“Just thinking about evolution myself.”
“Yeah?” A twinkle came back into his eyes. “Was that when you were admiring my body?” He patted his chest, wiggled an eyebrow. “Millions of years of natural selection went into this physique, baby.”
She bit back a grin. “It’s very nice.”
His gaze raked down over her body, came back to her face. “You think so?”
“Of course,” she said, now smiling, amused he looked a little insecure. “I’d kill for a little of your… stature.”
The wind blew the hair across her face. He reached out and tucked it behind her ear, staring down at her. Then he lowered his hand and cupped her face. Her heart thudded, expecting a kiss, and she told herself to reach up and pull his hand away and keep walking. But when he dropped his arm and strode past her, she was tempted to complain.
“What kind of birds are those?” he asked her briskly, pointing at the beach.
“Seagulls.”
“Ah. Right.”
She snorted, passing him, in control of her biology again. She jogged ahead to look for tide pools.
* * *
“Thanks for not prying,” Miles said.
Barefoot in the surf, Lucy turned and caught his gaze, her green eyes matching the ocean behind her. Her cheeks were flushed pink from the wind. He noticed freckles along the bridge of her nose and he lost his train of thought, absorbed in the details of her face.
“I’m a little curious, I admit,” she said.
He dropped to his knees in the sand and dug a hole until he hit water. He mounded up hills of wet sand, imagining it was her body, wondering if that made him a creep. “My father and I haven’t spoken to each other for a long time.”
Lucy sank down to the sand next to him and began digging her own hole about two feet away. They worked in parallel, each making a tower just out of reach of the waves. Finally she asked, “What happened?”
Should he tell her? He glanced up and saw she wasn’t watching him but staring at her hands, submerged in a sandy puddle. The wind whipped her coppery hair around her cheeks. He saw she had a triple piercing in her left ear, and was surprised he hadn’t noticed earlier. Three little pearls, not much larger than the freckles on her nose, outlined the curve of her ear like stars.
“I wouldn’t think you’d like pearls,” he said. “Kind of old-fashioned for you, aren’t they?”
Now she looked up. “They were my mother’s. She died when I was nine.”
He saw the calm challenge in her eyes. If I can talk about it, you can, she seemed to say.
He bent down for another handful of sand. “I was three. Barely. I don’t remember her very well.” His memories of a little apartment with a huge, smelly dog were more vivid than his memory of his own mother’s face, which had always bothered him. “That’s when I went to live with my father, but it was my stepmother—not Heather, but a couple of marriages earlier—who really took me in. I still think of Pat as my mom. She lives in Arizona now, a great human being, generous to a fault. I spend the holidays with her.”
“How old were you when—” she stopped herself. “Sorry. Prying again.”
“It’s all right. I was in sixth grade. He dumped her for an ‘on-air personality.’ A TV reporter. That one only lasted a year. Then, when I was in high school, he married Heather.”
“Ladies’ man, your dad?”
“To hear him tell it, he’s just very honest. Not one to sneak around. When he wanted to be with a different woman, he said so.” Miles pounded the tower of sand he was building. “I’ve never bought that, but maybe that’s because he seemed to have different standards about different kinds of women. As if the women who worked for him didn’t count.”
“Your mother…”
“One of the secretaries at the firm. In case you’re keeping track, that would have been after wife number one and during wife number two,” he said. “More proof Pat—my ex-stepmother—is a wonderful human being. She never ever let on that I was anything but one of the family.” He cleared his throat, fighting down unwanted emotion. “Even though I was a reminder of my father’s disloyalty. If my mother hadn’t died, Pat might never have found out I existed.”
Lucy traced a circle in the sand with a stick. “What happened?”
“Car accident. Yours?”
“Cancer.” She shrugged. “For a long time I was terrified of being an orphan. My mom had died and I knew my father was much older than any of the other kids’ dads. He’ll be seventy-five this year.”
