The bubbles in my heart and veins mean I practically float into the building.
The hostess gives me a strange smile when I skip inside.
“I’m meeting Rand Kestrel,” I tell her.
She looks at her list. “Mr. Kestrel hasn’t arrived yet. But if you’d like to wait in the bar, he’s already opened a tab for you.”
I do a little shimmy, give her a wink, the sashay into the bar area of Bellissimo. It’s an L-shaped bar that is already filling up with beautiful people on this Sunday night. The conversations are muted, along with the lighting. I find a stool halfway along the bar. It means I’ll have to sit with my back to the doorway, but I know Rand will find me when he gets here.
A 30-something bartender approaches my spot, tossing down a square napkin. His cheeks are chubby with a perpetual ruddiness that either means he drinks or laughs a lot. Maybe both. “What can I get for you?”
“A vodka press, please.”
His eyes light up. “I haven’t gotten a request for that since bartending school. It’s kind of an old-fashioned drink.”
I wink. “I’m kind of an old-fashioned gal.”
He chuckles and heads off to make my drink.
???
I glance at my phone for thegazillionthtime. It’s not making Rand appear any quicker.
He’s not just late. He’s dreadfully late.
It’s nearly eight o’clock. The hostess already told me we’d lose our table if Mr. Kestrel isn’t here in the next fifteen minutes. Texts and calls to his phone have gone unread and unanswered.
Dread churns in my gut.
I look at my phone for the time.
Yeah. I know only thirty seconds have passed, but I have to be sure.
This can’t be happening with Rand, can it?
There’s no way he ghosted me too. No damn way. He left such a sweet note, sent room service and a car, and opened a tab at the bar.
Maybe that was him buying you off out of guilt?
That nagging voice in the back of my head has gotten louder and louder the longer I sit here. My stomach is on fire right now with indigestion. I didn’t take my anti-anxiety medication today, and now I’m regretting it.
“Fancy meeting you here, Lina.”
Icebergs form in my stomach. There’s no fucking way that dickhead is out of jail. No fucking way the evidence against him allowed him to get bail. And no fucking way he’s here in Flamingo Cove.
But the feeling of doom in my body spreads as I turn and come face-to-face with Dash Malum.
“What the fuck?”
“I was just passing through.”
“How are you out of jail?” I grab my phone, ready to call 911.
Dash shrugs and plops down on the barstool next to me. “A misunderstanding.”
“Misunderstanding? How does onemisunderstandbruises in the shape of your hands?” I shriek.
Everyone around the bar pauses to stare at us for a second, then goes back to their previous conversations. Oh yeah, nothing to see here. Just a crazy woman staring down her rapist.