Page 17 of Waiting For A Girl Like You (Haven House #4)

“ M ore lip liner.” Liam rummaged through the makeup selections laid out on the vanity in front of her. “And apply it thick.”

“Are you going to tell me what we’re doing?” She wrinkled her nose when he picked a brownish shade and handed it to her. “You said to wear hot pink lipstick. This so does not go with hot pink lipstick.”

He didn’t answer, too busy looking for something on his phone. “Can you make your eyeliner go way out? Like way, way out?” Turning his phone around, he showed her a picture of a woman with exaggerated makeup and black wingtips. “Something like that?”

“And why would I want to?”

“Wait, scratch that.” He disappeared into the walk-in closet. “Just pack the makeup. You can put it on when we’re on the boat.”

She turned on her stool to glare at him. “Why am I wearing makeup on a boat?”

“Because I need you to seduce a man.”

“William, I love you, but you better start talking.”

He reappeared shirtless, ruffled, and almost annoyingly perfect. His tousled hair gave him a boyish look, yet there was a hint of recklessness layered underneath. Her fingers itched to touch him, but she reminded herself to focus .

“Toby planned to take Evie using a small boat he’d beached near the mill ruins. Sinclair planned to do the same with you. The women came here the same way. ”

They had found the boats. Large inflatable rafts were left on the shore near the mill ruins, beached where the manchineel trees grow. As far as she knew, there hadn’t been much evidence or clues left behind on them.

“Okay?” she said, begrudgingly tearing her gaze from his chest. “What does that mean?”

“Where did they launch from?” he asked, stepping out of his pants to stand in his boxer briefs. “Not a marina. Sinclair could have slipped by and not drawn attention, but a bunch of women in white taking off in the dead of night? That sure as hell would have alerted a harbor master.”

He had been sorting through so many moving parts. Theory after theory, observation after observation. Every minor detail counted to Liam.

“So, you’re thinking they launched from a private dock?”

“I know they did.” He yanked open a dresser drawer. “Close enough to reach us fast, but remote enough to stay under the radar.”

There were no private docks near Haven House.

There were no homes or buildings whatsoever.

The bayou behind the estate stretched east into a narrow river, eventually leading to another that fed into the Intracoastal.

Most of the coastal uplands had long since been claimed by the swamp or eaten away by Mother Nature’s violent storms.

Ty taught her to fish in those narrow inlets.

She could remember how frightened she had been of the bald cypress and their exposed roots, which seemed to reach for them as they glided past. He would laugh and call her a scaredy cat, but then tell her stories of the mermaids who supposedly lived in the water around the trees and how they used the tree’s root systems as underwater homes.

To the west of Haven House was a different story.

A much wider pass opened directly off the shore, leading into a bay that eventually curved toward Port Michaelson or out into the Gulf of Mexico.

The boats would have come from that direction, and Liam was right.

Every time Zanmi arrived at Haven House, it should have drawn some attention, considering you had to travel under a major bridge to enter the bay that connected Port Michaelson to the land where Haven House was built.

“Have you found a private dock between here and the edge of Port Michaelson?” She frowned, trying to think of where one could possibly be. “There are some fishing spots, but I don’t know about docks. ”

“Where are those cut-off shorts you drove me crazy with a couple of weeks ago?” Liam returned to the closet. “And wear a bathing suit. A cute one.”

“A bathing suit?” She was off the stool and following after him. “It’s November!”

October had come and gone, with the kids missing Halloween.

Lenora and Selah held a spooky party for just the three of them, while Annabeth had done the same for Theo and Harper.

Forced to participate for at least an hour, everyone was coerced into costumes and required to stand patiently behind closed doors so the girls could trick or treat.

As a connoisseur of party planning, Annabeth made the night as magical as she could with decorations, handmade candy bags, and enough glitter to traumatize the vacuum.

It was the first time they’d all felt a flicker of normalcy since the attack.

And Samuel dressed as a vampire was something Jamison would never emotionally recover from. He’d insisted on biting Evie’s neck every five seconds, and while it was weird coming from him, Jamison would admit it was also sweet.

In the closet, Liam was digging through another dresser. Behind him sat the wreckage of the destroyed shoe cabinet, and she took an elongated step to get around it.

“That cold snap’s over, and it’s back to being eighty degrees,” he said, holding up a pair of dark blue board shorts. “Eighty-eight, to be exact, and that’s warm enough for you to wear a bathing suit and a pair of shorts.”

