Page 91 of Off Plan

To the town. I blinked. “Oh. Um…”Sure. Let’s go with that.

“You need to stop. We all care about you, Mason. You’ve made a lot of friends here in a short time.”

Had I?

“But you don’t owe us anything. And I’m sure that Aaron will donearlyas good a job as you’d do yourself.”

“Aaron.”

“Aaron Smith, your potential replacement! Nice guy. Real down-to-earth. Good-looking. Tall. Blond. Not nearly as well qualified as you, if I’m being honest, but he’ll do. Bit of a talker. Likes sports cars. Big Bucs fan. Gay, too! And before you yell at me, he volunteered that.” Rafe nodded firmly. “I know better than to ask.”

I sucked in a breath. Rafe was going to replace me with a tall, blond, out-and-proud,sports car enthusiast?

I was being replaced with the anti-me?

With Fenn Reardon’s paper-perfect match?

I stared at Rafe for half a minute without blinking, utterly paralyzed.

“I mean,” Rafe said, clearly uncomfortable, “if you’re interested in staying, all you have to do is say so, Mason. As I said, you’re our first choice. You just need to decide that you’ll stay for the length of the contract.”

Just decide.

Easy as that.

I felt the little hamsters in my brain, which had been quiet and docile for weeks and weeks, begin to rise, and stretch, and jump back on their wheel.

It wasn’t like I hadn’t considered staying on Whispering Key and serving out my contract. Jeez, ofcourseI had. I’d been here over five weeks already, and I’d enjoyed almost all of it. When I looked out the window of this office, over the low buildings across the street, I saw endless sunshine and water, and it made me happy. The people on this island were weird but relentlessly kind, and I wouldn’t have traded the reality of this place for the five-star resort I’d imagined it to be.

Hell, I’d even learned to tolerate the geckos.

Mostly.

The problem was, if I went to that window and looked out at the water view, my mind would conjure Fenn Reardon’s blue, blue eyes. My gaze would track all the way to the rightevery single time, so I could see whether theMary Annawas back at the dock yet. If it was, my heart would give a crazy, joyful thump. If itwasn’tthere, like now, my mind would wander to where Fenn was and what he might be doing.

Victoria had said I wasn’t capable of loving someone fully… but clearly I could obsess with the best of them.

I could come up with a thousand and one reallycompellingreasons to stay on Whispering Key for three years—I hated leaving before I fulfilled a commitment. I worried that Aaron, who soundedverypoorly qualified in my professional opinion, wouldn’t be as concerned as I was about Lety’s shoulder as he should be, or about Gloria’s strange symptoms that really needed to be monitored, or about Dale’s mole, which needed to be biopsiedagainsince the lab had fucked up the first sample, but which I’d had a devil of a time pinning him down to get done—but if I stayed, it wouldn’t be for any of that. It would be because I’d gotten addicted to the hot almost-mechanic down the hall.

A man who’d changed the entire trajectory of my life just by existing and being so wholly himself that I couldn’t help but want him.

A man who lit me up just by looking at me.

A man who was so allergic to planning for the future, he didn’t even have an if-I-found-the-treasure bucket list kicking around.

A man who wouldn’t just throw me off course when he ran off to Belize (or whatever the Fenn-appropriate equivalent was) but might capsize my ship entirely and drown me forever.

I knew what my heart wanted.

I knew what logic and good sense demanded.

And I had no idea how to triage those conflicting needs.

“Well!” Rafe slapped his thighs, then got to his feet. “Gotta go help Fenn run the afternoon tour. Lots of folks rescheduling for earlier this week since the weather’s gonna get rough just before the weekend. How about you take a couple days to think about it? I promised Aaron I’d get him a contract by Monday morning.”

“And you told him the truth, right?” I demanded. “You didn’t lie oranticipate, did you?”

Rafe clasped a hand to his heart and shook his head ruefully. “Mason, you wound me, you really do.”