A Bodyguard For The Princess (A Bad Boy Romance) (30 page)

I watched Zach raise his hand, moving in slow motion, and brush his knuckles, then his thumb across my cheek. He cupped it gently, stroking the edge of my cheekbone, and leaned down.

Someone knocked very firmly on the door to our room, almost a pounding that sounded excited. Zach took a hurried step back, and I took advantage of the sudden space between us to squeeze past him, my heart a lump in my throat. Zach peeked through the tiny peephole, then eased the door partway open, sticking his head into the crack. I could just see his dad through the gap.

“Still not dressed, kiddo?” Evan said. “Hurry your ass up. Donna wants to stretch her legs off the ship and get some shopping done before the crowds start to pile up.”

“Sorry,” Zach said softly. “Be out in a minute.”

“Come knock when you're ready,” Evan replied and left to go back across the hall. Zach shut the door.

When he turned around, he wouldn't look at me. I pressed myself against the thin strip of wall between the beds and the bathroom as he passed. I gazed at the floor as he grabbed clothes and slipped into the bathroom. The shower started, and I released a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. I sat on the bed and waited, heart pounding, listening to the shower. Zach wasn't in there for long, no more than five minutes before the tap squeaked off. When I closed my eyes, I could see him toweling himself off, water streaming down his chest and stomach, his hair a mess of wet curls. I could see the blue of his eyes with their ring of black, how they had looked the night we first slept together. His hair had been wet then, too, from another shower, the one he'd taken right before I'd texted him and asked him to come to my dorm to watch Netflix.

I sucked in a breath through my teeth and managed to compose myself before Zach came out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist. He stared at me, one hand in his hair, then cleared his throat and walked past me to dig in his bag. I didn't move as he pulled out a clean pair of boxers and dropped the towel from around his waist, but I could still see him out of the corner of my eye, a flesh-colored blur at the very edge of my vision. His boxers were grey with little black smiley faces on them. I'd bought them for him a few months after we started dating.

I dug my fingers into the edge of my bed. Zach tugged up a pair of jeans and threw a t-shirt over his head. He didn't leave the towel on the floor but spread it over the back of the chair to dry, or be picked up by housekeeping, whichever happened first. He barely glanced at me, his hands in his pockets. His shirt clung in places to his still damp skin. My whole body burned.

“You ready to go?” Zach asked. He offered me one of his hands. I stared at it, then carefully raised my own and hooked my pinky through his. Zach moved towards the door, towing me with him. With my free hand, I patted my pocket to be sure I had my wallet with my money and our room key. The door closed behind us.

Zach held our hands out of sight when he knocked on the door to our parent's cabin, using his body to block them. I stood as close as I dared, my palms sweating even though it was cool in the corridor. I obediently backed up when Zach did to let our parents out and fell into step half a pace behind him to make room for people walking the other way. Would our parents ask questions if we were caught? I wouldn't put it past them. The thrill of it made me hold onto Zach's finger that much harder. Trusting him was instinctive, even after he'd broken it. I couldn't put a reason to it other than that my gut told me to. Something about him was different. Something I couldn't quite put my finger on. My fingers itched to properly intertwine with his.

The glorious heat of southern Florida in the spring washed over my face. I closed my eyes, feeling it warm the skin on my forearms and legs. There was nothing wrong with winter, but God, I'd missed being warm. Zach tugged me along, following our parents. All around me, I could see palm trees and clear blue water and the white sand at the bottom. A pleasant change from the gross, murky green of the ocean where we lived.

The incident with Zach still lingered in the back of my mind, but my surroundings captured my immediate attention. Now, I'd had some pretty good key lime pie in my life, but I knew it would be nothing compared to getting some from the source. I was more interested in going to the beach and dipping my toes in the warm water than I was wandering around town, but there would be tons of people wanting to do the same. I decided to wait until we stopped at one of the islands.