Miles realized with some discomfort that he didn’t know precisely how old his own father was anymore. His half-brother had mentioned a big seventieth birthday party a few years back, maybe hoping he’d come. “I suppose I felt a little vulnerable too. My father’s about that age. Heather… Well, she’s obviously much younger. Your dad remarried?”
“Just recently, thank God. Trudy is a little younger and is the type to alphabetize her spice jars. Managing my father’s life is a snap.” She smiled weakly. “Before she came along, I had a lot less free time. My dad is a stereotypical absent-minded professor—he’d lose his own butt if it wasn’t attached. My stepmother is a gift from heaven.”
“They can be. Especially if you have a large pool of stepmothers to draw from.”
“So, what’s the story with Blondie?”
“Heather?” He jabbed his finger into the sand to make a doorway to his castle. “I don’t like her.”
Lucy choked out a laugh. “I gathered that.”
He hesitated. Was he really going to tell her? He watched her work on her own castle. Very carefully, she dripped wet sand from her pinched fingers, making an impossibly delicate column reach up to the sky like a tower in a fairy tale.
He scooped up a handful of wet sand and tried to imitate her technique. “The problem,” he said slowly, “was that she liked me.”
Lucy moved her hand away from her fragile creation and stared at him. “How old were you?”
He shrugged. “That wasn’t the problem.”
Her eyes bored into him, deadly serious. “How old?”
“Old enough. I was a big boy. Just had an issue with her being my father’s wife.”
Lucy crossed her arms over her chest, ignoring how her hands left clumps of wet sand on her clothes. Her eyes narrowed. “You were in high school when they got married. Then dropped out of college your freshman year. So you couldn’t have been much over eighteen.”
“Alex loves to gossip, doesn’t he?” He dug his knuckles into the sand to make ramparts. “I would’ve felt exactly the same way if I’d been twenty-five. It was the disloyalty that offended me.”
“You were just a kid,” she said fiercely.
He laughed, amused by her protectiveness. “You’re cute when you’re angry.”
“What did your father do when he found out?” she asked.
Time to change the subject. He swiped his sand castle into the hole and climbed over it on hands and knees. She leaned back, arms still folded over her chest, but the fierce gleam in her eyes turned into something else. When his face was only a few inches from hers, she licked her lips.
His hands were too cold, wet, and sandy to touch her, but his mouth wasn’t. He moved closer, smiling as a tendril of her hair tickled his cheek, and kissed her gently on the lips. She was so sweet. Her mouth was soft under his, yielding, and he tilted his head to deepen the kiss.
Two cold, sandy hands clamped onto his face and pushed him away. “Nice try, but I’m not so easily distracted.” Her voice was low, shaky.
“My father blamed me, we fought, I moved on. End of story.” He broke free of her grip and kissed the side of her neck right under the constellation of pearl earrings. He could feel her pulse racing under his tongue. “This was my plan all along, you know.”
Very slowly, she tilted her head to the side. “Telling me your life story?”
He nibbled her earlobe, letting his tongue trace each individual pearl, feeling her tremble
as he blew air across her damp skin. “You smell so good,” he whispered.
She moaned and leaned into him. “You’re evil.”
Chuckling, he kissed his way across her wind-blown cheeks to her lips, his hands still braced in the sand. Hers were gripping his shoulders—whether to hold him back or keep him close, he wasn’t sure.
She let him kiss her. Unlike the time in the cabin, however, she didn’t jump on top of him. He wanted to tap into that passion again, feel her come alive, not hold herself still and rigid and careful.
At least she wasn’t fighting it anymore, this chemistry between them. While his mouth explored hers, he tried to figure out how to get her back to his cabin.
Stupid of him to start anything on the cold beach. It was like making out on a sandy glacier. His hands were going numb in the wet sand. He could hardly push her onto her back next to the piles of decomposing kelp and rip her clothes off in twenty-mile-an-hour gusts with the tide coming in.
“Shall we continue this at my place?” he asked in her ear.
“I have a date with Alex.”
