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. So Others May Live. That was the rescue swimmer’s motto, but it made commitment difficult.
And since he didn’t do forever, he shouldn’t be looking at Dani Andrews and wondering if she’d taste as good as she had the last time he’d kissed her.
Trouble.
She’d taste like trouble.
She was too sweet, too innocent even all these years later. She’d never faced real danger, never experienced the missions he had. That made him fiercely glad. She was safe because he’d done his job, and he’d keep her that way, no matter how badly he wanted to kiss her now that he had her close again. The breeze from the coming storm tumbled her hair around her face and shoulders.
He needed to let her go. He needed to wrap up this conversation and walk away. Again. Instead, he took a step closer, brushing up against her with his body. He was close enough to feel the heat radiating from her. “First storm of the summer’s arriving soon,” he said, brushing her arm briefly because he couldn’t take being this close and not touching her.
When a really violent storm blew in, the hotels opened up their conference rooms, ballrooms, whatever, putting down mattresses and offering bottled water for the locals. Sometimes the safest course of action was to put a kind of wall between yourself and any incoming storm. That could work for any number of things, he reminded himself.
She scanned the horizon. There were still several boats out on the bay. “It doesn’t look too bad. All those boats—they still stay here and ride out the storm?”
“Depends.” He pointed to a slim aluminum shell bobbing up and down just a few yards offshore. “Right there you’ve got your basic panga-type boat—aluminum sides, no cover, fifty horsepower motor.” He shrugged. “Not bad for a casual fishing trip inside a harbor or near shore, but nothing I’d want to trust my life to out on the open water. A bad storm’s going to toss one of those right up on the beach here if the owner doesn’t yank it out first. Then you’ve got your bigger boats.” He touched her shoulder lightly, directing her attention to a handful of larger vessels anchored farther away. “If the mooring’s good, those boats might ride it out. Bumpy as hell, but as long as they don’t get hit by debris, they’ll still be there in the morning. Then,” he said, smiling wide, “you’ve got your biggest boats.”
“Biggest?” She laughed, and he tried to ignore the urge to lean in and kiss her.
“Yeah, biggest. As in my boat’s the biggest. Perfect for your average midlife crisis or deep-sea fishing. Those guys hire the likes of me to pull the boat and get her under cover. Or, if they’re too cheap to pull the boat before the storm hits, they hire me after the fact to go salvage the pieces. You like sailing?”
She pursed her lips. “No. I don’t really care for the water much. Are they safe?”
“Enough.” He pushed the memories back. “I’ve pulled more than one captain out of the water.”
When she tilted her head, the question was clear in her eyes, so he continued. “With spec ops,” he explained. “After I left here, I did a couple tours with a helicopter sea-combat squadron as a rescue swimmer. We worked the Middle East and then Guam. I was the guy who jumped out of the chopper.” Was. He could still go back. He’d only been here three days and it wasn’t too late to re-up if he got his leg in fighting condition.
“It takes a brave person to do something like that.” She glanced at him up and down. He’d like to think she lingered on the good bits, but he wasn’t going to kid himself. “Are you all right?” she asked finally.
“Never better. This is just a little R & R.” The first day of spec ops training, he’d learned the “I am all right” signal. If you weren’t all right, you were off the job because otherwise you were a liability to the team. As long as a man could stay in the water, he was okay. He could keep on getting the job done.
He eyeballed their destination. The ice cream shack was coming up fast. Too fast.
“How about you? Is this trip all pleasure?” he asked, because he didn’t want to be done talking with her and couldn’t explain why. Stepping up to the order window, he bought two cones. The place only had the one flavor—chocolate and vanilla twisted together in a little cone. Her fingers grazed his as he handed her the napkin-wrapped cone, brushing aside her thanks for the cone before dropping a large bill into the tip jar.
“I had a vacation planned.” She looked down and fiddled with the tie on her bikini. “But now I’m helping my grandparents out, so business as well as pleasure. They’re on a cruise celebrating their fiftieth and I’m holding down the fort while they’re away. They were going to hire a temp from an agency, but I was here so...why not do it myself?”
“You’re walking on the beach.” He grinned at her. “The summer’s not a total loss.”
He headed back toward the water’s edge and she went with him.
She swiped at the ice cream, and now he knew why the ice cream shack had stayed in business for so long. That tongue of hers catching the creamy treat had him imagining carnal acts he had no business imagining. He wanted to wind his fingers in her hair and coax her down on the erection straining his jeans. Instead, he took a desperate bite of his own cone, welcoming the cold.
* * *
HER SEXY SPECIAL ops soldier was all rough and tumble. Blunt. Big and hard and tough. Odds were, he was also honorable, straight to the core. A man like him not only had rules—he kept to them. He was temptation personified—and Dani was a woman on a diet.
No more men for her.
After all, she’d already lost one fiancé. No, scratch that. You lost library books and socks and house keys. You lost those things because you couldn’t remember where you’d left them. As for her ex, she knew precisely where he was. Back in San Francisco with his new girlfriend.
Discovery Island was stunning at sunset, only a short distance away from the California mainland and surrounded by all that blue water. A beach walk with this man had seemed safe enough. Besides, who didn’t accept an offer of ice cream? The vanilla-and-chocolate sweetness was better than any orgasm she’d ever had, anyhow.
The chances of having a satisfying orgasm had gone down to nil when her fiancé had ditched her, although she was certain the chances hadn’t been that good before. She checked on the man keeping pace with her and reminded herself that she didn’t do casual sex. Not to mention her ex-boyfriend’s remark that having sex with her was far too predictable.
She took another bite of her ice cream cone.
Making cones with the soft-serve machine had been wonderfully precise, three twists of chocolate and vanilla, then the flick to finish the cone off. Exactly three point five ounces. She’d weighed her first cones, just to make sure, but she’d been a pro almost from the start. From the hard pull of the handle to start the flow to the sugary cardboard taste of the cone that was always soggy by the time she reached the bottom, she’d known what to expect.
Predictable.
The