Because after I came back and you were gone I wandered down to the tiki bar thinking I’d force myself to have some fun. Evidently, because my decision-making has been compromised since the moment your soft skin was under my hands.
But I say none of what’s going through my head. Instead, I shrug. “I was bored.”
“You were bored,” she repeats, skeptical. “On a tropical veranda. With a view of the Caribbean.”
“Boredom isn’t location-dependent.”
She grins. The grin lands in my chest like a blow I didn’t brace for, and I’m going to attribute that to the rum and the medication interaction and absolutely nothing else.
“What do you do, anyway?” she asks after a beat, leaning her hip against the railing. “For work, I mean. You’re always chained to that laptop but you’ve never actually said what your job is.”
“Software.” It comes out easily because it’s true. “Security systems. I started coding at fifteen, got good at finding the holes in other people’s architecture. Now companies pay me to tell them where they’re vulnerable.”
“You’re a tech nerd.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
She turns to face me fully, and the moonlight catches her collarbones and I lose the thread of whatever expression I was maintaining. “I would not have guessed that. I figured you for some kind of numbers guy, or maybe a corporate shark. You give off very intense, ‘I will buy your company and fire everyone’ energy.”
Jesus. I hardly recognize myself in the way she describes me. “I don’t fire everyone.”
She raises an eyebrow and I realize what I’ve just half-admitted. Something sparks in her eyes, curious, and I redirect before she can pull the thread.
“My work’s not glamorous. It’s code and systems architecture and a lot of staring at screens.”
I’m not lying, exactly. I’m selectively answering. Giving her the version of me that sat in a Harvard Business School dorm room at nineteen teaching himself Python, not the version that currently runs a fourteen-billion-dollar cybersecurity company.
“Do you like it?” she asks, and the question is so simple and so sincere that it catches me off guard. People often ask what I do. What my company is worth. Nobody asks if I like it.
“Yeah.” I nod. “I do.”
She smiles. Her expression is warm and open, sweetly so. Her face is so soft in the moonlight, it’s all I can do to keep myself from reaching out to touch her cheek. Guilt helps. Here she is, looking at me with honest interest, and I’m giving her half-truths and calculated evasions. I should change the subjectbefore this conversation goes somewhere my defenses can’t follow.
“What about your family?” she asks, and the subject changes itself.
My family’s not an area I generally discuss with random strangers either, but Ella’s not random, and although it’s not even two days since we met I can’t consider her a stranger. I’m not sure what to consider her anymore.
“Only child,” I answer, deciding it best not to try categorizing her. Especially not when we’re standing alone in the dark surrounded by the tropical romance of a warm ocean breeze and soft music coming from somewhere on the beach. “My father was a construction foreman. Retired now. He taught me that if you’re going to build something, build it so it stands long after you’re gone.”
“Good advice,” Ella says, listening intently. “Your dad sounds like a smart man.”
“Yeah, he is. My mom’s no slouch either. She was a school secretary for thirty years. Now she’s...” I pause. “She has a heart condition. Has for years.”
“I’m sorry. How’s she doing?”
I shrug, unsure why I allowed the conversation to wander down this uncomfortable path. “She has good days and bad. It’s hard to see her struggling when she was always so vibrant and independent. I hired a home health care agency for her, and I help out with other medical expenses.”
I say it matter-of-factly because that’s how Becketts talk about things that matter. No sentiment. Just facts and quiet follow-through. Ella’s expression softens as if I’ve handed her a piece of a puzzle she’s been trying to assemble since the plane.
“You take care of them.”
“They’re my parents. Of course, I take care of them where I can.”
“That’s not a given for everyone. You’re a good man, Alec Beckett.”
She’s looking at me with those blue eyes and the warmth in them is doing more damage to my self-control than the rum has. My skin prickles with the awareness of her, the three feet of railing between her arm and mine, the salt air carrying her warm, enticing scent.
I clear my throat, desperate to change the subject and the vibe going on between us. “Your turn. Tell me more about the woman who chooses where to live by randomly sticking a pin on a map, and who’s probably made friends with half the resort today. How does that even work?”
