“Look, Kylie,” I said. “First off, I have been around. That first night out, all the water stuff we did yesterday, every meal, most of the pool trips.
“And secondly, you have to believe me when I say that I’d rather be spending it with you guys. But — and please don’t tell Beck this — it wasn’t just the stripper thing. There were other ‘incidents’ that nobody knows about. I know I look crazy, but I really did think that Mac was trying to disrupt the wedding.”
“Did?”
I considered my words. “I’m not so sure anymore. He can be… nice. But he’s also impulsive and bullish and he seems to be taking this entire week as a personal attack against his lifestyle or something. He’s really convinced that Sam is just going to ‘change his mind’ or ‘come to his senses’.”
I remembered his promise to not sleep with Margot. He claimed he hadn’t known. “I don’t think he’s doing anything on purpose,” I said. “Not anymore. So I’m done following him around.”
Kylie examined me closely. “Are you okay, Alice?” she asked after a moment.
“What? Why?”
She shook her head. “No reason. You’ve just seemed off for a bit.”
I forced a smile. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. Or Mac. Just relax and have fun. And make sure Beck’s doing the same.”
She nodded and, on command, relaxed back into her chair. To the sky, she said, “I’m eventually gonna want a full report of your Tuzas adventure.”
I laughed softly. “One day, Kylie. One day.”
Mac reappeared sometime around four o’clock. I watched him stride across the deck out of the corner of my eye. He passed right by me, peeling off his shirt and revealing that insane body. If he was trying to put on a show, I wasn’t falling for it. We were done.
But yet I couldn’t quite keep my eyes off him over the course of the next hour. He sat on the edge, thick legs submerged to the knee as he talked and joked with our friends.
After a bit, Kylie joined Beck in the pool and, shortly after, Jules led Keegan off. He’d high-fived his friends and laughed as they whistled after the couple, but I hadn’t missed the disappointed look on his face as she took him away from the fun.
I felt conspicuous, sitting apart from the group alone. I couldn’t avoid talking or being around Mac for the rest of the week. At the end of the day, we were all there for Beck and I wasn’t going to split the group by being petty. So I threw aside my reservations and joined Kylie and Beck in the pool.
The afternoon passed undisturbed by argument, though Mac and I only exchanged the bare minimum of courtesies.
Beck seemed to be having a good time. I looked for the signs of discontent that Kylie had mentioned, but I wasn’t picking up anything. Beck seemed fine. Normal. Happy. Excited to be with us and with Sam.
It hurt a little to know that I’d been a source of distress the night before. That was the opposite of my intentions, of course. Beck was my best friend, and she deserved to have the perfect wedding week. I was just trying my hardest to give it to her. One day she’d understand.
In a similar vein, if Mac was reveling in his freedom from my watchful eye, he didn’t show it. He also was acting normally, talking and laughing and having a good time in the pool. Not that I cared, obviously. But still, I almost decided that he’d learned his lesson from our disastrous episode in Tuzas last night.
Almost.
Because if I’d learned anything about Mac, it was that he was frustratingly consistent.
I didn’t have to wait long for suspicious activity to resume. It started once we left the pool and went into the resort for dinner, a strange shiftiness hidden poorly under social exuberance.
He got up from the table in the steakhouse three times and on two of those occasions, I caught a glimpse of him outside, talking on the phone.
Whatever. Could be work stuff. The Knights (excluding Twain) frequently had to check in on their businesses back in New York.
Then a resort attendant came up to him at the table and whispered something in his ear. And just like that, I felt myself getting pulled back in. Mac was off his leash and immediately planning some new insanity. But what could it be?
Stop it! I commanded myself. You don’t care. Remember?
And I didn’t. I refocused on the conversation and forcefully ignored Mac and his antics.
But later, when I was coming back from the bathroom, I saw him off to the side, speaking into the ear of the same attendant who had come to the table. I narrowed my eyes. He didn’t see me and once he was finished talking, he slipped some cash into the guy’s hand and walked quickly back to the table.
I couldn’t help myself.
“Hey, wait a minute,” I called after the attendant, a young man in a red vest. He stopped reluctantly in his path of fleeing the restaurant and turned to me.
“Yes, miss?” he asked.
“What was Mac just telling you?” I asked. His eyes darted over my shoulder, the way Mac had walked. He looked nervous.
“Nothing, miss,” he said lamely.
“Listen,” I said, looking at his name tag, “Rico. There’s no reason we can’t get along.” I reached into my pocket in the way I’d just seen Mac do and slipped him a five.
He stared at it, blinked, and put it in his back pocket. I was grateful he didn’t acknowledge the fact that Mac had probably slipped him a hundred.
“Mr. Walsh wanted the boathouse cleared out around seven o’clock,” he said.
“Did he say why?”
He paused and I prayed he was going to answer. I didn’t have another five.
Rico swallowed and said, “He mentioned something about a lady.”
Of course he did. “Thanks, Rico,” I said, letting him go.
For the next hour, all throughout the rest of dinner, I considered what I was going to do with that information. There was no doubt in my mind that Mac was going to try to sleep with Margot Lorne in that boathouse. Which, ew.
I was surprised the fancy woman would agree to something like that or why Mac wasn’t just taking her to his own room. But I supposed there might be eyes watching their floor and, after the bathroom thing with Mariana, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that Mac had a kink of getting caught.
Which, again, ew.
Sometime after dinner, the group found ourselves in the hotel lounge where a band played onstage. It didn’t take long for someone to notice that, sometime in our migration from the restaurant, we’d gotten a little smaller.
“Where’s Mac?” Sam asked.
Mason frowned. “I could have sworn he was just here. Must be in the bathroom.”
I checked the time and felt my eyes narrow. Six forty. Bathroom? Yeah right. He was merrily skipping down to the boathouse to screw Margot.
But what was I going to do about it? I felt Kylie’s eyes on me and didn’t let the dilemma reach my face.
I claimed not to care what Mac did, but let’s be real. I did. And for some reason, I’d trusted him when he said he wouldn’t be sleeping with Margot now that he knew she was Lorne’s wife. For some reason I thought after last night, he was going to calm down. But I’d been wrong apparently.
When it came to Mac I was wrong at every turn. But then, what was new? I should have known at this point that I had zero instinct when it came to guys. For some reason, I thought that Mac would be different.