Page 27 of Nights at Seaside
She swatted his arm. “It is.”
“I know! I meant it. It really is awesome. I’m sorry I was a jerk when you came in. I saw how he watched you the other night at the bar, and yesterday there was an energy between you two that was so thick I felt like I’d stepped onto an island where I didn’t belong, and it was weird.”
She turned away so he wouldn’t see her cheeks flame up. “You always belong, but I’m not going to deny that whatever’s between me and Sawyer is pretty intense.”
“Intense is good, Sky. As long as he treats you well. But I do worry about him being a fighter and you being a butterfly.” He touched her shoulders, and she reached up and covered his hands with hers. “In all fairness I should tell you that I had Duke check him out.” Duke was Blue’s eldest brother. He owned a number of hotels and had connections in every industry known to man.
She turned to face him. “You spied on him? Behind my back?”
“No. I checked him out to make sure he wasn’t a freak with skeletons and abused girlfriends in his closet.”
“Okay, first of all, don’teverdo that again. That’s kind of creepy.” Although, she had to admit that she liked knowing he cared enough to do it, despite the fact that it bothered her. She still needed to draw this line.
“We don’t know him from Adam, and you looked at him like you wanted to jump his bones—”
“So what? That’s my prerogative, Blue. You don’t get to decide who I go out with or whose bones I jump. I don’t check out your girlfriends.” Anger simmered inside her. “Have you done this before? Checked out guys I dated?”
“No, of course not. He’s big, Sky. He’s strong. He’s a fighter.” His jaw clenched. “I wasn’tdecidingwho you go out with. I was just making sure you were safe.”
He reached for her, and she held her palms up to stop him. “Fine. No, it’s not fine, but since you did it out of some warped protective intent, I guess I should say thank you. But next time ask me, okay? That should be my choice. And without telling me anything personal about him, because I really think he should be theonlyone who decides what he shares with me…Did Duke find any skeletons?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. The guy’s never done a single thing wrong.”
She sank down to a chair. “I wouldn’t expect you to find anything bad about him. But I have to admit, even though he makes my head spin in the best possible way, I can’t wrap my head around his fighting.”
“Because that’s not your world.” He crouched beside her, and his eyes warmed. “He seems like a nice guy, despite the fact that I had him checked out, and from what you’ve just said, you really like him.”
“So now you’reproSawyer after you were the one who checked him outbecausehe was a fighter?”
“I checked him out because…I don’t know. Tons of fighters have issues and bad reps, run-ins with the law, and I’ve never seen you look at a guy like that before. I wanted to be sure you were safe. We’ve already established that it was a bad move.”
She sighed. “It wasn’t a bad move. I appreciate that you care, but I don’t appreciate that you ran to Duke without telling me first. Shouldn’t you have clued me in that you were worried?”
“You would have rolled your eyes at me.”
“True,” she said with a smile, because he was right. Short of finding out something horrific about Sawyer, nothing would have stopped her from going out with him. “If he was a freak, I could have been killed last night and the information wouldn’t have mattered.”
Blue smiled. “Yeah, I sort of thought of that this morning, too. Not my brightest idea, but I am glad I did it. Even if it pissed you off. Now I don’t have to worry when you’re out with him.”
“Guys are so weird.” She looked around the apartment, thinking about saying good night to Sawyer last night and how much she’d wanted him to stay.
“Are we still cool, or do you want to give me a hard time for overstepping my bounds?”
“How can I give you a hard time? If you didn’t do it, then one of my neurotic brothers would have the second they found out.”
“Yeah, well…Hunter and Grayson weren’t thrilled about this.”
“See?” She threw her hands up in the air. “Why’d you even tell them?”
Blue shrugged. “I don’t know. We were talking, and they were surprised I showed up without you. Anyway, even if you didn’t want the info, now at least you know Sawyer’s an okay guy.”
She shrugged, noncommittally. “Well, he’s still a fighter, and I need to figure out if I can deal with that.”
“Fighting is what he does, Sky. It’s not who he is.”
“That’s weird, because he said,I’m a fighter. It’s who I am.”
“He was probably just trying to be tough and impress you.”
