She pasted on a false smile. “Friends,” she agreed, extending her hand.
He looked down at her offering like it might be a turd floating in his cereal. But after a moment’s hesitation, he grasped her fingers in his warm palm.
The second he did, she understood his reluctance.Sparks, baby.Huge, massive, immediate sparks that ignited her blood and dizzied her brain. He quickly released her hand, and the skin on her palm tingled with phantom sensation.
“Good thing this friendship of ours is usually separated by the Gulf of Mexico, am I right?” he joked, once again leaning against the lighthouse, resuming his nonchalant stance, arms crossed, one knee bent.
“I guess so,” she managed even though she was reeling from his recent revelations.
Chapter 16
9:10 p.m.…
“So how are you doing,friend?” Bran stressed the last word.
“Don’t overdo it,” Maddy warned. She propped her back against the cool, black metal of the lighthouse’s facade and mimicked his stance by pressing one foot against the base. She covertly flattened a hand to her chest, hoping to push closed the black hole opening inside her and swallowing all the dreams—pipedreams, apparently—she’d had for the past three months.
It didn’t work. Which forced her to fall back on her most tried-and-true method of self-preservation: humor. “I’m still tryin’ to get over my disappointment that you’re not goin’ to let me touch your pickle.”
He swallowed like the thought of her hands on him caused his throat to close up. Then he managed to play along. “Never refer to a man’s package as a pickle. It brings to mind a baby gherkin, and that’s not at all flattering.”
“Sausage then,” she countered.
A muscle started ticking in his jaw, and any humor he’d tried to portray drained from his face. Was she completely evil to take delight in torturing him? Probably. But she couldn’t stop herself. As he’d told one of the masked gunmen,Tit for tat, dicksmack.If she was going to be miserable because he had some ridiculous standing rule about relationships, if she was going to be denied the joy of what could be between them if only he weren’t such a confounding idiot, he needed to suffer a little too.Fair is fair.
“Don’t say sausage either,” he grumbled.
“Okay,” she agreed. “I’m willin’ to allow for kielbasa, but anything bigger than that and you’re just foolin’ yourself.”
“Maddy,” he groaned, adjusting his stance. When her eyes pinged down to the front of his shorts, she realized all this naming of his nether region had caused the area to perk up. And maybe kielbasawasthe best comparison.
Oh! How she longed to find out for herself.
But he didn’t do relationships. And she didn’t do casual sex. So they’d reached an impasse. Or at least shethoughtthey had. Then an idea began to gestate. A scary, crazy, sort of…intriguingidea. With its birth, the emptiness inside her shrank.
“Fine,” she told Bran, her mind racing over possibilities. “No more talk of your man meat or the fact that I was lookin’ forward to—”
He lifted a hand. “Stop right there.”
“You’re no fun,” she declared.
“And you’re relentlessly wicked,” he countered.
“I’ll get you, my pretty,” she cackled, mimicking the Wicked Witch of the West. “And your little dog too!” Only, in her mind, she decided thatdogwas a euphemism for his pickle. His sausage. His kielbasa.
He grinned at her, having no idea of the devilish thoughts spinning through her brain. Then his expression turned serious. “Howareyou, Maddy? Really. How are you holding up? ’Cause I know you were just starting to get over the hijacking on your father’s yacht. Is this gonna set you back?”
Okay, so apparently fun time was over. She could have dodged the question and kept up the lark, but they’d never been anything but forthright with each other.
“Who knows?” She sighed. “I didn’t expect to experience such an aftershock three months ago. I thought I was okay and thenbam!The nightmares and the cold sweats started. So…” She shrugged. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”
“But for right now?”
“I’m okay.” When he lifted an eyebrow, she tossed her hands in the air. “What can I say? I feel like I woke up this mornin’, stepped in quicksand, then fought my way free only to have a two-ton anvil land on my head. I’m tired. The kind that can’t be fixed with sleep. The kind that’s bone deep. The kind that comes when you realize so many people are willin’ to do bad things for power or money or…or…whatever.”
He let his head fall back against the lighthouse. It made a softbong-ing sound when it hit the metal. “It’s a cruel world.”
She glanced at his perfect profile. “Meanin’ a cruel world begets cruel men?”
