Page 44 of Stealing Blinds

“God, you’re so romantic.” I grab my bag and get out of the truck.

He collects our beach chairs and rounds the hood. “You don’t want to be friends with me either. You’re just scared.”

Healing from anything is such a rocky affair. One minute, I’m fine. The next, a simple statement is an avalanche, burying me.

Oblivious to how that proclamation bitch-slapped me while simultaneously being irritatingly considerate, he flips the backpack chairs around to his chest and gestures to his back. “Hop on. You shouldn’t be walking through the sand on that ankle.”

I can’t look at him, so I dismiss his playful suggestion and start tromping to a section of the sand that I know will be vacant. He runs up behind me, and with one arm curled around my thighs, he lifts me into the air so I’m towering above him, facing forward with my ass on his shoulder, the chairs on his back once again. I smack his arm in protest, which he ignores.

Maybe this should be swoonworthy, but my skin boils from the mid-May sun and the wrath from everything crashing down on me, so holding my tongue is eventually too tall of an order. “Just because Peter alluded to something and my mother felt compelled to share whatever the hell she did, that doesn’t mean you know what my fears are or anything about why I make my decisions, Cash.”

“You’re right. I don’t know.” The apology is clear in his tone, which is why, once he carefully sets me on my feet, I finally grant him my attention as we drop our things, only for him to knock me on my ass—figuratively. “So, tell me why you stole the Stanley Cup.”

Acid sloshes in my stomach, leaping for my esophagus, but I feign a calmness that is eerie, even to me. “What are you talking about?”

He pushes his sunglasses up on his head, which, of course, has his mussed hair falling around the aviators perfectly, and his gaze docks on me while he lays out a beach blanket. “I’m sure you’re aware the Stanley Cup was stolen—hard to pull off since they have a keeper escort the thing everywhere. It was big news. It happened almost two years ago, when Dallas won. I think your ex played for them.”

My jaw locks, and suspicion makes my flesh itch. “Is this why you’ve been so relentless? Are you a hockey nut? Danny already tried pinning this shit on me, and it didn’t work. So—”

“Sylvie.” He steps into me, his hand on my throat, his lips inches from mine, and his timbre low and lethal. “I don’t know how much clearer I can be. I don’t give a shit about hockey. I want to murder your ex, but your mother advised against it, so I haven’t landed on a decision regarding that. I am here because of you. Because you’re fucking in me.”

I’m in him? I don’t know what to do with that or how to force my lungs to work properly within his grasp.

His thumb sweeps over my frenzied pulse point, his menacing demeanor fading to the lust-drenched bravado I’m used to. “My only motives are the ones I’ve already repeatedly stated. I’m happy to give you a demonstration if it would help with clarity, but—”

“Okay. I mean, no.” I can barely catch my breath. “I just …”

“Whatever you’re tangled up in, I’ll find you a way out.”

“In exchange for …” My insinuation dangles for seconds that stretch out like an eon.

“Fuck no,” he snipes, and a brief coloring of offense coasts through his baby blues, but he quickly tints it with swagger. “You’ll beg me for that of your own free will. No need to barter for it.”

With his hand on my throat and his mouth a hair’s breadth from mine, I’m close to begging now. But that isn’t what’s important. Maybe I should trust him. I told him I needed a friend, and he keeps showing up. He helped me at Peter’s, having no idea what I was stealing. And Peter is his member. Last night, when he saw the mask, he would’ve kept how I had gotten it a secret. For the second time. And more than all of that, I haven’t relied on anyone other than my mom in such a long time that it really would be nice to confide in someone.

Stepping back, I whip off my T-shirt and jean shorts and lay them on the blanket with my conditions. “I don’t mix work and romance or sex—however you’d classify your warning. You want me to trust you to help me? Then we need to leave the prospect of blowing up the friendship on the table.”

“Fine.” He does that one-handed thing guys do—reaching behind his back and ripping off his T-shirt—to reveal the reason he wears that pompous grin all the time before his gaze scrapes every morsel of my bare skin with obscene promises. “We’ll table it for now. But you’d better make it good.”

Make it good? A very demanding voice inside me has other ideas about things that could far surpass good, especially in the face of his chiseled physique and risk-taking tattoos—cards and money, dice and chips, a roulette wheel, a guillotine box with a woman sawed in half, and a skeleton, donning a crown composed of music notes and melting from flames.

It doesn’t matter that I glimpsed his bare skin last night. I can’t look away. This is the legend of Cash Noire, inked across his golden flesh.

Focus.

My heart thrashes my sternum, and my throat grows dry. “It’s a long story.”

“Remember what I told you?” He steps toward me again, but he doesn’t touch me this time. “As long as it takes.”

He did say that, but I can’t seem to reconcile his patience and commitment to being here with what I’ve heard about him. Maybe I need to see him through a new lens.

In an effort to protect my sanity and preserve my skin, I reach for the sunscreen, spraying the mist all over my limbs, cleavage, stomach, and back before turning it on him, like a vigilante against UVB rays. He merely wrinkles his forehead, lowers his sunglasses, and lets me hose him with SPF. Eventually, he chuckles and turns around, clasping his hands together on the back of his head. And I’m instantly held captive, alone with his gambling-themed tatted backside and bulging biceps—which is a mistake because every expertly crafted ridge is droolworthy—until he spins, and I catch him off guard.

“Have you ever had a time in your life that blended the worst and best moments?”

He hesitates, peering out at the subtle lapping waves with a more pensive disposition than I’ve ever seen him possess. “My parents died in our house fire when I was twelve. That day and the weeks and months that followed were … yeah, the worst. But somehow, Axel took that time and turned us into the kind of family that I imagine most people only dream about.”

Tragedy to triumph.