And I was not recovered when I, too, rolled out of bed, and automatically decided against the shorts and tank I’d worn when I thought I was going to the store and pulled on a white one-piece bathing suit with a short caftan over it.

I wandered out of the room and down the hall, seeing Shawn sitting on a stool at the kitchen island.

His back was to me, but he was looking over his shoulder, watching as I walked to him.

He was alone, which I vaguely thought was weird, unless he was there to get provisions and take them back to the pool house.

But if he was doing that, why was he sitting a stool?

And when I rounded him, I had another question, wondering why he was drinking coffee instead of also taking two of those to the pool house.

“You need a warmup?” I asked.

“Come here, baby girl,” he murmured.

I looked to his face.

He turned his stool my way.

I went there.

He pulled me between his legs, took up both of my hands and held them against his bare chest (he was only wearing track pants).

“I think you know, Preach is an edgy guy,” he began.

I snapped to my current situation and moved my hands as if to pull them away.

But he whispered, “Whoa,” soothingly like I was a skittish horse, and he held on, even if his touch remained gentle.

“Yeah, I heard him shout at you,” he said. “And no, I’m not dancin’ around that ’cause Preacher has something good in his life for once and I’m not gonna let him fuck it up.”

“Shawn, I don’t want to talk about this.”

“’Course you don’t. You just got a dose of the wild side of your man and it’s tweaked you. But, China, listen to me, you know better.”

“I know better than what?”

“You know better than to give up on something that’s as good for you as Preacher.”

I stared into his beautiful black eyes with their spiky lashes in his handsome face and said nothing because I knew how good Preacher was.

But what I’d just had from Preacher was very bad.

“You gotta keep that wild side tamed, baby girl,” he advised quietly.

“And what? Let him yell in my face?” I asked.

“Don’t fight him,” he said, sober as a judge. “Don’t ever fight him, Lyla. Not like that and not when he gets like that. And if he starts edging that way, you find your ways and talk him down. You do not let it escalate to what I just heard.”

“That’s not on me.”