by Karina Bliss
“Yes, nice guy.” He was a widower and they’d had a long chat about bereavement.
“He thinks you’re hot and wants to take you to dinner. You interested?”
“Of course she’s not,” Kirsty answered. “God, Nev, you can be so insensitive sometimes.”
“Can I?” Neville looked surprised, and Liz hid a smile. His volatile wife was usually the one who missed signals. Her gentle husband, on the other hand, saw too much. Only last week he’d told Liz she needed to get a social life. That was why she’d gone to their barbecue—to be social. Now she realized it had been a setup.
“It’s too soon,” Kirsty said, looking to Liz for confirmation.
But Neville spoke first. “It’s been over two years.”
Liz shifted uncomfortably on the couch. It sounded as if they’d discussed this before.
“You didn’t know what a perfect marriage they had. Isn’t that right, Lizzy?”
Neville snorted. “So perfect, you never accepted it while he was alive.”
“I admit to being a spoilt brat who needed to grow up.”
They glared at each other.
“Can I speak for myself?” Liz said mildly.
“She’s right, Nev, I can never duplicate what I had with Harry. And as mayor,” she added thoughtfully, “it’s probably not appropriate to date just for sex.”
Kirsty’s mouth fell open; Neville grinned. Liz swirled the wine in her glass. “So tell Mark thanks, but no thanks.” Kirsty immediately looked at Nev with an “I told you so” expression.
Her complacency annoyed Liz. It was her choice whether she slept alone, not Kirsty’s. She still had a loving husband to keep her warm at night. Did her stepdaughter think celibacy was easy? Mischievously she added, “Harriet can get Nana Liz a vibrator for her birthday.”
Maybe that’s why she had the dream again that night.
As a punishment.
CHAPTER FOUR
IN THE END she had to hunt Luke Carter down. His phone number wasn’t listed, and Liz knew if she left it until Monday when she could search council files, she’d chicken out, so she drove to his house the next morning.
He wasn’t home.
She sat behind the wheel chewing her lower lip for a few minutes, then reluctantly drove to Camp Chance. To her relief there was a tradesman working on an outbuilding. He could get Luke for her. She didn’t want to go inside.
As she picked her way over to him in heels more suited to the chambers of power than a construction site, Liz noticed the hammer hand was attached to one hell of a body.
Impatiently she swept some loose strands of hair up into her French twist, letting the sea breeze cool her damp nape, and told herself to settle down, wincing as her fingers brushed the bump on her head. She’d fallen out of bed trying to wake up.
Unfortunately the builder looked even better, closer. He stood on the scaffolding, clad in a pair of black shorts that clung to a shapely male ass, a leather tool belt and a pair of old trainers.
Liz made a mental note to talk to the building inspector. The man probably didn’t even wear sunblock; his back was as bronzed as the cherub fountain in her garden.
But, oh, boy, was he built, his muscles slick with sweat from the summer humidity, his shoulders as broad and strong as the planks supporting him, and biceps that matched the bunching muscle in his thighs. No cherub this.
His shorts and tool belt sat low on narrow hips. As she approached, he swung around and she was reminded of a discus thrower, all twisting powerful grace. She lifted her gaze to meet silver eyes as cool as water and realized she was looking at Luke Carter.
“Mayor Light.” He shoved his hammer into his tool belt. “Come for that personal tour?”
“No!” Still dazed, Liz realized she’d been too emphatic when he raised his brows. “I’m officiating at a citizenship ceremony this morning. Shouldn’t you have a shirt on?” Silly thing to say. “You don’t want to burn.”
“I’m in shade.” He grinned. “Is that what you came to tell me?”
“No.” She looked away. “I have to learn to swim one hundred meters in seven weeks. Can you teach me?”
“Probably not.”
She glanced up again, too high, the sun above the roofline blinded her. “Okay then. Well, thanks anyway.” Liz turned to go.
“And if you give up that easy, then definitely not.” He swung himself down from the scaffolding. “Why the deadline?” While she told him, he reached for a drink bottle and drank deep, head thrown back, the muscles in his throat working.
