“Have you thought any more about my story idea?” McKenzie asked. “This whole damsel-in-distress thing won’t last forever.”
“I’m not a damsel in distress,” Louisa said. She was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. She didn’t want to be reduced to one of those women who needed a man to swoop in and save the day.
But if Cody hadn’t swooped, she would’ve died. The weight of that might never escape her.
“XPO Boggs said he’d talk to me.” McKenzie’s expression turned wry.
“Great. He’s full of stories, I’m sure.” She tried not to sound sarcastic. She didn’t try hard enough.
“You really should be more grateful to him, Louisa,” McKenzie said. “He’s a hero. An actual hero, and you’re not the only person he’s saved.”
Maybe not, but Louisa knew it likely mattered very little how many people Cody saved. He hadn’t saved the one person who mattered most. That was probably what drove him in the first place.
“I have a meeting, McKenzie,” Louisa said with a wave. “Nice to see you.”
“You, too,” she called out in her singsongy voice. Louisa couldn’t be sure, but she thought two or three chirping sparrows circled around McKenzie’s head as she walked away.
She turned back to the station and inhaled a sharp breath. Here goes nothing.
The melody of “My White Knight” from the Broadway musical The Music Man drifted through her mind as she strode toward the door. She groaned. She didn’t need old-time love songs in her head right before she sat down with Cody Boggs.
She walked inside the station and instantly felt out of place. She shouldn’t have agreed to meet here. She should’ve insisted he come back to her office so she could pitch her ideas.
“Hey, you’re that woman.” One of the guardsmen stood a few yards away. “The one we saved the other day.”
Oh yeah, this would be fun.
“That’s me,” she said.
He grinned at her. “You got lucky.”
Luck had nothing to do with it.
“I’m here to see XPO Boggs.” She’d stolen his title from McKenzie. Truth was, she had no idea what Cody’s rank was or what it meant, but nobody needed to know that.
“’Course you are,” the man replied. “All the pretty ones want to talk to Boggs.”
“Louisa?”
She turned and found Cody standing in the doorway of what she could only assume was an office.
“We can meet in here.” He took a step into the nondescript room, furnished with a desk, two bookshelves, and a window that faced the ocean.
She stood awkwardly in the doorway. “I like what you’ve done with the place.”
He eyed her for a split second, then motioned toward the chair on the opposite side of the desk. “Have a seat.”
He clearly didn’t have time for witty banter today, which was a shame because she felt especially witty at the moment.
She did as she was told and felt suddenly self-conscious about the plan she’d concocted for this fundraiser. Maybe she should scrap the whole thing and start over. Go home. Work on the final details of the Timmons anniversary party. Come back to this with a clear head.
“So?”
She found him watching her, which would be off-putting if it wasn’t so nice.
“Louisa?”
She drew in a breath. “Sorry. It’s odd, right? Being in the same room again?”
“It’s just business,” he said.
Right. Business. So why did it feel like something else entirely? Why did it feel like an audition to earn a spot back in his good graces? Or a reality show gone terribly wrong?
“I have another meeting in half an hour,” he said.
“Are you this sweet to everyone, or did you save the sugar for me?” she asked without thinking. Sometimes she really wished she had better control over her mouth.
His eyebrows shot up.
“Sorry, forget I said that.”
“Forgotten.”
“Right.” She took out the small folder she’d put together outlining her plans. “I have three ideas, but there’s one that I think is the strongest.”
“XPO Boggs” leaned back in the chair, and the expression on his face seemed to say, Impress me.
She wasn’t sure anything she had to say at this point would impress him. Odds were, he was going to hate this idea. He was a guy, so he wouldn’t understand it. And that made her job that much more difficult. She not only had to execute the fundraiser; she had to convince him to let her.
It would be easier if he wasn’t staring at her like that.
She told herself to calm down. He was just a guy.
A guy who’d saved her life. A guy who’d stolen her heart a whole lot of years ago. A guy she couldn’t stop thinking about, no matter how mean he was to her. A guy she desperately wanted to win over and also desperately wanted to kiss.
“You’re zoning out.”
She blinked three times, quickly, and tried to focus, aware that she’d never felt this strongly about Eric in the entire eighteen months they’d been together.
She set the papers on the desk and fixed her gaze on him. “I don’t make a habit of going on the ocean without checking the weather,” she said without thinking. “I’m usually very good about it, in fact. I try to do something active every day—it helps my business if I have firsthand experience of things to do on the island.”
“That sort of backfired on you.” Now he was just being smug.
“Obviously.”
“I’m thankful we were there when we were,” he said with the sort of finality meant to end the conversation.
“Yeah, me too,” she said. “I wasn’t too keen on the whole dying thing.”
He looked like he was considering smiling but thought better of it. At least she could imagine he wanted to smile, even if he was still wearing that morose expression. What did this guy do for fun anyway?
“You should’ve worn a life vest.”
“I know,” she said. “But I wasn’t going out far. I was in what is usually calm water, the same area where people swim.”
“The ocean is pretty vicious when it wants to be,” he said.
She stared at her folded hands in her lap. “You know when I was out there, certain I was about to drown, I thought about you.”
She didn’t dare look at him. He didn’t say a word.
“I thought about your dad.”
“Louisa, we should talk about this fundraiser.”
She took his point. Don’t talk to me about my dad.
“Right. Of course.” She cleared her throat. “I think you’re going to love what we’ve come up with.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“I LOVE IT,” DUNCAN DECLARED.
Duncan had told Cody this fundraiser project was his, but as soon as he saw Louisa sitting in the office, he pulled up a chair and listened to her pitch.
“Yeah?” Louisa beamed at the compliment.
Man, she was pretty. No wonder Cody had taken it so hard when she broke his heart. Losing her was like losing something precious—and he knew it, even when he was eighteen, even before that, if he was honest.