Page 12

Up to now, Jean had made a point of leaving before sunrise, so spending the night felt like a milestone. Not necessarily the positive kind, considering how badly she’d jacked up her plan to let this situationship unspool on its own. Slow chaos, like one of her chef friend’s sourdough starters.

With the same potential for mess.

She’d never hooked up with a hotel guest before, much less played slumber party at his cottage. But Charlie was exceptional in more ways than one.

At some point in the wee hours, she’d woken up chilled by the powerful resort AC, not having packed any pajamas.

Charlie soothed her like she was a nervous pony, clicking his tongue and making little shushing sounds.

It was probably a tactic he’d picked up in his farm-boy youth.

The next thing she knew, he’d taken off his T-shirt and slipped the warm cotton over her head, smoothing it down her body.

“Finally,” she grumbled, throwing herself back at the pillow.

Jean slept blissfully after that, even though it usually took her days to adjust to a strange bed in an unfamiliar room. It was the buzzing of Charlie’s phone that finally woke her.

“Charlie,” she groaned without opening her eyes.

When that didn’t get a response, she flung an arm toward his side of the bed, surprised to find it empty.

Rolling over, she reached for his phone, intending to bury it under a pillow (or fling it across the room), when the bathroom door opened, and Charlie stepped out, buck naked.

His smile slipped when he saw her hand on his phone. “Did you—” he started to say, hurrying across the room.

“Make it stop,” she ordered, pulling the sheet over her head.

“Sorry.”

When he didn’t immediately join her in bed, she peeked out to see him frowning at the screen.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

“I think so.” He swiped out of the open tab before crossing to the dresser and setting his phone down.

“Do you want me to—”

“Stay for breakfast?” he interrupted, before she could offer to leave. The mattress dipped as he sat beside her, cupping her hip with one hand. His phone buzzed from the other side of the room. Their faces were close enough for Jean to spot his microscopic flinch.

“Do you want to check that?”

“No.” He shook his head, in case one denial wasn’t enough.

“I can let you get back to it.” She kept her voice light. It was the most casual offer in the history of casualness. No one had ever been this casual before.

Charlie blinked at her, and Jean wondered how nearsighted he was without his glasses. Would he be able to tell if she crossed her eyes?

“Back to what?” he asked.

“Whatever you need to do. Snake stuff. Whoever’s blowing up your phone.”

“There’s nothing in the whole world I’d rather do than drink a cup of coffee with you.”

Jean held her breath, diving through the sweetness of his words like a wave that threatened to sweep her off her feet. The pounding of her heart was getting a little aggressive. Like excitement or… panic.

“Nothing?” she teased, wrestling him onto the mattress.

Jean had plenty of time during her evening shift to figure out how to even the cosmic balance. Charlie had brought her coffee in bed that morning, so she would spice up his night with a little treat of her own.

As soon as she clocked out, Jean crept to his front door, placing a rolled sheet of paper on the mat. She rang the bell before lunging off the patio to hide behind a trio of oversize ceramic planters.

The door opened with Charlie’s typical hinge-straining enthusiasm. His smile fell when he realized there was no one there.

“Jean?” he said, uncertainly.

She watched him squint down the path, trying to see into the darkness beyond the trees.

“Is there someone there?” He was retreating into the cottage when he spotted the paper.

“What’s this?” Charlie murmured, bending to pick it up. A grin broke out as he read the words painted across the top of the page. “A treasure map.”

He took a step down, pausing when something crunched underfoot. Lifting his leg, he peered at the scraps clinging to his heel.

“The trail of breadcrumbs,” Jean hissed. “You’re supposed to follow it.”

“Jean?”

“I’m a disembodied voice. Totally anonymous.”

“Oh, right.” Charlie glanced at the path. “They’re very big breadcrumbs.”

“I thought tortilla chips would be easier to see.”

“Good point, anonymous voice. Am I supposed to eat them?”

“No. That would be gross. But I appreciate your commitment to the process.”

He sidestepped the next chip before stopping again. Charlie’s shoulders tensed as he looked back at the door of the cottage.

“Go on,” she coaxed. “You haven’t even gotten to the first prize.”

“There are prizes?” he asked, perking up.

“What kind of punk-ass treasure map do you think this is?”