She’d never thought of a man’s neck as sensual, but it was strong, wide, dipping into a collarbone cut like seagulls’ wings over broad pectorals and shoulders. He had the build of the 100-and 200-meter champion swimmer he was—a sprinter who relied on explosive power.
Luke squirted water over his head. Drops trickled down his brown neck, sparkled like diamonds in the smattering of hair on his torso. Liz swallowed and took a step back. “Sorry,” he said. “Did I splash you?”
“Playing it safe. So, you don’t think I can learn in seven weeks?”
“Are you frightened to put your head underwater?”
“Not if I can stand up.”
“Can you float?”
“On my back.”
“Are you stubborn?”
She lifted her chin. “I can do anything I set my mind to.”
Keen gray eyes assessed her. “If I gave you two lessons a week and you practiced every day, you could probably do it. Have you got that sort of time?”
Liz gulped. “I’ll make the time.” Who needed sleep anyway? Sleep held dreams. Except…“But I can’t ask you for that kind of time.”
“I can manage two lessons, and I’ll get a key cut so you can use the pool when I’m not around. It’s shallow, so you should be okay alone. One half-hour swimming lesson followed by one half hour of chess. Deal?”
He held out his hand and she took it. She must have shaken it when she first met him, but Liz couldn’t remember the warm, slightly callused firmness. “Why are you really doing this?”
“Blue Heron Rise. You helped me, I’ll help you.”
She smiled, and he saw a glint of mischief in her dark brown eyes. “It worked then?”
Luke wondered how he’d ever thought of this woman as cold. “Like a charm. Now what the hell is Blue Heron Rise?”
“A subdivision. About twelve years ago a developer successfully sued a council in the South Island for the costs associated with his project’s delay. Councils think they’ve legislated out of liability, but it hasn’t been tested in the courts yet. The specter of Blue Heron Rise can still rattle cages.”
Luke remembered the councillors’ faces and laughed. “Oh, it did.”
“Now tell me why one of New Zealand’s richest men is working with a hammer.”
“The builders needed help one day when they were short-staffed and somehow this evolved into a permanent part-time job. And before you squeal on me to the building inspector, I supported myself through university as a builder’s laborer.” He wanted to see if the woman still lurked behind the mayoral facade, so he added innocently, “I’ve always been good with my hands.”
Her expression didn’t change, but she did swallow. “That doesn’t explain why you’re working on a Saturday.”
He shrugged. “Working’s pretty much all I’ve got to do in Beacon Bay. Most people are adopting a wait-and-see attitude about the camp—and me. The hotel project cast a long shadow.” It was one of Triton’s few failures and it still rankled his professional pride.
“Living in Beacon Bay,” she said, “you must see the hotel wouldn’t have worked.”
“It’s certainly a great place to pull up a rocking chair and a banjo,” he said.
“Are you calling us backcountry hillbillies, Mr. Carter?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, Mayor Light…but change isn’t always a bad thing. The hotel would have brought economic prosperity to the area. You can’t tell me
the town doesn’t need it.”
“We need it,” she admitted, “but not at the cost of our beachfront character. Still, it doesn’t matter now, does it? Everyone got what they wanted.”
Not quite. “The camp exists on sufferance,” he said. “When the kids who holiday here are accepted by the wider community I’ll agree with you.”
Something uneasy flashed in her eyes. She glanced down at her watch. “Duty calls. I have to go.”
So the mayor’s support wasn’t unqualified? Now Luke was uneasy. But he said lightly, “So it’s okay for you to work Saturday?”
“I don’t have a life, either,” she answered. “Oh, dear, I didn’t mean to imply you don’t have a life, just not here.”
She was right, there was nothing to keep him here beyond the camp’s opening, but the prospect of returning to corporate life in Auckland didn’t thrill Luke, either. He’d pulled back from the business when his marriage broke up—to lick his wounds and reassess his priorities. The camp had filled the vacuum, satisfied a need to give back. After it opened, Luke didn’t know what he wanted.
