tried to get comfortable, reminding myself that a cold beer and a hot guy on a sandy beach were supposed to be my idea of heaven.
“I miss my bed,” Rich said as we shared our secret longings to stave off homesickness. Okay, they shared their secret longings; I just listened. I wasn’t homesick. One needed a home to get homesick about. Rich rubbed my arm, waggling his dark brows suggestively. “It’s huge, with just the right amount of bounce.”
I shook my head, grinning. “And you probably change the sheets maybe once a year, right?” I joked, and the others laughed, including Rich. He may be great in the sack, but he was little help outside of it, at least when it came to housekeeping, I’d noticed. He was great on the building site, not so much in the hut we now shared.
“I miss my mother’s pumpkin pie,” Stacey, a college student from Sacramento, commented.
“Oh, my mom used to make a fantastic pecan pie,” Harry, a young med student from New Orleans, interjected. I moaned at the thought of a slice of good old pecan pie—with lashings of whipped cream.
The tie of my bikini top dug into the back of my neck, and I lifted the cotton tank top away from my chest, trying to allow some of that breeze to brush against my skin, no matter how heated it was. It was hot, and my head was beginning to feel just the slightest bit fuzzy. I wasn’t sure if it was dehydration, drunkenness or a pleasant mix of both.
The breeze shifted, and some of us sitting around the campfire moved to get out of the way of the smoke. I tried to shift, too, but Rich sidled up alongside me, that heavy, hot arm tugging me closer to that solid, heated body. He was doing that a lot lately, as though signaling to all and sundry that we were an item. Normally I don’t mind public displays of affection. Kiss me, hug me, get me hot and panting, but this was beginning to feel just a little bit more than a casual PDA. I raised my glass to my lips and took a big sip of the home brew Chatri had left for us. I still couldn’t pronounce its name, but I’d acquired a taste for it. This was my fourth and I was feeling a pleasant buzz. Well, almost. I could also feel the suffocating weight around my shoulders. I swallowed some more. Yep, there’s that buzz now. I relaxed into the warmth that spread through my chest. Chatri’s home brew could pack a punch, if you let it. It made it easier to forget.
“I miss my sister,” Stacey said softly. “There are so many things I’d love to tell her about this project...”
Nope. I wasn’t going to think about my sister.
Harry nodded. “My dad would love this whole thing,” he murmured, staring into the flames. “He’s an awesome handyman, too. We built this bookshelf together for my mom when I was twelve, for the fabric she uses for patchwork.” His expression turned sombre. “She died a few years ago.” He blinked, then smiled. “But that bookshelf is still standing.”
I sure as hell wasn’t going to reminisce about my mother. I forced myself to focus on the bookshelf part of the story.
Jake put down his guitar. “I miss my dog,” he said, staring morosely into the fire.
I chuckled. “You are such a country song.”
Jake grinned, and Rich twisted slightly to face me.
“What do you miss, Lucy?”
I kept the smile on my face, and raised my eyebrows. “What?” I asked, pretending to not hear the question as my mind raced for an answer. Okay, maybe raced wasn’t the right word. It lurched at a sluggish pace.
“Who or what do you miss from home?” Rich repeated, framing his words too clearly for me to play dumb a second time. Damn it. He was experiencing a brief moment of clarity, of purpose, when I was concentrating really hard on not letting my head loll back. Not fair.
“Ketchup,” I responded, broadening my smile. Ah, good one.
My fellow campfire huddlers groaned, and a line appeared between Rich’s brows. For the first time, my glib response wasn’t cutting it with the group. With Rich.
“Why do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“You’re always joking, always laughing, but you never really tell us anything. About you, anyway.”
For a moment, I wanted to argue, wanted to point out that revealing my heretofore unrealized passion for table condiments was me sharing something personal, but the intent look in Rich’s eyes, the earnestness, interest and puzzlement I read there, his eagerness to learn about me, to connect with me... It was seductive. Exhausting. Tempting. I blinked. Slowly. Chatri’s home brew was burning through my system, calming me. Lowering my defenses. Careful, that little voice inside my head whispered.
“Come on, Lucy. Can you tell us something about yourself? Anything?” Rich urged in a quiet, pleading tone.
I glanced briefly around the campfire. Everyone stared back at me, waiting, anticipating. These were people I’d practically lived with for four months, worked shoulder-to-shoulder with, laughed with, shared meals with, raged at the bureaucracy with, celebrated with, cried with... I glanced back up at the man who held me so tightly, so closely, and who stared at me so hopefully.
I looked him straight in the eye. Well, in his four eyes. I saw two of him, at the moment. I blinked. Nope. There were still two of him. “My real name is Maisey,” I blurted. The soft gasp inside my head was a belated warning bell. You idiot.
Rich blinked, then pushed me away a little. I swayed, coolness washing over me at the loss of contact, the surprising distance that yawned between us. “Shut up,” he exclaimed in disbelief.
I may have been slightly drunk, but even I saw the faint horror, the hurt, in his eyes, the slack-jawed shock. I heard the crashing silence around the campfire. I felt the brittle coolness of our separation like an Arctic blast that was more effective than a cold shower could ever be, freezing the effect of Chatri’s hypnotic potion in my veins, and I saw the crystal clarity of consequences unraveling in my mind’s eye, and what I had to do to avoid them. Fix it, now.
I reacted. Curling my hand into a fist, I slugged him playfully on the shoulder. “‘‘Course it’s not, you idiot,” and laughed as I’d practiced for years, injecting levity that bordered on hysteria, but was apparently enough to void my brief, insane moment of honesty. Rich guffawed as he slung his arm over my shoulders again, tugging me off balance. I kissed him briefly on the lips to shut him up, and Jake started strumming his guitar again as Harry reminisced about his dad’s jambalaya.
I settled back against Rich, pasting a smile on my face as I surreptitiously tipped the rest of my drink into the sand, letting that truth serum poison soak into the beach, never to betray me again.
I let the conversation ebb and flow around me as I stared into the golden flames. That was close. Too close.
* * *
An hour later, I stumbled as Rich leaned on me, but managed to catch my balance before we both face-planted in the scrubby brush that formed a natural barrier between the sea and the village. Rich sniggered. I fetched my phone from my shorts pocket and used the light to illuminate our way back to our hut.
“You would love my mother, you know?” Rich slurred into my ear. “An’ she would love you.”
I almost wished I was drunk enough for this conversation, but I’d stopped drinking after my stupid-ass confession, and my brain function
