And then, when it seemed her lungs might deflate from the exertion, she could see the marina.
A man on a boat, that’s all Burke Wolf was. She couldn’t hold the memory of him as the complicated, wrecked soul who’d hurt and healed her in those hard growing-up years.
Sofia dismounted and paused on the dock. An array of vessels tucked in slips lay before her, lined up on the deep gray water that twinkled as the sun continued to indolently arc through the sky.
Was Burke’s home the robust yacht on the far end, which glistened and made her see luxurious sunset suppers and hear Andrea Bocelli? That didn’t fit the man who ate sandwiches on the floor and said dirty, rough things in her ear. Did he live in the narrow, battered craft that couldn’t be more than twenty feet? She doubted it accommodated his height and wingspan…height that shadowed her nicely and wingspan made up of sinewy arms, large hands, and long fingers that knew exactly how to stroke her nipples until she was tight and aching for—
And then she was hot again. Just that suddenly, and for no reason that could lead to anything good.
Well, there was one thing it could lead to, and if what they’d begun in Blush was any indication, it’d be incredibly good—of that she had no doubt.
Sofia’s gaze bounced from one boat to the next as she proceeded on the dock, too absorbed in her search to let the heat of the wood on her feet clue her in that she’d left her confidence-boosting Gucci heels in the bicycle basket.
She’d known live-aboards before, friends of Luz’s who floated off the grid most of the year. Their craft had been cramped but they lived off essentials only and craved a mobile, minimalistic lifestyle—playing gin rummy with Luz and other Cape Cod locals one evening, then sailing off to the Caribbean the next.
What did Burke crave out of this life that he devoted so much of himself to handling cargo on ships but in his downtime kept himself on the water and ready to sail away at a moment’s notice?
As though he was here, but not really. As though he was with her, but not quite.
“I think you lost your way, Sofia.”
“Gah!” She gasped, spinning around and stumbling. If she fell to the left she’d pitch herself off the dock. If she fell to the right she’d land against a hard, taut body. Glimpsing Burke’s easy smirk as she reclaimed her balance, she decided it was a toss-up which option was more dangerous. “I was supposed to catch you off guard.”
“Huh?”
“Forget it.” She countered his smirk—oh, when had he learned to perfect that half-sulky, half-amused twist of his mouth?—with neutrality. Blank expression, straight posture, steady breathing. Which was complete bullshit, because his proximity penetrated her resolve, seducing her without touches or words—only nearness. Euphoria surged, coasting along her skin and quickening her heartbeat. “You didn’t try to stop me from falling.” She adjusted the strap of her cross-body purse and pointed to the foam cups in his hands. “At least you kept hold of what’s important.”
“Wasn’t the plan to avoid touching each other?” Burke said tensely, as if he regretted everything about that plan. He walked past her, then stopped. “Coming?”
“Uh…”
“You get yourself up at the ass crack of dawn and creep around the marina for any reason other than finding me?”
Smartass. And damn him for being so astute—and sexy while he was at it.
“I didn’t know which boat was yours.”
“C’mon, then. I’ll introduce you.” He began walking but when she didn’t follow, he turned, confused. “Sofia?”
Clouds kissed and parted overhead, and a sheet of filmy light was cast across the dock, spotlighting them. He wasn’t just out of bed and lazy and sleepy. He was totally alert, in faded jeans and a gray tee that was streaked with—
“It’s oil,” he supplied, because she’d been staring and he must’ve figured the smears preoccupied her. The truth was she wanted to know what he’d look like if he put down those cups and peeled off the shirt.
“Oil,” she repeated. The kind of oil she’d appreciate wouldn’t be swiped across his shirt but dripped onto his sun-golden skin, and she’d be the one to massage it into him, trailing a stream up his abs, then fanning her palms over his pecs…
“Yeah, oil. For the boat. I change it myself.” A note of curiosity relaxed his face for the briefest of moments, and something inside her sighed. Then a frown took up residence, creating shadows where there was once light and openness. “Change your mind about the stalking?”
