His lips turn up faintly, matching the charming look in his eyes.
“I dunno,” he says. “I was hoping you’d tell me.”
I look away and down at my phone crushed in one hand. A stream of unread text messages from Paige await me. Sighing heavily, I drop the phone on the sand beside my shoes, not wanting to think about any of that right now.
The silence grows between us.
I wonder why he’s even still standing there.
Finally I stand up and dust sand off the back of my long flowered silk skirt, and then my hands. My heels sink deeply into the sand again, causing me to lose my balance. I catch myself before I fall, but it doesn’t stop him from collapsing his hand around my elbow, just in case. My stomach flip-flops a little when he touches me, but I quickly brush that aside.
“Well, I’ll leave you alone then,” he says suddenly and takes a step back. “Whatever it is, just let it go. You’ll feel better a lot sooner.” He smiles. His strange advice seems sincere and not at all arrogant or all-knowing—this alone makes me infinitely curious to know more about him.
He starts to walk away, his white T-shirt clinging to him in the breeze, his bare feet moving easily over the top of the sand as if he’s had time to master it, but then something urgent grows inside me and my mouth suddenly has a mind of its own.
“I’m just under a lot of stress,” I call out, finally giving him an answer, and stopping him in his tracks.
He turns to face me.
Nervously I glance down at my toes and the blue-mint beads running along the bottom strap of my sandals, buried partially by the sand.
He walks toward me again, but I don’t look at him. It feels awkward to look. I don’t want to risk giving him the wrong idea.
“That must be some serious stress,” he says, stepping back up. “To reduce you to tears.”
“Yeah, I guess you could say that.” I point at him playfully. “I wasn’t crying though.”
“Yeah, yeah—well, you do realize where you are, right?” he asks.
I look around briefly without moving my head, not exactly sure what he’s getting at, but I think it’s mostly because he’s caught me so off guard.
His smile softens around his eyes.
“Hawaii,” he says as if making a very serious point. “People come here on vacation to destress, not to create more of it.”
I kind of feel bad for dragging my issues over here from the mainland, like I’ve brought the plague with me.
Finally I look at him with a steadier gaze. “I know,” I say with regret, “but I’m not here on vacation.”
“Well, that’s your first mistake.” He points his index finger upward.
“An unavoidable mistake,” I say. “It’s my job.”
“Ah.” His head tilts back slightly, his lips parting. It’s as if he just realized something. “Well, that explains it, then,” he says with what seems like relief.
“Explains what?”
“Why you were hanging around that crazy chick yesterday.”
I remember him seeing Veronica talking to me on the beach right after she stormed away from him. But I take immediate offense to his choice of words.
“Well, that’s a little rude, don’t you think?” I cross my arms, letting my fingers drape over my biceps. “Not to mention whatever it was you said to her yesterday.”
He laughs lightly and then looks at me with raised eyebrows, but he doesn’t say anything in his defense. I’m not sure what to make of it, but I don’t like the arrogant vibes he’s putting off, and that’s a shame because I was beginning to like his company.
Then something dawns on me.
“It, uh … well, whatever you said to her, she probably asked for it, right?” I wince a little, feeling like an idiot.
He shrugs his shoulders, his muscled arms hanging freely down at his sides, the white T-shirt stark against his bronzed skin.
A breeze blows by, pushing the fabric of my loose, flowing skirt embarrassingly between my legs.
“I’m sorry,” I say, ignoring my skirt altogether. “I should’ve known.”
I stumble again—stupid shoes.
“I barely know her,” I go on, pointing at him briefly, “but what little I do know doesn’t help her case any.”
He chuckles and then crouches down in front of me.
Surprised by the sudden movement, for a second I can’t move anything but my eyes, which follow him. His fingers lightly touch my foot as he unzips the tiny zipper at the back of my sandal, collapsing the other hand around my ankle and then easing my foot out. There’s that fluttering in my stomach again; my skin breaks out in chills—I hope he doesn’t notice. Baffled by this otherwise intimate gesture, I still can’t do much but stare down at the top of his golden-brown head, my lips parted and my eyebrows scrunching up in my forehead. When I don’t protest, he takes off the other shoe, and before long I’m standing on the sand in my bare feet. He pushes himself back into a stand two inches taller than me and places my sandals into my hand, hanging them on my fingers by the thin straps.
I stare at him in bewilderment, swallowing nervously.
“Umm, so what exactly did happen yesterday?” I ask, feeling the need to change the subject—not because I was offended by what he did … No, I certainly wasn’t offended.
It was something else.
“Luke Everett,” he says, holding out a hand to me.
I glance down at his hand and back up at his gorgeous sculpted face and deep hazel eyes, undecided what’s confusing me more: the way he’s smiling at me or the way he keeps avoiding my questions.