Bad thoughts. Retreat!
She swallowed and focused her gaze on the menu for the fish-and-chips restaurant. It wouldn’t do any good thinking about kissing Jace, no matter how delicious she was sure it would be. Because he’d made it clear he didn’t do relationships.
And she would never settle for less.
Chapter Eleven
Half an hour later, they were dinner enabled and the SUV made a steady climb up to a car park that overlooked the Sorrento Back Beach. Jace reversed the car into a parking spot and dropped the rear seats down so they could sit in the back with their legs dangling out over the edge.
Truffle had perked up at the possibility of food and trotted around happily, tail wagging, confident in his assumption that he would get himself some treats. If Angie had half his confidence, she’d go far in life. Tilly made a whining noise when Jace nudged her to make room for Angie.
“She’s going to eat my face off; I can feel it,” Angie said, perching herself at the very edge of the car to get as much space as possible between her and the huge dog.
It was fine while they were outside, standing up with plenty of space around them. But in the back of the car, her old fears bubbled to the surface. Tilly’s pointy teeth were definitely within chomping distance.
“You can’t still be scared of her. She’s a total softy.” Jace pulled the bag containing their dinner onto his lap and started sorting through it.
Angie met the dog’s warm amber gaze. But pretty eyes weren’t a reason to trust anyone—canine or otherwise.
“Says the man who didn’t even want to dog-sit in the first place.”
Jace shrugged. “I’m starting to see why people like dogs. Though I’ll be very happy to reclaim my routine when Eugenie comes back.”
Angie raised a brow but didn’t have a chance to respond as he started dividing up their food.
“One piece of flake and two potato cakes,” Jace announced as he handed her an open piece of parchment paper containing her dinner. He took the package containing the chips and shook a generous amount into her pseudo dinner dish. “Sauce?”
“Yes, please.” She held her hand out, and he loaded her up with packets of ketchup. “I shouldn’t be so hungry. There was so much nice food at Elijah’s restaurant, but I was too nervous to eat any of it.”
Jace was holding a stack of napkins, counting them meticulously so they could have exactly half each. Clearly having grown up with four siblings had made him very good at sharing. Or maybe it was because he was processing something. She got the impression that he seemed to retreat into himself when he was thinking.
Normally a silence like this would set Angie’s nerves on edge—this was often where her verbal diarrhea would kick into full force. Jace handed her half the napkins. He had artist’s hands—smooth skin, long fingers, and one callus where his sketching pencils would rest. Her heart beat quicker, the warning sirens turning to a call of longing. Turning to whispers of temptation.
“Why were you nervous?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” She popped a chip into her mouth. “I guess I knew there wasn’t anything special there.”
“How could you possibly know that so soon?”
“Just a feeling…or a lack of feeling, as it were.” She sighed when she bit into a piece of crispy yet buttery flake with the perfect amount of saltiness. Pure heaven. Angie licked her lips and took another bite, suddenly ravenous. “I’d hoped I might find some spark as we got to know each other, but one date was enough to tell me it wasn’t going anywhere.”
Tilly lifted her nose in the air and sniffed. Jace held out a few chips, but she placed her head back on her paws without taking them.
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Maybe car rides don’t agree with her,” he said, his dark brows creasing, and he gave her a loving pat.
Watching the two of them interact was sweet. He seemed to genuinely care about the dogs. There was so much more to Jace than she’d first thought—he was this serious, artsy guy who was a bit lost in his own world. A kind loner. But there was such a genuine base to him. When it seemed like everyone who’d come in and out of Angie’s life had carried an ulterior motive, there was Jace with his pure goodness and blunt honesty.
“So no date number two for Elijah?” He tore off a piece of fish and dipped it into a dollop of ketchup.
“Why are you so interested in my dating life?” she asked. “You made it clear you thought I was sending myself on a wild goose chase.”
“Can’t a friend disagree and also be interested?”
“I guess.” She tried to concentrate on the salty deliciousness of her meal instead of her own tumultuous feelings. Friend. It was the line between them. “But you think I’m doing the wrong thing.”
“I never said that.”
“You implied I was being idealistic and setting myself up for failure.”
“I don’t imply things. I say things if I want to say them.” He frowned. “But yes, I do think this is a plan that has more chance of failure given the…constraints.”
She sighed. “But I really don’t want to go home. I’m not…the best version of myself there.”
It was 100 percent the truth. At home, she was Angela-Marie Donovan. A paranoid woman who always screened her calls and never answered the front door and avoided relationships of any kind and rarely left the house without dark sunglasses and a baseball cap.
Like being a celebrity but without any of the perks.
“Here, I feel more like myself,” she added.
The parking lot was up high, and they had an incredible view of the beach. Rocks jutted out of the water, and green vegetation sprawled across the hill, broken only by the wooden path and stairs that allowed people to climb down to the beach below. She watched the ocean roll into the shoreline, the crests crashing into white foam which ran up the sand.
The air was salty and fresh. Crisp, despite the heat.