“I wasn’t stalking.” She’d simply shown up on the dock unannounced and was creeping around hoping to catch him off guard to lay down a business proposal.
“No?” He eased into a spread-legged stance, apparently getting comfortable for whatever explanation she might throw out there. He drank from one of the cups. “Let’s hear it, then. The Tremaines in the fifty-footer at the end, they get up early for breakfast at the general store. They can get an earful, too.”
Dropping her volume, she said urgently, “I came to speak to you about something important, but I don’t know which one’s yours. I’m not going to cause a scene for your neighbors’ entertainment. I can leave.” But she didn’t want to leave.
Don’t let me leave, Burke. I want to stay. I want you to want me to stay.
“Don’t go,” he said. “You seemed pretty determined to get to me. The marina’s not exactly next door to your sex shop, is it?”
No, but your father’s building—your building—is, and we need to talk. “You’re holding two cups of coffee.” An assumption registered. “Maybe you want to send whoever’s in your bed on her way before I get on board?”
Burke’s eyes were assessing, measuring. “Two cups of coffee’s all it takes to make you jealous?”
“I’m not jealous. I’m being considerate of your one-night wonder in there.” God, she was lying, because the prickling on top of her veins had nothing to do with consideration and everything to do with envy that wound green and possessively through her like climbing ivy. “So. Yes. I’ll leave. Now.”
“Sofia.”
She pivoted, and something bit into her sole, but she could respond to nothing but his voice. “What?”
“There’s no one on board. I got out of bed at four something to knock out chores. Got a full day ahead over at Abram and Hannah Slattery’s house. The two cups are for me. Piping hot even through these damn sleeves, but the general store makes it good.” He winked and it almost felled her. “Since you got all dressed up for me, I can share.”
Sofia bristled at his teasing. It really came much too effortlessly for him, considering the canyon-deep hell between them. Either that or he wore a mask and was as torn and confused as she. “I’ll take one. What are you doing at the Slatterys’ place?”
“They’ve got a couple of babies on the way. Abram wants a nursery for the kids and a craft room for Hannah. I’m helping out.”
“That’s nice of you.”
“Nah, I’m just keeping busy.” Burke walked over and handed her the cup he hadn’t drunk from, and she felt slighted somehow. She wanted to put her lips where his had been. Cheap thrill, she knew. It also happened to be a safe one. The attraction was trouble, but could either of them ignore it entirely?
“Mmm…oh, there’s mint in this?” Yum. She went for another taste, taking a slurping sip that lacked any hint of grace. Giggling, she commented, “That wasn’t cute, was it?”
“I think it was,” he said, so gently she felt as if he was coaxing her out of hiding somehow. Not even touching her, he drew her along after him.
As they walked, a pinch of pain flared in the bottom of her foot to the point that she limped the final few steps onto the cockpit of a boat that gleamed white save for the cobalt lower half. Colossians 1:14.
“Didn’t you go to P-town and have Colossians 1:14 tattooed on your arm back in high school?” Belatedly, she groaned at the faux pas. It was the equivalent of Didn’t your dad chastise you in front of the entire
school for getting that tattooed on? Didn’t you kick a hole in Principal Whaler’s door because your dad went postal about that tattoo? Did you ever forgive me for telling your dad you sneaked up to P-town to get a tattoo?
“That was the first. The consequences of that didn’t stop me from getting more.”
“Oh. I didn’t know.”
“I made sure you didn’t.” For a time he’d worn one long-sleeved shirt after another. She wouldn’t admit now that she’d noticed. “When I wanted the old man to find out, I showed him. You should’ve been busy enough tipping over everyone else’s secrets. Why add all my fuckups to your burden?”
Somehow they’d made it past all that and they were here, together. What kind of miracle, or prank of fate, was this?
“This here’s a forty-footer. A beast, but I can handle her on the water all right.” Pride tinged his voice as he listed the restoration and upgrades he’d applied since laying down almost two hundred grand and having the boat shipped from Louisiana. “The bottom paint’s fresh. I took care of that and had the rigging checked out practically the minute I walked off the site in Boston.”
