laughter.
‘Look, I’d really like to clear the air between us. I honestly didn’t mean anything by what you overheard. It was merely an observation from working on these tugs too long.’
She opened her mouth to respond and he held up a hand. ‘Yes, it was a sweeping generalisation. And, yes, I’m suitably chastened and I apologise. But tell me, Lana Walker, which are you?’
He leaned closer. So close she couldn’t breathe without imprinting his seductive scent on her receptors. ‘Husband-hunter or fun fling girl?’
She reared back, knowing now was the time to clam up as she usually did, before she scolded him like a tardy student. As she compressed her lips into an unimpressed line she noticed the teasing sparkle in his eyes, the cheeky smile playing about his mouth.
‘You’re trying to wind me up.’
‘Is it working?’
‘No.’
‘So I could say anything and you’d be totally immune to me?’
Immune? She could have a hospital’s worth of vaccinations against suave sailors and it still wouldn’t give her guaranteed immunity—the type of immunity she needed more and more urgently the longer he stared at her with those twinkling eyes.
‘That’s right.’
‘So I could say you intrigue me and you wouldn’t react?’
‘Nope.’
‘What about if I tell you I think there’s more to you than the obvious?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘That’s the same as intrigue, so you need to come up with a better line, sailor boy.’
‘Sailor boy?’
A slow grin spread across his face as she mentally slapped a hand over her mouth.
Nicknames implied camaraderie. Nicknames implied fun. And there was no way she’d be foolish enough to ever contemplate having fun with him.
‘Figure of speech.’ She pleated her napkin, folding it over and over with origami-like precision, till he reached over and stilled her hand, setting her pulse rocketing as she tried not to flinch from his touch.
‘What if I said I like you?’
Taking a great gulp of air to ease her constricted lungs, she frowned. ‘You’re still trying to wind me up. And you’re good. I’ll give you that much.’
She extracted her hand on the pretext of picking up her wine glass, racking her brain for an easy way to end this conversation before she blurted out exactly how wound up she was by his teasing. The nape of her neck prickled. A colony of ants had taken up residence under her skin, and her blood flowed thick and sluggish, heating her from the inside out. Logically, she knew it was merely a physiological response—a simple chemical reaction to the first male to enter her personal space in a long time. But logic wouldn’t untie her tongue or stop the rising blush from making her feel more gauche and awkward than ever in a social situation like this.
Smiling, he picked up his own wine glass and raised it in her direction.
‘You do intrigue me. And I’m not trying to wind you up.’ His smile widened. ‘Well, not much. For some inexplicable reason I’ve taken an instant liking to you, despite your somewhat prickly exterior, and I’ve got two weeks to prove it to you.’
Prickly? The cheeky son of a—
He chuckled, and she knew he was winding her up again, trying to get a reaction.
She bit her tongue, mulling over what he’d said. He’d taken an instant liking to her, huh? As if. If she believed that she’d believe the ship would sail into the horizon and drop off the end of a flat earth.
Leaning forward, he murmured in her ear. ‘Two very interesting weeks.’
She stiffened, unable to think when he was this close. What was the best response? Ignore him? Berate him? Wait the requisite ten minutes it would take to think up a scathing comeback and put him firmly back in his place?
‘What? Nothing to say? Surprising, from a woman with such strong opinions about me.’
Sitting back, he fixed her with a smug smile—a smile that said he knew how flustered he made her, how she was struggling to come up with a suitable response.
She should have ignored him, pleaded a headache and left the table. That would have been her usual course of action—quietly slinking away, ruing her shyness. But his self-satisfied smile was too much, goading her into matching wits with him.
He assumed she couldn’t come up with a quick answer? She’d show him.
So rather than pushing back her chair and making a run for it, she felt blood surge to her cheeks, and her head snapped up as she fixed him with a scathing glare.
‘Go ahead, then, sailor boy. Prove it.’
LANA’S eyelids creaked open at the crack of dawn the next morning. A newly converted gym junkie, she usually bounced out of bed early and hit the nearest gym at six, when fitness fanatics liked to sweat through their first aerobics class of the day.
She’d never graced a gym, let alone tried an aerobics class, till eighteen months ago—all part of Operation Obliterate. Obliterate her memories of Jax, obliterate the embarrassment of how he’d used her; obliterate the fact that her first love had seen her as nothing more than a fling.
Now, not only was she hooked, she’d become a qualified instructor just for the fun of it. Madness? Probably. But for the hour she jumped around every morning she was just like the rest of the sweaty women around her, when no make-up and casual clothes weren’t a big deal.
After a quick shower, she donned her favourite capri pants—in urgent need of replacing, considering the frayed cuffs—and a plain white T-shirt. She had a ton of them, as they went with everything. Then she slipped her feet into a pair of well-worn slingbacks.
Beth had shuddered when she’d seen her casual outfits, but, hey, she’d always been a comfort-over-style girl. Besides, she didn’t adhere to the old ‘dress to impress’ motto. She used her brain to get people to notice her. Discounting last night, when her intellect had gone AWOL.
Prove it, she’d dared Zac. All very brave in the heat of the moment, when she’d fired off the retort without thinking it through properly, but now, in the clear light of a perfect summer’s day, her resolve wavered.
It was one thing setting out to build confidence by trying new things, but challenging a pro like Zac to flirt with her could only end in disaster.
He’d pushed her, taunted her till she’d snapped. He couldn’t have known she’d react that way, for she still couldn’t believe she’d done it herself. And while she now regretted her outburst, a small part of her was jumping up and down with joy at the unusual flash of bravado.
The
