The Wrong Gentleman

I grinned. That I believed. “I promise I will.”

I hung up, pulled myself off the bed, took a seat at the table, and opened the first page of the study guide. Staring at the books wasn’t going to get me anywhere. It was time I started taking steps toward my future.

Thirty-Seven

Landon

I glanced around Hayden and Avery’s comfortable home. I’d been here a hundred times before, but this time I found myself wondering what it would be like to live this way. Out in the country. With a woman I loved.

“Can you put these spoons out?” my brother asked, handing me a bunch of cutlery.

“Who are you and what have you done with Hayden Wolf?” I asked.

“You think I’m not your brother anymore because I use spoons?”

“I guess I’m adjusting to the domesticity after having been on a yacht all summer.” I was adjusting to a lot of things after this summer.

“I’m not sure I should be speaking to you,” Avery said as she pulled out a tray of vegetables from the oven. “I don’t want to take sides, but I’m on Skylar’s. You have to know that.”

Hayden rolled his eyes. “There are no sides to take. Breakups happen.”

“Have you tried to reach her?” Avery asked.

I’d thought about it. Every day since I’d last seen her. But there was no point. She was understandably angry at me, and I’d encouraged her to leave. “No. I understand why she was pissed off.” At least she’d not been brought into any real danger. That was the only thing that mattered.

“Because of all the lies,” Avery said as if I were unaware of why Skylar was upset.

“Lies he had to tell,” Hayden said. “It wasn’t as if he’d lied about being single or having herpes.”

“For the record, I don’t have herpes,” I said.

“Good to know,” Avery said. “But Skylar’s sensitive to people who don’t tell the truth. She’s had a difficult path.”

“I know,” I replied.

“You do?” Avery moved past me and put some plates out on the table.

“Yeah, she told me about her parents.”

“She did?” Avery’s face looked like I’d just told her I was about to go to the moon after dinner. “That’s big, Landon. Skylar doesn’t tell a lot of people her story.”

I swallowed. From what Skylar had told me, not even Avery knew that it was her father who killed her mother. Compared to me, Skylar came across as open, light, and breezy, but there was a lot more to her than what was on the surface. It was part of the reason I was drawn to her. “The things I didn’t tell her were to protect her. You know I hung around in Monaco after the owner of the yacht left for the summer?”

“Yes,” Avery replied.

“Well, the owner, the one I’d been surveilling, was arrested in his hotel the day he walked off the Sapphire. For gunrunning. It’s been in the press now. He was planning to sell weapons to a splinter group of the Islamic State.”

“Jeez, Landon. Are you kidding?” Hayden asked. “You said it was a low-level thing.”

“Well my involvement was,” I replied.

“Are we talking about the owner of the yacht Skylar and August were on? Didn’t Skylar go to dinner with that guy a couple of times?”

I nodded. “He wanted her as a cover—to join him at dinners with various people that he shouldn’t have been meeting with.”

“And you just let her go?” Avery asked.

“They only had dinner twice,” I replied. The last thing I could be accused of was not worrying about Skylar’s safety. “The second time was on the boat. The first time . . . Well, I was there outside the restaurant.”