“Since you’re permanent there, at the harbor, how often do you go out to sea?”
“As often as possible. I try to put my name at the top of disaster aid lists, but I can usually find a cargo ship or a gig with a fishing crew. I got myself sent to Alaska last winter. Can’t say I was enthusiastic to come back here. On the other end of that, Eaves wasn’t all that enthusiastic to welcome me home.”
Sofia adamantly denied that the churning in her stomach had anything to do with the touch of longing coloring the matter-of-factness in his voice. “Forgetting someone’s fuckups can be impossible, but people are equipped to forgive. Redemption and forgiveness, they happen. Reacquaint yourself with Colossians.” On the cockpit the water’s coolness and the sun’s heat engaged the breeze in tug-of-war, but she didn’t sit and bask in the competition. “The drugs, the acting out, that doesn’t define who you are.”
“There you go with your fantasies again.” Contrition dulled the sharp delivery of each word. “This place pinned me a long time ago. Some part of me is anchored here.”
Me, too.
“Want a belowdeck tour? And I don’t mean that in a pervy way—unless that does something for you.”
A smile defied her resolve to be opaque, to give away nothing. She started to keep up with his casual speed, but her foot hurt and she was done putting up a façade. “Ouch,” she complained at last, holding out the foam cup. “Take this. I might’ve cut my foot on a plank.”
“Not surprised. That can happen when you go stomping around on a dock barefoot. Seems a woman would wear some kind of shoes with a getup like that.”
“They’re in the basket. Of the bike. I bicycled here.”
“Bicycled? Look, Sofia, I know Eaves is a mighty small town, but it’s not so small that somebody like you can pedal from one end to the other like it’s nothing.”
“My heart is fine. As soon as the docs gave me the all-clear, I started building my endurance. A year post-transplant I was sprinting. This was nothing.”
“You seemed out of breath when I came up behind you.”
“That’s because I was thinking about—” She swallowed the rest of that sentence, that single damning word: you. “Forget it.”
Burke disappeared belowdecks and returned empty-handed, but straightaway helped her down a column of steep steps and carried her to his living quarters. “You say that a lot. ‘Forget it.’ Every time you do, it makes me even more eager to know your secrets.”
He set her down on something firm yet cushiony…a mattress…his bed. He’d brought her to a cabin that was more spacious than she’d imagined, even on a boat this size. Portholes allowed sunshine voyeuristic entry. The cabin smelled of teak and clean laundry, spiced with the tang of lemon from the galley. She hadn’t absorbed that she was being spirited someplace infinitely private.
“The purse, the jacket—get rid of them. If you’re gonna give me your secrets, you might as well be comfortable when you do.”
The jacket was the crucial article of her businesswoman ensemble. Without it she’d be a woman with a scar on her chest sitting in front of a man who had something she wanted. It was the critical thread in the image she’d stitched together. All else would unravel with mortifying ease.
“Air conditioner’s not cranked up yet,” he said. “You’re hot in all those clothes, and I’m hot looking at you.”
“That’ll certainly change once I take this jacket off.”
“So test your theory.” Burke crouched before her, watching her as he opened the jacket button by button. Stripping away the fabric, he let his hands skate along the skin he uncovered. Testing her, he gauged what she’d allow and what might compel her to retreat. “I see the edge of your scar, a dark slash between your breasts. That’s not scaring me off.” He leaned close, kissed her neck. “You’re so damn soft, right here. I didn’t kiss you here the last time.”
Sofia edged back. “Motor oil. I don’t want it on my clothes.” Her borrowed heart thump, thump, thumped inside her. The jacket, her shield, lay discarded on the bed somewhere behind her, and she was only Sofia and he was only Burke. “Can you make sure that doesn’t happen?”
The sheets rustled as she scooted toward the center of the bed, farther from the edge…farther from the door. His scent lifted from the linens, stroking her lightly, pulling her down gently until she lay on her back.
