Damn. Dax wasn’t the relationship type, but if he had been, he couldn’t imagine letting a little thing like a busy schedule get in the way of giving his woman what she wanted.
The incoming ferry had docked, and the line began to move as the handful of passengers bound for the residential Ward’s Island boarded. He gestured for her to precede him. “Well, your wish is my command.”
“This is turning out to be the best jilting I ever had,” she said over her shoulder, forcing him to drag his eyes up from her swaying ass, pert and encased in the shimmery fabric of her flapper dress. The fringe edging the criminally short skirt started just where her thighs would meet her ass and hung to midthigh. And, oh, those legs. It was cliché, but they went on for miles. A pair of strappy silver high heels clicked as she walked up the gangplank.
His own phone buzzed, which was probably a blessing, because it saved him from having to battle the insane urge to bend her over the railing of the ferry and have his way with her.
Cassie says you’re with Amy.
It was his friend Jack. Otherwise known as Amy’s boss. And in some ways, Jack was like her big brother. He’d mentored her rise through Winter Enterprises, and his girlfriend, Cassie, was tight with Amy. Before Dax could type an answer, he had another incoming.
Don’t you dare touch her, you asshole.
He sighed and texted back.
I’m just saving her from herself. She’s fine.
I don’t think I’m making myself clear. Do NOT touch Amy. I will throw you off the 49th floor myself.
He wanted to howl his frustration. Forget bending Amy over the railing—he’d be better served using it to bash his head against.
I’m not planning to. The bride is safe with me.
He glanced up to make sure that was, in fact, true. The boat had cleared the dock and begun its fifteen-minute journey across the harbor. He hadn’t been paying attention, and she was still at least a little bit tipsy. Moving to stand beside her where she leaned against the railing, he noticed she was shivering. No wonder; the scrap of fabric she called a dress barely covered her. And he had only a T-shirt and jeans on, so he had nothing to give her.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, turning to him with shining eyes as she gestured at the skyline, skyscrapers all lit up like vertical jewels in the newly fallen darkness.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “You’d think it would get old, but it doesn’t.”
“It’s funny. It’s the same old city. Same old skyline I’ve seen a thousand times, but it seems different from here, somehow.”
She’d hit on something he’d always felt. “It’s amazing to see it from the edge of Ward’s Island. It’s so quiet there, unlike at Centre Island. All you can hear is the lapping of the waves. And yet there’s North America’s third-largest city, right there.”
Her shivering had become more pronounced, so he moved closer. Standing behind her, he reached around and put his hands on the railing on either side of hers, encircling her and using his body to shield her from the wind but taking care not to get too close.
The fireworks started then, with a great big cascade of half a dozen red and gold starbursts. Startled, Amy shrieked and jumped. He responded instinctively by tightening his arms around her, drawing her back flush against his front. Probably a mistake: he almost groaned as the very ass he’d been admiring all day wiggled against his crotch. “This is totally the best jilting I ever had,” she exclaimed, looking like a little girl thrilled by the display. As her fright turned into delight, she was doing a little dance of joy, bouncing as the sky lit up, peppered with explosion after explosion.
His cock jumped to attention as if it, too, had been startled by the fireworks. There was no way she couldn’t feel the evidence of his arousal. He glanced around. They were nearly alone on the deck—the summer ferries were large, and there were only a handful of passengers aboard. Two of his neighbors had taken seats inside, and there was a couple he didn’t recognize at the other end of the deck watching the fireworks.
And he was a jerk. And she already knew he was a jerk, so it wasn’t like he had a reputation to mar. So he didn’t move, just closed his eyes and listened to the sky explode while his cock pulsed against her, the thick denim of his jeans the only thing saving him from completely embarrassing himself. As long as he didn’t move, he was fine.