“It might be warm outside, but I’m not getting in the water. Neither are you without a wetsuit, so why are we dressing like we’re going to the beach?”

He gave her ass a solid smack as he walked back into the bedroom. “Because I want to check something out from the water.”

She groaned and dug through the same drawer he’d just ravaged. “So how does that tie into the ‘seduce a man’ part? Or are you the man I’m seducing? If so, I’m cool with that, but I didn’t know you were into me wearing heavy makeup.”

“I’ll take you any way I can get you, woman.”

Rolling her eyes, Jamison stuck her head out of the closet. “ William . ”

He grinned, tugging a T-shirt over his head. “I found a piece of property on the north side of the bay. It’s just off a small inlet and literally has nothing on it but a shack. It’s owned by a guy named Emmett Watson, who inherited the land ten years ago from his father.”

“What do we know about him?”

“Thirty-eight. Caucasian. Lives alone. No job.”

“That could describe the most boring man alive or a serial killer.” She returned to her search for a bathing suit. “Give me the good stuff.”

“He’s local. Grew up here. Used to live in a nice place with his mom until she died in a car wreck when he was seventeen. Then the state handed him over to his dad, who was never around.”

Recognizing this would be a long story, she took her time searching for a bathing suit. As she did, her fingers closed around a thin strap, and she lifted a bright orange thong from the options.

“Why doesn’t he work?” she asked, stepping onto a stool to reach the security camera’s access pad. She punched in the blackout code to give herself two minutes of privacy.

Or else Rowan would get quite a show.

The indicator light turned red, and she dropped to the ground, hustling out of her clothes and into the bikini, not wanting Liam to see what she was doing. Their first alone time in weeks called for a special surprise, and this bathing suit was perfect.

“He doesn’t need to,” Liam replied, moving around the bedroom. “Emmett sued the drunk driver who killed his mom and won. He’s set for life.”

The camera’s light switched back to green just as she was zipping up her jean shorts. They were frayed at the ends and short enough that if Liam looked closely, he would be able to tell there wasn’t much to her bikini bottoms.

She threw on an old T-shirt and stepped out. “But he lives in a shack?”

“Not just a shack. A fishing shack with a very nice dock,” Liam said as she emerged from the closet. “The thing is basically a glorified tiny home where his dad kept their fishing and boating supplies. It doesn’t have running water or electricity.”

“But he doesn’t live there. ”

“He does. He’s a survivalist.” Liam’s dark gaze zeroed in on the orange strap peeking out from the T-shirt’s large collar. “What bathing suit are you wearing?”

Knightly sat patiently on the bed, listening to their exchange, and she went over to give her best feline boy a proper scratch behind the ears. “What exactly is a survivalist?”

“Someone who lives off the land,” Liam replied, his eyes now firmly glued to her ass. “And I asked you a question.”

Pressing her lips together, she shrugged. She’d purchased the bikini for their honeymoon, and he had never seen it. “A new one.”

“Let me see.”

“No.”

Knightly let out a low, annoyed meow, perfectly echoing Liam’s growl of frustration.

“Fine.” He turned away to grab a black backpack off the floor. The entire bedroom was an organized mess only the two of them could understand. It drove Simone crazy. “But you’re showing me later.”

She smirked at him. “When we get that alone time on the boat.”

Liam grumbled something under his breath as he roughly unzipped the backpack.

“What was that?” She leaned in with a grin. “Didn’t quite catch it.”

“I said forty minutes.”

She tilted her head. “Forty minutes for what?”

He finally stopped his aggressive packing to face her. “Between scouting Watson’s place, maybe talking to the guy, and then getting the boat back to the marina before sunset, I estimate that we should have about forty minutes of alone time together.”

She told herself not to giggle, clap, or fist-pump the air. “Forty minutes? That’s it?”

Dropping the bag, he stepped in close. “It’s enough time.”

“For what?”

He hauled her tight against him, and this time, she did giggle—right up until his lips brushed her ear, and the giggle turned into a moan.

“To have you hard and fast,” he whispered. “You won’t mind, will you? ”

Her head tilted, exposing her throat. The sharp inhale from him had her arms winding around his neck and pressing her body into every hard line of his. “No, sir,” she breathed. “I won’t mind.”