She was lying in a man’s bed. This was new. If he stretched out beside her, would lying with him feel strange? They’d lain side by side before, sharing a pair of earbuds as they listened to music, sharing a blanket as they watched fireworks explode over the beach, sharing tears the morning she’d found him shaking and weak and made the 911 call that had saved his life.
They’d never been together this way.
“I’m going to take a look at that foot,” he said, and stepped out of the cabin.
She was lying on an extremely sexy man’s bed and the best she could get out of it was splinter removal. Embarrassed, Sofia debated: Feign nonchalance or jet out as fast as her hobble would allow?
But he came back before she could decide. He’d traded his oil-stained shirt for a white one and held up a first aid kit. “Clean shirt, scrubbed hands, and whatever’s bothering you should be remedied with something in here.”
“Okay.” It wasn’t okay. She was clawing toward something but afraid to gain purchase. So she let him pick up her foot. “Is it bleeding? Did I track blood on the pier?”
“Nope and nope. You’ve got a splinter. I’m going to tweeze the bastard out, then clean you up. Is that a plan?”
“Sure…it’s a plan.”
“It shouldn’t hurt, unless I have to do a little digging to get a grip. If it pinches too much—”
“Scream?”
“At this hour, try not to. Marina folks like to let the sun and gulls wake them up, not screams. How about tapping me with the other foot? Whatever you do, don’t squirm while I’m aiming the pointy end of these tweezers at you. You might end up with worse than a splinter.”
Sofia waited, twisting her fists in the sheets in anticipation of pain and squeezing her eyes shut to brace herself for the sting.
“Hey, Sofia?”
Was he…laughing? She opened her eyes, unclenched her fists.
“It’s out already. A little disinfectant and a Band-Aid should tide you over until you get some shoes on.”
It was over, and so painlessly? He’d handled her carefully, capably. “You weren’t as barbaric as I thought you’d be,” she said as he applied the slim bandage. “I keep thinking the worst when it comes to you, and I don’t want to do that anymore.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Burke, thanks for patching me up.” His smile startled her, comforted her, and she realized the compassionate, attentive side of him was nothing new. “And for remembering my sub sandwich and cleaning m
y windshield and being my friend when no one else would take the job.”
“That stuff…I didn’t do it for gratitude.”
“I know. It’s just that”—she wiggled her foot, still in his grip—“you reminded me that you’re kind of good at taking care of me, so I shouldn’t have worried about the splinter.”
“I don’t want to see you hurt, Sofia.” His gaze found hers and held it…cradled it, like he cradled her foot. Then he raised it and laid a kiss on her heel…then another on her instep…then another on each toe.
Oh my hell. Oh. My. Hell.
“You owe me a secret,” he reminded her, too serious to be called gentle. “What were you thinking about on the dock?”
“You.” Sofia took her foot from his grasp and slid it down the stony terrain of his abdomen. When she’d asked him not to get oil on her shirt, she hadn’t meant for him to change into another. She poked her toes into his muscles. It was so hard there—did he even feel the pressure? “Let me see you.”
Burke swept off his shirt and it joined her jacket somewhere on the bed.
Well, damn.
One arm was inked from the curve of the shoulder to the top of the elbow. The bicep was completely covered. Words were written into his skin, images drawn into his flesh. Patterns and messages blended and competed, and he was so beautiful in front of her that he stole her breath like an unrepentant thief.
It was the sort of tragic, painful beauty that you could either treasure or forsake.
Sofia allowed her foot to slip farther, and she rested it firmly against his crotch. That was hard, too—unmistakably so.
“You’ve been thinking about this? Thinking about how I’d feel in your hands? How I’d feel in your mouth?” Burke covered her foot with his hand and moved it up and down the front of his jeans. “Tell me. I want to hear every word. Every little moan you’ve got. Every nasty wish you’re hiding in that sweet mouth of yours. That’s what you’re going to do for me, Sofia.”
She wanted to speak, but a trembling sigh tumbled out. Trying again, she said, “Oh, yeah?”
Meant to Be Mine Page 16
