Mama’s Boy by Avery Flynn
Chapter Twenty-Two
Dixon
The island awaits? Really? God, can you sound any more like a weirdo?
An hour after breakfast and he was still replaying the line in his head. Dixon had thought he was so smart setting up breakfast like he did. She was supposed to admit the whole no-eating-for-pleasure thing was a lie. But she hadn’t, and watching her watch him eat had made him lose his appetite. It wasn’t that plain oatmeal was bad so much that it sure wasn’t a Nutella-filled croissant still warm from the oven. The guilt at the way her shoulders had sunk just a little bit more with each spoonful had left him with a twisted gut and a mouth full of tasteless pastry.
“So what exactly are we doing?” Fiona asked as they walked out of the house into the cool September morning and down the path leading to the lake.
“Nash’s plan for the day was a hike and lunch picnic out on the island.” He opened up the gate to the dock and held it so she could walk through. Okay, and so he could get a look at her perfect ass. He was a dick. He admitted it. “Knowing him and Griff, they’re already out there setting up trouble.”
She pulled her bright-blue knit hat down tighter on her head. “What, like hiding in the trees so they can scare us?”
“You are not good at this.” That was putting it mildly. Even at eleven, they’d been pulling more complex tricks on one another than that.
“Thanks so much for the compliment,” she said, sarcasm dripping from her voice.
Way to go, Beckett. “No, I mean subterfuge and pranks. They’re not your thing.”
She turned and stared at him, open-mouthed and eyes wide, before she put her hands on her hips and glared. “I can be sneaky.”
Going by how well she’d done so far with Peacock and porridge? Yeah. Not so much. Good thing they didn’t have to worry about it, though, because when they got out to the dock, both canoes were still moored at the dock. He loved it when a plan came together. They’d get to the island before Nash and Griff.
“Being sneaky is not all it takes to have a winning plan,” he said. “You have to outwit your opponent. That’s what makes it fun.”
“So we’ll be the ones jumping out from behind a big-ass rock?”
He put the picnic basket down on the dock and held out his hand to Fiona. “Yes, that’s totally what we’re doing.”
“Really?” she asked as she took his hand and stepped onto the canoe.
The touch wasn’t much, but it was more than enough to make him want more.
“No,” he said once they broke contact and his brain started functioning again. “We’re leaving them lunch and stealing their boat. We’ll give them time to get nice and chilled before going back for our hike and lunch.”
She sat down and accepted the picnic basket he handed her. “That’s your big plan?”
“Yep.”
“And you thought that up with the same big brain that helped make Beckett Cosmetics a household name?”
The question—said with just enough of a teasing zip—knocked him a little off-balance, which was exactly the wrong thing to have happen as he was stepping into the narrow canoe. It bobbled on the water, and Fiona let out a yelp of surprise, grabbing ahold of the sides. Just as he overcompensated one way, she went the same way and they nearly overturned, coming close enough to the cold water to get splashed in the face. He reared back.
“Don’t move!” Fiona yelled.
For once in his life, he listened to the advice of someone besides his mom and froze, hunched over, his arms flung wide, one leg in the air. Fiona settled in the middle of her seat and then righted the picnic basket so it sat between them. Then she nodded at him, one hand held palm facing him as she moved it slowly downward in the international sign for nice and easy.
Embarrassment at his own lack of getting-in-the-canoe-with-a-gorgeous-woman skills had sweat prickling the nape of his neck, but he followed her direction and managed not to send them both into the lake before they even left the dock.
Wow. Good thing you’re not trying to impress her, because that right there would have lost her.
They were halfway across the lake, the sun glinting off the smooth blue water, headed for the small island in the middle, when he broke the silence. “What is it that you do? I should know, being your insta-love boyfriend and all.”
“What do you think I do?”
“Librarian.” The answer was out of his fantasies and into the open faster than he could stop himself.
She chuckled. “Nope.”
He let his mind wander but kept coming back to images of her at work all tightly buttoned up until she wasn’t. This was seriously not healthy for a man. “Scientist.”