He shoved the thought aside. “Since we’ve established neither of us has a life outside work, what time do you finish? I’m heading up to Auckland tomorrow for business and will be gone a couple of days. A lesson will give you something to practice while I’m gone.”
They made arrangements to meet at four.
“I’ll park on the road so no one sees my car in your driveway.”
With difficulty, Luke stopped himself from suggesting a secret knock. But his amusement faded as he watched the gentle sway of her hips under her pencil skirt as she walked back to her sedan.
Maybe he did have an ulterior motive, beyond repaying a favor and making allies in council. He missed the company of women who didn’t have a relationship agenda. And unless he’d read the mayor wrong, the last thing she wanted to do was to jump his bones.
Thoughtfully, he put down his bottle. He’d already read her wrong once—she wasn’t an ice queen, only a little frosty. And a touch of frost would feel pretty good on a day as hot as this.
Luke reached for his shirt. The mayor was right.
He’d had too much sun.
LIZ THOUGHT she’d lost her fear of death when Harry died. But as the water closed around her, squeezing the last precious oxygen from her lungs, panic made her suck in instead of blow out. Chest heaving, she burst out of the swimming pool, coughing and spluttering for air.
Standing poolside in board shorts and T-shirt, Luke removed his sunglasses. “You told me you had no problem putting your head under.”
Gasping, Liz fell forward on the sun-warmed tiles edging the pool, needing terra firma. “I don’t…usually.” She loved the water, always had. On the rare occasions she’d visited the sea as a child, she’d gazed in envy at the kids splashing confidently in the shallows.
All that space, all that freedom. The ocean was what initially attracted her to move to Beacon Bay. But to deliberately empty her lungs, watch the air escape in tiny bubbles of life-giving oxygen…
“I could feel myself sinking and I panicked,” she confessed. She’d expected to take to swimming like a duck to water. Not a lump of ballast.
“You will sink a little as you empty your lungs.” Luke flicked through the book—Learn to Swim!—again. “Let’s go back to floating, no exhaling.” He grinned. “I haven’t taught before so you’re going to have to give me some leeway here. It’s probably better if I get in the water.”
He dumped the book and hauled the T-shirt over his head. Liz averted her eyes, but her heart thudded harder against the hot tiles.
Nothing to be ashamed of, she told herself, a body like that would raise a pulse in a dead woman. She’d been nervous about this ever since she’d seen him shirtless earlier. There was a splash as he dived into the water and she took the opportunity to adjust her lime swimsuit so it covered all her bottom. One of them needed to be decently covered.
Luke’s dark head broke the surface, and the grin on his face suggested he’d seen her self-conscious gesture. Oh, God! Water streamed over the chiseled muscle of his shoulders and torso as he stood. Liz concentrated on his eyes, smoky-gray under wet black lashes.
“Okay. Float on your back like a starfish. If you start sinking, I’ll catch you.”
Slowly she leaned back, let the water hold her, then lifted her legs and tentatively stretched out her arms.
“Open your legs wider,” he commanded. Liz bit her tongue to stop a hysterical giggle from escaping and started to sink. Immediately Luke’s hand was under the small of her back. “Head back, muscles relaxed. Push your stomach up. The book says to pretend you’re Santa Claus, all belly.” He laid his other hand lightly on her abdomen and, startled, she tightened it. “No, Liz,” he said patiently. “Out, not in.”
She closed her eyes. Shutting him out helped.
“That’s good. I’m taking my hands away now.” Stomach up, head back, limbs relaxed—she could feel the difference. The afternoon sun was a caress through the cooling water.
Experimentally, Liz stretched out her fingers, became aware of her hair fanning out from her head. Opened her eyes to see Luke, a mountain of muscle above her, and sank.
“IS IT THE TOUCHING that’s making you self-conscious?”
They’d stopped for a cold drink.
Liz figured she had two choices with this man. Match his honesty or be intimidated by it.
