“My ritual humiliation?” Face hot, ísa told herself it was over, in the past. “No, why would I be bothered that a man I want to be naked with saw someone call me a tub of lard?” Her skin felt like fire.
“Your gardener clearly doesn’t share that opinion from the way he looks at you.” Nayna poked her in the shoulder. “Why are you acting crazy?”
“I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.” Her friend pinned her to the spot with her eyes. “Yes, it sucks that he had bad taste in friends at college, but remember that one day at school when you thought Suzanne might be a nice person? We all make mistakes.”
“I was new!” ísa cried. “I had no idea she was hiding horns and a tail under her blinding smile and shiny hair.”
“Whatever.” Nayna waved off that moment of shame. “Back to your hot gardener. What’s the deal? Why are you so discombobulated?”
Flushing, ísa swallowed hard… and admitted the truth. Because yes, she was acting crazy and it wasn’t only because Sailor had witnessed the most horrible moment in her life—though that didn’t help. “I like him so much, Nayna. And if he was friends with Cody…” Her eyes grew hot. “You know the kind of guys Cody called friends.” ísa had never been comfortable with his crowd, and they’d been total assholes to her around campus after Cody dumped her.
“Did your gardener—”
ísa shook her head. “I never saw him again after that party, but… if those were the people he hung out with back then, how can I trust my instincts about him now? How can I trust him not to turn on me? For all I know, he still hangs out with Cody and Suzanne.”
Nayna released a shaky breath. “Okay, yeah, that I get. But you’ve had a chance to see this guy a couple of times now. Does he seem anything like the Slimeball?”
“That’s just the thing. Cody was nice when we began dating.” And ísa had believed him, believed in him. “It makes me sick to think I might be repeating history. I just can’t, Nayna.” Not even for a blue-eyed man who asked her out on cookie dates and took her skinny-dipping.
Later that night, she opened her laptop and began to skim through the photos on Cody’s social media profile. His privacy settings were ridiculous—she could see pretty much all the images he’d posted. She ignored all the images of Suzanne, her search focused on only one person.
And then she found it: Sailor’s face.
It was in an image of a bunch of guys wearing rugby gear so muddy it was hard to tell what their uniform colors might be. Sailor had been snapped talking to an equally muddy Cody.
Fingers shaking, ísa sat back and just stared. She’d hoped she was wrong and Nayna was right, that Sailor’s friendship with Cody had been a college thing that had fizzled out when he figured out his friend was a monumental ass. But this shot was from the last rugby season.
Her hot gardener was still friends with the Slimeball.
* * *
SAILOR HAD A TERRIBLE NIGHT’S sleep. He’d been home from the party before eleven—and he hadn’t even had to ditch Raj. His friend had been in a hell of a mood, with no desire whatsoever to interact with any other humans.
The other man wasn’t a big talker, but Sailor figured it had something to do with the pretty woman in the bandage dress. The depth of Raj’s reaction might’ve intrigued him on another day since his friend wasn’t known for his temper, but last night Sailor had been distracted by the promise of seeing ísa again, probably within the hour.
He hadn’t worried too much about how she’d literally run across the grass and away from him, figuring her rush had something to do with the message she’d received from her friend. Some female emergency. After all, he hadn’t done anything dastardly in the seconds before she’d run—he’d literally just asked her to wait so he could walk her to the car.
Like a gentleman. And so he could sneak a final, scorching kiss.
After dropping Raj off at his place, anticipation a knot in Sailor’s gut, he’d waited. And waited. And waited. And finally realized that there wasn’t going to be any cookie-bar date. He’d been stood up.
The redhead had gotten away from him a third time.
And he still didn’t know her name.
Aggravated, he’d gone online and ordered a pair of fur-lined handcuffs. The next time he saw his curvy little con woman, he was going to lock her to some immovable object—namely himself—until he figured out why she kept leaving him in her dust.
Unsurprisingly, he’d dreamed of the cute, lying redhead all night long, woken up with a cock so hard it was painful. He wondered if his perfidious redhead realized he hadn’t finished his job at the school. One of these days he was going to run into her again. And when he did, he was going to bring out those handcuffs. Then, when she was stuck and unable to run, he’d tell her what he thought of cute redheads who promised a man a night of sweet heaven and delivered a night of frustrated aggravation.
Snarling at the memory of how soft she’d been under his hands, how lusciously responsive, he tried to convince himself it was a good thing she’d stood him up. Sailor had a plan for his life, and a cute, sexy redhead didn’t figure into it, not when his dreams depended on obsessive focus on a single overriding goal.
Neither his brain nor his body were convinced by the argument.
Rising in a black mood, he showered, then got himself ready for work. Just because it was Sunday didn’t mean he didn’t have things to do—he wanted to put in a few hours on a small project he was fitting between bigger ones. And today was a good day for it; he had no other commitments—definitely no kissable redhead in his bed as he’d hoped for last night—and the weather was holding beautifully.
Once at the site, he put his back into it, worked like a demon, and was done by seven that night—an entire weekend ahead of schedule. Gabriel had invited him over for dinner with a couple of other rugby buddies, but Sailor told his brother he couldn’t make it.
He needed time to brood.
Which he did until he fell exhausted into bed.
Waking the next morning with his mood not appreciably better, he showered and shaved with care before dressing in the single business suit he owned. He’d bought it a couple of years back, taking Gabe’s advice and getting one good suit rather than three cheap ones; it was his go-to outfit for meeting with his loan manager at the bank. And today, for what might be his first major corporate client.
He paired the dark gray suit with a blue shirt that “made the most of his eyes,” according to his mom, who’d given him the shirt on his last birthday. He made sure his hair was neatly combed and his dress shoes polished. For a second, as he looked in the mirror, he could almost touch it, the goal that drove him, the need to prove himself a gnawing on his bones that wouldn’t stop until he’d done it.
Until he’d shown the world that he wasn’t anything like the man whose face he bore.
“Keep going, Sailor,” he told his reflection. “No excuses. No distractions.”