when he was going to be doing what he didn’t want to do at all.
But Molly shook her head. “Not soccer.”
Joaquin couldn’t think of anything else he was good at. “Then what?”
Her fingers strangled the beer bottle again. She took a breath. “I need you to teach me—” another swift deep breath. And another. Hell, in a minute she’d hyperventilate! “—how to seduce a man.”
His jaw dropped. The beer bottle slipped from his hand.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Molly bent down and snatched the bottle off the deck, slapped it on the table, then ducked past him into the room and, returning with one of the bathroom towels, used it to blot up the beer with a gravity far exceeding the amount that had spilled.
His brain was still buzzing, wondering if it was the heat of the afternoon sun or the beer that had caused his hearing to go. “You want me to what?”
As she mopped he could see that the back of her slender neck was almost as red as her hair. And when she stood up, her face was flaming. “Never mind! Forget I said anything. It was a stupid idea!” She tried to dart past him into the room, but he hauled her up short.
She jerked her arm, but he wouldn’t let her go. “Sit down.” He still couldn’t believe it, but her behavior was making it seem more and more like his hearing wasn’t as bad as he’d thought.
“Did you say you want me to teach you to—” now he was having trouble getting his mouth around the words! “—seduce a man?”
Her shoulders lifted and her mouth twisted in one of those distasteful faces she’d been making earlier. But then she met his gaze squarely and seemed to defy him to make something of it. “Yes.” The word hissed through her teeth.
Good lord. He tried to bend his mind around it. His mind wasn’t that flexible. “Why?” he asked stupidly.
“For the usual reasons,” she snapped. “Why the hell do you think?”
He shrugged helplessly. He’d always thought he understood women very well. He sure as hell didn’t understand this one!
She sighed and squared her shoulders beneath the gargantuan T-shirt, then said evenly, “Look. It’s simple. I’m thirty-one years old.”
He was surprised. Of course she had to be, as she was only a couple of years younger than he was. But somehow he’d never thought of her as any older than when he’d first met her. She’d been about seventeen then. Still, “Thirty-one?” he echoed doubtfully. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure! I’m not ancient.”
“I know that,” he said quickly. “I thought…younger. You look—”
“Like a thirteen-year-old boy?” Her mouth twisted.
Yes, actually. In those clothes. Though she sure as hell hadn’t at Lachlan’s wedding in that borrowed dress. But he wasn’t going there, either. “Fine,” he said at length. “You’re thirty-one. So what? Like you said, it’s not ancient.”
“Not yet. But it’s time I got married.”
“Married?”
He’d never even seen her with a boyfriend! It wasn’t that he’d thought she might prefer women, it was that she’d never given any indication of preferring anyone at all. Some people didn’t.
“Not everyone has to get married,” he said, in case she had suddenly begun to worry about it. “Lots of people lead perfectly happy single lives.”
“You, for example,” she said tartly. “I know that. But I presume that’s because you want to.”
“Damn right.”
“So, fine. Hooray for you. But I don’t want to.”
He blinked at her vehemence. “You don’t?”
“No!” She took a quick breath, then said more moderately, “No. I don’t. As surprising as it may seem, I want a husband. I want a family. I always have.” She said the words with almost as much bluntness as he was accustomed to hearing from her. And yet they weren’t disinterested. There was an emotional edge underlying them. She sounded vulnerable.
Molly McGillivray? Vulnerable?
“Your sister wears army boots?” he’d said incredulously to Lachlan the first time he’d met her.
And Lachlan had agreed with a wince as he’d rubbed his shin. “And she knows how to use them.”
That was the Molly McGillivray he knew. Not this one.
Now he rubbed the back of his neck and tried to think. The very notion of him helping some girl with marriage on her mind boggled his. Marriage wasn’t even a word in his active vocabulary, despite his mother’s recent not-so-subtle hints.
When it came to staying power, his romances—if indeed anyone beyond tabloid journalists dared call them that—rarely lasted longer than the half life of a loaf of bread. Which was the way he liked it.
In the past three weeks, he’d flirted with dozens of women and been delighted to have them flirt with him. Someday he would doubtless marry and do his duty by the family name.
But he was in no hurry. None at all.
Besides, what did seduction have to do with marriage? Unless Molly was planning to seduce some man, then kidnap him and haul him to the altar. He gave her a narrow assessing look.
“You want me to teach you how to nab some unsuspecting tourist?”
“Of course not!”
“Well, then—”
“He’s not an unsuspecting tourist!”
“You’ve got someone in mind?”
“Of course.”
“You do?” He couldn’t keep the astonishment out of his voice. His mind darted to all the eligible men on the island. “Um…anyone I know?”
“I don’t think you’ve met him. We grew up together. He lives in Savannah now—and elsewhere. His name is Carson Sawyer.”
No, Joaquin hadn’t met him. But he’d heard the name. Carson Sawyer was the “local boy who made good.”
“You think we’re driven to succeed?” Lachlan had once said to him when they were working their butts off. “You should meet Carson.”
Carson Sawyer, last Joaquin had heard, was worth about as much as a small Mediterranean country.
And this was the man Molly had set her sights on?
Talk about aiming for the moon!
“I don’t think—”
“We’re engaged.”
