Page 87 of Chasing Lynda

Fuck.

I can only imagine how this must look to her. “Lynda, did I or any of the others make you feel like your stay here was in exchange for—Fuck! That’s why I told Dodge to give you your own room. I swear, none of us want to assume anything. The reason why we asked you to stay is that, aside from feeling guilty about the fire, we all like you. We want to get to know you better and with what happed at the hotel, we knew it would take us a few days to figure out what was next and—”

I’m blabbering. I take a deep breath and slow down. “We all wanted to hang out and see if the attraction we all feel for you, could be something more at least with one of us. That’s why Bennett was planning to find you a job at the hotel, if you wanted one. We invited you to stay here because we didn’t want to lose track of you like happened to each of us after we first met you. I promise that we weren’t expecting anything in return.”

She finally lifts her gaze, her eyes wide as she catches my drift.

“Oh Zane, no! You guys have been amazing and so generous. Callie has been so sweet too. I swear, I never thought having me stay here was a quid pro quo. You all behaved like total gentlemen and nothing really happened since we got here ... aside for a moment with Bennett at the pool—”

“Fucking Bennett!” I cuss. “The guy can’t keep it in his fucking pants, to save his life! If he pushed you too far, I swear I’m gonna make sure he has no use for that dick for a long time!”

She smiles for the first time since I saw her this morning, amused by my reaction. “No, he didn’t push me. We didn’t exactly ... what I mean is that what we did was completely consensual. I encouraged him.”

That admission makes me feel relieved and jealous at the same time; I hate the idea that the others might be ahead of me in getting close to her. I know she had sex with Dodge the night of the fire. “As long as you don’t feel pressured or think that your stay here is in exchange for anything,” I mutter darkly.

Her reaction surprises me. “I like you guys,” she drawls, covering my hand with hers on the cloth of the compress. “No one made me feel pressured to do anything. To be honest, I thought I did something wrong or that you guys changed your mind about being attracted to me.”

I look at her, lifting my head off her thigh and busying myself opening the sachet of burn gel. “How could you ever think that? We were just trying to give you some space and get to know you without making you feel uneasy about staying here. Every time I turn around, someone is snuggling up to you or holding your hand. Haven’t you seen how Dodge and Bennett are practically seconds away from peeing on you to mark their territory and Carter follows you everywhere like a lovesick puppy?”

She smiles but it’s fleeting; she returns serious as she tilts her head to meet my gaze. She’s so fucking pretty that I need to remind myself how to breathe when I’m close to her.

“What about you, Zane?” she asks. “You’re kind to me every time we cross paths, but you’ve kept your distance since I walked out on you on the beach the night before the fire.”

This girl is going to kill me, I swear. “You know I really like you, right?” I ask and she shakes her head.

“No I don’t know if you don’t tell me, Zane,” she says, making me think that I’ve fucked this all up before it even starts.

“I—I don’t know, I was just trying to get to know you before we got closer. I realized that that night on the beach, I was the one who was too pushy maybe.”

She sighs, but this time it’s a frustrated sound. “I thought we cleared that up after the photo shoot. You didn’t do anything wrong, Zane. I wanted to spend more time with you, I just—”

I drop all pretenses once and for all. I know there’s a ton of stuff she isn’t telling me and after seeing her name in the paper she was reading when I got her breakfast, I need to know what the heck is going on.

“You didn’t have money to stay at the hotel and you weren’t sure if you’d stick around.” I finish for her. “You keep repeating that, Lynda. I know this isn’t the whole story though. I didn’t know that night, but I started to get an idea the night of the fire.”

She looks confused and scared at the same time. “What do you mean?”

I sigh, hoping that I’m not about to fuck everything up by putting all my cards on the table. “After you left the club with Dodge, Bennett and I dealt with the asshole that tried to grope you on the dance floor, convinced that he bought some extra perks from Monroe. After we sent him on his way with a refund for his VIP ticket and the warning to never show his face again at the resort, Bennett went back to the club but the head of our security staff, asked me to stay behind.”

She doesn’t say anything and I continue. “He had told me that it looked like someone had been sleeping in our private cabana on the beach and that some stuff was missing from there. There and then, I told him I’d have to look into it and then I forgot about it because of the fire. It just hit me this morning, when I brought you your breakfast. The bikini you were wearing and that t-shirt the night we had dinner; they looked familiar and I just realized where I’d seen them before. They were Callie’s.”

Lynda gasps, covering her mouth with both her hands. “I—How?”

“That bikini was a bespoke Valentino. A limited edition that Callie had been wanting for ages. There was a waiting list to buy it, believe it or not. I’ll never understand Callie’s obsession with fashion and how she could leave it at the cabana after lusting over it for months. But I made the connection after I was told that there was stuff missing. You bolted on me that night because you were squatting in our cabana and you had nowhere to go, am I right?”

She opens her mouth to speak but no sound comes out. I feel like a complete piece of shit when I see the unshed tears in her eyes but I need to know what’s up. “You had nowhere to go and your name was in the paper this morning. It looked like an obituary. What’s going on, Lynda? I promise that whatever it is, you can trust me. Are you in trouble?”

She takes a shuddering breath and then slides off the counter, attempting to rush past me and out of the bathroom.

I reach her in two short strides, holding her in place by her biceps. “Lynda, where are you going?” She doesn’t look at me, her eyes are fixed onto the tiled floor of the bathroom. “Lynda, baby ...” I coax her back to me, lifting her chin with my finger as gently as I can. “Whatever kind of trouble you’re in, you can tell me. You know? What did you see in the paper?”

Her eyes flash with fury for a second. “You think I ditched you the other night because you were being too pushy?”

I open my mouth to answer but she doesn’t give me the chance. “You ask too many questions, Zane. I—I’m not ready to talk about it. I just—”

Fuck. Me and my big mouth. Carter keeps telling me that I’m too nosy. “I’m sorry,” I utter as softly as I possibly can. “I’m just trying to get to know you better, Lynda. But if I’m making you uncomfortable, then I’ll stop pushing. Just know that if you’re in any kind of trouble, I can help you. If anything, a problem shared is a problem halved.”

I’ll never understand women, I swear to God. She smiles, as if what I just said was actually funny. “You sound like my grandma, Zane.”

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