“Wrong,” she said, sounding way too pleased with herself.
“Backwoods brothel madam.” He threw out the most ridiculous option possible.
She gave him an exaggerated pout and batted her eyelashes at him. “What gave me away?”
“The bunny scarf.” It was dark blue with little white bunnies on it, jumping every which way. “I hear all the best madams have them.”
Her cheeks turned pink as she brought her fingers up to it, stroking the soft-looking material absentmindedly. “Someone special made it for me.”
“Those are the best gifts.” They were worth everything—even dating someone pretending to be one of the worst people in the world.
Fiona threw back her head and laughed out loud. “You’re saying you, a guy who could buy half of Harbor City as an impulse, would get sentimental about homemade presents? Puh-lease.”
Close but not quite. “I could buy a third of the city, not half.”
She didn’t stop giggling and teasing him about what he could buy—a football team? Yes. A planet? No. A vanity-project movie about Dunkin’ Donuts? Absolutely, and really someone should—until he tied up the canoe at the island’s dock.
He managed to get out of the canoe without tossing them both over, grabbed the picnic basket, and walked her up the path to the island’s scenic overlook. They made it about halfway when he heard the unmistakable sound of the motor on the caretaker’s boat.
His gut dropped.
They wouldn’t.
He was going to kill his cousins.
“What’s wrong?” Fiona asked, peeking over his shoulder and getting a look at the basket’s contents.
“We’ve been had.”
He hurried down the path, getting to the dock just in time to see Griff in the powerboat and Nash in Dixon’s canoe making their way back to shore. On the dock was another picnic basket. He opened it to find hand warmers, hot chocolate, food for dinner and breakfast, a bottle of wine, and a box of condoms—ribbed for her pleasure. Yep. He was definitely about to become the sole heir to the Beckett Cosmetics fortune because he was going to murder his cousins.
“They’re coming back, right?” Fiona asked, rubbing her palms up and down her arms as a blast of wind shook the orange and brown leaves from the trees.
Dixon gestured toward the basket. “Not until tomorrow morning.”
Fiona stood shoulder to shoulder with him, watching the boats and the jackasses waving goodbye to them. “I’m gonna fillet your cousins.”
For once, she didn’t sound the least bit like she was faking it at all.
“I’m looking forward to watching that.” He picked up the extra picnic basket. “They’re assholes, but they wouldn’t leave us out here without shelter. My guess is they set up the tent. It’s always at the top of the path.”
The hike was an easy one and yet his chest was still tight as they made their way up to the clearing. He had to stay strong. Remember what was at stake. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—lose. He was the guy who always won. That’s who he was. What happened with Nicole had just shown him what it was like to lose, to be lost and alone and vulnerable without being able to tell anyone the truth. He hadn’t come out of his penthouse for weeks after she’d died, except for the day of her funeral. That had broken something in him and revealed the truth. Losing wasn’t just bad; it was the worst thing that could happen. He wasn’t going to ever go through that again.
By the time they made it up to the tent set up at the clearing, under the shadow of the craggy hill he and his cousins had called The Castle when they’d visited in the summers, his equilibrium had been reset. The tent felt smaller than the one they’d had as kids, even if it was probably the same size. The floor was covered in blankets, and one thick sleeping bag was laid out in the middle of the cramped quarters. Spotting the red nylon, he wavered on his feet, suddenly off-balance once again.
“That should be everything,” he said, his tone gruffer than usual as he set the basket down.
The contents shifted inside as it hit the blankets, pushing the lid open and showing off the box of condoms sitting right next to the bottle of Merlot.
“I’m not going to think about it,” Fiona said, her tone firm even as she finished off the statement with a little sigh.
Trying and failing to keep his gaze from wandering over to the condoms in the picnic basket, he nodded in agreement. “Me either.”
Of course, there wasn’t any way he wouldn’t lose that battle—and for some unknown reason, he was okay with that.
