By the time we tumbled between two big dunes of sand that separated the fair from the beach, I was laughing so hard there were tears streaming down my face. I lay on sand and long grass as Gideon rolled into me and leaned his forehead against my shoulder as he laughed.
“I hate geese,” I wheezed.
“I didn’t think it would attack me,” he admitted.
“Have you ever met a goose before? What else would it do?”
Gideon laughed harder, rolling onto his back in the sand. We lay there until the giggles subsided. Finally, I turned to look at him. He’d lost his sunglasses at some point, and his eyes were glimmering with humor. His smile was unguarded and bright. He was gorgeous.
We stared at each other for a long time. I licked my lips, and Gideon followed the movement with his eyes. Slowly, as if he was waiting for me to flinch back, Gideon reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, neatly avoiding the globs of llama spit. His finger was warm as it traced the shell of my ear, coasting down the side of my neck and drifting away.
I ached for him to touch me again, but he just looked at me.
“Thoughts on your first Marswood Harbor Fair?” he asked.
“Ten out of ten,” I replied, and he grinned. He pushed himself to his feet and helped me up, and we did our best tobrush the sand from our clothes and hair. Stumbling out from between the dunes, we nearly ran into grumpy old Ivan Popov.
The old man scowled at me and then at Gideon. “Beauty and the beast,” he sneered, and then brushed past us to limp toward the fair. I frowned after him, offended.
But it wasn’t until I looked at Gideon that I realized that little comment had overshadowed all the laughter that had come before. His jaw was tense, and he was doing that thing where he angled his head away from me, like he didn’t want me to look at his scars. He wore long sleeves today too, despite the beating sun, and I watched as the fingers of his right hand twitched at the left cuff to pull it down over his scarred wrist. It made me want to scream.
He met my gaze after a long pause and said, “You want to stay longer, or should I drive you home?”
The bubbly, effervescent feeling in my chest went flat. “Gideon…”
He shrugged off the hand I reached toward him, then stalked toward his car. I followed, trying to find the words to tell him that Ivan had been rude, and that wasn’t at all how I saw him.
“He’s wrong, you know,” I finally said when we reached the vehicle.
Gideon shot me a glance. “Is he, though?”
This time, he angled his head so I could see the scars. And that pissed me off, because how did he expect me to react? Did he think I’d run away screaming? The scars were just different-textured skin! They didn’t change the fact that he was funny and warm and a great cook, he was reliable and beloved and respected in his family, and he had an amazingbody, and hisvoice, and oh, God, I was falling in love with him.
My mouth clamped shut before I could reply, the horror of my realization staying my tongue.
“I need to go to work, so…”
“It’s Saturday.”
“We’ve got thousands of hours of video to review to try to find Mr. Titty.”
“Can’t a computer do that for you?”
Gideon just stared at me. “You want a ride home, or no?”
“I’ll find my own way back,” I said.
His eyes were flat. Unsurprised. “Fine,” he said. His anger—or was it hurt?—lay heavy between us. He got behind the wheel and went to close the door, then seemed to reconsider. He glanced at me and, a little more gently, he said, “Call me if you need a lift.”
I nodded and watched him drive off. Glancing back at the fair, I didn’t have the heart to go back. I did spot Gideon’s sunglasses on the ground by the dunes, so I circled back to grab them, then made my way up Main Street.
My head was a mess. I walked under the dappled shade of the big trees lining the street, barely seeing the new additions to Mr. Titty’s oeuvre. I passed boarded-up shops and the vacant apartments above, and I nodded to passers-by who greeted me by name.
As I walked, my anger grew. Anger at myself for falling for yet another unavailable man. Anger at Gideon for thinking I was so shallow. Anger at Ivan Popov for being a rude son of a bitch who couldn’t be civil for three seconds of the day.
Anger had always been a great motivator of mine. It’s whathad made me sign up for this marriage, after all. So when I reached Life’s a Stitch and saw the “For Rent” sign still hanging in the window, it was my anger that made me pull out my phone. I was mad when I swiped away yet another spam call from an unknown number, then typed in the phone number on the sign.
“Marswood Harbor Property Management, how may I help you?” a woman’s pleasant voice sing-songed the greeting over the phone.