I stared longingly at the water we left behind as our little group followed a handful of others into the town. Our parents pulled ahead. I guessed they trusted we wouldn't get lost, and besides, since we were on the mainland, we had cell service again. Zach slipped his hand into mine. I stared at our interlaced fingers and sunk my teeth into the inside of my lip. Zach didn't glance back to gauge my reaction but pointed at one of the many souvenir shops that lined the main road.

“Wanna look?” he asked.

“At gaudy, expensive, cheesy, tourist gags?” I replied. “Hell yeah, I do.”

“Dad!” Zach shouted, “we're going to stop in here! Meet you later?”

“Will do!” Evan shouted back. “I'll text you!” He and Mom headed further down the street, and Zach pulled me towards the shop.

Away from our parents, the need to hide our clasped hands was gone. He let them swing freely, his palm warm against mine. If he noticed that mine was sweating, he didn't care. The shop was the typical tourist trap, full of t-shirts, mugs, bags, magnets, and little knick-knacks. Zach let me take the lead. There wasn't anything I really felt like spending my money on, but it was nice to be myself with Zach again without having to worry about what our parents might say. It wasn't quite sneaking around. We'd have to be doing something for it to be that, and all we were doing was holding hands. There was nothing wrong with that.

Zach pulled on my hand to stop me moving, his free one flipping through shirts on a rack. They all had different designs in black and white, but the tag on them said they changed to full color prints in the sun.

“I like that one,” I said, pointing to a shirt with a pattern of the Jolly Roger on it.

“Yeah?” Zach replied, taking a closer look. “For you or for me?”

“For you, stupid,” I said. “You're the one who used to pretend to be a pirate when you were little.”

“Well, I don't see any princess patterns here,” Zach replied. “So maybe we should be pirates together.”

“Maybe we should.” Zach let go of my hand to search through the shirts for the right sizes, a medium for him and an extra small for me. I held it up to double-check the fit and grinned at him, searching for approval.

“The most fearsome pirate I ever did see,” he said in a mock accent, squinting at me with one eye closed. I giggled and folded the shirt in half, then draped it over my arm. “Hey.” I looked up. Zach had wandered over to one of the tables in the middle of the shop with a display of magnets and mugs. He turned the magnet tower. The heat had dried his hair, and his shirt hung looser on his frame now that his skin wasn't damp. His new shirt was slung over his shoulder. My heart gave a tiny thump.

I wandered over and slipped my hand into his without thinking. “Hmm?”

“Do you think Donna would like a magnet? Does she do magnets? My mom does.”

“Doesn't every mom do magnets?” I asked.

He chuckled. “Good point.” He held up a standard rectangular magnet with a picture of a beach behind protective plastic. “This one?”

I glanced quickly over the other magnets on display, but none of them caught my eye. “Yeah, that one. You wanna look at anything else?”

“No, you?” I shook my head. “Cool, let's go then. Lots to see, little time to do it.”

“We have hours,” I told him as we walked to the checkout.

“Yeah, but how much of that time do we get to be alone?” Zach asked. I blushed while the cashier rang up our items. Zach already had his wallet out.

“Hey, no, let me pay!” I said, trying to push his hands away. He held his wallet up above his head and gave me a look with one brow raised. I huffed and glared at him. “You're an ass.”

“I have an ass,” Zach replied, slipping his card out and handing it to the cashier. “A pretty great ass.”

I couldn't dispute that fact, but it took all my willpower not to stare at it. It didn't help that he wore particularly flattering jeans. It wasn't on purpose, just the style of jeans he liked to wear, but damn, it had been good to slip my hand into his back pocket while we were walking. A lot of things had been good when we were together. A little pain stabbed into my chest. Instead of taking his hand again, I took the bag and slipped my free hand into my pocket, suddenly struck by the ridiculousness of what I was doing. Our parents were dating, for fuck's sake. And that was some fucked up work on the part of the universe, but there was nothing we could do about it.

We stepped outside the shop. Zach didn't move to take my hand, but he dug around in the bag for his t-shirt. The tension between us had returned, and the back and forth was making me crazy. As I tried—and failed—not to watch Zach change into his new shirt, I wondered, not for the first time, if things would have been at all different if we had run into each other again under different circumstances.

