Page 97 of Disguised as Love

“You love him back,” she said quietly.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Georgie. The man all but kidnapped me, nearly got me killed, and then abandoned me to return to his normal life. I’m not in love with him. I hardly know him.”

Her lips twitched.

“What now?” I asked.

“Just your word choice. The ‘abandoned’ was quite telling.”

“Oh my God, you’ve lost your marbles. Just because you pick apart words for a living, doesn’t mean you should pick apart mine.”

“You’re quite testy for someone who isn’t in love and feeling abandoned,” she said, her pale-green eyes twinkling. Normally, Georgie switched contact colors like most people switched jewelry, but ever since the twins had been born, she’d worn them less and less. Maybe she just didn’t have the time, or maybe she’d just found her true self and liked it more.

Even though I’d known who I was for years, I still felt like I’d been searching for something. Something to fill in the cracks that felt a lot like loneliness at times. It seemed unfair that Cruz had been able to sidle his way into those spaces in our short time together.

“Tell me something,” she said, and I rolled my eyes. I thought they were hidden behind my sunglasses, but she saw anyway, because she kicked my shin with her foot.

“What?”

“Was this special agent an enormous Black man who could take Lance Gross’s hotness and triple it?”

I pulled my sunglasses back down. “I don’t know who Lance Gross is, but why would you even ask that?”

She smiled, got up, and then looked up toward the house before easing away.

My heart stutter-stopped as soon as I saw him.

Georgie said something to him as she went by, and he just nodded before stepping from the stone path onto the sand. He looked completely out of place on the beach?dress pants, dress shoes, and a pale-blue button-down?and yet he looked perfectly at ease. As if the incongruity didn’t faze him in the least.

His eyes scanned the area, found the guards that were posted along the fence lines, and then journeyed back to my face. They didn’t stay there long. They traveled slowly along my body clad in a tiny red bikini. Strings held it together?barely?and my breath caught as I imagined his fingers untying them. Unraveling the cloth like he could so easily unravel me. His jaw was ticking by the time our gazes met again.

“You look…overheated, little one.” His voice crawled through my veins, igniting them in a way the narrator had been unable to do.

I pulled my headphones out, shoving them into my bag along with my phone, my water bottle, and my sarong.

“What are you doing here, Cruz?” I demanded.

How had I forgotten how tall he was so quickly? It was bad enough to have to look up at him when I was standing, but being on the ground made it even worse. I stood, hands on my hips, and I swore the motion brought a twitch to his lips.

“I told you I’d come,” he said.

“No, you told me to wait to hear from you. I’ve waited. A week. I was going back to Stanford on Monday whether you called or not,” I retorted. I pushed my bag onto my shoulder and went to stalk by him.

My heart was hammering. Hammering because of his nearness and what it meant that he’d come, but I couldn’t afford to admit any of it. Not when it meant he’d have to give up one of the things that made him who he was in order to stay at my side. The Bureau would never keep him if he started dating me…did more than date me.

He easily caught me, first by the arm and then pulling me until my nearly naked body was tucked up against his fully clothed one. The zing of his touch lit me more than the sunshine had, chasing the cold that had become an incessant hum inside me into the background. It made me ache to pull the clothes from his body so I could feel again the silk of his skin sliding along mine. I wanted to wrap my legs around his waist, kiss him, and make him carry me to my room and undo the bikini strings while the invisible ones tying us together grew tauter.

“I didn’t have your number, or you would have heard from me before,” he said.

“You work for the FBI, and you couldn’t get my number?” I huffed as I pushed at his hands.

“I don’t work for the FBI anymore,” he said quietly, and that caused me to still. I looked into his eyes and saw the seriousness there as well as a question and hope.

My heart pounded fiercely, but my lungs forgot how to breathe. Finally, I forced out, “It was stupid of you to quit.”

“Was it?” he asked, voice deepening. “I can feel the way your heart is beating. The halting rhythm. I see the pulse at your neck going wild. I hear the desire that you’re trying to hide with your fiery display. Is it really stupid to want that for myself? To want you?”

“Yes, if it means giving up part of who you are.”

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