He hadn’t counted on her moving. Before he could get his bearings, she pivoted in his embrace, twined her arms around his neck, pulled his head down, and kissed him. Oh, God, she tasted like strawberries, too. And suddenly he was gorging himself, finally feasting on that scarlet mouth that had mocked him for years. She’d come at him with her mouth already open, and he didn’t waste any time. She liked sloppy, openmouthed kisses? He’d give her one to remember. Plunging his tongue inside the impossibly hot softness of her mouth, he let his hands fall to her ass and hoisted her up so she had no choice but to wrap her legs around his waist. She didn’t seem to be objecting, though, judging by the breathy mewling sounds she made as he turned them both around and carried her the few steps across to the interior wall of the deck, so she wasn’t leaning against the railing. He angled them so they were hidden from the other couple on the deck. When her back hit the wall, she didn’t lower her legs, just used them to draw him closer as she kissed him back, giving as good as she was getting.
“Mason never did this,” he rasped.
He hadn’t meant it as a question, but she answered anyway, letting her head fall back to give him better access to the neck he was scraping his teeth against. “No.” She gasped as he nipped her throat, then pressed soft kisses against the same spot to soothe it. “Mason never liked public displays of affection.”
“But you do, don’t you?”
He had meant that one as a question, so when she remained silent, he braced her harder against the wall so he could slide one hand under her dress, returning it to where it had been cupping her ass, but this time they were skin on skin. “You like it with your legs wrapped around me, out here where anyone could see, don’t you?”
He could see her eyes flash in time with a firework. “I’m not sure this is a public display of affection. I think it’s more like lust. But yeah, Dax, I like it.”
He would have said the earth moved under their feet, but of course it was only the lurching of the boat as it docked on the island. It was enough to make him lose his footing for a moment, and he let go of her, making sure her legs hit the floor and she was standing upright on her own before taking a step away.
“What now?” she said, looking around, trying to make sense of her surroundings, as if she’d woken from a dream.
He thought about how to answer: Now I get a grip on myself. Now I remember who I am and what I promised Jack. Now I do right by the jilted bride, even if it kills me.
Now I remember that Amy Morrison and I hate each other.
He didn’t say any of that, though. He just held out his hand and said, “Now we walk.”
…
The minute she stepped off the ramp from the boat, Amy bent over to take off her shoes. She liked heels as much as the next girl, but she had now officially been tromping around in the killer footwear for twelve hours, and enough was enough. She had clearly won over Dax, so she didn’t think it mattered if he saw her bare feet.
“What are you doing?” he asked, his tone piqued.
“Those shoes are killing me.”
“Those shoes are killing me,” he declared. Then he looked down at her bare feet as she wriggled her toes. “But those might be worse.”
Ignoring him, she turned to look back at the skyline and cocked an ear. “So let’s hear this wave-lapping, blissfully quiet thing you supposedly have going on here.”
“If you want quiet, we have to wait for the ferry to leave.” He pointed to a stretch of grass that abutted the lake twenty or so yards from the dock. “That’s a good spot to sit.”
Without waiting for him, she strode ahead and sank into the cool grass. Dang
, it smelled good. She had a lawn at her house. Why didn’t it smell this…grassy? Of course, she never sat on it like this, and she paid a landscaping company to maintain it, so she wasn’t really in a position to know.
“What are you doing?” Dax lowered himself to sit next to her.
“What am I doing what? I’m not doing anything.” The ferry’s walkway began to retract, and she realized she had really, really escaped everyone. That had been the whole point, of course, but she was truly stuck here now—at least until the next ferry. She gave Dax the side-eye. Stuck on an island with a guy she had always considered her office enemy.
“You’re doing this.” Dax started making exaggerated sniffing noises that bordered on snorting. “Do you have a cocaine habit I don’t know about?” He was mocking her. Of course he was. What did she think? That just because they’d made out on the boat, he was going to start being nice to her?
“I was smelling the grass,” she said, opting for the truth. Let him mock her. What did she care? She had nothing to prove to him. It was his turn to give her the side-eye. “It smells delicious,” she added, a touch defensively, as the ferry pulled back from the dock.
