by Maria Geraci
“But I thought everyone wanted you and Jenna to get together.”
“That would be my mother and Viola. My sister, however, is intuitive enough to realize that Jenna and I have absolutely no chemistry.”
“Really? Because it seemed like she was hanging on your every word the other night.” Oops. That came out sort of…jealous sounding.
“What night?”
“Career night at the high school.”
At first, he seemed confused, then recognition set in. “She was hanging on my every word because she’s interested in hiring my company to do an environmental study to determine beach access parking.”
“Oh. And…that’s it?”
“Believe me, as far as I’m concerned Jenna Pantini is strictly business.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“If you’re asking if I’m romantically interested in her, then the answer is no.”
She swallowed hard. “Did you know that Mimi was going to pull a bait and switch?”
The way he looked at her made her stomach feel fizzy. Or maybe it was the champagne they were drinking. Or the way he smelled—a combination of fresh gulf air and warm sun that made her want to rub her nose all over his neck and chest. “A bait and switch,” he said, “implies that I’m stuck with something less desirable than what was originally advertised. As far as I’m concerned, that’s not the case here at all.”
Sarah’s face went hot. What was she supposed to say to that? She wished she was better at this subtle, sophisticated kind of flirtation, but she was definitely out of her league here.
“You knew I’d be the one going on today’s date?” Because she needed this clarified now. Before she did or said something foolish.
“Let’s just say Mimi was acting pretty strange. Or stranger than usual. She made up this whole thing about how I couldn’t pick up the picnic basket because of a chocolate cake and how she was going to deliver it to me personally at the marina, but it all sounded pretty hokey, so I knew something was up. So, while I didn’t know for sure that you’d be here,” he paused, “I hoped you’d be the one on this date.”
Okay. He wasn’t being subtle anymore. This was about as direct as you could get. He waited for her to say something. “That’s…nice.”
Gah! What a perfectly boring thing to say.
He seemed disappointed, too. He’d thrown the ball in her court and she hadn’t even tried to go after it. But she just couldn’t. If he kissed her again, she wouldn’t be able to stop at just a kiss. She knew that now. Then what? They were roommates, with another couple of weeks to go. Sex would change things up between them, but whether it would change things for the better or the worse, she couldn’t say. It was probably best not to go there. Probably…
“So, your mom won’t be too happy about this. I mean, she and Viola went to a lot of trouble to get you and Jenna out on this date.”
“As far as my love life goes, my mom is used to being disappointed.”
Ah, so it was back to Victoria.
“She can’t expect you to marry someone you’re not in love with.”
He glanced at her sharply. “How do you know I wasn’t in love with Victoria?”
“You said she gave you an ultimatum but you were still willing to let her go. I don’t know, it seems like if you were in love with her, then you’d have manned up and married her rather than lose her.”
“I almost forgot how you always say what you think.”
Not always, Luke. Because if he only knew what she was thinking now! Specifically, how she’d like to jump him.
“You’re right,” he added, “I wasn’t in love with her. I don’t think…” he shook his head. “I just don’t think I’m that guy.”
Funny, she didn’t have to ask what he meant by that cryptic statement. There was a hint of gentle warning in his gaze that made his words more than obvious. Luke had just basically told her that not only wasn’t he the marrying kind, he wasn’t the falling in love kind either. Good to know, really. But then, neither was she, so it was all good here.
She sighed. “At least you’ve got the niece and nephew. I wouldn’t mind being an aunt.”
“Being an uncle isn’t as easy as it looks.”
“You mean because Toby got lost? Are you still beating yourself up about that? Because that could have happened to anyone.”
He poured her more of the champagne. She noticed he’d only had one glass. Probably since he was driving the boat. She downed the cold bubbly and put her flute out for more. No sense in letting good champagne go to waste.
“Cameron told me something in private the day of the fishing trip,” he said. “Something, that I think Zeke and Mimi should know.”
Sarah noted the seriousness in his voice. “Go on.”
He told her how Cameron wanted to quit the soccer club but that he didn’t want to let everyone down. He told her other things, too, like how he’d found out that Mimi and Zeke had been separated and how he’d only discovered that because Cameron had told him.
“Poor kid.” And poor Luke. “That’s a tough spot you’re in,” she acknowledged.
“You think I should tell them?” he asked. “Or should I keep Cameron’s secret?”
Sarah had to admit, she was incredibly flattered that he wanted her opinion. She got the impression while he’d been talking that he hadn’t confided this to anyone else. “Have you talked to him about this, since the day of the fishing trip?”
He shook his head.
“Then maybe you should. If I were you I’d keep his secret, otherwise he might not trust you again, but I’d definitely encourage him to tell his parents on his own. You don’t want him to go through life always doing what other people expect of him, not if it makes him as unhappy as you said he seemed.”
“Yeah, I suppose I should do that,” he said pensively.
“Thirteen is a rough age.” He didn’t say anything. Maybe it was time to lighten the conversation again. “What were you like at thirteen?” she asked.
“I was a pretty typical kid.”
