“That’s a sad fact of life, isn’t it?”
“So does Nik have any talent? Tell the truth.”
“He’s got a lot of talent. Wait’ll you see his charcoal sketch of me. You’ll love it.”
“We’ll see.”
“‘We’ll see’? I have a skeptic on my hands. Do you doubt his talent, or my skill as a teacher?”
“No comment.”
“And what do you know about art, pray tell? Do you paint?”
“I appreciate. I studied art history in school.”
“No way. Where’d you go?”
“West Point.”
“Get outta here. There’s no art at West Point.”
“There is art at West Point,” he assured her.
“So what do you do now?”
“I’m in the army.”
For the first time, her smile dimmed. “What are you doing roaming around with the general public, then?”
“I’m on leave. That’s allowed.”
“But—”
“I’m going back to Afghanistan next month.”
That killed her smile outright but, to her credit, she recaptured it pretty quickly. “Back? So you know how to stay safe, right?”
“Let’s hope so.”
“How long will you be over there?”
He tried to keep his voice light, but that was hard with the shadow of war doing its best to block out the sun. “Not long. A year.”
“I’ve never really met a soldier. I guess I don’t travel in military circles.”
“You’ve met one now, haven’t you?”
“I’m going to write to you.” She hesitated, seeming to think better of this plan. “Or do you have too many pen pals already?”
This announcement infused him with an unreasonable and inappropriate shot of happiness. Too late, he remembered Sky and felt a stab of guilt, which he shoved aside. It wasn’t as if he was going to date this art teacher. A few letters while he was overseas. What could happen?
And honesty was always the best policy.
“Not many. Just my fiancée.” It seemed important to get that out there, for the record. Or maybe he just needed to remind himself that this woman could never be anything more to him than a friend.
“Will she mind? Tell her I’m not trying to steal you away or anything. I have a boyfriend.”
He stared at her.
For one bewildering second, before he caught himself, he tried to decide which possibility was worse: that she spent her nights rolling around in bed with some faceless but clearly lucky dude, or that she was oblivious to what he considered some pretty serious electricity crackling between them.
But, again—he was engaged.
This woman, and any other interesting woman who might happen across his path in life, was therefore off-limits.
On the other hand, he could always use a new pen pal.
“I don’t think she’ll mind,” he told her.
“Great.” Beaming, she grabbed pen and paper from the table and handed them to him. “I’ve never been a pen pal before. I’ll be great. You’ll see. I’ll take my responsibilities very seriously.”
He’d lapsed into grinning again—her smile was very contagious—but he paused to fix her with a stern look before he wrote down his information.
“See that you do. It’s very bad manners to get a soldier’s hopes up and then never write.”
“I won’t let you down.”
Talia hadn’t let him down, ever.
Until that terrible day when she’d rejected his final letter.
Why had she—
“What’s up, Cap?”
“Hey, Mick,” Tony said automatically, not fully registering Mickey’s presence. “What’s up?”
“Well, I was thinking about taking some lunch down to the beach.”
The thing was, Tony reminded himself, Talia was afraid of something, and he needed to respect that. Give her time. See if she’d open up—
“Are you listening to me, Cap? ’Cause I get the feeling you’re not listening to anything I’m saying.”
—But what if she never opened up? What if she kept all those walls between them? What then? It wasn’t as if these art projects were going to last forever—
“And I’m thinking that I could start babbling a bunch of nonsense right now and you’d never notice, Cap. For example, what if I said the Taliban is coming up the lane right now? What do you think? What about if I said this giant-ass meteor is heading right for our beach and we’ll be dead in ten minutes? Would you hear me then? What if I said that I think that woman has your panties in a bunch? What about that?”
—And what if she finished both projects and they never came any closer than they were now? Huh? What then, genius? And what if—
“What about this, Cap? What if I say her name a few dozen times? I think I’ll try that. Talia. Talia… Talia… Talia.”
The name registered with Tony’s frazzled brain.
With a fair amount of difficulty, he yanked his gaze away from where Talia was now tumbling off her paddleboard for the thirty-third time, and turned to face Mickey. The smartass was sitting there in his chair with a picnic basket in his lap, grinning up at him with that smug expression that could only mean he’d gotten the best of him. Again.
“Are you trying to be funny, Mick?”
Chuckling, Mickey ran a hand over his stubble. “I’d say I was being funny. Between you and your lovesick brother, I don’t think there’s a clear brain among the Davies men these days—you know what I’m saying?”
This assessment did nothing to sweeten Tony’s mood. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m thinking of just ignoring it.”
“And to think they put your sorry ass on the front in charge of a bunch of men,” Mickey said sadly, shaking his head. “What’s the army come to?”
“Yeah. Okay.” Tony did a lunge or two, trying to look as though he’d been engrossed in his prejog stretches. “I’m doing my run. I leave you here to your nonsense. Maybe the seagulls need a laugh.”
“Actually, Cap, I have a better idea. Why don’t you take this basket on down to the beach and have lunch with Talia? Since you’ll be thinking about her anyway, you might as well give her a little face-to-face action.”