“There are rock pools down there,” Jace said, as if he sensed that she didn’t want to talk about serious stuff anymore. For someone who seemed to think people were a foreign species, he was certainly doing a solid job of being a good friend now. “It’s low tide now, so you can see the outline of them. They kind of look like honeycomb.”
She followed his pointed finger until her eyes caught the interesting pattern along the far edge of the beach.
“We would go swimming in them as kids, but they’re full of seaweed.” He grinned. “I used to freak Olivia out by grabbing some and trying to tuck it into her bathing suit.”
“And here I was thinking you would have been the Goody Two-shoes in the family.” A smile curved on her lips, easing some of the tension from her body. “Since you’ve grown up to be so serious and all.”
“Being serious isn’t all bad.” He munched on a chip, looking content.
It was all too easy to pretend they were a couple in love, coming to the beach with their fur babies. Angie felt a deep tugging in her gut—a longing that called out for her to lean over and kiss the salt crystals from his lips. To run her fingers through his thick, wavy hair. To let him press her down to the bed of the SUV while he devoured her. Consumed her.
Made her feel whole again.
Nope. Unsafe thoughts! Back away. I repeat, back away.
She couldn’t waste her precious time lusting after the wrong guy.
…
Jace tried to stop his thoughts from cycling out of control—that happened sometimes when he really wanted to say the right thing. Part of him wanted to know more about Angie’s date and why it hadn’t worked, and part of him never wanted to hear about it again.
What he did know was that he wasn’t so good at talking.
It was an aspect of his autism that had always been a struggle, and he never quite knew if his words would make things worse instead of better. Bu
t part of it was also that growing up with three brothers meant talking wasn’t the way things got sorted out. In fact, more than one time, a discussion had been settled with a furious round of Mario Kart instead.
It would be so much easier if he didn’t care about Angie’s situation—or the way she wanted to fix it.
A small flock of seagulls had gathered around on the ground by their feet. They scuttled back and forth, hoping for food scraps. Angie tossed her remaining few chips to them before scrunching up her parchment paper and tucking it away in the bag it came in.
“You’ll have us swarmed if you feed them,” he warned.
Tilly lifted her head and started barking, scattering the birds to the wind, but not before they’d gobbled up the chips. Truffle joined in at the last minute, wanting to claim the glory without actually putting in much of the effort. With a slight amount of renewed energy, Tilly started sniffing around Angie.
“No food left,” she said, holding up her hands, though her shoulders bunched around her neck.
When Tilly plopped her head in Angie’s lap, she glared at Jace. “If she starts growling at me again, I’m going to scream.”
“Yeah, she’s so ferocious.” He chuckled as Tilly sighed, nudging her head against Angie’s arm. “She wants you to scratch her head.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, come on. She really is harmless. All bark, no bite.”
“Jace, she really scares me, okay? I get not everyone is afraid of dogs, but I am.”
He immediately felt like a jerk. There’d been plenty of occasions where people had dismissed his fears growing up—like that one time he couldn’t stand being in the movie theater because it was too damn loud and some teenagers laughed at him—and now he’d done that to her.
Bloody hell. Why couldn’t he see things like other people did? Why couldn’t he read a situation and understand the subtle nuances that other people did? He’d gotten so used to people’s words and feelings not matching up that sometimes he didn’t listen to the words. He didn’t know what he could trust, what aspect of a person was most accurate—was it their eyes, their mouth, their hands? Was it their words or that fluctuating tone of voice that he never got quite right?
“I’m sorry, Angie.” He shook his head. “Do you want to go home?”
Please say no.
She sighed. “No, I’m having a good time, but…what if she bites me?”
Maybe this was something he could help Angie with. Because he’d learned in the past few days that dogs were actually much easier to read than people.
“You’ll be able to tell if she’s upset.” He reached out to grab her hand but paused. “Can I show you?”
Angie’s whisky eyes were big and round. But she nodded, her bottom lip drawn between her teeth. He gently took her hand in his, sucking in a breath at the way the contact made him feel like everything was lighter. Better.
Slowly, he guided her hand to Tilly’s head and pressed her palm down, moving it back and forth. The dog seemed to be enjoying the attention, and she let out a big sigh. “See,” he said softly. “She’s totally relaxed right now.”
Usually Jace struggled with eye contact—apparently that was a common thing for people like him. He’d never been too good at looking right into a camera when someone was taking a picture, or maintaining eye contact during a conversation. Right now, however, he couldn’t look anywhere but at Angie. It would be so easy to lean in and kiss her, just like he’d wanted to during the movie. Would she tasted as good as she looked? Fire burned through him, the deep pulse of want spreading around his body and settling between his legs.
Making him yearn to pull her close.
“I got bit by a dog when I was little,” Angie said. “So they scare me, but I don’t hate them.”
“How did it happen?”
“One of my foster dads wasn’t a very nice man. He had a couple of big dogs and didn’t treat them well. I was young, and I was stealing a sausage from the grill. The dog tried to snatch it out of my hand, and I was frightened, so I pulled back, but it got its teeth into me. I had one hell of a Tetanus shot and never went near a dog for years after.”