Typical was the last word she’d use to describe Luke. “Let me guess. You were a straight-A student who all the teachers loved and you excelled at sports and everything else you did and you always made mommy and daddy incredibly proud.”
“Wrong.”
She raised a brow.
“I lost the fifth grade spelling bee,” he said in a deadpan voice.
“Horrors!”
He tried to hide his smile. “I came in second place to Mary Beth Cooper. Although,” he paused for dramatic effect, “seven years later I got my revenge when I beat her out for senior class valedictorian.”
She laughed.
“It’s my turn to guess,” he said. “You were a good student, but not straight-As. The teachers liked you, but you always talked too much so they had to ding you on the behavior grade. When it was your turn to pick teams for dodge ball you always picked the kid that no one else wanted and if anyone gave you flack about it you put them in their place because you couldn’t stand the bullies.”
He was completely correct. Not that she was going to give him the satisfaction of knowing it. “Smugness does not look good on you, Luke Powers.”
“Sure it does.”
She rolled her eyes.
“And, last but not least,” he added, the humor gone from his voice now, “all the guys had a secret crush on you but you had no idea because you have no clue just how gorgeous you are. Especially in a little red bikini.”
Oh, boy. First, he’d tried subtlety and then he’d been direct and now… Now he might as well throw her down on the bottom of the boat and do her. She wouldn’t mind, actually. It would make things so much easier if he’d just make the first physical move.
“I bet you say that to all the girls,” she joked, mostly because it was the first thing to pop into her head and because she sucked at taking any kind of compliment.
“Just the ones I take out on my boat,” he said easily.
She laughed and it came out like a snort again. Sarah had never wished for an evening to either end or to go on forever. He began clearing up the food. She tried to help him but he waved her away. “Drink up the rest of your champagne. It’s almost dark and we should get going.”
Luke secured the picnic basket and raised the anchor. The ride back to the Destin marina was fast but, by the time he’d moored the boat, the sun had long since set. Despite it being August, the wind coming off the water made it chilly enough that Sarah shivered. Or maybe it was a bad case of lust and nerves combined.
“I’ll see you at the house?” she asked Luke, since they’d both driven their own cars to the marina.
“Sure.”
“I have an early morning which means I’ll probably be in bed when you get home.”
He nodded and she felt her throat go dry. Why did she suddenly feel so stupid? It was like the instant something came out of her mouth she wanted to take it back.
“Thank you for today. I had a lot of fun.”
“Me, too,” he said.
She got in her car and drove off but the shivery sensation had dulled into something she couldn’t put her finger on. Except to say that after a day that could only be described as completely fun and wonderful she felt the opposite of what she should.
Sarah walked into a dark house. If Luke was coming straight home, he’d probably only be a few minutes behind her. There was only the one bathroom so if she wanted to shower, she should do it now.
She tossed her shorts and tank top into the laundry bin and peeled off the still slightly damp bikini, then rinsed it out in the sink and hung it to dry. She didn’t think she could ever wear it again without seeing the look on Luke’s face when he told her how gorgeous she was. If he did indeed say that to all the girls then he must have a slew of women madly in love with him.
Not that she was in love with him. No way. But she realized now that what she’d felt for Christopher was the nursery school version of what she was feeling for Luke. Sure, she’d been attracted to Christopher. What she felt for Luke, however, could only be described as Lust with a capital L. Just once she wanted to know what the big deal was. To experience the kind of crazy passion she’d thought only existed in romance novels.
She quickly showered and washed her hair, towel dried it and was about to—
The sound of his truck pulling into the driveway made her freeze.
In just a couple of minutes, he’d walk through the front door. She could easily be in her bed by then and avoid seeing him until tomorrow at the earliest, or she could do something wild and crazy and totally not like her at all. He wasn’t looking for a relationship and neither was she. In just a few weeks, Frida and Ed would be back from their trip and Sarah would be on a cruise with her mother. It was a perfect scenario, really.
Before she could think too hard she ran to his room, closed the door behind her, and slid beneath his sheets.
* * *
Luke got into the shower, lathered up, then let the hot water run over his head. Maybe if he stayed in here long enough he’d cool down some. He’d never been so wrong about a woman in his life. His gut told him that Sarah wanted him as much as he wanted her, and he’d given her plenty of opportunities today to take their relationship to the next level. But she’d shot him down. Not once, not twice, but three times. Hard on the ego, to be sure, but it was time to accept that, for the first time in his life, his instincts had failed him.
The hot water eventually ran out, not that it had done much good, so he got out of the shower and dried off. He went to put up his towel but there was that hot little red bikini of hers hanging on the rack, staring him straight in the face. Did the woman have no mercy? There had to be some other place to dry the damn thing.
He squelched the urge to rip the bikini off the towel rack and toss it into the garbage can. He was a grown man, for God’s sake. He could handle a little sexual frustration. Okay, so maybe it was more like a lot of sexual frustration. But, as she liked to remind him, he was thirty-seven, not some randy teenager. Although, if he was being honest with himself, right now he felt a whole lot more like the latter.
