the boat is leaking.” His tone suggested he knew that was not the problem.
“No.”
The problem was that the storm had passed and the electricity still leaped in the air between them.
“What’s the problem?”
She looked at the slick wetness of his hair. The problem was she wanted to run her hands through it. The problem was that she wanted to press her wet body against his. She gulped and looked away from him.
The problem, she reminded herself. Her mind was blank for a moment, and then she remembered.
“Ice cream!”
“Huh?” He ran a hand through that wet hair where her own hand wanted so badly to go. It freed droplets that ran down the line of his temple, and then his cheek and his jaw.
“You know you took the ice cream off the list?” she said in a rush. “I bought it anyway.”
“Why am I unsurprised?” he said, his voice full of irony.
“And the cooler is not going to prevent it from melting.”
“No, it won’t.”
“That’s our problem. We have to eat it now. All of it.”
“Sounds like kind of a fun problem to have,” he said.
“And since you didn’t want dark chocolate, I bought two kinds. The dark chocolate for me, and one for you. I tried to guess what you might like.”
“And?”
“Salted caramel.”
“I have to know,” he said drily, “what would make you look at me and think salted caramel?”
“The contradictions,” she blurted out. “Sweet and salty.”
“Don’t kid yourself. There is nothing sweet about me.”
But that, she knew, was a lie. She remembered his tenderness from the night before. She thought of how he had deliberately made the boat ride to Anslow exhilarating. Still, she played along with him. “It was Salted Caramel or Nutty Road.”
His lips twitched. And then he laughed. It was no less delightful because it was so reluctant.
“I hope you like Salted Caramel. A lot. Because you have to eat a whole bucket of it.”
“We don’t exactly have to,” he pointed out pragmatically.
“I should have got the Nutty Road because only a nut would even consider letting ice cream melt,. Even with the cooler it won’t last long in this heat.”
Aware that something was easing between them, Angie went below and retrieved the two containers of ice cream. She came back topside and he turned from where he had been digging through a side compartment. In his hand he had one of those Swiss Army combination knife sets. He unfolded it to reveal a spoon.
“We’re going to have to share,” he said. “Only one spoon.”
The danger of the storm had nothing on this: sharing a spoon with him. The new ease between them became laced with something else, something as sensuous and unpredictable as that storm.
Jefferson gestured to a bench seat at the back of the boat, sat down and patted the seat beside him. She took the seat, not quite touching him but close enough to be aware of the heat radiating from under his damp shirt. She set down one bucket of ice cream, put the other on her lap and popped the lid off it. She looked into a vat of chocolate the same color as his hair.
“It’s already started to melt,” she said.
“That lends a sense of urgency to the whole situation,” he said.
She glanced at him and realized he was teasing her. The ease and the electricity braided themselves together even more completely.
He dug the spoon in and then held it, heaping with dripping ice cream, out to her. She moved into the circle of his electricity and closed her lips over the spoon, her eyes locked on his.
Without breaking the hold, he took the empty spoon and dug it back into the chocolate. Seeing his tongue dart out to free the ice cream from the spoon was way too sexy. But then he was holding the spoon, filled again, out to her. She closed her lips around the spoon, aware that his lips had just touched that same place. Ever so slowly, she tugged the ice cream off.
And then she watched him take that same spoon and dip it back into the ice cream and put his lips exactly where hers had just been. His eyes met hers. He did something exquisite to that spoon with his tongue.
When it was her turn, she did something just as exquisite with her tongue. She heard him give a little gasp of surprise.
And longing.
Sharing that spoon became an exploration of sensuality almost as powerful as a kiss. She was so aware of him: the wet transparency of his shirt, the shape of his lips, the light in his eyes, the solidness of his wrists, the strong columns of his fingers as they held the spoon to her lips.
“So, would you say this ice-cream flavor—dark chocolate—is a reflection of you?” he asked.
She gulped. “In what way?”
“Sweet, but with surprising depth and a hint of mystery.”
Was he flirting with her?
“You need to be writing ice-cream labels,” she said.
“You write the next one.”
He reached over her, and took the second bucket of ice cream. He pried the lid off the salted caramel one and dipped the spoon in. He held it out to her and she took it.
“What do you think?” he said. “What would you put on the label?”
“Subtle, but sensuous with hints of salt.” Was she flirting back?
He ducked his head and dipped the spoon back into the ice cream and tasted it slowly, rolling the ice cream on his tongue as if he was at a wine tasting.
“I like it, but—” he dipped the spoon back into the chocolate and then into the salted caramel “—who knows what could happen if you combined two such different flavors?”
Was he talking about ice cream? Or was he flirting? Whatever he was doing, she liked it. She never wanted it to end.
With her eyes still locked on his, she slid the ice cream off the spoon. The whole experience was so exquisite it was almost painful. She had to shut her eyes against it.
When she opened them, he was sliding a spoonful of the mixed version between the sultry mounds of his lips.
“The ice cream tastes like ambrosia,” he said gruffly.
“What does that mean, exactly, ambrosia?”
“Food
