Ahoy!
Page 24
Bugsy cocked his head. “Ok, what is it?”
“All I was going to say is that it’s been nice knowing you and that I wish you well.” There, I’d gotten it out of my system and, for the first time since I’d met the man, I felt like the bigger person.
Bugsy nodded once at me and took a few steps in my direction. I wasn’t sure where to look. He was so close that I felt like I couldn’t look him in the eye. When he stopped dead in front of me, I looked straight ahead at the bare skin I could see in the neckline of his navy-blue polo shirt. I nervously looked down at my hand again, tattooed temporarily with paint and grime. I rubbed at it a little longer with the rag in my hand.
“But you know, you’re pretty when you’re sleeping.”
“I am?” I asked, surprised at the comment which seemed apropos of nothing.
“Yes, mostly because you’re not talking.” He smiled.
“I—" I began to say.
“I’m not leaving,” he said matter-of-factly.
I paused. “So, Bunny is moving here?” I glanced up and did a quick mental inventory of other marinas with vacant slips I could move to.
“No, no, I don’t think that will be happening.” He flitted the long eyelashes that framed those startling blue eyes.
“Oh.” I nodded, wondering what kind of Bunny-sharing arrangement he was going to work out with his old man.
I watched as he looked down at the deck for a moment, as if the words he wanted to say were written there. “I don’t want to leave,” he said, and his dimples punctuated his smile like quotation marks.
I swallowed hard. “Well, what do you want to do?”
He studied my face. “If I told you that, you’d never speak to me again,” he said, adding a wry smile.
He was close. And the room felt warmer than it had before. I felt another bead of sweat roll down from my clavicle. I looked down to wipe my hand nervously with the rag. My swooping bang, that had never swooped properly outside of the beauty salon, fell across my forehead. I tried to get it out of my eyes by blowing air upward then shaking my head. But I got the feeling it hadn’t worked.
“May I?” he asked.
I looked up and shrugged at him, and when he tucked my swoop behind my ear, I felt something in my stomach. Like when you’re a kid and you go over a big hill in a car. I could feel my chest rise and fall with the closeness of him. I tried to swallow but there was nothing there. I turned to look to the left, not sure what to do with myself. When I looked back, Bugsy was studying my face and smirking at me.
“Can I see that?” he asked and gestured to my hand.
“This?” I held up the rag, damp with paint thinner.
“Yes,” he said lowly.
“Ok. Why?”
“Because you have some dirt on your face.”
I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Oh.” Of course, I did. It was almost a given that, if Bugsy was around, I’d have dirt or paint on me. I felt so stupid and handed him the rag.
“May I?” he asked, and when I looked in his sea blue eyes, I thought I was going to be sick. “Look up,” he said and used his index finger and thumb to angle my head as he gently wiped the cloth beside my nose. I tried to remember what I’d had for breakfast that morning and hoped my breath wouldn’t knock him over. He finished wiping the gunk off my face.
“May I?” he asked again, in a whisper this time.
May you what? I looked back curiously, locking eyes with him. The look he gave me could have melted an iceberg. I looked at his lips and back to the ocean blue of his eyes staring back at me. He leaned down with lips soft as cotton, light as air. He slid his hands down to my waist and pulled me to him, so close I could feel the muscles in his body against mine. His hand pressed into the curve at the small of my back. He kissed me softly at first, testing the waters and perhaps my ability. And then, well then, he kissed me like I’d never been kissed before, soft and hard at the same time. It felt like rain on parched earth, like a cool breeze on a hot day. Like home.
EPILOGUE
As I mentioned, it was Tuesday when Bugsy surprised me with the news he was staying and even more so with the sizzling kiss in the steamy engine room of my boat. It wasn’t, however, the biggest surprise I had that day. A delivery van rolled up to my dock and delivered a parcel I’d not been expecting. Inside the box was another box, and inside that box was a pie. On top of the pie was a note that read:
Dearest Sunshine,
I know this hasn’t been easy for you, my leaving. I hear that you’ve had an interesting time of it, what with Bugsy, Hagen, Shawn, and Cynthia. I should have known you’d figure it out. I wanted to tell you that I was leaving, but I didn’t want you to worry or try to stop me or give me those pitying looks that people in my straits so often get. I want you to remember me with the ice cream cone on our walk. I want you to remember the pie and the songs and all the fun we had. Thank you for taking care of Pepper and my boat and my guys and Stephen. Your performance was as good as any Hitchcock heroine.
Love, Nat
P.S. I hear Beedle likes pie too.
I found Bugsy later that day and shared the pie with him. It was rhubarb. I never found Cynthia’s sex tape on the boat and, months later, the police changed the status of Nat’s case from missing person to ‘homicide no body’. Speaking of the police, Officer Hagen ended up playing a very important role in my life, but that, as they say, is another story.
TEASER: BUOY
Buoy: An Alex M. Mystery #2 is the second book in the Alex M. series. More suspense, action, and romance await Alexandra Michaels as fall arrives at the Marysville Marina, and along with it a mysterious stranger or two, a rash of robberies, and a velvet Elvis painting. Prepare yourself for a bone-chilling ending when Alex finds herself at sea, figuratively and literally!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maggie Seacroft loves boats and admits to being a sucker for any kind of mystery. One day while walking by the water on her way to the boat brokerage she owns, she decided to combine her two passions and thus was born the Alex M. Mystery Series. Maggie lives in Port Dover, Ontario, is fiercely independent and has some seriously sassy tendencies.
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