He kept inhaling, but he closed his eyes. “It does.” He continued breathing audibly and listed toward her until his face was inches from her own. Then he opened his eyes. Those weird light green eyes pinning her as if he were a superhero capable of immobilizing her. They were so pretty, those eyes. Like pale grass.
It’s possible she was still a little tipsy.
He broke eye contact and leaned even closer, touching the tip of his nose to her neck and heaving another big inhale. “And so do you.”
She wanted to lean toward him and away from him at the same time. “I what?”
“Smell good. Like strawberries.”
Right. “Uh, thanks?”
“I didn’t know they made strawberry perfume.” He sniffed once more and then pulled away. “That is perfume, right? You didn’t do some weird pre-wedding bridezilla thing where you bathed in crushed strawberries?”
She laughed. “No, it’s perfume. I always wear strawberry perfume, but normally only a little. But for the wedding I did scent layering so it’s probably still hanging on.”
“Scent layering?”
She laughed again and waved her hand dismissively. “Scent layering is a weird pre-wedding bridezilla thing. I probably read it in some stupid magazine.”
“So what you’re telling me is that you always smell like this, just not usually as intensely.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Right.” He straightened and scooted a little farther away from her. Maybe he didn’t like strawberries. Maybe he was just being polite when he’d said she smelled good. Maybe, like Mason, he thought strawberry perfume was juvenile.
Dax pointed to the lake. The ferry was halfway back to the mainland. “Okay, now concentrate,” he said. “Notice how oddly quiet it is, even though the city’s right there.”
He flopped onto his back and closed his eyes. It was fully dark now, but there was enough ambient light from the lit-up skyscrapers across the harbor that she could still make out his face. She knew he had laugh lines around his eyes, but in repose his face was unlined. Heavy black eyebrows punctuated his otherwise smooth face, and a lock of black hair fell down his forehead.
He opened one eye and caught her staring. “Are you listening?”
She nodded and, following his example, lay back on the grass. It was, as he’d suggested, silent except for the lapping of water against the shore. There were only a few stars in the sky—though the noise was blocked here, the city light was not. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath. Not the trying-to-smell kind that he’d mocked, but a real one. This was a good place. A far cry from the suite at the Shangri-La Hotel suite she was supposed to be spending her wedding night in, but still. She turned her head and sneaked a glance at Dax, who was still lying there unmoving. He was an egotistical ass, but it had been good of him to rescue her. She would have to go home and face up to real life, but for now, she really did feel like she was a place apart. Like she’d escaped.
Escaped what, though? That was the question. The life she’d been so joyously moving toward when she woke up sixteen hours ago, the morning of her wedding day? Everything she’d been planning for, working toward, for the last seven years? Her entire life as she knew it? Perhaps “escape” wasn’t the word so much as was “exile.” She was an outsider in her own life now.
The tears started then. But they weren’t the great gasping sobs that had overtaken her at the bar, just hot, silent tears that flowed fast and uncontrollable. She could no more stop them than she could stop breathing. But she was okay to just lie here and cry for a while in the quiet night. Dax was a couple feet away from her, and he looked almost like he was sleeping. In fact, all the heat that had characterized their frantic make-out session on the boat seemed to have dissipated. It seemed almost comical now—or it would have, if she could manage to stop crying—that she’d come to the island with the intention of sleeping with him. At the time, it had seemed the perfect countermove. Get jilted. Have casual sex to prove a point. What point had that been? She wasn’t sure anymore. And really, she hadn’t been thinking about it those terms. She’d been so crazily, uncharacteristically attracted to Dax—Dax!—that she hadn’t really been thinking at all. Sure, the guy was good-looking. You’d have to be blind not to see that. But God, the way he’d talked to her. I don’t make love. I fuck. The feeling of his hands all over her on the boat, like he wanted to rip off her clothes. Like he couldn’t get enough.
