brows, and am I too rapt, waiting for that yes?
“It happens to everyone, right?”
“True,” I admit. “But it still sucks.”
We regard each other openly, and I fight the urge to fill the silence. At one point yesterday, before things got crazy, Dani said she started following my Insta in June once she learned Evelyn had hired me. That alone ramped up my interest in her.
A beauty like her who is not a built-in Crazy?
What are the odds?
“What about you?” she asks. “Any recent calamities of the heart?”
Myla qualifies as a calamity, but not in the way Dani implies. And no way in hell am I bringing the topic of her up. “I’m too busy for heartbreak.”
Dani stays silent, but I can feel her sizing me up. Maybe she’s wondering how someone like me could be single. Whatever the case, we sink into the quiet connection of the moment, watching the sun’s final rays dance on the rippling surface of the lake. The half-bright moon climbs above the willow trees scattered along the shore, and a breeze kicks in, carrying a sweet fragrance that hits high in the nose.
Dani glances my way, a shy smile tugging at her lips.
We are perfectly isolated out here.
Am I reading her right? Is this my time to bust a move?
The answer comes in the form of a rogue gust of wind. The force of it churns the lake, the raft surging beneath us, canting to one side. We pitch forward, gripping the nearest things to steady ourselves, which happens to be each other.
“Whoa!” Dani yelps, reeling, unsteady on her feet.
I hold her tight to ride out the upheaval, me with a newfound appreciation for all things immaculate timing. Because when the raft levels out, Dani and I remain close.
Touching.
“I swear I didn’t plan that,” I say, battling the temptation to let my hands wander beyond their resting place on her waist.
She looks up at me from under her fringe of wet, dark lashes. Eyes soft as a whisper.
“You’re warm,” she murmurs.
“Is now the time for a lame hot-blooded male joke?”
After a low, sexy laugh, she asks, “Is that all you got?”
I feel a fizzy sort of scrambling in my brain. I’ve heard of chemistry and felt a lick of it here and there, but never like this: middle-earth and elemental. Dangerous as the dusk contouring her beautiful face.
Awareness hums between our damp bodies.
And those damn roaming fingers of hers make it impossible to stay casual and in control.I don’t think she knows how much she’s affecting me.
“If you’re trying to turn me off you,” I say, my voice thick, “you’re doing a spectacularly bad job.”
For five long seconds, it’s just us and the weight of everything unspoken while the undulating water creates this dream-like sensation. My skin, every part of me, tingles with desire. I think I know what’s about to happen, and I’m shaking ever so slightly when I draw her closer. But right before our mouths connect for that first, forbidden time, she twists her face away.
“I don’t think kissing me is a good idea,” she says, a high note in her voice that wasn’t there before.
“Do you have a better idea?” I ask, refusing to let her go.
She glances at the shoreline, fading into dusk. I silently beg her to take me down, but she slips free of my grip instead.
“How about another race back?” she suggests.
I try to keep cool, masking my disappointment. We were on the verge. I know Dani felt it—she had to, what with my erection the size of a torpedo and pulsing hard against her bare thigh. So why are we still talking?We should be a hot, breathless blur of grasping hands, mouths, and tongues. Lost in a primal frenzy to devour each other.
Seriously, how did I screw this up?
“Glutton for punishment?” I ask with a pumped-up smile.
Dani ponders the question briefly. “Maybe I need to be punished.”
“I can arrange that,” I quip, out of fucking nowhere. Out of desperation, really, because punishment is not part of my contract, nor am I skilled at inflicting physical pain.
Her eyes dart to the sand and, okay, I get it. This, again—the race fake-out. It's not the punishment I envisioned, but if you can’t devour the woman, you might as well beat her at her own game. I brace myself for her move, my twitching muscles ready to dive right after her.
But I guess she dupes me, times two.
With a wily grin, she plants her hands against my chest and shoves hard. I stumble backward, time and space frozen into a singular moment, my body tight with the urgency to steady itself. Then I’m falling, and the cool grip of the lake clamps around my lungs. I thrash to the surface, gasping for air, struggling at this precise moment to locate my dignity after being unceremoniously dumped.
And my manhood has already shriveled and surrendered, appalled at the betrayal.
Retreat! False alarm.
And Dani? She's laughing —full-throated and unapologetic—as she sprints off the raft, launching herself into the air. Tucked into a deadly cannonball, she plunges into the depths beside me with a joyous holler. The spray peppers my eyes, but the sting is peanuts compared to the chaos pounding beneath my skin and ribcage like a second, competing heartbeat.
So full of feelings.