Heat Stroke (Beach Kingdom 2)

“Yes you are. You just hide it well.”

CHAPTER NINE

Marcus was sweating through his shirt.

Jamie was an hour late to work. Where was he?

This never happened. Jamie always showed up on time. He was constant.

What if it was his fault? He’d pushed Jamie away last night, made him leave and now he didn’t want to look at Marcus’s big dumb face.

Marcus had been counting the hours since Jamie walked out his door last night until they’d see each other again. Not that he had any kind of plan. Or had an apology rehearsed. He just wanted to get into the same room with Jamie, because everything righted itself, ten times out of ten, when Jamie was standing in front of him. It never failed.

Oh my God, what if he’d quit?

It was kind of common knowledge that Jamie didn’t necessarily need to work in the summertime. He had a job at a prestigious private school in Brooklyn, was well paid and definitely didn’t need bar tips or lifeguarding money. Maybe he’d just decided it was easier to stay home and read then to deal with Marcus and the confusion that came along with him.

“Hey, uh…” Marcus approached the bar for the nineteenth time in an hour. “Have you heard from Jamie yet?”

In response to his question, he got the Rory death stare and it was one of the rare moments lately Marcus remembered the youngest Prince brother had once been an inmate. “You asked me six minutes ago, man. I would have told you if he’d gotten in touch. Just so you’d stop asking.”

“Should I go out and look?”

Rory sighed and plucked a red cocktail straw out of the plastic holder, starting to chew on one end of it. “Yeah, maybe,” he sighed.

Rory looked like he wanted to say more and it made Marcus’s stomach turn over. “What?”

“Nothing, I just…” Rory paused. “You know about what happened on the beach back when Jamie was twenty, right? Everyone does. The fight that got me arrested.”

“Yeah. I just don’t know what it was over.”

“You’re not going to hear it from me, either.” A muscle flexed in Rory’s cheek. “Anyway, I saw the guy who led the fucking charge on the boardwalk a few weeks ago, when I was with Olive. He’s still in Long Beach. And I think I’m just overreacting, but I wish Jamie would get his ass in here already—”

Marcus was already weaving in and out of the early birds, jogging toward the door, his mouth drying up. No. No no no. If something happened to Jamie—if that fucker put a single finger on Jamie—Marcus would twist his head off like a bottle cap. Don’t be hurt. Don’t be hurt. I didn’t mean to shove your hand off of me last night.

With his heart slamming into his ear drums, he burst out the door.

And ran right into Jamie.

“Jamie.” Marcus didn’t think, he just wrapped his arms around Jamie and lifted him up off the ground, absorbing his warmth like a sponge. He was there. Right there. “You’re alive.”

“Not for long,” he wheezed. “I can’t breathe.”

“I’m sorry.” Reluctantly, Marcus set him down. “Don’t quit the bar.”

Jamie adjusted his glasses and swatted the wrinkles out of his shirt. “If I tried to quit the bar, my brothers would laugh at me.” He frowned. “Why do you sound surprised that I’m alive?”

Hanging out with Jamie must have been making him smarter, because Marcus’s intuition told him Rory wouldn’t like him telling Jamie what he’d shared. So he wouldn’t, even though he kind of wanted to kneel in front of Jamie, wrap his arms around the guy’s waist and confess every secret he’d ever kept straight into Jamie’s belly.

A totally normal impulse.

“No reason.”

After a moment of scrutiny, Jamie nodded and they were left staring at each other while a group of noisy college kids piled past them into the bar. “Well, I better get to work,” Jamie said. “I’m late.”

Marcus’s heart was still thundering in his ears, even though Jamie appeared intact. Mostly because Jamie didn’t look as amazing as usual. His eyes were a duller shade of gray and his skin seemed paler. Was he really okay? “Um. All right.”

He had no choice but to step aside as Jamie breezed past him, but the other man paused before he could walk into the Castle Gate, looking back at Marcus over his shoulder. “Could you—”

“Yes.”

Jamie laughed quietly. “Could you hang around tonight? I want to talk. If that’s okay.”

“Why wouldn’t it be okay?”

“What happened last night…” Jamie said quietly. “I was way out of line. I’m sorry.”

A weight pressed down on Marcus’s lungs. “I’m the one that made you stay.”

Jamie’s tongue touched to the corner of his mouth. “You didn’t make me do anything I didn’t want to do, Diesel.”

Ah, shit. Bad time to get a hard-on. You’re at work, bozo. “Oh.”