The world had turned upside down. That was the only explanation. Sweet, steady Mason had left her, and a few hours after that, she’d been on a boat with her legs wrapped around Dax Harris, her office nemesis. The worst part was that even though she was still crying, her body remembered the feeling of being plastered against him, of rocking against his erection as his big, warm hands cupped her bottom.
She could almost feel him stroking her thigh even now.
“Jesus Christ, you’re freezing.”
“Ah!” He was stroking her thigh. She bolted to a sitting position, and since he’d moved to sit near her, they nearly knocked foreheads.
“And you’re crying?” He raked his hands through his hair. “I’m sorry.”
She swiped at her eyes and cursed her renegade body, which was still distinctly lust-addled. “It’s not your fault.”
He hopped to his feet. “Yeah, well, we can at least get you warm. I’m pretty sure the post-jilting etiquette handbook has a rule about not allowing the jiltee to freeze to death.”
She accepted his outstretched hand and let him help her up. “So now I’m the jiltee?” she said, her voice back to that humiliating chipmunk quality. She cleared her throat.
Instead of dropping her hand, he grabbed the other one and rubbed both of his vigorously over hers, which really were like icicles. She hadn’t noticed. “Well, I don’t think we should call you ‘the bride’ anymore. But point taken—‘jiltee’ probably isn’t the best choice, either.” He dropped her hands and began walking.
“Yeah. I was going to be Mrs. Mason Madison by now.”
“You were going to change your name?”
“No!” she scoffed. “I just meant it figuratively.” She had a vast network of business associates who knew her as Amy Morrison. She may have had a whole domestic fantasy built up around the idea of marrying Mason, but she was also a modern girl. “Give me a little credit.”
“So his last name is Madison?”
“Yup.”
“See? One more piece of evidence that you got lucky with this break up, even if it doesn’t seem like it right now. Mason Madison sounds like a porn star—a female one.”
She giggled. “It kind of does, doesn’t it? Paging Dr. Mason Madison. Too bad he wasn’t…” She checked herself. Now that she was sober, she had to stop defaming Mason. Mason was fine. Mason was very conscientious in all things—som
etimes so much so that she faked it just to move things along.
I don’t make love. I fuck.
“So.” She cleared her throat. “If I’m not the bride, and I’m not Mrs. Madison, I guess I’m back to being just plain old single Amy Morrison.”
Dax led her to the edge of a path that marked the beginning of the residential portion of the island. “If you’re looking for a new identity, may I suggest Strawberry Girl? It can be your superhero incarnation.”
“Strawberry Girl?” she echoed, but then all thoughts of names, jiltings, and Mason flew away, replaced by utter delight. “Oh! This is the sweetest place I’ve ever seen!” There were no roads—she remembered reading once that no cars were allowed on the islands—just paths that crisscrossed between the houses, forming a grid between yards and gardens and the cutest little houses. Some were larger, modern structures, but most were still cottages in varying states of being retrofitted and improved. Even in the dim light, she could see that some of them were painted whimsical colors. Residential architecture in Toronto proper was almost without exception done in brick. By contrast, the brightly colored wood frame houses on the island, surrounded by lush, aromatic flowers, made it seem like they were walking through a fairyland.
“It is pretty damn charming, isn’t it?” Dax said, making a turn onto a path marked Fourth Street.
“How did you find this place?”
“To get a place here, you have to put yourself on a list the city keeps. When a property comes up, they go to the top name on the list.”
“Wait? What?” She stopped walking. “How did I not know about this?” As vice president, Amy was the real estate guru for Winter Enterprises. She usually oversaw large-scale commercial deals, though. It was completely different work from selling houses. Still, she prided herself on knowing everything about the Toronto housing market. She was a hobbyist, but a serious one. There was nothing more satisfying than poring over the Multiple Listing Service with her Sunday morning coffee. And she spent a significant proportion of her free time advising friends who were buying or selling, so much so that she sometimes joked that she should call herself a consultant and take a portion of the commission they paid their agents.
Sleeping with Her Enemy Page 3
