Page 3 of Marriage is a Shore Thing
I just hit the man I’d been talking to.
“Sorry,” I blurt, placing my hands on his hunched-over shoulders as he wheezes. “I didn’t think. I just reac—”
“It’s alright.” His eyes meet mine as he lets out a pained grunt. “I startled you.”
A strangled sound escapes me. I was hoping to make this man’s night better, not worse.
“Is everything okay here?”
Three black-suited security members surround us. Two of them pick up the drunken men and escort them away while one remains beside us.
“Everything’s fine,” I answer, still surveying the man I hit as his breathing evens out.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” the behemoth of a security agent tells me.
Oh. That’s fair.
The man chuckles, low and deep, and I’m overwhelmed with a sudden longing to see him laugh—to know how his eyes would curl with mirth, to see his mouth fully relaxed. Then he stands upright, taking my hands with him. I should let go, step back, but my fingers stubbornly remain on his firm shoulders.
“I’m fine. Thanks for checking,” he tells the security agent while keeping his gaze zeroed in on me.
He’s only a few inches taller than me with my heels on, making his lips distractingly close to mine. I bite the inside of my cheek to banish the wild thought.
The agent murmurs something into the microphone clipped to his lapel before striding away.
“I’m Evander, by the way. Everyone calls me Van—in case you write the names of your victims in a log somewhere.” A playful twinkle settles over his mesmerizing eyes.
I release a controlled exhale. “I’m sorry again.”
“It’s okay.” A half-smile settles over his mouth. “I’m sure we’ll laugh about this someday.”
An unfamiliar yet soothing sensation slips over my muscles. They should be tensing, moving away from this man, but I feel almost pliant in his reassuring presence.
“Ma’am?”
I welcome the bartender’s interruption, using it to break contact and regain my composure. I’ve never had it slip so quickly, but there’s something disarming about Van’s dimpled grin.
She hands me Cade’s beer-sodden purse and my smashed phone before sliding over a thick stack of bar napkins. “They went over the edge. Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I mutter, checking the contents of Cade’s unzipped purse to see if her phone needs to be dried like mine.
Besides the aforementioned breath mints and pepper spray, the only other things inside are three lipsticks, a New Orleans fabric patch, and a tiny rubber duck. My ID, credit card, and room key are in a secret pocket of my scoop-neck black mini lounge dress, so Cade probably has her essentials in the pockets of her sparkly jumpsuit.
My shoulders settle before I assess my phone. The screen isn’t just cracked; it’s annihilated. It blinks helplessly at my attempts to get it to function. I sigh, using the napkins on Cade’s small purse before drying my phone.
“You can use my phone if you need to,” Van tells me.
Under normal circumstances, this would be where I’d turn, march back to the expensive suite, and put an end to this long day. But I made a decision before everything went sideways, and Ialwaysfollow through on my commitments.
Straightening my spine, I face Van. “Since I made your night worse, I can get you into Bellinger’s afterparty to make amends.”
Van just stares, amused.
“However”—I pause, my jaw hardening—“you need to understand that nothing is going to happen here.” My index finger flicks between us. “After an hour, we’ll go our separate ways. That’s it. The end.”
He runs a hand through his hair as a shadow passes over his face. “I’m honestly in no state for…”
His words trail off in an exhausted exhale, leaving a painful twist in my belly.
