The Pleasure Of His Company. Lindsay Evans

know how to finish that sentence.

      “This is nothing more than an invitation to go snorkeling,” Kingsley said with a look that was far from innocent. “Aruba has some of the most beautiful waters in the Caribbean. You should experience it with locals who know what they’re doing.”

      “And you’re one of these locals?”

      “Not at all, but my friends are and they will be there. I’m only local to Miami.” He said his home city with an echo of pride in his voice.

      Miami was so very far from Atlanta. Good. That meant nothing could come of this...whatever it was. No matter how much Adah’s eyes drifted low on his body and her heart sped up at the thought of him touching her. But it wasn’t all because he was the most perfect male specimen she’d ever seen. He was just so open with his desire for her, so deliriously transparent in a way she’d never experienced before that it was intoxicating. And she also felt like the very air around him smelled of freedom. Escape. A higher plane of living, where pleasure was easy and everything else was inconsequential.

      “What exactly do you have in mind?” she asked.

      His beautiful teeth flashed in the moonlight again, and her breathing sped up. This was beyond ridiculous.

      “We have a snorkeling trip planned for tomorrow night.”

      She gestured to the high moon and the inky evening around them. “Snorkeling at night? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?”

      “Not at all. The sea looks completely different at night, just beautiful. You won’t regret it.”

      Adah started to argue with herself about the safety of going off someplace with a man she didn’t know. But all her life she’d been safe.

      “Okay.” She took a deep breath once she’d committed herself. “Where should I meet you?”

      “Do you know where the lighthouse is?”

      “Yes.” It rose high and majestic, a historic piece of island history where tourists gathered from morning until night to take pictures, gawk at the scenery and buy food and drinks from the vendors who set up shop at its base.

      “Meet me there just before sunset,” Kingsley said.

      She raised an eyebrow at him. The snorkeling trip now sounded suspiciously like a date. It lay at the back of her tongue to change her mind and tell him there was something else she’d committed to after all. But she bit back the almost-confession.

      “Okay,” Adah said. “I’ll meet you there. Near sunset.”

      “Perfect.”

      Adah didn’t know about that. She was quite possibly doing the most imperfect thing for her situation right now. She didn’t need another man in the mix to cloud her already-murky judgment where the potential wedding was concerned. But as she turned away to jog back down the beach toward her hotel and her mother, her mind’s eye wouldn’t let go of the memory of Kingsley, rising from the water like some Adonis thirst trap, making her heart beat fast and her tongue feel heavy in her mouth, thick with the desire to taste the path where every drop of water had run.

      Yeah. Her decision making was cloudy. Absolutely the cloudiest it had been in a long time. But that didn’t stop her from smiling the whole way back to the hotel.

      Seconds after walking into her room, she heard a knock on the other side of the door joining her room to her mother’s, then a muffled voice. Instead of answering what was undoubtedly the question of where she’d just come from, she quickly fled to the bathroom, stripped and turned on the shower. Her mother’s questions would have to wait another day.