But as I watch him, something shifts in his expression, and I know I’m going to pay for this.
Probably dearly.
Of course I will.
I have terrible taste in men.
Before he even opens his mouth, my stomach is already dropping. My shoulders are already bunching. My breath is getting shallower and shallower, and my pulse is pretending to be a cheetah.
His deep brown eyes connect with mine, and I feel his words more than I hear them.
“Appreciate that. Because I need a favor.”
4
Davis Remington, aka a quiet man of mystery who is being very difficult right now
5
Sloane
You’d thinktwo days would be enough to work through the stress of my new reality, but Monday night, as I’m on my way to fulfill my end of a bargain that I made with a devil, my pulse won’t slow down.
I’m okay.
Nobody’s hurt.
Everything’s fine.
But my body is on an adrenaline high, and I can’t decide if I love it or hate it.
Everything’s been wrong since Nigel showed up at the wedding on Saturday. Since I found Davis and a mystery person in what was supposed to be an empty museum.
We gave our statements to the sheriff, who thinks that it’s likely someone at the wedding was playing a game to practice for an upcoming Hollywood role. While he took photos of the workroom and dusted for prints, he says he’s not expecting to find anything. Only the coffee cup was broken, with prints on it belonging to one of our volunteers who forgot they’d taken their coffee with them to the museum the day before the wedding, and nothing was stolen. The sheriff and the rest of Waverly’s security team are convinced no one other than Nigel had gotten into town to crash the wedding, so the sheriff agreed to add extra patrols around the museum, but otherwise, they say it was the dumbest time to commit a crime, so it’s likely it was just a joy break-in.
After what Davis asked for his favor, I don’t agree.
And after I agreed to do the favor for him in exchange for him playing my pretend fiancé, including having a fake wedding with Nigel as a witness this coming weekend, my entire life is spinning out of control.
And it’s my own fault.
Approaching the house Davis told me to meet him at after I was finished with work today isn’t helping.
Not just because all of my patients wanted to talk today about how I kept my relationship with Davis a secret the past year, and I was already frazzled before my errand that’s the favor that I owe Davis.
I’m also keyed up because Davis’s house isn’t actually a house.
It’s a camper trailer hidden in the woods. Like the kind you’d pull behind a truck. Abigtruck—this is one of the largest campers I’ve ever seen, like the kind that’s an inch short of being a tour-bus-type RV—but still not a permanent structure here.
Probably.
With the fall leaves half-off the trees as dusk settles two days after the wedding, it’s even more eerie.
Especially since between the Shipwreck gossip chain and my work at the museum, I know all about this little piece of land, even if it’s the first time I’ve visited in person. There’s a run-down cabin sitting a little ways behind the camper with an ancient outhouse leaning in the slight breeze just beyond it, and lots of clumps of scraggly bushes all around it too. The cabin’s porch has caved in, and the roof is half blown away. It was condemned years ago, supposedly owned by a now long-deceased descendant of the founder of Sarcasm who didn’t fully fit in Sarcasm but was never accepted into Shipwreck either.
Rumor has it the former owner of the cabin died without any heirs, but I don’t actually know how long ago that was. I also don’t know if he lived here when he died or if he’d lived out his last days in a nursing home.
