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“Go,” he mutters and motions for the door. “And well done, trouble.”

CHAPTER43

WEST

The darkness around the villa is complete. It swallows it up whole and sets off the blue lighting in the pool outside. The air is humid and thick with the scent of greenery and ocean.

It’s a beautiful country. And I can’t help but resent the other guys, men I consider family, for being here when it could just be Nora and me. For constantly standing in the way. Rafe handed me a beer earlier, and I had to bite out athank you.

There’s a pool table in the villa, and we’ve been playing since we got back from the bar. Nora joined in for some of it, winning two straight games before declaring she’s going for a late-night swim. Alex dipped off to join her, and I’ve been watching as the two of them swim outside beneath a starry sky.

She looks happy and light, far away from the stalker and the worries of New York. I want to join them, but I can’t take off my damn shirt without showing off where some rock grazed me and lose a point.

Rafe and James want to keep playing pool. So I stay and watch her through the windows. She wears nothing but a bikini and a smile.

My entire body aches from the day I’ve had. From touching her and not getting tokeeptouching her. She was so damn fine against my fingers. Soft, and sensitive, and getting wetter with each circle of my finger. Her face was so expressive too, those long eye-lashed eyes locked on me when I touched her. Pushed a finger inside and heard her sweet gasp.

If you won’t be the one to take my virginity, I’ll have to find someone who will.

“West.” Across the pool table, Rafe is leaning against his cue. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing.” I refocus on the table. Shit. It’s my turn.

“You’re out of it.”

I line up my shot and pocket the ball in the far-right corner. “Even out of it, I can still beat you.”

James is leaning against the wall behind Rafe, a cigar in his right hand. He long ago stopped smoking. Cigars are reserved for trips like this. “He’s thinking about how he’ll be a husband in less than three months.”

“How long is your mother’s list of potential new Mrs. Calloways?” Rafe chimes in.

I walk past them both and turn to face the table. I could aim for the far left one… and hit a bank shot. “I won’t marry someone my mother chooses.”

“No grand wedding,” James drawls. “What a disappointment.”

I line up the shot and hit it. The ball rolls perfectly into the second pocket, and I straighten. “Let’s not talk too much about it around Nora.”

“Why not?” Rafe walks past me and reaches for his own glass of whiskey. It’s MacKenzie ’64, the best vintage from Alex’s family brand. Smoky and amber-colored.

Yes, why not?

“She doesn’t know. I don’t want her to think there’s a time limit,” I say. “On staying at Fairhaven, being under my protection.”

Both James and Rafe look at me. One gaze steely gray and amused, another green and narrowed. “If it came to that, she’d be back under mine,” Rafe says.

“I know. Just don’t want her to worry, that’s all.” It’s a thin excuse. I walk around the table, looking for a new angle.

I shouldn’t have said something.

Shouldn’t have agreed to this damn trip at all.

The sliding doors to the terrace open. Alex walks in with a towel slung over his neck. Nora walks in after him. She’s wearing an oversized shirt, the sleeves just a bit too long. It falls right below her ass. In her left hand is a jumble of green fabric.

She’s wearing Alex’s shirt.

She took off her wet bathing suit, and now she’s in Alex’s shirt.

My hand turns into a death-grip on the pool cue. She smiles at him, her hair wet down her side, a big, beautiful smile. An authentic smile. She’s not acting or people-pleasing.