Tony hesitated.
This proposal did have some appeal. He could run his ass up and down the beach until he dropped from exhaustion, or he could eat some of Mickey’s excellent cooking—he’d recently taken some professional cooking classes and had taken over cooking duties at the house—in front of sparkling waves with his favorite person in the world.
Hmm. Tough choice.
And Mickey had given him the perfect excuse to break his rule about giving Talia space, hadn’t he?
Tony shrugged, trying to look indifferent. “If you insist.”
“Oh, I insist.” Mickey handed the basket over. “I definitely insist.”
Tony continued down the boardwalk, breathing in the salt air until it saturated his lungs. On days like this, he could almost forget that he’d ever left home. That he’d ever been to Afghanistan. That there’d ever been—and still was—a war.
Although, to be fair, was it the ocean setting that did it for him, or Talia?
Tough question.
Hitting the sand’s edge, he toed off his running shoes and socks and slipped his feet into its giving warmth.
Something about her was brighter than other people. More intense, maybe. And it came across in person, but also in her letters. Maybe that was why he was so hung up on her. She was so…exuberant. So energetic and engaged.
Splashing around with Chesley now, she seemed infused with the sunlight, as though it came from inside her rather than from without. She and the barking dog were having fun, splashing, kicking up water, and Talia was laughing at nothing in particular. Even her silver toe ring shimmered against the bright water, and her bracelets, which she apparently never took off, tinkled like a thousand little bells.
It seemed unlikely that he’d ever feel that kind of joy again, though; maybe the war had amputated it. Hell, the way he was wired these days, it was much more likely that the sunlight would hit him and immediately be sucked into a hole of black nothingness, never to return.
But he was working on it.
Wasn’t knowing you had a problem and wanting to do better half the battle? God, he sure hoped so.
He’d reached Talia’s umbrella and the pair of Adirondack chairs underneath, so he set the basket down and took a couple of steps toward her. She hadn’t seen him yet, but was squealing with delight and turning away as Chesley did one of those crazy dog shakes, throwing water in every direction.
Raising a hand, he called to Talia. “Mickey sent me down here to—”
He froze, knowing something was wrong even before it happened.
Talia, still a good twenty or thirty feet away, grimaced, putting a hand to her chest and then moving it to her throat. She gasped in a breath, then another, but it didn’t look as though she was getting enough air. His first wild thought was that she had choked on something, but she hadn’t been eating—
Talia’s mouth opened wider; her skin was beginning to pale.
“Talia,” he called sharply.
Dismay widened her eyes. She held up a finger in a wait a minute gesture, not looking happy to see him, but that was just too damn bad. The adrenaline rush made him sprint flat out, and he reached her side just as she doubled up, bending at the waist and bracing her hands on her knees.
Since he didn’t know what the hell else to do, he put a hand on her back to steady her and felt the straining heave of her rib cage. Panic tried to clamp down on him, but he shoved it away. Freaking out right now wouldn’t help Talia, and he’d surrender himself back to the Taliban before he let anything happen to this woman on his watch.
“I’m—okay,” she gasped. “Give me…a minute.”
Okay? Did okay now mean that your face was chalky from lack of oxygen? Had she lost her mind?
“You’re not okay. Sit down. Put your head between your knees.”
She straightened, fixing him with a glare even as the tendons in her neck strained with each breath. “You…are way too…bossy.”
“Damn straight. Here. Let’s get you to a chair.”
Keeping a firm hand around her waist, he steered her to one of the chairs where she sat, leaned back and closed her eyes. If he’d been a cat, he’d have lost eight and a half of his nine lives during the period that she breathed deep, in and out, slowly catching her breath, until it eventually returned to normal.
He waited, not wanting her to tire herself by answering any unnecessary questions, but then he couldn’t take it anymore.
One of her hands rested on the arm of the chair, and he took it, squeezing. She squeezed back, and he let himself be reassured, at least until she opened her eyes. Evidently, she’d caught herself, because she looked embarrassed and, worse, uncomfortable with the caress.
She pulled her hand away and flashed what she evidently thought was a soothing smile.
“I’m fine. Don’t worry.”
“Don’t worry? You serious right now?”
“Yeah, I’m serious. I just got a little overexcited and…lost my breath, and…it’s no big deal. Don’t you ever get overexcited sometimes? It’s not like you need to call out the coast guard or anything.”
Apparently they’d observed two different incidents, because that version of events didn’t jibe with what he’d just seen. “That was a whole lot more than you just being out of breath,” he said flatly. “Do you have asthma?”
“No.”
“Pneumonia? A heart condition?”
“No. Just drop it, okay? I’m telling you…I’m fine.”
“Fine,” he snapped, running a hand over his nape and deciding to come at her from another angle. This woman gave stubborn a whole new meaning, and he was beginning to understand that trying to force her to do anything she didn’t want to do was the rough equivalent of trying to fly without the benefit of wings or an airplane. “I’m not trying to make a federal case out of this, but you might want to think about seeing a doctor.”
Uh-oh. Wrong tactic. So much for the calm and rational approach.