He admired how easily Angie shared things with him. It made him want to open up to her, made him want to explain why he was the way he was. He could tell her why he didn’t see that her fear was so sharp, why he wasn’t always good at coming up with the perfect response to her questions. He wanted to explain why he was so reluctant to even think about being in a relationship again.
But the beauty of his interactions with Angie was that she didn’t know about his autism. That she treated him like any other guy. Any other guy who could do all the things he couldn’t. And if he shared that part of his life with her…what if she pitied him?
He couldn’t take it, having someone so strong and resilient and positive as her pitying him. Making him feel different, even if she didn’t mean it. What if things changed, like they did with his ex when she started to focus on his flaws instead of his strengths?
“I understand why you were scared,” he said, and the statement made a beautiful smile bloom on her lips.
What if she stopped looking at him like that?
It would be better if he didn’t tell her. Let things be the way they were so he could feel normal around her. He liked it that way.
They sat in silence for a while, the heaviness of the dog’s slumbered breathing mingling with the slow back and forth whoosh of the waves. If only they could stay here forever.
But that wasn’t in the cards for him, unfortunately. There would be no forever with Angie, and possibly no forever with anyone. Maybe Hermit vs. World would end up being an autobiographical comic after all. Because if Julia couldn’t put up with his quirks, a girl he’d known most of his life, then who would?
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said softly, almost as if she was speaking to herself. “I’ve never felt as good as I do here.”
Angie had been through so much, and she deserved to be happy.
She won’t be happy with you.
What had his mum told him once? Caring for someone meant sometimes putting their needs before your own. Maybe that’s what he had to do here—focus less on hating the idea of Angie being with someone else and focus more on what she wanted. To fall in love and stay in a country she’d determined was her dream home.
“Maybe you need to do a little more research before you jump into the next date,” he said eventually. That was how he usually dealt with big decisions—gather as much information as possible first. “Try and figure out before if there’s likely to be any chemistry.”
“Research?” She wrinkled her nose. “How would I do that?”
“See if you can observe them. Maybe interact with them in a way that’s causal before suggesting a date?” He shrugged.
“Is that what you would do?”
“I wouldn’t do anything because I’m perfectly happy being on my own,” he replied, scratching Tilly behind the ear. It had been true at one point, but now he wasn’t so sure. Since Angie had barreled into his life, he didn’t usually have whole days where he avoided talking to another human being anymore. A year ago, there was no way he would have blown off his preplanned meal to have fish and chips. But she’d made him want something different. “But we’re talking about you, right?”
“Right.” She nodded. “Research. I don’t suppose you feel like accompanying me on a field trip?”
His gut reaction was a resounding no in flashing neon. But maybe this was exactly what he needed to get over this strange hold that Angie had on him—maybe seeing her happy with someone else would be the catalyst he needed to move on. To forget about the idea of a relationship, because he wasn’t sure he ever needed to go through the pain of rejection again.
So, in a way, helping her would also be like helping himself.
“Sure.” The word popped out, and he immediately wanted to snatch it back.
But now that it had been said, there was no taking it back. A promise was a promise. Talk about wading into the fuzzy gray. He was so not qualified to do this.
And there was only one way it could end: He was going to have to set up the woman he’d almost kissed…with some other lucky bastard.
Chapter Twelve
Jace tilted his eyes up to the ceiling of the Bright Bluff Café, where funky Edison bulbs dangled next to clusters of potted plants. Exposed beams gave the space a barnlike feel, and everything was painted a crisp, clear white. It was all so neat and orderly…just like his life used to be.
Instead of working, which was what he should be doing at eleven a.m. on a Wednesday, he was here…stalking some poor, unsuspecting guy. He’d spent a good fifteen minutes before leaving the house rearranging his daily schedule to ensure that he could still get in the requisite number of work hours.
Angie came back to their table with two coffees in hand—a flat white for her and a long black for him. “Any sign of our target?”
“Can we please not call him a target? It sounds like we’re about to put a hit on him,” Jace said dryly.
Why had he agreed to help on Angie’s ridiculous mission? Oh, because he had a moment of personal crisis and decided the best way to “get over” his crush on his annoyingly sexy tenant was to help her find a man.
Maybe it’s also the fact that having Angie here is what you want, even if it means she’s dating someone else?
“Sorry.” She laughed. “Any sight of our…research subject?”
Now it made the guy sound like a lab rat. “He was there a minute ago and his laptop is still sitting at the bar. Maybe he went to the men’s room?”
The lab rat in question was Theo Hasikos, thirty-two, tech start-up whiz. Named one of Patterson’s Bluff’s biggest success stories. He’d come from little—with a family who’d struggled to make ends meet after immigrating from Cyprus—only to sell his first software creation at age sixteen. He paid off the family’s mortgage at twenty-one, and now he was working on some top secret project that had tongues wagging all over town. Unlike a lot of people who found success in business, he hadn’t left his town behind for greener pastures.
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