Blush(19)

“Frequently things seem simple and turn out . . . not,” Mia told him as, after handing him the stick of butter, she started rinsing off the plates, then scraped out the burned offering from the pan.

She was a little tongue-tied around him, she realized, surprised. She, who mixed and mingled on a daily basis with people at every social level, with ease. She was as comfortable making small talk with the president of the United States as she was chatting with the maintenance staff at Blush’s headquarters in San Francisco.

She was intelligent and articulate, and enjoyed social interactions. But he made her feel—God, she had no idea why this man made having a conversation so difficult. He didn’t scare her—well, maybe a little. What he did do was turn her on. Maybe it was because with him she felt vulnerable. Bare. Maybe. Or maybe it was her imagination. Low blood sugar was giving her head a rush and she needed to have breakfast.

“That’s life for you.”

He was right behind her—she hadn’t realized just how close until she felt the heat of his body all the way down her back. Her skin instantly tightened in anticipation of his touch.

“Things are seldom as they appear.” His deep voice dropped several octaves until his words were more vibration than sound. The hair on the back of her neck lifted in response. “It’s what makes life interesting, right?”

“Sometimes.” Mia braced her hands on the edge of the sink and looked through the Spanish moss–covered cypresses to the green, murky water of the bayou. The rain was letting up, just random drops plopping into the muddy puddles between sad patches of scrubby grass, turning the lawn into a marsh.

Goosies rose on her arms. Everything looked alien, unfamiliar. Dangerous in a beautiful wild way. If that wasn’t a metaphor for what her life was right now, she didn’t know what was. “It would be nice if the world were a simpler place,” she whispered, her own voice low in the quiet. “If we could take things at face value and not have to read subtext or subversion into everything.”

“You’d have to find a deserted, uninhabited island for that.” His arm brushed hers. Bare skin to bare skin. She sucked in a breath. Anticipation surged through her veins— but he was merely reaching for the dish towel on the edge of the counter.

Still, she was trapped, caged by his proximity. “If you move, I’ll get out more bacon.”

Looking faintly amused, he stepped aside, then started hand-drying the plates, watching her out of dark, fathomless eyes.

Mia turned her back to open the refrigerator and get out the eggs he already had out, and a frozen package of bacon, since she’d used the last of the open package earlier. The diversion gave her a few seconds to collect her thoughts. She must look a mess. Tempted to excuse herself, to run upstairs and fiddle with her hair and put on some makeup. She felt exposed the way she was.

Before coming to Bayou Cheniere, she’d never been seen in public not fully made-up, hair expertly styled, and wearing discreet, exquisite, top-end fashion from international designers.

From the time she was twelve she’d never been out in public not fully made-up or beautifully dressed. When she was twelve years old, the PR team at Blush had made her into a walking billboard for the company’s products. All of those ingrained habits had been left behind—by necessity—in San Francisco months ago. Now the simple act of being without makeup as this man stared at her was foreign but also liberating.

No mask. No pretense. Nothing to hide behind. He was one of the few people who’d ever seen her for who she was. Almost. There was the whole change of name and identity thing, but still, who he saw was who she really was. Her name was immaterial.

Yeah, go ahead and tell yourself that, Mia mocked. That name was on Forbes’s list of the richest women in the world. It might have some bearing on how he perceived her if he knew.

But Mia Hayward owned a run-down, two-hundred-year-old, weed-infested property in the wilds of Louisiana. Here, her net worth wasn’t relevant, to him or anyone else.

Now she wore clothes bought at a store that also sold produce and cat food, and she’d had her waist-length hair chopped off at a walk-in chain salon. They’d done a crappy job. One side was longer than the other. Not in an avant-garde way, just a bad haircut. She kinda liked the way the messy, piecy style framed her face. It was different for her, not perfect, but fun.

If anyone had told her three months ago that she’d be clean-faced, wearing inexpensive, off-the-rack shorts, and loving the freedom it gave her to do these things, she wouldn’t have believed them. It was just starting to sink in that she wasn’t living her real life.