“I don’t know.”
“What don’t you know?” he prodded. “It’s perfect.”
“I can’t do anything until I know what’s going to happen with Dylan. And how could you work with him around and…” She shook her head. “No. No. My goal with meeting you was to get rid of you, not get closer. I can’t.”
Without thinking, he pulled her into him, the very opposite of what she said she wanted.
She put her hands on his chest and looked up at him, those incredible sapphire and emerald eyes wide and serious. “You want to know something about me, Nate?”
“I actually want to know everything about you,” he confessed.
She gave a vague smile. “Let’s start with this, the thing I dislike the most about my…situation in life. The almost-not-quiteness of it.”
“Excuse me?”
“It somehow always seems to haunt me. I almost-but-not-quite have an amazing son, but he’s not, you know, mine. And I can’t be sure he ever will be. I almost-but-not-quite have a beautiful, safe home in a nice development, except my mother owns it, and that makes her think she owns me. I almost-but-not-quite was in love once, too, but he...” She gave a dismissive wave. “Didn’t work out. And now I almost-but-not-quite have the perfect job offer land in my lap, except it’s...”
“It’s what? It’s not almost-quite anything. This is a bona fide offer.”
“I can’t spend that much time around you…with Dylan and…no.”
Without thinking, he pulled her a little closer, just to erase the raw misery in those beautiful eyes.
“I am common and simple and pedestrian,” she said softly, not lifting her arms to return the embrace but not pushing him away, either. “And I have very strong feelings about that child. I love him beyond description.”
Her lower lip quivered just enough to show she was a little afraid of what he might say next. Or do. Because he couldn’t stop looking at those lips and thinking about...
The ship lurched again, bumping the pier and slamming them together, his lips hitting right on hers in a completely unexpected kiss. For one flash of a second, neither moved, then they both slowly backed away.
He refused to apologize, and she just let a hint of a smile lift her lips. “You know what you just did, don’t you?”
“Changed the dynamic between us?”
“You almost-but-not-quite kissed me.” The smile grew. “The story of my life.”
The boat stopped with a loud horn announcing their arrival and covering up his next sentence. “Might have to change that story, Liza.”
Chapter Seven
The minute they stepped off the yacht to the pier, Nate pulled on a nondescript baseball cap. “Sorry,” he muttered as he added his reflective shades. “Gotta suit up.”
“I keep forgetting I’m with a celebrity.”
He snorted derisively. “You’re not. You’re with someone people love to say they saw in person and prove it by taking pictures.”
“That’s a celebrity,” she said.
“No, that’s this stupid country that makes people idols and famous even though they’ve accomplished exactly nothing in their life.”
She glanced up at him, wishing the sunglasses didn’t deny her the chance to gauge how sincere that bit of self-deprecation really was.
“Oh, and this helps,” he said, sliding an arm around her and tucking her tight to his flank. “Stay very close.”
“A human shield?”
“No, but I won’t get bothered nearly as often when I’m with someone and deep in conversation. When I’m alone, I’m like a walking target.”
“Ugh,” she said, and not at all because she fit perfectly under his arm like she belonged there. His body was warm and hard and so, so masculine, and there was absolutely no other way to stay there without sliding her arm around his waist. “That must be a craptastic way to live.”
“You can’t imagine.”
A woman walked by and did a double take at him—not the usual check-out-a-cute-guy double take, either. The woman’s step slowed, her eyes narrowed, her mouth dropped to a little O as she reached for her husband to whisper something.
Isn’t that Nate Ivory?
Liza could practically read her lips. Nate steered them away with purpose, moving faster, keeping his head low.
“Just keep moving and get into a crowd.”
“Holy cow,” she murmured as they did. “You really can’t go anywhere.”
“I can, but I’m selective.”
“Like you can’t just go to the store and shop like a normal person.”
“In some cities, I can. New York, LA are usually safe zones. In some places I lie low, in some I have the stores come to me, and in others, I hire bodyguards.”
“Armed?”
He laughed. “Of course.”
“Whoa.” What would it be like to have to have a bodyguard? What a limiting life that would be and another really good reason for him not to have Dylan.
He guided her to a secluded sitting area between some stores, finding a bench under a tree and choosing the empty side that faced a wall rather than all the people.
“This life would totally suck,” she announced as they sat down.
“What sucks is having to be rude to people when I don’t want to. I don’t want to come off as some kind of cocky asshole, because that does nothing to help my family’s image, and really, it’s just fodder for tabloids looking for the worst. I don’t mind someone knowing who I am, but I hate when I have to be a prick in order to have privacy.”
“Well, if anyone bothers you, I’ll be a prick for you.”
He eyed her up and down. “Sorry. You couldn’t if you tried.”
“I could be a bitch.”
“Doubtful. Now, listen, we need a plan,” he said. “I don’t want to just wander around here like tourists. I thought we could start by going to my friend’s house where I’d been to the party that night, but he’s not answering his phone. I left a message, and he knew I was coming.”
“Why don’t we go to the restaurant where she worked?”
“You know what it is?”
She opened her purse and pulled out her cell phone, where she’d jotted down notes the night before. “I went into the office yesterday afternoon and did some digging around. I know where she worked, the apartment complex where she lived, and the number she gave ‘in case of emergency’ when she first applied for a job with the County Clerk.”