Page 48 of Resting Beach Face
Cash grinned. “Melia, the giver of the SpongeBob pajamas, am I right?”
She giggled. “How did you know?”
Cash glanced at the stuffed Sandy squirrel from the cartoon tucked under her arm. “Wild guess.”
“Wow, you’re good at guessing!”
Cash charmed my family as easily as he did the guests—and all the while, he smiled at me, touched me, made me feel like the center of his attention even as he talked to everyone but me.
When he withdrew to give me some privacy to say my goodbyes, I instantly missed his warmth.
It was the middle of an Ozarks summer. His warmth should have been stifling, and yet…
Monroe eyed me through the screen after shooing the kids off. “You didn’t tell me you had a boyfriend.”
“A boyfr— No, absolutely not,” I said. “He’s just a friend. A casual acquaintance, really. He’s going to work on the B&B with me, that’s all. He’s a contract worker. I’m going to pay him. Not to date me.”
“You’re going to pay him not to date you?” she teased. “Well, that’s one way to keep a man at arm’s length.”
I glared. “That’s not how I meant it.”
“Declan,” she said, voice soft. “You just gave me a whole lot of words to explain away Cash’s importance.”
I winced. “Well, I didn’t mean he wasn’t important.”
“Because he obviously is,” Monroe said. “The way he looks at you…”
“I know.” I pressed my lips together, hope and fear warring inside me. “You know I don’t have any luck with that stuff.”
“That stuff being love?”
I shrugged a shoulder.
“Well,” she said thoughtfully. “We don’t always expect love when it finds us. I certainly wasn’t looking for Will. The man was buying flowers for his ex-girlfriend to woo her back, remember? When he came back to ask me out, I thought I was his second choice. I refused him for weeks.”
I smiled, remembering just how dramatic my sister had been at the time. Howsureshe’d been that Will thought she was that easy. She’d made him work for it.
And he had.
“Will’s a great guy, and your situation is different from mine.”
“Yes, but you’re still human. There’s nothing wrong with wanting companionship.”
The phantom feeling of Cash’s hand on my neck returned. The warmth of his smiles, his voice. Thelookshe cast my way, a message in them that seemed to say that I was the center of his world.
I wanted that. I wanted it so much.
But could I ever have it without the other side of the coin? Without disappointing him or leaving him so unsatisfied that he’d seek out other partners?
And a guy like Cash? Anyone would snap him up in a heartbeat.
Anyone but me, that was.
Because deep down, I knew I couldn’t keep him. No matter how fondly he looked at me or how much I liked the small fragments of affection he cast my way.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Cash
