They continued staring at each other, not talking. Her heart was hammering so hard, she was suddenly afraid Samir could hear it. She should tell him to back off, but… she didn’t want him to. She wanted him to continue standing exactly this close. She wanted to continue to be lost in those brown eyes. And she was fully aware that how she was feeling was completely and utterly at odds with her “let’s just focus on our goals, Samir” speech out on the deck the night she’d turned him down.
“You,” he said, almost angrily. “You’re the one getting under my skin.”
Holy hell. If she’d ever thought Samir was soft, or weak, or too much of a goody-goody, if she’d ever judged him as not being attractive enough for those qualities, dear goddess, she’d been so, so wrong. Her knees were actually weak. The boy was projecting some serious alpha male energy, and she was panting for more.
“Why?” she asked him in a challenging tone meant to get even more under his skin. Come on. She was only human. She wanted more of this Samir. She could easily see this one striding around a courtroom, controlling it. Dominating it.
“Why?” he asked, his voice deep. “Because I can’t figure you out. You tell me you don’t have feelings for me one night, and then you kiss me two days later. Sometimes you look at me like—”
“Like what?” Pinky asked, breathless, when he didn’t continue.
“Like you want me to take you in my arms, pin you against the wall, and kiss you senseless.”
She stared at him.
He stared at her.
“Oh my God!” Dolly burst into Samir’s room, her head bent and her eyes glued to her phone. “You guys aren’t going to believe this.”
Samir seamlessly stepped sideways and took a seat in a chair beside Pinky. She blinked, not really able to see anything because her head was swimming so much. What had happened? What had just happened?
Dolly looked up at them. “He’s mad at me because I haven’t invited him to the house.”
“Who?” Pinky asked, in a voice that was little more than a croak. She cleared her throat. “I mean, who?”
Dolly held up her phone. “Cash! Can you believe that?”
Pinky read the text and shook her head. “Ugh. He’s a petulant mess.”
“He’s just jealous of you, Samir,” Dolly said. “I shouldn’t have told him our parents like you so much. Now it’s become some kind of ridiculous macho competition for him.”
Samir crossed his outstretched legs at the ankles, looking completely unruffled. How could he do that? Weren’t all his internal organs in tangles like hers were? “Doesn’t surprise me. Cash is somewhat of a douche, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
Dolly sighed and sat on his bed, her cell phone dangling from her hands between her knees. “I don’t mind at all. I’ve decided to call it quits with him.”
“Seriously?” Pinky went over to sit by her. “Are you okay?”
Dolly groaned. “I don’t really know. I mean, the first ‘bad boy’ I date and I can’t even date him for all of the summer. Am I just that boring? What does that say about me?”
“You have good taste?” Samir said with a shrug.
Pinky slung an arm around Dolly. “You’re not boring. You’re just… set in your ways.”
Dolly punched her lightly on her thigh and then they all laughed, Pinky locking eyes with Samir for a moment. An invisible electric charge seemed to arc across the room, sparking and spitting between them.
Forget Dolly’s boy problems. What was she going to do about hers?
* * *
A few days later (during which Samir didn’t bring up anything else about her getting under his skin, much to Pinky’s disappointment), they were all sitting down to dinner on the deck when the French doors opened.
Pinky frowned at her parents in the dim light of the flickering table lanterns. “Are we expecting someone?”
“No.” Her mom was frowning too.
Pinky’s dad got up to check who it was—they couldn’t see from the far corner of the deck—and then she heard her dad’s “fake friendly” voice. “Oh, hello!” he said. “You’re one of our neighbors, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” came the reply. “I’m Cash—Cash Miller. I live right across the lake.”
CHAPTER 14 Pinky
Pinky darted a glance at Dolly, only to see her cousin just as wide-eyed and horrified as she looked. Her dad’s and Cash’s voices got closer.
“Dr. Miller’s boy, of course! What a nice surprise.”
“I just came by to see Dolly,” Cash was saying as they rounded the corner. Pinky could now see that he was wearing a white button-down shirt with little blue anchors on it. His usually shaggy hair was neatly combed to the side. He was wearing boat shoes. Boat. shoes.
“Oh my God,” Dolly mouthed at her, and Pinky grimaced at Samir, who was watching the proceedings with avid curiosity.
“I see,” Pinky’s dad said, his eyebrows rising in surprise. “Well, we’re all sitting down to dinner.…”
“But why don’t you join us?” Meera Mausi added. “We have an extra seat and plenty of food.”
Abe smiled and gestured to the empty seat beside him, which Cash took. “Thank you,” he said. “I don’t mean to intrude.…”
“Not at all,” Abe said genially. Naturally, he wouldn’t be quite so friendly if he knew Cash was the reason Dolly had burned down the barn earlier this summer. “The more the merrier.”
“Thank you, sir.” Cash smiled, his straight, white, dentist’s-kid teeth all perfect and happy.
Pinky had to hand it to Cash. When he put on his human face, he was pretty charming. Almost Samir-level charming, except something in those flinty blue eyes told you he wasn’t nearly as trustworthy.
Cash smiled winningly over at Dolly, who was seated across from him. “Hey. What’s up?”
Pinky could tell her cousin was trying not to glare at him, but she didn’t quite succeed. “Hi, Cash,” Dolly said carefully. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to ask you if you wanted to do some fireworks with me and the crew.” He smiled as sweetly as if he were a kid in a lemonade ad. “We have some left over from the Fourth of July, so we’re going to set them off, just for fun.”
“Really?” Pinky interjected pointedly. “Is that even legal?”
Her mother gave her a withering look. “It’s fine, Pinky. A couple of small fireworks aren’t going to hurt anything.” She turned to Cash. “I assume there will be adult supervision?”
“Oh, of course.” His baby blues were all wide, his face earnest. “We wouldn’t dream of doing it without.”
Pinky snorted, ignoring her mom’s evil eye.
“I’m sorry.” Dolly speared a piece of conchiglie pasta with her fork. “I’m busy.”
Her parents exchanged a glance, probably wondering what the heck was going on. For Dolly, that response was really high up there on the rudeness scale. It’d be like a regular teenager spitting in someone’s eye.