“Just…go get in the shower, would you?” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder toward the bathroom. “I’ll finish packing.”

“I don’t think you can call it that,” she said as she watched him put her dirty shoes on top of a white shirt. Disaster.

“Your five minutes are counting down.”

Her jaw dropped. “Five minutes? I can’t get ready that quickly.”

Will shrugged without looking at her. “Guess I leave without you.”

Brynn’s eyes narrowed, unsure of whether she believed him or not. She decided she didn’t want to risk it, and scampered toward the shower, then showered in record time.

Will Thatcher had planned a romantic getaway with her.

The thought made her smile more than it should have.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The best vacations are the cultural variety.

—Brynn Dalton’s Rules for an

Exemplary Life, #2

You weren’t kidding about the cold and the rainy.”

Will sucked in an appreciative breath of cool ocean air. “But cold and rainy by the sea is much better than cold and rainy in the city, is it not?”

Brynn watched a seagull swoop low over the dark gray water before disappearing into the mist. With the exception of the crashing surf, the seagull was the only moving thing she could see for miles.

“It’s wonderful,” she breathed, bracing her forearms on the deck railing and taking it all in.

Will mimicked her posture. “I thought you might like it.”

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, watching the way his blue eyes soaked in the quiet, peaceful nature scene just as hers had. “I admit I’m surprised,” she said lightly, bumping him with her hip. “For all your yammering about adventure and rebellion, I was expecting a casino or a nudist colony or something.”

“How about a nudist colony for two?” He wiggled his eyebrows.

“Depends if you can figure out how to get that huge fireplace in commission.”

“Of course I can. I was a Boy Scout.”

“You were?”

The corner of his mouth tilted up. “Definitely not. But I do always carry protection. Wanna see?”

“I’m pretty sure condom supply is not what they’re teaching in Boy Scouts these days.”

Brynn tilted her head up and felt the beginning of drizzle against her cheeks. Normally she would have been ducking for cover at the first sign of moisture in the air, but today she just stayed, loving the coolness against her face.

When she finally straightened, she found Will watching her with an unreadable expression. The look was oddly intense, and she forced a smile to lighten the moment even as she wanted to beg him to kiss her in the rain with the Pacific Ocean crashing noisily in the background.

With every additional moment she spent with Will, she feared more and more that there was nothing easy and casual about what they were doing. Every look, every kiss hinted at more.

And it scared the crap out of her.

“Tell me you brought some food in one of those huge coolers,” Brynn said, trying to lighten the strangely intimate mood.

The old, easy Will returned instantly as he pushed back from the rail and headed inside. “Of course I brought food. Nothing organic, though, and I don’t want to hear one peep about preservatives or nitrates.”

“Exactly how long have you been planning this?” Brynn asked as she trailed after him.

For all his yammering about spontaneity, it was clear that Will had put a decent amount of thought into this little getaway. By the time she’d hurriedly showered and dressed that morning, he’d already loaded her suitcase into his car along with a couple of coolers and his own black leather bag.

The car ride had been complete with a road-mix sound track and a thermos of hot chocolate, and the guy hadn’t once looked at a map to know where they were going. Spontaneous my ass.

Brynn had never heard of Moclips before now, but from the looks of it, it was one of those cute Washington coastal towns that she’d always meant to visit on a whim. Instead, she’d ended up going on elaborate vacations that took eighteen months to plan.

Even the house they were staying in was perfect. From the outside it had looked sort of rustic and plain, but the owner had obviously spared no expense on the inside. Granite countertops in the kitchen, rich dark leather sofas in the living room, and the biggest fireplace she’d ever seen.

She hadn’t seen the bedroom yet, but she’d bet big money that there was a big bed.

“How’d you say you found this place?”

Will opened one of the coolers and pulled out a couple of sandwiches. Brynn’s fingers fumbled a little as she opened the sandwich he gave her and found her favorite combination of all time: turkey, cucumber, and Brie.

It’s not a sandwich that one accidentally threw together. And she was reasonably sure that she’d never told him her favorite sandwich. And yet he’d known.

Her spine tingled a little in warning.

“One of my biz-dev guys bought the house for next to nothing a few years ago and fixed it up. There’s been an open-ended invitation for a while, but I’ve never taken him up on it.”

“You say that like it’s supposed to mean something to me,” Brynn said around a mouthful of sandwich. “‘Biz-dev’…?”

“Business development,” Will said, unwrapping his own sandwich. Brynn had the odd urge to know what kind it was. To know him like he apparently knew her. She pushed the urge aside. Flings didn’t need to know each other’s food preferences.

She shook her head. “Business development? Could you be any more vague?”

He gave her a funny look. “Sounds to me like you might actually be interested in my career, Princess.”

Brynn lifted a shoulder, feeling oddly embarrassed. “I’d be interested if you had one.”

For a second Will looked completely stunned, and then his face registered something else entirely as he set down his untouched sandwich and stared at her. “You think I don’t have a career?”

The crushed expression on his face paralyzed Brynn. My God, I don’t know him at all.

“I, um…I guess I never thought about it. I mean, you obviously have money, but you never seem to work. I figured it was from an inheritance or taking a shortcut somewhere.”

He leaned back in his chair. “Taking a shortcut?”

The sandwich that had a minute ago tasted like heaven kept wanting to get stuck in her throat. Why had she taken the conversation in this direction? “I mean, you move all over the place whenever you want, you don’t wear suits, you don’t work nine-to-five…”

“Well, gosh, if I don’t have tassels on my shoes and a company-sponsored 401(k), then I must be an unemployable slacker, right?”

“No!” Maybe. “I guess I just never understood what it is that you do. How you make your money…”

His eyes snagged hers and held. “You could have asked.”

“But…I couldn’t have, not really. I mean, when? Amid all that fighting and trying not to kill each other?”

“And what about the past two and a half weeks, Brynn? Have we been fighting then?”

“No…but we both know it’s a temporary reprieve,” she said, her words all coming together in a rush. “It’s not like we entered this thing with a get-to-know-you goal in mind.”

His steady gaze told her what she’d been beginning to suspect. I already know you.

It was she who was clueless. She who was in unfamiliar waters.

The playing field wasn’t nearly as level as she’d thought. And she didn’t like it one bit.

“So tell me, then,” she said, lowering her voice. “What is it that you do?”

Will shook his head. “Eat your sandwich. I’m going to change my clothes, and then we’ll go for a walk on the beach.”

He was already moving toward the bedroom, where he’d put their bags, when she reached out a hand to grab his wrist. “Will, talk to me. I want to know—”

“No, you don’t, Brynn. You think you care now, but in a week, when this is all over, you won’t care whether I’m a billionaire or a bankrupt bum who drinks beer all day in his underwear.”