I let the moment stretch until it was about to break, then shook my head and laughed.
“Nah, I’m just messing with you.”
“Oh, you jerk!” she giggled, reaching out and slapping me gently on the shoulder.
“It’s actually way worse than that,” I replied. “Both of my folks are dead.”
“Uh huh,” she smirked. “And mine are dying from Ebola! Oh, and I have a rare disease and only have three weeks to live.”
“No really,” I replied. “My folks are actually dead.”
Rachel paused and twisted her lips at me while she ran her internal lie detector over me.
“Wait, you’re serious?”
“Yeah,” I smiled. “It’s okay though. I’m not that tortured.”
“I’m so sorry!” she stammered, obviously embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Don’t worry about it,” I told her, stepping closer. She smelled incredible, like some kind of perfume that only royalty could buy. “I started it. You were just playing along.”
“No…I feel terrible now—”
“Okay, well, you’re gonna have to make it up to me then,” I told her.
“Of course!” she replied. “What can I do, Mr. Dawson?”
“First of all, call me Jay,” I told her as I took her hand and pulled her to her feet. “Second of all, since you insulted me so badly, you’re going to have to come for a walk with me around the harbor, and if you’re really nice to me, I’ll show you my secret spot.”
“Oooh, secret spot?” she asked, bouncing slightly beside me.
God, she’s adorable.
“No one knows about it but me,” I told her. “So you’re going to have to really impress me for me to show you.”
Rachel smiled at me as I took her down the rocky shores to where the waves broke against the beach, and although my body was aching for her and I was insanely turned on, I was also feeling something deeper, beyond the basic animal instincts telling me to take her and make her mine.
I’d met more than a few rich girls in my life; Green Harbor had become a bit of a tourist destination lately and old money was showing up from out of state and buying up property. They all mostly kept to themselves or watched from afar, and while they were friendly enough when addressing you, it was easy to see that they thought they were better than the rest of us.
But I didn’t get that vibe from Rachel at all
. In fact, if it wasn’t for her Mercedes, designer dress and diamond earrings (which I assumed were real), I would never have guessed she came from money.
“You’re so lucky to live here,” she said, leaning down and picking up a piece of soft driftwood. “It’s beautiful. I can’t imagine waking up here every morning.”
“Well, imagine yourself going out on the fishing boat in mid-December when it’s just below freezing and hauling in traps,” I chuckled. “It’s not all sitting on the beach watching the evening sunsets.”
“Well, why don’t you imagine yourself on those same evenings smiling at parties filled with lawyers, bankers, accountants and mind-numbingly boring businessmen, all of them looking for a way to turn their already enormous mountains of money into even bigger mountains.”
“Rich people problems,” I countered. She replied by sticking her tongue out and poking me in the ribs with a well-manicured nail.
“Everyone’s problems are their own.”
“Very true,” I told her, stopping at the edge of Dane’s Wharf, the oldest fishing wharf in Green Harbor. The setting summer sun glowed peach and violet above us, casting its soft light across her gorgeous face.
This girl could have been a model, but she never would; it would bore her. I don’t know how I knew that, but I did. And I wanted to know more.
“It’s private property from here on,” I told her. “But to get to my secret spot, we’ve got to go through it.”