had tried them all, ending, of course, with California because the Golden State had a white-hot real estate market. Summers on Discovery Island had been the one sure, stable thing in her life.
He scrubbed a hand over his short hair. “It’s been a while.”
“Has it?” she asked sweetly, instead of telling him to get lost. Something about Daeg Ross sent her straight back to her younger self. That part of her wanted to tease, to coax or to even hurt him the way he’d hurt her.
The adult part wanted to kiss him again.
Her taste in her men was clearly suspect. The guy she’d been engaged to for two years had become Mr. Wrong. And he’d excused his own infidelity by claiming she was terrible in bed. No matter how she looked at it, her love life was either a disaster or a disappointment. Take your pick. She was supposed to be on Discovery Island having hot, raunchy honeymoon sex in Sweet Moon’s finest suite. Instead, she was holding down the fort while her grandparents sailed down to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, on a cruise to celebrate their fiftieth anniversary. They were undoubtedly having hot, raunchy second-honeymoon sex—which she was so not thinking about.
No more men, she insisted. Eventually, when she was ready to put her ex-fiancé behind her and start dating again, men like the soldier facing her wouldn’t make her list. Military men were outrageously built and beautiful, but they’d never be keepers. They shipped out, moved on and did everything but stay.
He peered down at her, and those eyes of his were hard. He’d seen things, done things. Those tours of duty had changed him. Well, she’d changed, too. She wasn’t that innocent girl walking along the beach.
Not anymore.
“Ten years,” he said, as if their timeline—or lack of one—was a challenge he was throwing down. “It’s been ten years, Dani.”
Numbers had always made sense to her. She was an actuary, which meant she turned risks into something you could calculate. In her world, loss was a formula and all you had to do was hold enough assets in reserve to offset those losses. Daeg lived in a different world, by different rules. Where she calculated risks, he took them.
Her eyes narrowed. “I didn’t know you were counting.”
Counting implied caring, and he’d never cared about her.
* * *
DAEG HADN’T COUNTED. Not every minute. But he thought about her more than he should have. He’d wanted to come back here to Discovery and finish what they’d started. He’d wanted to push that cupcake of a gown down her body. Touch her. Learn every lovely inch of her, inside and out.
She’d been too young.
She was a woman now. No longer a girl. She’d have had lovers. He captured her hand in his, entwining her pale, slim fingers with his. He noticed she didn’t have a ring.
“You’re not married.” Thank God. There were rules even he wouldn’t break. His lovers had been women who were only looking for the same thing he was. Casual, fun affairs featuring hot sex with a side of companionship. He liked waking up next to someone in bed and he wouldn’t rule out settling down eventually. Someday. At some point in the future when his body gave out and he couldn’t make the cut to be a rescue swimmer. But that wasn’t today.
“That’s none of your concern.” Anger flashed in her eyes. She tugged on his hand. “It doesn’t matter.”
For a long beat, he hung on. She was strong, but he was stronger. “It does.”
“To me, maybe.” She shrugged. “But whether or not I’m married doesn’t mean a thing to you, Daeg Ross.”
She was right. Whether she was married or not shouldn’t matter to him. But the lack of a husband, a boyfriend, someone who had claimed her for his own and whose claim she had welcomed—that would mean she was available. His body went on alert, adrenaline pumping through him like it did before he made a jump. She didn’t have to be off-limits. He could pursue her, kiss her, touch her.
He could strip off that cute bikini of hers and bury himself deep inside her.
He could make the biggest mistake of his life.
The words came out of his mouth, anyhow. “You’re back for the summer?”
“I’m out at Sweet Moon.” He knew the place. Her grandparents had run it for years, booking romantic cabins with four-posters and fireplaces. It was the kind of place a man took a special woman.
He’d never spent the night there.
“Important occasion?” He kept his voice deliberately light.
She shook her head. “Not anymore,” she replied, giving him a wry smile. “But my grandparents reserved a cabin for me, so here I am.”
“His loss,” he growled, and her eyes widened as if he was some kind of mind reader, because he’d put two and two together and come up with the correct answer. “Whoever he was, he messed up.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said quickly, making it clear she had no intention of giving him the details about what had brought her here alone to Discovery Island. “It’s over. Water under the bridge. Things happen.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “But maybe I can make it up to you? What about ice cream?” he asked. He definitely needed to work on his social skills. “I may not have been back here in years,” he coaxed, “but I still remember how good the ice cream is.”
She eyed him cautiously, her brown eyes examining him. He didn’t know what she saw, but it must have been something good because she nodded and a slow smile lit up her face. “I can let you do that.” She paused, toying with the strap of her tote bag.
He gestured toward the ice cream shack at the far end of the beach and started walking. The muscles in his knee knotted, putting a hitch in his gait.
“You okay?” Dani’s expression was all worry.
“Leg’s fine.” He wasn’t fielding questions, not today, so he returned the conversation, what there was of it, back on her. “We need to worry about you. First thing you do when you hit the beach? You lose the sandals.” Stopping, he pointed at her sandy flip-flops, holding out his hand. “You can’t be comfortable in those things. Let me carry them.”
She hesitated, clearly not sure if she wanted to hand over her shoes or jam them into her bag, sand and all. When she looked down at her feet, as if she’d forgotten what she was wearing, his gaze followed hers. The nail polish on her toes was perfect—more proof this was her first day on the beach.
Leaning in closer, he caught a whiff of coconut-scented sunscreen.
“You haven’t been on the island long, have you?”
“A week. What gave it away?”
The pristine beach tote and the perfect polish were his first clues. “No tan lines,” he said.
“Being pale is an occupational hazard. I work in an office. It increases my risk of dying from heart disease because I’m too sedentary, but decreases my risk of contracting skin cancer. At least the sun is a controllable risk.”
“Wow.” That was a first.
“Too much?” She made a face. “My day job is as an actuary. I only moonlight as a beachcomber.”
She toed off the shoes, shaking loose a small avalanche of sand. He captured the flip-flops, which looked ridiculously feminine in his hand.
She looked over at him. “You have any other suggestions for me?”
Did he ever. Indecent suggestions a decent man would never say out loud.
Because he wasn’t looking for a happily ever after. Getting serious and marriage weren’t something he’d ruled out for himself in the future—the very, very distant future. As it was now, he was away for months at a time on missions he couldn’t discuss.