"Stuck how?"
"She's scared. That if she goes after him, she's admitting she needs something. And she's spent the whole book proving she doesn't need anyone."
Tucker is quiet for a moment. The waves fill the silence.
"Sometimes the bravest thing isn't proving you don't need anyone," he says. "Sometimes it's admitting you do."
I stare at him. This man—this security guard, this former whatever-branch-of-military—just delivered a better emotional thesis than anything I've written in three months.
"You should put that on a T-shirt," I say, because sarcasm is my primary coping mechanism.
He almost smiles. "Just an observation."
The silence stretches a beat too long, the ocean filling the space between us, and something loosens in my chest. Not the block—not yet—but the stranglehold of needing everything to be perfect before I can put words on a page.
"I should head back," I say, picking up my dropped shoes.
"Need an escort? It's getting dark."
"I think I can survive fifty yards of beach."
"Copy that." There's that word again. Copy that. Like everything is a mission.
I start walking, then turn back. "Tucker?"
He's already watching me. "Yeah?"
"Thanks for carrying my bags earlier. And sorry I thought you were the bellhop."
The smile he gives me is slow and real and does that inconvenient thing to my stomach again. "Don't worry about it. I've been called worse."
I walk back to the house with sand between my toes and a sentence forming in my head—the first real sentence in months. Something about a woman who meets a man she can't categorize, and how that terrifies her more than anything.
The hot security guy thinks I'm a demanding diva who talks to herself on beaches. Perfect start to my inspiration retreat. At least it can't get worse.
Chapter 2
Tucker
The writer thinks I'm a bellhop.
I'm still smiling about it twenty minutes later, doing my second perimeter check as the sun sinks below the treeline. In eight years on the teams, I've been mistaken for a lot of things—contractor, bouncer, someone's ex-husband at a bar in Virginia Beach—but bellhop is a first.
Grab my suitcase, please. Like I was on the clock at a Marriott.
She didn't even hesitate. Just looked at me, assessed, categorized, and assigned me a task. There's something almost impressive about that efficiency—brain snapped to a conclusion, ran with it, no second-guessing. Type-A, clearly. Probably color-codes her calendar and outlines her grocery lists.
My radio crackles. "Tuck, status?" Calder's voice, clipped and professional even through static.
"All clear. Perimeter's secure. The writers are having cocktails on the veranda."
"Any concerns?"
"Negative. Unless you count bad chardonnay."
A beat of silence, then: "Stay sharp. Hartwell's publisher flagged two more messages this morning. Same sender."
"Understood."
