I Fled My Wedding, Slept With a Stranger, and He's My New Boss novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: No Last Names

At the island bar Jack and Maddie trade barbs, she sets three rules, he fixes her sunburned strap, she mocks the near-miss, and he kisses her on the pier at dusk.

I turned around with the glass still in my hand.

He stood close enough that I had to tip my head back.

He had dark hair, grey eyes, a scar that split his left eyebrow, and a white shirt wrinkled from travel.

He looked at the glass, then at me.

"I ordered it ten minutes ago," he said. "I went to take a call, and you moved in."

"It was sweating on the bar with nobody watching it."

"I was watching it from the pier."

"Then you should have stayed."

The corner of his mouth moved.

I held out the glass. He didn't take it.

"Keep it," he said. "I'll get another. You're the one who looks like you need it."

He signaled the bartender for two more and sat on the stool beside me, with his back to the televisions.

Behind him, my own face came on the screen again, white veil in my fist.

I turned my stool the other way.

"Do you watch football?" I said.

"No."

"News?"

"Not this month." He rubbed the scar. "I came here to stop looking at screens. Why?"

"Just checking."

He waited, and I understood that he wasn't going to push.

It was the first time anyone had let me not explain myself in about nine hours.

"I'll tell you what I need," I said. "If you can't do it, take your wine and go."

"Go ahead."

"Nobody asks my last name. Nobody brings up phones, the news or anything back home."

"What else?"

"Whatever this is, it ends Saturday morning when I fly out."

"Whatever what is?"

"This." I waved the glass between us. "Two people being decent at a bar."

His gaze dropped to my mouth, then came back up.

"Three rules," he said. "Fine. Mine are shorter. I'm Jack. That's all you get, too."

"Maddie."

"Maddie." He said it slowly. "What do you do, Maddie, when you aren't running from something?"

"I plan weddings."

He laughed out loud, one rough note, and heads turned down the bar.

"Sorry," he said. "That's the best thing I've heard all week."

"I'm very good at it."

"I believe you." He turned his glass a quarter turn on the napkin. "I fix things at a hotel group. Leaks, locks, whatever the guests break."

"You've been checking your pocket every minute."

"I'm bad at taking time off."

He took out a phone, powered it off in front of me and set it face-down on the bar.

Something in my chest loosened.

Lena found us an hour later.

She stopped at the end of the bar, looked from him to me and back, and mouthed: Oh, my God.

Then she took her drink to the pool, and she did not look back once.

The next morning I came out to the pool deck in a bikini top and a cover-up.

The strap of the top had dug a red line into my sunburned shoulder.

I tugged at it and winced.

"Hold still," Jack said.

He'd been reading on the next lounge chair. I hadn't noticed him get up.

His fingers slid under the strap and lifted it off the burn.

He moved it half an inch toward my neck.

His knuckles brushed the bare skin of my back.

Neither of us said anything.

I stayed where I was, and so did he, longer than a strap needed.

His breathing had changed. It was slower and deeper, and I told myself he was tired from the sun.

"Better?" he said, near my ear.

"Better," I said. My voice wasn't mine.

He leaned in another inch.

"Do you do this for all the stranded brides, Jack?" I said, and I made it sound light.

He went still.

Then he stepped back and picked up his book, and the corner of his mouth moved again.

"Only the ones who steal my wine."

I put on sunglasses and went into the water so he couldn't see my face.

We spent the day not touching.

He took me to the dive shack and showed me where to rent a snorkel.

He called a sea turtle by the wrong name until the instructor corrected him.

"That's what I get for sleeping through school," he said, and I laughed until I had to hold the rail.

When the sun started going orange, we were at the end of the long wooden pier, our feet over the water.

"Is it Saturday yet?" I said.

"Six days."

"Good."

"Is it?" he said.

I looked at him.

He wasn't smiling now.

"Yes," I said. "It's the best news I've had all year."

Jack put his hand along my jaw, slowly, giving me every chance to turn away.

I didn't.

He kissed me on the pier with the whole sunset behind us, and my hands were already in his shirt.

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