He padded out to the living room and thought about watching TV but changed his mind. On the way back to his bedroom, he hesitated briefly in front of Sarah’s door. Maybe she was still awake but probably not. It was quiet as the dead in there. Besides, it didn’t matter if she was awake or not. She’d made it clear today that she wasn’t interested.
He opened the door to his bedroom and flipped on the light. Sarah sat in his bed, the thin, cotton sheet tucked nearly all the way up to her chin. Her long, blond hair fell in damp waves around her shoulders like she’d just gotten out of the shower.
The first thing that hit his brain was that his instincts hadn’t been wrong after all. The second thing was that although she was here, waiting for him in his bed, she looked nervous as hell. One wrong word or move on his part and he could completely blow it. If he made too big a deal of this she might bolt, and the thought of her walking away now…
His heart began to pound so fast he could practically hear it.
“Please tell me you’re naked under that sheet,” he said trying to infuse humor in the situation.
She gave him a shaky smile. “Naked and afraid,” she said, referencing the TV show he liked. Although, he wasn’t sure if he enjoyed it as much as he liked seeing her reaction to it. The show took two completely unclothed strangers and dumped them in a primitive setting for twenty-one days with nothing but a machete to test their wilderness skills. The faces Sarah made to some of the situations they encountered were priceless.
“Afraid of what?” he asked. “Me? I’m not so scary.”
She still looked uncertain.
“Here, I’ll prove it to you.” He dropped his towel. She leaned forward and began to study him with the kind of interest that sent all the blood in his body rushing straight to his groin. Okay, so maybe in his current physical state he might be a little scary. He didn’t think he’d ever been this hard before.
“That looks…painful.”
“It’s your fault, you know. I was thinking about you in the shower.”
She swallowed hard and a rush of something unfamiliar hit him in the chest. This wasn’t the confident, smart-mouthed Sarah he’d grown to know and genuinely like over the past few weeks. Instead, this was a vulnerable side of her he hadn’t seen before. He wished he could protect her from whatever it was that frightened her. Him? All men in general?
Of getting too involved and ending up hurt?
There was only one way he could guarantee that she wouldn’t get hurt and that was to leave her alone. To go back to pretending that they were just friends and nothing more. God help him. This was going to be the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life.
Nice Guy Luke reached for his discarded towel. “It’s okay. We don’t have to do this.”
“Yes, yes, we do,” she rushed. “Because if we don’t, I think…I’ll die.”
He straightened up and gave a strained laugh. “Sweetheart, I think it’s pretty obvious that should be my line.”
“Just this one time. So that we’ll both know,” she said, mimicking his exact words the night he kissed her.
“Sarah,” he said, trying to inject as much tenderness into his voice as possible while still standing in front of her buck naked with a raging hard-on. “As much as we both might want this, I think we also know it’s probably a pretty bad idea.”
And just like that, the old Sarah was back. Her green eyes hardened. “Why? Because you think I’m going to fall in love with you or something? Don’t flatter yourself, old man. The thing is, I don’t think I’ve ever had really good sex. So, if you think you’re up to it,” she added, then flushed, “which, obviously, you are, I’d like to find out what the big deal is.”
Then, as if to prove she meant it, she slowly pulled back the sheet, exposing her breasts and pretty much everything else to him. He’d seen it
before. The first time he’d come home to find her in his bed. But that time he’d only gotten a few quick glimpses. This time there was nothing left to the imagination.
He wasn’t a saint. Far from it.
She wanted really good sex? Then he’d die trying to give it to her.
Without another word, he slid into the bed next to her.
“Um, can you turn out the light?” she asked which was kind of funny considering that she’d just shown him all her goodies in living color.
He could tell her that she had nothing to be embarrassed about. The woman was gorgeous, and before the night was over he’d make sure she knew just how sexy she was.
“You want some really good sex? Well, so do I, and for me, that means keeping the lights on right now.”
Before she could protest he drew her against him. She felt warm and soft and her hair smelled like raspberries. He nuzzled the skin beneath her ear and began to place soft kisses up and down her neck until he could feel her relax, then he kissed her for real. She wrapped her arms around him, kissed him back, and it was on.
He covered her with his body, careful not to put too much weight on her as he slowly brought his mouth down to her breasts and over the smooth skin of her stomach. He liked everything about her. The way she smelled, the way she tasted, the little noises she made in the back of her throat when his tongue finally settled between her thighs. He even liked the impatient way she tugged on his hair to get his attention, even though he ignored her and continued working her with his mouth until she screamed her pleasure.
He reached inside the drawer of the bedside table to get a condom, then wrapped her legs around his waist as he positioned himself. “You okay?” he asked.
She sighed, then nodded. “Never been better.”
He grinned. “Then hang on, Goldilocks, cause I’m about to take you on the ride of your life.”
It was a cocky thing to say, but it made her laugh, just like he hoped it would. And then he began to make good on his promise and she wasn’t laughing anymore, also, just as he’d hoped.
Awhile later, they were both sprawled out on the bed, too exhausted to move.
“The light’s still on,” she said right before she let out a huge yawn. “Can we turn it off now? I really need to get some sleep.”
