Trace shuffled through the woods side-by-side with Dustin in silence. Perhaps she’d been too hard on him.
The way he’d listened to her and asked questions about her past made her think he actually cared about her and not just the hotel and business. But Robert Remming had seemed overly interested in everything about her, and it had only been an act.
No way she’d be manipulated by a fancy meal and wooing again.
They reached the hotel, and she paused at the edge of the docks, looking up the small hill toward the hotel and Trevor’s place. “Dutch. Not a date.” She continued ahead, assuming that was the end of the conversation, but he followed by her side.
“Non-date, but I pay.” He thrust out his hand like a business deal.
“Why would you pay? You just worked on my father’s house for hours with me pushing you to do something you hate for someone you don’t like.” Trace huffed, wishing she could read people better. If she had Wind’s gift for that, she would’ve known Robert had been playing her like a teenager on a hoverboard.
Most people were a mystery to her, and with Dustin—despite their easy banter and obvious physical attraction—she didn’t know the right thing to say or do.
“Is that what you think?” Dustin trotted ahead, then turned in a football field block position.
She stopped short of the tackle, but the way he looked at her caused a sensual shiver through her body. His gaze was intense, searching—for what, she didn’t know, but she couldn’t hold it, so she looked toward the one thing in the world that was always there… The ocean.
“I know your type, and I’m nothing more than a sand flea at your barbeque. If you could, you’d swat me away.”
Hands. Strong hands. Hands that sent a heat up her shoulders, over her neck, and down her spine. Hands that promised peace, hope, security wrapped around her biceps and squeezed. Squeezed the breath from her lungs. She blinked at him and told herself, They are just hands. Hands that lie.
“Let me tell you something, young lady.” Dustin’s gaze narrowed. His chin set, brow furrowed. But then he took in a breath and dropped his head, still holding her like a life preserver in a storm. “No. You’re right. That is the type of man I am…or was.”
His voice, the tone sharp and pained, slapped her with realization. The man struggled, but with what? “Was?” she asked, her voice soft and probing.
“I hope it’s how I was and not who I’ll be.”
He released his grasp and took a step back. She thought she’d drown from the loss of his unexpected, unrequested, unnerving touch. A touch she hadn’t asked for or wanted but needed. For the first time in years, her gut didn’t feel like she was stuck on a ship in a Category 5 hurricane surrounded by waterspouts. She shook off her crazy thoughts and watched the man look to her ocean as if he wanted to find something beyond his fear.
“I’m like the moon. Old, worn, and solid in where and who I am in this universe. But I don’t want to be the moon. I’ve been the moon for too long, and all that resides on my planet is dust and craters.”
“You’re full of holes?” Trace tried to decipher his analogy, but she couldn’t. Where were Jewels or Wind or Kat when she needed them?
“Yes. No. I mean…” He spun on his heels in the thatches of St. Augustine grass sprouting between dirt piles, but he didn’t speak. He only looked to her as if she was supposed to say what he couldn’t.
“I’m sorry. I don’t speak man. Heck, I’ve been accused by more than one ex-boyfriend that I don’t speak human. Not that you’re my… What I mean is…”
He laughed. “How could you decipher what I can’t even figure out? I’m rambling. All I mean to say is that I came to Summer Island to find something Trevor discovered, but according to him I can’t find something if I’m not willing to look.”
“What are you looking for?” Trace asked, wishing he’d spit out what he really meant.
“I don’t know.” Dustin moved in. His tall frame and wide shoulders reminded her of a Navy SEAL she’d known when she’d been working on a top-secret research project in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Yet, his soft dark curls, which had grown since he’d arrived, framed a handsome, less angular face.
Trace looked at her tennis shoes. This was the moment when she usually ran from a conversation. When she didn’t have answers or understand what someone was talking about.
Dustin snagged her fingers with a light touch. “But you could help me figure it out. Dinner?”
Trace thought about awkward conversations discussing moons and the uncomfortable mention of feelings and all other subjects that she hated to talk about. Maybe her friends were right and she was emotionally stunted at birth or what Rhonda told everyone about her being raised by an animal so she didn’t relate to humans. No, this was a bad idea. They needed to work together and get the job done. That’s what Trace did best. No entanglements. Only work. And she’d never, ever allow another Robert into her heart. “Yes.”
“Yes?” Dustin lit up like a full moon.
Wait, was that all he needed? A little light in his life? Dang, no, this was impossible, she had no gift at reading people.
“I don’t know if I can help with figuring out why you’re a rock in the sky, so don’t expect too much from me.”
“No worries. I won’t try to compare myself with an inanimate object again. Casual conversation, non-date, good food, and I pay.” Dustin held out his hand once more.
“Limited conversation, non-date, okay food, and Dutch.” She took his hand.
