Page 44 of One Night in Hawaii

I planned on dulling the pain and anger with enough alcohol to drown an elephant.

I was so angry I was trembling. Not only was I furious with Ashley, but I was angry with myself for being so stupid. Ashley used me. She was fucking with me and loving every minute of it.

I knew better than to get involved with Shiloh. I didn’t think I could ever trust another woman. Whatever I thought I felt for Shiloh couldn’t be trusted. I honestly didn’t know if any of it was real. Was she going to sleep with me because she was being paid? Maybe she didn’t understand what my sister asked her to do and was going to fuck me to make sure she earned her paycheck.

“How much?” I asked Penelope.

“What?”

“How much were you paying her?”

She looked down. “Thirty thousand.”

“Damn, you were making sure she kept me very happy,” I said and walked away.

“Archer!” Ryder called out. “Where are you going? Let’s party!”

“I’m good,” I said and walked toward the hiding spot Shiloh and I had used.

I was so fucking tired of feeling like I was always swimming upstream. I didn’t want to see or talk to anyone. I just wanted to be alone. I flopped onto the sand and finished the first beer before opening the second.

18

SHILOH

Iturned the knob to lock my cabinet door in the kitchen. Then it was securing my toiletries. I rarely encountered rough water, but even a small wave could knock stuff over and make a mess. With everything secured below, I went on deck to go through my usual checklist.

It was time to get back to work. It had been two days since the Archer situation. I was ready to get the hell out of Dodge. I hated sitting at the dock knowing he was just down the beach. I wanted to get as far from him as possible. Thankfully, I had a boat and the wide-open sea.

Penelope had tried to reach out a few times. She called and left a voicemail asking me to get coffee, but I didn’t call her back. I didn’t answer her text messages either. I felt a little bad for blowing her off, but she would be gone in a week and it would all be over. In one of her messages, she asked for my Venmo information because she wanted to pay for the days I hung out with Archer.

The very idea of getting paid to spend time with a man made my skin crawl. I never should have agreed to do the job in the first place. I wouldn’t have accepted the offer if I had known it was him. The whole thing was a bad idea from the very beginning and I let it get out of hand. The fact he had not even attempted to call or come by to explain or talk spoke volumes.

He was going home and getting married. I would have been a fling. It wasn’t like I didn’t have a few of those in my past, but it felt different with Archer. I didn’t want to be a fling in his world. It felt wrong.

I tried to push the thought of Archer out of my mind and focus on the task at hand. As I went through my checklist, I noticed a strange sound coming from the engine. It was a slight rattling noise that I hadn’t heard before. I frowned, trying to determine the source of the sound.

“Not what I need right now.”

My years of running my own boat had given me plenty of hands-on learning. The diesel engine was my specialty, and so I got to work investigating the rattling noise. It didn’t take long before I found the problem—a loose bolt in the engine mount. It was a relatively easy fix, but it was time I didn’t want to waste.

I groaned, frustrated at the prospect of losing a whole day’s worth of travel time. But I knew that fixing it was necessary if I wanted to make it to my destination safely. So, I set to work, pulling out the tools and getting to work on the engine.

As I worked, my mind wandered back to Archer. I couldn’t help but wonder what he was doing at that very moment. Was he packing for his wedding? Was he second-guessing his decision to marry someone else? Or was he already on his way to the airport, ready to jet off to his new life?

I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts. It didn’t matter what he was doing. What mattered was that I finished fixing the engine so I could get back on track with my own journey.

After about an hour, I finally tightened the last bolt and wiped my hands on a rag. I turned the key in the ignition and the engine purred to life, the rattling noise completely gone. I smiled in satisfaction, feeling proud of myself. I loved being independent. I didn’t need to worry about Archer. He was nothing more than a blip on my radar. He was my past.

“Shiloh!” Ryder’s voice called out.

I walked upstairs to see him standing on the dock. “What?”

“There you are.”

“I’m right where I’ve been.”

He climbed on board. “Penelope has been trying to reach you. She said she’s been calling and you’re not answering or replying to her texts.”

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