“Sorry.” Charlie took another tentative step forward, and then another, at which point he spotted the fluorescent duct tape arrow pointing at the outdoor table. A brown paper bag sat on top, with the words O PEN M E on the front.

“Go ahead,” she stage-directed when he hesitated. “It’s just a present. Not something weird.”

“But I don’t have a gift for you.” He turned back to the door, like he was thinking of running in to grab something for her. One of the lamps, maybe. Or a remote control.

“Just open it.” This was not the kind of surprise that benefited from a big buildup.

“It’s a shirt,” he announced, like she might not know what was in the bag.

“Now we’re even. Since you gave me a shirt.”

“I’m not sure gave is the right word.”

“The important thing is that it’s mine now.” It was soft and stretchy and smelled like Charlie. He’d have to pry it out of her cold dead hands.

“Is that the end of the treasure hunt?” he asked, examining his new Dolphin Bay polo. New- ish , anyway. In the borrowed-from-the-laundry-room sense. Jean refused to pay people who were supposed to be paying her.

“No, Mr. Low Expectations. You have to put it on.”

He shrugged it on over the shirt he was already wearing. “What now?”

“Into the wild blue yonder.”

“We’re going flying?”

“No.” Though it was touching that he thought she had access to a plane. “You have to follow the map. We’re going out.”

Charlie glanced down at the paper in his hands. “Out there ?”

“Yes.” Technically he was pointing at a parking lot, but that was beside the point.

“I probably shouldn’t. I told Mugsy I’d…”

“You told Mugsy you’d what?” she prompted when he trailed off.

“Be available. In case she wanted to call.” A shadow passed over his features.

Jean emerged from behind the planter, tired of trying to boss him around from a distance. “What if I said you could bring your phone with you on our excursion? Seeing as how it’s highly portable?”

He watched her stalk closer. “That’s nice of you—”

She silenced him with a finger to his lips. “Do you know why I brought you this shirt?”

“So we can match?”

“No. But also sort of. If someone sees you out there, wearing this, ” she drew a soft line from his mouth to his chest with the tip of her finger, “what do you think will happen?”

Charlie opened his mouth to guess, but she cut him off.

“You’ll be invisible. Hidden in plain sight.

” Jean didn’t know exactly why Charlie was avoiding the outside world, but she had ruled out a number of possibilities, including agoraphobia.

Charlie had been out in the wild studying snakes, which would freak out plenty of people who weren’t phobic about leaving home.

And yet he’d told housekeeping he’d do his own cleaning.

It was hard to imagine a more serious sign of your aversion to human contact than that.

“But—”

“Nobody cares about the resort staff,” she said, cutting off his protest. “We’re like elves. Magically getting shit done.”

“Or the Kapuas mud snake.”

“Absolutely.” Jean reached up to slide both hands into his hair, gently massaging as though working shampoo into a lather. “In what sense?”

“Changing color to camouflage yourself from predators.”

Jean smoothed his hair away from his face before taking a step back. “I could get into that.”

“If you had the right kind of scales.”

“Would you still like me if I did?”

“Of course.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Would you like me more if I had scales?”

“I don’t see how I could.” His little shrug, like it was too obvious to be worth thinking about, hit Jean right in the feels.

It was tempting to go full Dr. Seuss on him: Would you like me in a house? Would you like me in a blouse? Would you like me here or there? Would you like me anywhere?

“Let’s go,” she growled instead, frustrated with the mushification of her brain.

Charlie’s face fell. “I guess you must be sick of staying in.”

“This is about you, not me.”

“You’re tired of me?” His sigh was resigned, like he’d known it was a matter of time.

“No, I just don’t want you coming down with scurvy or rickets or whatever from not going outside. You need vitamin D.”

“It’s nighttime.”

“So we’ll go buy some chewable vitamins. Come on, Charlie.” She handed him the treasure map. “The sooner you find the treasure, the sooner we can go back to playing our favorite game.”

“Which one is that?”

“X-rated Swiss Family Robinson. Duh.”

He found the next prize at the base of a palm tree, helpfully marked by another arrow. Jean followed at a distance, peeling off the tape after he passed and making helpful shooing gestures when he looked back.

Not much farther now, and then Charlie could relax. And set down the picnic hamper Jean might have overpacked, judging by the way he was listing to one side.