He pulled back, his mind dulled from the blood pooling elsewhere. He must have misunderstood. “He’ll understand if you cancel. After you explain.”
She sighed and rolled away from him. Her cheeks were even more flushed now, and her lips looked damp and swollen. Kissed. Scooping up another handful of sand, she went back to making her castle without meeting his eyes. “There’s nothing to explain.”
Still on his hands and knees, he ducked his head to make her look at him. “Lucy…”
“We’ll just stop doing this. You promise to stop initiating, and I’ll promise to stop responding.” She patted the base of her tower, still not looking at him. “’Kay?”
He gaped at her. “And why would I agree to this?”
“You know there’s no future between us. Unless you’re looking to settle down.” She gave him a bright, fake smile. “Want to get married?”
“You don’t mean that. With me or with Alex.” He got to his feet and slapped the sand off his knees. “You don’t even like Alex.”
“I don’t know him well enough, which is why I’m not going to give up on the idea just because”—she waved her hand between them as if she were dispersing a bad odor—“part of me isn’t governed by reason.”
“Yeah,” he said, “I like those parts.”
“Sure you do.” She stood up, walked away from him into the surf. She bent at the waist to rinse the sand off her hands.
Miles was struck by the perfection of the view. He strode over, grabbed her from behind, pulled her against him.
“I’d give you time to chuck Alex on your own, but there is none,” he said, bending over to brush his lips against the earrings again. “Take advantage of what we’ve got here. We should enjoy each other. You can bag a husband any time.”
She wriggled away and swatted his arm. “Any time? Please. Clock’s ticking here, buddy. You don’t want to deal with a woman in a hurry? Bark up a younger tree.” She gave him a big, toothy smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “I’m sure there are lots of twenty-two year-old women who would love to have you.”
If they’d been in a cozy, dry, comforter-filled spa cabin when he’d made his move, they’d be naked by now. He slapped the sand off his feet, watching her do the same, and they put on their shoes.
Getting to his feet, he gestured to the path up the beach. “Let’s head back.”
She fell into step beside him. “Look, I know I’m sending mixed signals. I’m sorry.”
“No problem, I understand.” So long as your signals to Alex are mixed in the opposite direction. “You’ve been very up-front with me.”
She sighed, apparently relieved, and he let her walk ahead of him up the path. “Thank you. It would be selfish to have any drama between us stress out the lovebirds this week. They’re having enough trouble with his parents.”
Watching her bottom sway as she hiked, Miles realized he’d almost forgotten about his own parent trouble. That was the great thing about lust. The ultimate amnesia. He was dreading the next few days, how he’d feel like a dumb, angry kid every time he saw the coldness in his father’s eyes, the measuring hunger in his stepmother’s. Getting Lucy naked just might make it bearable.
They hiked back to the spa, only breaking the silence to comment on the birds or terrain. When they reached the fork in the path leading to her cabin, he took a deep breath and asked casually, “Want to have some tea at my place? Just to warm up?”
But she wasn’t fooled. She glanced at him and shook her head before striding away.
He stared after her. Has she ever given in to that passion before? Just let loose?
She thought she wanted a husband, but her body knew better.
It would thank him for showing her the truth.
* * *
When Lucy thought she was finally out of Miles’s sight, she glanced back over her shoulder.
Just the trees.
She sighed, both relieved and disappointed. It was like being fourteen again to have a craving for someone so inappropriate. Back then she would’ve called it love if she thought about a guy fifty-nine seconds out of every sixty; if the hair on the back of her neck stuck up just because he touched her; if she couldn’t control herself around him.
I’m too old for this. As long as she reminded him of her goals, she’d be able to keep him away. Mentioning marriage was like flinging a crucifix at Dracula. Begone, servant of Satan! Tongue to yourself, hands at your sides, spawn of the devil!
Time to get serious. She hurried the rest of her way to her cabin, deciding to call Alex and push their date to seven. That would give her time to wash the sand out of her hair.
