Imagine With Me (With Me in Seattle #15) - Kristen Proby Page 0,12

him. I just keep marching around the driveway.

“What are you doing?”

“Walking off a mad.”

I glance over. He’s standing on the bottom step, his hands in his pockets.

“In the driveway?”

“I wanted to walk on the beach, but I don’t know how to get down there.”

He starts to walk, and I follow him. Mostly because I really want to walk on the beach. I’ve heard people talk about it all my life, and I want to see what the hype is about. Will it calm me? Will it terrify me?

Most things scare me.

There’s a path behind the house that leads down to the sand. At the bottom, I look both north and south, then back to the path that leads to the house so I don’t forget what it looks like. And then I turn to Shawn.

“You can leave now.”

I set off, headed south. The sand is packed and wet, I assume because the tide reaches up this far. The waves crash against the shore about fifty yards from me. Far enough away that I’m not afraid of being swept out by a riptide, or fear getting eaten by a beached whale.

Not that I know anything about those things.

The sound of the water is soothing, and before long, I feel my blood pressure start to lower.

When I turn around to head back the way I came, I’m surprised to find Shawn not even a hundred yards behind me, his hands still in his pockets, his face impassive as he waits patiently.

I walk toward him, pretty sure that the urge to kill him has passed. When I reach him, he surprises me by tucking a piece of my hair behind my ear.

He’s done that before.

Both times have made me sigh.

“You infuriate me,” I admit in a calm voice.

“I know. It’s not on purpose.”

“Feels like it is.” We start to walk back down the beach, side by side. “When I tell you I don’t like something about what you’ve written, you clam up on me. You don’t say anything in response to me, and you don’t listen.”

“I’m thinking,” he says. “If I’m not responding, it’s because I’m thinking, Lexi. It’s not because I’m deliberately being a jerk.”

“It shouldn’t take you ten minutes to think of a response.”

“No, but it might take me two minutes to wrap my head around something. I don’t think aloud like you and so many others. I process internally.”

“Okay.” I sigh and step around a piece of driftwood. “Maybe in the future, if I disagree with you on something, I should state my case and then let you ponder it while I use the restroom or grab a snack or something.”

“That would help, yes.” He takes my hand in his, surprising me. But I don’t pull away. “You’re not the most patient of women, Lexi.”

I laugh. “You’re right. I’m not. I’ll try to work on it.”

I wish we could spend all of our time away from the office. Because as much as we are at odds while we work, Shawn and I get along really well when we’re not talking business.

Under different circumstances, I could see having a romantic relationship with this man.

Unfortunately, that’s not in the cards. We need to figure out how to work together productively so we can finish the project, and then I’ll be on my way home.

We head back to the path that leads up to Shawn’s house, and he suddenly tenses.

“What is it?”

“Something’s wrong.”

Chapter 4

~Shawn~

“What’s wrong?” Lexi calls out from behind me as she scurries up the hill, following my lead. She’s in excellent shape, and she’s able to keep up with me.

“Don’t you smell it?”

“Smell what?”

I stop and turn to her, and she plows right into my chest. I catch her shoulders in my hands to keep her from falling.

“Take a deep breath.”

She complies, and then her eyes grow round. “Fire?”

“Exactly.”

“Oh, God. Is your house on fire?”

“I fucking hope not.”

My heart races in my chest as I crest the top of the hill and round the path. My eyes skim over my home, and I breathe a sigh of relief that I don’t see any smoke coming from the building or the detached garage.

“Not your house,” she says, panting. “Has to be a neighbor. Or the woods.”

“I only have one neighbor close by. I’m going to run over and see if it’s their house. You stay here.”

“Yeah, right,” I hear her mutter as I take off in a full sprint, running to the neighbor’s house that’s a quarter of a mile down the