Reaching for her towel, she began drying her legs with the kind of jerky moves that told him she was pissed off, and royally so.
“I’m not an invalid. I don’t need to see a doctor. And I’d appreciate it if you’d back off, okay? Back. Off.”
“Talia—”
“Don’t make me sic Chesley on you.”
The dog, who’d been watching anxiously, whining, fixed Tony with a warning look. “Don’t even think about it,” he told the dog.
A sound vibrated inside Chesley’s throat, and it sounded suspiciously like a growl. But then Tony snapped his fingers at her, she headed off toward the waves.
Stalemated, Tony and Talia glared at each other for a minute. It crossed his mind to just toss her over his shoulder and march her back up to the house, but he figured that would end badly for him.
Anyway, she was the one with the fearsome-looking dog.
He was overreacting, he supposed. If she said she was fine, then she was fine. God knew his instincts were all out of whack when it came to her.
“Fine. And when you collapse, I’ll know what to tell the EMTs, won’t I? I’ll be sure to tell them I tried to get you checked out.”
“Nice.” The beginnings of a grin curled her lips. “Throw me under the bus, why don’t you?”
“I will.”
“What’re you doing out here, anyway?”
“Well, I was jogging. I’m allowed to jog on my own beach, aren’t I?”
Her lips thinned with obvious suspicion.
“But, as it happens, I ran into Mickey heading out with the picnic basket. So I thought I’d save him a trip and bring it instead. But since you’re being so snippy, I think I’ll take it back inside and eat it by myself.”
Deciding to make it look good, he grabbed the basket and started for the boardwalk. That was all it took.
“Wait!” she called. “Let’s not be too hasty. What’s in the basket?”
“Do we have an agreement that you’re going to be nicer to me in the future?”
“That depends on what’s in the basket.”
“Let’s see.” Coming back, he sat in the second chair and dug into the basket. “We’ve got your basic cheeses… I saw potato salad… Chocolate chip cookies… Oh, and—” He hesitated, not wanting to throw them back into uncomfortable territory. “It’s, ah—”
“Let me see that.” She snatched the bag in question from him and studied it, a flush rising up over her cheeks as she read the label. “Wasabi-covered peanuts.”
She stilled, refusing to meet his gaze.
Yeah, Tony thought. This was what you called an awkward silence.
“Don’t worry,” he said quickly. “I won’t force you to eat any.”
To his overwhelming relief, she blinked and smiled up at him. It was one of those glorious smiles, bracketed by dimples and that sexy little mole at the corner of her mouth, the smile that he’d been living for these last months.
“You know—a good friend of mine loves these things,” she told him. “I think I’ll give them a try.”
So, okay…lunch. Lunch would probably make sense. Yes. They should eat. Lunch.
If only she weren’t so freaking flustered.
Talia fumbled through the picnic basket, arranging plates and cutlery and trying to pretend that Tony didn’t exist. Failing that, she tried to pretend that he wasn’t so…there.
Unfortunately, he seemed to be everywhere.
There was no safe place for her to look, at least none that she’d found so far. Another reach into the basket brushed her arm up against the sinewy warmth of his forearm.
“Sorry,” she muttered, drawing back and concentrating on slicing a blo
ck of cheese instead. Although, given her general clumsiness and her current jitteriness, maybe she should leave the sharp objects alone. With her luck, she’d end up thumbless by the end of the meal.
She couldn’t look him in the face, either, because connecting with that brown-eyed gaze was like plugging into a generator humming along at full power. A single second’s contact was enough to heat her face to the melting point and make her brain liquefy.
The probability of making it through the entire lunch in some sort of dignified manner was, therefore, negligible at best.
Their chairs were way too close. They were arm to arm, and if she stretched her right leg out by a scant half inch, they’d be thigh to thigh, as well, and wouldn’t that be more than her overwrought nerves could handle?
Still, it wouldn’t hurt to take a peek. Just a quick one.
Under cover of swiping sand off her ankle, she bent and cast his legs a sidelong look, thoroughly checking him out.
Wow. That was all she could think. Just—wow.
He was sprawled in his chair with the relaxed posture that big men always used, as though it was their divine right to take up all the available space because their body mass was greater than anyone else’s.
His nearest thigh, which was smoothly brown and sprinkled with a fine layer of black hair, was so sculpted and proportional it could have been snatched from a med student’s anatomy book. His thigh was longer than hers, of course, and she didn’t need to touch it to know that it was probably ten times as powerful. He had the toned calves usually seen on tennis players, swimmers or ballet dancers. Down at the end of all this lengthy perfection, his strong toes burrowed into the sifting sand, flexing and digging…flexing and digging.
His feet were big and—
Whoa. She didn’t like where that thought was headed. Why didn’t she just whip out a tape measure and be done with it?
He smelled good, too, which was a lesser problem, but still worth noting. What kind of man smelled good while exercising? What was so special about his skin, that he could generate that warm musk and cottony fresh scent when other men in the same situation would smell like barn animals?
How was it even possible that she could smell him over the salt water’s tang?
Sinful Temptation Page 8