She rested her head against the door, overwhelmed with the memory of Miles kissing her over the sand castles. She’d almost jumped him again, right there in front of the gulls and the kelp. If he’d touched her, if he’d pushed it, Lucy would have done anything.
She heard a gasp and spun around. Fawn was running down the path to the cabin, barefoot, tears streaming down her face. The pretty silver heels that matched her floral chiffon blouse and designer slacks dangled from one hand.
Lucy flung open the door and helped her inside. “What happened?”
Fawn threw herself face-down on the bed and began to cry.
Gritting her teeth, Lucy kicked off her muddy boots as fast as she could and fell to her knees beside Fawn on the bed. “What did he do?”
“It’s what he didn’t do,” Fawn choked out.
“Because his parents were there?”
She pounded the duvet. “I hate them.”
Lucy rubbed her back, cursing the Sterlings under her breath. “Oh, Fawn. You deserve so much better.”
“Dinner last night was bad, but lunch today was worse. They just won’t give it up! They’re horrible!”
“Is it the modeling? They’d rather you were an investment banker or lawyer or something?”
Fawn flipped over and sat up, wiping her eyes. “I was all prepared for that, even had a little suck-up speech about my degree from Cal being so important to me, how I could casually mention my SATs and my net worth just to show them I’m not just some stupid bimbo.”
“Don’t even say ‘just.’”
“Yeah, well, it doesn’t matter. They don’t even look at me, not once, let alone insult me. It’s like I’m not even there. I couldn’t tell you the eye color of either one of them.” She leaned forward. “Any of them. Huntley was the worst of all.”
Lucy grabbed her hands and squeezed. “I’ll kill him.”
“He was ashamed of me.” She glared at Lucy through her tears. “How can I marry a man who’s ashamed of me?”
Lucy swallowed. Oh, shit. “You can’t.”
Chapter 14
LUCY BANGED ON BETTY AND Krista’s cabin door. It was past six. Hopefully they hadn’t already gone over to the Snowy Egret for dinner; she’d rather not track them down in front of a crowd.
Betty opened the door wearing only a towel and a smile. Her black and green hair was wet and combed back away from her forehead, emphasizing her bright eyes. Then she saw Lucy, and her smile fell. “Oh, it’s you.” She glanced over Lucy’s shoulder.
“Waiting for somebody?”
“I thought Jaynette might come back.” Sighing, Betty opened the door wider and stepped aside to let Lucy in. “Probably for the best. Easy to overdo it, you know? I wouldn’t want her to get the wrong idea. I like yoga, but I’m not about to shack up in a spa for the rest of the year to find out how much.”
Lucy didn’t have time to get into Betty’s love life. “I need your car,” she said. “Fawn needs to get away for a while.”
“Away from here?”
“Huntley’s being a dick.”
“Shitty timing.”
“Yeah.”
Chewing her lip, Betty strode over to the bedside table, shoved aside a purple vibrator, a bottle of lube, and a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos to unearth her cell phone. “Krista’s got it. She was going through retail withdrawal. Went to Mendocino with Fawn’s mother to shop, have dinner.” She dialed, glanced up. “They wanted to ask you to come but couldn’t find you.”
“I was hiking.” Lucy rubbed her lips, remembering what else she’d been doing. “Maybe we can catch up with them. Fawn would love to be with her mom, get away from this place for a while.”
Or longer. They could brainstorm together on how to get Fawn through this. Worst-case scenario, they could reschedule the wedding—not like money was an issue. Hell of a lot easier to cancel a wedding than a marriage.
Betty shook her head and dropped the phone back on the bedside table. “No coverage. Want me to try at the lodge?”
“I’ll call her myself if I can get out of here. Who else has a car?”
Smirking, Betty tucked the towel more tightly around her breasts and stuck her hand in the bag of Doritos. “We could ask Jaynette. She wanted to take me for a ride down the coast tonight and I turned her down.”
“That would be great. If she could drop us off in Mendocino, we could get a ride back with Krista and Geri.”
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