“You okay?” Zach asked. “You're red as a tomato and it can't be me, 'cause I just took my shirt off, and I know you've seen a naked guy before.”

Yeah, you, I thought, but he didn't know I hadn't dated anyone since him, nor kissed or slept with anyone else. I nodded. “Just not used to the heat,” I said. “Come on, I wanna go to Kermit's now. I've been dying for some proper key lime pie.”

Zach offered me his hand, but I ignored it. He shoved it back into his pocket. “Sorry,” he mumbled. The sun had turned his shirt a rainbow of colors. I pointed it out, earning a smile and a temporary distraction. Zach pulled on the front to examine it better. “You should put yours on, too.”

“I'll change when we find a bathroom,” I said, and headed towards the sign that read Kermit's Key Lime Shoppe.

Delicious scents assaulted my nose as soon as we were inside. I groaned, my mouth watering. There were the traditional shirts, bags, and magnets, but then there was the food. God, the food. Pies and fudge and jelly beans, to name a few. There were samples of almost everything. Zach tapped my shoulder to get my attention, then popped a bit of fudge in my mouth before I could ask him what he wanted, his fingers brushing my lips. It practically melted on my tongue.

“Good?” Zach asked.

“That's amazing,” I said through a full mouth. “We have to get some for Mom.”

I knew the longer we spent in there, the more I would eat and the more I would buy, so I was careful to keep our trip short and sweet. Before I let Zach all but drag me out of the shop, I bought a small bag of jellybeans, a small box of fudge, and a single slice of traditional pie to give to Mom. Zach called his Dad, and we met them by a little cafe for a quick lunch before we walked back to the ship.

Mom had finished her shopping quickly. She lugged a large bag with her that looked like it had even more bags in it. I wasn't surprised. She loved shopping when she had the opportunity and hadn't indulged herself often enough when I lived with her. I chowed down on jelly beans during the walk, refusing to look at Zach.

He cornered me later, like I thought he would. Mom and Evan were at the pool, and I had returned to the cabin to finish up the last bit of my work before we got properly into the Caribbean. I'd been looking at the same spot on my computer for a good five minutes when I heard the click of the lock opening, and Zach slipped in. I glanced at him, then went back to staring at my computer. We'd split up after we'd returned to the ship, so I had no idea where he'd spent his time. He turned on the TV to the movie channel and slumped in the chair with a sigh. His shirt was still a rainbow. I tapped softly on the base of my laptop, raising my gaze to watch him. He looked sad. Or maybe he just hadn't slept well.

“Tired?” I asked.

He shrugged. “A bit.”

“So take a nap.”

“Don't want to.”

“Why not?”

“I don't like naps, you know that.”

“Yeah, but it doesn't matter if you feel groggy after,” I said, frowning. “It's not like you have to go to class or do work or even get out of bed. It's vacation.”

“I just don't want to, okay?” Zach replied sharply.

“Well, maybe you need to,” I snapped back. “You're being an asshole.”

“Oh, I'm being an asshole?” Zach asked, glaring at me. “I'm not the one who's been sending mixed signals!”

I furrowed my brow, both annoyed and confused. “What mixed signals?”

“Not stopping earlier when you were changing in front of me, that incident in the bathroom, watching me change—and I know you were—holding my hand, and now suddenly wanting nothing to do with me! Am I supposed to say 'oh okay' and go with the flow and pretend my feelings aren't hurt?”

“You broke up with me,” I said, reminding him of how he'd broken my heart.

“Yeah, and I've regretted it every day since.”

My shoulders slumped, the fight leaking from me. I sighed. “Well, it doesn't matter now, does it?” I asked softly. “Mom and Evan really like each other. I haven't seen her this happy in a long time. And I'll bet that it's been ages since you've seen your dad this happy as well. I'm not willing to ruin that just to risk having my heart broken again. Are you?”