Thief:A Bad Boy Romance(24)

 

“Just make sure you get my good side, okay?”

 

I wink as he shakes his head at me, his arms still crossed over his chest.

 

“Welcome home, Silas.”

 

“Enjoy our lovely town, Agent Riley.” I call back over my shoulder. “Try the lobster rolls down on Commercial Street.”

 

I wait until I’m a block away and around a corner before I almost drop to my knees, the wind leaving me in a whoosh.

 

Fuck. Welcome home indeed.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Thirteen

 

 

 

 

 

Ivy

 

 

 

 

I leave my sandals on the beach as I head down onto the rocky shore. The water is cold, as it always is in New England, even in the summer.

 

I shiver as I let just the tips of my toes into the lapping waves, feeling somehow comforted by the feeling of the Atlantic against my skin.

 

Shelter Harbor doesn’t get big surf-type waves. That’s out on the breakers around the mouth of the harbor itself. Here in the protection of the bay though, we just get little lapping ones - the ebb and flow of the water teasing endlessly against the shore.

 

Tickle waves, my mom calls them.

 

I grin as I let them tickle my feet, feeling centered - feeling at home.

 

Of course, I’m also grinning because these tickle waves are about to become a $5,000 Instagram picture.

 

I push the little bottle of skin cream down into the soft brown sand and black pebbles of the shore, pushing it just enough in, right next to my toes, so that the water just splashes gently across it.

 

Perfect.

 

This week’s skin cream product placement apparently specializes in minimizing high-heel-related calluses. Or, something. This one I’m not actually that familiar with, but my management team made sure it was part of the “to shoot” product bag - along with the sandals up on the beach, the sports bra I’m currently wearing, and of course the yoga pants that carry my brand - that I was supposed to come home with and photograph

 

“Make sure you really get enough of that quaint Cape Cod charm, okay, Ivy?”

 

I frown at Lori, my immediate manager. “Shelter Harbor isn’t actually on Cape Co-”

 

“Hon?” She looks down over the top of her tortoise-shell glasses at me from behind her wide, glass desk. “It doesn’t really matter, okay?”

 

Here in decidedly not Cape-Cod-located Shelter Harbor, I bring the phone up and point it down at my feet, framing it just right. Some people who do this kind of work hire a team, but polls have shown that people really dig my “home shot” aesthetic. They like that I’m “au naturale” and don’t use pro photographers. They like that I’m “so genuine” in my selfless quest to highlight-reel my life of endless yoga retreats, active wear, and goji-berry cleanses.

 

Right.

 

I mean, I’m going to Photoshop the shit out of these pictures later on my laptop, but sure - “au naturale” it is.

 

The sun’s perfect right then too, the light great for that mid-afternoon summer dazzle. I swap to a video, shooting a quick one with sound that I’m sure will get 300,000 likes by dinner time if I can get it up in time.

 

The skin cream along with my toes captured in about fifty shots, I make my way back up to the beach, slipping back into my sandals and climbing the wooden stairs back to the piers. My eyes dart across the harbor scene I could probably still navigate with my damn eyes closed. The smell of Halstead’s lobster-roll take-out window, the sounds of mechanical winches down on the docks loading empty nets onto trawlers or full ones off.

 

The cool wind of the Atlantic blowing through my hair.

 

I snap a few more random shots, getting that “New England charm” aesthetic I know the management team is looking for. I might’ve run away from this place a long time ago, but I will hand it to this town, charm it’s got by the damn bucketful. There’s a reason ferries and tour buses bring tourists by the truckload to this place between May and September. It’s charming, and quaint - picturesque enough that they’ve even shot movies here over the years.

 

I head down to the lower piers, following them almost aimlessly.

 

Of course what the movies don’t show and what the tour buses skip is the darker side - the part of town that behind the veneer of it’s adorable little main street. Beyond the charm and the little shops selling plush whale stuffed animals and keychains with founding fathers’ names stenciled on them, there’s the other side of Shelter Harbor.

 

Silas’s side.

 

The edgier side, home to the boy from across the tracks.