He held it tight and leaned in. “Limited conversation, non-date, average food, and I’m paying.” He shook and then released her hand and strutted up the hill with that I-bested-you swagger.
“You didn’t win that. It was a compromise,” she shouted before tromping through the weeds and sand.
“A compromise with you is a win,” he shouted.
Trace marched up the street, chastising herself for being caught up in the Devilish Dustin Drama, and bolted through the front door of Jewels’s house to avoid Win and Jewels. She showered, all the time having a mental argument about why she’d said yes to the all-wrong-for-her man. She returned to the guest room to find Houdini with a knowing glance, staring at her suitcase as if to say, if I could speak, I’d tell them about that letter. He reached out with his paw and set it on a dress. He seemed to say, Ha-ha. This is payback for hiding the truth.
Wind, ex-best friend turned traitor, bounced like a cartoon character on two-pounds of Skittles. “Wear this,” she said in an obnoxious unicorn and rainbows fantasy tone.
“It’s a dress.” Trace snatched a pair of shorts, T-shirt, and a sports bra from her duffel. “Why would I wear that?”
“Date with Dustin,” Wind announced.
“Not a date. You’re the one who’s dating him.” Trace’s chest tightened. Her breath caught between a way out and an off-ramp she didn’t want to take.
“Dustin and I are too similar, and opposites attract. And you two are definitely opposites.” She held up the dress, but Trace tightened the towel around her body as if it would serve as her shield.
Houdini chattered in ferret peer pressure.
Trace shook her head at him. “Not you, too.”
Wind pouted with a lip that looked like a filler injection had gone rogue. “Come on. It’s a date with Dustin. Trust me, this is soooo much better.”
“What are you? Twelve?” Trace faced the wall and put on her sports bra and T-shirt.
“Modest. Geesh. Not like we didn’t all jump in the ocean naked as kids.”
“That was so when we skipped classes to go swimming and we didn’t have any other clothes to wear, we could return to school without getting caught.”
“Still, I thought at our age, modesty was a misnomer.”
“At our age, modesty is a must. Especially when my spare tire has deflated from age.”
Wind shot up and turned her around, lifting her shirt and poking a finger in her belly button, the one sensitive spot she hated anyone to touch. It was like someone stuck a finger inside her and touched her light socket, zapping her insides. “Stop that.”
“Still don’t like it?” Wind dropped her shirt and picked up the dress from the bed. “Please, you’re in better shape than any of us. You’ve still got long, lean muscles from swimming. And how’d you avoid sun damage in your profession? Wait, you had to have that lasered off.”
“Right, the woman who has slept in tents and bunkrooms with twenty other people to avoid paying for a hotel has money to blow on skin treatments.”
“Compromise?” Wind leaned out the door and waved. “Do you own a real bra?”
Trace huffed. “Yes, of course.”
Jewels joined them, holding her own clothes. “Wear these capri pants. Dress isn’t you. Shorts aren’t good for dinner with mosquitoes and are too casual.”
Trace plopped down on the bed. Her mind was spinning with questions, as if she was fifteen again. Why’d she care what Dustin said or wanted? He had been her enemy. “Why would someone think they were a moon?”
Jewels placed the outfit on her lap and picked up Houdini, who now purred louder than a 1950s marine engine. “What do you mean?”
Trace threw her hands up. “I don’t know. I mean, Dustin said he was like a moon. You know I don’t like to read between the lines.”
Wind sat on the bed by her other side, leaving Trace as the meat in the friendship sandwich. She folded the dress, as if surrendering to the idea of putting Trace into it. “It means he’s alone, far away, and cold. In other words, he’s lonely and lost and looking for the sun.”
Trace shot up straight. “You got all that? Are you like a man whisperer or something?”
“Me? Yes.” Wind smiled in her theatrical way, so Trace braced for a performance, but she didn’t give one. Instead, Wind patted Trace’s leg. “Don’t worry. You’ll figure it out. I honestly think you and Dustin are perfect for each other. Neither of you know it yet.”
“Do you really trust the man? I mean, he’s like… others.”
Jewels and Wind shot a knowing look to each other, and then their arms both landed around her shoulders. “Not every man is the same.”
Wind played with the back of her hair, relaxing her into compliance. “Dustin’s a good man. Yes, you can trust him.”
Trust him? Did it mean anything that her friends judged him trustworthy?
“Trace, are you ever going to tell us what happened?”
Trace bolted from their embrace. “Nothing to tell.” She raced to the bathroom, her heart, pulse, and breath rapid and erratic. She shut the door and fell against it, huffing and puffing. She needed to escape the idea of her and Dustin. They might understand men, but they didn’t understand how low and dirty they could be.
No. No. No. She’d never trust another man again.