Page 98 of Cinderella Is Faking It

“Janice Terry. She made the call at some point while you were in the shop. That’s how the photographer knew where you were.”

“Ohmygod.” She pulled the Afghan up over her head.

“Hey,” I leaned over and slipped a finger into the blanket, pulling it down just enough to kiss her. “For what it’s worth, when I get married, I won’t need dragging. I’ll be the one waiting at the altar.”

“What?” She blew strands of hair from her face, wriggling for a better view. “You said that you don’t do monogamy.”

Pointing out that plenty of marriages were non-monogamous probably wouldn’t help. Not that I’d even been tempted by anyone since Del had started rearranging my bookshelves. Even before that, the only woman I’d been with in weeks had been nothing but a quick release after Blondie had gotten my systems going. “Yeah, but I also used to look like someone who sleeps with women, and now I look like I fuck. People change.”

She snorted a laugh. “Okay, you almost had me.”

Goddammit. I reached over and pulled her to me by the back of her neck, wrangling a choked squeal from her lips at the sudden roughness of my touch, and I kissed her long and hard enough for desperate gasps to sneak in between our lips. She tried to untangle herself and reach for me, but her hands were caught in the loose yarn of the Afghan, sparking around a dozen ideas of how I could make this cocoon work for me. For now, I leaned back and held her with my hand around her throat, forcing her chin up to meet my gaze. “I told you, Blondie. You’remine. I don’t care how we got here or if you need a ring or anything else as a reminder of that, but that won’t change. Ever.”

Her pulse was hammering fast under my hand and her lips trembled as she looked up at me with those ocean eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“I…” She swallowed, throat bobbing under my touch, then tapped my wrist. “Please stop. I’m too tired for anyreminderstonight. Sorry.”

I pulled my hand off her and cursed myself for my fucking choice of words. Del turned over, hiking the blanket higher again, driving home the point that I was not to touch her tonight. At least not like that.

I switched the lights off and stared at the ceiling, a throbbing crescendo behind my temples as I listened to her breathing even out.

It shouldn’t have bothered me that her mind had gone there, when I’d just told her- Merger aside, I couldn’t help but- I mean-Fuck.

* * *

The lingeringpressure in my head evaporated the next morning at the sight of Del in a pale blue triangle bikini that left very little to the imagination. Her nose had taken on a sun-kissed tint from the day before, but that was all the color on her face. No signature red lipstick or winged eyeliner. She’d not even bothered with her hair, throwing it all into a clip at the back of her head.

I leaned in the hallway, watching her zoom through the living room and back to the kitchen, back and forth, while she filled the basket that usually housed a bunch of old boating magazines, muttering instructions to herself.

“Sunglasses, sunglasses, sunglasses.” She touched the top of her head - no sunglasses - and scanned the living room before her eyes finally found me. “Hi.” Her face lit up and whatever ache I’d felt in my temples last night, plummeted to my chest. “Wanna come swimming with me?”

“Breakfast?” I had plans to show her how to make agoodfrittata with less eggshells and sugar.

“Already packed.” She pointed at her basket, and rolled her eyes at me because I must have looked skeptical. “Fruit, cheese, bread, juice. I washed the fruit but everything else is exactly as bought.”

“You didn’t wash the fruit with soap water, did you?”

“Ohmygod, you’re uninvited. I’m going alone.”

“I’ll change. Give me a minute.”

Weeks of unrelenting sunshine had warmed the shallow beach waters. It made wading in easy, but Del stopped just when it hit her waist, pulling her shoulders up. “It’s too deep. I can’t. I’ll just stay here.”

“This is the part of going swimming, where you actually have to swim.”

“But there’s crabs and jellyfish and those big round fish that sting you and you die. Or what if there’s sharks? I read about shark attacks around the Cape.”

Despite my first instinct being to tell her that she wouldn’t be attacked by a shark, I knew that would do nothing to reassure her. “If you get attacked by a shark, you pee at it and you whack it in the nose.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes, human urine and a punch in the nose, best shark deterrents.”

“I just…”

“Come here,” I sighed and lowered myself in front of her, back turned towards her. She climbed on without questioning, wrapping her arms around my neck and her knees around my waist. Tension burrowed through my hips at how her body pressed against mine. “See? Not so bad,” I said after walking far enough for me to keep both of us afloat, a few feet between me and the sea floor.

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