“No, I’m getting used to that. It’s your…body that’s a little overwhelming. But then,” she added dryly, “you know that.”
He sipped his juice. “When you’re an athlete your body is simply a machine that you, your trainer and physical therapists push to go faster and farther. Any self-consciousness soon goes. But that’s not your point, is it?” His gaze returned to hers, all male. “You’re asking if I know women like my body. Yes, ma’am, I do.” Luke smiled, but cynicism colored his next words. “But I also know it’s not personal.”
Liz squirmed in her seat. “It must be hell to be objectified,” she managed to say.
His lips twitched. “Hell.”
Amused, Luke watched her deciding how to respond. The mixture of curiosity and caution in her dark eyes reminded him of Harriet when he’d first picked the baby up. Flirt with me, he invited silently, you might like it.
Her eyes shied away. “Shall we get back to the lesson?”
Nope, innocuous flirting definitely wasn’t part of the mayor’s repertoire. Maybe he could throw in a couple of covert lessons. Obediently, he picked up the swim manual.
The irony of being an Olympic gold medalist looking at a primer on basic swimming strokes hadn’t escaped him. But it seemed to have escaped Liz, who was looking at him impatiently, eager for her next instruction.
“Let’s try a facedown starfish float,” he suggested. “Don’t bother about blowing bubbles this time. Just get comfortable lying with your face in the water.”
He didn’t laugh until she was semisubmerged and couldn’t hear him. He was having fun.
His sense of superiority lasted until she started thrashing him at chess.
CHAPTER FIVE
A MONTH LATER, the gold wedding ring on Liz’s finger caught the morning sun as she leaned forward in her deck chair, trying to hide her rising excitement. Hand poised above her intended target, she waited.
Only when Luke frowned as he awoke to his predicament did she slide her queen gently into position. “Check.”
Across the chessboard his eyes met hers and her breath caught at the gleam of battle in those depths before it was obscured by a sweep of black lashes as he returned his attention to the game.
Luke leaned forward and dropped his forearms on the table that separated them, throwing the muscles of torso and arms into sharp relief. Throat suddenly dry, Liz reached for the dew-touched glass beside her and took a sip.
If anything, her physical awareness of him had intensified, but fortunately she’d got better at hiding it. Her at
traction to Harry had been cerebral. Luke’s self-assured sexiness was potent and…distracting.
In the distance, the bells of Saint Aloysius called the faithful to Sunday mass and Liz felt the loss of all the things she’d stopped believing in after Harry died. Glancing at her watch, she saw it was barely 9:00 a.m.
With elections and the camp’s trial run drawing closer, these sessions were usually jammed in at odd hours, but today they had the luxury of time.
Luke’s hand crossed the board. A rook entered the fray—the king was safe. Not only safe, she noticed with dismay, but poised to counterattack. “Check,” he said.
Glancing up, Liz caught the last flash of a grin and realized she’d been lulled into a false sense of security. “About time you made the game interesting,” she said pleasantly.
Ice tumbled into her glass as Luke refilled it from the water jug. “You don’t fool me.”
That was a problem, Liz thought. Because she had to trust Luke in the water, she instinctively trusted him out of it. Except then he’d do or say something that reminded her of her first assessment. Dangerous.
“So when am I giving you a camp tour?”
Liz kept her gaze on the board. “Let me check my diary.”
“Weren’t you supposed to do that last week?”
Her queen took his. “What I love about chess,” she said, “is that while the king’s the most important piece on the board, the queen is the most powerful.”
Luke tipped his glass for an ice cube, which he crunched between strong white teeth. “The queen may be powerful but she can’t mate the opposing king without help.” He took her knight. “Speaking of allies, how’s the election campaign going?”
“Bray and Maxwell have thrown their weight behind Snowy.”
“They’re like two pilot fish trying to avoid being eaten by a great white shark.”
Liz laughed. “If you’re trying to distract me, it won’t work.” She moved her bishop to cut off the black king’s last means of retreat.
